Until the End of the World

December 2024

Perhaps he saw himself in her.

As they left Tifa behind in Mideel with the man they'd known as Cloud, Vincent found his thoughts remained with her.

Though Tifa expressed certainty in the face of Barret's doubts that he really was the Cloud she'd grown up with, there was no certainty that he would ever return to health. He lived, but that was all. She devoted herself to a memory.

The very fact that it troubled him... troubled him. The end of the world drew nigh, and who was he to deny anyone their final wishes? If she wanted to spend her last days clinging to the memory of a broken man, that was her right.

And how would he spend his last days? Rushing about after Shinra's schemes, following the lead of people who didn't know what else to do. But after all, what had he really wanted? To kill Hojo? His life would end with the rest of them. Much as Vincent would have liked to make it personal, there was something fitting in the great equalizer of the Planet's end. Hojo would hate to die the same as anyone else, nothing great or remarkable in his demise.

So what more was there?

For decades he had clung to the memory of a broken woman. His solace, his punishment. What good had it done anyone? Swathed in the past, he offered no counterbalance to the ills of the world.

Maybe that was why it troubled him. Tifa had never been like him, he thought. From the moment he had joined this group, he had watched her--watched her always push herself forward despite circumstances. They lost the Black Materia, and she pushed on. Aeris was murdered, and she pushed on. Shinra had put her to the execution chair, and she had torn herself free and pushed on.

Now her driving passion was gone from them, and they were aimless.

Did he think that, if she managed to push past this, too, that she would find a way to save the world through strength of will alone?

No. Maybe it was just what he wanted, from the end of the world. To spend his last days as the shadow to that fearsome will.

He didn't want her to spend her last days in Mideel, keeping vigil over a man already dead. But Vincent was as he had always been, and he would say nothing to keep her from it. Let her take care of Cloud, if that was what she wanted. What she said she wanted.

He wished he could be someone different from who he was.

 


 

He thought it again when he watched the Lifestream swallow the town of Mideel whole. If he had been someone who could have persuaded her to leave, someone who would even have tried, then she might have lived.

Only for another week, maybe, but--

But then, he underestimated her. She pushed on, bringing Cloud with her.

Vincent felt no shame over having given up Cloud for dead. His return to himself was good, but a wild improbability.

It was Tifa's survival that twisted him up inside, somehow. He had had nothing to do with it, provided no warning, been nothing to her. She forged her path ahead, and he did nothing but watch.

Could he not be different from who he was? If Tifa had, for a moment, followed the same path he walked, then maybe he could walk hers, at least until the end of the world.

 


 

As Cloud led the next mission for the Huge Materia, fighting the only fight they understood at the moment, Tifa was among those who remained behind with the ship. She passed him in the hall, a pent energy in her step, and Vincent peeled himself away from the shadows.

"...Tifa."

She stopped, turning to him with her characteristic warmth. "Oh, Vincent. ...you look so serious. Is something wrong?"

He blinked slowly. Only she would have parsed the change in his expression, he thought. "I only wanted to say... I'm glad you're sitting this one out. You've been pushing yourself quite hard, lately."

It was a platitude, a nothing, but he could not tell her all he thought of her without preamble. He didn't remember how to do this--how to have feelings, much less express them.

"It doesn't feel that way," Tifa said, tucking her hair behind her ear. "You all went halfway around the world for the Huge Materia while I was just sitting by a hospital bed. I just thought... I didn't want Cloud to feel like I was babysitting him, his first mission back."

"Hm."

"You don't think I should worry about that?"

"I can't imagine you make anyone feel weaker when you fight beside them," he said. If Cloud thought that, then he was a fool, but Vincent did not think him a fool.

Tifa looked down shyly. "I hope not."

"......it's good to have you back," Vincent offered.

A small offering, but she seemed to consider it. "Would you mind keeping me company for a little while? If I'm by myself, I'm just going to worry about them. Junon wasn't... great, the last time we were here."

He should have thought of that. "Of course," he said.

Tifa led the way out onto the deck, though she chose the side of the ship facing away from the city. After dropping off Cloud and the others, they had pulled back, so that it lay as a dark shape against the cliffs in the distance, but it was reminder enough. To the south stretched a rocky shoreline, and empty waters. The air was cold, but she seemed not to mind; she had grown up, of course, in Nibel's shadow.

"You said that then, too, that you were glad I was back," Tifa remarked, not looking at him.

"What?"

"After the execution."

"Oh. Yes." He hesitated. "That surprised you?"

"Well, you don't say much. I never really know what you're thinking."

"I am unused to speaking my mind." A Turk wasn't meant to, and the beasts within him had made for poor conversationalists during his long confinement.

"I guess I'm not so different," Tifa mused. "I just... say other things."

He knew precisely what she meant. "You think of what would help others to hear, and keep your own worries to yourself."

But it seemed to trouble her to hear it aloud, as if her consideration for others were a flaw rather than a virtue. "...I almost wonder if we'd be in this mess, if I hadn't."

This, he didn't understand. He waited.

