AN: Written for bofoddity and previously published at my LiveJournal.
Cloud's got something to say.
"Heroes fight alone," he says, walking into an empty church.
He comes here to brood.
He'd like to be thanked sometimes, he sometimes thinks. It might make the dreams a little less red, and a little more blue-green or yellow-orange or some other happy-optimistic color. Thanks for saving the world, he'd like to hear. Thanks for making things all better and stop by for coffee next Monday. It might be nice, he thinks, to be that simple. It might be nice to think I deserve it. Because it took three to bring down one, he remembers, and heroes fight alone.
He comes here to avoid.
He should confess something here, he thinks. How he hides. How he lies. How he cowers. How he fails. How I was never afraid of heights until I was put on this pedestal. He should confess, but he talks to flowers instead, and punishes them for the way he's very sorry. He says, You and you and you and you and you. I wish I was better. I wish I was sorrier. And when he's done, the plucked petals lay at his feet like corpses.
He comes here to suffer.
He doesn't have to do it on the side of a road or behind a locked bathroom door any more. The black syrup of so many sins drips from his arm onto a pew and reminds him of how ugly he's become. He wants to smear it in his hair and become someone else. He wants to run far, far, far away. He wants her to stop looking at him like I'm somebody you believe in. Because one day, she might be a petal—they all might be petals—and he wants desperately for her to be someone he doesn't have to pull from the stem. He wants her to be home again.
"But heroes fight alone," he says.
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