Disclaimer: I do not own any part of Final Fantasy VII in any way, shape, or form. I own nothing!
Harmonies For the Haunted:
Part IV
I get up and pace the room as if I can leave my guilt behind me.
But it tracks me as I walk, an ugly shadow made by myself.
– Rosamund Lupton
Vomiting in the wasteland outside Midgar was a new low. He could practically hear Sephiroth snickering behind him.
He'd barely made it off Fenrir before he lost his blackened guts all over the dried, dead ground.
His phone started ringing in his pocket. He couldn't answer it. He was kind of busy puking, but who was he kidding? He wouldn't answer it anyway. It just so happened he had a legitimate excuse this time. For once, he wasn't blatantly ignoring it. He chose to pretend he would've answer it were his stomach not falling from his mouth. It was a lie but he chose to believe it. It would make him feel better about himself for a while when reality snapped back into place, when his perception of reality was a little less faulty, when he was no longer withdrawn and lost in a sea of delusions.
Once he was done and the Geostimga had successfully purged his stomach of everything he'd eaten the past few days, he stood upright and wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand. He took his water canteen out of his satchel and did his best to rinse his mouth out. It didn't really work but hey, he tried.
After the taste of vomit was a little less prevalent, he reached in his pocket and checked his phone.
The call had been from Tifa. It was probably a business call. She'd stopped making personal calls a while back. She grew tired of his neglect. She knew him enough to know that he wouldn't answer and that he would call her when he needed her, if he needed her.
Cloud listened to the voicemail and his assumption had been correct. Someone had called the landline at the bar requesting a delivery. Tifa gave him the name, address, and requested materials. Sometimes, she would ask him something personal at the end. Something sweet or caring like: 'How have you been?' or 'Are you making it okay?' She didn't leave anything like that this time. It was strictly professional. It stung but only for a moment. He wouldn't let it bother him further. He couldn't.
Tifa's voice was always refreshing but it also reminded him of how much he missed her and the kids. Sometimes, when he was in a special mood, he would listen to her voicemail a second time but not today. He was too tender and raw for that today. It would fracture his resolve. He'd want to go home and he couldn't do that. He was sick and worthless and he couldn't bring himself to go back and make their lives worse by effectively sucking any and all joy out of any room he entered with his detachment and misery.
Shaking the thoughts away, Cloud mounted Fenrir and began making his way to Kalm to complete his current deliveries.
It was a bad day. He hadn't puked since that morning but he still had a fever. He had no business doing deliveries in this condition but people needed their packages and their mail so here he was, in Kalm…with Geostigma…
He'd made it to Kalm, somehow although his body was at war with itself. His eyes were going crossed and he was ten different kinds of dizzy. If there was anything left in his stomach, he was pretty sure he'd vomit again.
Everything got worse when he dismounted Fenrir and began walking. If someone would have told him five years ago that he would get sicker off a moving vehicle than on one, he would've laughed. He was swaying as if he were a passenger on a ship, his shoulders drooped and his posture gaunt.
'Man, you aren't looking too good."
A blurry Zack was suddenly in front of him, squinting slightly as if to get a better look at him.
'You look worse than you did that time in Junon when you got a nasty case of motion sickness. Remember?'
Cloud stopped dead in his tracks, shocked that he actually did remember what the hallucination was talking about. He remembered! Not well but he wasn't drawing a blank! He'd gotten nauseous during the helicopter ride to Junon. He'd been sent to do rescue work he'd been forced to prop himself up on a nearby metal wall in one of the many center tunnels in Junon, trying desperately to rid himself of the nausea.
'You do remember! You might make a full recovery yet. Well, maybe not a full recovery…but you're still improving.'
His Mako eyes narrowed at the apparition. How could he say that? How could even a figment of his feverish imagination say that? Sure, he was better in some respects. He wasn't brain dead but he was far from normal, far from what he'd been before. He didn't recall being borderline schizophrenic before…
'Hey, maybe you should rest. You look like you're about to fall over…'
This hallucination was so vivid Cloud could practically feel Zack's hand landing heavily on his shoulder in encouragement, trying to coax him into taking care of himself.
Inspired by Zack's infectious personality (even his delusions of it), Cloud tried to blink the pain away. He tried to will himself to overcome it. Surely his will was stronger than Geostigma.
But it wasn't—at least not this time. He was rapidly losing the battle for consciousness. The pain shot up his arm like a liquid fire, causing his whole body to lock up. He grunted from the strain of fighting it off, of fighting the blackness exploding in violent bursts behind his eyes. His hand shot to his infected arm and he could feel the ooze slipping down his bicep, then down his forearm and finally spilling into his glove and overflowing onto the ground.
