Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They say Shinra Mansion has been haunted for a hundred years. They say it all began when the house suddenly caught fire—spontaneously, instantaneously—the family inside and unable to flee, burnt to a crisp like charred meat in a cast iron pan. It’s a sad story, like any other sad story, but the history is all anecdotal. No one truly knows what happened that day, because all of the important papers had been destroyed in the fire, and the verbalization of it has become creepier and more grotesque as the years wore on in Nibelheim. It was an exciting thing to do when they were younger, to question and wonder with their childlike amazement, and for families to twist the story of the mansion to make it haunt their dreams and deter them from trespassing or attempting anything reckless or inconceivable— remember, if you’re bad, the curse will move to us. Our house will be set on fire. You don’t want that, do you? 

Even if it wasn’t real, why challenge it?

For a small town, it’s Nibelheim’s claim to fame. Every October is filled with tourists who visit, cramming into the two Inns the town has to offer. Ghost tours are set up every evening for weeks, the occasional jump scare rigged, along with constructed shadows and door creaks and loosened floorboards. The tour is over the top, fantastical, gimmicky, and laughable for the denizens of Nibelheim. For newcomers, it is, apparently, rated 4.9 out of 5.0 stars. 

Cloud has never believed in that kind of thing—ghosts and haunting and spirits, ghouls and goblins and demons.  It increases the town’s revenue, and he’s almost positive, as far as he’s concerned, it’s all a load of shit. Half of it goes to the Shinra family. No matter how much money the place makes, Nibelheim’s schools, the neighborhoods, and community facilities continue to be rundown and ramshackle.

It’s stupid. Cloud hates this town and it’s broken swing sets and its rusty fences. Most of all, if he hears one more story about how they say, he’s going to bust a gasket and ask who everyone thinks they really are. 

Every October, as he watches Tifa Lockhart and another punk dressed up in their tour guide attire bringing groups of family and friends through the creaky gates and over the cracked sidewalk, bordered with overgrown foliage, into the haunted Shinra Mansion, he wonders if people can truly be this gullible. He hears them, going in, not quite believing—the young men and the older women, skeptical and rolling their eyes, only there to appease their significant other or their children or friends—and then reappearing on the outside of the tour, faces ashen and eyes wide with new wonder, questioning what they had always believed in, whispering their thoughts of something more . 

The one thing Cloud can say, however, when he sees Tifa herd the groups of people out of the gates, is that she’s a damn good tour guide. 

Gullible or skeptical, it’s her. 

Tifa Lockhart can make any man, woman or child believe in the supernatural, mechanized ghosts and goblins or not.

In the offseason, which is every month besides October, it is not nearly as busy. The Mansion is cleaned and cordoned off from trespassers—with trespassers being unruly high school kids with nothing better to do in a town with nothing to do. 

Cloud’s just relieved he’s a senior. He’ll be able to leave this town in less than a few months and go to college and forget about how shitty this place is and will probably always be. 

He closes his locker lazily, slinging his backpack over one shoulder. He turns and becomes face to face with Tifa, who is leaning against the wall of lockers. She smiles up at him, uncrossing her arms. 

“Hey, Cloud.”

His evaluation of the town, he’ll admit, isn’t entirely true. It’s not completely shitty. 

“Hey,” he says. 

“Ready for the calc final?” she asks. “I’ve heard it’s brutal.”

Cloud shrugs, beginning his walk down the hallway as Tifa falls into step beside him. 

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he answers.

Shaking her head, she says, “You would say that.”

“You’re good with numbers.”

“I’m mediocre at best.”

Cloud scratches the back of his neck. It’s the perfect opportunity. He’s imagined it before—bringing Tifa to his bedroom, sitting on the floor with her biting the head of her mechanical pencil while he explains derivative functions and infinitesimals and helping her with perfecting what she needs. And Tifa somehow being impressed enough to pull him into a kiss. And maybe second base. 

“Uh, well, if you want any help with it…” he starts, his tongue already tying. “I’m sure…uh…”

“Yo, Teef!” 

They both look up, a boy waving down the hallway from them. His name is Bradley. When he grins at her, it’s crooked and a dimple appears along the corner of his mouth, his curly head of hair reminding Cloud of retro shag carpeting. 

Bradley is one of only about twenty other of Tifa’s close male friends. He’s broad, happy-go-lucky, and holds the self-esteem of a guy who knows he’s good-looking. He’s also taller than Cloud, though this is nothing new. Cloud’s been trying to accept the fact that most males tend to be taller than him.

Cloud sighs as Bradley smacks his shoulder, attempting to make nice while his eyes focus solely on Tifa. 

“You heading to the hill?” he asks her.

Tifa blinks. “Oh, I forgot! That’s today?”

“Of course it’s today! We only have three weeks before graduation, remember,” Bradley laughs, coming around to Tifa’s side and slinging his arm around her shoulder. Cloud takes a step away, averting his eyes. “It’s tradition.”

Tifa’s lips slant. “But…finals are this week and I still need to—“

“Finals, sh-minals,” Bradley waves off. “You’ve already gotten accepted. What’s the big deal?”

Tifa narrows her eyes at him, and Cloud smirks at the look of annoyance that settles over her face. “My acceptance is contingent on retaining my GPA, Brad.”

He sighs, letting his arm slide off her shoulders. “You worry too much. You’re really smart, Teef. You’ll ace it without having to study, unlike degenerates like me, Matt, and Elijah. Honestly, I don’t know why you’re still friends with us,” he teases, smiling all the while. 

“It’s a small town. I have to be,” Tifa says, and it sounds like she might be only half-joking even with her smile. Her eyes dart and find Cloud’s for a second. The glance is a knowing one, and Cloud smiles back, a lightning strike of delight filling him up. She’s always somehow been able to do that—include him when he’s excluded everywhere else. 

Bradley laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. Cloud’s smile turns into a grimace, and Tifa giggles. Cloud is pretty sure she’s laughing at him, but Brad seems to be beaming too brightly, as if his laughter was infectious enough to make her share his amusement. 

“Anyway, c’mon. We’ve gotta pull the names.” 

“Alright,” Tifa relents. “But Cloud’s coming, too.”

Cloud’s grimace evolves into a frown, and Bradley finally acknowledges him with a full glance in his direction.

“Uh, sure, yeah. You cool with that, man?”

It’s always a question. It’s never an, of course, we’d love to have you! Join us all the time! Feel free!

The questions always sound like they’re hopeful he’ll say no.

Cloud glances at Tifa again. She’s smiling at him, and as annoyed and angry as Bradley and Matt and Elijah make him, she always makes him feel the opposite. 

“Yeah. I’ll come,” Cloud answers, hoping he doesn’t regret it.

Tifa grins. Bradley nods, and he hides his disappointment well, shoving his hands in his pockets.

Cloud only knows because he does the same thing.

The hill is a favorite hangout in Nibelheim. Study sessions, picnics, underage drinking all happen here, and everyone in town knows. It’s an easy place and a safe haven, and it’s a place parents never worry about. As opposed to Mt. Nibel or the Mansion, this hill is just like hanging out in someone’s house. 

It overlooks the Eastern District of the town, just a few blocks away from the school. They can spy the football field and the small track, the lines faded and the grass wilting in a sickly green and yellow from the harsh sun of summer and not enough water. 

Matt and Elijah are already there, hollering when they see Tifa and Bradley. They give brief greetings to Cloud as they sit, and Cloud nods in response. They play nice for Tifa, but she’s never been a dummy. They don’t like one another, no matter how much she’s tried to bridge the gap between all of them. She sits beside Cloud, and Cloud feels a bit ashamed every time she does. It almost feels like she’s trying to protect him from the discomfort of her friends, and this is the biggest reason he hates being around them. Tifa has always been this way, protecting and caring and empathetic, and once he was grateful. As he’s gotten older, he can’t shake the feeling of inadequacy—as if he’s a damsel and all the other guys are dragons and knights. 

And he’s not. He’s not a wimp. He’s not a weakling. Everyone’s looks make it hard to believe in himself, and he’s leaving soon, anyway, so it doesn’t matter, but…

Tifa’s shoulder brushes against his, and he glances at her. 

It does matter.

Matt pulls out a plastic bag with a handful of paper strips. He shakes it in front of his face, grinning widely. 

“Y’all jackasses ready for this?” he asks. “The moment of truth is finally here.”

Cloud eyeballs the bag. It’s a ritual only the fucked up minds of adolescents would make up in a backwater town. At least, Cloud thinks so. He can’t imagine kids in bigger cities having the time or the imagination to make up anything similar to this. For fun. 

“Wait!” Tifa says, slipping off her backpack and unzipping it. She pulls out one of her notebooks and rips a clean page out of it, tearing off a strip. “We have to add Cloud.”

As she writes his name, he doesn’t miss the looks the others give to one another. It’s as discretionary as a tornado, and Cloud glares at them. Elijah averts his eyes, Matt shrugs, and Bradley merely laughs, always being the affable one—the one that tries the most. And, Cloud thinks, the one who wants the most.

“How could we forget?” he asks, going so far as to nudge Cloud. Cloud bristles at the contact. 

Tifa grins as she hands the slip to Matt. He places it in the bag and shakes it again. 

“Alright,” says Elijah, flicking his hair out of his eyes. It’s too long, needing a cut, but Cloud is certain he keeps it that way so he can constantly fling his hair around. It’s black and glossy, and Cloud can tell he takes a lot of pride in it. Cloud, unfortunately, can relate. “Tifa, do the honors.”

She bites her lip, and her hands clench a bit. “Okay…well…” she reaches forward before pausing. She glances around at the entire group. “Remember, this doesn’t mean…I know the connotations behind this, but…”

The custom has always been one boy and one girl, chosen from a group. It had been a challenge that had started as a dare, then evolved into a game like Spin the Bottle or MASH. Now, it’s a game of chance and pure luck.

The guys either shrug or shuffle around, shaking heads and acting nonchalant. Even Cloud’s heart is beginning to thump, and he really hates this, because he won’t be chosen, and he isn’t sure he even wanted to be present to see Tifa pull out another name from the bag. In the moment, he wishes he had simply told her he would help her with calculus. None of these other dickwads can—Bradley is the only one with a scholarship. Matt and Elijah will probably stay behind in Nibelheim. Cloud’s going to Cosmo Canyon for their engineering program, and Tifa—well, Tifa has the coveted option of choosing from multiple offers. 

And one night…doesn’t mean much in the scheme of it all, but there is no denying how suddenly and abruptly Cloud wants it. It’s a desperate sensation, clogging up his chest, and he knows the other guys want it, too.

“Yeah,” Bradley says, breaking the sudden silence. “We know, Teef. It’s just for fun, right?”

Tifa’s chest expands in a deep breath before she glances at Cloud for a moment, then she reaches forward. Cloud watches her slightly curled hand fall into the opening of the bag, shuffling around the ripped pieces of paper. 

Once her fingers come upon the one she wants, she tucks it in close before opening her hand and unfolding the paper. When her eyes fall on the name inside, she bites her lip again, but Cloud knows her well enough to realize when she’s trying to keep from smiling. 

When she glances up at all of them, Cloud notices he’s holding his breath. She turns her eyes to look at him last, and she blushes. Cloud’s thundering heart suddenly stops. 

“Um, so I know you hate the Mansion, but…” Tifa says. “I got you.”

Tifa lowers the paper, everyone witnessing Cloud’s name staining the paper in Tifa’s handwriting. 

Cloud stares at it. So do all the others.

“I…” Cloud begins, his voice a croak. “Uh…”

Matt is the first to break. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

Tifa blinks, glancing up at him. “What?”

He stands and grunts, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. “Fuck this shit, I’m going home.”

He stomps off, ignoring the protests of Elijah and Bradley. 

“C’mon, man,” Elijah says. “It’s not a big deal.”

Bradley follows up. “Matt! Stop!” Bradley glances over to Cloud, and their eyes clash. There’s something in the energy that runs between them as they stare at one another, and Bradley calls out, “He’ll probably chicken out, anyway. He’s never had any balls.”

Tifa’s gasp sounds distant. Cloud’s blush turns into a burn of anger. His jaw buckles, and the past few years of hatred he’s had for this town dig deeply into his veins. Bradley is one of the roots, and Cloud knows, absolutely knows, that Bradley put his name in that bag several more times than was fair, and the others certainly did, too. Cloud can’t put it past any of them, especially when he would have done the same thing.

He stands up, the rage fueling him. “You sound mad, Bradley.”

Bradley follows his lead, and he’s about two heads taller than Cloud, and Cloud’s blood boils. He hates being short. He hates it. 

“Mad? Why would I be mad?” he says, grinning and completely inauthentic. “Because you’ll get to spend the night in the shithole Mansion with Tifa? Not like you’ll do anything about it, right?”

Cloud’s hands clench in fists at his sides. “You don’t think she knows you’ve been pining away for her ever since you met her? ” Cloud says, and he would be shocked at himself if he wasn’t so hot and seething.

“Y-you guys! Stop!” Tifa says, jumping to her feet. “I…I don’t…”

“Yeah, guys, cool it,” Elijah tries, placing a hand on Bradley’s shoulder. “Don’t be—“

Bradley jerks his shoulder away from Elijah, continuing to glare at Cloud. 

“You’re a little pussy, Strife. You always have been.”

Cloud sees red. “Remember when I broke your jaw, Brad?” Cloud growls. “I can do it again.”

At that, Brad laughs. Cloud stalks forward but is surprised at Tifa’s hand grabbing his wrist. 

“Cloud,” she says softly. “Don’t.”

Cloud’s heart begins to settle, the rage slowly filtered by the way she looks at him with pleading eyes. He takes a deep breath. 

“You wouldn’t be able to do anything, Strife,” Bradley continues. “I don’t care if you don’t think the Mansion is haunted. You wouldn’t be able to protect Tifa even if your life depended on it.” He glances at Tifa, and he begins to morph into what looks like a normal human being. His eyes narrow at the sight of Tifa’s hand still around Cloud’s wrist, and Cloud feels a wash of immense satisfaction. 

“Tifa,” Bradley says. “I’m sorry. This was supposed to be fun, I just…” he trails. “I could protect you, you know. I could…we could…”

“I’m sure you could, Bradley,” she answers, and Cloud is surprised at how her hand tightens on him. “But I chose Cloud.” She looks up at him with a carefully guarded expression. “Will you go with me?”

Cloud imagines being stuck in a stuffy, rickety old Mansion with her, hearing all those old stories and the other stories from the upperclassmen as they grew up. It is the game, and ritual, of only the bravest and the most reckless. You can only leave this town if you participate! You can’t graduate unless you survive!

Some have no interesting things to explain, saying it was the most boring experience of their lives. Some have gone crazy, spouting ridiculous tales from the bowels of the Mansion— it ate me alive, and it’ll eat you, too —some have needed the hospital from freak accidents, some have come out unscathed, boasting that they’d had sex on the moth-ridden couch in the living room. Just turn the lights out, and it’s like any other place.

Two never came back. They are the cautionary tale parents tend to use to deter the hive mind that comes about every May. 

Don’t be stupid, his mother has told him. Don’t be like those children. I don’t care what you think, Cloud. That place is dangerous.

It’s been several years since that incident, and the story has collected dust and browned over like a half-eaten apple. Those kids have been rumored to have never stayed in the Mansion at all, becoming runaways from their families, too suffocated and stifled by their lives there. No one truly knows for sure. Cloud only knows one thing. 

He’ll protect Tifa. Not because he wants to prove it to Matt and Elijah and Bradley. He wants to prove it to himself, even if he doesn’t believe in any of the haunts or mythical, supernatural horror stories. 

Tifa chose him. She even wanted to smile because she chose him.

“I’ll go with you,” Cloud answers. 

Tifa knows the Shinra Mansion better than almost anyone. 

She knows which hallways hold the pop-out skeletons. She knows which loose floorboards are for effect and which ones are hiding the machinery for ghostly moans and flickering lights and shadows. She’s well acquainted with all the rooms and the three floors—the newly refurbished ones that were completely burnt in the fire from years and years ago and the old ones they’ve cleaned up and salvaged, polishing up every year before October. 

She knows there is nothing to be scared of, no matter how rickety the wooden stairs, no matter how thin the curtains or ominous the bannisters or how filmy the frames of the portraits, filled with the Shinra family of old. 

The wealthy Shinra family bought the estate years ago, seeing and capitalizing on its potential to monopolize riches in a small, forgotten town. They placed Nibelheim on the map, attracting people far and wide.

Her father is the main real estate broker in town, in charge of nearly every property and lot in the community. The Shinra Mansion is a relic, and her father sold it to Shinra senior several years prior, receiving kickbacks from the revenue made from the Famous Nibelheim Haunted Tours. This sucked at the coffers of the town like a mosquito, the mayoral office anemic from their greed. 

