Title: Home
Fandom: Final Fantasy
Characters: Cloud, Tifa, Denzel, Marlene
Universe: N/A
Prompt: 90. Home
Word Count: 564
Date finished: 05/26/2006
Rating: G
Summary: Cloud considers what Home means to him.
Author's Notes: Stupidity. I don't know what I was thinking, except that I don't know that Cloud has ever had a real home since he left Nibelheim to become a SOLDIER...
Disclaimer: Not mine.

Home was a word that brought up a lot of confusing thoughts for Cloud Strife. Faint memories of his mother, of the small house they'd shared, of running home from errands, usually with cuts or bruises or… or worse. She was so gentle, binding his cuts, easing the pain, both of body and of spirit. He was the smallest boy his age, ostracized for a reason he did not understand, but he never blamed his mother for it, even if she'd been the cause of it. He'd left because he wanted to help her like she'd helped him - and she'd died, not knowing if he were even alive.

Sometimes it was the barracks he'd never actually been in, Zack's memories that he'd taken and created in his head. Sometimes - and this really frightened him - it was Hojo's lab. Whenever it crossed his mind, he shoved it away, refusing to associate that nightmare with something so comfortable as home. He still woke up with nightmares about that place.

Other times it was the time spent with AVALANCHE, their fight against Shinra, a strange group of people that at other times might not have even said hi on the street. They'd taken him in, even though he was one of Shinra's SOLDIERs, or thought he was - even he'd thought he was. But that time was one also rife with nightmares, especially Aerith's death, and his inability to do anything to stop it.

More recently, it was his bike. He spent more time with Fenrir than anyone else, delivering anything anyone wanted sent just about anywhere. It was lonely, but it was all he really deserved, he figured.

Kadaj and his insanity had been a wake up call, a much needed one, in fact. It had reminded him that he had friends who followed him, for a reason he did not understand. They'd followed him when he'd gone after Sephiroth - more out of desperation than anything, so hurt and so disillusioned that he'd struck back the only way he knew how. Of course, that had turned out horrid, with his own hero taking him over and turning him against those he wanted to protect. When they came this time, they hadn't known he was sick until Tifa found out and told them, but they'd still followed, stayed away to allow him to defeat his nightmare one more time - and had been there when Aerith had sent him back.

Now, he sat in Tifa's bar, after closing, after a long tiring day of deliveries, Denzel on one side and Marlene on the other, Tifa attending to a cut she didn't need to. He'd come full circle, sort of. He was still small - shorter than any of his friends - still picked on, if you counted the monsters still in Midgar - and still cared for, even though he didn't really need it, and Tifa most definitely was not his mother.

Nor did he want her to be.

So this was home. And it occurred to him, as Tifa tied off the bandage on his wrist and moved behind him to put the supplies away, that it wouldn't matter where he was. Home, now, was where she was, had always been that way, even if he hadn't recognized it in Nibelheim.

He turned to thank her, and she smiled warmly at him. He found himself smiling in return.

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