Love and Life Chapter 4
Cast Your Fate to the Wind
By Medina
Cloud slumped to his knees, his hands clenched, crumpling the paper. He read it again, just to make sure that his eyes were not playing tricks on him: it couldn’t be true that Tifa had left him permanently? After reading it even a third time he found himself hardly believing it.
“What a fool I am! I should have gone after her back when we were still out there,” he mumbled to himself as he put an arm up to the bed so that he might pull him self up to sit. He kept on looking over the letter, and found that the ink was smudged by water drops in places, no, they were teardrops, Tifa’s teardrops.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you so much, it’s just that I’m not sure that I’m ready for a relationship yet. I don’t know, maybe I don’t want to be hurt again, but, oh, Tifa, I’ve hurt you so much worse than you would have ever done to me! You love me so much, you’d never hurt me like that... I’ve proved that my love for you isn’t the same, you deserve my all.” he said, as if she were there.
A shadow was outlined by the light of the doorway. “You should tell her that, tell her everything; before it’s too late,” said a dark, brooding voice that could only belong to one man: Vincent Valentine.
“What do you mean, ‘Too late?’” Cloud asked, bypassing his curiosity of how long the caped man had been listening to him.
Vincent walked closer to him. “You just never know when your time with someone will run out. You should know that, I know that,” said he. Vincent's eyes flashed for a moment, signifying that he felt a pang of sorrow in proclaiming that, for he regretted every moment he had lost with Lucretia. “Do you love her?”
Cloud looked at Vincent, then looked at the letter. “I don’t know. I’ve always liked her as a very close friend, and I remember knowing that I loved her when I was younger. But, my head’s been so screwed up over the last few years, that I don’t remember what that feeling felt like. I’m sure it’s like what I felt for Aeris, uh, at least I think,” Cloud scratched his head.
“You don’t sound so sure now. So, what will you do, Cloud?”
“I... er...” something deep inside him told him to go after her, in the same way that he had felt back when he had hurt her. Then, his mind took over. “Well, I’ll wait around. Maybe she’ll come back, after have considering things, and then I can also sort out for myself what I feel.”
Vincent turned around to leave. “Very well, be it so.”
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