Tifa has figured that out very recently, when she asked her father after he was well and deep into his cups. He grumbled and harrumphed and told her things he would regret later— it’s the only way to pay for your schooling, Tifa. How the fuck else do you think you’d be able to leave here besides loans? You’d be paying those loans off forever. 

Tifa remembers that conversation with unease and melancholy, filling her up with disquiet. She had known they weren’t well-off by any means, not in a town as small as this, but it had still surprised her. His gruffness was unwelcome as it always is, but she was thoroughly silenced that night, wishing he cared enough to tell her when he was sober. 

He hasn’t been the same since mother died. He’s been belligerent and standoffish and, at times, almost cruel—not only to Tifa, but to all of Tifa’s friends. 

It was embarrassing, and hurtful, and Tifa learned that bringing her friends over was a recipe for disaster. The last two years, she’s avoided it, finding refuge in her girlfriend’s houses or her backyard, staring up at the night sky. 

Every year when October would come around, Tifa would never so much as volunteer to be a tour guide, but would do it because it was at her father’s behest. It made sense. He was the broker, had a good relationship with the owners and the business. She didn’t want to disappoint him, no matter how much she disliked the Mansion. No matter how eerie and chilled she felt, standing at the gates, feeling the Mansion watching her, its windows the eyes and the large, heavy, oak door the mouth, beckoning her to enter with the next round of victims.  

She’s never admitted to it aloud, but it scares her. Even with the gag effects and the cheap jump scares and the mirrors rigged to reflect a shadowy figure behind the customers, all fake and campy, Tifa will always glance back when the machines are turned off and the tour over, wondering at the feeling it leaves in her skin. How it never feels empty. It never feels quite…right. 

Tifa tightens her hold on the strap of her overnight bag. It is just past 10 pm, her father having long fallen into a drunken slumber on the living room recliner, making it too simple to sneak out of her house. She left a note just in case. I’ll be at Sarah’s, studying for our finals! 

She’s slept over at her house multiple times. Sarah knows how to answer if her dad calls, having perfected both responses to cover each other if they ever needed.

Cloud is her next door neighbor, and she walks sedately by his house, pausing off to the side to wait. 

It takes him a mere few moments to appear, gently closing the front door behind him. When he sees her, he gives her a smile. It’s small, like always, a barely there thing, but she likes to imagine he saves them for her. She has never witnessed him give that specific smile to another girl over the years she’s known him. 

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey.” He adjusts his backpack. “You ready?”

Tifa sighs. “Yeah. I think so.”

He looks at her before glancing at the ground. “We don’t have to do this, you know.”

They don’t have to do this, and it’s a sweet thing for him to say it. Back in October, she knew it wasn’t the end of her relationship with that Mansion. Her friends would never let her get away with not spending the night with one of them. She’d tried to keep it as platonic between all of them as she could. She knew a few of them would have wanted to make her their girlfriend or keep them bound or even create some kind of physical attachment to one another. Bradley was especially persistent, always waiting by her locker or outside of her classes or sitting by her in the ones they shared. Tifa never did anything to give him hope for something more than friendship other than being nice to him. Even then, she’d never go out of her way to see him outside of class alone, only with a group of their friends. 

It’s been like that since they were twelve. 

The only boy she’s ever wanted to hang out with separately and alone is… Cloud. 

She smiles at him. 

“You’re right,” she says, stepping up to his side. “But it’s our last year. And…” 

Internally, in the safe spaces of her mind, Tifa allows the confession to skitter across her heart. 

This might be the last chance. 

Spending one night together, alone with Cloud Strife, even in a haunted mansion, surrounded by the eeriness of a large, empty house with antique furniture and long, stretching shadows from the depths of the hallways, is something Tifa has wanted for a while.

She’s known him just as long as all the others. She remembers when he moved to town, riddled with the newness of an unknown place and piquing her endless curiosity. She’d pulled and annoyed and tugged at him until he became her friend. When she elicited a smile from him after what seemed like weeks and weeks, it was the dawn of a new era. Tifa relished it as only a child could. 

Over the years, he’s been the boy that never seemed to want anything else from her. As everyone grew older, hands began to linger, eyes wandered, bodies became fuller and more attractive. Testosterone and estrogen and pheromones became unrelenting, settling in a deep haze around her friends, both boys and girls alike. But once you began dating in a town like this, it seemed you either stayed together forever, or you left. 

Tifa is going to college, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to date. In fact, Cloud’s the only one she’s ever wanted.

Cloud has always respected her boundaries. He’s never tried anything untoward. He never persisted like Bradley or hovered like Matt and Elijah, never made her feel the need to erect a barrier to dissuade anything more than friendship. Tifa had wished on more than one occasion for Cloud to be the boy waiting outside her classes or at her locker. She’s wanted him to offer going to the pie shop or grabbing a milkshake at the diner or even going to homecoming together. Something other than spending time in the library or after school make-up sessions. But he didn’t, and he hasn’t. Now it’s nearly mid-May, and so much time has passed without any memories Tifa wishes they could have made together.  

“I want to make it count,” she finishes. 

Cloud nods, glancing back up at her. 

“Can’t ever back down from a challenge, right?” he asks.

“Nope,” she smiles. “We can’t back down on our senior year. That’s a bad omen.”

Cloud scoffs, shrugging. “Don’t really believe in those.”

They begin to walk side by side, down the road toward the Mansion. They are covered in the incandescence of the occasional streetlamp, the crickets humming along the sidewalk. 

“You don’t?” 

“Nah,” he says. “Those are just things to scare us and make us think we can’t do something.”

Tifa tilts her head. “So, no bad omens. I know you don’t believe in ghosts or spirits or goblins…” 

Cloud smiles again. “Growing up with all those stories…it never seemed like they held any weight. Even if they’re real, I have a hard time believing any one in their right mind would want to stay around here to haunt.”

Tifa laughs at that. “I never thought of it that way before. Maybe you’re right.”

They walk along a little while longer before Tifa thinks of something. 

“You did come to one of my tours, though,” she says.

At that, Cloud shrugs. “You asked me.”

“Yes, but…” she pauses. “I don’t know. It was nice having you there, even if you thought it was silly.”

Cloud turns his head to look off at the stretch of houses as they pass. “Uh, it…wasn’t so bad. You’re a good tour guide.”

“Thank you,” she says softly. “You could have been a guide with me. That would have been fun.”

“No,” Cloud says, adamantly shaking his head. “I would have been terrible.”

“Oh, you would have done great, Cloud.”

“You know I hate people.”

Tifa giggles. “That would have helped. It is about scaring people, you know.”

She spies one of his rare smiles creeping at the corner of his lips. 

“You had Johnny to help you,” he says. “I’m sure he was a blast to work with.”

Tifa shakes her head, trying not to laugh. “He really tried his best. Half the time he’d be as scared as the tour group and would try to grab my hand.”

“Sounds like Johnny was pulling his moves on you.”

“Not at all!” Tifa says. “He would scream . He knew where all of the scares were, but it never failed whenever we’d go down the same hallway or up the same stairs.”

Cloud cracks an amused smirk at that. 

“Had you been there, it would have made it much more tolerable,” she says, and Cloud averts his eyes at the words. She bites her lip, uncertain if it was the wrong thing to say. Cloud doesn’t respond, and Tifa feels her insides curl up. She pulls on her fingers, trying not to fidget. 

“You know, I actually…hated doing it?”

Cloud snaps his head around to her. “You did?”

Suddenly embarrassed at her confession, she lets her hair fall, covering the side of her face. “I started doing it because my dad asked me to, and I’ve…felt obligated ever since.”

“I didn’t know that, Tifa,” Cloud says. “You never said anything.”

“It was only a month out of the whole year,” she answers. “It never felt right of me to complain.”

Shaking his head, he shifts his backpack. “What did you not like about it?”

She smiles a little, crossing her arms in front of her. “The whole Mansion.”

“What? Really?”

Tifa nods. “I’m, um…I was always scared. Not during the tour but…right before and right after. It would stick with me after the tours were finished. After it was over, it never seemed like it was over . I know it sounds strange,” she says. “But I think it’ll be different with you there.”

“Why?” he asks eventually.

She blushes, staring at her feet. 

Because I’m the most comfortable around you. 

“Because…we’re going to be studying calculus and…” she sighs, pulling at her fingers again. “With the others—Bradley especially—I’d be…” she pauses, glancing up at Cloud. He’s looking directly at her, and it’s a concentrated and saturated stare. She has to look away, else the words will leave her. “This sounds…I don’t mean it to sound arrogant or conceited, but…they all seem to want more from me. It’s like after we started sophomore year, they all began trying to one-up each other. They would ask me separately to hang out with them. They started sitting closer to me. They’d go out of their way to do things for me. They’d…I don’t know. I guess…they wanted me to like them.“

“That’s not arrogant or conceited, Tifa,” Cloud says. “Don’t feel that way. Nearly all the guys in our class like you. You can’t help that.”

She feels her heart squeeze, her mind getting stuck on the words nearly all the guys. She’s ashamed by it, but it… bothers her, because there’s a dark, uncertain feeling in her stomach telling her Cloud is not a part of nearly all the guys. 

“Still,” she says softly, crossing her arms under her chest. “It’s always felt a little weird. And then you—“ she pauses for a moment, staring straight ahead. She can see the Mansion coming up in their field of vision, staring down at them from the small, upraised hill. 

“You never did that, Cloud,” she says. 

He shifts the straps of his bag, glancing at the cracks in the sidewalk. 

“I, uh,” he says, scratching the back of his neck. “No. I didn’t. You’re my…friend.”

Her stomach tangles into a tighter knot. Yes. His friend.

“Yeah,” she says. “We are friends. Thanks for doing this with me.”

Cloud nods at her. “Of course.”

As they come up near the gates of the Mansion, Bradley and Elijah are waiting, offering to be their witnesses. Cloud passively glares at them, and Bradley answers with a grin. Elijah seems to be the pacifier, standing angled between them. 

“Wondered if you were gonna show, Strife,” Bradley says. 

“Sorry to disappoint,” Cloud answers. “We all know you really wanted to show Tifa how much you cared about her. A shame you can’t.”

Tifa blushes tremendously at Cloud’s abrupt and straightforward dig at Bradley. She nearly winces and glances toward the dirt. 

Bradley steps up to him. “When you fail to show her what she needs, and you will fail, I’ll be here to show her what you lack.”

“I think you’re forgetting something, Brad, ” Cloud says, surprising Tifa at the edge in his voice. “You act like Tifa wants you. As if she cares.” He leans forward. “She doesn’t.”

Tifa nearly gasps. “Cloud.”

 Bradley’s grin slowly falls into a tight line. “You’re a little shit, aren’t you, Strife?”

“I don’t know. I thought I was a pussy. Which is is?”

Tifa blinks, staring at them. She’s always been aware Bradley could be a little vicious when he wanted to be, but hearing Cloud say these words—giving back as much as he’s receiving—shocks her. 

Shocks her, but also…she swallows. She never sees Cloud being aggressive, hearing him or seeing him tense up and snarl. He had been when they were younger as they broke into adolescence. Nowadays, he is calmer, more collected and reserved, polite and respectful. Not yesterday, on the hill. Definitely not tonight.

“Guys,” Elijah says. “C’mon. Stop being stupid.”

“Why not both?” Bradley continues, ignoring Elijah. “You acting like a tough guy is laughable. Trying to show Tifa how strong you think you are?”

“If I know Tifa,” Cloud says, “she won’t think any of this shows strength.” Taking a step back, Cloud turns to her. She’s been staring at him, she realizes. Her blush deepens as he gives her his attention, and he suddenly looks apologetic. 

“Sorry,” he says, staring at his shoes. “I, uh…”

Bradley shifts his weight, finally looking abashed as he turns his head toward Tifa. “I didn’t mean for…”

Tifa places her hands on her hips, merely shaking her head. “Oh, it’s fine, but next time, treat each other nicely. It’s just one night, and it’s a silly tradition, but we’ll be alright. Won’t we, Cloud?” 

She smiles at him, and he matches it. 

“Yeah,” he agrees. 

Tifa pulls her phone out of her pocket. “If we need anything, we’ll call. Okay?”

Bradley and Elijah both nod, and Bradley seems to waver, opening his mouth before closing it. 

“Be careful,” he calls as Cloud and Tifa turn to the gate. Cloud ignores him, but Tifa gives them a wave. 

“We will!”

Cloud pushes the gates open, the creak loud and long and high-pitched. He leads the way and she follows behind him, trudging up the fragmented, disjointed cement of the sidewalk. She glances up at the Mansion, the windows shuttered closed and black, the nighttime shine glinting against the shingles of the roof, casting lengthy shadows under the awnings and gutters lining the molding around the lines of the house. 

There are twisted columns, thick and fat, on either side of the entryway. They hold up the overhanging second story like corded, muscled arms.

The three steps they take up to the front double doors hinge and gently give under their feet. Tifa pulls out the key from her backpack, slotting it into the giant lock underneath the doorknob. Most kids break in another way, be it another door or climbing up the trellis along the side wall to the creaky, window with a broken lock. Because Tifa hangs onto a key copy year round, it makes it much simpler for them to walk through the front door. 

The maw created as the doors open is intimidating, wide, and endlessly black. A rush of the stale, warm air from the house rushes against her cheeks, and Tifa takes a deep breath. As warm as it is, a chill crawls up her arms and settles against the fine hairs of her neck. She tries to ignore it as she imagines where the light switches reside off on the right, attached to the wall. She exhales when she flicks them on, the side lamps illuminating the open foyer, the broad expanse and furniture covered with white sheets to ward off dust and wear. 

“Well,” Tifa says as Cloud closes the doors behind them. “I guess we can set up in here.”

They step into the room, feet echoing on the waxy, wooden floorboards. A patterned red, green, and tan rug spans underneath the formation of the furniture, a large fireplace cold and empty off toward the right wall, a delicate portrait hanging above. 

Wallpaper used to decorate the wall, now painted over with a deep burgundy. Most of the walls are bare and without ornamentation, taken down for the sole purpose of making the haunted house easier to prepare when fall came around each year. 

Further back, two sets of stairs curve along the walls, meeting at the landing of the second story. The railing is crafted from the same wood as the floorboards and door, a heavy, sturdy oak, stained a deep brown. The rails are metal, gently reverberating with a bump of a purse or a booted foot. It always makes for an easy jump or scare, completely organic during the tours. 

Tifa gently peels one of the sheets off a chaise lounge slipping the strap of her overnight bag off her shoulder and setting it on the rug. She uncovers the coffee table as well, and Cloud steps closer, offering to help her fold them. They set them beside the fireplace and take their seats on the chaise. 

Tifa bites her lip, trying not to think about the chill that is lingering, the icy burn across her neck, and the sudden closeness of Cloud sitting beside her. 

It’s not unlike how they sit in the library. She’d always ask him to take her through the occasional equation, him coming around the table to point and draw graphs and write numbers. This time, though, he doesn’t edge away from her, the cushions being just big enough for both of them. Tifa reaches forward to take out her notebook and pencil, and Cloud mimics her, slipping the backpack around to his lap. 

“So, uh,” he starts. “What did you want to go over, first?”

Tifa peeks up at him, but Cloud is staring intensely at the calculus review, flipping through the packet.

“How about we start at the beginning?” she asks quietly, and Cloud nods, clearing his throat. 

“Alright. Number one,” Cloud starts, and Tifa smiles a little at the pink dusting his cheeks. 

She hopes, maybe, he likes her, too. She holds onto that thought, beginning to forget about the eerie crawl that persists between her shoulder blades.

Forgetting about the chill residing against her neck, like the curl of a sigh. 

Cloud watches as Tifa pushes a lock of hair behind her ear, tucking her bottom lip underneath her teeth as she puzzles out an equation. Each time she erases, her elbow gently pushes into his bicep. 

He’s finished the packet over the previous weekend, redoing a few of the last problems while waiting for Tifa to finish hers. He did them so he wouldn’t be caught staring again. The first time she glanced up at him when asking a question, she stuttered and blushed, and he realized how close their faces were. He almost apologized until he asked himself why apologize when he wasn’t sorry?

Instead, he turned his head quickly and began talking about the question she was working on. 

Now, though, he’s beginning to do it again. He trains his eye on her paper, but his gaze begins to trail up her wrist to her shoulders, to her neck to her jaw, her ear and throat and face exposed from tucking her hair. 

He can smell her skin sitting so near. It’s citrusy and bright, like a squeeze of an orange wrapped up in a flower.

