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Sink to the Bottom With You
Chapter Fifteen
The Agonies of Having Emotions
“This sucks.” Cloud Strife
Mirror,
mirror hanging on the wall
You
don’t have to tell me
Who’s
the biggest fool of all
Mirror,
mirror I wish you
Could
lie to me
And
bring my baby back
Bring
my baby back to me
“Mirror, Mirror”
M2M
“Must be nice,” Tifa told the chocobo as she
held out gloved hands full of greens for him to devour. This particular chocobo was an attractive
mountain bird with lovely green feathers that shimmered like gems when wet with
dew. Tifa had bred him all by herself,
and had named him Stefan after one of her childhood friends from Nibelheim. The chocobo was, of course, very happy to
see her and immediately warked, rushing over on the slightly damp ground of his
pen and bowing his head to eat the greens from her hands.
Despite her melancholy mood, Tifa smiled as
his beak tickled her palms. She was
glad that when she and Cloud had built the Final Heaven bar in Kalm, they had
had enough room to put in a small pen for eight chocobos in the back. Sure, things tended to get a little cramped,
especially when everyone was together like this, but Tifa considered it well
worth the effort. She loved chocobos,
and she loved having her friends around.
So why wasn’t she happy now?
Her smile faded as her thoughts began to
spiral downward into darkness. God, why
did life have to be so complicated sometimes?
Couldn’t she be allowed a little smidgeon of happiness and serenity
after all she had been through? For a
while there, she had thought she was happy.
She had her bar, she had her friends, she had her health…and she had
Cloud. Happiness for all eternity had
been right in front of her face sitting on a silver platter, but she missed out
on it due to lack of valor, due to tender words that she kept locked inside of
her. How many times had she and Cloud
been sitting alone, talking peacefully as if the whole world didn’t exist, just
enjoying the comfort of each other’s presence?
And how many times had that Silence fallen, the particular breed of
Silence that just screams for words to be spoken, but not just any words, oh
no, The Words, the ones that would change everything, the ones that
would make or break the future of their relationship. One step in the wrong direction, one word neglected, one word too
many, and her world could have come crashing around her ears.
She hadn’t had the courage to speak the
words then, and now she regretted that more than anything. Her shyness seemed so petty now that things
were getting turbulent. Would it really
have taken much out of her to just look Cloud in those eternally beautiful Mako
blue eyes of his and tell him everything, all her thoughts, all her feelings
for him? Would it have killed her to do
so?
No, it wouldn’t have, not then. But now, oh, now it might be a death
sentence to go treading onto such thin ice when the lake beneath their feet was
so angry and churning. And the fact
that their great lake of unspoken thoughts and desires now had another person
balancing on its precarious surface was going to make the tangled web into a
prodigious labyrinth with a menacing Minotaur lurking around every corner.
Reno…
What had gotten into her then, what had she
seen in those eyes that had made her heart and soul respond in such a
fashion? It had been like looking in a
mirror and seeing her own shadows and pains reflected with equal intensity. And her emotions, rejoicing at having found
someone to know their grief, had lurched out desperately to touch that aching
soul, to seal that wound. But surely it
had been a one-time thing…
No,
something in Tifa’s mind sneered. It
most definitely wasn’t a one-time thing.
It’ll happen again, rest assured.
Every time the name of “Mika” is spoken, that wound in that cold,
callous man will begin to bleed again, and you, being the over-sensitive,
do-gooder that you are, will stumble over your own two feet trying to help ease
his suffering. And in doing so, you will
dig your own grave by pushing away the one you’ve been in love with your entire
life. Every time you touch Reno’s face
with gentleness, you widen the rift between you and Cloud. Every time you pull him into your arms, you
flood the rift with water. And every
time you stroke that fiery hair with such tender hands, you fill the rift with
venomous snakes. Soon that rift will
turn into a pit, and that pit into a canyon, and that canyon into an ocean; it
will become larger and larger until the one with the Mako blue eyes will be as
unreachable as the stars themselves.
Pity…
“No,” Tifa murmured softly, the hands
holding the greens for Stefan shaking a bit.
“It can’t be that way.”
But she knew in the darkest region of her
heart that things were rapidly plummeting down in that direction. And she was scared, god, was she ever
scared. Scared of what could happen if
she said or did the wrong things to the wrong people. Scared of hurting either Cloud or Reno. And most of all, the fear that formed the basis of all her other
fears was the terrifying prospect of losing Cloud.
She had never thought of it as a possibility
before, especially after all they had been through together. She recalled the silly things he had done
for her, or had said to her. Dressing
up as a girl to get her out of Don Corneo’s greasy paws. Braving those precarious cliffs in the Da
Chao mountains to pick a flower that had caught her eye. Allowing himself to be dragged on stage at
the Gold Saucer during Enchantment Night.
Fumbling for his words as he tried to tell her all the “things” he had
planned to say to her.
