Cast Me Gently Into Morning
by Portrait of a Scribe

Chapter 14: Lightning.

"You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself."
--Leonardo da Vinci

It takes me a total of four and a half days to recover from my wounds and the blood loss that came with them. Even before I could walk again, I was chafing at the limitations placed on me by my body and my- cough, overprotective, cough- companions. Truthfully, after casting Curaga on myself, I was raring to go. That was about twelve hours or so ago.

As it stands, I'm so bored right now that I've taken to learning how to juggle with the few Materia I have with me. Even Zack can't get me to stop, which is saying a lot toward what my lack of activity is doing to my temper.

Toss, up, down, catch, toss, up, do- Hey!

"Oi!" I exclaim, the remaining Materia falling ungracefully into my lap. "What's the big idea, Zack?!"

Zack grins at me, tossing the White Materia up and down where he's just snatched it right out of the air.

"Well, you want it back?" he asks. I scowl at him and leap to my feet, my boots clunking dully on the turf. Not for the first time, I'm glad I was allowed to dress myself fully the second time I woke up after being wounded. It would be hard to chase Zack around if I didn't have pants on.

It takes the rest of them about five seconds before they realize that Zack and I are halfway across the world fragment. By that time, the two of us are long gone, plunging into the woods at the edge of the fragment. Zack's laughing like a lunatic, and I'm growling curses at him under my breath. But when my foot suddenly hits something, I come crashing down, barely catching myself with my hands in time to recover from my fall into a much more graceful roll.

I hear Zack laughing at me from up ahead, but as I turn to see what it is I tripped on, I feel my breath catch. Hurriedly, I gather my legs beneath myself and move into a crouch, leaning forward to more closely examine it.

"Hey, Spike, where'd ya go?" Zack's still laughing, and I can hear him approaching.

"Over here," I call, my gaze still fixed on what tripped me.

Good God. I thought we were the last ones. The only ones. I never expected this.

Zack shoots me a question as he pushes through the flora around me, but the words die on his lips as he sees what I've found. A low, appreciative whistle escapes him.

"Man, she's kinda hot," he says. A second later, he yelps when I backhand him in the knee. He conveniently drops the White Materia at the same time. I catch it quickly before it can hit the ground, and banish it to my subspace pocket. Then I turn back to our foundling.

She's a young woman, maybe twenty years old or so, with strawberry-blonde hair that reaches down to the middle of her back or so. A sheath of some kind is slung from her belt, and it'll probably reach down to her mid-thigh when she's standing. She's as fair-skinned as I am (albeit with a few more freckles, but hey), and she has a face that reminds me a lot of my mom…

Poke.

It's a good thing I'm kneeling out of her reach, because Zack's prodding her with a stick and I know I wouldn't take kindly to being examined so. Sure enough, she begins to stir a minute later. Zack leans back, as well, following my lead.

I'm almost thankful when she simply stills again, though I have to admit that it worries me that she hasn't reacted to what amounted to a kick in the side from when I tripped over her. I exchange a glance with Zack.

"I think we'd better take her back to camp with us," he says, and I nod. I was thinking the same thing.

I reach out and detach the sheath-thing from her clothing, handing it over to Zack before I lean over and slide my arms under her knees and her back. Then I shift my weight and push myself to my feet.

Thank God for all those squats I used to do.

The girl doesn't stir in the slightest, and it's a little awkward for me to carry her because I think she's taller than I am, and she's heavier than she looks. But I manage well enough, and soon Zack and I are walking back out of the woods the way we came.

"Zack," I say when I can tell we're nearing the edge of the trees. He looks at me inquisitively. "Go get Aren and Terra. Have them ready with a place to put her and a Scan spell." I pause. "She might be injured, if her lack of reaction is any indication."

Zack nods and runs ahead. His SOLDIER speed doesn't awe me as much as it used to, but I find myself smiling slightly at his familiar exuberance, nonetheless. His motions are so intrinsically Zack that it lightens my heart.

…Don't ever tell him I said that. Thanks.