“...good at these. I always mess up when I go to change the derivative and...”

Her lips flutter over the words. He thinks he notices some mascara along her eyelashes, and he creates a small, secret hope that she put makeup on for him tonight. 

She’s wearing a loose, heather gray blouse—cottony, like a t-shirt, along with jean shorts. His eyes begin to fall to the shadow of her breasts, her cleavage just hidden by the neckline.

“...you think, Cloud?”

She looks up at him again, smiling. He blinks, his eyes darting up quickly to her eyes. “Uh...sorry, what?”

“I said, what do you think?” she tilts her head. “About this problem?” She taps her paper at her work, and Cloud glances over it.

What Cloud really thinks is that he wishes they were sitting on his bed instead of inside a stuffy, too warm mansion.

“You got it right,” he says, nodding. He points. “You don’t have to do that step—it’s extra and unnecessary.”

“Ah. Thank you,” she says. “I’ll try without it but...it’s habit.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Cloud says. “Sometimes it can get confusing.”

Tifa smiles and finishes the last equation, and her scribbling against the paper is the only sound that breaks the silence of the room.

Tifa hums once she completes it, and Cloud praises her on a job well done. The grin she gives him nearly shrivels up his lungs. 

“You’re a good teacher, Cloud,” she says. “Thank you for helping me. I feel much better about the final.”

“No problem,” he says, trying to will away his blush. “I’ll help whenever you need it.”

They stare at each other for a moment, and Tifa is the one who looks away first. 

“Um...you know yesterday, on the hill?” she asks. “When I pulled your name?”

Cloud shifts on the cushion. “Yeah?”

Her shoulders rise in a breath. “This is going to sound...ridiculous.”

Cloud straightens. “That’s okay.”

He almost says I like ridiculous at the way she hesitates, if only to comfort her.

“I brought you with me that day because...I didn’t want to be here with the other guys.” Blushing, she glances at the floor. “I know I told you that this place scares me a little, but...that’s why I made sure that I’d get to be with you.” 

Cloud blinks. Her confession is making his heart rumble and pound with furious intensity. 

“How...I mean, uh, how did you...” he stutters.

“It was so selfish of me. I’m sorry for making you do this—I know you hate this place, and yet I did it anyway.” She shakes her head. “And you’re always so generous with your time.”

Cloud’s shoulders gradually fall from where they’ve shot up to his ears. “Tifa, that’s okay. I’d rather be here with you than those other guys, too.”

At that, she stares at him, her eyes soft and warm. “I’m glad.”

His eyes catch on her lips. “How were you able to choose me? It seemed...pretty lucky.”

Bashfully, she tightens her fingers together in her lap, fidgeting. “I...had another piece of paper in my hand from my notebook. You were all too busy glaring at one another to notice.”

Cloud blinks, thinking back to her curled hand, the way she glanced at him before reaching into the bag. He begins to smile. “Tifa, that’s...clever.”

She laughs, and it rings through the room. It is strangely echoey in the space, like it’s too happy a sound to exist here.

“Thanks. I hoped no one would realize. I didn’t expect them to get so mad.”

Cloud looks around the room, gently lit by the side lamps, with the doorways covered in dark shadow, the hallways hidden and out of sight, and Cloud thinks if this is what it will be tonight—just this lonely room, sitting on this old chair with Tifa—he might be happier to be here than he would be anywhere else.

“They were mad because they were jealous,” he says, the words sticky and caught in his throat. “I’m happy you chose me. I…It’s gonna be weird graduating and...leaving.”

“Yeah, but we still have the summer,” she says, turning more fully to face him. “We can hang out more than we were able to over the school year, without worrying about scholarships and applications and grades...” she smiles, shrugging. “If you’d like to.”

“I’d like to,” he says, almost embarrassed at how quickly he responds. At her beaming smile, he doesn’t feel so bad. In fact, it seems like she might have scooted closer to him, and his eyes fall to her lips—is she wearing gloss, or is it just the shine from where she bit them in concentration?—and his heart begins to race, and there’s a chilly sweat forming in the palms of his hands, and if he had a mind to do it, he’d wipe them down and reach up to cup her blushing cheek. 

He’s about to gain the resolve—about to discreetly wipe away his nerves, lean forward, and kiss Tifa Lockhart—when they hear it. 

It’s a resounding crack, as thunderous and deafening as a shotgun. They break apart and jolt, looking straight in front of them. 

The front doors are wide open, the hinges loose and the wood splintered. They swing as if there is a forcible draft, pressing and swirling into the foyer. But there is no breeze. The foliage Cloud sees beyond the doors are still, the night abnormally quiet. It lacks the chirps and cadence of nighttime, the small, living things that create the tapestry of the dark hours. 

Tifa’s hand clamps around his wrist, and he glances at her. She’s shaking, her eyes widening and her body taut and tense, as if she’s a deer behind a lens, ready to bolt. 

“Cloud...” she whispers. “Do you see that?”

Cloud follows her line of sight, seeing the open doors and nothing more. 

“See what?”

Her hand tightens to the point of pain. Her eyes are stuck straight ahead. 

Cloud begins to frown, eyeing the doorway then looking back at her. He touches her hand.

“Tifa? See what?”

She blinks, her mouth parting slightly. “I—I’m not sure.”

Cloud narrows his eyes, looking forward and trying to see anything. He squeezes her palm, attempting to calm her. 

“Hey, Tifa. It’s okay. Look at me.”

Her breathing is turning ragged. “But...she’s…her head...”

Her words make him pause for a moment, but he persists. “Tifa, look at me. There’s nothing there.”

Tifa blinks again before squeezing her eyes shut. “Ghosts. It must be a ghost. I hate ghosts.”

Cloud glances up again before gently shaking her hand. “Hey...Tifa, whatever you see—“

Without warning, her hands come around her ears, and her breathing becomes faster and harsher. Her eyes open and whatever she sees makes her press further back into the chair.

“Cloud,” she whispers, and he’s never seen her this way. She’s so frightened and small, nothing like she normally is, so full of strength and courage. “Cloud, she’s coming for us.”

Cloud furrows his brows. “Tifa, I promise, there’s nothing—“ 

He waves his hand out in front of them, only for the back of his hand to hit something. 

Cold. Wet. Viscous like mucous or slime.

Cloud snaps his head around to look, coming face to face with gray skin. It is tattered like snagged cotton, cords of dead muscle shadowed and blackened, hiding behind the opened cut on its neck. The eyes are glimmering and shining, veined white and gold like ornate marble. They roll around in the skull, the forehead overhanging like a ridge.

It’s a monster, Cloud thinks, his mind running away with him, a heightened sensation of disbelief suspending his heart mid-beat. It can only be a monster.

“Child...child...” it hisses, the voice nothing but a rasp. The head is crooked, hanging at an angle. It moves in a jerk, and the neck cracks, leering above them on the chair. It’s spindly fingers reach out toward his face, blackened like they are riddled with soot. “Your flesh…your heart...”

Tifa screams, shattering Cloud’s frozen, uncomprehending stare. He scrambles backward, the chaise falling to the ground. They both twist and turn, panicking to find their footing. He grabs anything he can find on Tifa, pulling first at her shirt before he finds the crook of her elbow. 

“What the fuck,” he breathes, standing up in a fling of limbs. Tifa presses close to him, her nails digging into his arm.

“Child…” the monster croaks behind them.

“Run,” Tifa says, voice ripped out of her. “Just run.” 

They sprint toward the first doorway they can find, swallowed by the shadows, hearts as loud as the pounding of their feet.

Chapter Text

Sprinting down the hallway, Tifa leads them with arrant memory and blind adrenaline.

Her mind keeps conjuring the woman. Scraggy, tangled hair, streaked with black and gray and thin, her scalp a shining white. Her mouth open, teeth missing, dried blood at the corners of her lips.

“Child…”

Tifa hears her behind them, her feet slapping on the floor, slow and ominous. Her body creaks like the front steps to the Mansion, echoing and following. Tifa’s heart clogs up her throat, sweat forming at her hairline. Her hand is clenched inside Cloud’s, but everything else is numb.

“Tifa—“ he says.

“In here,” she answers, sharply turning into a guest room. Cloud all but flies behind her, and she slams the door shut, locking the bolt. As she does it, she already knows it’s in vain—ghosts don’t care about locks or doors or even walls. What if she seeps through the paneling? What if she seeps into them? Maybe they should just keep running. But there’s a window in here, and maybe—

Tifa spins around to find Cloud already at the window, unlatching the sill. He pushes up, but it doesn’t budge. Tifa runs to him, placing her hands at the bottom to help him lift. It doesn’t open.

“Shit,” Cloud says. “We have to break it.”

“We need something,” she huffs, shaking her head. “It’s too thick. We can’t break it on our own.”

Tifa whirls around, her mind shifting immediately to the closet. They use it as storage for decorations and different equipment for the haunted house. There’s a few iron rods in there, to hold up dummies in the shadows during the tour—she put them away herself all those months ago.

She runs to it and opens the door, only to be pelted with a screech. It’s so loud and sudden, she falls backward and collapses to the floor. She stares up into the face of one of the dummies—it’s a cheap ghoul, brown and sewn with lumps and wrinkles, red stuffing falling out of it to act as blood. When she shoved it into the corner of the closet, it looked like nothing more than an old stuffed animal. Not ominous at all, almost like a cartoon pulled out from a television show.

The stuffing splashes to the floor as if it is blood. It is dark and thick, the color of a rusted, mangled wound. It splatters onto her legs, and it is cold like the spray of rain. The arms hang by threads, and they strain as the ghoul wraps its hands around the doorframe, pulling itself from the depths of the closet. It’s mouth is stretched wide, too big for its face. Tifa doesn’t remember that. She doesn’t remember the unhinging jaw, the thickness of its tongue.

Tifa scrambles away as soon as she feels the chill from the blood, her mind blank and white.

Get away, get away, get away.

Tifa hits something as she’s scooting, causing her to scream. Arms wrap around her, and she screams more, jerking away.

“Tifa, it’s me, it’s me,” Cloud says, tightening his hold on her shoulders. She nearly cries in relief, and he spins her to look at him. “I don’t know what you saw,” he says. “I don’t see it, so just look at me, okay?”

Tifa blinks rapidly, nodding her head over and over.

“O-okay.”

“We need to break the window. Is there anything in the closet to do it?” he asks.

The thought of Cloud going into the closet and walking into the mouth of that ghoul—

“No, there’s nothing,” she says breathlessly. “There’s nothing.”

“Tifa,” he says, his voice stern. His eyes are hard and sharp. “We need to get out of here.”

She grips his forearms, plunging her fingers. Her breaths come and go in gasps. “You can’t go in there, but—“

“Child…”

They both glance up at the bolted door. Tifa trembles, and she’s too afraid to look behind her toward the closet. Because what if its mouth is right above her head?

She closes her eyes for a moment then turns her head to look up at Cloud. “Check the side tables. There are some weird antiques.”

Cloud pulls her up with him, shuffling over to the bedside table. He pulls open the drawers, but they come up empty. They go to the dresser, but are greeted with cobwebs. Tifa feels useless, holding onto his hand like its her lifeline, not daring to turn her head to look behind her.

“Any false floorboards you know about?” he asks, head swiveling around them, attempting to find anything other than wood paneling and stale comforters wrapped in plastic on the bed. He glances underneath it, grimacing as he stands up.

“Child…” the woman’s voice is closer, as if she’s right outside the door. She might be toying with them while they wait for the inevitable.

“Not this room,” she whispers. “I’m sorry. This was a bad choice. This was—“

“Tifa,” Cloud says, his voice low and harsh. “Do not be sorry.”

“I—“

Their hands intertwined, he squeezes them together. She realizes she’s still numb, because she can hardly feel the pressure of his palm and fingers.

The locked door of the room rattles behind them. Tifa inhales sharply, and her heart trills behind her sternum. Cloud glances at the door, then he glances over her shoulder toward the closet. His eyes narrow.

“You’re not going to like this,” he says.

“Cloud—“ she whispers, already panicking. “What are you—“

“Don’t think about it. Just keep looking at me,” he says before he pulls her to his side and runs.

Her legs automatically follow and she tries to listen to what he tells her—just look at him—but she can’t when they turn, because he’s forcing them toward the closet.

Her eyes catch onto the ghoul, still in the doorjamb, its hands hanging onto the frame. Its body is bigger, now, as if it has inflated and grown. The mouth is still wide and large and open, the tongue hanging, lips slit open into a hungry smile. It waits for them like a phantom.

The locked door rattles and rattles. The ghoul’s blood stuffing drips to the floor in rivulets.

“Child…Jenova…” the woman calls through the lock, and the door begins to shake and vibrate, the sturdy seal of the wood stain cracking. The ghoul’s mouth opens wider and wider, taking up the size of half its body.

Tifa’s feet drag and stutter, but Cloud is relentless, unseeing of the monster, pulling her without mercy.

“Cloud,” she chokes.

“Look at me,” he growls, staring forward. “It’s going to be fine.”

How can he know? she thinks, terrified, every nerve in her body refusing the vision in front of her. They get closer and closer to the mouth as it continues to spread, waiting for them to enter its throat and the cavern of its belly.

She presses into him, and before they pass through the door of the closet, she shuts her eyes and hopes beyond hope that he’s right.

As soon as her vision is gone, coldness overtakes her, surrounding her with an unnatural chill. The only thing that anchors her is Cloud’s hand and the warmth of his body against her.

The closet door slams behind them while the other cracks and crumbles, the doorknob thumping to the floor. A rickety sound of the knob rolling into the room is the only thing that can be heard.

Tifa focuses on the rapid beats of her heart and the quick breaths of Cloud’s chest. He’s alive, she’s alive, and while the doorknob rolls past them, the sound magnifying before abating, Tifa keeps her eyes closed.

Because what if they’re in the belly?

What if they’re in the beast?

Tifa trembles like a leaf against his side. Cloud holds her, tucking her in close. Her eyes are still shut, and her breaths are quiet and short, absorbed by the fabric of his shirt.

They are ensconced in darkness, a sliver of light penetrating the space from beneath the door. The slow, ponderous footsteps of the woman—the monster—enter into the room. Her movements sound like the rubbing of sandpaper against a wall. It is soft and straining against the deep silence. Cloud’s heart is loud in his ears, running in place behind his sternum.

“Jenova…” the monster hisses. Her shuffling along the room lasts and stretches for what feels like hours before her body shadows the light from underneath the door.

Her body pauses, and Cloud thinks she might reach for the knob and break this door, too. All she has to do is twist the knob and push. Simple and effortless. Cloud holds his breath, eyes trained on the shadow. He squeezes Tifa tighter, and she’s stopped breathing, too. She’s stopped trembling, body seized with stillness.

There is a scrape against the door. Slowly, the knob begins to turn, the meal spring clicking and tugging. Cloud closes his eyes for a moment before opening them, trying to build resolve against something he still doesn’t believe in.

The door is pulled open. Tifa’s fingers dig deeper into his shirt. Cloud shifts, attempting to cradle Tifa between the wall and his body.

Only two have never come back, he reminds himself. Only two. All the others have survived.

And if some undead monster thing keeps him from kissing Tifa Lockhart—he’ll regret not inviting her to his house. He’ll regret how he’s been so timid with her, always feeling like she’s too good for him. He’ll regret not asking her to homecoming. He’ll regret every fucking thing he was too nervous to do.

As the door opens and the monster stands before them, rotting and peeling, her ashen skin and thin, wiry hair, Cloud stares into her white, foggy eyes, the hideous forehead, the sunken cheeks and her long, wraith-like limbs. Fear bundles into his throat and wraps around his vocal cords. It is a red hot burn like stomach acid, stampeding around his gut. He takes a deep breath, anchored by Tifa’s nails in his skin.

“Jenova…” she repeats, creeping forward. Her feet drag against the floorboards. Her neck is still slanted at an abnormal angle, and as she reaches forward with her hand, Cloud sees her fingernails are broken and chipped, dirt packed underneath them, the fingertips blackened and raw. “Jenova…”

Cloud inches back from her hand. His heart is running so quickly, he feels like he might fly away. Tifa whimpers behind him, and Cloud swallows, unsure what compels him to say it.

“Jenova isn’t here,” he whispers.

The woman’s movements pause. Her neck cracks in a tilt, her eyes rolling around like wet marbles in her skull. She might be staring at them, but it is impossible to tell in the low lighting.

Eventually, her hand lowers down to her side. She turns in the doorjamb, shifting and sliding away. Her motions are stilted and slow. She is ponderous, and as disgusting and wretched as she is, it strikes Cloud’s senses that she’s searching.

“Jenova…” she calls out. “Child…flesh…heart.”