His ears were ringing with the shrill droning of white noise and then he was out, just like someone had yanked a plug out of an electrical socket.
'Hang in there, Cloud'
There was a powerful murmur humming around him, the sound of concern and intrigue, the reverberation of shocked onlookers…
What happened? Was there trouble? Cloud willed himself to grab the main blade of his Fusion Swords off his back just in case but his body refused and everything was still black. Had he been infected with Darkness? He couldn't remember…
"Are you okay?"
Someone was touching him, supporting his weight, holding his limp head up and trying to prod him into standing. It wasn't working.
"Tifa?" he called, not conscious of the reason why. Either because he knew she was always there or because he wanted her there…
His rheumy eyes could almost see her smiling down at him, his head in her lap, and her hands on his face. It was that small yet warm smile she always offered, the one that almost didn't' reach her eyes, belying that there was more pain in her than she ever divulged to anyone, even him but he could see it and he knew enough about her to know that there was a lot underneath that powerful, optimistic disposition she projected to the Planet.
"No, I'm afraid not."
Tifa began fading, taking that flickering moment of what could almost be considered tranquility away with her.
Something akin to disappointment washed over him. The voice no longer sounded like Tifa's and had confirmed that she wasn't whom he was asking for.
That's right. I'm not home. I left them… No, I abandoned them.
When he opened his eyes the second time, he saw a group of people staring at him with concerned expressions. He'd finally done it. Geostigma had finally knocked him unconscious…in public. He'd caused a scene.
Shit.
Cloud focused on one of the faces around him… It was young and outlined by brown hair that was pulled into a long, tight ponytail that fell over her shoulder. The eyes were blue-green and the cheeks were rosy, almost flushed.
"He's warm. Do you think he's…?"
Double shit.
Cloud shot upright before she could finish her assumption, causing the spectators to jump in surprise.
The girl who'd been holding his head in her lap helped him back to his feet. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine. It's fine."
"Should I get Tifa?" she asked.
"What?" he reeled, shocked.
"Tifa? The girl you were calling for…?" Her features contorted with uncertainty. "We can find her for you if we need to."
Cloud shook his head.
"Are you sure? You really don't look well…"
He nodded, murmured his thanks, and lumbered through the small crowd that had accumulated around him. Slowly but surly he made it further the township of Kalm.
Once he was sure he'd dissolved the situation as much as possible, he took the mail to the post office and dropped off the ordered supplies at the item shop. They'd also ordered a lot of Potions, Antidotes, Remedies, and the like. These were common ways to combat and treat the stigma. It didn't heal it but it made living a bit more bearable. It numbed the pain and could give someone a few more days, give or take depending on the severity of the infection.
It was getting worse. It was spreading but not in the traditional sense. Despite popular belief, Geostigma wasn't contagious.
The outbreak in Kalm was nothing like it was in Midgar or Edge but it was evident. There were those sitting outside in alleyways with bandages around their eyes, their foreheads, necks, and other places that probably weren't visible to the eye like his arm.
Cloud had also noticed the subtle number of coffins in the process of being constructed in the back room of the carpenter's shop, some much smaller than any coffin should ever be…
Guilt flooded his insides and he couldn't keep from thinking of Denzel and the other infected children around Kalm. As he made his way back out of the town, he heard child-like laughter and saw the children that lagged behind and winced from unseen pain shooting through their bodies, the disease already taking its told on their vitality and stamina.
There had to be a cure. There just had to be. What was the point of any of this if they were all doomed to succumb to Geostigma anyway?! What was the point in defeating Sephiroth? What was the point of finding Denzel? What was the point of all the sacrifices?
There had to be something… He'd find a cure somehow. Not necessarily for himself but for Denzel and the others. He'd spend the rest of his days looking if that was what it took. He'd never be able to go home or face anyone again until a cure was found. He couldn't bring himself to put the burden of his stigma on to Tifa, Marlene, and Denzel. He couldn't do that to them. It couldn't destroy what remained of their hope like that. He couldn't kill what remained of their hero by revealing that he was just as vulnerable as everyone else and that he was as doomed as the rest of them. He couldn't shoot their dreams of the future point blank in the face. The only solution to any of this was to find a cure for Geostigma but deep down he doubted he'd be able to pull off such an impossible feat. He cared and he wanted to help but he'd proven time and time again that he was nothing if not worthless. He wasn't capable of saving himself, much less anyone else. Finding a cure to Geostigma was just another one of his pitiful attempts of justifying his existence, his actions, of justifying why he'd left Tifa and the kids. It was something that might help him sleep a little better at night; a nice thought, nothing more.
