And all that's best of dark and bright...
A CxA fanfic by Sadhana
• • •
The narrow alleyway stinks of cat piss and sugary fermentation, and glows red from florescent vacancy signs, humming their luminance. A car passes by on the uneven road. It splashes through muddy puddles, and a panorama of headlights spins through the alley. A dog barks. There are no stars for those who don't pay for their sins, the cursed.
A haze of billowing clouds of steam from a nearby manhole shroud the ground, but her steps break the clouds as she splits through the night.
An old drunkard half-passed out by the graffitied fountain in the center square sees her pass; he has a cataract in his left eye, a useless thing that roves about inside his skull like a murky marble, but there's no mistaking the flash of life that flutters past. Oh yes, he sees that, and his head cocks up to catch a glimpse of what beauty walks in darkness. But it's gone a moment later, and he wonders to himself if it was not just some blessed butterfly of hallucinatory absinthe that floated through his vision. He falls back asleep a moment later.
• • •
He doesn't know what time it is when he arrives at Seventh Heaven, but he knows it's too late for anyone to be awake–or too early, rather. Not that they'd be expecting him anyway, he so rarely stays here.
Fenrir purrs to a stop, and Cloud dismounts. There is an eerie silence over the city, and he thinks of nights spent in the church, looking up through its crumbling roof at the starry sky. Whatever sinful poison that plagued Midgar in its prime has left the ruins of that city and moved here.
The marble angel that watches ruefully over the city street is lambent in the moonlight.
Cloud moves soundlessly across the bar and up the stairs to his room. He half-expected it to be used as a storage space since his long absence, but the only difference is a thickened coating of dust. The photograph of him with Tifa, Marlene, and Denzel, however, is polished and dust-free. The bed has not been slept in for months; it looks chronically untouched like an old widow. Part of him wants to go see Marlene and Denzel, to creep into their rooms and see how they are, but he knows that if he doesn't just get what he needs and leave immediately, Tifa might wake.
He already made the delivery, and it feels pointless in a way to come all the way back here just to collect the slip with the order written on it: a bouquet of flowers from Elmyra Gainsborough to be laid at the City of the Ancients. Yet it was precious. Laying the bouquet of poppies by the water's edge was the closest thing she had to proper funereal flowers, and in his mind when he laid them down, it was his own gift to her. But he wanted (was desperate for) a reminder that she did exist once, that he wasn't the only one to treasure her. Elmyra knew her too; she commissioned him to lay a gesture of remembrance and sorrow by her watery grave. Yes, it is important that he come back here to retrieve that slip.
A heavy fog begins to weigh on the night outside the window.
Cloud finds the slip, and folds it into his pocket. No use in staying any longer, he thinks. But he notices the fog, and is drawn across to the window. Is it too heavy to drive through? He hopes not. He unlatches the lock, and pushes on the cool glass until the window opens.
The building across the alley is still visible, and he can see the glow of the lamp post through the mist. He moves to close the window, but the night moves more swiftly than he does. The fog thins.
She's there. For just a moment, he sees her standing there beneath the lamp post looking up at him. She cradles a flower basket of white orchids. A luminescent figure in a starless night. Shock chokes Cloud, and the fog occludes her again.
Panic strikes him. How can it be? But it is her, she was there. He saw her. No one else could shine like that in such darkness. There is no mistaking who it was. It had to be her. He is too breathless to call out to her through the darkness, and he is too panicked to think of what to do.
He stands by the window until sun rise, waiting for the fog to lift to catch a glimpse of her again. But no one stands beneath the flickering lamp post when dawn arrives, and Cloud wonders if it was not just a trick of when darkness met the lamplight.