She ambles away, disappearing from the room. When they can no longer hear her wails, Tifa finally begins to release her death grip on his bicep. She doesn’t move away from him.

“Is she gone?” she whispers. Cloud turns his head, realizing her eyes are still trained on him. They are wide and bulbous, her teeth cutting into her lip.

“Seems like it,” he answers her, glancing into the guest room before looking back at her. “I think she’s looking for…I guess, Jenova. Whoever that is.”

“Y-yeah,” Tifa says, hesitating before she glances around them. She exhales after her observation, her body finally relaxing in a tired slump. “I can’t believe that worked. What you said. I can’t believe we’re…fine.”

Cloud eases against the wall, trying to allow his heart to slow. The fear has exhausted him, and he notices his limbs are shaking. “Are you okay? You don’t….see anything, uh…” he trails, unsure how to finish his question.

She nods, but her lips are slanted uncertainly. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. I don’t…see anything.” She gently squeezes his arm, and Cloud hates that now the threat of potential death is no longer at the forefront of his mind, nor is it right in front of them, hovering and reaching, his complete incapability of doing something bold with Tifa, be it wrapping his arms around her, touching her, kissing her, immediately stifles him once more.

Always. It’s always been this way. Cloud grimaces, sighing at how shitty and stupid it is. Now it seems like the house might truly be haunted—and he must be haunted right along with it.

“Let’s get out of here?” he asks her.

“Yes,” she says. “Please.”

As they stand and leave the confines of the closet, it astonishes Cloud how Tifa’s hand does not leave the crook of his elbow. She remains within his realm, the puffs of her breath hitting his shoulder. It’s distracting. Distracting enough, Cloud thinks, to keep what happens next from completely unhinging his mind.

Because when they slip out of the guest room and into the hallway, it is not the hallway it used to be.

His boots splash into liquid. It is foggy and dense, like the thickened color of a swamp. The lights are flickering and the walls are no longer painted burgundy but are covered in old, antiquely stained and textured wallpaper.

Tifa inhales sharply. “Cloud.”

Cloud stares down the hallway. The opening to the foyer and the entryway is blockaded by shadowed figures. They are all the same height. They look like multiples of the same shadow.

The liquid ripples at their feet. The wallpaper even begins to shake, and Cloud has to blink a few times to be sure he’s seeing what he thinks he’s seeing.

Hands are beginning to split the walls, first knuckles, then fingers, then entire palms. They reach and grasp into the cavity of the hallway, disjointed and trembling as if only beginning to learn how to move.

“Holy shit,” Cloud whispers, tensing up. “What the fuck is going on?”

Tifa presses into him. “I don’t know. I don’t know, but they want us.”

“Why?” Cloud breathes. “We didn’t do anything to ruin their night.”

Tifa shakes her head, her hands becoming steel bands around hs forearm. “Probably doesn’t matter. If ghosts are vengeful, they don’t care who you are.”

She says it with deep wisdom, and had they been anywhere else, Cloud would ask how she knows.

“Yeah. Right. Okay.” Cloud’s breath flutters out of him.

“C’mon,” she says, her voice hushed. She turns her head to look down the opposite end of the hall, and Cloud follows her gaze. Hands have not yet started to peel apart the walls in that direction, and there are no ominous shadows barricading the path. Cloud takes that as a good sign as any. “We need to get out of here.”

Tifa tugs him down the hallway, leading him easily. Their feet splash in the liquid floor, wet flecks staining his jeans.

The walls shimmer as they run, and it feels like they run forever. The hallway elongates, stretching like a chewed piece of gum. Cloud squeezes his eyes closed for a moment, trying to blink the sight away. It doesn’t change.

“Tifa—“

“I know,” she says. “I see it. But if we can make it to the end—“

The floor begins to crack underneath them, sudden bouts of rips and warping wood, like a frozen lake about to shatter. It chases behind them, and Cloud glances back as they run. Abnormally long arms continue to grow out of the walls, the hands nearly at their backs.

Cloud almost chokes, gasping. “Go. Go.”

The cracks spiderweb above them and around them, cutting through the ceiling and the side walls, catching them like a trap. Tifa pulls harder on his arm, and he sees that the floor is breaking apart in front of them. The end of the hallway begins to look like a cliff face, pulling away. The floor starts to crumble and shift, as if they’re on an incline.

“Jump,” she cries. “We have to jump.”

The floor thunders in another crack.

“You go first,” Cloud says. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Tifa hesitates before nodding, letting go of his arm. She faces the ever increasing chasm in the floor, taking off in a sprint. Cloud begins to run as soon as she makes the jump, pushing herself up onto the other side of the floor. He makes it to the end of the floorboards, propelling himself forward as hard as he can. He grapples onto the broken end on the other side, landing with his arms across the floor, and he scrambles to push his body up the rest of the way.

He feels the grip of a hand around his ankle before he can right himself, and he slips down to the ledge. The wood is broken, and he feels it scraping against his forearms. The hand pulls and tugs with a fierce grip, and Tifa shouts, rolling forward to grab his wrist.

“Hang on, Cloud!”

He digs his fingers into the wood, holding as hard as he can. He glances down at the hand gripping his ankle, and he sees several other hands coming forward, blindly reaching, trying to find his other leg.

Cloud kicks out, snapping his foot around to break the grip. It is relentless, growing tighter with his increasing struggle against it. Cloud kicks at it with his other foot over and over.

Tifa helps try to leverage him up to the floor. “Cloud, I’m gonna—pull, okay?”

“Okay,” he calls. “I’ll kick when you pull.”

“One—two—three,” she shouts, pulling so hard on his arm, Cloud thinks his shoulder comes out of its socket. He kicks with so much force, his entire body swings, and the hand must loosen just enough for him to free. The next thing he knows, he’s flying up into the air, colliding into Tifa’s body. They tumble and roll, smacking against the floorboards. Cloud loses his wind, unable to breathe. He blinks up to see Tifa’s face above his before she turns away, glancing back at something he can’t see. He closes his eyes and attempts to recover faster, and when he opens his eyes again, Tifa’s smile is the first thing to invade his vision, beaming at him. Tifa wraps her arms around him. Even through the sweat and dampness of fear covering them, he can feel her warmth. As his breath comes back, he can smell the brightness of her skin—citrusy flowers—and he hugs her back.

“Oh, Cloud, thank goodness,” she whispers.

“The—the arms—“ he tries.

“They disappeared as soon as you landed up here,” she answers. “They’re gone.”

Cloud exhales, a deep relief cascading over him. “Good.”

She laughs, and it is breathy and brief. Cloud stares at her before looking down the hallway. It’s all put back together like a puzzle, plastered and cemented and fixed with no tears or cracks in sight. The walls are still different—no longer are they painted burgundy, but a cream, off-white textured wallpaper. The lamps lining the hallway do not flicker, and they are an old gold stained with age. Portrais hang along the walls, too, with faces of people Cloud doesn’t recognize.

Most importantly, there are no arms growing out of the walls, no liquid seeping up from the floorboards. There are definitely no shadows lingering at the end, hovering at the door.

He looks up at Tifa, finally allowing himself to feel the exhaustive wash of adrenaline. A lightness floods him, and he’s wondering how they can still possibly be alive after all that. Her smile begins to fall, her hands still around his shoulders.

“Tifa,” he says. “I…I have no idea what’s happening, but…”

She shakes her head. “Me either. I’m terrified, but…we survived it.”

“Yeah. Whatever the hell that was,” he says, sighing. “Maybe we can find a way out of here, now. It probably won’t be easy.”

“Probably not,” she says. “But I know the floor plan. The window on the second floor is always open. We might have a chance there. There’s also a back patio…a side door a little ways further down this area,” she says, pointing behind them. “We could even try the front door, but…” she pauses, glancing back toward the hallway. Cloud doesn’t hear the ghostly wraith calling out, but the hallway stretches on and on, ominous and foreboding. If Cloud didn’t know any better, he would think the hallway was mocking them, daring them to try running through it again.

“But…I have a feeling it won’t open for us,” Tifa continues. “I’m even…I’m not sure if we should even try this hallway, again.”

“Yeah,” Cloud says, unconsciously holding her tighter. “I feel the same way.”

They don’t move away from each other, both silent in their contemplation. Eventually, Tifa turns to him. She stares at him and hesitates. Cloud’s heart abruptly starts to pound harder and harder, the adrenaline once diminished now revived in his bloodstream.

“I, uh, Tifa…” he says, unsure what he wants to say.

Tifa leans forward and presses her lips to his cheek. Cloud’s entire body freezes up, limbs unable to move.

“Thank you for earlier, in the closet,” she whispers, backing away. “I thought we were goners for sure.”

Cloud blinks, his cheek burning. His skin holds onto the remnants of her kiss, and he thinks he’ll remember the soft pressure of her lips forever.

“I…yeah, of course,” he stutters. She goes to stand, and he follows, eyes catching on the blush blooming on her face.

“Well,” she says, clearing her throat. She places her hands on her hips. “Let’s try this again.”

Cloud feels a faint smile creep onto his face. Before Tifa leads on, Cloud reaches out and grabs her hand. A bout of bravery is kindled inside of his heart by her deepening blush from the contact.

“Just in case,” he says, gently shaking her hand. “Never know when another ghost will pop out at us.”

“You’re right,” she says, matching his smile. Their fingers intertwine. “You never know.”

They try Tifa’s phone, which she had secured in her front pocket. The service is out, and the battery is dying quicker than normal. Exasperated but not altogether surprised, Tifa decides to place it on the lowest energy level for conservation. Cloud's phone is still in his backpack in the front room.

They run down the hall to find the side door is locked.

It isn’t locked in the conventional sense. It is locked by threads of ghastly smoke curling around the doorknob. Tifa tries to push her hands past it, but it wards her off like an electrical spark, burning her palms as though it is angry at the attempt to leave.

They try all the windows they pass, each of them stuck or impenetrable. They slip into the kitchen, furnished with old silver and china that Tifa has never seen before, the windowed cabinets beautiful and haunting. Shadows have been crawling around the floorboards along their journey here, but Tifa can’t tell if it’s her mind playing tricks or if the shadows are real. She tries not to think about them, focusing on her next plan of escape.

They enter the dusty pantry to find the door to the cellar. As Tifa reaches her hand out for the latch, she stops. Her breath scuttles behind her chest.

“The cellar has a hatch to the outside,” she says. “But…but, um…”

Cloud senses her hesitation and her fear, she knows, because he places a hand at the small of her back.

“Do you know what’s in the cellar?” he asks.

Yes, she thinks. There are a lot of things. Too many things. They use the kitchen as a stage for a butchery gone wrong. False blood they didn’t use the previous year is saved, sealed up in plastic bins. Mannequins are dismantled and shoved into boxes. Plastic chef’s knives and other miscellaneous kitchen items are wrapped up and placed on built-in shelves.

Tifa knows it’ll be terrible. She doesn’t want to think about the mannequins coming to life, chasing them with knives that are too real and no longer plastic.

“This is another bad idea,” she murmurs.

“Being in this house is a bad idea,” Cloud says, glancing back into the kitchen. “There are a few knives and pots in there. Ghosts probably can’t be attacked, but we could armor  ourselves.”

Tifa takes a breath, nodding. “Can’t hurt. There are mannequins and…and fake blood and knives in there. Awful things.”

“Great,” he mutters sarcastically. “And knowing us, the cellar door won’t open. We have to try, though.”

They backtrack into the kitchen, rummaging through the drawers and cabinets. Tifa finds a small paring knife and a rolling pin. Cloud picks out a carving knife and a heavy cast iron pan. They look at one another with their weapons, and though Tifa feels her heart pounding hard enough to erode her sternum, the chill reappearing along the back of her neck, Cloud gives her a wry little smile.

“Ready to go face some mannequins?” he asks.

Tifa shakes her head, biting her lip. “I’m ready to get it over with.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

As they enter the pantry together, Tifa pauses before the cellar door. She glances at him. “Hey, Cloud?”

He looks at her, and for about the hundredth time that evening, Tifa is grateful he’s here.

“If we survive this,” she says, the question now so easy when faced with the dark, unsettling, viciously dreadful door. “Do you want to go to prom with me?”

Cloud stares at her, his eyes widening. He blinks and seems at a loss. It would be cute, had he not been holding a knife and a cast iron.

“You said you were going with Sarah,” he says.

“And you said you weren’t going,” she answers.

Cloud’s cheeks begin to flush. “I…didn’t want to after you said you were going with friends.”

She straightens. “That’s why you weren’t going?”

Cloud looks at the ground. “Uh…well…”

A bang resounds against the cellar door. Tifa jumps a foot in the air and Cloud jolts.

Another bang sounds, another and another. Tifa steps back, running into Cloud’s chest. Cloud comes around to stand in front of her, shielding her from the door. Tifa feels a sudden blast of cold against her skull, and she turns around. She sees nothing in the kitchen, but she feels it. She sees how the color of the walls temper, shadows elongating from the tiled floor to the ornate cabinets to the stove vent to the ceiling. They deepen and cascade, like a cloud moving over the sun. It darkens almost instantaneously, and the door bangs and bangs and bangs.

Tifa’s breath comes quick and fast, her palms sweating along the handle of the knife and the rolling pin. The only thing that keeps her from trembling is the sturdy foundation of Cloud’s back against hers.

“You see anything, Tifa?” he asks.

“Just darkness,” she answers.

They press against each other, tensing. Tifa holds her weapons in front of her when she notices the change.

The sinks begin to fill until they drip over the side. The droplets fall in thickened streams over the counter. It’s too dark to know what it is—blood? Sewage? Something else?

Shadows flicker along the cabinets. Tifa sees silhouettes of people wink in and out of her vision, and a fog shimmers around them, settling into a dense haze.

“Cloud, things are in the kitchen,” she says under her breath.

The cellar door continues to bang. Cloud glances over his shoulder.

“What do you think?” he asks. “Cellar or run?”

Tifa opens her mouth, a charge of adrenaline rushing through her system. Before she can answer, the cellar door slams open.

“Shit,” Cloud mutters. Tifa glances over his shoulder and sees what she was dreading all along.

A mannequin, assembled without rhyme or reason, a leg in place of an arm, the torso twisted, one leg positioned backward with the knee buckled. The face is broken, half the grin and eyes still visible painted in but chipped. One of the arms attached to the torso holds a knife—plastic, Tifa hopes. Plastic and bloodied with fake blood. It jerks in its steps toward them, and it grouses, the noises emanating from somewhere inside.

“Our gorgeous lady fair,” it rumbles. “Eyes of gold and silver hair…”

Cloud swings the cast iron in front of him, smashing it across the face. Pieces of it fly off and shatter across the ground, the body stuttering and attempting to move forward on shaky limbs. Tifa gasps. Cloud’s chest heaves.

“It worked?” he says.

A grating noise comes from the kitchen, and Tifa whirls around, watching as another ghoul—or phantom—scrapes a handful of forks across the granite countertops. It forms a trail along the liquid that splashes against the floor.

Cloud swings the pan again, dismembering the arm of the mannequin holding the knife. It clatters to the floor, and Tifa knows immediately it isn’t plastic.

The phantom in the kitchen wears a chef’s apron. The face is sunken and dead, peeling just like the lady in the foyer. “Jenova, Jenova…”

“Who is she?” Tifa mumbles, her arms trembling. “What did she do?”

It continues to amble forward, slow and stuttering like all the rest. Mannequins, Tifa wildly thinks. Like puppets.

“Will show you…how…to care…” the phantom screeches, the words draped with insidious intent.

Tifa’s heart pounds, her blood shuttling through her limbs. She tries not to let it scare her. She tries and tries, and as it steadily moves closer to her, the forks scraping hard enough to peel the enamel of the granite, Tifa’s grip on the rolling pin solidifies.

“Tifa…” Cloud says behind her. “We can hurt them.”

“I-I know,” she whispers, staring at the phantom. Its eyes gleam against the reflection of the moonlight traveling through the window.

Cloud swings a few more times. She hears the crack of the fiberglass and plastic of the mannequin, and she wants Cloud’s strength to fill her. The phantom is now a few feet away, closer and closer. It’s breath rattles through the space between them. She stares at it. She tells herself she can swing the rolling pin and bash its head. She can hurt it. She visualizes it. She doesn’t have to allow it to overcome her—the burning chill of terror and fear.

She doesn’t have to allow it.

Her hand shakes around the rolling pin. Her body is stuck, and she can’t—she can’t—

Cloud moves in front of her, closing the distance. She nearly screams at his proximity to the phantom, but he swings the carving knife through the air, right across the neck. A gushing flutter of smoke bursts out of it, and it falls to the ground. It slowly disintegrates into a pile of smoke and ashes.