The frequent deliveries and all the time spent fighting monsters reminded him of all the traveling he'd done two years ago and he was rapidly being reminded of how much he hated Poison. No, hate was putting it lightly. He loathed Poison. Loathed it! It was like having the hiccups except each hiccup was like having a Bomb go off in your intestines. He'd forgotten how much he hated it until one of the monsters outside Midgar infected him with it. It was either a Mu or a Trickplay, as pathetic as that was.
He just wanted to get back to the church so he could medicate himself, redress his Geostigma, and hopefully, sleep. Was that too much to ask? Apparently it was. He'd been forced to chug an Antidote and sit on Fenrir like a bump on a log until it took effect and cleansed his system.
The others never shared his hatred of Poison. The others brushed it off and said it was probably the least troublesome of the status effects. Cloud frequently begged to differ. Nothing could make him curse under his breath like Poison. He'd admit it probably bothered him more because it was more annoying than anything. It rarely caused massive damage but he could remember a battle or two where he just knew that Poison would finish him off before the enemy could. He swore it dealt more damage than some attacks did and sometimes there was no time to heal or remedy it so he'd just have to make due and hope for the best until the battle was over…
Barret hated the transformation statuses such as Frog. Yuffie hated Silence, not because she missed conjuring magic but because she hated losing the ability to ramble and the hum of her own vocal chords. Cid yelled an impressive amount of profanities each time he recovered from Petrification. He swore the after effects of Petrification left his joints stiff for hours afterwards (the theory was never truly tested). Red XIII hated Confusion and to this day Cloud still wasn't sure if Vincent had a special distaste for any of the status effects. He'd always assumed he had a special place in his heart for each of them. Tifa, however, he'd learned her aversion well. He'd never be able to forget which effect she hated the most…
Tifa Lockhart could take a hit with the best of them. She would also avoid telling anyone if she was infected with certain status effects to preserve supplies and to not worry or burden others with her ailment. However, Tifa could not stand Darkness. Personally, Cloud had always been more of a Confuse/Poison man himself but everyone was different and everyone had a special hatred for different kinds of status effects, and Tifa could not handle losing her sight.
Cloud would always know when it had happened because Tifa would always get very still and try to use her other senses during fights and once the battle was over, she'd fall to her knees and stare out at the ground blankly…
FLASH
"Tifa?" he called when she didn't follow the party further into the wood.
The behavior was strange because Tifa never lagged behind unless something was seriously wrong. She was sitting on the ground on her haunches with her legs sprayed out behind her, shaking.
"Are you okay?"
She shook her head rapidly, shakily. "Mm-mmm."
"What's wrong? Are you hurt?" Aerith asked as she moved closer to examine her.
"I can't see," she confessed, her eyes wild despite the blindness.
"Calm down, Tifa," Aerith chided gently and touched Tifa's quivering arm only to have Tifa stagger away, unsure of what or who had touched her.
"What was that?!" Tifa held her fists up, preparing to fight.
Cloud yanked Aerith behind him before Tifa socked her. He just knew Tifa was two seconds from knocking her flat and poor Aerith would never know what hit her.
"Hell, Tifa, it's only Aerith. The monsters 'er gone. We're the only ones around you," Cid huffed before lighting his ceremonial victory cigarette.
"Right… Right. I'm sorry…" Tifa replied, her voice shaky.
"Come on." Aerith fearlessly emerged from behind Cloud's form, took her hand, and led her to a nearby patch of moss near a tree trunk. "Let's go sit down so we can treat you. Does anyone have any Eyedrops?"
Everyone began patting their pockets and satchels.
Tifa frowned. "Should we save them…? I don't have to be in the main party. I can stay back so that those who need them the most can use them."
"Don't start that, Tifa," Cloud groaned.
Admittedly, he wasn't in the best of moods. He hadn't been since Cait Sith (or Reeve, whatever the hell his real name was) decided to be a traitorous bastard back at Gold Saucer and he honestly wasn't thrilled about going to the Temple of the Ancients. He had a gnawing feeling it would be an unpleasant experience and he wasn't in the mood to argue with Tifa about the durability of their supplies.
