DISCLAIMER: Final Fantasy VII is wholly the property of Square Enix. No money is being made from this story.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: I was inspired to write this based on a fic I read long ago. Sadly, it's been so long that I cannot remember the title, author, or even series it was written for (just the general plot), so I can only say thank you to whoever the author was for the idea. Hope you enjoy it.

Torn Home

Written by daBOSSz

Chapter 1 – Rising Tensions

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

Tifa put her phone away, caught up in a storm of emotions that had been exacerbating every day for weeks, if not months. Her husband had just called to tell her he was coming home that night. It should have brought her excitement to see him again, but it didn't, and the reasons why were too numerous.

He'd been gone for five weeks with barely any communication.

He'd been doing this for half a year.

Her calls to him were almost always going straight to voicemail. Again.

The few times she'd been able to reach him, he'd given her horrible excuses.

She wanted to believe him. She wanted to think he was true to his word: that these increasingly longer trips were all business-related, that there wasn't anything sinister he was doing behind her back, and that he was fully committed to her, but weeks and months dragged on with less and less contact.

At the beginning, he'd at least call every few days to check in on her and the children. Now, he'd just called for the first time since his last visit home five weeks ago and told her nothing except that he'd be back that night and gone again in the morning. To say she was finding this predicament increasingly difficult would be the biggest understatement she could make.

To make matters worse, this wasn't the first time he'd made her feel like he was abandoning her.

He'd walked out on her three years ago with nary a word. She later found his supplies at the Sector 5 church and discovered that he'd contracted Geostigma. She lashed out at him for giving up on himself, and it was only later that she'd been informed by Marlene that he didn't start losing hope until after he persistently tried to find a cure for Denzel's sake.

It took some time to repair the fractures that had formed from his decision to leave, but he assured her that he was here to stay. That was when he finally came forth with his feelings for her, and she finally allowed herself to be swept off her feet by him.

He proposed to her shortly after they'd welcomed Shelke into their family. Their engagement was brief, and they were married in the same church. It was a small ceremony attended only by friends who they'd all considered family, and it went perfectly.

She thought she received her fairy tale ending that day. She thought the past was finally behind them, and for a while after their wedding, it certainly felt that way. She'd continued running the bar, and he'd been out on his daily deliveries with the occasional long-distance trip keeping him away for a few days, but he'd always come home to her and their family.

Then, six months ago, it began to change. He started leaving on longer delivery trips more frequently: first a week, then two weeks. She was a bit suspicious, but she quickly suppressed those suspicions, convinced that it would not be a repeat of the past.

Sadly, it only got worse. The trips lasted longer. Communication grew fainter. Every time she asked him about it, he gave her pretty much the same, drawn-out excuses: he'd accepted too many deliveries at once, more and more of his customers lived farther and farther away from Edge, etc.

She believed him because she wanted to, but more so because she needed to. After all, they were no longer just two childhood friends who had developed crushes on each other. They were no longer stuck in a will-they, won't-they loop that carried well into their adult years. They were married now, and they'd sealed their fates to each other when they stood inside the Sector 5 church and declared their vows in front of all their close friends on that euphoric day.

Tifa found herself aimlessly wandering into the bedroom she shared with him and staring at the framed marriage certificate hanging above their bed. It was a short document, but she didn't even need to read anything other than her own name to remind herself of the commitment they'd made to each other that day: Tifa Lockhart Strife.

She was the one who insisted on changing her name for him. He'd suggested that she keep her maiden name, but she wanted to wear both family names with pride, to show that he was just as much a part of her as her bloodline. Now, with him gone for stretches of time and her feeling ever more distant, her new name felt more like a trap than a display of affection.

She'd fallen for him long before she realized it, long before she even understood her own feelings. Perhaps it wasn't his noble pursuit of a cure for Denzel, but those same feelings she'd held onto since childhood that allowed her to forgive him so quickly when he abandoned her the first time. Perhaps it was those same feelings again that convinced her to be persuaded by his worn-down excuses this time.

Now, perhaps it was those same feelings that made her into such a fool, blinding her to the possibility that he might be deserting her again.

Tifa didn't want to go down that road, but with every moment that Cloud wasn't home, she found it harder to turn back from such thoughts. Had her feelings for him realized themselves so early in her life that they blinded her to her own sense of logic?