Tifa stares at Cloud and the pile, her body paralyzed.

“I’m…” she starts. “I couldn’t…”

Cloud comes up to her, dropping the pan and the knife. He places his hands on her face.

“Tifa,” he says, tilting her head up to look at him. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re okay.”

Tifa is shaking so badly, she thinks she might begin to cry.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” she says. “I couldn’t—I couldn’t—“

He brings her against him, curling his arms around her. “It’s alright, Tifa. We’re okay.”

“But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even fight it,” she says, shaking her head against his chest. “Why does it scare me so much? Why—why can’t I react like I want?”

The shadows in the kitchen continue to swirl, seemingly curling against her words. A breeze gusts through, and Cloud pulls her tighter against him.

“We should get out of this room, Teef.”

She shifts, looking around them.

“Should we…try the cellar?” she asks.

“Won’t hurt,” Cloud says, but she sees him wince. “Hopefully.”

Cloud leans over and grabs the handle of the cast iron, slipping his other hand around Tifa’s elbow. Tifa continues to hold both her weapons, and he turns them back to the pantry, stepping over the broken and disassembled mannequin into the cellar.

It is musty and dank, the dirt floor gripping their feet as they run toward the hatch. Tifa tries not to look too closely in the shadows, for fear of more mannequins jumping to life and attempting to grab them.

We can hurt them, she thinks. Stop being afraid.

They reach the hatch, unsurprised when it’s cemented shut. Cloud sighs roughly, pounding a fist against it.

“Knew it wouldn’t work,” he says.

Tifa frowns, shuffling through the different rooms in her mind. “Let’s try upstairs. There’s a set of stairs in the kitchen.”

They miraculously avoid any other creatures crawling through the dark once they arrive back to the landing of the pantry. Cloud continues to wrap his hand around her elbow, and it settles Tifa’s heart.

She guides them to a side passage, slipping into a narrow corridor holding the set of stairs. It twists up to the second floor in a spiral, utilized once as a servant’s mode of transportation. Even in the dim, sinister lighting, the walls and light fixtures are filled with gold and crystal, all wrapped in luxury. Tifa has always known it was a wealthy place, but as they enter the second floor, opening up into another expansive hallway, it is adorned with pieces she has never seen before. Ornate frames dot the walls, filled with pictures of strangers. They are dressed in foreign clothing, with petticoats and fine wool, frilled sleeves and full, rounded gowns. The women are laced in silk. The men don sleek suits and prestigious hats.

“Who are they?” Cloud asks beside her.

Tifa shakes her head slowly. “I…I don’t know. I’ve never seen these pictures before.”

Fascinated, Tifa continues down the hallway, inspecting each portrait. It seems to be a family—perhaps generational, or cousins and nephews and aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers. It is indecipherable without name plates or labels, but they are all severe and serious with their expressions. Tifa feels drawn to each individual, the paint gleaming and new, not having a hint of age against the canvas.

Eventually, her feet take her around the entirety of the wing. Before she knows it, they are at the beginning, the walls opening up to look down on the entrance of the Mansion, the foyer sprawling below. It is connected by the double staircases that make the entry of the place so wondrous and intimidating.

Tifa doesn’t look into the foyer. Instead, she eyes the middle portrait, overlooking the front doors of the house. It consists of only three individuals, situated in strategic familial placement. To the left is a bearded man with black hair, the tufts of it curled along his forehead, the rest hidden underneath a heavily decorated hat. He is well-built and trim, his suit and waistcoat more modern than the pictures that have come before. His eyes are a beautiful emerald green, but they are harsh and intense, unseeing of humor or levity. To the right is a woman, and she is wildly lovely. Her hair is lengthy and thick, and a striking color of blond so platinum it looks silver underneath the light from the sconces on the walls. Her cheekbones are raised high like cliffs, tapering into a dainty jawline and a delicate neck. Her lips hold a soft smile—almost a smirk—as if she knows how well off she has it. Or, Tifa thinks, she knows something most do not.

She wears a dress with a tight bodice, uplifting her breasts. It is made of silk, the shine from the paint denoting it well. The fabric falls into a flowing, full train, gently ruffled like ripples on a lake.

Lastly, in the middle, is a girl. She can’t be older than sixteen. She is more striking than either her mother or her father beside her, but Tifa can see that she takes after her mother in coloring. She has platinum hair—it is less blond than her mother’s. It is almost gray, but the word gray is too pall and commonplace for the true color. It shines like starlight, almost translucent and fair, each strand pronounced with the brushstrokes that create them. Her cheeks are high and smooth like her mother’s. There is rouge there, but it is impossible to tell if it is manufactured or her natural blush. Her lips are full but in a thin, unhappy line. Her head is held high, but her hands are clasped in front of her in submission. Tifa isn’t sure why she feels that way about her stance. As her eyes rove over the girl’s face, it strikes Tifa that it must be her eyes. They are round and wide, a strange color that Tifa has never seen. They are amber, a honeyed gold like the glow from a kerosene lamp. The same shade from one of the bonfires they hold at homecoming. They are markedly brilliant and unique, but they are sad. They hold no emotion, no spark. The color, while singular and breathtaking, do not hold any passion. They are somehow dull and drained.

How can that be? Tifa thinks, her mind completely taken with the picture. Her vision blurs around the edges, her periphery gone—but that’s fine. She doesn’t notice because how could such a gorgeous girl, surrounded by this wondrous, terrifying house filled with luxury and lace and intricately woven design, be so unhappy?

Tifa looks on as the girl blinks at her. Her head tilts in thought before her eyebrows gently raise.

“You’re pretty,” the girl says. Her voice is resonant and muffled, as if she’s speaking through water. “Do you know what they do to pretty girls like us?”

She turns her face to her mother, then she turns her face to her father. His hand is on  her shoulder. Tifa hadn’t noticed that before. She didn’t notice the grip—how tight and whitening, how taut the skin across his knuckles.

The girl looks back at Tifa. Her hands unclasp and come to rest at her sides. Tifa’s eyes widen as she watches the fingers elongate, the nails growing into horrifyingly long claws. The girl turns to the right and slits her mother’s throat, the gash formed spilling into torrents of dark red blood, thick and slow. The face doesn’t change in the mother, but her body crumples to the floor. Tifa hears her begin to gasp for air, strangled and drowning.

She turns to her left and slashes off the hand resting on her shoulder. It bounces as it  spins out of the painting. It hits the floor, rolling down the staircase. Thunk, thunk, thunk.

“Don’t let them,” she hisses, her face suddenly morphing. “Don’t let them do what they want to do.” Her neck lengthens, and her eyes begin to glow like they are heated from within. No longer are they dull and drained.

She shoves a clawed hand into her father’s torso, right below the sternum, and she cuts downward so quickly, Tifa doesn’t even see it. She guts him. His entrails spill out like the stuffing from the dummy in the closet, trickling over the frame of the portrait. Tifa realizes her breaths are coming in short, hiccuping gasps.

“Oh, you’re afraid, aren’t you?” the girl asks, but she is no longer a girl. Her jaw is wide, holding sharpened, needle-like teeth. She walks closer to the front of the portrait, bringing her claws up to the barrier of the canvas. “Afraid of me? Afraid of you?” Her hands bypass the canvas, fingers curving over the bottom of the frame. Her face leans forward, and Tifa can smell and feel the girl’s breath against her hair and her neck and her bones. It smells like pond water, dank and humid and with a hint of rot. “Afraid of what you’ll become when I’m finished with you?”

Tifa can’t move. She is frozen, again. Numb.

“N-no,” she manages.

“You are,” the girl says, her lips slicing into a smile. She reaches forward and touches Tifa’s cheek. “You should be.”

At the touch, Tifa jerks back, finally coming to life. The scream tears through her throat, and it must crack her cartilage with how powerful it is.

The vision distorts, and Tifa shuts her eyes closed, stepping back and back and back. She moves so quickly she nearly trips on her own feet.

“Tifa!” she hears, but all she can see is the girl’s now monstrous face, inches from her own, following her back and back and back, flickering in and out of reality.

“N-no, please. Get away. Get away.”

Get away, get away, get away.

“Tifa! Tifa, stop. Tifa.”

Arms come around her, and she thrashes so hard, she feels her elbow jam into firm skin. Cloud grunts, coughing, but his arms are vices around her torso.

“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s okay. You’re fine. You’re okay.”

You’re afraid.

“I’m not,” she stutters, her eyes still closed. She grips his arms, nails digging into him. “I’m not okay. I’m sorry.”

“I’ve got you,” he says. “No matter what, I’ve got you.”

She hiccups, realizing she’s crying. She turns and buries her face in his chest.

“I hate it, here. I want to be home. I want us to be anywhere else,” she says, her voice wet and quavering.

“We will be,” Cloud murmurs in her hair. “Soon. We’ll figure this out.”

She pushes her ear to his chest, hearing the constant, pattering beat of life, trying not to think of the girl, pushing her face out of the portrait, murdering her family, asking her about an unknown fear—Afraid of what you’ll become when I’m finished with you?

Tifa shakes, wishing she could meld into Cloud and hide inside his ribcage, sidled up beside his heart.

She doesn’t want to know what she’ll become.

She doesn’t want to become anything. But she can still smell the girl’s breath, deep in her nostrils, stuck in her lungs with dank humidity and the hint of rot.

Cloud holds Tifa close as he stares up at the portrait. She had been nearly mesmerized, walking with a strange, unnerving purpose down the hallway. He could barely keep up, calling after her, but she hadn’t responded. She had even dropped her rolling pin and knife when she had stood in front of the painting.

What had she seen? He stares at what must be the mother and father, surrounding their daughter. All three of them look absolutely bored and dead—dead eyes, dead expressions. Only the mother holds a modicum of emotion, the end of her mouth turned up in a prideful snarling smirk.

They give Cloud an eerie feeling in the pit of his stomach. He can’t put his finger on it. It’s a sick, intuitive feeling as they stare back at him.

The girl’s eyes are the most unsettling. They aren’t hazel but an oddly bright gold. They are a shade darker than his hair. He tightens his grip on Tifa. What had she seen?

He doesn’t ask. He lets her find her peace, her trembling fright slowly calming and mollifying. Cloud doesn’t spy anything out of the ordinary. Nothing had been lurking downstairs. No sinister lady roaming around and croaking for someone. No ominous shadows. No hands flaying the walls and reaching out toward them. Thank Gaia.

It is a small respite. Cloud feels the restless energy inside of him, needing and wanting to move to a different place. They are too vulnerable out in the open like this.

“C’mon, Tifa. We gotta go.”

“Y-yeah,” she says, sniffling. “Sorry. Yes. Let’s go.”

“Stop being sorry,” he says, unable to help himself. “None of this is your fault.”

She takes a deep breath. “I can’t stop being afraid. And I think that’s why I’m so affected, Cloud.”

He shakes his head in disbelief. “Tifa, I’m fucking terrified, and I can’t see a damn thing.”

At that, a brief smile appears on her face. “I’m glad you can’t. You shouldn’t.”

“I’d rather see them than you.”

Her mouth parts at that. “Cloud, no, you don’t.”

They stare at each other. Her hands are on his chest, and Cloud realizes he’s still embracing her. It seems to him, while his heart jackhammers in his throat, that there are several things to be terrified of in life besides creepy monsters lurking in a haunted mansion. Holding Tifa Lockhart is one of those things.

The floorboards groan, and it sounds like the house settling. In any other instance, that’s what Cloud would wave it off as. Instead, he drops his hands from her waist and glances around them. He still doesn’t see anything suspicious. He walks a few paces off to the side, bending forward to grab the rolling pin and knife she’d dropped. He hands them to her, and she blinks down at them, as if suddenly realizing she hasn’t been holding them.

“Where to?” he asks, finding the cast iron he had all but flung to the floor when he grabbed her.

Tifa frowns. “Well, there’s one room that—“ She turns to face the hallway, and she shrieks, almost falling over, and swings the rolling pin wildly around her. She chokes and throws it, hitting the portrait. It makes a small rip in the canvas. Tifa groans and twists her body fully away from the picture, dropping her knife and placing her palms around her face. “Ugh, she’s still there! It didn’t work!” she cries, agony in her voice. She hurriedly reaches out to grab his hand, and she begins running down the hallway.

“Didn’t work? She?” Cloud asks, following closely behind her. He glances back but sees nothing.

“The girl,” she says. “The girl in the portrait. She—she killed her family.”

Cloud blinks. “What?”

“And the rolling pin went right through her. Of course it did.”

Tifa leads them into a bedroom. She closes the door angrily behind them, huffing with frustration.

“She—she turned into a monster. She cut—she cut her mom’s throat and cut open her dad.” Tifa shakes her head, as if trying to clear the image from her mind. “She was coming out of the portrait. She felt…evil. Worse than the others,” Tifa says. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

Cloud takes a breath, thinking about the girl’s eyes. The eeriness.

“You said the rolling pin went right through her?” he asks.

Tifa grimaces, running her fingers roughly through her hair. “Yes. She isn’t like the other ones.”

“Okay,” Cloud says, walking closer to Tifa. “There was bound to be one, right? We’ll figure it out. She has to have a weakness.”

Tifa looks at him, frowning dubiously. “I hope so.”

He smiles wryly. “Yeah, me too.” He glances back into the room, his eyes hooking onto the four poster bed. The bedsheets look just like the portraits did—finely woven and incredibly expensive. It is bordered with large, fluffy pillows. There are tables on either side of the bed, one with a thick-necked lamp and a fat bulb with thick filaments inside. The other holds a candelabra. A large dresser stands across from it, a vanity and mirror attached for convenience, and a door to what must be a closet is along the other wall.

“There’s a secret passage in this room,” Tifa says, exhaling and pointing. “It’s behind the mirror. During the haunted house, we’d use it for jump scares. Someone would hide in there, jump out, then run through the passage to another room.”

Cloud stares at it. “A secret passage?”

Tifa nods, her voice becoming stronger with the surety of her explanation. “Yeah. It connects this room with the master bedroom, but it leads to a small safe room. That’s what we called it, anyway. We always wondered what it was for. It was probably a spot for jewels or whatever money they had, or even a hiding place.”

Cloud thinks about it for a moment, walking up to the mirror. The room is reflected back behind him, innocent and without any hint of there being a passage behind it.

“Safe rooms are usually on the first floor or underground. Weird that it’s on the second story.”

“I know,” Tifa says. “My dad told me they tried to find any other secret door in the passage to see if it led downstairs, but they didn’t.”

Cloud frowns, his reflection frowning back at him.

“I thought about this room with pure impulse. Maybe we might find something in the safe room. A clue or…I don’t know,” she says, sighing. “Something.”

“I’ll take whatever we can get,” Cloud says, giving her a small smile. “Let’s try it.”

Tifa nods. “All we have to do is push it, and it slides like a door.”

“Easy enough,” he says. He turns back to the mirror and steps forward. As soon as he places his hand on the frame of it, he notices a ripple in the glass. He pauses. The scene of the bedroom begins to darken and fog, the lighting gloomy and ashen. The mirror becomes an old reel of film, grainy and stuttering and fading in and out.

There are two figures on the bed. One is lying on its back. The other is in a straddling position. It seems to be a woman on top, her lines smoother and daintier, but the scene flickers, and the person is sturdier and broad, having changed into someone else.

“Tifa…” Cloud whispers. “Do you see this?”

At the sharp breath she makes, Cloud knows she does.

“Yes,” she says softly. “What…what is…”

The shifting body flickers back to a woman, and she lifts a hand above her head. Something glints in her palm, flittering in the moonlight. She brings it down over and over, and a dark spray litters the air around her.

Blood, Cloud thinks, blinking. It’s a knife in her hand. Her shoulders shake, and perhaps she’s sobbing, but she turns her head just enough for Cloud to see the rim of her smile, the teeth shining, her cheeks splattered with the blood from the viciousness of her attack.

Her laughter peals through the mirror and into the room. Her shoulders shake violently, her laughter loud and maniacal, rich and throaty.

“It’s her,” Tifa gasps. “The girl in the portrait.”

The girl turns her head more fully and locks eyes with Cloud. Cloud’s heart beats madly, throbbing in his temple.

The girl changes back to the man, and Cloud starts, because it’s the father. His hard, green eyes unmistakeable, his beard neatly trimmed, but his hair out of place and skewed. The grin on his face looks just as out of place as his hair, the expression disconnected from his eyes. Cloud feels the sick tug on his stomach again.

“Cloud,” Tifa chokes. “The—the girl—“

Cloud’s eyes find the body underneath the man, the eyes so gold but dead and broken like a rag doll.

