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Words were always hard to come by. But Tifa thought that they’d never really needed them.
Not that night at the tower, after their promise, after silence settled between them, an easy warmth carrying in the breeze that drifted past beneath swaying feet. When starlight had slipped into an encroaching dawn and Cloud had been the first to stand. He’d pushed up onto his feet, turned to her, and held a hand out, gaze turned aside.
Tifa had only smiled and took his hand, letting him pull her up even though she didn’t need his help. His hand had been soft with childhood naïveté then. The same as hers in so many ways. Size, feel, heft. His eyes, too, had been the deep blue of a warm summer’s lake.
When she next saw him, the hue of them had become something entirely different, as though the wide swath of the skies above that old water tower had somehow crept into them - swirling green against a too-blue back. Too sharp. Gone was the boy she knew, with the soft hand and softer eyes. In his place was someone else entirely. A stranger.
Despite that - despite the stretch of time and space that had separated them, distorted as it was - they never needed words to hold on. Not when the skies rained bullets and bloomed with gunfire, steel creaking underfoot. Instinct had driven just to take that leap of faith, his name spilling from her lips. He’d been there. His hand outstretched, catching hers. Roughened leather skimming her calloused fingertips.
They hadn’t needed words when he dangled from the slanted precipice of the Shinra building and she’d skidded across steel grates to grab him. Tifa had never gripped onto anything so tightly before. The entire weight of his life - clasped in her palm.
It was always a push and pull with them. A dance that rocked to and fro, teetering on the line between too close and too far. Yet, through it all, she never let go. Neither did he.
Until he did.
Until she was toppling back into the open air, the pool of mako yawning beneath while her hands reached out in front of her. Towards Cloud. The boy who’d held his hand to her. The boy who was always there. Until he wasn’t.
And yet- and yet-
And yet, Tifa refused to let go.
Perhaps there was still that childish naïveté somewhere in her, or perhaps it was sheer stupidity, or perhaps it was the softness in his expression and the quiet crack in his voice when she awoke and found him perched by the foot of her bed. Tifa couldn’t know what it was that drove her to reach for him again. To take his hand in hers. To hold on to the boy she knew.
They never really needed words, but sometimes they were welcome. Like in that ferris wheel, shrouded in a dozen colours and the popping of fireworks. When she’d clutched onto her own hands, fingers digging into leathered palms, afraid that if she held on too tight that he would slip through the cracks of her grip.
“Not one bit,” he’d said, palm outstretched.
Maybe it wasn’t so bad, sometimes, to have these words too.