By the time I finally break into open ground once more, the others are all standing back at the campsite, waiting for me, though I can see Aren and Terra and Zack making their way toward my location. It's obvious that they're all curious. Frankly, I'm pretty intrigued, myself, if not a little unnerved.

I'm about ten feet away from the woods when she begins to wake up, shifting in my grip enough that it's difficult to keep a hold on her. I finally have to stop and set her down before I drop her. Then I sit back and watch as her eyelids flutter.

Suddenly, her eyes snap open and she shoots into a sitting position, fists coming up and knees bending toward her chest in a defensive posture. Now that she's awake, I can see that she has blue eyes like chips hewn from a winter sky, but her pupils have a ring of sea-green around them. The same color lines the outer edge of her irises before fading to the starkness of the whites of her eyes.

After a second of surprise, her gaze closes off. It's an almost startling change, from showing emotion to being as detached as the most veteran SOLDIER's. I try to keep my expression neutral. Don't want to freak her out more than necessary, after all.

"You're awake," I murmur in greeting. She eyes me warily. "Are you injured?"

No reply. Shit, is she going to be difficult?

I frown at her. "You can tell me, or we can use a Scan spell to find out the hard way. Which is it going to be?"

It's at about this point that Aren, Terra, and Zack arrive. Zack immediately crouches on her other side, cocking his head in a very Chocobo-like manner.

Ha! And he says I look like a Chocobo.

"Hiya!" he chirps, grinning and holding up a hand. "I'm Zack. Zack Fair, SOLDIER First Class. What's your name?"

She just stares at him.

I roll my eyes. Then a thought hits me. "Do you understand what we're saying?"

She turns to me and frowns. "Of course I understand you."

The condescension in her voice puts me on edge, and I grit my teeth.

"What's your problem?" I growl. From the corner of my eye, I catch Zack's look of alarm from where he's crouching, and I return her cold glare full-force with one of my own. Unsurprisingly, she looks away after a long moment. My eyes usually have that effect on people.

I scoff and get to my feet, deciding that it's not worth my time to try to get her to talk.

"Good luck," I mutter to Zack, Aren, and Terra as I pass them.

"…Wait." Her voice startles me, with both its tone and its smooth quality. It's surprising, really, what a softening in inflections can do. I stop, but don't turn around, in case she's not talking to me.

"I'm… a little disoriented," she confesses. "I didn't mean to snap or be rude."

I sigh, reach up to massage the bridge of my nose, and then turn back to her with some reluctance. I can feel a headache coming on.

"Are you injured?" I repeat. She looks up at me, and shakes her head.

"No," she replies, though she looks thoughtful. "Though I have to say I can't remember why my side is aching so badly."

I give her an apologetic, sympathetic wince. "That's my fault. I tripped over you while I was chasing Zack."

"Yo," Zack says with another wave. "Sorry for my buddy's klutziness."

"Zack," I growl. He grins at me unabashedly.

"Admit it, Cloud, you had a klutzy moment," he chuckles. I sigh and thwap him upside the head before I look back at the girl.

"I'm Cloud Strife," I tell her. "Again, I'm sorry for tripping on you."

She shakes her head. "It's fine. My name is Lightning. Lightning Farron."

There's a second of silence before I sense Zack's stare on me and turn to him. "What?"

He glances between me and Lightning with one eyebrow raised and an amused smirk dancing across his features.

"How many does this make?" he asks me, grinning again. "There's you, Squall, Tidus, Terra, and now Lightning. Five? And you're all named after either weather conditions or geographical features."

I roll my eyes openly. "Where's a wall when I need to bash my head against one?"

Terra's laughing behind us, and I can sense Aren's amusement, as well. As Lightning stands up, Terra comes forward and smiles at our pink-haired acquaintance.

"I'm Terra Branford," Terra says, and then I hear Aren hum behind me.

"And I am known as the Warrior of Light," he intones quietly. "If you so wish, you may call me Aren."