She had taken for granted that he would
always be there, that she would always wake up every morning and come
downstairs to see him sweeping the floor or building pyramids with the shot
glasses, his bottom lip caught gently between his teeth as he concentrated,
knowing that he would catch holy hell if he so much as cracked one of
the glasses. Golden hair shimmering in
the overhead lights. Blue eyes lighting
up as he saw her standing in the doorway.
The grim, hard line of his mouth turning up in a smile as he looked at
her sheepishly.
God, what would she do without him? Wither up and die, surely. Tifa had failed to realize just how much her
world revolved around Cloud until she stood face to face with the hideous
possibility that she might actually lose him.
And she would be the one to blame.
It would be all her fault.
But what do I do? she wondered futilely. I want nothing more than to be with Cloud
forever, but Reno…I can’t just leave him like that, with that horrible wound
festering inside him like a sickness.
It’ll kill him one day; I know it will.
He has to get help before he’s gone to the point of no return… But Cloud…
Everywhere she turned in this endless labyrinth
of emotions, she ran into that godforsaken Minotaur. She needed to help Reno; she wanted to help him. Something inside told her that this
mysterious “Mika” was the key to every unseen pain, every unseen grievance that
plagued the fiery-haired Turk. But in
helping Reno save his own life, she knew that she ran of the risk of driving
Cloud out of her life. She was
torn. What should she do? The consequences on either side of the coin
were heavy, but she knew that this could very well be a lose/lose
situation. There was no in-between; she
couldn’t choose by not choosing. She
had done enough of that in her life…
So many decisions. Against Reno’s pain and suffering, against his unspoken need to
release his demons, she weighed the frigid landscape of Cloud’s eyes as he
stared at her. Again she saw the water
dripping down his face like tears, his eyes cold and heartless, his voice flat
and toneless. She never wanted to experience
that again. But then Reno’s face and
eyes loomed in front of her. The scars
– from what? And that horrendous
internal scar, that gangrenous wound deep in his soul that began to gush again
as she spoke that forbidden name. And
again she heard Reno whimpering deep in his throat as he tossed and turned in
the dark of the night. Again she saw
Cloud’s cold, dead eyes.
She couldn’t take this anymore.
A wark suddenly jolted her from her dark
reverie. Tifa’s eyes came back from
their journey to the Twilight Zone, the place where they tried to make sense of
the labyrinth and dodge the Minotaur.
It was then that she realized that Stefan had long since finished
devouring the greens in her palms and was now nibbling at her hair in a
comforting fashion, cooing softly, as if he sensed her pain. His green feathers tickled her cheek.
“Must be nice,” she whispered to him,
patting his head gently as she felt a lone tear roll down her cheek. “I wish I were you, so simple, living life
without all the agonies of having emotions.
Must be nice…”
* * * * * * * * * *
Why did I let you
walk away
When all I had to
do was
Say I’m sorry
I let my pride get
in the way
And in the heat of
the moment
I was to blame
I must be stupid,
must be crazy
Must be out of my
mind
Now in the cold
light of the day I realize
“Mirror, Mirror”
M2M
The blades of the fan spun slowly on the
ceiling, stirring the dead air of the room and sending small breezes down to
the man lying on the bed. The reluctant
wisps of cool air brushed across his pale, inanimate face, trying again and
again to ease the tension written in every feature, every muscle. They swept over the grim, hard line of his
mouth, trying to get the jaw to unclench and the lips to soften. When they failed there, the breezes
whispered over the muscles around the eyes, which were narrowed in some warped form
of inward concentration. Again they
gently touched the dark blond eyelashes, whispered through the thin eyebrows,
trying to get the muscles to relax and make the man’s expression less
forbidding.
But Cloud was in no mood to relax, and the
breezes soon gave up and dissipated into nothing, leaving the burden of their
job to their descendants that were already being birthed from the fan’s
spinning blades.
Outside, thunder still rumbled with
contentment at its own strength, beside itself with narcissism as it gave forth
its mighty roars. Cloud snorted in
annoyance and rolled onto his side, making sure he was facing away from the
window and the rain was that was pounding against it in such an aggravating
fashion. But now that he couldn’t
occupy himself by watching the fan blades spin around and around, he had
nothing else to do but study the swirling grain of the door that was clear to
his Mako-enhanced vision even though the door itself was a considerable
distance away. Cloud traced the
spiraling swirls of the door’s wood for as long as he could, but then his
emotions caught up with him again, and he flipped back onto his back, giving up
his effort at distracting himself.
He was very ashamed, not to mention
embarrassed, for the way he had acted in front of his friends. Cloud knew that he had many, many faults,
but losing complete control of his temper like that had never been a very
serious one of them. The only time he
could recall that he had let his emotions wield total power over his actions
was when he had desperately rushed into the Nibelheim Mako Reactor and impaled
the maniacal Sephiroth with Zack’s sword.
Back then it had worked to his advantage – sort of – but now it was
making him look childish and out-of-control, the last thing anyone needed at
the moment.
