A/N: My birthday was yesterday and boy, was it awesome! This was supposed to be published last week and updated, like, biweekly or something, but that didn't happen, lol. Here's chapter two; with chapter three following shortly.

Enjoy~!


Main Entry: 1cloud

Pronunciation: \ˈklau̇d\

Function: noun

Usage: often attributive

Etymology: Middle English, rock, cloud, from Old English clūd; perhaps akin to Greek gloutos buttock

Date: 14th century

2: something resembling or suggesting a cloud: as a: a light filmy, puffy, or billowy mass seeming to float in the air a cloud of blond hair a ship under a cloud of sail b (1): a usually visible mass of minute particles suspended in the air or a gas (2): an aggregation of usually obscuring matter especially in interstellar space (3): an aggregate of charged particles (as electrons) c: a great crowd or multitude : swarm clouds of mosquitoes


Cloud had been at the Bastion for a little over a week now.

Leon had seen him at meals.

Three times.

Ten days and three meals.

With a frustrated sigh, Leon rifled through the kitchen; grabbing baked goods or leftovers from lunch and dinner the night before. Neither of which Cloud had appeared at. With a tray of food and goodies, Leon made his way down the hall to Cloud's room. There was a word inscribed on the door. When he had asked, Tifa had said it was a few words but it was "in the Old Language" and she didn't know enough to guess what the words meant.

Whatever that meant.

The letters were graceful, if archaic in look. Leon looked at them a moment longer before he rapped on the door.

Nothing.

He knocked again. "Cloud?"

Still nothing. "Strife?"

Knocking once more, out of courtesy, Leon let himself in and stopped just passed the threshold. The door clicked softly shut behind him.

Cloud was sprawled out on his bed, fast asleep. His hair was sprawled just as gracefully over the pillow. Leon didn't know if he would find the particular position comfortable; stretched languid across the bed on his side but twisted at the waist so his face was almost buried in the pillow. There was a strange gathering of shadow on the blond's left shoulder that seemed to dance with the shadowed light that came through the window.

The red cowl was hung on one of the bed posts; the brass gauntlet on a chair nearby.

If there was ever a time that Cloud resembled his namesake, it was now.

Knowing, as a fellow warrior, how precious sleep was, Leon made a careful exit. Aerith had also said that his departure from their world had been difficult as he had been trying to keep someone named Vincent with him, but the Darkness had separated them. Leon had never heard of someone fighting with the Darkness and surviving; that made Cloud special in and of itself.

With a quiet click of the door shutting behind him, Leon made his way down the hall. He had done his good deed for the day; everyone else be damned.


As the door clicked shut, blue eyes snapped open. The shadows hovering around and about his shoulders coalesced in a leathery, black, bat-like wing he had seen on Chaos before the...well Before.

Blue eyes were about to close again when a breeze from the window carried a delicious and familiar smell. Dragging himself out of bed, Cloud surveyed the tray before him. He recognized Aerith's cooking, but didn't know if it was from his own memories, Zack's or Sephiroth's that prompted the familiarity. Finding several things that appealed to all his Parts, and how Leon Not Squall knew, Cloud would never find out. As it was, all of him was happy with this food arrangement.

He had been sleeping far too much, but that was because of the difficult transition from The Planet to Hollow Bastion and fending off the Darkness while he was at it. Happily eating the pie, Cloud pondered the state of his mind as it was. When he had first gotten here, it was everything he could do to just move correctly and form coherent speech patterns. He had no idea how he had made it from the shiny crystal place to the house he was currently staying in, and Aerith told him every day that he asked that had walked here.

It was like getting everything in his head put in a box and shaken up; now he had to piece everything back together and put it away. Sleep was best for that.

But food was good, too, otherwise sleep turned from completing one's puzzle mind to Standby; waiting for sustenance. The food was wolfed down much faster than he should have eaten, which only told Cloud that he needed to make an appearance at more meals than he was, even though he was only eating and sleeping and Mako could only do so much.

He did savour the pie though; there was no way that one could inhale that lovely, flakey, buttery golden brown crust with the home made filling. He thought it was mulberry-blueberry, pretty sure in fact, but he was one hundred percent sure it was delicious.

Moaning, Cloud collapsed onto the bed as he licked his fingers.

Aerith's pies were the best.

There was something though, at the back of his mind; a different something that didn't have to do with the light, didn't involve My Name Is Leon Not Squall. Fighting the Darkness while trying to keep Vincent and his own darkness from The Darkness had been draining and not altogether successful. With every success, Cloud had learned, there was a sacrifice. Cloud had lost Vincent; the other man's Parts, his darkness, had connected him too closely to The Darkness and when that...Entity, Thing...had showed up, Chaos had almost exploded out of Vincent to challenge it.

Aerith's reassurance that the man was okay where he was, Cloud had accepted that Vincent had managed to survive against that Thing.

Cloud hadn't escaped unscathed, as the wing settling on his shoulder proved. There was something Dark about him now despite his Light and innocent colouring. It purred and growled in the back of his mind, his soul, and the Zack voice in his head thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world to antagonize.

Resettling himself, Cloud yawned as he prepared for another nap. Perhaps he'd wake up for dinner...


posted 13February2012