When working on your mental health, it's important to take time to process what you're learning and how you're changing. Today is Cloud's day off, too, but he has some homework he needs to get done...

Disclaimer: Still not a therapist. Half of my friends went to school for psychology but I did not.

By the time the sun began making patterns on the ceiling through the softly billowing curtains in the morning breeze, Cloud knew he was in for a world of hurt. Another night of sleep that was fitful at best had him laying on his back staring blankly at the wood-grained ceiling for hours, hands tucked under his head and eyes roaming the aging beams and dusty cobwebs as he mulled over his "homework" assignment.

He had deliberately left his new phone off for his first few days out here, because he didn't want distractions of the very obvious Yuffie sort while he was getting this done. This morning, however, he found his gaze drifting towards the silent device and realized he almost missed that ringing he used to ignore when his friends called. Still, the dread of having to follow through on things was making him anxious. The idea of talking to people about how he felt seemed particularly weak.

He groaned, rolled onto his side, and grabbed the phone. He already missed the flip model he'd lost somewhere during the events of a few weeks ago, as this black square-looking thing looked daunting. He jabbed at the power button and the device came to life at once, blinding him in the process.

"Shit," he muttered as he blinked at the new white rectangle burned into his retinas. Once the phone was on, he adjusted the brightness until it was more comfortable. Then he waited.

It took all of ten seconds for the messages and voicemails to come pouring in. Three new voicemails, two from Tifa and one from Reeve, and then no less than sixteen new texts, most of them from Yuffie with a surprise one from Vincent and a couple from Tifa too. Cloud checked through the messages first.

Yuffie: Hey bird brain, hope ur getting all de-crazied!

Yuffie: I saw this picture of a rock and it reminded me of you (This text was accompanied by a picture of a rock with a couple large points on top)

Tifa: Missing you. Marlene sends her love and Denzel says hi. Call when you can?

Yuffie: Wutai is so boring after our last fight. Wanna save the world again?

Yuffie: WHY WON'T VINCENT LET ME CALL HIM

Yuffie: Hey look what I found

Yuffie: Shit I forgot to send the pic here lol (This text included a picture of a magazine with a blurry shot of his face on the front from what he guessed was a few weeks ago. Cloud winced at that)

Yuffie: Answer me already, what the hell are you doing, turning into a hermit again or something?

Yuffie: CLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUD (After the long, drawn-out text of his name, there were three emojis of clouds)

Yuffie: Damn it I'm going on an adventure without you then, loser

Yuffie: Guess what I'm about to do (The included picture of Cid's latest plane build had Cloud groaning in anticipation as he swiped to the next one)

Yuffie: I GOT IT OMG (This text was accompanied by a selfie of Yuffie in the cockpit of the plane, her shit-eating grin full of pride and mischief)

Vincent: Is murdering Yuffie an acceptable form of control? Chaos is asking. (This surprising text from Vincent made him chuckle)

Yuffie: I may have crashed it…ooops (This text, summing up the chaotic mess that always followed Yuffie around, was accompanied by a picture taken late at night of what looked to be the remnants of Cid's new plane. Cloud looked at the timestamp and saw it was the night before)

Tifa: Don't worry about Yuffie, I know she's been texting you when we told her not to.

Tifa: Missing you at dinner tonight. (The attached selfie featured Tifa, Marlene, and Denzel sitting around one of the tables at Seventh Heaven. All of them had big smiles, Denzel was waving a fork with a piece of sausage on it, and Marlene was gripping her glass of milk. Tifa's eyes were kind and understanding, conveying the words she didn't say: I hope you're doing okay. You can talk to me if you need anything)

As he was studying the faces of the people waiting for him back in Edge with an unknown emotion, another text came in, this one from a number that he didn't have saved but recognized immediately. He dismissed the message without reading, not in the mood to hear anything Reno of all people had to say.

Moving on from the disaster that was his text messages, Cloud listened to the voicemails next.

