Cloud x Tifa - The Comeback Kid (FFVII)

Chapter Four - I Am Phenomenal

The Comeback Kid

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Chapter Four

I Am Phenomenal

[ ν ] - εγλ - 2022 | March 21St

Tifa's concussion kept her from training for several days, Zangan insisting that she take it easy despite the fact that she largely felt fine after a few more potions and the warm wave of a healing materia. She stayed at home for most of that time, the splits in her face beginning to heal and the bruising soon disappearing following her brief convalescence. By the third day, Tifa was working out quietly in the home gym without telling Zangan or Cloud, intent on not letting her body idle long enough to hamper her training efforts, and ultimately her chances at winning the World Championship that was just a few short weeks away.

For the first day or so after the semi-final match, Cloud kept a watchful eye on her, carefully checking her wounds as they healed and watching her with an eye trained for erratic, concussed movements while she ambled through the house. But his mood was still distant and strained, and they rarely exchanged words unless it was absolutely necessary - discussions about Tifa's healing, talk about a permission slip for a field trip for Aster at school, chatter about dinner or which bill needed to be paid next. Cloud almost seemed afraid to let a conversation between them stretch on for longer than was necessary, moving on and finding a way to busy himself before their interactions could grow too awkward. And as the days continued to wear on in that fashion, there remained a cold, thin blue line of ice between them in their bed, where neither seemed bold enough to move beyond the separation that lived between them thanks to their lack of communication. Only in the middle of the night, as they tossed and turned in the throes of sleep, would they find each other drifting closer to one another again, only to quickly tear out of the tangle of their limbs when they woke, moving into their morning routine without acknowledgment of what was happening between them at all.

Tifa was distraught by the distance between her and Cloud, by the lack of communication, by the persistent stubbornness and inability to simply move past the rift that was now going on a three-week run. Even if they could move through their daily routine in quiet agreement, the lack of intimacy, the absence of warmth, the clipped and brief nature of their conversations was wholly unnatural. She felt as if they had become two oppositional stars, pushed apart from each other at the aphelion by their gravitational forces, two magnets both facing north and suddenly repelling one another despite that a deep part of them wanted and needed to connect, to slam together and coalesce. Yet in order for that to happen, one of them had to cave and speak.

Deep inside, Tifa knew that it was on her, no matter how much it hurt and how much she wanted to avoid it. As childish and surly as she knew Cloud was being over Zangan, Rufus was all her fault. She should never have kept the nature of those loans from him, no matter what Reeve had said about them. It was wrong, and he had every right to be angry and to mistrust her. And apparently, her acceptance of them over the years had given Rufus some sort of idea about her and the nature of her relationship with Cloud.

As much as she tried to put it out of her mind, Rufus' behavior outside her quarter-final match, his sly coyness, the spark and flash of white steel against the ice in his eyes as he looked at her compelled her to believe that she might have done something to encourage his behavior.

The loans. The flowers.

And she still wore the scars of Marle's passing on her heart, even as the days passed by with their rawness and the pain began to fade, the ache and the guilt still cut deep.

As the days passed following the semi-finals, Tifa contemplated her training as a distraction from the spin of inner turmoil that kept her wound up like the gears of a clock. The draw against Mindy Lin still wore heavily on her mind. While she was grateful that she had not lost, which would have disqualified her from the Championship, she was dismayed that she had been knocked out so brutally. She had not only underestimated her opponent, she realized, but she had been preoccupied with matters outside of the ring.