Title: The Fight (2/??)

Fandom: Final Fantasy VII

Paring: Tifa/Cloud, Denzel/Marlene

Word Count: 2, 450 (5,008 in total)

Summary: This fight, it seems, changes everything in all of their relationships.

- - -

Sometimes, when he isn't aware of it, Cloud humms to himself. While working, his mind busy, and the small noise leaks from his throat - thick in sound and in feeling. It was something Zach did - the same, soft song - light and airy.

But it's his now, not Zach's. Clouds' made it his through time and use – and it's beautiful.

Yuffie and - a big surprise - Vincent show up when the sun goes down that day. The stoic man slips off toward the backyard - to brood and drown in calm silence like Cloud, Tifa guesses. Yuffie helps her behind the bar. The night is cold, actually - a brisk, sharp change in temperature. The bar is flooded. Tifa takes all the help she can get.

Tifa makes sure that Yuffie is between her and Marlene the entire time. Strangely, the younger girl is acting like nothing happened between them. It reminds her of Cloud. It makes staying mad at the girl a lot harder.

Maybe it is her? Maybe she had been-

"Tifa, sweetheart-" Cid sits, cigarette ashes falling onto the bar top. "Your making yourself too easy to read."

"Shut up." Tifa sets a beer on the counter for him and turns back to the liquor shelves.

"If ya'r so upset, then talk ta him."

Tifa rolls her hips and pores two shots. "Cid, I swear-"

"The kid's gonna work himself sick."

Tifa slides the shot glasses down the bar - where they're picked up immediately. "And?"

"Tifa-"

"Cid, I'm not in the mood to fight with you." She leans forward, crossing her arms to lean on the bar. "I'm fighting with enough men in my life right now – I don't want to fight with any more."

"He's right." Marlene says. The girl is elbow deep in the ice cooler, scooping out more into a pitcher. She fills it like she knows what she's doing and she has done it for a while. Her white lace shirt seems dainty in comparison to Tifa's black leather. Her hair is pulled up high like Tifa's. Marlene can easily reach over the bar top now, sliding a cup of rum and coke to a patron - Tifa wonders when the girl has grown so much. "Cloud's going to collapse."

There is a collective shout as Denzel moves through the front door with a full case of beer. Tifa lets her eyes follow him, Marlene's presence careful next to her.

"I'm not ready to not be mad yet." Tifa said. Cid shakes his head and lights another cigarettes as he slides away to help the gangly teen get the cases over the counter. There are itchy, hot hands already reaching for the drinks, but Cid's rough mouth shoos them away. Marlene is there to help Denzel - and, surprisingly, Tifa sees something shimmer around them. A tension - a careful caution - that surprises her. Marlene is careful not to touch him, and Denzel tries his hardest to avoid her eyes.

That isn't right...

"Well, I hope you're ready soon." Yuffie notes, mixing something orange colored. "The sooner you and Short, Blonde, and Stoic make up, the sooner the two of them can relax around each other again."

- - -

Tifa has a scar at the base of her neck. Cloud knows where she got it from - it's a burn from a fire long ago. Cloud doesn't really remember the fire - bits and pieces - he had come around near the end.

He doesn't want to think about it.

Cloud ends up sleeping on the floor of the loft. The air up there is cooler then it is on the couch downstairs. The floor was alright, but his back strains and his neck aches. He can't do this that much longer. He has to apologize so he can sleep in his bed again.

But he doesn't want to apologize. It doesn't feel right to-

Denzel doesn't wake to help that morning. Cloud finds it strangely comfortable all alone - being by himself in a place he calls home, knowing that there are others above him that...

Cloud sighs and opens the last of the windows. Vincent is sitting on his own bike outside - alarming Cloud so much that he stumbles on his way out the front door.

"What's wrong?"

Vincent's eyebrows jump, just a little. "What makes you think something is wrong?"

Cloud feels dust gritty in his mouth. "It's five in the morning."