“Do you know what they do to pretty girls like us?” she asks them.

The man morphs back into her, and she’s smiling and smiling, slowly standing from the bed. Her hands are drenched and her nightgown is unsalvageable, soaked and dribbling with blood and someone else’s ragged skin.

“They do what they want,” she says, and Cloud sees her teeth are sharp and grotesque. She stares at him as she walks forward, coming closer and closer. “And who are you? Afraid?”

She stops inches away from him. Her eyes freeze him, and there is a power in them that keeps him in place.

“You believe now, don’t you?” she whispers, her voice wavering through the glass of the mirror. “Ghosts and monsters and demons. Do you know what they are?” Her hands slip over the glass, curling over the border. Her fingers are red and shining, but they look as if they are also filmed over with slime. She stares at him, coming forward, her beautiful, ugly, destructive face closer and closer. Her hair trickles over the threshold of the mirror, falling in clumps, long enough to touch the floor.

Cloud’s body trembles and he desperately wants to run, but he’s stuck. She has bolted his feet in place with the energy wafting from the room around them.

“They are you. They are me. They are people. They are what we do to each other,” she says, and she grins. It is terrible and hungry, and her appetite is so clawing and desperate, Cloud can almost feel her eating him—sucking his soul right out of him without anything other than her feasting stare. Her eyes burn and burn, as hot as a branding iron.

“And I do what I want,” she growls. Her hand darts forward, and it bypasses his skin and his bones. His heart squeezes in terror, but he looks down and realizes it isn’t terror, but her hand. He feels her nails around his heart, and Cloud can’t breathe. His hands come up to grip her forearm, but it is feeble and weak.

“Cloud!” Tifa screams, and she is wrapped around him, too. He can’t feel her as much. His body is beginning to turn cold, like he’s lying face down in snow. A wet chill is seeping into his skin.

“T-Tifa…” he rasps. “I…”

The girl cackles, her smile widening, bigger and bigger and bigger.

“You’re mine,” she says.

Cloud feels fuzz filling him up, dots scattering around the outskirts of his vision. His arms fall to his sides.

“No! You can’t! You can’t have him!” Tifa cries, and Cloud distantly hears a shatter.

“Silly girl,” the monster says. “I had him the minute he walked into my mansion, and I’ve had you even longer.”

The last thing Cloud hears is Tifa’s scream and the rush of wind—a tumultuous pounding through his brain, a storm looming in the distance, the vice around his heart.

And then he is gone.

Chapter Text

Tifa doesn’t let go of Cloud, not even as she shatters the mirror with the cast iron pan. It doesn’t do anything to the monster or the grip she has on his body. Her hand is underneath his skin, and Tifa is terrified to see that it’s inside of him. Tifa’s shock glues her even further to Cloud, her chest pressed against his back and her arms around his shoulders.

“Silly girl,” the monster rasps, and her tarnished, golden eyes connect with Tifa’s. “I had him the minute he walked into my mansion, and I’ve had you even longer.”

In the moment after, Tifa and Cloud are sucked through the shattered mirror. Tifa sees nothing but an abrupt white burst across her eyes, and the air is suddenly thick and old, like it hasn’t been disturbed in several years. There is no draft or breeze, only an abrupt stillness. Tifa knows nothing but her hold on Cloud’s body, but even that begins to fade. As hard as she is grasping him, his body starts to slip from her hold, disappearing and disintegrating like grains of sand.

She chokes. “Cloud, no. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave!” Her fingers dig into his shirt, but that disappears, too. She feels tears start to blur her vision. “No, please, don’t take him from me. Don’t take him.”

There is a low rumble of laughter. It cascades over Tifa, and she’s suddenly on her own. Cloud’s body is gone, and she is floating in dark, damp, and still air. She can see nothing around her, the blackness nearly total and complete.

“What’s it like to be alone?”

The voice is drenched in knowing, husky and evil. There is no other word to describe it. Evil.

“What does it feel like to be in the dark? Helpless and separated from all you hold dear?”

Suddenly, the girl is in front of her, her silver hair swirling wildly around her head. Her teeth are still sharp and her fingers are long and clawed. They come up and hold Tifa’s face, her slimy palms framing Tifa’s cheeks.

Tifa gasps and writhes, but there is nowhere to go. She is stuck, feeling caged in the vast space of nothing.

“S-stop,” Tifa whispers.

“No one stopped for me. What makes you think I’ll stop for you?” She laughs again, and she punctures Tifa’s cheeks with her claws. Tifa feels the bright sting of the cut, and she pinches her eyes closed. She feels the warmth of blood curl down her skin.

“What…what happened to you?” Tifa says softly. It comes out as a whimper. “Why are you doing this?”

“Why?” she hisses. She brings her face closer, and Tifa can smell the putrid stench of pond water. “Why not?”

Tifa opens her eyes at that, and she is terrified at what she sees. The girl’s lips are hooked in a snarl, and her glare is blinding and shining like fire.

In a rush, Tifa’s vision blurs, and she is whisked into another time and place.

Cloud feels a rustle. He hears his heart beating, loud and slow in his ears. He believes he might sleeping, his vision dark and shrouded. He can’t feel the temperature of his body, unsure if he is warm or cold. He simply feels light, as though he is floating. He can’t find it in himself to care where he is, only that he is tired, pulled by the unrelenting fingers of sleep.

Exhausted, he lets sleep take him. He dreams.

Tifa’s eyes open inside a cage. She’s not sure where she’s sitting. There are instruments in the corner, metal, glimmering things that look ominous and dangerous. There are knives and scalpels, and a silver table under the hanging kerosene lamp overhead. There is a workstation not far from where she is, and there is someone in a chair, shoulders hunched forward and head looking down at something on the table. His hair is long and black, tied in a low ponytail and trailing down his back. He’s whispering and muttering, some words louder than others but remaining inaudible. Tifa leans forward but is unable to decipher anything clearly. She glances around herself, reaching out a hand to touch the metal bars of the cage. She finds the hinges to the door, and she sees the padlock facing out toward the room. She pushes against it, already knowing it won’t budge. Strangely, she doesn’t feel afraid. In fact, she hardly feels anything. When she glances down at her hand, she realizes with a start that it isn’t her skin. Her body is not her own. She’s wearing an old looking dress, ratted and thin as if its a nightgown. Her feet are bare and dirty, as if she’s been walking around on dirty floors for a few days without a bath.

The man at the table suddenly jerks, slamming a hand on the desk. Tifa jumps at the sound, looking up at him.

“Ah, yes. Excellent. I’ve got it,” he says, chuckling madly. “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that before?”

Tifa abruptly begins to feel a chill along her neck and spine, and she glances down at her foreign arms. She spies goosebumps starting to form along them.

“Where am I?” she whispers under her breath. “What is this place?”

It’s the why not, the girl’s voice answers inside of her mind. Tifa stifles a gasp. I want to show you what true horror feels like.

The man at the workstation turns, his round glasses glinting under the light. Tifa is unable to see his eyes behind the reflection, but she knows at once that he’s staring at her. His lips split open into a hungry grin, and he stands, clasping his hands behind his back as he treks over to the cage. He hovers over her, the shine on his lips so prominent, it almost looks like he might be salivating.

“We’re going to have a lot of fun, aren’t we, my little pet?” he asks, a short chuckle following his words. “You are my canvas, and together we will create art. Something the world has not seen before.” He leans forward even further, his hands clasping around the bars of the cage. “Your family wants a future. They want an heir. Everyone is capable of this feat—we just have to find the malfunction and fix it.” He presses his face against the bars, and his hair shines with grease and sweat, as if he hasn’t bathed, either. “What better way to fix than by cutting into your flesh? To rearrange and perfect all the mistakes? As pretty as you are on the outside, it didn’t follow the inside, did it?”

He begins laughing again, laughing louder and harder. Spittle flies out of his mouth at the force.

This is what happens when money is more important than family, when fortune and status trump physiological mistakes, the girl hisses into Tifa’s mind. The vision around her blurs, tears forming around her eyelids. The man’s laughter becomes distant and faraway, as though her ears are disengaging from the situation. I had been married off at sixteen and estranged from my husband within six months. I couldn’t produce an heir. My body would not take.

The man takes out a key from his pocket, and he opens up the door to the cage. He reaches forward, and Tifa feels his hand grip her ankle. He drags her out, her nightgown peeled up above her knees and her thighs scraping against the tiled floor. Her body is thrashing in every direction, but Tifa is not making the actions herself. 

What happens if you cannot perform what you have been created to do?

The man wraps his arms around her stomach, and they feel like steel bands. Her body wriggles and kicks, but he’s able to muscle her onto that metal table. He slams her so hard, the back of her head cracks against the metal, and she sees stars.

I’ll show you, my little pet, the girl snaps, her voice shrill and high in Tifa’s mind. I’ll show you the things people do to one another.

The man straps her down with a belt across her torso and neck. He injects her arm with something, and things become hazy and empty and suddenly very, very lonely. The fight runs out of her, and her eyes catch onto the kerosene lamp overhead. The numbness trails through her body from her arm into her chest, down her stomach and to her toes.

Tifa knows what happens, though she doesn’t see it or feel it. It is an instinctual memory that the girl shows her, and it rocks through her like deja vu.

The man does exactly as he said. He cuts her open and tries to fix her with his tools and his magnifying glass, his fingers and his scissors. He pulls and tugs, and yet it will be proven to be worth nothing.

The girl will still be unable to conceive, but this only means they try other things. The man—Hojo, she whispers. Hojo takes pieces of her skin and tries to clone her in the expensive, one-of-a-kind test tubes he swears only he has ever been able to utilize. Perhaps one of the clones will be able to produce. One mutation is all they require, Hojo iterates.

Other doctors have tried without success, and he’s right. He creates little monsters—empty girls who look just like her. Their eyes are amber but they are dead. Their skin is pallid and grey, not flushed and exuberant. They learn to walk for seven days before they fall into lifeless heaps at her parents’ feet. Her mother screams at the sight. Her father’s lips curl up, and he fists Hojo’s collar, slamming him into the wall and demanding a refund from the fortune they spent for this freak show Hojo has procured in their basement.

The girl watches it all from her cage. Once, she had cared. She had a voice and expressed it on deaf ears. She was beautiful—so beautiful, they always crooned. They prided her on her looks, as if she had anything to do with them. As if it was a specific talent she created all on her own. It was more of her parents’ hubris, she finally figured out. They boasted her at all the parties. They found her a husband as soon as she became of age, ignoring her protests and wants, because she was a child who didn’t know any better. Her father would hit her, occasionally, when she spoke her mind too fervently. Her mother would tut at her her with disappointment. A girl’s voice is not prided, she had told her. Beauty, a vapid mind, and caring for the household—these are the attributes of a perfect young lady. This is what a girl strives to become. Take it from me, darling, her mother had told her, combing through her thick, blonde hair. Men do not want to be questioned, nor should they be.

The girl remembers this, watching it all unfold from her cage. Her words do not matter, nor do her tears. The man leaves her face alone, but no one cares about the scars underneath her blouse or the bruises left from the needles puncturing her arm or the straps around her neck. The pain from the procedures riddle her body constantly.

The pain soon becomes all she feels.

Tifa feels like she needs to scream. She needs to wail and pull at her hair, desperately tug at the bars of the cage, and perhaps mar her face so that she is no longer pretty. If she is no longer pretty, will they let her go?

But if they let her go, she thinks, what will she do? The fate of freedom seems almost worse than death. She doesn’t know how to live on her own. She knows nothing outside of the walls of her family’s mansion.

“Jenova, Jenova,” Hojo sing songs one day. His pockets are full of their riches, and he seems to be having the time of his life as he experiments with her skin and her bones, playing with her like a doll in a plastic house. “Oh, my pet, can’t you smile anymore?”

She stares at him, then she stares at the floor. The tile is black and white, like a checkerboard. She used to like checkers, didn’t she? Perhaps. She can’t rightly remember.

She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t speak. A girl’s voice is not prided. A man’s word should not be questioned.

“You’re almost fixed. Your defects are almost healed. I can feel it.”

She turns her eyes on him, and he begins to laugh again. He laughs and laughs, and she can hear it when she closes her eyes to sleep. Laughs and laughs.

Can’t you smile anymore?

She imagines his laughter constantly. Then she imagines it stifled and choked and ending. She imagines it ending with his neck bruised and vessels ruptured, his smirk twisted into a painfully grotesque grimace.

Only then does she smile.

Tifa wakes up gasping in a bed. It is not her own, and she wants to cry at the fact that she’s still trapped in the mansion. She knows this room. She sees the broken mirror off to the side, and she has a sudden, desperate need to know if Cloud is okay. Where has the girl taken him? What kind of dreamworld is he in? She hopes it’s not this one. This one is full of nightmares.

She whispers, “Cloud, where are you?”

The girl—Jenova—startles her, the voice sifting through her mind like flour. Oh, he’s on another planet, in another place far, far away. What’s wrong? She asks. Will you cry? Don’t you know that no one cares when you cry?

Tifa grits her teeth. “I hate you.”

Jenova lets out a light, almost melodic chuckle.

Hate? She asks. Oh, my pet, you don’t know the first thing about hate.

The room spins, and the atmosphere changes. They fall back in time, and Tifa is not inside of her body any longer. She is inside Jenova’s.

The side lamp is on, the thick filament glowing a russet orange.

I know you think you hate your father, Jenova hisses. Let me show you mine.

The door creaks open a second later, and the broad shouldered figure of her father steps inside. He looks just like his picture. His black hair is like ink from a pen, his beard thick and neatly trimmed. He is wearing one of his suits, the frock jacket hanging over a waistcoat, with the coattails nearly reaching the backs of his knees. He closes the door softly behind him, and he’s glaring at her. His eyes are green, but under the lighting, they are the same color as his hair and his suit jacket. His lips curl at the edges when his gaze roams along her body on the bed.

“Hojo gave us one more option,” he tells her. “One more option before we must call you a complete, wretched failure. No heirs mean no bloodline, and no bloodline means the end of us,” he states. “That is unacceptable.”

He reaches up to loosen his tie. He pulls it out from his waistcoat, and he slips off his jacket, gently placing it over the vanity desk.

Jenova almost speaks, but she thinks about all the times he’s slapped her across the cheek to quell and punish her. The pain she feels inside of her belly rages on, and she doesn’t have enough energy to say anything.

Unacceptable. One more thing. If this one last thing can fix it all, wouldn’t it be worth it? Her purpose on this earth would mean something. Her eyes follow her father as he paces around the room. He seems to be thinking, placing this hands behind his back. Eventually, he pauses, staring at the carpet.

“It has come to my attention that we may have been going about this the wrong way. Your body will not take to an heir, but it is solely your fault? Perhaps it is both your body and the chosen mate. The genetic material may mean just as much as your own,” he says. “Dr. Hojo has gone through testing of different samples. There are few dukes in the area. Earls, viscounts, barons. He tested your previous husband’s hair, and he found it inadequate. He tested a few in the area who jumped at the chance to find their levels of worthiness. None were right, not even close to what he found in yours.” He continues pacing. “The only one…the only one worth was mine, Jenova.”

The way he says her name makes her flinch. It’s the first time she’s felt something other than pain and discomfort in weeks. Her father has always made her feel this way, as if she’s walking on eggshells. As if she can breathe wrong, and he can slice through her with his glare.

His glare hits her, now, and she stares at it head on. The pain in her belly intensifies.

“This might be the way, Jenova. This is what must be done. If I am the only one worthy, then so be it.”

My father has always been a vain man, she mutters in Tifa’s mind. He’s always thought himself superior to others, in fortune, in prestige, even in looks and glamor.

Her father begins to unbutton his waistcoat, and he untucks his white dress shirt from his trousers. He unbuckles his belt and places it atop his jacket on the vanity. He goes so far as to take off his boots.

You thought your father was selfish, miring himself in drink. Angry. Yelling at you because you remind him of your mother.

In a flash, the scene changes, and Tifa sees her father in their kitchen, pouring another glass of bourbon. He swallows it in three gulps before pouring another. She sees herself peeking into the kitchen doorway, tiptoeing across toward the stairs before he can see her.

The scene changes again, and he throws a glass across the room at something Tifa says. It breaks against the wall, and Tifa jumps, her eyes welling up with tears.

“But Daddy—“ she tries.

“Go to your goddamn room, Tifa. I don’t want to hear it.”

Has he ever laid his hands on you?

The scene changes back to the room, and suddenly Tifa is staring into the black eyes of Jenova’s father—he has the same coloring as her father, she realizes. He has the same rage and anger her father does when he’s deep inside of his drink, and Tifa wants to scream.

