Oscillation
i.
It's the geostigma, Cloud thought afterwards, sitting across a pond of unknown depths, staring at the quivering child beneath a crimson cape.
Vincent knew better than to interrupt the other man, who was probably a million miles away right now in some eternal reverie. Although now probably wasn't the best time for Cloud to be wrestling with demons of the past as there were three very new, very familiar demons of the present that needed to be dealt with.
It has to be the geostigma, a frown settled upon Cloud's face and stayed there as it would for the remainder of the day.
He wanted to sit down somewhere, tear the sleeve away from his arm and stare at the diseased flesh that he'd kept hidden. But his body was stiff from the fight, and his mind was careful not to upset Marlene any further, and an inkling of masculine pride wanted to avoid any speculations of weakness on Vincent's part.
Still, he knew Vincent better than that, and that forced Cloud to wonder what else was keeping him from laying his eyes on the effects of the geostigma on his body.
Vincent looked down at the girl, Barret's daughter, and was slightly confused. She was no longer trembling against him, instead, a look of calmness was resting upon her features as she took in Cloud with her eyes. His own vermillion irises took note of Cloud's tired posture and weary frown. A wanderer in every sense - but what was he thinking of? It couldn't have been those three silver-haired maniacs, could it? No, Vincent did not think so. Remnants of their most malevolent rival called only for anger and hatred and resentment in Cloud.
But now, the blond looked perplexed. There was nothing about evil that generally perplexed them. Sephiroth had been a scourge upon their planet and their lives, and Cloud had been determined to stop him at all costs. Vincent couldn't doubt for one second that if he ever felt the one-winged angel's presence creeping towards them again, Cloud would waste no time in summoning the same determination as he'd harboured two years ago.
There was no confusion about it. In fact, Cloud was mostly a straight-forward person. Except, Vincent mused, when it came to the one thing they would never get straight. The one thing that would never make any sense.
And Cloud was confused. Very confused, and not to mention, completely backwards about his priorities. Those three - whatever they were - needed to be stopped before the created any more chaos, and Cloud couldn't have cared less about any of that. He was too busy trying to recall the events that had overtaken him prior to his brief encounter with the silver-haired men. That was the plain and simple reality of it.
But reality was such a funny, fleeting thing. The reality was supposed to be that the planet needed his help again and that he needed to fix this for the sake of the little girl who was standing just few feet away.
That was the reality of the situation, and Cloud wasn't really focusing all of his attention on it. He was, in every way except perhaps physically, still in a field of rustling gold, and a flower girl, the flower girl was up against his back. She was so real, he could have wept, but the playful tone of her voice - exactly how it had always been - prevented him from doing so.
He had wanted to turn around, gather her fine chestnut tresses in between his fingers and pull her to him or... or maybe he would have been content to lay his hands on her shoulders and stare into her eyes for several lifetimes to come. But just when he went to turn his head, almost delirious with anticipation, he felt her hand on his sleeve, through his sleeve. It was almost like contact.
Except that she wasn't really there, and neither were any of her flowers. And maybe her hand on his infected limb was a sign as to why all of this was happening.
The memory ended... was it even a memory?
Cloud shut his eyes for a short time and tried to dig through his inner archive of all things related to geostigma. Surely that delusion, the image of a hundred thousand flowers surrounding he and Aeris, was just that - a delusion. Perhaps one brought on by this wretched ailment that had somehow taken to playing games with his mind.
And his heart.
"Cloud," whispered Marlene.
He looked at her with renewed hope, took her hand, and did his best to ignore the oh-so-knowing look on Vincent's face.
ii.
Perched elegantly on a thick metal beam, several stories above the ground, Tifa looked out across a wide expanse of scrap metal. As if on cue, Cloud Strife landed gracefully. She could almost feel the vibrations of the impact of his feet on the metal course through her body.
He looked up at the sky and Tifa, much like Vincent had several hours before, watched as their cherished friend slipped away, away, away again.
"Ready?"
It didn't matter much to Cloud that he and his friends had miraculously slain the most extraordinary beast he'd laid eyes on in the past two years and that somewhere perhaps, more of those fiends were terrorizing the populace. No, once again he found himself in that maddening state of uncertainty that reared its ugly head whenever he was overcome by visions of Aeris.