She looked to the stand beside the bed at the propped-up family portrait they'd taken about a month after their wedding. It had replaced the old one that featured just her, Cloud, Marlene, and Denzel, before Shelke came into their lives. It reflected a time when she was still convinced that the past was past and that such feelings of abandonment would never surface again.

Shelke had been a blessing to Tifa just as much as Marlene and Denzel had been. Ever since she established herself at Seventh Heaven, Shelke had developed a serious interest in bartending, and Tifa was more than happy to take the young gal under her wing to teach her the ropes. Business had been booming as Edge continued to grow, and there were plenty of times when Tifa found herself overwhelmed by her work. With Cloud away, it was during those times that Shelke almost always stepped in to ease Tifa's load.

"You gave me a home," Shelke would always say when Tifa thanked her. "It's the least I could do."

She's done more than that though. Shelke was the company Tifa needed when Cloud wasn't around. While Marlene and Denzel fulfilled Tifa's motherly nature, Shelke was closer in age to Tifa; thus, the two could discuss matters that she never could in front of the children.

Still though, she never dared to speak of the tenuousness that had grown from her marriage or show any signs of tension. For the sake of her family, Tifa had to project her strong-adult persona.

Inevitably, her thoughts returned to the spiky-haired blond man in the portrait, the man whose name she now bore and the only one to whom she was willing to show any signs of vulnerability. He'd been there for her in her greatest times of need, from the day Nibelheim burned down to the day Meteor fell. She'd always held onto the promise he made to her atop the Nibeheim water tower when they were teenagers, and he'd stayed true to that promise on too many occasions to count.

However, he'd also left her side too frequently. The first time he did so, when he headed to Midgar to join SOLDIER, he'd at least had the understanding to notify her well in advance. She never held that departure against him of course, since he was pursuing his dreams, but what she never told him was how she'd already felt about him by then. The day he took off for Midgar was the same day in which she realized the full extent of her blossoming feelings for him, and looking at it this way, it seemed as though he had left her behind just as she had grown close to him.

They'd separated a few times during their quest to stop Sephiroth, but she never faulted him for those since he was not himself. Yet he separated from her willingly when he became himself, keeping his Geostigma a secret before taking off. Even with his absence tormenting her long after his return, she'd put this departure behind her because her feelings for him were simply too strong. Besides, they were not even officially together when he left, and she figured she'd made the right decision when he finally confessed to her that his feelings for her were mutual.

Now? What could he have left to say this time? What legitimate reasons did he have to be away for so long again? His delivery service often called on him to be away for days at a time, but a week or two? Weeks that eventually became over a month? Even if what he'd kept insisting was true, couldn't he at least have the courtesy to contact her more frequently? Didn't he understand how lonely and lost she'd feel without his presence?

The same thoughts that had swarmed through Tifa's mind countless times started to plague her again despite every attempt to squash them. What was he running from this time? What secret was he hiding from her now? What kind of man would walk out on his own wife the way he seemed to have done? What about the children? Did he still care about them? Did he still care about her?

Worst of all: could he have found another?

Impossible. She knew him too well. She knew he loved her. She was why he ran off to join SOLDIER. That's why he came back and stayed, right? That's why he confessed to her, proposed to her, and married her, right? Why would he spend his entire life up until now doing everything for her only to give himself to someone else?

However, the longer he dragged out these periods of absence, the more she couldn't help but feel that he was growing apart from her. After all, why would he have started doing this in the first place if his affections for her weren't dissipating? Did her feelings no longer matter to him?

If so, should she still care about him?

"No," Tifa told herself. "I can't go there."

Why not though? What made the most sense given her situation right now? Should she still be holding onto her deepest affections for him if he's out there for such lengthy periods of time doing who-knows-what by his own choice? How much longer would she allow him to do this to her before she finally woke up to the reality she was facing?

No, she could no longer suppress it. She may have cared about him since childhood, but that affection was weakening by the day. The certificate hanging above their bed was starting to lose its sentimental value. It was frightening to her that these feelings of indifference were even a possibility, but she would be completely dishonest if she tried to deny them anymore.

Tifa walked out of the bedroom, closed the door, and headed down to the bar. The evening rush would be coming soon, and she had to put on her enthusiastic attitude for her patrons the way she did every day.

She had to get through the next few hours cheerily before Cloud came home.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Did you enjoy this first chapter? If you have any constructive feedback, please feel free to leave a review. Thanks for reading!