"I... had my doubts about Cloud, ever since he first showed up in Midgar," she elaborated. "I didn't know what was wrong with him, but I knew something was. And I never said anything. I guess I thought maybe it was me who was wrong, or I didn't want to freak him out, or a dozen other things."

"You think that if you had brought it up earlier, he wouldn't have given Sephiroth the Black Materia," Vincent realized.

Tifa threw him a cautious glance. "...maybe, right?"

Vincent shook his head. "Maybe we are alike, after all."

"What do you mean?"

"If I had not kept my silence, would Sephiroth even exist?"

"But that's not..."

He met her gaze steadily. "If that wasn't my fault, then this isn't yours."

Her lips twitched into a smile. "Sorry, did I just hear you absolve yourself of guilt?"

Vincent huffed softly and looked out at the landscape. "I don't know," he said. "I only know that... dwelling on it has come to nothing. It accomplished nothing. And I... don't want to be a man who only does nothing."

Tifa nodded. "Then, we're agreed," she said. "Whatever happens, we're going to fight until the end."

"...yes. Whatever happens."

From the way she said it, she didn't believe the end would come. What gave her such certainty?

 


 

Maybe, he reflected later, she had sensed it down there in the Lifestream, in the domain Aeris now called her own. She was the one who had left them a chance, and Tifa believed in it even before she understood what it was, because she was the sort of person who had the strength to believe in things.

Vincent understood only when the City of the Ancients revealed its secrets to them that they could not squander what Aeris had left them. For her sake, they needed to ensure the future. Even if it was one she would never see.

He wondered if that left them with some responsibility to live it in her stead. For his companions, it would come as no struggle, but Vincent still felt himself a man out of time. He had died decades ago. What future could he be a part of?

But something small in him had shifted since he had climbed out of that coffin. He did not know how to do it, but he did want to make the past release its hold on him.

They put Hojo in his grave, and it corrected none of the past, but Vincent understood better his mistakes, his misplaced blame. He should never have granted Hojo the right to mete out his punishment, even if some part of it had been deserved. Let someone else be his arbiter. The Planet, perhaps.

He thought he knew, at least, how Tifa judged him. He watched her, in the days that followed Mideel, expecting something to change between her and Cloud, expecting no place for him beside her but that of a friend. Cloud was a good man, and Vincent wouldn't get in the way of that.

But there came nothing to get in the way of. No private glances shared. No furtive touches when they thought no one was looking. When one left the room, the other would not look long after them.

It had been a long time since Vincent had been the object of such looks. A long time since he had felt himself deserving of them, and even now, did he deserve it?

Could he not trust Tifa's judgment, as he should not have trusted Lucrecia's?

"You're probably not scared at all, are you?" Tifa remarked to him as they stared into the gaping maw of the Northern Crater.

"...not for myself, no," he answered.

She glanced at him. "You're worried about us?"

"I want to see you all through."

"I did wonder, you know, if you would come back. Hojo was the only reason you came with us, in the beginning."

"That was the beginning," he said.

"Yeah." Tifa smiled up at him. "I'm glad you came back."

"Oh?"

"What, you can say it, but I can't?"

"I didn't mean to suggest that." He paused, and while the moment hung suspended between them, Cloud called from across the rim of the pit that he had found a way down. "We agreed to fight to the end, didn't we?" Vincent offered. "We'll watch each other's backs."

"Right." Tifa drew a breath, turning in Cloud's direction. "That makes me feel better about this."

"You have my support. Always."

She glanced back at him. "It goes both ways, okay?"

"Mm?"

"I don't want you thinking... you support me, but I shouldn't have to support you. I think... maybe we both need to get better about that."

"...if you remind me, then I will remind you."

She deserved someone to look after her, and he... He would do his best to accept what she offered him, because she wanted to offer it. And he knew he wanted to accept it. If he let her find purchase, the past would loosen its hold.

 


 

They put Sephiroth in his grave, and that, too... That, too. He could imagine a thousand ways in which his choices might have made a different path for Lucrecia's son, but his inaction had not narrowed Sephiroth's paths only to this. Vincent alone had not chosen this for Sephiroth, or for the world.

He alone would not right its course.

Vincent had never felt a part of something before, but he left that crater together with the others, having done all they could. He watched together with them as Meteor descended on Midgar. He had died alone, once, but now he faced the end of the world among friends.

And when the Lifestream rose up all around them and its power surged to join Holy's, Tifa turned towards him. He drew his cape around her, shielding her from the blinding flash.

Silence fell in its wake.

"...I can't see a damn thing," said Cid. "The hell was that?"

Vincent's own sensitive eyes had yet to recover. It was Tifa who said,

"It's gone."

"What's gone, Midgar?"

"No," said Barret, his voice struck uncharacteristically soft with wonder. "Meteor."

Cid landed what remained of the Highwind outside of Kalm, and Barret and Tifa were the first to hurry inside its walls, seeking their reunion with Marlene. Midgar's reactors were dead, and the power was out. Vincent watched Tifa disappear into the dark streets and thought perhaps that was the end of it.

