Cid left the helm of the ship at eleven thirty at night, as was more or less his norm. After giving his gauges all one last look, he assured himself that all was well, that the ship was in good shape for the time being, and then walked toward his cabin.
Making his way through the dark corridors of the vessel, he kept his hands shoved in his pockets, trying as best as possible to keep his mind devoid of any deep conscious thought. Doing so just worked him up and right now, he needed sleep. It had been a long time since he'd slept all that well anyway, and those fires in his mind didn't need to be rekindled. Not right now.
Finally at the door to his room, he kicked it open, entered, and then kicked it shut again. Pulling his hands from his pockets, he locked it. Safely within, he tossed his flight jacket onto one of the chairs present and then sat on the edge of the bed to get rid of his boots. A few short seconds later, he got back up. He placed his flight goggles on the nightstand and then pulled off his shirt before walking to the bathroom.
After getting the water running in the shower, he turned and looked at himself in the mirror for a moment. Sighing and then dropping his gaze, he reached up with his left hand and grabbed a corner of the small bandage on his left temple and pulled it away. He crumpled the small piece of medical tape up and then flicked it off into the bathroom's wastebasket.
That done, Cid reached up once more and rubbed where the bandage had been all day, the area always getting a little irritated after being covered from the time he got up in the morning until the time he went to bed.
That bandage was there for a reason, but it wasn't to cover an injury. It never had been, despite his claims whenever anyone would ask him about it. For nearly twelve years now, the explanation he'd given had always been the same.
"I just... hit it on somethin' when I was workin'."
It's not that Cid liked lying. That wasn't the case at all. It's just that the inevitable questions that would be raised by people if they truly saw what was there would bring back memories he just didn't need.
There were those whom, like Vincent, thrived somehow on dwelling in the past, but Cid wasn't like that. No, his main goal, contrary to his comrade, was to just forget.
But damn it, some things just weren't meant to be forgotten.
Turning his head slightly, he finally brought his eyes to bear upon the reflection of his own face. At once, the memory flooded back.
He had only been in his twenties. With having just attained the title of Captain, he was assigned a ship to fly in the Shinra-Wutai war. It had been a miserable conflict and although Cid had, at that point, flown plenty of combat missions, this one from the very outset had just felt wrong.
The flight had started well enough. It was just a bombing run...
It was just supposed to be a simple fucking bombing run...
Murphy, you know, the guy with the law? No, he saw it fit to screw with poor Captain Highwind. After all, the pilot did seem to be one of fate's favorite playthings.
Fate needed a new Goddamned hobby, if you'd asked Cid about it.
His ship had just made a turn after dropping its assortment of explosives on the Wutain target beneath, when suddenly the ship was rocked hard by some unknown impact.
Cid didn't have a complete recall on what happened in the ensuing moments from his ship's mortal wound, just bits of his desperate attempt to keep the craft, that he'd named Sarah Jane for reasons he kept completely to himself, airborne. It was futile, though, and she had plummeted to the ground, being strewn across the Wutain countryside.
When Cid had regained consciousness, he'd found himself one of two survivors from the wreck. Injured, he'd been unable to leave the crash site. The broken right tibia he had sustained had made moving very far impossible.
It hadn't been long before Wutain warriors had amassed upon the crash site and Cid was soon hauled off to a POW camp. His leg was splinted crudely as the Wutains had really very little concern over an enemy's well being.
To them, he was now just a nameless, numbered prisoner.
It was that number, which was tattooed onto his left temple in small, Wutain characters, running vertically just behind his left brow. This made it easy for the Wutains to identify their prisoners when they were too stubborn to comply and give their identities openly.
Life in that camp had been Hell. Despite his broken leg, he was put to work within days. He'd done what was asked, too, since the beatings for disobeying were far worse than the pain that burned with each move his leg made. The abuse there was considerable, and the food and sanitation of the camp lacking. Within four weeks of arriving there, his only surviving crewman, Major Curtis Flemming was dead and Cid highly doubted his own survival.
But survive he did.
For eight months.
The longest eight months of his life.
Then, as quickly as it had started, the war ended and Captain Highwind had been shipped back home along with all the other remaining POWs that the Wutains had coveted for the duration of the conflict.
Once back home, and assigned to the space program, Cid did his best to forget what he'd been through. Even now, however, years later, he still had moments when he would seemingly space out, his mind abandoning the present as he relived that experience.
The habit of wearing the bandage over the small tattoo on his left temple had started within a few weeks of his return home.
...and as far as Cid was concerned, he'd keep doing it until the day he died.