Lightning nods, and I can see her glance toward the rest of our companions. Then she looks back at us.

"Do any of you know where we are?" she asks. "I woke up here about three weeks ago with no knowledge of how I arrived or what the purpose of bringing me here is."

I exchange a glance with my companions, and then I watch as Aren turns to Lightning.

"You should probably come with us," he says. "We'll explain on the way."

Lightning stares at him, features impassive, for a long moment. Then she nods.

"Alright," she concedes. Then she turns to Zack. "Now, if you'd give me back my sword."

It's an order, not a request. Zack studies her for a long moment. Then he hands her the sheath with a slight bit of reluctance. Lightning clips it onto her belt with professional swiftness.

"Are you a soldier of some kind?" Zack asks as we turn to head back to the camp. Lightning looks at him with something akin to calculation.

"I was," she answers at last. I tune them out some as we near the encampment and the others come over to meet us.

What follows is a blur of introductions and explanations.

I just end up getting a headache. Ugh.

I'm cold. And it's not a dropping-temperature-in-the-middle-of-the-Nibel-Mountains-signalling-the-onset-of-a-blizzard kind of cold, either. It's on the inside.

The cause?

Our current location is hair-raisingly familiar to me, even more so than when I found Sephiroth at the Planet's core. No, this place is one that holds very few good memories for me.

Nibelheim.

How did we get here, you wonder? Another rift in the fabric between our worlds, that's how. You know, like the one I almost died trying to get to after falling off an invisible platform, and then had to get saved by Cecil? Yeah. A portal. Like that.

I tune out the others' musings about our location, and, as my gaze falls on our newest companion, I take mental stock of her.

It's been almost two weeks since we met Lightning. She apparently comes from a place called Cocoon, on a planet she calls Pulse. She has a sister called Serah, and Lightning is a soldier, like Zack and I first thought. She fights with a gunblade she calls Blaze Edge. As I related before, she has strawberry-blonde hair, blue-green eyes, and fair skin. She wears a white waistcoat made of some kind of synthetic material- vinyl?- and a red cape that she has attached to her shoulder pauldrons. Long leather gloves protect her hands and arms. She also wears a moss-green miniskirt, black shorts, and has a red leather pouch slung from her belts, which straps around her left thigh. Thigh-high combat boots complete her ensemble.

Personality wise, it's like looking into a mirror of my past self. She's cold and calculating, brusque with everybody, and even condescending to many of us. She even seems to look down on me.

I swear, if I was ever like that to Tifa and the others, I'm apologizing profusely as soon as I get back home.

Ah, sorry. I've gotten into the habit of cataloguing people I meet, filing away information about them for later reference. I know I did that with the rest of my companions, and now I've done it with Lightning, too.

Unfortunately for my temper, however, there's no doubt that she's a warrior chosen by Cosmos. After all, Lightning has a Crystal of her own, which she apparently acquired just before Cosmos' death. Her Crystal is a beautiful, translucent blue that glitters like diamonds any time the slightest amount of light hits it. It reminds me a lot of Materia, but clearer.

I'm drawn out of my musings when I see Terra heading for the replica of the cottage I grew up in.

"Terra," I call to her. She blinks and turns to me. "Don't go in there."

She tilts her head to the side, looking genuinely curious. "Why not?"

I glance uneasily around the town again, and it's not long before my stare lands on the path leading up to the Shinra mansion. I repress a shiver with some difficulty. I'm reluctant to find out if it's still there in this world fragment, but I guess it's probably not something I can really control.

"Just… don't," I repeat slowly. "It's not someplace you need to see."

I glance around again, and then look up at the mountains, seeing clouds gathering around their summits and the peaks and valleys of Mt. Nibel. The temperature is beginning to drop, and I can smell snow on the air, though I doubt that any of the others can. Mako-enhanced senses, you know.

Finally, I turn and head toward the inn.

"Come on," I call to them. "We're not getting any further today, anyway."

"Why not?" asks Firion, confused. "We've got a few hours of daylight left."

