Lost in Sleep [KH/FF]

Prologue

He paced about the room as she looked at him with sympathetic eyes. It hurt her to watch him like this; lost and so afraid. He wasn't the one to be in such a condition with his always stoic demeanor and personality. He was always filled with pride and confidence that no one questioned him.

But right now, she wanted to scream from the top of her lungs. She wanted to scold him and tell him how innocent he was. How much it wasn't his fault as much as it was hers. But she couldn't, because any simple move at the moment and he would snap. Break.

Question her. And more importantly, question himself.

Though she knew the outcomes, she just couldn't hold it within herself any longer. "It wasn't your fault you know," she spoke with her soft voice as she looked at her clasped hands on the table. They were quivering she noticed.

With a scoff, he stopped and looked towards her direction where her face was hidden from him by her hair. "You honestly think that?"

He didn't need to hear her answer. He knew what it was off impulse.

For the past three years, they've been arguing like this whenever the day would be approaching. It was a special day, horrifying, but special. And in two days, he would be in agonizing pain all over again. Because he knew the feeling before it began.

"Well, she wouldn't have wanted you to be sulking for the whole time," she said as she looked towards his blue eyes. And once her brown ones met his, he saw them tremble as she too was crumbling.

"She should be blaming me," he answered as he looked away from her pleading eyes. It was too much for him to watch someone he held so close to his heart quivering because of him.

"But she doesn't. Cloud, you couldn't have done anything for her."

"Couldn't have I, Tifa? Couldn't I have been able to save her?"

"No. Because," Tifa began as she walked towards him and hugged him from behind. "Because she said so herself, didn't she? She wanted to risk anything to save us, even herself." Cloud held onto her arm as he recalled those memories from three years ago.

---[Flashback]---

"Cloud."

"Yes," he answered after a moment of silence.

He watched her walk towards the end. He was on guard at all times just in case she decided to do something unthinkable. But suddenly, she stopped and faced the vast lands before her. She looked towards them for a while before she took in a deep breath.

"Promise me something?"

"It depends on what you're offering."

Her light chuckle filled the empty air around them as his spirits lifted up just a tiny bit from all of the negative energy he received from the "graveyard".

"Always so serious," she stated as she shook her head. She turned to look at him with a big smile. "Never change. Okay?"

"That was the promise?"

"No, silly. I want," the female stated as she looked at her open palms with a small smirk. "I want to save them."

"How do you plan to do that?"

Balling her open palms into fists, the female looked at her male counterpart and gave him a determined smirk. "I'm going to fight him."

With a gasp he lunged for her, but to no prevail she backed up a step. "Are you out of your mind? He'll kill you! Listen, we can fight together and we can all help you defeat him!"