A/N: This popped into my head while I was trying to rewrite 'Two Years Alone' and wouldn't leave me alone. Written to "The Swansong" by Within Temptation.
Tempest the Turk Drabble Series
Episode II
"Glimpse"
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I knew the day would come.
I've known since I was a boy that I would die young. Just as my father did, and my grandfather before him, just as it has happened for generations. For centuries, not one member of my bloodline has lived to see old age.
We always die before the 9th birthday of the next generation.
The reason why this happens has been lost to history, but I do know there is something special about my bloodline. You see . . . after my own father died, I began having visions. They were only glimpses, but over time I came to trust in these glimpses.
As a SOLDIER, my glimpses gave me an edge no one else had. They warned me when something or someone was sneaking up on me, they showed me where to go whenever a trail went cold. They were how I met Rachana.
She was a SOLDIER as well, though only a Second Class, she was talented. It was only her sensitivity to Mako that kept her from being promoted. We became close, not only as comrades, but also as friends.
Rachana Quincy was born in Costa Del Sol, but grew up in Midgar, she was a city girl through and through. Her mind was as sharp as her weapon however, and just as unique. Her hair was a blazing red to rival her temper.
Rachana was listed as MIA in 1984.
But instead of showing me where she was, the glimpses were now only of a blonde little girl in an orange dress. A little girl who called me papa.
For the sake of that smiling little girl, I pushed aside my emotions at Rachana's loss and when no sign came forth . . . officially listed her as KIA. A few weeks later, I met a blonde woman with the same smile as that little girl that now haunted my visions.
The first time I saw Piper was when she was fighting.
She fought without any enhancement, trapped by the limits of her own body . . . but that didn't restrain her. She fought using a spear, sweeping the paws out from under the wolves who circled her and killing them before they could land a single swipe of their own.
She was the girl's mother.
Before Cloud was even born, I'd seen glimpses of her as a teen, as a grown woman, from all turns of her life.
I saw her as a girl, wearing brigandine so like her mother's as she knelt in the dirt crying.
I saw her fighting with the Prototype "Halcyon" the very day it was issued to me.
I saw her wearing a powder blue dress with the arm of a SOLDIER around her waist.
I saw her wearing the suit uniform of the General Affairs Division.
I saw her in the pitch uniform of a First Class.
The visions were confusing, contradictory, one day I would see what looked like her death, the next I'd see her older and happy.
I saw her standing beside a woman who looked like Rachana. Yet I know the only family Rachana had was her kid brother. My glimpses have always shown nothing but the truth, but surely not all these glimpses of Cloud could be true?
Then I died . . . and yet . . . I can still see those glimpses, and I can only watch helplessly as each and every moment I see comes true, both the good times that make me smile and laugh, and the bad ones that make me struggle helplessly and hate myself for not being there to protect my only child.
~ Sky Strife, Retired General of SOLDIER
Mentor, Husband, Father
"Strife is the beginning and end of chaos."
