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toovermorrow · 10 months ago

Text

— where or when

aerith gainsborough x zack fair, cloud strife | 2.4k words

SUMMARY — Spending time alone in the church, Aerith thinks of the blond man she met crumbling through the roof. Tending to the flowers, she reminisces the time a SOLDIER did the same. — Inspired by Laufey’s Where or When.

WARNINGS — angst, introspective, post-crisis core/middle of ffvii (canon compliant), implied suggestive affection.

READ ON AO3

Through the gloom of a skyless street, light shines upon the roof of the church that Aerith left broken.

She leans down on the green, yellow, and white plants that greet her in gleeful bloom. After a while of meeting new faces and jumping across train station platforms, she finally has time for herself in the church at the end of the slums. She has time to think and feel as the fragrance of an earthy heaven hits her nose.

Flowers grow around her sandals as if they’re mindful of her presence. Living solely on a lucky patch of grass with the help of her tender care, they’ve been the only flowers around Midgar.

Aerith paces around the leaves, careful in her steps to not ruin the progress in keeping the little pieces of life left in the slums. Observing the plants as they follow the shifts she makes in the wind, her sight leads her to the hole in the roof.

Not everybody gets to meet people falling from the sky — but meeting two people who have is a low yet strange number.

She laughs at herself as she realizes it. Her green eyes shine in the sunlight as she reminisces the circumstances in which she met the blond-haired man.

Because yes, a while back, she met a blond-haired man who fell through the scaffolding of the church’s broken roof. He looked lost, as anyone who fell from the sky would.

It wasn’t really the sky, rather from the plate above. The sunlight barely shines through the streets below the hard concrete covering a good portion of the vast sky. It keeps her from her irrational fear of the world, she thinks, but maybe it isn’t so bad after meeting people crashing from above.

Just like a meteor.

When she tended to the man, he seemed cold yet endearingly awkward. There was a warmth in his sky-blue eyes that she couldn’t get ahold of. There’s an aura of experience and a life he lived despite his age, all along with the promise of a life ahead in his stride. His arms were toned, armor full of scratches, with a particular sword that looked all too familiar.

Aerith couldn’t put her finger on it then, but as her eyes focused on the open roof, she sighed as she felt the familiarity blaze through her skin.

That roof had been broken by another man before.

“…Zack?”

That’s not the new guy.

But it could’ve been.

A longer while back, she met black-haired man who also fell through the scaffolding of the church’s roof.

A while’s as long as Zack had left her.

He was warm off the bat. He was less lost, more excited to meet another life form other than his own since waking up. The warmth from eyes that were sky-blue were peculiar too. The man, a boy then, talked in his sleep about the troubles he faced in his current life, but he walked with promise of a bustling future ahead in his stride. His arms were toned, armor full of scratches, with a particular sword that looked all too familiar.

Zack Fair is her first love.

They spent time together like two puppies playing in a lawn. They’d call when they were apart, send mail when they had the time. He built her a flower wagon with the promise to populate the streets with flowers. In their downtime, they’d hold each other’s hands and twirl around the church. She’d hum a tune and he’d duet along, surprising each other with decent singing voices that erupted into giggles and laughter on the wooden floorboards of the chapel. To hell with manners whenever it came to love; he was her puppy.

“You never see flowers around here,” he always said, “I want to see a flowery Midgar with you.”

She isn’t affected by his absence, she hopes, having drafted one, two, five, ten, twenty more letters since the eighty-ninth that she sent him. Her calls never went through anymore, neither did her texts. He must’ve found somebody else, someone outside of Midgar who can bring in as many flowers as he once hoped to see in the streets with her. The flower wagon broke anyway.

Everything in the slums remained the same, so did the opened ceiling of the church.

The streets are trash and junk. The people get by with smoke in their lungs and smiles that they’ve earned through the shine of shillings and nothing more. This is life as Aerith has always known it to be, the only faint memories of her outside Midgar being her as a child running with her mom in a meadow. No flowers around still. The sky was still the color of concrete. Nothing changed when the man with shoulder armor came and left her life.

Naively, as anyone would, she misses him ever so dearly still.