I don't even turn around, pushing open the door of the inn. "We're not moving on unless you want to get caught in a massive, white-out snowstorm. Now come on."

The inside of the inn is just like I remember it from the last time I was here. The cream-colored walls and dark wood half-paneling is the same as it always has been. The front desk is slightly dusty, and the bell sitting cheerfully on top of it is dulled; even the guestbook is flipped open to the first blank page, the pen uncapped and leaking onto the paper. It's almost… sad.

I can hear the thump of everybody's feet on the floorboards behind me, and I turn around to find them gazing around, taking stock of the place just like I did. When they fix their eyes on me again, I gesture to the stairs to the right of the desk.

"There are three bedrooms upstairs, and there's a bathroom with showers in it at the end of the hallway," I explain to them, calling on my previous knowledge of the inn. "There are two beds plus a cot to each room. On the ground floor, as you can see, there's the common room, the dining room, and another bathing room."

I drop my hands to my sides again, and head back toward where I can remember the kitchen being. "I'd recommend you take the time to rest and bathe, if you'd like. Don't know when we're going to find someplace like this again."

Then I'm alone, standing in the middle of the inn's kitchen and staring around at the unfamiliar room with only my thoughts and my Summons for company.

'Man, this sure brings back memories, doesn't it?' It's Zack again. I hum, and head back for the pantry, determined to find something to put in my belly. Come to think of it, it's probably a good thing that I'm alone for the moment. If the others saw me eating, they'd probably just gawp at me.

After all, having a SOLDIER's metabolism means I have to eat a lot… and eat almost constantly, at that.

Sigh. Thanks a friggin' lot, Hojo.

'Amen to that, brother,' Zack mutters. 'I know exactly what you mean.'

Yeah. And my stomach agrees with me, too.

I can sense Zack's grin even though I can't see him at the moment. Oh, that reminds me. It was really, really funny when Lightning realized that Zack is one of my Summons.

Zack sniggers in the back of my head. 'The look on her face was priceless. I can't wait until she meets Fenrir and Griever.'

I snort as I try to hold back my laughter, and finally settle on whatever I can find for food. I manage to pull out half a cooked ham (wrapped in a layer of aluminum foil), a couple jars of pickles, a few packages of dried fruit, and two sour plums. Yum.

No, seriously, I love sour plums. Everybody else in my family thinks I'm crazy, but hey, that's what I like. I don't have much of a sweet tooth (except when it comes to Tifa's hot chocolate, of course), so…

My musings are interrupted when I hear the door to the kitchen swing open. I turn to see who it is, and I'm greeted by the sight of Aren… minus his armor.

I simply stand there and stare at him for a long moment, taking in the sight of him with his hair flowing free and clad in a simple pair of pants and a loose shirt. He still has his boots on, and for some reason, he's looking a little uneasy. It's an almost-funny sight.

It's then that I realize that he's staring at me, too, and I glance down at myself. I've got my arms full of pickles and ham and plums, and I have two bags of dried fruit dangling from between my teeth. I must be quite the sight. Raising my eyebrow at Aren, I cross to the island and set it all down, plucking the fruit bags from my mouth with feigned nonchalance. Then I turn to him and cross my arms, waiting for him to speak.

It's a few moments before he ventures to talk to me.

"I was looking for something to eat," he confesses. I nod, and point him to the pantry.

"Pantry's over there," I say, and then I point to the refrigerator. "And there's the cold storage. Help yourself. Just make sure you check the food before you eat it. I don't know how long it's all been in here."

He nods, and crosses over to stand where I was just a few moments ago, scanning the interior of the pantry for anything he might like to eat. In the meanwhile, I pull a stool up to the island and crack open a jar of the pickles.

"Were you planning to eat all of that?" The question makes me blink, and I turn to Aren with a pickle stuck halfway into my mouth. I realize my lapse in manners a heartbeat later, and hurriedly bite off the half in my mouth, chewing and swallowing in a matter of seconds.