The black haired man stares, then he sighs just a little. "I need a favor..."

- - -

Tifa finds herself dreaming of Cloud - him and Zach when - when they were in the old Midgar. Before the fire and destruction. She dreams that she knew what she knows now - and she won't let Zach go. Cloud smiles at her, open and bright, and says everything is alright. Nothing will ever change.

Tifa wakes to Marlene crying.

The girl is sitting where Cloud normally sleeps, her awkwardly long legs curled up and her head buried in her knees. Tifa sits up instantly and reaches for her. "Marlene - what?--"

"Cloud's gone." The girl says softly, moving away from the hand. Tifa stops and lets her hand fall, her chest becoming cold.

"What?"

"Cloud left." The shuttering figure repeats, her face soaked. Her eyes look sadder then Tifa thought they ever could. A thousand times sadder then when Barret has to leave. Tifa wonders at that for a second.

"You sure?"

"His bike is gone." She says. "His shoes and jacket - his overnight pack. He left us again..."

Tifa gets out of bed to see for herself.

Sure enough, his pack is gone from under the sink and his riding jacket is missing from the closet. The garage is empty - an oil spot where Cloud's mechanical beast had been sitting for the past four days the only proof to show that it had sat there at all. Tifa lets her hands skim over the work bench as she takes an in-depth look around. He really can't be gone again, right?

She's biting her lip when she finds it.

The single silver wolf earring sitting on the bench.

No note, no knock on her door and a whispered 'I'll be back', but this little silver trinket lets Tifa know that everything will be fine. Cloud would be back before the hole in his ear closed up. He didn't need to say anything for her to understand that. She doesn't need to be afraid this time.

And, perhaps, this time apart will let her forgive him completely.

Tifa goes back inside and holds Marlene until the girl stops crying, murmuring small, careful sounds to get the tears to stop. All the while, she holds the sterling silver earring in the palm of her hand - against the crying girls shoulder - and rubs the cold wolf until her hand starts sweating.

She decides she'll only be mad for a few more days when he comes back. Just so he doesn't think he has gotten away with it.

- - -

Whenever Cloud hurts himself, he always thinks of Her. Of Her warm hands and kind face.

She would be twenty-six now.

It was odd for him, this time - because he didn't think of Her at all. He only thought Tifa will be pissed at me for this.

They had been gone a week. He called the bar, twice - but no one picked up the phone. Denzel answered his cell phone though - so at lease someone in the house knew that he would be coming back there. Though, he had a feeling they didn't expect him like this.

The leather across Vincent's shoulders is sticky in the heat. They have been driving for almost two days straight since the attack. Cloud could kick himself for being so careless - if he could ever move his leg again. His arm and shoulder ached where his skin had been hacked open. The ache had become so bad that a numb feeling has swept in to replace the pain. When was the last time he had gotten hurt this bad? He almost forgot this feeling.

"You awake?" Vincent's voice rumbles from under the leather. They're getting closer to Midgar - huge hills in the distant comfortable to Clouds eyes.

"Mostly."

It's more of a noise then a word. Cloud could have sworn that he said that.

Vincent grunts - and that's enough. Cloud holds on to conciseness.

- - -

Clouds skin is normally a deep tan color from spending the past two years working outside. His body is still in perfect condition, tight and lethal - Tifa says it's cheating, him being a ex-SOLDURE and all. Clouds eyes always light up just a little more when she says that, twinkling - remembering things, people, places - and smiling never the less. The scars that dot his body are few and scattered, rough and huge in ways that make up for the lack of his internal scars showing on his skin. There's a gaping scar at the center of his back, one just set into his right armpit, assorted cuts and burses over his calf's and thighs, a single scar over his left eye. Tifa has seen them in abundance - more times the she has fingers to count. But still, ever time the smooth landscape of Cloud's body is reviled to her eyes, she finds the scars both intimidating and harsh against his otherwise perfect flesh.