The night was young in the same chapel, except the moonlight shone across Zack’s blue eyes with the stars encapsulated in them. They pant slowly, sharing hitched breaths that gradually calm down as Aerith reached for his finally bare shoulders. The two close in, Aerith’s body pressed against Zack’s as she was sandwiched between the back wall and him. She gently cupped his cheeks, running a thumb across his scar. He smiled at her gesture, leaning closer into her palms as the warmth of his cheeks filled her cold hands. Neither of them knew that it’s the first and last time they’ll ever be like this, close, intimate, inches away from kisses and more, all before Zack’s expedition. It’s the only time he had seen her with her hair completely down. It’s the only time she had seen him with his body exposed. Their heads closed in, Aerith wrapping her arms around Zack’s exposed upper half, inviting him to rest his hands on her hips — it was the only time they ever had a moment together, under a different kind of sky, flower wagon parked in place as it watched them feel each other’s heat.

Zack crashed through the roof of her heart. Then, he left without a trace. She only called for partial repairs since then.

Now, Aerith tends to the flowers with hope in her eyes. She picks one flower from the patch, apologizing to its severed stem, promising it a new life once she encourages it to regrow — but that’s not what she plans to do yet.

Her priority at the moment is herself, she thinks, as she hums a little tune to the freshly-picked flower.

“He loves me,” Aerith tugs on a petal, before hesitating to remove it.

It’s not the flower’s life that she’s concerned about now, she just plucked it out, but her breath hitches as she rephrases her words.

“Zack loves me…” Aerith says. “Zack loves me not—no, wait…”

The memory of the blond-haired man crashing through the roof replays in her mind as she stares at the bare ceiling. This time, it’s different. The partial repairs she requested were all for nothing as she reimagines the other man again.

The blue sky beyond the exposed ceiling is briefly interrupted by a tuft of white. She resets her little game as she finally tugs on the petal in her hand.

“Zack loves me, Cloud loves me…”

Oh, the strange man with the blond hair.

He looked almost exactly like Zack except he was moodier. Cloud Strife, SOLDIER First Class. His cadence and tone in reciting such words felt automated, but not exactly soulless; Aerith found him endearing in a different way.

Cloud never called back much, never really sent messages, never sang with her, but he did dance — not with her, as he always danced against his will. He never promised for a flowery Midgar. He never commented on the plate above the streets or the fact that the only sky they’d see clearly was through the broken roof of the chapel. Actually, Cloud never really did anything to swoon her heart at all.

He definitely is nothing like Aerith’s first love, but for some reason, she took to him too.

There’s something about him: the way that he spoke to her was gentle. He had a gruff in his tone that slightly reminded her of a little kid acting tough. She giggles to herself thinking about it, but immediately softens as she remembers his patience. She’d encountered him on Loveless Avenue before, and she’s somehow glad that he remembered her as “the flower girl” at all. They’re little things, not as grand as the gestures her first love gave her, but she felt the love and care in his heart that he didn’t know was even there.

She tugs on another petal.

“Zack loves me,” then another petal, “Cloud loves me. Zack loves me,” Aerith hums, “Cloud loves me.”

She isn’t sure what she feels.

One man is a dog, the other a cat. One man took her heart around and left, the other never even took anything yet stayed. Zack gave her life as his own was bursting, Cloud seemed caught up in his own life while figuring out hers. Suddenly, a thought ran across her mind.

They both had eyes that were the color of the sky.

Aerith stopped plucking the flower, no petals left, lost on who she ended up with in her little tune.

Not like she cared in the first place whoever she would like more. She liked them both, the puppy and the bodyguard, and she didn’t mind either one to love as much as they loved her.

Zack cared for her despite his duties. Cloud cared for her despite his demeanor. Both held her heart and made it feel whole, patching up the crashes they made through the ceiling of her soul.

Content with that realization, she smiles to herself — only for her eyebrows to furrow and for the corners of her lips to drop as soon as they smiled.

Neither of them are here with her in the chapel.

It’s not like it’s a big deal, she thinks. Zack probably has his reasons to leave, and Cloud seems busy by himself anyway. Aerith has other friends by the streets, but they never really filled up the holes in her heart the same way that they did. She’s surrounded by love and life and flowers that never go anywhere beyond her hands.

She has everything, yet she has nothing.

Despite all the people she’s met, she won’t admit that she’s still so incredibly lonely.