"But we don't know what kind of enemies are in this temple. We might need to preserve—"
"I'm not taking you into the temple blind." Cloud pinched the bridge of his nose. He was getting a headache…
"We have plenty of Eyedrops, Tifa," Red XIII assured her, his tone gentle and Cloud was glad someone had the decency to comfort her because he literally didn't have it in him at the moment.
Tifa nodded, albeit begrudgingly and Cloud was relieved. Even if he didn't take her into the temple as part of his primary party, she'd still be in the area and he might need her as backup if things got really hairy. She was too valuable to leave blind and he didn't want her that vulnerable in this particular situation. Someone would have to be her eyes and he'd be worrying about her the whole time.
Aerith squeezed Tifa's hand before silently motioning for Cloud to give her the Eyedrops he'd pulled out of his pocket. He did as instructed but she gave him one of her signature knowing looks. He'd said or done something she didn't approve of and Tifa was frowning like a scolded child.
Guilt coiled in his entrails and he suddenly felt awful for how he'd reacted. It wasn't her fault he was in a bad mood and he knew better than anyone how Tifa loathed Darkness. He knew he was virtually the only one she listened to when she was like this. He was the only one who could calm her down enough so she could be treated and he should have been considerate of that…
Damn it all he couldn't fight them both. One of them being mad at him was bad enough…but both?
He approached and placed a hand on Tifa's shoulder. "I'm sor—"
Before the apology could leave his fully leave his mouth, he was taking a sucker punch to the nose. Cartilage gave way to the metal covering her knuckles. His eyes went crossed as his brain was jarred loose from the sheer force. His vision blurred and filled with painful red as if his eyes were bleeding from the inside out.
"Goddamn!" he roared, his hands covered his now broken nose. "Son of a bitch!"
"Cloud?!" squeaked Tifa, her eyes still glossy with blindness. "Cloud, I'm so sorry! I didn't know it was you! I panicked! I'm sorry!"
Tifa was apologizing profusely but everyone else was either bowing over with laughter or trying to hide chuckles.
Cid almost inhaled his cigarette. Yuffie fell onto her back, succumbing to a giggle fit on the forest floor. Vincent shook his head but his eyes were shining with subtle mirth. Red XIII turned his head away to hide his simper while Aerith covered her mouth with her hands in a combination of shock and amusement.
"That's what you get for being a smart ass!" Barrett bellowed. "You shoulda known better than to sneak up on her while she's blind! You know how she gets!"
Tifa's hands wrapped around his wrists apologetically as he continued to groan in agony.
Her hands then wandered up the back of his hands to his face until she felt the warmth of his blood leaking out of his busted snout.
"Here, let me…" Tifa took his face in her hands and angled it towards her, trying to tenderly pry his hands off his mangled snout.
Cloud twitched at first, not wanting her to touch the source of his misery but relented due to the mere sound of her voice and the warmth of her touch.
She cupped his face in her hands then began casting Cura on his head. Slowly, the pain began to disperse and when he could think straight again, he became aware of their proximity and the oh-so-subtle intimacy in the way she was touching him.
He swallowed thickly as his eyes danced across her face, tensing with unease and a discomfort in his gut that he couldn't quite place but it felt a lot like being caught playing with a girl that all the other boys just knew had cooties…
"I was going to apologize but now forget it," he grumbled, his tone sarcastic yet somehow playful but not many people would pick up on the faint humor mingling between his words. He knew Tifa would though. She was one of the few people who understood him enough to translate his strange verbal and nonverbal cues.
Tifa chuckled. "Want to just call it even?"
FLASH
It was moments like those that had made that journey bearable, especially after she was gone, when things got dark, when it seemed hopeless but now… Now he was alone and that made this particular hopelessness all the worse.
He found himself reliving those types of moments more and more as he spent more and more time alone. It made sense considering most of his time was spent with himself, his thoughts, and his memories. He was a slave to his own thoughts and delusions, a slave to his demented mind, which was something that no one would recommend.
As the memory faded, so did the side effects of Poison, permitting him to continue his journey to Midgar, to return to the rhythm that was his life now.
The days all bled together and he honestly and legitimately had no idea how long he'd been gone. Long enough he supposed, probably too long. It was just like one really long day that never seemed to end although his deliveries usually changed from day to day.
Everyday, he he'd do his deliveries and wander back into her church whenever he felt the need for some semblance of a home although deep down he knew this wasn't his home. It was where he came to torture himself and treat his Geostigma.
Sleeping there was uncomfortable but he couldn't bring himself to care. The longer he was sick, the harder it was for him to bring himself to care about anything but sometimes, in the silence of night, when it got quiet, he thought about what he left behind. He thought about Tifa and the kids.