He places his hand around her neck, and it feels like the straps on the medical table in the basement.

“Don’t you dare make a sound,” he threatens her. He rips the comforters off her body, and he shoves up the hem of her nightgown.

Jenova’s voice is so close to her, Tifa can almost feel her sharp lips against her ear. Hands curl up over her shoulders and grip them, and Tifa suddenly realizes she must be behind her, underneath her, and her breath becomes rapid.

It doesn’t matter who you are. If you’re pretty, they’ll do what they want. But you knew that already, didn’t you, Tifa Lockhart?

Jenova’s father turns into Tifa’s father. Jenova’s claws curl into the meat of her shoulders. The panic and pain and horror all coalesce into her throat.

Tifa screams with all her might.

It goes unheard.

Cloud opens his eyes when he hears the scream.

Tifa, he thinks. He knows it’s her. It sounds in pain, terrified—where is she? Where could she be?

He can see nothing but darkness. His body is suspended, and he feels as though he’s in a viscous fluid, like slime or mud. He tries to move his arms and legs, but they travel in slow motion. He can’t break through it. The air is still and dense, and it’s hard to breathe.

Tifa’s scream continues to pierce his ears, and a dart of pain slashes through his mind. Cloud winces, bringing his hands up to his temples. “T-Tifa…” he mumbles. “Shit. Where are you?”

He glances around him, trying to find anything to give him leverage or an idea on how to move. His chest constricts the harder he tries to breathe, and the air gets stodgier the faster he tries to move them. He becomes more and more frustrated and panicked, soon gasping and fighting for air.

“Damn it,” he rasps, becoming dizzy from lack of oxygen. His mind flicks across the past evening, then the past week, then the past months. He begins regretting his lost chances and his own fears—Tifa had been at his side over the entirety of their teenage years, and he’s had a brilliant time growing up with her.

But the fact of the matter is, he’ll probably die here. His vision is dotting, fazing out at the edges, his heart is beating rapidly, and he thinks if he had been just a bit more courageous, he could have brought her to his bedroom for tutoring, asked her to dinner, held her hand and kissed her like he wanted. Just one kiss. That would have been everything, and he could die right here and now without any regrets filling him up.

“Tifa,” he mutters. “I’d go to prom with you.”

Suddenly, something unlatches from him. He falls face-first onto the black, empty ground. He’s not sure what this place is made out of, and he probably never will, but his chest smarts, and his lungs are expanding with thinner, much more palatable air. He slowly pushes himself up, catching his breath. He tries to figure out his bearings and calm his heart, but when he glances down at the ground, he realizes its a murky window. Light is filtering through it like stained glass, and he blinks in quick succession, his eyes widening as he comprehends what he’s seeing.

It’s Tifa, in a bed, with the monster behind her. Her mouth is in a smile and her chin lies atop Tifa’s shoulder. Her teeth are grazing Tifa’s ear as she speaks. Squirming and thrashing, Tifa’s body is wildly trying to fight something. It’s only then when Cloud can see a flash of another body hovering above hers. It fades in and out, and Cloud squints, trying to discern what it is. It might be a man—but the flashes pass less than a second when they occur.

Tifa screams again, and Cloud jerks, slamming his hand against the glassy ground.

“Tifa!” he shouts. “Tifa, look at me! I’m here!”

When she stops screaming, her eyes open. They glitter with tears, and she continues to thrash. He yells again and again before she finally glances up. Her eyes lock with his for a moment, and Cloud presses his face as close as he can to the ground in the hopes that she sees him.

Blinking rapidly, her mouth moves, and he can almost hear her say his name.

In the next second, the monsters eyes catch on him, too, and it is a horrendous glare. It is so forceful, Cloud’s heart squeezes, and his vision abruptly blackens. He begins to have a hard time breathing once more, but he tries to conquer it. He tries to remain conscious.

“T…Tifa…”

“Cloud!” he hears, loud and clear. “Cloud, please! Let him go!”

A terrible pain darts through his head again, and Cloud can’t hold himself up any longer. He sinks to the ground, his vision still dark and obscured.

“Sorry…” he mumbles. “I’m sorry.”

Cloud succumbs to the sudden exhaustion and pain, his heart fluttering like a bird in a cage.

“Cloud!” Tifa shouts, but she can no longer see his face. It had been in a rough, transparent circle in the ceiling. At first, she thought she had been imagining him there, but she heard him say her name. His eyes had been the vibrant, alive blue they have always been, and she knew immediately it was him. It couldn’t be a figment or a memory. He had been too perfect and clear. No fuzzy edges and no blurred lines.

The vision of him has broken the assault of terror of Jenova’s father—and her father. She feels Jenova’s claw puncture more deeply into the skin of her shoulder. Even with the added pain, Tifa’s jaw buckles against it, and it’s not as severe as it should be. Tifa is washed with hope.

Cloud’s alive.

If he’s alive, that means she can survive this. She has to.

She feels Jenova’s growl rush through her.

“He’s becoming my puppet, just as you are mine,” she hisses. “No one can save either of you. Don’t forget that.”

The words are heated and sure, and they line Tifa’s heart like thorns. The words ring with the disastrous tone of truth. Tifa has no reason to believe she can be wrong, but the hope inside of her belly remains. It remains right inside the pain she continues to feel, lingering from Jenova’s past.

The scene changes again, and Tifa is in another room. She’s on a bed, but her belly is swollen with life, and the pain becomes nearly unbearable.

There is a midwife at the end of her bed, cooing and coaxing her on breathing and pushing. In a whiplash of new horror, Tifa realizes Jenova is pregnant.

She screams and she cries out, and there is no clock on the wall, and the windows are curtained, so Tifa can’t tell how long it lasts. It feels like it lasts forever and ever before there is finally relief. There is delirium, and Tifa might whimper—it might be Jenova. Tifa can’t tell between either of them in the moment, only that there is no more pain.

A baby’s cry echoes through the room not a minute later, and the midwife beams up at her.

“Oh, my lady. It’s a beautiful baby boy!”

It’s what I needed. It was more than what I wanted, Jenova says, her tone disgusted and angry. It meant I could continue living. It meant my father was right.

The midwife cleans up the baby. She cuts and ties the umbilical cord, and she swathes the boy in a blanket. She carries him around to the side of the bed, handing him over to be cradled in her arms.

He already has a thick tuft of silver hair on his head. It is gleaming and beautiful. His cheeks are ruddy with new life, his body so small and delicate.

When he opens his eyes, they are green.

A sudden rush of hate swarms her belly. It is so shocking and full, Tifa gasps at how it rocks into her.

Men do not want to be questioned, nor should they be.

She stares at the baby in her arms, and the hate seeps into her soul. From her belly to her heart to the line of her mouth that no longer speaks at all. Her father had been right. Hojo had been right. Creation had occurred because they were not questioned.

And she hates them.

She hates them all.

Tifa chokes on the feeling, and her head spins with dizziness. The scene changes before her, and it is a ceremony in a chapel, with only Jenova’s parents and the family of her groom to be.

They hid me away from the world for nine months until I had the child. In my world, it mattered if you were pregnant with a bastard. Carrying a child out of wedlock was a tarnish on your family. Incest was forbidden. Every little thing would ruin your name, so it became our own little family secret, Jenova drawls, her words tinged with spite. No one wants to marry a whore. Where is her faith? Her loyalty? Of course, men can do what they want. It’s expected for men to take a mistress. But how dare a woman find pleasure in another bed? Her place is in the kitchen, on the couch, mending clothes, cooking, crocheting. They are not to speak their minds.

Tifa watches the wedding unfold. It is bland and unceremonious. Jenova has no expression. Her eyes are empty. She doesn’t say a word.

The man she marries is ten years her senior. His face is soft and he tells her sweet things, like he loves her. He admires her needlework. He thinks she’s the most beautiful woman in the world.

He says things Jenova has heard before. She heard them from her first husband, too, until she could not give him what he wanted. She’s heard it at parties, when the gentlemen tried to woo her and before she was an experiment. They are supposed to butter her up with their flattery. Jenova stares at him and says nothing in return.

Jenova does not say any vows. Her parents have expressed the excuse that she has become a mute—that it is something that occurred over the last few years. The man doesn’t seem bothered by it.

Does that come as any surprise? Jenova snarls. Tifa feels the trickling of anger burn down her throat. He doesn’t have to burden himself with conversation. He does not have to hear the opinions of my mind. I will be the perfect little wife, and he will use me as he wants. A perfect world for him, wouldn’t you agree?

Tifa’s eyes blur with tears, but they are tears of rage. She feels that pain in her belly again, low and uncontrolled. It is a constant ache.

The man is disclosed with the information of Jenova’s son—only eight months old, now. He’s promised a large fortune for his discretion, and he is to inherit the mansion when Jenova’s parents pass on.

A flawless arrangement, Jenova says, laughing. Everything so utterly perfect. He was chosen because he held so much prestige on another continent. So much equity and land. A legacy is what he brought to us. It has always been my family’s dream to control the entire world. Tifa can feel the smile behind her words, but it is black and dark. And what they wanted is what I wanted.

Tifa is transported to their wedding bed. Jenova lies on the right side. The man lies on the left. He reaches over to touch her face, and Jenova stares at the ceiling, unfeeling and without emotion. He turns her head to him, and he tells her he loves her.

Because isn’t that what you’re supposed to say? Jenova whispers deeply into her ear. Tifa can feel the words echo in her chest. It is a word people throw around, as if it means anything at all.

The man pulls her close, and she is a rag doll. She is limp, and she does not struggle. The man does what he wants.

I’ve learned words mean nothing.

Tifa opens her eyes and is inside of Jenova’s body again. She feels what she does, and she aches like she does. Her mouth is sealed with no energy to say a word.

You become a shell, she whispers. You are simply a heart that has stopped beating.

The man is gentle with her. He urges her on, and he tries, and he curls his hand underneath her nightgown.

And they don’t care. Not while they slaughter you from the inside.

The man’s hand grazes across her belly, and he stops. He blinks, his eyes catching on the puckered, puffed scars.

Not while they take from you what they want.

His eyes widen. “Jenova…what are these? What has happened?”

A vessel. That’s all I ever was when I was alive, and guess what?

Tifa finally feels the rush of energy flood through her. Her blood is hot through her limbs. There is an undeniable pull of wrath that burns all the way into her eyes.

She stares at the man’s horror, and she relishes the way he looks.

That’s what they are now. Vessels. All of them.

Jenova stares up at the man’s face. She opens her mouth, and finally, finally, she speaks.

“They cut out my heart, just like I’ll cut out yours.”

The man blinks, his jaw slackening at her words. His eyes widen. “What…what do you mean?”

There is fear inside of him. She can taste it. It is the same iron tang as blood, warm and thick. It is a spiking rush, and she feels it growing. It expands. It twists and mangles, and she cannot control it.

She reaches toward the side table and grabs the kerosene lamp. She smashes it, and glass shards go flying onto the floor. The jagged edges surround the base of it, and she turns back to the man. He’s staring at her like he’s never seen her before.

“Jenova, what are you—“

A guttural roar tears through her throat, and she swings the lamp. It slashes across his cheek. The man puts up a fight, grabbing at her torso and her shoulders, one lucky hand finding her bicep and stalling her next blow.

But the wrath is too complete. She breaks through his hold and swings, over and over. Blood splatters across the comforters. Jenova straddles him and plunges the glass into his abdomen, into his jaw, into his neck. He attempts to protect himself with his forearms, but she slices through those, too. When the glass has broken all the way off and the lamp has exhausted its use, Jenova begins to use her fingernails, plunging them into the cuts on his face and dragging them through his skin. She rips the tissue from his face. She stabs his eyes with her thumbs.

He shouts and yells with strangled pain, and Jenova feels it all. She feels the slick streams of his blood and the wet, slimy curl of his skin, and she says, “Love is a funeral. It is death, and now you will know what it truly feels like.”

He gurgles, the jerky thrashes of his arms beginning to subside. His breaths are shallow, and he passes out from the pain. Jenova finds an errant piece of glass on the bed and punctures his throat.

She stands, covered in pieces of flesh and soaked in her husband’s blood. She runs a hand through her hair, and she smiles.

She goes to the kitchen first. It is the dead of night, and not one soul is awake to see her. She grabs her favorite butcher’s knife. She leaves a trail of red behind her, climbing the stairs and running her stained fingers across the creamy wallpaper.

Sometimes, my father would crowd me in corners when I was alone, fat with his child, Jenova growls. He never hit me in those months, but it was fear he taught me. It was how he breathed down my neck. It was how he touched me when no one was looking. Does your father do that, Tifa Lockhart? She asks. Does he crowd you in corners, striking you with fear?

Tifa is in a daze, feeling the bloodlust control the body of Jenova. She feels sick, but she feels light. She feels nauseous but free.

My mother didn’t care. In fact, she was ecstatic. Our own little family with the best genetic material. She couldn’t be more pleased. She kept me quiet. She taught me how to endure it—but the funny thing is she didn’t want to have another child. It would ruin her body. It’d make her begin to sag and ruin her perfect skin. She worked so hard after having me, and she was too old to do that again. What a pity.

She continues on the corridors until she comes upon her parent’s room. She opens the door and slowly makes her way to the side of the bed. Both of them are sleeping deeply, at ease and unaware. Jenova stares at them. Her eyes begin glowing, and her grip tightens on the knife.

She walks around to her mother’s side.

“Men like their women quiet, don’t they?” she whispers, the words hardly breaking through the film of silence. She lifts the knife and brings it down on her throat. Her mother’s eyes shoot open, and her breathing is staunched by an immediate puddle of blood. One hand reaches up toward her neck, and her eyes catch on Jenova, wide and uncomprehending.

This awakens her father, but she’s already on his side. She smiles when he sees her, his eyes darting to the knife in her hand and then over to his wife, who is choking on her blood, beautifully drenched in red.

Jenova slashes across him, and he raises his hand in instinctual defense. Her cut severs his hand. It bounces to the floor and rolls toward the door.

“Let me show you everything you’ve taught me,” she says, slashing again and again. Her father is a large, strong man, but his shock is his undoing. Jenova cuts into his stomach, beginning low and then slashing up towards his sternum. The butcher knife is so sharp, it slices through his skin like paper. It is a deep cut, and her father groans, agony painted across his face. Jenova grins, feeling the rush tenfold, and she hurriedly crawls on top of him, sticking the knife into the joint of his shoulder as he writhes and struggles against her. She plunges her hand into the deep gash on his stomach, and there’s a large, throbbing artery in his abdomen. She laughs, grabbing it and squeezing. Her father yells in terrible pain, and Jenova says, “This is what it felt like.”

She shoves her hand up the cavity of his torso, pushing through thick layers of fascia and skin, finding the beating organ residing in his chest. She digs her fingers into it, memorizing what it is like to watch his dark, green eyes cower underneath her. The fear of death—so vibrant and sudden and overwhelming—blankets over him. Jenova feels its power, and it gives her life.

She tugs and pulls as he dies underneath her. She finally rips his heart free, and she watches the light trickle out of the glare that always used to cut into her so heavily, so remorselessly. She absorbs it within her, and she carries it with her. She holds his still beating heart close to her own chest, waiting until it finally stops working. Until it finally gives up.

She discards it on the floor, and she makes her way back to her room. Her baby is crying. He has green eyes and silver hair, and he’s crying.

She picks him up out of his cradle, holding him close to her bloodied chest. She stares at him before she walks back into the hallway and down the stairs into the main foyer. There is a small fire still burning brightly in the hearth, made up by the butler before he went to bed.

She places her child on a sofa, and she grabs a burning log with one of the tongs. She sets fire to a few of the cushions, then a few portraits. She goes to the library, and she begins a fire there, too.

She returns to her baby, who is crying, crying—always crying, she thinks.

What’s the point of crying?

She stares at him again, feeling nothing but rage.

She sits with him in the foyer, among the flames, and she waits for the crying to stop.

Tifa sits with her, and she waits, too.

Cloud comes to with the smell of smoke burning his nostrils. He coughs, gaining his bearings. The space he’s in is still black, but it’s littered with small flames everywhere. They attach to random tufts of darkness, slowly growing, creating trails all around him.

He glances around quickly, making an impulsive decision to look back at the ground. He swipes at it, hoping he’ll be able to see through it like a window.

Everything is foggy and gray. Cloud pounds at it, anger filling him. It had been so easy to see through it before. Why can’t he now?

“Tifa! Tifa, where are you?” he shouts. “Tifa!”

Wisps of dark gray and black flutter against the glassy ground. Cloud inhales a puff of smoke, and he begins coughing. The smoke begins to disperse before coming together, again, and Cloud grunts at it, frustration quickly taking hold of him.

