They say all humans go crazy after four days of sleep deprivation. All of us, mind you, SOLDIERS and ShinRa and labrats. Most people can't even make it two days. Three days is required to get into SOLDIER.
I wonder how many days Cloud and I are up to. Heh. A lot more than four, that's for sure.
But this is different than SOLDIER training. This is worse. Training was only water carefully maintained at room temperature. Not Mako, Mako fogging my sight and plugging my ears and blocking my nose, Mako diving elatedly down my throat each time I open my mouth. It even seeps slowly into my pores, until I feel I should be glowing from the inside out.
At first I couldn't see beyond the green glow. That was when I still saw Aeris, still deluded myself that someone would come to help. But I've only ever had two friends, and one is dead in a reactor while the other is floating in the tank next to mine.
After a while, the glow crept into my eyes and wrapped its way around my sight and I could see again. I could see, but now everything has a haze of Mako green. And I can see in the dark. And you know what? I always wanted to see in the dark, but now that I can I wish I couldn't. Because I've discovered that things hidden in the shadows are hidden for a reason.
Like the man He keeps in the back room. The one with ruby red eyes and midnight hair. I can see now what He does at night for amusement.
And if in the daytime, Ruby Eyes moves stiffly when He pits us against each other, I pretend not to notice. He knows I know, our gazes have locked more than once deep at night, but I cannot hear and he does not speak.
Mako does strange things to your body. My sight pierces the night and lends everything a brilliant green haze, but all I ever hear is Mako. I didn't know it was possible to hear Mako until He stuffed me into a jarful of it. It can be, though. It can be and it sounds like that annoying high-pitched buzz your TV makes, the one some people can hear and some people can't, and that makes the ones who can't think the ones that can are crazy. At first it was just a dull buzzing in the back of my skull, but it crept slowly forward until it centered itself just between my eyes and now it's all I ever hear. I hear Mako and I see Mako and when I speak my throat is coated in it and I don't know if it's really there or just a hallucination. He even tried to feed us Mako, to stick needles in and force it into us that way. The human body can't survive on Mako alone, though, so He settles for lacing our food with it instead. And even if humans can't exist on Mako alone, I'm afraid that soon Cloud and I will be able to. I know I'm not entirely human anymore and Cloud's even further gone than I am. I'm terrified that I've become dependent on the horrible green slime, that without it I will fall apart and scatter on the wind.
But it's been too long. Years, maybe. It certainly seems that long. I need to get away. I'm starting to scratch out a message to Cloud, hoping that he isn't too far gone to read it.
A/N: This is one of the first things I ever wrote for this fandom, when I was in a really, really odd mood.