A/N: Not sure where this came from, but it's a bit of a weird one. This is what happens as a result of pulling an all nighter for a paper and five hours of class right after. Woohoo...Sorry if it doesn't make sense. I'm not sure it's supposed to.
Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII and all related materials belong to Square Enix. I make no profit from the odd imaginations of my mind.
DISEMBODIED
He dreams about Nibelheim often. The dreams (or were they memories? nightmares? He can't really tell) came with increased frequency after the time in Kalm when he told everybody everything (well, not everything because some things were still too jumbled in his own mind to make sense) he remembered about fateful event five years ago. It's understandable that he dreams of it so often, he thinks, because it was such a pivotal moment of his life, but he still finds it strange because nothing about that night makes chronological (or even plain) logical sense.
Sometimes he feels the flames burn and lick across his skin as he lay paralyzed on the ground. He could hear the dying screams of people and the low groaning of wood succumbing to flames as he watched the evil that was once his greatest hero toss about his blade like child's play.
Other times, he remembers that he wasn't supposed to be there to see his mother trapped beneath the smoldering planks of the home she'd so lovingly maintained for decades. He wasn't supposed to be there to see the pain and the bleak realization that she was going to die flash across her terrified (yet strangely calm and accepting) blue eyes...
Was it he who'd witnessed the anguish on Tifa's face as she crowded over her father's dead bleeding body? Was it he who'd heard the rasping sorrow of someone rendered hopeless (hopeless hopeless hopeless) declaring her hatred for Shinra, SOLDIER, Sephiroth, and yes, even him? Was it he who smelled the metallic sting of blood—stomach fail him not, even if it was her blood—and chose in that moment to go after the madman first because he deemed her life already forfeit? Could it be he who'd chosen bloodlust over salvation?
But no…no no no. Because he remembers the feel of her porcelain skin beneath his gloved hands slick with blood.
(So much blood, so much of her blood. Too much red. Red red red.)
He remembers her quiet whimper when he'd picked her up as gently as he could and the delirious murmurings that left her broken lips, begging, pleading, accusing him for not keeping his promise.
(But he did! He did! He was there and he would always be there!)
Sometimes his dreams would align with his memory and he would feel the firm (sick) resistance of muscled flesh when he'd impaled Sephiroth through the back with his (his?) sword. But most curious of all, other times he sees himself as if he were witnessing fate through another pair of eyes as Sephiroth rammed him through with the Masamune. He would watch, seemingly disembodied and strangely detached, in abject horror as he pushed himself further up the blade to gain a purchase on the blade, and with a hearty grunt heave the SOLDIER general over the rails and into the pit of Mako below.
He remembers all of it, but he does not (cannot) understand how he could have been in two places at once.
Those are the nights he wakes up feeling like another man.
A/N: Feedback is much appreciated!