AN: A birthday gift for Sev. Yuffie, Cloud, Land Worms and donuts. Oh, and of course sex. No profit, lots of fun, this one was done on request. Yes, even with the donut porn bit...
Oil and Water, Part I: Cloud's Introspection
Cloud hunched over the fire pit, rubbing his hands together for warmth. A chill breeze whipped across his ear, and he pulled his collar further up around his neck, cursing his bad luck. Of course Reeve would happen to have an urgent delivery that needed to get to the Gold Saucer "yesterday." Of course the lift would be out of commission, leaving the dusty, ill-used road that wound through Corel's desert as the only way into the famed resort casino. And of course Fenrir would have to choose today, of all days, to overheat while attempting to navigate through the shifting desert sands.
"Why me?" Cloud groaned into the cool night air. He shivered and drew even closer to the fire, trying to extract what warmth he could from it.
By day, Corel's desert was a nightmare of unbearable heat and haze. Most travellers weren't suicidal enough to try using it to gain entry to the Saucer. If the heat didn't fell hapless travellers first, the monsters that roamed the desert sands unchecked would be more than happy to.
Cloud Strife, however, wasn't most travellers. The monsters were hardly an issue - if he was honest, there wasn't much of anything that lived and breathed on the planet that could truly bother him - nor was the thought of a suicidal mission. The latter was more like an old friend that kept eluding his attempts at a greeting, no matter how much he chased after him. No - Cloud Strife's delivery service, no matter how harrowing or impossible the mission might seem, always managed to get the job done - and on time, too.
At least it had, until that afternoon. That was the moment that Cloud's business partner, otherwise known as Fenrir, decided that it was not quite as resilient to the desert's elements as its rider and died a slow, stuttering death to the unquenchable heat.
That had been more than three hours ago. The sun had set all too quickly, and Cloud finally had to abandon his attempt to ferry both himself and his recalcitrant motorcycle to the Golden Saucer, which loomed maddeningly near in the sky. He was settled now at the side of the road, trying to keep his extremities warm with the sorry excuse for a campfire that he was maintaining, with little more than a few tattered missives, some liberally splashed gasoline from said motorcycle, and a few irregularly cast fire spells.
No one had ever told him the desert was cold at night. Trying to still the chattering of his teeth, Cloud pulled the collar of his overcoat up a little higher and hunkered closer to the pathetic fire.
Can my life possibly get any worse than this? he thought to himself bitterly. He briefly toyed with the idea of settling down, making a home in Edge with Tifa, as she'd so obviously wanted - before discarding the idea almost immediately. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate his childhood "friend" - he hid a grimace at that - but her choice of occupation had left him wanting. No, not for drinks - even he wasn't so far gone as to turn down free access to alcohol when it appeared - rather, her unexpected stint acting as Edge's unofficial orphanage. Back at the Seventh Heaven the kids were all over the place, swarming in and out of the bar like clusters of gnats, always poking and prodding and asking questions with their wide, innocent eyes. They just never shut up. Tifa would remind him with her infinite patience that it was because he was a hero, that he'd saved the world twice over already, but really, sometimes, all he wanted was a little peace and quiet. A further moment of morose introspection - what else was there to do out in the middle of Corel desert, Nowhere - brought him to the conclusion that his bias might have been the result of his own stunted childhood.
Not that it really mattered in the end. He still couldn't stand being around the little punks for extended periods of time.
The chill evening breeze swirled violently, ruffling Cloud's hair. It almost felt like a cool, stinging slap against his skin. He winced, groaning. That was the other part of his so-called life that he would change if he could - his attachment to Aeris. Not that he didn't appreciate the lovely, pure-hearted Cetra - just, she was dead. It was more than a little strange to feel her spirit "tracking" him across the entire world, even four years after the fact. He'd really thought he'd loved her, at least at the beginning of their brief time together. That was before his world had been shattered, broken apart, and he'd learned that he was nothing more than a failure, a loser at his worst and a mere shadow of her former boyfriend at his best. Somehow he'd managed to pull it together, long enough to save the world multiple times over, at least, but it was getting progressively harder to feel comfortable with the feeling of being watched constantly. It was a little bit like having his mother looking over his shoulder all the time.
On the plus side of things, he could always attribute any aberrant behaviour on his part to Zack's poor upbringing.
Cloud let out a hollow laugh. He supposed he was one of the luckiest men in the world. There was a beautiful woman waiting for him back at Edge - surrounded by cheerful living memories of a time of his life, when it had been truly his own, that was so painful that he'd rather it remain forgotten. But he also had his rootless freedom as a vagrant, chained to the world only by the constant vigilance and concern of a woman long dead.
A distant roar shook Cloud out of his thoughts; the fire was dying, and absently he waved a hand at the pit, renewing the fire spell that kept away the chill of the night air. His brow furrowed; strange, that one of the desert's many creatures would be roaming the sands so late at night. Most of the things large enough to make a sound that would carry so far required the heat of the sun to function.
The roar echoed across the sands once more, definitely closer this time, and Cloud stood with a grim expression. It seemed like his charmed luck was holding out once more. Reaching over Fenrir, he quickly freed his sword from the motorcycle's confines and brandished it into the darkened night. He was rewarded with another echoing roar, this one near enough to cause the ground to shake as vibrations travelled across the sand dunes.
An unexpected streak of fire illuminated the desert, and Cloud squinted and winced as he recognized the source of the noise.
"A Land Worm? You've got to be kidding me," he groused to himself. "What the hell is it doing out this late at night?"
The answer came to him as another brilliant flash of light illuminated the desert, doing little to waylay the rampaging monster but providing an adequate beacon to silhouette the frantic figure that was its source.
"Why do I even ask?" Cloud groaned as he set out at a run towards the disturbance.