Loneliness isn’t unfamiliar to her either. Ever since her biological mother died, she felt lonely even under the roof of her adoptive mother’s home. It was another hole that only her mother could patch, and she’s forever grateful to have her new mother, but the loneliness that came with death was unshakeable since then. She’d meet new faces in the slums, from older women who taught her how to pray to younger teens who talked to her endlessly. Even then, there was a tear in her heart that was bigger than any patch that could sew it back together.

So, she kept to anything familiar as a safety blanket of sorts.

Familiarity gives her comfort. Aerith somehow felt scared of the open air, the flood of sunlight that the sky above the Midgar plate could offer. She’s grateful that she could see the blue sky somewhere without feeling dread in her soul. That’s why she’s glad that she met Zack and Cloud; men who fell from above with doses of the sky in their blue eyes.

The fact that they were so similar, so familiar to her made her feel loved and a little less lonely, but keeping to them was another burden. Aerith never wants her happiness to depend on anything other than herself.

She thought she was never normal for that, another fear she lived with her whole life. She doesn’t know what it is about it.

The Shinra executives, the Turks, and the floating rumors from townsfolk all called her an Ancient. They called her biological mother a Cetra. She denies all of it, but she knows that it’s true and it sets her apart. She doesn’t despise her blood, she thinks, but all the jargon is stressful. It’s unfamiliar. It’s uncomfortable, and it makes her feel less normal.

There’s a burden that she feels is a necessity for her to free, a pain in her chest that she knows she will carry lest the world die beneath her legs.

It only tears her heart apart, leaving a hole so big that it might as well be split into two.

But her heart shouldn’t matter as much, right?

Aerith’s breath hitches as she swats the thought away. She hates that thought more than anything.

Before she knows it, she’s crying, slumped in a squat over the flowers, careful not to squash them. The soil on the patch dirties her dress, but it’s the least of her worries.

“I wish they were here,” Aerith thinks. She wants to see Zack again. She wants to know Cloud better. If another man fell from the damn roof right now, she’d take it, but her luck wouldn’t be so good.

Defeated, she sits beside the flowers, petting a lone white lily at the side.

The sunlight along with the broken scaffolding on the roof drew beautiful shadows around the lily. Aerith stares at it before wiping her tears, managing to smile at the calming sight.

Zack loved that she took care of flowers. Cloud cared for the flowers she loved.

Who knows where or when they exactly swooped her heart out of the loneliness it drowned it. Who knows where or when they’d meet her again.

All Aerith knows is that she left her heart open, broken yet beating, for the people in her life to crash through.

She’d save them and the world that they inhabit, she’d trade her life and everything with her just to patch the massive hole in her heart by herself.

It was through the wide cracks of the wood and brick above their heads that the sky finally shone, no longer the color of concrete; the greenish-blue expanse of the world greeted her heart hello , keeping her smile as the tears fell freely on her cheeks.

She bids the flowers farewell for now. She’ll be back soon.

#ffvii #final fantasy vii #final fantasy 7 #ffvii fanfiction #final fantasy fanfiction #aerith gainsborough #zack fair #cloud strife #🪶 — z writes

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toovermorrow · 10 months ago

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— stories and stars

cloud strife x tifa lockhart | 3.7k words

SUMMARY — One week after they saved the Planet, Cloud and Tifa wondered about their places in the world. They felt so small, yet never insignificant; who are they, really?

WARNINGS — angst, hurt/comfort, introspective, post-ffvii/pre-advent children (canon compliant), trauma and identity crisis processing, traumatic flashbacks (cloud has PTSD).

READ ON AO3

Dark navy swept through the sky a few hours before midnight. Specks of light from dying stars—ones that Tifa and Cloud were grateful weren’t theirs—twinkled in the safe, comforting distance.

The chilling evening breeze sifted its way through the cracks of the windows. The wind blew without a whisper, silence filling the four corners of the room. Tifa was urged by the slightest tinge of a feeling to look east, eyes landing exactly on the tip of Cloud’s upturned nose.

The two couldn’t sleep.

Cloud stared at the ceiling, comfortable in casual clothes for what seemed to be the first time in all his life. The bed’s cushions were feather-soft. His pillow was delightfully cold. The heat of their bodies and breaths circulated and dissipated, warmth allowing itself to only land between themselves and nothing else. The moon reflected the light of the sleeping sun against their skin.

Tifa rolled her face over. “Still awake?”

“Yeah. So are you,” Cloud replied neutrally.