Hey Cloud, it's Tifa. I just wanted to leave you some words of encouragement before you get started, but it seems you've already turned your phone off. Don't go silent for too long, okay? You know I'm here.

Cloud, hey… It's me again. I hope therapy is going well. I know it can be tough but you know you're stronger than most. It may seem a bit weird to talk to a stranger too, but it'll all work out. I'm here if you need anything, okay? Check in soon. Marlene and Denzel have been asking if I've heard from you.

Cloud, it's Reeve. I received the request for your personnel file from Doctor Ayla just now. Your file was pretty well hidden, but it was one of my priorities when I first started working through old Shinra data. You have nothing to fear, nobody has seen the contents of the file at the WRO, not even myself. I'll be sending someone along with the physical file to keep it confidential, and they should get there by Thursday. I hope things are well with you. Everything has been relatively quiet since the madness of a couple weeks ago. I hope to hear from you soon.

The final voicemail ended with a pleasant beep and the phone fell silent. Sighing, Cloud set it next to his head and he rolled onto his back again. The more he lay there, the more he thought about just how much he had admitted to the day before in therapy. While Doctor Ayla was nice about everything, he was sure he was just being stubborn and would probably frustrate her to no end with his lack of ability to move past anything. Hell, even thinking about doing the homework had him on edge.

He couldn't hide forever though, so he sat up and began his day. His padded barefoot across the old wooden floors and out the bedroom door into the main room, where a pot and a bag of coffee grounds sat waiting for him. As he prepared his morning brew, he heard the gentle, muted strumming of a guitar from the radio next door. Chatting people walked below his open window and excited kids shrieked and laughed.

Costa del Sol was animated and full of life, so much more so than Edge had been in the three years they had built and lived in it. Perhaps it was something to do with the heartache from the destruction and loss of Midgar, or maybe it was because of the promise of warmth and relaxation that the tourist town provided, but he wasn't exactly unhappy about getting away from Edge for a legitimate reason rather than just running away from his problems. If he had been assigned homework to be amongst people for two hours back in Edge, he may have well just given up before trying.

Here…he would see what he could do. Breakfast and a walk sounded nice, after all. So after tugging on the rest of his clothes and armor and enjoying a fresh cup of coffee (he was getting pretty decent at making it after three years of struggling), he left the relative safety of his villa for the bar around the corner – especially since while he'd figured out how to make coffee, cooking basic food still eluded him as a life skill. That might play to his strengths today, since he had been tasked with socializing – he shuddered at the thought – with strangers.

So that was where he found himself a few minutes later after wandering among the masses of families looking to enjoy another late summer perfect day, sitting at the bar inside the cheerful atmosphere instead of at the secluded booth he usually took. When the waitress whose name he didn't know saw him choose a seat front and center, she raised an eyebrow but said nothing out of the ordinary. After serving the booth in the corner their drinks, she made her way back behind the counter with the standard pen and pad in hand.

"Morning," she greeted chipperly. "The usual?"

Cloud blinked in surprise. "The…usual?" he repeated slowly.

"Yeah, the hearty platter with your eggs scrambled and sausage instead of bacon, right?"

He shifted uneasily in his chair, asking, "How did you know that?"

"Kid." She gave him a small smile and glanced pointedly at him. "You've ordered the same thing for three days now. I tend to pick up on that sort of thing."

He felt the back of his neck warm at the fact that she had remembered his order. When he nodded his confirmation and she walked away with the ticket for the cook, he struggled to keep his composure as he looked shiftily around the room. Did other people recognize him from the past few days? There were seven other people in the bar besides him. The two men at the corner booth were sipping their drinks and studying their menus. At a table a stone's throw away was a young family of four. An elderly woman was sitting by herself at the other end of the bar from him. She caught his stare and smiled tiredly back. He looked down quickly, his face flushing further.

How am I supposed to talk to people? He lamented to himself. This wasn't his sort of thing at all, he had always left it to other people to do the introductions and talking for him. The only person that seemed approachable to have a conversation with was the waitress, and he was still reeling from her noticing his daily breakfast order. Taking a few minutes to compose himself, he prepared for her returning with his standard glass of orange juice with a few lines that he'd seen people use before to make "small talk."

