Cloud's vision slowly came into focus. He wasn't dead. He was pretty sure of that. He looked up and saw a blue sky. It was beautiful. It was dotted with clouds, like right off of a post card. He sat up. The scenery really was picturesque. There were palm trees and the grass seemed to be a perfect green. There was a river in front of him. The water was clear, cool, and crystalline. Cloud tried to get to his feet. He was able to, but his legs shook violently. He had bruises all over him and he was pretty sure his left wrist and knee were broken. He looked at the ground we had been laying on. It was soaked with blood, but all of Cloud's wounds had healed enough to have stopped bleeding. It made him wonder just how long he had been lying there. He limped over to the water and slowly lowered himself in. Where the hell was he? It had to be some place far away from Midgar, because the land around there is all wasteland. How did he get here? Did someone find his body and drag it here? Or was that green light some sort of warp portal? And where was the silver haired man? Cloud looked around, but there was no sign of the man. If the green light was a warp portal, he got warped somewhere else. Cloud splashed some water on his face. All that left was the question why.

"Why…" Cloud muttered under his breath. That question was the only constant in his life. Why was he here? Why was he fighting that man? Why couldn't he remember anything? Why had his mind betrayed him? Cloud's mind was a vortex of swirling confusion and pain. When he thought of nice things, like the bits and pieces he could remember about his loving parents, he felt hate, but when he thought about that man, and his glowing eyes, he felt love. Why? Why was this happening? He only remembered sad things. His joyful memories were too far out of reach. He could see them, in the back of his mind, but as he drew near, they vanished. Even the parts of his memories he did have were incomplete. He remembered a brown haired girl, her smile as bright as the sun, snuffed out by the silver haired man with the eyes. He knew he loved this girl, but his feeling betrayed him. He could not feel sadness over her death. He remembered his best friend, a man with untidy grey hair, but all he could remember was his death, the bullet, driven into his head. "Grah!" Cloud cried in pain as his brain convulsed with anguish. Make it stop. MAKE IT STOP! He grabbed his face, tearing at his features, ignoring the pain from his left hand. Despite the beautiful scenery, all Cloud could see was blood, darkness, and the anguished distortion of his own face in the water. He plunged forward into the water. He thrashed about, trying to make the pains go away. He splashed about in the water until he couldn't anymore. His vision blurred, the light faded, and slowly, very slowly, the pain went away…along with everything else.

"Hey, what are ya hanging around here for? You look pretty banged up. Someone in your condition should be in a bed or something, ya know?" Cloud opened his eyes. He saw a red-haired man with a blue headband wearing large baggy yellow overalls standing over him. He had a concerned look on his face.

"W…who…who are you?" was all Cloud could stutter out.

"The name's Wakka, but that's not important right now. We need to get ya back to the village so I can get someone to patch you up." He hoisted Cloud over his shoulder.

"Ah!" Cloud cried out in pain.

"Sorry bout that, but it won't take me too long to get ya back to the village." Wakka jogged off into the jungle. Cloud was in too much pain to pay attention to the surroundings, he remained in a zombie like half-sleep. After a painful jog back to the village that the man apparently named Wakka brought him to, Cloud could faintly hear his voice. "I got a live one! He looks like he was beaten up pretty badly. He must have escaped from some soldiers."

"Where did you find him?" Another voice piped in. This one was feminine, but like that of a young girl.

"He was off near the river. I heard an explosion so I went to investigate. As I got closer, I heard some yells, so I began to run, when I got there, I saw this man floating in the water."

"How bad are his injuries?"

"I don't know, all I can see is a broken wrist and a broken knee, but that isn't enough to make all this blood, ya know?"

"Wait if he was attacked by soldiers, which must mean they're near."

"I don't think so, I think he crash landed here."

"I guess that explains the explosion."

"Well hurry up and ready the bandages, we need to fix him up." That was the last thing Cloud heard before he passed out.

Cloud woke up in a soft bed. The pain that was hurting him so badly before seemed like a dull throb. He turned his head he saw his left arm, it was bandaged from the shoulder, all the way down to the finger tips. His right arm was only bandaged down to the wrist. He couldn't see his legs under the blankets, but since he couldn't move them, he assumed they probably had bandages on them too. He felt a cool cloth resting on his forehead. He tried to sit up, but his body wouldn't let him. He looked around the room, or at least what he could see of it. There were jars of fluids and herbs, all labeled with weird shapes. He saw woven baskets and large decorate blankets draping the walls. There was no metal to be seen. All in all this was very unusual scenery for Cloud.

"Ah, finally up I see! I was beginning to think that you wouldn't pull through." It was the big man, Wakka. Behind him was a small…girl. She wasn't yet a woman in his opinion, but she definitely wasn't a child. She had long blond hair and was wearing a sleeveless shirt and shorts. She also had goggles hanging around her neck. Now that Cloud thought about it, these weren't clothes he had seen before. The whole visible culture of this island seemed…native. It wasn't very advanced at all.

"Yeah…" replied Cloud, "How long have I been out?"

"Oh, I dunno," the girl piped in, "maybe 3 days or something." Three days? After three days he was still incapacitated? He didn't think he was that injured.

"Really? I need to go!" Cloud said alarmed. That man was probably still out there. Cloud didn't know why, but his mind kept telling him that the silver haired man was evil.

"Whoa, slow down there bud. You aren't in any shape to be going anywhere. You gotta rest up before you can start moving around again, ya know? You have a broken knee, a broken wrist, a broken elbow, your left leg is broken in three places, and you had cuts and bruises all over your body. You're gonna stay put right in that bed." Wakka crossed his arms over his chest.

"No, you don't understand, there's someone I need to find," Cloud cried in protest, "He's probably somewhere around here!" Cloud pushed with all his might to try and get out of bed, but at his best he was only able to swing his right leg out of the bed. A jolt of pain shot through his body.

"No ya don't," Wakka move towards Cloud, "Rikku," he motioned to the blond girl, "go get some of the sleeping potion."

"Aye-aye sir," she saluted and dashed out the door. Wakka grabbed Cloud and repositioned him back in the bed. Cloud tried to struggle, but his body fought him. The girl, Rikku, came back with a bottle of blue liquid. "Open wide!" she opened Cloud's mouth and dumped the liquid down his throat. Cloud tried to fight it, but he swallowed the liquid anyway. His vision got cloudy, and then he fell asleep, limp on the bed.

"What do ya think he meant by 'someone I need to find'?" Wakka looked up at Rikku.

"I dunno, you said maybe he crashed, maybe it was someone else in the ship, like one of his friends or something." Rikku looked down at Cloud, and then over to his clothes hanging over on the wall. "You know, his clothes look kind of strange. I wonder where he comes from."

"Aww, there are plenty of people we don't know about, and with the known world expanding as fast as it is, he could be from anywhere." Wakka looked out the window, "Thing is, Besiad Island is just a small little piece of the puzzle, ya know? There's a whole world out there. We know that. Remember, Sin was not really what he seemed to be, so I think it might be the same way with this world, ya know?"

"Yeah," Rikku replied, "It's just, this guy seems different. I mean, his eyes, I never seen eyes like those. So full of…sadness…despair…longing."