The bed fit them both with a generous allowance of space in between. Neither of them nudged closer, but it was intimate; it’s not the closest they’ve been. Staying awake together was something they’d done multiple times before, they’d been in closer proximity; however, unlike everything they felt in the past few months, this was new.

Intimacy wasn’t their best spot as friends, partners, whatever they were. They never really said anything about it despite the questions in their heads that they’ve always wanted to slip out of their tongues, but in the grand scheme of things, deemed unnecessary.

Cloud’s eyelashes lowered, only to stop halfway before he could close them.

“Got a lot on your mind?” Cloud asked.

He wasn’t not the type to ask questions, but it was uncommon for a query of the sort to leave his lips. Concern wasn’t his most evident expression but Tifa felt it in every syllable of his sentence. He changed a bit.

She knew him. He knew her. “Yeah. I guess.”

“Me too,” he shuffled, “I can’t sleep. What’re you…thinking about?”

Tifa inhaled sharply and sighed.

Where should she begin? She thought a lot about herself. After years of caring for other people and looking after others, in the moments wherein she knew death was upon the world she’d fought for, Tifa thought of her legacy.

A sky full of nothing turned into black with specks of mint green flashes, before a light washed over the world — then, in an instant, the unusual weather of the world returned to its former state. The meteor that threatened the existence of all things had seemingly destroyed nothing but itself in the wake of all evil.

The Lifestream weaved its way back into the Planet, and yet, Tifa’s mind was thinking humanly.

She witnessed Cloud’s conscience in the Lifestream and how the fragments of the broken man she loved turned back into parts of a whole. She watched as Cloud’s deepest desires to be accepted as a person, his own person, unfolded before her eyes. He wanted to be accepted by Tifa, and she showed that she loved him for who he was, is, and always will be; regardless of the lies he told her and himself just to impress that insatiable need to be someone.

Sometimes though, Tifa wondered what exact kind of person she was to make Cloud care for her this way.

As the world caved in and the grey skies turned into looming death, she thought of why she didn’t dive into her own conscience. She cared for Cloud and still does—she wouldn’t be facing him in bed if she didn’t care—however, she thought of herself for the first time in what felt like an eternity lost to the world around her.

What if she saw herself in that mint-green sea instead of him? Why didn’t she see herself? Why wasn’t it her own conscience that she’d navigated through, but Cloud’s? She wanted to help him like she always quietly promised in return, but the more she thought about it, the more she wondered about her little spark of life in a sea full of bright, big stars.

She’ll never know now. “I’ve been thinking about a lot.”

Cloud’s eyes finally turned to her face. They were the color of the sky as she’d known when they were younger.

“It still hasn’t sunken in that we…saved the world.”

Listening, Cloud hummed in agreement.

“And I don’t know if this will make sense…” Tifa’s eyes lifted themselves away from his face. “…I started thinking about my place in the world.”

He could do nothing but continue to listen.

Differences were everything to her. It wasn’t the cliche of vengeance that pulled her into the fiery passion behind her burgundy red irises; no, the similarities behind Bahamut materia and her eyes were never coincidences, she thought. She wanted a difference in the world: a greener Planet was a bonus in all of her efforts to reverse the damage that it—and she—had suffered.

Suddenly, because of what she experienced in her early life, she became a person who kept her real personality just to adapt to others. Tifa would usually hyper-observe in conversation, adjusting her mannerisms to match the other person. In moments like these, she’d be careful not to share too much of her life as she thought that there was a dam protecting a flood of traumas in her head. With utmost care, she never dared to even let a single droplet of water slip through her mouth, let alone allow it to flood through her tears. In a way, she kept so much of herself that she started to lose that meaning and identity that she so wanted to protect.

Losing her father to the pitch-black selfishness of a one-winged angel wasn’t what defined her. Helping her childhood friend remember her wasn’t what made her whole. She’s more than the willingness in her system to take Shinra down and make a difference in her surrounding environment. These learnings that she got from flashes of the end of everything stuck with her, even if it had only been a week since their rag-tag team saved the Earth. She’s a collection of stories named Tifa Lockhart.

“My hands are sore.”

Cloud watched as Tifa clenched her fist, only for her knuckles—thoroughly calloused by the rough leather adorning her wrists and fingers—to immediately turn white at the slightest bend. She winced before relaxing her hand.

“We fought a lot, huh?” Cloud looked back up at her.