Surprisingly, the little things were what he missed the most when he allowed himself to miss them. He missed Marlene and Denzel helping him with his maps and routes. He missed the way Marlene would tattle on him. He missed the way Denzel would always ask him questions while he watched him work on Fenrir. He missed making shoddy parenting decisions. He missed his silly conversations with Tifa. He missed being able to go to her room to find that she was just as restless some nights as he was. He missed coming home to see her waiting for him in quirky positions in that chair in the bar…
Yes, he thought about them. All the Mako poisoning and the experiments had messed him up, deadened him, but hadn't removed his heart. He hated being alone and thought about them but he would also admit he was doing that less and less. Somehow he'd managed to become even more detached. Going from town to town and hearing how incurable Geostigma was certainly didn't help matters either.
On each delivery, he'd try to find some news on the ailment but it was always the same. Wutai had even obtained a second "quarantine" hut and Yuffie had called again, wondering if he knew anything. Sadly, he had nothing to tell her. She'd come to him and Tifa looking for answers when the Geostigma outbreak started but nothing had changed. All he knew now was how painful it was firsthand but he wasn't about to share those details with her.
Cloud was to the point that he no longer asked about Geostima. He knew the answer. He was inadvertently coming to terms with the stigma and its inevitability and how helpless he was to stop it.
His Geostigma was still in the early stages but he could already tell he was losing vitality. Granted, he wasn't in the shape he was in when he defeated Sephiroth but he was far from out of shape. There wasn't a monster out there that he couldn't handle, which was kind of what started the whole delivery bit because he wasn't afraid of the monsters that threatened the areas surrounding the cities and towns, but he was slowing down. It took him longer than it should to take out certain enemies. He was off and his immunity to status effects was practically nonexistent. Eventually, he would end up like the many others he'd seen who succumbed to Geostigma. He'd be reduced to a blob of mangled, slumping flesh that couldn't hold its eyes open. What would he do then? There was no good outcome of this, which was why he chose to avoid it. He'd deal with it when he couldn't ignore it anymore. That was his approach to everything now because he simply couldn't handle anything in his life anymore.
Day after day, delivery after delivery, it was all the same until he got a particular call from Tifa…
"You got a call from Reno. He's in Healen. Says he's got work for you." She paused and even though he couldn't see her, he knew she was contemplating on whether or not to make the call more personable. "Cloud, how have you been?" she finally asked and he would admit it felt good to hear her ask about him instead of just parrot the information provided through the landline to him. It meant she still cared and that would always be refreshing. It would be something to motivate him later.
Cloud flipped his phone shut and shoved it back in his pocket.
Reno at Healen Lodge, huh? Interesting but why? What would Reno possibly want from him? This oozed of shady behavior. Reno oozed of shady behavior.
Having nothing better to do, he decided to at least humor him and if it was something he wanted no part of, he'd simply say he wasn't interested.
Positioning his sunglasses on his face, he shifted on Fenrir and prepared to head towards Healen but before he could jar the machine into gear, pain shot through his arm. He couldn't keep himself from wincing and twitching as if he'd been struck.
If Cloud had to describe it, he'd say it was like being stung by a really, really big Slap in the same place repeatedly at unpredictable intervals. The saddest part was he was getting use to it. He felt the pain and reacted to it but ultimately sighed and went about his business, which was exactly what he did this time too.
Once it passed, he jerked Fenrir into gear and took off into the wasteland toward Healen Lodge but something was off. For the first time in a long time, he felt a familiar, bone-chilling tingle run up his spine. Something felt off, something that shook his enhanced senses into action, something more than a regular monster, something that felt familiar and thick on the back of his tongue yet something he couldn't quite place…
He told himself it was nothing. He shook it off, insisting it couldn't be anything more than paranoia and Geostigma messing with his normally impeccable senses but no amount of disregard could shake the feeling of being watched.
A/N: Thanks so much for reading and reviewing! I know I don't always have time to respond to each of your reviews but know that I always read them and I always appreciate them!
We are now getting into Advent Children territory but I will not be confronting that beast directly. I will reference it but the next chapter will be post Advent Children and by post I mean immediately afterwards. Honestly, I don't see the need to get into Advent Children material because most of you are already familiar with that story and what happens in it. I made no plans to write anything on it because I don't want to rewrite history or reinvent the wheel. My point in writing this story was to fill in the gaps and whatnot and I can't really see how I'd manage to do that in AC. So don't be surprised when we jump head next time.
Thanks again for reading and I hope you enjoyed the chapter!