"Are you kidding?" I ask, raising my eyebrows a fraction of an inch. "This is just the first course…"

Aren's eyes grow wide.

"…Or at least, it would be if I could be certain that we won't be stranded here," I continue, shrugging. "As it is, I figure we can all split the ham, dig out what else anyone else wants, and have a decent dinner. That way, we'd still have enough for breakfast in the morning. If we get stranded, I can always dig my way over to the other houses and raid them."

Aren's eyes are still wide. I blink.

"What?" I ask. He shakes his head.

"How is it that you can eat so much?" he counters. I sigh, and down the other half of my pickle before turning to fish another out of the jar.

"It's the Mako," I explain, keeping my voice as neutral as ever. "It boosts just about everything in my body- my nervous system, muscular performance, cellular respiration, and so forth. This, if you couldn't guess, ups my metabolism exponentially. I can go for days without food or sleep, but I have to eat almost constantly if I want to keep at peak performance."

"Huh," he mumbles. Sometime during my lecture, he's come over and fished out a pickle of his own. He's munching on it as we sit there. It's a moment before I realize how ridiculously similar we look, and I begin chuckling a second later.

Aren blinks at me.

"What?" he asks. I shake my head, leaning down and resting my forehead in the palm of my hand as I continue to laugh quietly. He gives me a strange look, but waits until my mirth subsides to question my sanity again.

"I'm laughing at us," I explain with a small smile, gesturing vaguely from myself to him. "Both of us are sitting here, leaning on the island, eating pickles with our right hands. I know that we're wearing similar expressions."

By this time, Aren is chuckling, as well, an extremely rare sound that I think I've heard maybe once in the nine- ten? Twelve?- weeks I've known him. It makes me smile to see him lightening up even a little bit.

When we finish laughing at ourselves, we sit there in silence for several long moments, slowly making our way through the jar of pickles.

"So," he ventures at last. "Is this Nibelheim?"

I blink again and turn to him, swallowing my latest bite of pickle.

"How'd you guess?" I ask, and keep my voice carefully neutral. Aren shrugs.

"You seem to know your way around rather well," he answers, "and none of the rest of our party knew where we are."

I nod. "I see."

He studies me for a second. "Are you planning anything?"

That catches me off-guard. I furrow my brow faintly for a second before I look him in the eye.

"What would I be planning?"

He shrugs again. "I thought you might be planning on checking around, seeing if anyone is here."

I look down at the surface of the island in thought.

I… hadn't really thought about it. I mean, I thought maybe I'd poke around my old house, snoop around Tifa's old house, just for old times' sake. But…

Then a thought hits me, and my eyes narrow.

Maybe I will snoop around, after all.

Disclaimer: Don't own anything. And it sucks big, hairy, shit-covered monkey balls. ...Eeew. BAD mental images. *grimaces*

I. DON'T. LIKE. SHANTOTTO. That's all I have to say toward the main reason why I added in Lightning. Minor reasons? I think she's cool, and I thought it would be interesting to see how she and Cloud would interact. There'll be more scene time between them in the future, I'm sure, but I also wasn't planning on having the scene at the end between Cloud and Aren. I was rather pleased with how it turned out, though. I think it would be interesting to see Aren without his armor... a shirt and trousers would be nice, methinks. XD I'm being such a fangirl.

Hope you all liked this chapter, and I'm sorry for the lateness. I know I said I'd post it on the 30th, but between three essays I had to write for school, as well as a couple of bad headaches that have kept me from getting a decent night's sleep for two days in a row, I've had very little attention or energy to finish this chapter. I have a really good idea for the next one, though, so hopefully the lull that this chapter became will be easily forgiven. XD

A big thanks goes to Calenlass Greenleaf1 and Ayame Harushino for reviewing the last chapter. I'm glad everybody seems to be enjoying Zack so much. Hope you liked him here, too. This is something I totally think he'd do. *big grin*

HAPPY EASTER, EVERYBODY! (even though it's two days early.)

Next chapter should be posted 4-5-10.

-Portrait of a Scribe