Disclaimer: Don't own Final Fantasy VII, or Vincent, or Tifa, or any of the other Final Fantasy VII characters. Just inserting them into the machine of my imagination and watching what pops out.
Destination: At Long Last, Buried
by: thelittletree
(Okay, I think it's been a month or something since I wrote the last chapter for this fic, and this is sort of the epilogue, and I meant to have it up so much sooner. But my muse died of withering starvation, and I've only just barely manage to resurrect it long enough to punch this out. Audience, my hugest apologies for a story that sometimes only had half my attention. This is definitely my final good-bye. Thanks for all the reviews and for reading and for so much more! The learning, oh the learning! That's enough.)
"While here I stand, not only with the sense / Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts / That in this moment there is life and food / For future years. And so I dare to hope, / Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first / I came among these hills;" -- 'Lines', William Wordsworth
Tifa stepped into the familiar warm and white-washed fluorescence of the lobby and began with a haste born of routine to thumb through her key ring. In a moment she'd found what she was looking for and turned to open the tiny mail locker at her elbow. Bill, bill, she ticked off in her head, pulling them into the open. Something for Vincent, something for the previous tenant, a restaurant flyer. And a postcard.
A very regular-looking postcard at first glance, the picture strangely and faintly familiar: one of dark grassland trickling off into the flat, severe rock of a cliff, perhaps a ravine, under the heavy glare of an unclouded red sun. Beautiful and stark, mingled with the faint suspicion that she should know the place. But there was no caption, no message on the back, no clue as to its purpose or its sender. Nothing but her own type-written address on the reverse side. And she almost smiled at the thought that it must be a joke. From Barret, or maybe Yuffie, both of whom had shown up to say good-bye before she and Vincent had left North Corel, months ago now. Both of whom had seemed almost ready to understand Vincent's status in her life, and Barret had even managed to shake his hand.
Maybe a picture of a place they'd been on their travels, all of them together, that would mean something to her once she'd remembered where it was. But impossible to know now, she realized, too tired from eight hours on her feet to try and wrack her brains. With a sigh of mildly frustrated curiousity, she put the postcard with the rest in her hand and headed upstairs.
Vincent was nowhere to be seen as she entered the apartment, and she smiled as she took off her shoes. Before work, she'd drawn up a list of things to be done before they left, mostly things that involved feeding or changing or bathing or dressing Jordan. And she half hoped to catch him in the act. There was little, she thought in private delight, more surprising -- or entertaining -- than finding Vincent and Jordan together.
During the first few weeks she'd watched and wondered and waited, unsure how Vincent might ultimately react to being a father. He'd been helpful enough, in his own initially uncomfortable way, with changing and washing and waking up in the middle of the night to the shrill, unfamiliar cries of a young, hungry stomach. Unsurprisingly silent about their evolving family, simply building new routines because it was something he could control. Not affectionate, or particularly inclined to spend time alone with their son, but always ready to shoulder his share of the new chores so that she'd had nothing to complain about.
But it was something Lily had unearthed through the almost flippantly devoted patience that had sometimes seemed like an accidental coincidence of her character: love took a long time to grow, to shape, for him. He had to be sure, she knew, reasonably sure that he was not stepping blindly into a world of pain. But when he was sure…
Like a coal left under pressure and heat, his love was something strong and sharp and unbreakable beneath the black soot. Something raw and uncut sometimes, but always beautiful. And always waiting, simply, for the right light to reveal it.
And Jordan was, undoubtedly, full of lively radiance. In his good-humoured charm and natural curiosity, in his absolute trust and his absolute dependence, he had artlessly wound Vincent around his tiny, pudgy finger. Fitting into the crook of his arm, sleeping in perfect contentment against his collarbone, as simply and snugly as a holster had ever fit over an old Turk's hips -- he was the last blow to Vincent's unsmiling composure, and perhaps the biggest doorway between his walls.
The greatest love of Vincent's life, despite all initial doubts, and Tifa had never been less jealous.
She dropped the mail onto an end table in the living room and sensed more than heard the sound of movement and voice coming from the bedroom. Grinning, she made her quiet way down the hall.
And wasn't surprised in the least when Vincent didn't notice her.
Jordan lay on the bed, a squirming bundle of bunched up clothes and smooth baby skin as Vincent worked to get him into a pair of overalls and the shoes Jordan hated. One tiny hand ventured up to smack at his father's face, but Vincent was quick enough to avoid the swinging palm and take the small fingers gently in his lips for a moment before letting them go.
"That isn't going to work, unfortunately," he chided seriously. "Your mother wants you in overalls and shoes, and this time you're going to have to keep them on."
Jordan squirmed and gurgled in protest.
"There's nothing I can do about it. But, you know, I think you're going to forget all about it once there's a bottle in your mouth. Yes. I think so. You're all stomach and diaper. Yes. There we go." He hefted Jordan onto his tiny feet and then into his arms. "All ready for your…" He turned to the door and froze for a second as he realized he had an audience.