And all because I saw Reno and Tifa together
like that, he thought
sourly, the vivid image of them in each other’s arms once again rising up
before his unfocused eyes like the ghastly visage of Lucifer in the pits of
hell.
Shaking his head violently and barely
containing the urge to yank at his hair, Cloud shoved the picture from his mind
and strove to concentrate all his thoughts on planning, something he had failed
to do when he had had everyone together.
Okay, he told himself. Vincent
and Yuffie are back and safe and are not missing any body parts. Good.
I pissed Yuffie off, but she’ll get over it. Memo to self: don’t call her a brat again. Now…Reeve.
Still missing. Where could he
be? No earthly clue.
I shouldn’t have left her alone with Reno…
No, Cloud!
Focus! Reeve! Okay, find the Running Man. Where’s the Running Man? Hell if I know.
I should have known Reno would take
advantage of her…
Damn me!
Running Man! Now, Rude saw him
in the remains of Hojo’s lab. Would he
go back there? It would be pretty
stupid of him to do so, but it’s all we have to go on. We’re not going to go on another ghost ship
chase…
What will I do without her?
Cloud let out a cry of frustration that was
happily mimicked by the rumbling thunder.
He couldn’t concentrate on anything!
One of his closest friends was missing, probably in the hands of a
madman or maybe even dead by now, and all he could think about was one
woman! What did that tell him? Gee, well, maybe he was in love…
And he was, he knew he was. Would there have ever been anyone else for
him? Aeris had been a possibility for a
while, but now she was dead. Sure, he
missed her a great deal and sometimes it hurt even to think about her and all
she had done for them, but all along, something inside him had told him that
Tifa Lockheart was the only woman for him.
Maybe it was the memory at the well so long ago that kept this thought
pounding through his head, or maybe it was the knowledge that he had gone off
to join SOLDIER just to get her to notice him.
Then again, it very well could have been the fact that she had remained
faithfully at his side when he had had Mako poisoning, basking him in the warm
comfort of her presence even though he had no recollection of her being
there. She had braved the voices and
fury of the Lifestream for him, all to help him rediscover himself, the Cloud
Jacob Strife that he had thought was lost forever, lost into the horrible
servitude of being a mere Sephiroth-clone, the puppet Jenova had believed him to
be. Tifa had taught him to believe in
himself, in the memories they had together.
She had taught him how to feel, to smile, to cry, to…love.
And now she was fading out of his life, it
seemed, being sucked into the abyss by a fiery-haired demon to which lies and
treachery and deceit meant nothing.
Love meant nothing to Reno.
Devotion meant nothing to Reno.
Tifa as a person meant nothing to Reno.
All the redheaded Turk was interested in was her body, with its generous
curves and creamy skin. That’s all Reno
was ever interested in. A man like that
didn’t know the meaning of the word love; to him, love was synonymous with
lust, with carnal desire. Such a man
would defile Tifa, taint her with his poison.
Cloud couldn’t let that happen.
God, what am I thinking? he wondered. Maybe I’m overreacting completely. Maybe what I saw didn’t mean anything to either of them. But is there any other logical explanation
for it? Who does Reno think he is,
moving in on my…
And who do you think you are, Strife? a voice in the
back of his mind suddenly sneered. You’re
treating the one you love most as if she’s some sort of possession, a
cherished item your macho defense mechanism refuses to let go of because you
think it belongs to you and you alone.
What kind of person does that make you?
A coward, that’s what! You had
your chance to make her your companion for the rest of your life. For a year you danced around your emotions,
filled with uncertainty and ambivalence, wimping out when you had just gotten
the courage to ask her what you’ve probably been planning to ask her your
entire life. You were on top of the
world, and you refused to see the beauty that was all around you, refused to
submit to its majesty because you thought it was too good to be true. And now look what happened. You missed the boat, buddy, and now you’re
drowning in the cruel sea, all alone.
Don’t you think all the other fish were just waiting for you to do
something like that so they could have an opportunity to hoist themselves up
onto the boat with the sea goddess?
Man, you really screwed up this time…
It was times like this that Cloud wished
that Sephiroth had been right, that Cloud was only a puppet who had no
emotions, who only pretended to be sad or angry. A puppet, a clone to whom tears came easily but without
meaning. Cloud wished he felt
nothing. He wished he were cold inside,
his soul a frozen landscape of hollow thoughts and no feelings whatever. He wished he was heartless and aloof, his
eyes empty and icy. Sort of like Vincent.
But no such luck.
Shifting his weight slightly on the soft
mattress, Cloud rolled onto his side and growled into the pillow, “This sucks.”
And the thunder rumbled in agreement.
Author’s Note: Fairly short, really crappy chapter. Well, I couldn’t just leave Cloud and Tifa hanging like
that! Don’t worry, though, more Vincent
and Yuffie in the next chapter. You have
my word!!! ^_^ Thanks to anyone who is reading!
e-mail catalina2717@go.com
