Cloud x Tifa - Last Train to Brooklyn (Final Fantasy VII)

Chapter Seven - Star Crossed and Blood Rushed

Last Train to Brooklyn

Chapter Seven

Star Crossed and Blood Rushed

"The Captain has turned the fasten seatbelt sign back on. Please return to your seats and prepare for landing."

Cloud awoke with a start, feeling a stiff pain in the side of his neck from where he'd laid it against the window of the flight to Denver he was aboard. Overhead lights flickered and dimmed, and Cloud blinked a few times before sitting up and rolling his shoulder to shake away the aches that this poor, cramped sitting position had inspired in him.

Yawning, he lifted the shade above the window to look out, hearing the roar of the 747's engines tear through the sky as the aircraft began to tip into a descent toward the ground. The sky was bright with early morning sunlight; although his flight had left New York at six that morning, with the two hour time difference, it was only a little after eight here in Colorado. Below, Cloud could see the first illustrations of the world below emerge from between the pockets of clouds, nearly everything coated in white.

Cloud looked down at his leather motorcycle jacket and sighed. There was no way he was dressed warmly enough for late-January Colorado weather.

Memories of events transpired began to return to him as he tossed himself from the sleep he'd managed to steal during the five-hour flight, spiking his anxiety and the tiny jolts of terror that had been running up his arms and through his heart since he'd packed his carryon late the night before in preparation to leave for Colorado. His mother, in a coma in the hospital, after suffering a major heart attack. His mother's friend, Linda, unable to tell him much about her condition, other than the fact that the doctors needed to perform what they hoped would be a life-saving procedure.

Cloud thought back to his mother's wheezy breathing on the phone the last few times they'd talked, of the way she seemed to cough and strain whenever they spoke, and he wondered if he hadn't missed something all along, a warning sign that had been right there in his face.

And just what the fuck would you have been able to do about it ? He found himself angrily asking himself. He had only been home maybe two or three times in the last six years since he'd been deployed and now living in New York. He'd been so goddamn eager to get out of Breckenridge that he'd let years go by where they didn't see each other or do much more besides communicating via phone.

And now, here he was, finally showing up when it was far too little, far too late.

As the jet began to taxi along the runway, the lights of Denver International Airport twinkling in the distance beyond the window beside him, Cloud rubbed his temples, the anxiety thick around him. None of his present troubles were helped by things that were happening back in New York. Just when he'd thought he'd made progress in his relationship with Tifa, that they'd finally come tor reconcile their mutual feelings and that they'd somehow figured out a way forward together, he'd been railroaded not only by his mother's sudden illness, but by that piece of fucking garbage, Rufus Shinra.

Cloud still couldn't clear the image of Rufus standing at the foot of Tifa's steps in front of her brownstone out of his head, watching him lean casually against the banister while Tifa stood shadowed in the doorway of her apartment, her hands on her hips. And he couldn't shake the sound of Rufus' laughter ringing out into the night air once Tifa'd slammed the door and he turned away, a rich, deeply amused sound that seemed to suggest everything was just a game to him.

And then there was the matter of Tifa's father and the entire Shinra company, a situation that didn't seem like it was improving and was certainly only helping to create further challenges and barriers between their relationship. As much as he and Tifa seemed to be finding their way to one another, there was no denying that they were stuck behind a line that she seemed terrified to cross because of all of the stresses in her life that were placed there primarily by her father and his allegiance to a corporation full of bloodsuckers.