Cloud x Tifa - The Comeback Kid (FFVII)

Chapter Two - You're Gonna Go Far, Kid

The Comeback Kid

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Chapter Two

You're Gonna Go Far, Kid

[ ν ] - εγλ - 2022 | September 24th

It was raining early Friday morning, the overcast clouds blunting the sunrise and coloring the sky a deep, murky shade of steel blue-gray. Tifa was sitting at the island in her kitchen, her hands wrapped around a hot mug of coffee as she stared out of the window, watching the rain fall in slats against the glass, the hazy colors casting shadows over the room. The gentle drumming of the precipitation was the only sound Tifa could hear at this early hour, aside from the occasional whirl of tires across the wet road outside when a car drove by. The dim, tranquil atmosphere left her with only her own thoughts floating through her mind, loud and unkempt, watching the steam rise from her mug.

It had been three days since the drake attack, three days since Tifa had broken down in Cloud's arms and let him do his level best to piece her back together. Every time she thought about that night, she drifted back to the moments they had shared, to the desperate and tender lovemaking that had accompanied his sweet reassurances. He had sent her into a blissful reprieve, but when Tifa woke the next morning, the moment had passed, and reality had settled back in, reminding her of all of her troubles and nagging doubts.

For the rest of the week, Tifa refused to travel, canceling her visits to Kalm and Midgar where she had been planning to visit the local Seventh Heaven franchises. This had been a risky decision to make, as Johnny was currently running the franchise in Midgar, and he was the type of person who required frequent monitoring. But she couldn't bring herself to leave Junon that week, and found herself spending almost all of her time the last few days working from home or stopping into the Seventh Heaven in Junon to work alongside her team there.

Even though she had gone into the bar and sat at her laptop, pouring over spreadsheets of sales figures that had come in from Seventh Heaven's three other locations, she found the work was piling up. Bills and notices sat unopened on her desk in the corner of the small workspace she shared with Cloud behind the kitchen on the first floor. Emails went unanswered in her inbox, prompting her with nagging notices of Received three days ago. Reply now? Voicemails from Johnny and Lucinda, her most inexperienced and needy franchise managers, cluttered her PHS' inbox, the tiny red icon glaring up at her worryingly. Even text messages were beginning to give her anxiety.

Tifa had to admit to herself that despite the words Cloud had rained on her that night as he sheltered her beneath his touch, despite the way his blue eyes flickered and glowed as they stared down at her in reverence and awe, despite the way the tips of his fingers and the feathers of his lips skirted across her flesh in adoration and need, her mind had not left the headspace of the drake attack on the plains outside of Kalm. The muscles in her thighs and the backs of her arms still felt stiff and dense. She could still hear the creak in her bones. Her lower back still hurt.

All of it was producing feelings of anger and rage inside of Tifa that were unfamiliar, toxic and hot, bubbling to the surface of her throat like the sulfuric and suffocating smoke rising from flame and ash. It was not like the kinds of anger she'd felt in the past - anger at fate and circumstance, anger at despotic conglomerates and depraved mad scientists and corrupted megalomaniacs - in fact, it was not even like the kind of anger she had once harbored toward herself over her own guilt and poorly conceived choices. No, this anger was new - and while it was also self-directed, it was a tragic blend of fury of a different sort of fate, the sort that she knew she could not stop nor prevent, and she feared that it would not only tear her further away from herself, but from the ones she loved.