They met eyes for a moment. The wind blew, this time with a pleasing hum akin to a siren’s hymn. Leaves of a nearby tree rustled as the two adults turned their bodies fully to face each other.

At this rate, Tifa would have been humming the tune of her eighth-grade piano recital to herself, lulling her to sleep. She opted out of it, listening to Cloud’s steady breathing with the rhythm of the evening air filling the room.

“We—you, you’ve done a lot,” Cloud stumbled on his words. There wasn’t much for him to say, anyway.

“You too, you know,” Tifa replied.

If there’s something Tifa didn’t know, it’s that he wouldn’t have done anything if he didn’t meet her.

He wouldn’t even have continued to pursue SOLDIER if it weren’t for the promise he made. The creaky wood planks of the top of the well, the smell of the earth below, the glares of the starry sky that weren’t harsh; gentle, forgiving, and ready to shoot one star across the night to encapsulate the promise of going back to her.

Cloud always returned to save Tifa. He’d always kept that promise, one of the things he had never truly forgotten. She’s a collection of stories named Tifa Lockhart, and to him, she was a bedtime story that kept him company throughout every waking moment of his life.

“I owe you a lot,” Tifa smiled. “For continuing to keep that promise.”

“Y-You don’t…” Cloud’s eyes widened as he disagreed. “I owe you, if anything.”

“Oh, stop it. Let me have this moment.”

Defeated by her quick dismissal, he readjusted his head to face the ceiling again.

“I can’t get used to you being this kind,” Tifa teased.

Cloud merely let out a faint chuckle, smiling ever so slightly. The slight tinge of a tone in his voice, the sound of genuineness kicking itself out of his lungs after a lifetime of sarcastic laughter, the lone appearance of the corners of his lips turning softly to express delight; Tifa couldn’t get used to this sight either.

The light of his smile didn’t drop as he faced her again. “I’m not that kind.”

She hadn’t seen that side of him in what seemed to be forever. He hadn’t felt this amused by anything in a long while.

Unable to act, Tifa simply elbowed Cloud’s arm. “Gosh. You look funny.”

“What?”

“You’re never this happy-looking!” She let out a laugh.

Cloud’s amusement turned into a fond gaze as he listened to her giggle. They haven’t laughed in a while, haven’t teased in this way. Cloud was usually dense or dismissive whenever Tifa made comments, but as the world shifted with their hands, so did the bubble of laughter they’d been suppressing.

“I’m getting the hang of it I think,” Cloud admitted, half serious.

A beat of silence passed as they both fixated on the ceiling above them. The concrete is sturdy above their heads. Shelter hadn’t felt so secure in so long without the crawling dread of doomsday within the grasp of a hand.

It’s all gone. The most they’d ever have to worry about now were themselves.

Neither would admit it — nor would their other friends ever bring it up, but the looming question of “what now” haunted them for more than it should. They were the silent heroes of the apocalypse that never happened. Not a lot of people knew their names except for the Shinra Corporation, which was going to dissolve anyway. Townsfolk that they’d met from across the world would know them, but not as the people who held back a meteor from falling into the Earth.

Cloud wasn’t going to be known as the man who faced Sephiroth. Tifa wasn’t going to be known as the person who willed the Planet to safety. Neither were their colleagues.

Then who were they?

Who are they?

Their former friends would have known. Zack and Aerith were two people who lost their lives to carry the torch of saving the world in their wake. The torch’s flame wasn’t red, not the color of their burning hometown in their memories. They were so considerate of Cloud and Tifa that they might have known them better than themselves.

But they’re not here anymore.

Life goes on, but what’s there to life that they haven’t figured out yet?

The stars in the sky twinkled as glimpses of the universe painted over the dark navy with streaks of lighter hues. Tifa looked at the window beyond Cloud’s face with a childlike glee. She’d seen the same hues before from the top of the well.

“Tifa, I’ve been meaning to ask…”

Her pupils slowed their restlessness and fell back to his face to focus on Cloud’s somber words.

“Why do you care for me?”

She didn’t know it, he didn’t show it, but he was having flashes of his past at the back of his mind again.

For once, the flashes didn’t feel like they were blitzes of lightning or sparks of the same fire that ran across their hometown. He didn’t feel the heat of the flames in the goddamn traumatic memory that never left his mind even if he tried to forget it all. The flashes manifested in the form of voices now, ringing his ears with the cracking of the fire alongside voices. He saw only the slightest of visions before hearing the voices of people he loves.