"Nice weather we're having," he commented in what he hoped was an off-hand tone as he accepted the juice.

The waitress – her name badge read "Ruby" – blinked a few times as if surprised before she relaxed into a more comfortable position with her hip resting against her side of the bar. "Absolutely," she agreed passionately with a gesture towards the lively and sunny outdoors. "It's like the middle of summer out there! This is the latest we've had tourists here in a generation."

He made a non-committal noise of agreement before remembering he was supposed to be conversing. "Uh, yeah," he added. "There's a lot of people visiting the beach still."

"Do you want to know the most ridiculous thing?" Ruby leaned in closer and glanced to either side before dropping her volume. Cloud tried his best not to lean away but was intrigued nonetheless. "The people coming here are all celebrating being rid of the Midgar pox. The kids had it, they said, and so many of them were dying. And then suddenly, poof! They're better." She put her hands on her hips and leaned back. "They say the pox isn't contagious, but a few people have been nervous. Me, I'm not too scared. What about you? Have you come across the pox?"

A phantom pain snaked down his arm and he mentally shook it off. "You could…say that," he said elusively. Ruby raised her eyebrows at that, maybe expecting more, but he didn't feel comfortable sharing his personal plight or knowledge regarding geostigma with her. Once she realized she wasn't going to get much more out of him, she shrugged and walked away again.

One down, he groaned mentally to himself as he struggled not to sigh and hide his face.

One long, awkward breakfast later, where Ruby came up a couple more times to try and gossip and left disappointed, Cloud trudged out of the bar and glanced around himself to figure out where was "public" but not too public for him to spend his remaining hour and a half outside the house. He made a decision and headed towards the beach, where he'd walked the boardwalk with Ayla the day before. Instead of cool wind and rain, today was like a sauna, and he found himself sweating in his neck-high shirt, pants, and boots. As he settled into a park bench to people watch from a safe distance away, he eyed the water with something akin to curiosity. He had never swam in the ocean before, and if the throngs of people young and old were anything to go by, it could be refreshing.

Still, he sat and watched for a long time, his heart and head torn between the relative safety of distance and the cool, refreshing water that splashed around the kids who played in the shallows. Crossing his arms, he stared at a younger couple who distantly reminded him of Zack and Aerith as they splashed at each other farther out in the deep blue ocean. The woman squealed and the man picked her up and tossed her backwards into deeper water. Their peals of laughter reached his ears with relative ease.

"Nice day to people-watch," an older voice startled him from his misty-eyed staring. Cloud started and wiped his eyes quickly before looking to see who had sat on the other end of the bench. It was the older lady from breakfast. She was wearing a printed floral blouse, tan shorts, and white hair in a short perm. The glasses perched on her nose were floral as well, and she looked up at him as she pulled a paper sack from her floral bag and clutched it while staring at the beach.

"Uh," he said, before remembering that he had to have one more conversation. The little old lady seemed like she would be the sort to ramble on and on, so he took it as a minor win in the making. "Yeah. Better than yesterday."

She snorted as she reached into the paper bag and pulled out a small handful of birdseed. Some pigeons poking at the sand and bobbing their heads nearby took notice of her almost instantly and began to approach the bench in a rapid, excited pace. Farther out, the cries of seagulls began to creep closer as they, too, spotted what the woman had. "Yesterday was just regular autumn weather here. It's always a nice day when tourists aren't flocking to the beaches and hoarding the public spaces."

He looked away, realizing that he would be considered a tourist in this place. But she continued as if she hadn't noticed, "Anyway, I saw you eating breakfast this morning. You're not the sort to do decent small talk, from what I could gather."

"What gave it away?" he asked before thinking, and then he winced as he waited for some kind of criticism. Instead, she tossed the handful of birdseed to the pigeon front lines, while the seagulls began to dive from the air for their share of the food.