Now, Cloud's skin is porcelain white, sticky to the touch and warm all over. He's china fragile in a way she's not used to - as if to touch him will help the fever along. His shoulders are scraped ragged. Tifa has to remove herself from the fact that it's Cloud and has to start doing something.

Starting at his right deltoid, a slash tears across his bicep brachii and nicks the upper part of his brachialius. A rip from his right shoulder to his inner elbow. Easy to stitch, easy to heal, may leave a light scar. Assorted abrasions on his upper vastus muscles, possible tear in his vastur lateralis. Some deep cuts on his upper thigh and assorted areas toward his knee, a cut long enough on the side of his leg to draw attention to after his arm. Something gleams white in the mass of the cuts on Clouds leg. Tifa ignores it.

Cloud is never the one to get hurt. At least not this bad.

Marlene shakes her hands off and rubs her knuckles against the fabric near Clouds chest. Her face is hard and her hands are clean, hair pulled up high on her head. She carefully starts some place small - the few assorted nicks on Clouds upper left pectorals, small scrapes for a sword close enough to cut but not close enough to do damage. Her hands glow an earthy blue - Clouds cuts stitch themselves up, easily.

Clouds breathing is ragged. Tense. Tifa concentrates on realigning the muscle tissue in his upper arm. Someone wipes the sweat from her brow, but she's too busy to notices if it's Yuffie or Marlene or Denzel, but whoever it is she's thankful to them. Vincent is concentrating on Clouds only reviled leg - having cut one of his pant legs at just below the hip - one of Yuffie's materia in hand. Tifa notes the thin fingers that smooth the hair from Clouds face and places a wet cloth on his head. Yuffie's got her phone pressed between her shoulder and her cheek - calling Barret, or Cid, or both - checking the state of the blonde's pupils.

There are two bright spots of color on the rough curves of Clouds cheeks.

Tifa feels like throwing up.

Focus.

Pull the blood back into the almost-dead area, repair any minor lacerations resulting from the initial damage, hug the two lips of the cut tight together, seal as one, fix the assorted other collateral damage around the area. Get as far as she can before her hands give out and she can't pull anything else from herself. Marlene's hands move over a bad cut that heals up instantly once her hands pass over it.

Vincent's shoulder tense and Cloud's face twists into a pained expression. Vincent's shoulders jump and Cloud groans. There's a sickening crack that shakes Tifa's bones.

He was reckless.

Tifa knows this. She knows that he was reckless because he's tired; he hurts from sleeping on the couch and the floor and from pushing himself working in the heat. She knows that he's been thinking about the fight none stop since it happened; wearing on him a little more each day he was away. Tifa knows that Cloud thinks that she thought he wasn't coming back. She knows he felt like he was abandoning them even after deciding to help Vincent or whatever.

Tifa knows.

She wants him to open his eyes.

Yuffie's hand wraps around hers, breaking her from her thoughts. Cloud's skin has barley started to close up, but he's bleeding again - which is both good and bad. Someone grabs her from behind and pulls her away from him, to sit in a chair near the door - placing water in one of her hands. Denzel's eyes are suddenly close, and he's saying something - she knows it - but all Tifa can register is the careful way Yuffie stitches up Clouds' arm. All she can hear is the unsteady pull of breath as Cloud drags air into his lungs, fighting again the pain. She wishes they had something to give him for it, but she knows almost immodestly upon having that thought that Cloud would be angry if they drugged him and he didn't know. Cloud would rather be stiff and in pain then be inebriated in any way.

She wants him to open his eyes and smile at her. She doesn't want to be angry any more.

She wants to strip him of his scars. She wants' him to stop hurting himself for reasons that he can't control. She wants' him to lie still so she can hold him and never let him go.

She wants him to be happy.

It dawns on her, suddenly. The drawing realization makes her shutter with the utter feeling of it.

Surprisingly, despite the amount of time they have spent together - being a couple in almost all the ways possible - she has never told him that she loves him.