It’s loud. Then it’s louder. Behind his somber eyes, Cloud saw glimpses of Zack’s smile, then Aerith’s closed eyes, before they opened, where the blue serpent’s pupils of Sephiroth greeted him instead. Conversations between his friends and family—the voice of his mother calling his name for breakfast—echoed through his head as if he’d trapped himself in a cave with no escape in sight.

Tifa’s lucky she can’t hear anything, one voice said. The other laughed. They’re his voices. His tone, his laugh, his mockery of himself. For once, it’s not Sephiroth, it’s not Zack, it’s not Aerith, it’s not his mother.

How could I be my greatest enemy if I don’t know myself?

Cloud did his best not to show Tifa that he was having an episode. He couldn’t have it that night. He didn’t want to, he never wanted to; but as his own voice rang in his head hauntingly, his facade cracked as he dug his head into the pillow, curling his body next to Tifa.

“You looked after me so many times. I don’t get it, I don’t get it, I don’t…” Cloud swallowed after talking. His voice almost gave away the internal hell he’d been living through at that moment.

“All those times…why did I matter to you so much?”

Tifa knew what was going on. “Cloud…”

She took ahold of his wrist, twisting her body closer to his, and she held him tight. “I don’t know either.”

Caught off-guard, Cloud’s eyes widened, scanning for her face. She gave a knowing look, one that she hoped would be warm enough to say that she was here like she always had been.

He lowered his head and shifted closer to her, welcomed by her embrace.

“Tifa, you could spend your time on other things. You’re your own person, and I’m just…”

He looked up at her once more to apologize, only to be dismissed. “Let it out,” Tifa told him, inviting him to tell her—show her everything he’d been bottling up.

As if she couldn’t release her own dam herself.

Cloud bit his lip before continuing. It had been a week since the end of the world stopped. It had been a week since he last truly embraced his emotions as they were.

“I’m just a collection of stories,” he managed to say with tears in his eyes.

“I’m not Zack…I was never a First Class—n-no, I was never in SOLDIER. I was never going to be the SOLDIER that would have saved you. I’m also not your childhood…friend. I wasn’t really a clone, but I have Jenova’s…”

A flash erupted through Cloud’s nerves. The pain seethed, but he didn’t let a single utterance of pain escape through his teeth.

“It’s patchwork. It’s one story after another. Not memories, just stories, and I…”

“Aren’t we all?”

Tifa interrupted Cloud’s little speech by tugging his wrist. She’d been caressing it to calm him down, but feeling a rush through his vein, she held her thumb over his skin and kept it there.

“It’s really hard in general to figure out who you are regardless of what happened.” She looked down to observe the throbbing veins and nerves under his skin. “I think I know who I am, but not really. There’s no need to worry about that.”

He simply looked at her burgundy eyes through her thick downward eyelashes. Her eyebrows lifted for a moment as she sighed.

“Weird, isn’t it? We can do all we can to figure ourselves out and yet…we can’t. Like, I know that I’m strong. I’m from Nibelheim. I know that I want to care about other people.”

Cloud nodded slightly. She looked up at him as her thumb brushed along his wrist again.

“There’s a lot of things that I can say about me. I am my own person, but I’m not me without stories.”

He seemed to understand. She’d been this and that, and to Cloud, she was someone that he always sought approval from. There was a lot to Tifa than she had just mentioned, and he wanted her to mean more than just the subject of his woes and insecurities.

Either way, he listened, agreeing for once — but he hadn’t been sold on the idea that she was just like him.

“I’m not just…me as I know myself. I’m the Tifa that you think I am. I’m what Zack thought I was, I’m what Aerith thought I was…I am beyond my memories. I’m a collection of stories, just like you.”

Cloud squinted his eyes. “But you know what I mean.”

“I know. And in my story, you’re Cloud, the one I care about.”

His tensed muscles softened at her reply. She felt it under her touch.

It dawned on him that he never really knew how much he longed for words like those. His cells were degrading little by little, memories and identity fading into the darkness in his mind. To think that he, despite it all, was still somebody to someone — to be worthy of care at all, sparked something in Cloud that felt less like a traumatic shock and more like a touch from the skies.

Tifa smiled fondly at him. She blinked slowly as she gathered the right words to say.