He had gotten what he wanted, after all: seeing through to the end of the world at her side. He lifted his gaze to the stars overhead. Even without her, he promised himself, he would not be as they were, silent watchers to everything that unfolded beneath them.

The innkeeper didn't charge them. It wouldn't be long before some semblance of normalcy reasserted itself, because that was how humans were, but for this night, all were overcome with the sense that nothing would ever be the same again. Who could give any thought to the mundane, after a power they hadn't known existed had risen from the earth to expunge their doom?

But they needed to think about the mundane, because the battle with Sephiroth had left them battered and exhausted. They nursed their wounds and fell into beds. Vincent, too, slept.

He woke in the morning and left his room to find that he was not the first to rise.

Tifa was standing beneath the awning outside the inn, the morning sunlight not quite reaching her. She looked out into the daylight, like a swimmer considering the water before venturing into it.

She looked over at him as the door shut behind him. "Good morning, Vincent," she said. Her smile was easy.

"Good morning," he replied. "I thought you'd be enjoying a well-earned rest."

She rocked back on her heels. "I got excited remembering the world didn't end. What about you?"

"I don't know," he admitted. What had woken him wasn't excitement, but perhaps... wonder. Curiosity. "I didn't really expect to see this morning."

"Well, it's here," said Tifa. "What do you want to do with it?"

Vincent looked at her. In turning towards him, she had stepped partly out from beneath the awning's shadow. The morning sun caught the sheen in her hair and glittered in her eyes, a warmer, softer red than what his own had become. She brimmed with life, a yearning to move forward into whatever this unexpected new day would bring.

"...I know what I'd like to do," he said softly.

He watched as comprehension crept across her face, and she flushed. She spun on her heel, embarrassed but not, he thought, horrified.

"...how long?" she asked.

"Since Mideel," he said. "That was when I realized, anyway."

"You didn't want to be a man who did nothing," she murmured. She had such a memory for the things he said, as though she made deliberate note of every word. He wondered what they meant to her. Surely she understood, at least, that it was towards her that he wanted action to compel him.

"I guess I wasn't imagining things," she added.

"What?"

"I wasn't going to say anything," she said, and then laughed. "The same problem all over again. I... I was starting to think you sought me out. You were coming out of your shell, and I was the one you wanted to see it, for some reason."

"...yes."

Tifa glanced cautiously back at him, tucking her hair behind her ear. "It made me think maybe I could do it, too. If you can learn to speak your mind after all this time, maybe I can, too."

All this time, he hadn't imagined that she watched him, too, or that she saw in him anything worth aspiring to.

"Anything you want to say... is safe with me," he said.

Tifa nodded. "When I'm with you, I feel... steadier. Like I'm not going to get left behind."

She'd been left behind so many times, as disaster swallowed up those she loved and left her to pick up the pieces. Was that why she pushed herself so hard? If she kept up then this time, maybe this time, she'd be able to stop it.

"...the others wouldn't leave you behind," he said. Not intentionally.

"I know. But I think you're the one who understands it."

It would have horrified him to realize she saw herself in him, if she hadn't already explained some fraction of it. For all that he had done, or failed to do, he was still here, still trying. Finding his way back even after the world had left him far behind and forgotten him. He wouldn't have imagined himself a symbol of resilience, but if she feared a limit to hers, he had dwelt so long in a pit of despair and still climbed out of it.

If she fell, he would understand where she fell to, and have the patience to wait for her.

"I think so," he said.

A little smile flickered across her face, and she toed the ground shyly. "You know what's wild?" she said. "If the world had ended, I never would've kissed anyone."

A first kiss. He could imagine how circumstances had pushed so many milestones of adolescence and young adulthood farther and farther from her grasp, leaving her here, in the morning after the end of the world, never kissed. It was a precious thing she offered him.

"...would you like to?" he asked her.

She stole another glance at him, her cheeks darkening. "...yeah. I think it would be a good way to start."

Vincent intended to make it chaste, soft and gentle. She looped her arms around his neck, her body leaned into him, her lips crushed against his. He felt as though he hadn't touched anyone in a hundred years--30 was near enough. He didn't know how long he lost himself in it, overwhelmed. Tifa became his entire universe.

She dropped back onto her heels, breaking the kiss.

"Wow," she said. "I can't believe I almost missed that."

"It was... truly something," he managed.

"Are you okay?"

"I didn't expect you to... It's been a long time."

"Oh!" Tifa flushed. "I'm sorry, I was just thinking, you were the one with all the experience... Um."

"It was perfect," he said. If he steadied her, then she unmoored him, and he desperately needed unmooring. For the first time, he felt fully here in the present.

She opened her mouth, closed it, and then settled on, "Okay."

"If that was the start," Vincent said cautiously, "then how do you imagine it continuing?"

Tifa looked out into the sunny streets, and then back at him, her smile an invitation. "I want to see everything," she said. "A little at a time, I want to see everything that's still standing. Will you come with me?"

They were still standing, the world was still standing. Vincent felt her hand slip into his, and he followed her into it.

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