He tried to convince himself that that's all they were, visions. He'd moved on from 'delusions' recently. It was such an unbecoming word, and there was nothing unbecoming about Aeris. Himself on the other hand...
Sometimes he didn't know what to make of himself at all. The planet was growing restless, and Cloud felt himself grow restless along with it. He was no longer able to predict his own next move. He drifted from high to low, from elation to depression (and back and forth again). There were several moments when he focused on a pair of eyes, a horrid mako blue like his own, then another three pairs that were frighteningly alike as well. But those moments were brief, and were constantly at war with several others.
Denzel. Marlene. Tifa.
Planet. Lifestream. Geostigma.
Aeris.
Sephiroth.
Aeris.
"Aeris," he said aloud, thinking that it didn't matter, because nobody could hear him.
But from across the void, Tifa was looking at him the same way Vincent and Marlene had. They knew, they always knew. And how could they not? It was obvious, when his eyes and his mind refused to see anything but the flowers blooming in the church, that there was always that one part of him that could never think of anything but Aeris.
A sharp pain ran up his arm and resonated down his spine, knocking around the inside of his body. He wondered if there really could be a cure for geostigma, maybe then he'd stop seeing her.
Or maybe, there was no cure, and these visions would come to him again and again until his heart ceased to beat, and then he could be with her, finally, forever.
But he'd promised, promised Tifa, promised himself, that he wouldn't give up. Just then, Cloud thought he was almost certain that Aeris was just another devastating effect of the disease. She was dead after all, and had been for two years and some months now. Perhaps it was giving her too much credit to suggest that she was still somehow appearing to him, trying to communicate with him outside of his dreams.
Dreams, he could live with. But the feeling of Aeris' hand in his seconds before he raised his weapon poised to strike a deathblow, was much too tantalizing to be anything but a disastrous psychological ploy, masterminded by the geostigma. For the briefest moment of them all, Cloud couldn't help but understand the Denzel's willingness, the willingness of all those children, to step into the water and imitate Kadaj. To be rid of this disease, thought Cloud, was the only thing they desired.
Maybe Denzel saw his parents the same way Cloud was seeing Aeris, all the time. Perhaps it was just as wondrous, just as heartbreaking.
He would come to know sometime in the distant future, that when Tifa could finally tear her eyes from him and look up into the sky, she thought she saw Aeris too.
In the meantime, Cloud thought, It's the geostigma.
iii.
For quite some time, Cloud will have no memory of being suspended in the air, in a large white space. He won't remember the feel of her hand on his forehead, or how he had whispered, "Mother?" in response.
But for some reason, when his feet touch the floor, and he finds himself waist-deep in a small body of water, Cloud hears a familiar voice in his head, Zack?
He wants to slip away again somewhere, but there will be none of that now. He is an object interest to a surprisingly large crowd of onlookers. Amongst them, his friends, all of them, plus Marlene and Denzel, all with ridiculous smiles on their faces.
Ridiculous feels surprisingly good to him.
So he has no problem arching his palms together beneath the water, then lifting his hands over Denzel. A frenzy erupts around them, and he thinks the tinkling laughter of children is the best sound he has ever heard. Their happiness is mirrored in Tifa's smile, and just behind her, Vincent's usual scowl softens into something else.
There's a tingling sensation in his arm, and he's too afraid to touch it in case it fades away. He wonders if it's the last remnants of the geostigma, dissipating like a dying storm over a vast expanse of water. But then a certain warmth appears just above the middle joint, and settles there, maybe forever. The lasting imprint of her hand against his body seems just as real the second time. It's so alarmingly present, he wonders how he could have missed it all this time. It feels like she's been here the whole time, (and Tifa's grinning now; he wonders if she knows something he doesn't).
So this isn't the second time. It's not even the third.
The flowers up ahead rustle the same way they had in the field. He catches her, just as her dainty fingers finish caressing a single white petal.
Their eyes meet and his heart just flutters the way it always does when he sees her. His pale, unmarred skin erases any final, negative inferences. His geostigma is long gone now.
Anyway, it isn't the geostigma. It never was the geostigma.
"See? Everything is alright."
He can't help it. He smiles.
fin
June 2009