“You saved me then. In Nibelheim, twice. When we fell off the mountain. Then, when Sephiroth took Papa.” The memories were bitter, but they both knew that these are all just memories now. “Then you saved us in all those fights. You held onto your promise all this time.”

She wasn’t wrong. She’d always been Cloud’s strongest physical support, but he carried the honor in the sword that he was left with.

Zack would’ve been proud, Cloud thought.

“Even if you broke your promise, which you never did, I still would’ve looked after you regardless.” She chuckled with a sweet, toothy grin. “You’re Cloud, you’re beyond a promise.”

The night breeze whispered once again.

Cloud cleared his throat. “And if that’s what I’m not, then…”

“We’ve gone through the Lifestream before.” She squinted at him with a cocked eyebrow. “I don’t want to go through it again just to remind you that you’re Cloud.”

She’d been joking, but she meant it. She helped him rediscover himself and doing it once had been more than enough to get Cloud back up on two legs.

“Y-Yeah. I’m…Cloud…”

Son of the Strifes. Former Shinra infantryman. A member of Avalanche. A close friend of many, a blond man who looks like a Chocobo, a dancer sometimes. A racer, a country boy, a man with a kind heart.

“You’re more than just stories to me,” Tifa clarified. “You’re someone I don’t want to lose.”

The reassurance that she gave felt warm. Against the chill of the evening air, the words and kind expressions they exchanged felt comforting. Soft, even. It felt like forever since they last slept on a bed this comfortably, let alone processed their lives after the meteor.

But the glint in Tifa’s eyes still didn’t shine as bright as it did before. She lowered her gaze again to her own hand this time; Cloud took the turn of holding her hand.

“Honestly…I’m not too sure who I am yet.” She blinked tears back rapidly to not let them fall. “Can’t believe I’m just saying stuff.”

She chuckled darkly to hide the break in her voice. “I can’t lie, I still hope that I’m someone to you.”

“Of course you are.”

Cloud was never one to say reassuring words like she would. Regardless, he tried; she was, still is, and always will be a dear friend to him. It didn’t matter who they were — in terms of a relationship and terms of their individual persons. He didn’t have the words, but he wanted her to be okay.

He spoke. “In my story, you’re the one I’ll always save. You’re the one who understands me. You’re beyond our promise and I can’t keep thanking you enough.”

Touched, Tifa smiled as a few tears escaped her eyes.

The shooting star across the sky manifested into a meteor crashing down on Earth. What luck, Tifa thought, that their wishes and promises would come back to bite them in the end.

But they saw through their ends and watched as the meteor dissipated into a shower of light that seemed like little granted wishes bursting in one go.

“Thank…you…” she swallowed. “…I still can’t get used to a kinder Cloud Strife.”

“Neither can I.”

The two laughed heartily. It was the most they’d laughed in their whole lives. They inched their bodies closer to each other, poise thrown out of the bed as they lay comfortably. Tifa stretched her leg over Cloud’s hip. He didn’t mind. Cloud used his arm as a pillow, not caring if it was cramped tomorrow. He just lived in the comfort that there would be a tomorrow.

People aren’t to be defined. People, humans, human beings — they exist beyond definitions, they are beyond what a conscience thinks of another conscience. Whether or not people are a collection of stories, the types of stories that were their memories and others didn’t matter.

Humans are humans by the virtue of allowing themselves to feel.

Tifa figured that Cloud had enough of a grasp of himself to start climbing back into the type of person he was inside. She helped him, and now he’s about to make his way back into himself.

Cloud turned to face her again, still-glassy eyes peering at her with the same promise hiding behind his mako irises.

He’ll help her ease her way back into herself. Her insecurities to be someone, her habit of adapting to other people just to be something; it’s all nonsense that she despised, it’s all things Cloud wanted gone for her own good too.

Stitching each other back into the people that they used to be was going to take time, but it’s another promise they’re willing to take up again.

Even as survivors of dark pasts that erased segments of their own persons, they looked at each other and realized that the skies in their faces reflected the warm, orange future ahead. The dawn crept across the dark navy through their windows as they finally closed their eyes, breaths slowing to resting beats, facing one another with the hard fact that neither will be alone anymore.

#ffvii #final fantasy vii #final fantasy 7 #ffvii fanfiction #final fantasy fanfiction #cloud strife #tifa lockhart #cloud x tifa #🪶 — z writes

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