Cloud

I heard glass shatter, and my eyes blinked open. The sound presumably came from outside the building. Morning had already rolled around, and it appeared as though I'd slept in. Stretching on the bedsheets, I felt my hand brush against a journal on the table between Zack's bed and mine, and I sat up to look at it. I figured it was probably his, a recording of his mission progress or maybe something more personal. I had to fight the urge to read it for either reason. If the journal was about his missions, it may have told me about what happened in that reactor, or why Sephiroth had been gone for so long. If it was a personal journal, it may have mentioned me, or perhaps my mom, and that thought made it even more tempting to read. However, I didn't really see myself as the type to go snooping through someone else's writings, even if the concept seemed somehow familiar to me.

Kicking my legs off the bed, I stretched my arms again, did a few squats for good measure, and started to walk out of the room. I noticed Zack outside the window, standing alone by the town's well. He noticed me too, and gave me a wave, so I smiled and started down the stares to leave the inn. It was now day six at Nibelheim, and despite being in a pretty good mood myself, I kind of felt bad for Zack and the other two infantrymen. They were being forced to just sit around and wait, in a town that they weren't all that familiar with, counting the minutes until Sephiroth came up from his hole under the Manor. Still, it didn't seem like a good idea to rush the guy, especially after he'd been acting so strange. Zack noticed me when I stepped out, and I approached him with a grin.

"Rise and shine!" he said, and I put my hand on his shoulder as a sort of 'good morning'. "You're a late sleeper on your own accord, huh?"

"I guess." I shrugged and took back my hand, placing it on my hip. "What have you been doing?"

"Not much," he said, scratching the back of his neck. "Our driver was getting impatient this morning. He figured out that our mission's been over for a while." I considered the fact that I still didn't know the driver's name.

"The other guy's not complaining?" I asked, the name on the tip of my tongue.

"No... he seems to be taking this whole things as a vacation," he said after a moment, turning and walking a few steps. "I noticed him looking around at the shop earlier."

"I don't blame him," I said, trying to remember exactly where the shop was. "Not much else to do here."

"Hey, Cloud?" he said after a pause.

"Huh?" I turned to look at him, and he was staring off toward the entrance of town. There was a long pause before he spoke again. I almost decided to respond again.

"If you're okay with it..." he started, but paused again. Then he turned around with a smile. "I'd like to spar with you."

"Spar?" I repeated, having a hard time accepting the word. Zack wanted to battle with me?

"If you think I'm up to it," he laughed, raising his chin. "...going to be in SOLDIER, right?" I felt like I missed a piece of what he said, but my hearing seemed fine. What was there to lose, anyway?

"Sure, but..." I took a step forward on one foot, crossing my arms. I was going to say something else, but my mind had a blank moment.

"...hold back of course." Zack said and cocked his head. "Unless you're busy." I thought about how this was a good step, sort of a closing in the gap of our ranks, at least for a fight.

"At least for a fight." I thought aloud, and he took that to be my answer.

"Man, 'fight' makes it sound so brutal." He turned away from me and gestured toward the entrance to town. "There's a safe place we can go out there."

We fought, minutes later, just outside the town by the water. I didn't really have a great memory of that fight. I remember something about rolling and guarding, or maybe catching Zack's hand at one point. I remembered testing materia for the first time, remembered the water freezing, and it looked so nice for something that was meant to be used in war. But the battle was mostly a blur, some kind of strange mix of adrenaline and a weird euphoria. In a way, it felt more like a connection, like I was closer to Zack than I'd ever been before, even more than that night on the roof, under the stars and Mt. Nibel. The memories came back sometime afterward, when Zack had taken a break because of exhaustion, and he said something that I didn't quite hear, but I didn't quite like.

"Zack, we have to go soon," I said, looking down at him as he laid by the water. I felt a strange discomfort at the time, as though their was something important that needed to be done."Something the matter?"

"Eh, just guy stuff." He didn't even look at me as he answered, then he kicked his legs and somehow managed to end up standing on his feet. "Let's go!" I turned around to face the town, and a man was running our way. I didn't really recognize him at first, but as he got closer, I noticed that it was Tifa's father. His eyes locked on me first, and he stopped, hesitating before he spoke. When the words finally came, he looked to Zack as though I wasn't there. Why was he looking at Zack?

"You're not leaving," he said, sounding a little out of breath, "are you?"

My eyes opened up again, though I hadn't realized that I'd closed them. I was very tired, so I guessed I must have been sleeping. I was sitting on the grass and I could hear water nearby, so Zack and I must have still been just outside of town. My back was also against a rock, and my body felt sore all over, but at the same time, something was comfortable about the whole thing. Then I noticed Zack, leaning against my side, also on the grass, also against the rock. I thought I heard him say something too.

"If we...of this, we'll have...one day." I missed a few bits of it, and really had no clue what he said. I wanted to ask him, but the words wouldn't come. All the same, something about it was comfortable. A few minutes later, Zack was asleep, and I was smiling, or at least it felt like I was. I couldn't help but to wonder why I couldn't remember the rest of my day. Nibelheim day six, right?

It was Nibelheim day six, and Zack and I had just come back into town after our sparring match. We didn't say much on the walk in. I thought Zack had picked up on a bit of the uneasiness with Tifa's father back there, so I stayed silent and waited for him to say something. After walking into the center of town, I slowed to a stop by the well. It had become sort of a comfortable place for me to just stop and think, and I kind of needed a little peace of mind. I turned around to look at Zack, and just before I could think of something to say, he spoke first.

"Going to see your mom today?" he said, throwing his arms up behind his head and interlocking his fingers. I smiled a little and averted my eyes from him. For some reason, the question made it hard to keep eye contact.

"No, I..." I started, pacing a few steps. "I figured it'd just be us today." He seemed strangely surprised by that concept, which only made it harder to look at him while I talked. "I mean, we probably won't be here much longer, so I figured we'd enjoy ourselves instead of..."

"Just another day of guard duty?" Zack finished my sentence. "Yeah, that would be nice."

"At least we're stationed out here and not inside the reactor, right?" I shrugged, taking a breath of the fresh air. Zack nodded.

"Tch, yeah..." he agreed, walking up closer to me. "Those places smell weird. So what do we do for fun around here?"

"We could start by getting something to eat." I gestured at the shop, just then remembering where it was. "All that fighting made me hungry." Zack laughed and threw open the door to the mobile home. My mind went blank again. The fact that I was missing pieces of things didn't bother me before then. I didn't really register the fact that my mind kept going blank, or that I'd missed part of a conversation, or ended up in a place that I wasn't before. Then suddenly, it all hit me at once, and it wasn't something that I could just shrug off because I was comfortable.

This time, I was worried; worried for myself, worried about waking up in all these different places, worried about something I couldn't put my finger on, as though I was being followed. I was tired again, and I was sitting again, but this time it wasn't on grass. I was sitting on metal, and I could smell gunpowder. The only thing that made me feel any better was that I could hear Zack saying something, and he sounded happy.

I was a SOLDIER then, right? Zack said I'd be a SOLDIER. I should have been ready for anything. But how was I supposed to be ready for that? I had some recollection of Mako, recently. Was that all just a hallucination from the treatments? Maybe the blackouts were a side effect. But why did something about SOLDIER just not feel right? I was worried about how hard it was to think clearly, and even more worried about how it seemed to be getting harder.

A few moments later, I heard the sound of a motorcycle.