A/N: Man, I am rusty. I won't be doing longer fics till after my exams (which starts in 38 days), but I promise I will get to longer fics at some point.
I don't know why I was thinking about the concept of guardian angels lately. I wondered how they would look like if we could see them. As a child, I imagined them as little faceless faeries wearing white dresses, fluttering around with wings.
But what if they looked just like people?
Cloud felt a dull distant ache as his skull cracked open a little further, which was followed by his eyes rolling up in his head. He was quite sure that he would be able to at least look his attackers in the eye before he died if he tried - honour and all that, as Zack would have reminded him - but he realised he didn't have the strength.
And did honour matter, really, when Cloud had been attacked with his back turned anyway?
It was supposed to be a simple delivery, but Cloud didn't know that that the job was actually an ambush with a couple of ex-Turks who happened to have beef with AVALANCHE. The moment the door had opened, he was hit with the butt of a standard ShinRa rifle - ironically - and found himself sprawled on the ground bleeding from various orifices before he knew anything else.
Cloud was pretty sure that this would be the end.
He was pleasantly surprised, therefore, when he awoke sluggishly in a ShinRa hospital some indiscernible time later, bandaged like a mummy and feeling generally like crap.
Opening his eyes had been a bad idea, if the bright fluorescent lights right above his bed was any indication. Who the fuck chose to put them directly above a bed, anyway? Cloud tried to swallow and realised he couldn't, throat crusty with days of unuse. Cloud wriggled all fingers and toes and learnt that everything below his chest hadn't been amputated, and decided he would be alright.
"Fuck," he croaked, once he felt he had learnt enough about his surroundings. A gasp informed him that Tifa occupied the visitor's seat next to his bed - and that was confirmed a moment later when he felt a warm hand wrap around his - heavily bandaged - one.
Tifa quietly informed him of how Reno and the usual gang had busted in to rescue him, just in the nick of time. They had been alerted when an "anonymous source" requested information on the blonde through Tseng, and Reno had been the first to successfully piece everything together, trace the source to its address and grab his EMR.
Cloud tried to nod, or at least wiggle his head, to show he understood. "I'll open the window," Tifa said, before standing and gracefully moving to undo the latch.
In the gust of fresh air that graced his hospital room afterward, Cloud swore he heard amused laughter.
Cloud reprimanded himself briefly, mentally, as he looked at the cowering nurses in his hospital room. He knew he was becoming more crass - more of a Reno, as he liked to think of it - the past few days, but he really couldn't bring himself to keep his language in check. He had just been beaten to bloody pulp a few days ago, he figured, and that seemed to soothe his conscience as enough reason to lose his temper when he didn't get his way.
"I want you to run the tests," Cloud repeated, more quietly this time, after he was sure he had reigned in his temper adequately. "I swear I am really seeing and hearing these things, it is not the mako, it is not the medication, it is just me." Cloud held his hands up, as if he was dealing with a cornered and frightened little animal.
"Alright, I will call the doctor," the head nurse stammered, before they all took their leave. Cloud slumped back on the pillows and shut his eyes, and already knew in his heart what the verdict would be once the tests had been run. They'd say that there was nothing wrong with him, and that Cloud must still be recovering from the trauma, and that he should take more time off and get some sun or something. Cloud let out a sigh in frustration. He was not imagining these things!
As if on cue, a voice whispered in Cloud's ear, "I feel ya, buddy. Hang in there."
Cloud flailed around like a baby chocobo's first time swimming and tore open his eyes, searching frantically for a confirmation of the reality of all the things he'd been experiencing the past few days. He thought he saw a brief figure seated in the place Tifa had occupied a few days ago, but it faded just as Cloud's eyes brushed over the spot it had been at.
Cloud swore on Fenrir, and on his sword, and on his currently-not-amputated legs, that the figure seated there had spiky black hair.