And Tifa laughed as his expression melted into a familiarly reproachful, and slightly embarrassed, resignation.
"You never seem to notice, it's so funny. I could've been a burglar and you would've just gone on obliviously."
"A burglar might've left my dignity intact, at least." But he was smiling now. Smiling and waiting for her final inspection and approval.
Though she hardly needed to give it. Vincent had these kinds of routines all but memorized and her sanction was more of a polite formality now than a real requisite. "You two look very…" She stopped for a moment to search for an appropriate term. "Solemn."
Jordan shrieked, the epitome of solemnity.
She chuckled and sidled up to put her arms around them both, content for the moment, despite her rush home, to indulge in a little conversation. "Did he give you much trouble?"
Vincent shrugged a little. "No more than usual. He managed to keep most of the water in his bath this time."
She nuzzled her face against the soft hair at the nape of Jordan's neck, smiling. "You just hate to do anything alone, don't you? Everyone has to wear your food, everyone has to take a bath."
Jordan squirmed around to look at her, toothless and unrepentant.
She glanced at Vincent, and took a second to appreciate his quiet smirk. The same smirk he wore when she was lying on the floor with Jordan, playing with Jordan, putting Jordan to bed. Content, oh so content, to watch her enveloped in the happy universe of loving her son. Their son. Never laughing, only rarely participating, but joyfully content to watch.
"You know," she began, letting her voice become recognizably teasing, "if you weren't so embarrassed about being 'foolishly affectionate', I wouldn't have to sneak up and spy on you."
"If you didn't tease me about it, maybe I wouldn't feel the need to be 'foolishly affectionate' in private."
An old argument, and it had only stung the first time, when she'd accused him of being cold. How wrong she'd been.
"Shut up and kiss your son."
The afternoon was sunny and warm and completely, atmospherically wrong for a cemetery. Tifa took a few moments to de-weed the area around the heavy, bobbing lilies before sitting down with Vincent and Jordan (finally, happily absorbed in crawling or bouncing around) on the traditional blanket.
She leaned back against Vincent and stared at the tombstone, idly rereading the epithet. Name, dates, and one line of an appropriate quote, almost hidden in the flowers: 'You give, I give. We come away rich.' She glanced up at Vincent and returned his spare smile.
"Should we make an introduction?" she asked, absurdly pleased with the way Vincent was sitting. Relaxed, his arm around her, hair unbound for the moment and face open to the sunlight.
"She knows."
And Tifa knew she did. "I got a postcard today," she began quietly, craving more of their sometimes subdued conversation. "It had a picture on it I thought I recognized, but no message and no return address."
"I saw it."
Trust him to notice anything new or out of place. She brushed a few strands of hair away from her face. "Did you recognize it?"
He'd pursed his lips a little, and she suddenly suspected what she hadn't even considered.
"It's a picture of the cliff side, where Cloud asked us to find our reason to return."
The place they'd all come back to, she continued silently, somehow unsurprised. Where they'd all come back to when they'd found their answers, why they'd wanted to continue fighting for a world, in a world that, for some of them, had held mostly pain.
So he was okay. Wherever he was, he'd found a reason, and he was okay. She smiled a little and turned back to the tombstone. Almost ashamed for a moment that she'd been too busy to wonder more than briefly, and infrequently, how he was doing. But reconciled to the gesture of closure, and grateful. Cloud hadn't always been selfish. And she hoped he was happy.
"We've all moved on, then," she murmured, satisfied.
"But we come back to the same places," Vincent added quietly.
And it was true. Barret to North Corel, Yuffie to Wutai, Reeve to the slow rebirth of a Midgar of which no part would be air, wind, or rain deprived. Cloud to the last place he'd made a solid decision he could believe in.
And Vincent and herself to Nibelheim, and to this graveyard twice a year.
Even if the future wasn't about returning to the past, it was about remembering and acknowledging, and sometimes grieving. Growing and learning and being afraid and hurting. Loving and changing and allowing things to stay the same.
And Tifa curled up in Vincent's arms, both comforted and disconcerted to think that closure could be messy and painful and uncertain, and decisions you made weren't always the right ones, and sometimes the steering wheel broke off in your hands. But things had a way of coming full circle, one way or the other. And they were all stumbling blindly through.
The lilies bobbed and danced in a breeze, laughing and weaving. Vincent watched them wordlessly; Tifa read the silence in his face. Saw the bare shadow of his grief, and the near-hidden glitter of his gratitude.
Stumbling blindly, sometimes without home or hope, and sometimes even headed toward self destruction. But somehow, graciously, undeservedly, pulled through, pushed to your feet, stumbling on again toward the light.
It was, she decided, terrifyingly reassuring.