“C’mon. Stupid, fucking, goddamn place. Just show me Tifa is safe. Please, that’s all I care about.”

He punctuates his words by punching his fist against the glass. The the word care, the smoke begins to thin. Cloud can feel the heat of the flames surrounding him progressively getting worse and build with intensity, but he is struck by how the smoke starts to part for him, as if this place had listened.

He looks down into the main foyer of the mansion. It takes him a moment to orient himself, but he recognizes the chaise lounge and the double staircases. He sees two figures sitting side by side on one of the couches in front of the fireplace, and he is struck by all of the flames quickly beginning to surround them. Tifa’s head is unmistakeable. The silver glint of the woman beside her leaves no question in his mind. He pounds his fist against the glass slab and screams, “Tifa!”

Her head moves at that. She glances around her before finally tipping her head up toward the ceiling. Her eyes squint, but he knows the moment her eyes catch on him. He presses his palm against the glass, and Tifa’s lips part and mouth his name.

The woman beside her snaps her head up, and she finds Cloud’s face, too. Her glare is tremendous, just as it had been the first time. A pulverizing pain stabs into Cloud’s mind, and he hunkers down, tucking his chin toward his chest and grabbing at his head. He groans. “Shit.”

Eventually, Cloud is able to look up again, and he sees the woman has stood up and is walking toward the fireplace. Tifa is standing, as well, and Cloud realizes for the first time the woman is carrying something. She stands close to the fire, and she brings the object in front of her.

Cloud hears Tifa shout a moment after.

“No!”

She rushes to the woman and reaches her hands out. In awe, Cloud watches as Tifa shoves her to the ground, the object landing on the floor beside her. The woman glowers at Tifa, her teeth elongating over her lips. One of her arms stretches to a grotesque length, and her hand comes around Tifa’s neck. She lifts Tifa up into the air.

Cloud’s eyes widen in shock. “Tifa! No! Stop it! Let her go!”

Cloud’s fear of the scene ricochets up his throat. In that moment, he realizes what his true fear is. It is not his regrets over the past few years. It is not the possibility of his own death.

It’s the possibility of Tifa’s. It’s the lack of his own strength and courage.

He slams his hand over and over on the ground, and he feels his eyes prick with tears.

He watches the monster’s grip on her neck tightening. Tifa’s legs are kicking and fighting, and her hands are clawing at the monster’s hand.

“Please,” he whispers against the glass. “Let her go.”

There’s a creak, then a crack. Cloud hears it but pays it no heed. He watches with disbelieving eyes as the hand around Tifa’s neck starts to twist.

But before the monster can snap her spine, the glass breaks underneath Cloud’s weight.

He falls through the floor.

A large thump shakes the room.

Tifa can’t breathe, already half-way to losing consciousness. Jenova’s grip is an unrelenting force on her, and she is going limp.

Maybe… she thinks. Maybe this is it.

As soon as the thought crosses her mind, Jenova’s grip vanishes. Tifa falls to the floor, moaning at the sudden impact. The baby’s cry pierces the air again, and Jenova’s snarl follows closely behind the cry.

“How dare you break through my cage,” she hisses, her eyes roving behind Tifa. Tifa blinks, attempting to catch her breath and push herself up. Her limbs are shaky from lack of oxygen, and her vision is still dotted at the edges.

She hears a mismatched cough, quickly followed by a, “Tifa.”

She knows that voice immediately. Cloud.

She turns her head but she can’t quite make anything out among the plumes and haze of smoke. Is she dreaming? She can’t be. It sounded too real.

“C…Cloud…?” she tries. She inhales before she has to spit, then she coughs and gulps another breath of air. “Cloud?”

“I’m here,” he answers, and she feels a hand on her back. It’s his hand. It is so familiar and gentle. Tifa nearly sobs at the contact, twisting her head up to see him.

In her limited vision, she sees the blonde spikes, the blue eyes, and the small smile. She cries out.

“C-Cloud—I thought you were—“

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m here, now.” He touches her arm and helps her to stand before they are interrupted by a bloodcurdling screech. Tifa nearly stumbles at the sound, and Cloud rights her before she can.

“You both dare defy me?” Jenova all but screams. Her body lengthens, and she hits six feet, growing upwards to seven. She becomes lanky and long-limbed. Her teeth sharpen further, and her hair cascades like several thousand snakes around her head. She is a menacing monster, glaring down upon them. Tifa can feel the boiling rage exuding out of Jenova’s pores, so luminescent it is nearly radioactive. Her eyes showcase it the most, reflecting back the flames in the room, and Tifa feels the phantom pains in her belly. She grabs at it unconsciously.

The baby continues to cry and shriek, and the fires seethe around them. They crackle against the wood, and a few shelves fall to the ground, clattering and splintering.

“You both know better, especially you,” she says, glowering at Tifa. “I’ve shown you how to be a good little pet, haven’t I?” She slithers closer, her body hovering over them. “I’ve shown you the fear. I’ve taught you how to be afraid.”

Afraid of what you’ll become when I’m finished with you?

The words from so long before swirl around Tifa’s mind. She stares up at Jenova, so tall, powerful, and angry.

“You are both my puppets, and that is all you will ever be.”

The baby’s cry pierces through the room, cutting through the crackling of wood. Jenova’s eyes rove to it, and one of her limbs flies forward and grabs it. She simply tosses it into the roaring fires in the hearth, and Tifa shouts, unable to stop herself from running towards it.

“No! You can’t—you can’t do this!”

Before she can run any closer to the fireplace, Jenova’s hand darts forward and shoves her back. She lands against Cloud’s chest, and he grunts behind her from the force. His hands come around to grab her shoulders.

“This has already happened. This is a memory, silly girl. You cannot change what has passed.”

Tifa’s eyes fill with tears. She turns her head toward the fireplace, watching the bundle eaten by fire, the cries extinguished.

Tifa has felt Jenova’s rage, and she understands it. It has eclipsed her, filling her up, attaching deeply underneath her skin. In the moment, however, she realizes all of her fears from before have not been the fears guiding her. They have not been the fears holding her back.

You cannot change what has passed.

Her mind flickers to the memory of her father, throwing a glass at the wall and it shattering. Goddamn it, Tifa, he said. I don’t want to hear it.

She’s been losing him for years.

Another scene glides before her, with her and her mother planting flowers in the backyard garden. Her mother smiling at her, reaching forward and rubbing dirt across Tifa’s nose.

Those same flowers lain on her mother’s casket. The garden now empty and dead.

She lost her mother without warning.

Tears fall down her cheeks. Her back presses into Cloud’s chest, and he’s been there through it all. She can’t lose him. She can’t lose him, too.

She stares up at Jenova’s amber, golden eyes, and she is suddenly, unequivocally, unafraid.

“I’ve never been your puppet, and I never will be,” Tifa says, her voice roughened with emotion. “I’m not afraid of you.”

At her words, Jenova laughs. It is mocking and condescending. The unfiltered amusement singes Tifa with that same rage she felt before—all that pain low in her belly begins to rupture and spread.

Cloud’s hands on her shoulders tighten their grip. He hisses under his breath, “Tifa, what are you doing?”

She shakes her head. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“Say it louder, my dear girl,” Jenova rasps, still laughing. “Your fear is so potent, I can smell it over the smoke.”

Tifa is struck by this, but she knows it’s because of Cloud behind her. He’s in the thick of it. One wrong move, and they might both die. But he can’t. She can’t let that happen.

“Yes,” Tifa says, her voice high. “I’m afraid, but not of you.” She grits her teeth, tensing against Cloud’s hands. “Go ahead. Do your worst.”

Jenova’s laughter dies, and her teeth glint in a grimace, reflecting off the flames.

“Oh, you’ll be a good, strong soldier for me,” she answers, and it all happens so quickly. One of her claws whips forward, heading straight for her heart. Tifa has steeled herself for whatever was going to pass.

She isn’t expecting Cloud to turn them, shoving her out of the way.

Jenova’s claw rips into his back, pulverizing his bones. Jenova grips him before she screeches again, and she immediately lets go. She stumbles backward, and her body begins to shrink. She loses her height, slowly reverting back into her normal form.

Tifa screams at the sight. “Cloud! Cloud, no!”

She gains her footing and runs to him, her sneakers slipping against the wood. He’s fallen to a kneeling position on the ground, and there is no blood that seeps out of him, but the gaping hole in his back is too real and too shocking for her to believe. She wraps her arms around him, clenching his face between her hands. The tears fall freely, now, and she is so terrified. She’s so scared, and it is so absolute, it is almost another language. She can’t breathe as she grips him.

“P-please, no, please, Cloud…” she gasps. His eyes are blank, and his face is ashen, but there is no blood, and Tifa can’t imagine he’s…he’s…

She didn’t even get a chance to tell him.

“Cloud…please…”

Sobbing, she brings his head forward and kisses him. It is filled with tears and snot, and his lips are cold. He’s turning gray, and she needs him to stay vibrant and alive. She kisses him again.

“You’re not supposed to leave me,” she whispers. “Not you.”

Jenova grunts behind them, and Tifa suddenly notices that she is weakened. Her skin is thinner. Her hair is matted in clumps. She is hunched over, leaning against her knees as she glares and snarls at Tifa.

“Sacrifice…is…a fool’s game,” she wheezes. “Love…is…a death.”

The flames have expounded, and Tifa begins to feel their disastrous heat. Her skin feels as though it is melting. She clings tighter to Cloud, waiting for him to come back, desperately hoping. She glares back at Jenova, and she says, “You’ll never know what love means, and I feel so sorry for you. I’m sorry your world was cruel. I’m sorry no one cared about you.”

Jenova heaves a laugh, and her bones quake. Her skin begins breaking like old leather.

“Spare your pity. Spare your bleeding heart.”

She tries one more time to reach out to Tifa, but something repels her back. Her lips curl, she gives out a low moan of disgust and waves her hand.

“Begone with you.”

It only takes a second for the flames to tower over them, consuming them completely.

The world turns white, and they disappear.

A bird begins chirping in the distance. A light taps against his eyelids. Cloud groans.

His entire body feels like it’s been t-boned by a truck. His neck aches, his legs and arms burn with fatigue, and his back feels like it’s torn to shreds. He has a hard time breathing at the sudden, sharp pains, and he forces his eyes to squint open.

The first thing he sees is the morning sky. It is still hanging in the dark purples, oranges, and beginning yellows of the dawn, a few stars twinkling and beginning to fade. Dew from the grass is soaking into his shirt, creating an uncomfortable sensation of dampness across his back, but he’s too sore to move or sit up.

He thinks he might just go back to sleep.

As he closes his eyes again, he hears a soft little moan beside him. He blinks, turning his head slowly to the side. Tifa’s lying next to him, her face pinching as she struggles to wake.

Suddenly alert, Cloud begins to move. He regrets it in an instant, his arms immediately buckling as they try to support his weight. He falls back down into the grass. He attempts to get up again, much slower and deliberate, and eventually finds himself inching closer to her.

“Tifa,” he mumbles, touching her shoulder with his hand. “Hey, Tifa. Wake up.”

She moans again before her eyes slit open. She winces, then blinks a few times. Her eyes slowly find his, and the smile she gives him is immediate and breathtaking.

“Cloud,” she gasps. “You’re alive.”

The memories of the last few hours hit him square between the eyes. He blinks from the sudden rampage of them, each scene bulldozing through his mind one after the other. He sighs loudly at the weight of them.

“Sorta,” he answers. “I still feel half dead. I can’t believe…that happened.”

Her smile remains, and she does her best to push herself up to sitting. Cloud tries to help her, and it is a feat for both of them to remain balanced enough to sit. She begins to lean against his shoulder, and he leans, too. They’re close, but it certainly doesn’t feel close enough.

“I’m so happy you’re okay. Her hand went into your back,” she says, shuddering. “I was so afraid.”

Cloud winces at both of her statements, his back beginning to throb harder at her mention of the monster’s hand clenching his spine. “Tell me about it. It feels like shit.”

She huffs a laugh, pushing closer into him. She reaches around with one arm and hugs his torso. He drops his chin onto the crown of her head.

“It does. My head hurts…very badly,” she says. “So does my lower stomach. Ugh.”

“I guess it’s better to be in pain than six feet under,” Cloud mutters. “Even though this really sucks.”

Tifa gives a cute little snort before she groans, her other hand coming to her stomach. “Cloud, don’t make me laugh.”

“Sorry,” he says, but he smiles.

“It’s ‘kay,” she mumbles. She tightens her hold on him, and Cloud focuses on the feel of her body rather than the fatigue and bone-deep aches. It is a much easier and much more beautiful thing to spend his time thinking about.

“Hey, Tifa,” he ventures after a minute. He’s not surprised at the sudden increase in his heart rate, but he is surprised that he’s not afraid of what he’s about to say. “I want to take you to prom.”

Tifa slowly shifts, breaking away just enough to look up at him. Her eyes shine against the morning sunlight. “You do?”

“Of course,” he says. “I wish I asked you last year.”

She blinks, and a blush curls over her cheeks. “Last year?”

“And the year before that, if I’m honest,” he shrugs.

“We can’t go when we’re sophomores,” she whispers.

Cloud smirks. “I’m sure we could have crashed it.”

Tifa’s mouth parts, and it looks like she’s about to say something. Cloud hurries on before she can.

“In the mansion, I realized a few things,” Cloud says, averting his gaze. “First, I guess, that I believe in ghosts, now.”

“Cloud, I told you not to make me laugh.”

“Can’t help it,” he says, smirking and shaking his head. “Where does it hurt?” He reaches with a hand to place a palm over her stomach, where she had been holding it before. “Here?”

She stops breathing for a moment, huffing before she says, “Y-yeah. Right there.”

“Hopefully this doesn’t last too long,” he says.

“Actually…” she answers, glancing back up at him. “Your hand…helps. A lot.”

For whatever reason, this makes Cloud’s cheeks heat up. “Uh…good.”

They stare at each other for a moment. Tifa eyes him and says, “What else did you realize?”

“Right. Uh,” he says. “That I have a lot of regrets. I can’t undo them, but I can do better to avoid them in the future.”

She smiles at that. “How’ll you avoid them?”

Cloud’s heart continues to thud mercilessly against his sternum, and he can feel it in his back, too. He feels it like a dull throb over and over, but he’s not nervous. Nothing puts life into perspective than dying.

Who’d have thought he’d known what that was like before graduation.

He lowers his eyes to her lips. They look so soft and inviting, and Cloud swallows.

“This is a start,” he says before slowly ducking his head. He kisses her, then, finally, for the very first time. He’s dreamed about it for too long, and it’s nearly too good to be true. It must be in his mind as the aches begin to fade, as the throbbing in his back subsides, and his arms stop trembling to hold him upright.

She moans lightly, and it’s a sweet sound. It hovers in his ears and slides over his skin.

They break away and stare at each other. Tifa’s cheeks are flushed and her eyes are bright. Cloud sighs once she begins to smile.

“You saved us,” she says. “You shoved me aside without thinking about yourself at all, Cloud.”

Blinking, Cloud shrugs. “Well, yeah.”

“That was my biggest fear. Losing you,” she says. “Losing the people I care about. And then you went and made my worst fear happen.”

Her eyes pinch, and Cloud is horrified to see her eyes cloud over with tears.

“Tifa…” he says, reaching up to palm her cheek. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t let you die.”

She shakes her head, placing her hand over his. “I…I’m just happy. Thank you for being my hero, Cloud.”

The blush on his cheeks becomes furious. “I…uh, you’re welcome.”

Smiling, she leans forward and kisses him again. Cloud accepts it immediately.

“So…this is just a start, huh?” she asks against his lips. She continues peppering him with kisses, and she must be feeling as good as he is, because she sits up without help and moves her hands to hold the sides of his face. She pushes into him so hard that they fall backward into the grass. They both laugh before they’re distracted by kissing again.

While they remain in the front yard, underneath the shadow of the infamous Shinra mansion, there is a distinct calm that now resides in place of what used to be ominous and unexplainable. There are no longer goosebumps and eerie twinges of intuition. There is not a sensation of unsettled stomachs or the need to avoid the stare of the skeleton eyes of darkened windows.

It is simply a house, with its own history just like any other. It is not a nice history, filled with tragedy and hatred, bloodshed and cruelty, and perhaps Cloud and Tifa will be the only ones alive to tell it, if curious minds know well enough to ask why they have now heavily boarded up the windows and the doors of the mansion. If they ask why there will now be policing around the mansion indefinitely before graduation. 

At the end of the day, perhaps it is better to live in the ignorance of the question what? And why? Because as the saying goes, what they don’t know won’t hurt them.

And in this case, it’s truer than ever.