The older lady chuckled to herself. "Ruby's the sort to love gossip, and I took her increasing frustration as a sign you weren't of a similar mind."

Cloud didn't answer this as his eyes drifted towards a young teenage girl who kind of reminded him of Yuffie walking a fluffy dog along the shoreline.

"So, were you involved in the war?"

Her question startled him out of his reverie. "Uh, what do you mean?" He asked, instantly on edge.

"The war, son. The Wutai War?"

"Oh." He thought back to his first memory of the war, when he was a kid and his mom brought in the newspaper and sat down with him to talk about conflict. He remembered the front of that newspaper, how his eyes had gravitated to the cover photo with its young hero, Sephiroth. It was when he'd instantly decided he wanted to be in SOLDIER. "No, I was a kid when the war started. Why?"

He glanced out of the corner of his eye to see her watching. Smiling, she took a second handful and fed the rapidly growing masses of birds that were swarming them. He felt a little tense to be scrutinized like this.

"Your eyes," she said softly.

Oh. He stared ahead as two pigeons battled it out for a single seed in front of him while a third looked on, head bobbing longingly. "The mako, you mean," he said dejectedly.

"Nope." She popped the 'p' and it startled him. "The look in your eyes, son… it reminds me of my late husband. He was in a war too, decades and decades ago… and he never quite lost that look in his eyes. The look that says you've seen stuff."

Cloud let out an involuntary chuckle. "Yeah, I've seen some stuff," he mumbled as he ran a hand through his hair and looked away. Then he thought for a few moments before slowly speaking again. "Did…did your husband ever get over it? Whatever he saw?"

"Now isn't that an interesting question…" the woman trailed off as she tossed her third and final handful of seeds onto the ground. More gulls were coming in now and she turned and shook the bag upside down to get the rest of the crumbs out. "I don't think he did fully, but he made small strides along the way. I think talking to people helped. He also had me and our kids, and we kept him plenty entertained."

Cloud was beginning to be alarmed by the birds that were surrounding him, and he thought to bring them up, but as they realized there was no more food they began to wander away again. Seagulls took to the skies once more and the pigeons strutted their way back to the crowded beach.

"Do you have family? Kids?" the woman asked then.

He almost shook his head, and then he reminded himself that Tifa, Denzel, and Marlene were his family now. His rudimentary idea of family stemmed back from when it was just him and his ma back in Nibelheim though, and that was a blood connection, so did they actually count? "Yeah," he finally answered. "My friend and I take care of a couple kids."

"Perfect." She patted his leg and he looked down in surprise at the physical contact, but her hand was gone again before he could do so much as squirm. "Now, what are you doing sulking over here? I saw you eyeing that water, son."

He grunted noncommittally and looked back towards the water. He could feel beads of sweat trickling down his neck as the sun continued to blaze in the sky. Part of him realized he would most likely get sunburnt if he stayed out too long. Still…

"Do you want some advice from an old-timer?" She cut into his thoughts and drew his attention again. He glanced at her uncertainly as she continued without his answer, "The only thing holding you back is yourself. If you want to cool off in the water, go cool off in the water. See over there? A private part of the beach you can enjoy."

Cloud followed her pointed finger towards a hidden part of the beach. He craned his neck and noticed that indeed things seemed to be quieter on that portion of beach. Maybe I should consider sneaking over later, when the beach is less crowded?

"Anyway, that's enough from me," the woman said with a final sigh. She stood up, stretched her arms in front of her, and smiled fondly down at him. "You will figure out your purpose, son. You just need time and people. Take a chance on the world and let it surprise you."

Just like that, she began hobbling away, a few pigeons wistfully bobbing after her as if she was going to give them more food. Cloud sighed himself and ran a hand through his hair, annoyed at the icky feeling of sweat on his scalp. Then he stood too, choosing to wander over to inspect the quieter section of beach for himself. Maybe he could get a quick dip in without anybody looking, and then he would call Tifa and the kids to check in and cross off the final item on his list.

Today isn't…so bad.