"I'm fucking mental," Cloud muttered to himself, as he got off of Fenrir and carried the parcel under his arm. He swore he heard Zack riding beside him, as he was on Fenrir heading out from Midgar. "Fucking all over the place," he then added, as he reached the bottom of the steps and started to scale the steps to Healen Lodge. It was four days since he had been discharged, and he had picked up his usual deliveries for fear he would rot into a mess of blonde hair if he sat around and did nothing further. Rude had ordered six new pairs of sunglasses today, as Reno had stepped on his last pair on their previous mission, but Rufus was down with chicken pox and had to be isolated from the rest of his company. That meant that his faithful Turks would not be allowed anywhere out of Rufus' sight.
In light of recent events, Cloud figured he would make the trip, even if it was on terribly short notice.
"Ah, there's our pretty boy!" The noxious redhead called from the top steps. "Come o'ver here, I got something to show ya!" Cloud was then left staring at the arc that Reno's ponytail made in the air as he whipped around and stalked off. Cloud shook his head and climbed the rest of the steps. Some things never changed.
"Got ya a surprise," Reno announced proudly, gesturing to the front door with a flourish. "Found it in the Mines myself, yanno, and thought you'd find some sort of use for it-"
Cloud felt a brief tug on his belt as he reached for the door handle, and staggered backward just as Rude opened the door from inside. "Thanks," Rude grunted at Cloud, no doubt shielding his sunglasses-less face from the world. Cloud whipped around and looked behind him, but there was no one there. Upon turning back around, Cloud managed to spot Rude's outstretched hand and Reno's widened eyes before a particularly-loud explosion burst above the door - a shower of butter and chocobo feathers rained down from above. They had homing mechanisms on them - courtesy of Reno Sinclair - and promptly covered Rude's big brown bald head in fluffy yellow feathers.
"YA IDIOT!" Reno stormed, flinging open the door to glare daggers at Rude, sprawled out on the floor. "I TOLD YOU TO STAY INSIDE, TOLD YOU THE FIRST PERSON TO TOUCH THE DOORKNOB WOULD-"
"Reno, shut up," came Tseng's steely voice from the inner room.
"FUCK YOU, TSENG!" Reno roared, furious that his plan had been foiled. "CHOCOBO FEATHERS COST A BOMB CUS OF THEIR SMELL-"
And true to his word, the musky scent that emanated from Rude could not have been mistaken for anything else. Cloud took another step back and wrinkled his nose, before setting the sunglasses on the table outside the doorway, and heading back down the stairs. The string of vulgarities that Reno uttered followed Cloud all the way back to Fenrir, the redhead's shrill yells and hollered oaths clearly audible even from the bottom of the hill.
In spite of himself, Cloud rode back to Midgar with a grin plastered on his face.
Cloud swooped down and picked up Marlene, as she tried to prove to Cloud that she could breathe underwater. Cloud knew they were in Aerith's church, and figured Aerith probably wouldn't let a little girl drown in her own puddle, but still. Cloud carried Marlene on his shoulders and deposited her safely in the arms of Tifa, before wading back in to rescue other potentially ambitious children.
He looked over the crowd of people present, who had gathered around at the promise of magical healing water. Uncomfortable with the looks of awe some (if not most) directed at him due to his latest escapade, Cloud shifted his gaze until it rested on the two someones situated at the church entrance, far behind anyone else. Cloud blinked and stood a little straighter, fearing that all the phantom occurrences he had been sensing the past two weeks was finally manifesting in direct hallucinations.
"See?" Aerith chided, twinkle in her eye. She pushed herself from where she leaned on the wall, linking her hands together in front of her body and tilting her head to the side. "Everything's alright."
Cloud just stood dumbly and watched, as she turned and shared a grin with none other than Zackary Fair. Cloud glanced at his upper arm, just to be sure that he was really seeing this, that it wasn't caused by some still-uncured patch of Geostigma.
Zack winked, wearing his trademark shit-eating grin, and saluted Cloud with fore and middle fingers from behind Aerith. Eyes shining with a million unspoken words, Zack wordlessly reached behind him to touch his sword, before forming a fist with his right hand and pounding his chest once.
The message was clear: I got your back.
Cloud could only watch dumbfounded, as if in a dreamlike trance, as Zack slowly, so slowly, turned to Aerith and retreated from the church. Only when the doors had closed, did Cloud find it in himself to move.
Cloud blinked and smiled. "I know. I'm not alone... Not anymore."