Cloud x Tifa - Time After Time (Final Fantasy VII)

Chapter 1 - Then

[ ν] - εγλ | 2001 |May 25th

Cloud Strife was crouched on the seat of a public transport bus, staring out of the large, tinted windows at the dirty expanses of road that passed Junon and rounded a bend of mountains beyond the Mythril Mines, heading east toward Midgar.

There was nothing particularly inviting or interesting about this terrain; it was all pale sierra rock and faded grass, even the mountains were dull juts into the sky. Cloud turned to face the seat in front of him, bored, noting the torn, blue and red threads in the fabric that stretched over the seat's back. It interested him for a moment, the stains of dirt that were molded into the textile, the faded patterns. He rolled his eyes away from it after a moment, and looked back out the window again, seeing the same dreary expanse of crag and dust.

Cloud had been traveling for the past ten days, since leaving his home village of Nibelheim, all the way on another continent on the opposite side of the world. He'd left his mother, his only living family, behind for the big city, in pursuit of big dreams and a big life that he could never achieve in his small, dusty town that boxed and caged him in and kept him from becoming something or someone greater. He was on his way to Midgar, the largest metropolis in the world, where he would finally become someone , become who he wanted to be, who he was destined to be. There would be no more small, weak Cloud, no more Cloud who could only prove himself by getting into fights with other kids in the schoolyard, who couldn't get through a single day without putting his painful inadequacy on display, who couldn't manage to keep the girl he'd felt more bursting, explosively warm feelings for than anyone or anything in the world from plunging into the crevices of Mount Nibel, nearly to her death.

Tifa Lockhart.

Cloud closed his eyes as the bus rolled over the roads, feeling it rock him gently, stirring a familiar feeling of dull nausea at the back of his throat. As soon as his eyelashes met, an image of Tifa drifted in front of him, the visual the latest his mind's eye had burned into his collection of memories of her. She was sitting next to him on the water tower, dressed up and pretty, wearing a seafoam-green dress and sandals with wedged heels. Her lips were glossy and pink, and her eyes looked brighter and more doe-eyed than usual, and Cloud was almost certain she was wearing a little bit of makeup. It thrilled him to think that she was dolled up like that for him.

Cloud couldn't remember a time when he didn't have a crush on Tifa Lockhart. He'd felt drawn to her from the first time he'd laid eyes on her, when he was seven and she was six, the first time he saw her outside of the schoolhouse doors, their eyes connecting and her offering him a playful smile. He'd grown up next door to her, and she was the nicest, prettiest person in the entire village. He'd felt that way about her for his entire life, watching her as she became nicer and prettier every year that she grew older, her hair growing longer, her features sharpening, her shape filling out. By the time Cloud left the village, Tifa was turning more and more into a woman, and his biggest regret about leaving town was that he would not get to see what she looked like when she blossomed fully.

Cloud blushed at his thoughts, pulling his knees close to his chest on the seat. Thinking about Tifa, which took up a lot of his free time, always tore a whirlwind of emotions through him. While he had never let himself get too close to Tifa's group of friends, she still sought him out from time to time when they were growing up, was still kind to him and would still wave to him from her window or try to talk to him over her fence, despite the fact that her father absolutely despised him ever since they had fallen from Mt. Nibel's cliff face.

Cloud sighed and pushed that miserable thought from his brain. He still had faint scars on his knees from that day; he'd been scratched up pretty badly when they fell. But Tifa had fallen into a coma, and many of the villagers had worried she might not live. And Tifa's father had never forgiven him for it.