...tendencies. (a story about obsession).
Chapter 3: Lady Lazarus
Someday...soon....
comes.
Someday...Cloud...
will too.
"Who ...are you?"
The figure stepped out of the shadows. In the dim moonlight, starlight, Cloud could faintly discern the tall, curvaceous form of a woman. As she drew closer, he could see the fine, delicate bone structure of each limb, the perfectly formed features on her perfectly formed face. She was...ideal. She was...inhuman. She was...beautiful.
She spoke, and her voice was not formed of sound, but of thoughts, bubbles. "My name doesn't matter."
"My name doesn't matter..." Cloud's lips softly repeated the words, mouth and tongue moving against his own will. He looked up bewildered at her. "My...mouth...I didn't say that! I didn't say that! Who are you? And what did you do to me? And how can you do that?"
She smiled, flawless blue-tinged lips of her own sliding up in an embracing expression, as Cloud's mouth opened again, and her words in his voice said "None of that matters either. "
He blinked his blue eyes, slow, methodical, rubbing his lips gingerly. "What do you want from me?" he said, speaking haltingly.
She nodded slowly, statuesque form relaxing as she bent her neck fluidly in a nod. "You should be asking what you want from me," Cloud said to himself, and her buzzing voice said the same words to him simultaneously in his head.
Cloud fell back on his elbows into the mud, palms out to her in a sign of innocence, of pleading. "But I don't want anything!" he exclaimed. "I didn't ask for you, I'm fine!"
The lilac lips pursed together, pouted, her silvery hair swished like whisky windchimes as she shook her head. "Oh dear boy, look at yourself." Cloud's voice snuck out of his throat like a snake. "You, the great hero Cloud Strife, wading in a mud puddle." She leaned over, picked him up with her impossibly smooth hands, slender fingers folding over his. Cloud noticed that not a speck of dirt touched her, though she stood virtually in the middle of a bog. "Cloud." She stroked his cheek, her lips unmoving. "You know what you want. Just tell me. I'd give you anything," Cloud breathed in a whisper. She leaned her head down, kissed him on the head, sensuously, though the gesture was like that of a mother to a small child. "I love you..."
And Cloud believed her. Suddenly, his muscled, wiry arms were around her slim waist, his head was in her chest, and for reasons beyond his comprehension, Cloud, the man, the grown man, the legend, was sobbing. "I...I..." he gasped through his tears.
"You..." her voice echoed through him, perfectly composed.
"I want Aeris to live again," he said.
Suddenly, there was a clap of lightning, an infernal, otherworldly screaming, and the light, crisp voice of a woman, saying "Done!"
And now Cloud fell forward, and he was hunched over, in the mud again.
Except this time, he held a purple-black materia in his hand, scuffed, and stained, and gnarled.
Vincent sat straight up in his bed from a nightmare and screamed. It would be ironic for him to scream bloody murder, for that was exactly what he was dreaming of. But irony was flitting about elsewhere this night, for the scream torn from his throat was a single roar of anguish, no more. It always took longer for Vincent to realize that he was out of his nightmare than others- perhaps because what greeted his open eyes was what haunted him with his eyes closed: Red, red, red. Or perhaps it was because, to him, his entirety was one living nightmare, an unending somnambulist hell. But today, a different tune was playing. The soundtrack to this twisted tango veered off track to switch from "Lucrecia" and "Hojo" and "Jenova" and "Sephiroth" to....
"Repetition," said Vincent.
And his gut told him it was all happening again.
Mud encrusted, world weary, the sunlight mocking his bedraggled, beaten form, Cloud stalked once more into the City of the Ancients, the strange materia in his hands. He had slept all night in that infernal forest, and every sore muscle, every aching bone in his body reported proof of this to him. Dragging mud-stained footprints behind him, he scaled the steps to the ledge once more, this time collapsing to his knees with full blown fatigue. His forearms shook with the mere task of lifting the small, cracked materia. His entire body trembling with the effort, the man shut his grubby eyelids over crystal-blue eyes slowly, readying to cast.
"Don't."
His eyes opened. And Cloud swiveled around, brow furrowed. "Wh- Vincent? What are you doing here?"
Vincent stood in the shadows, cloak folded about him, protective batlike wings. In the dim light of the cavern, only his piercing crimson eyes were visible in his silhouetted form. "Don't do it Cloud. It's not worth it. It wouldn't..."
Cloud glared at him. "What are you talking about? Have you been talking to Tifa?"
The harsh harsh red of Vincent's eyes glowed softly, gently. "Tifa? No...what about her?"
Cloud shook his head turned back to the lake and readied to cast once more.
"Are you really willing to face the consequences of your actions? Love though eternal isn't revivable in a replacement."
The blonde man rose to his feet, snapped irritably at the dark figure behind him. "And what would you know about this Vincent, huh? What the hell do you know about what this is about?" He took a threatening step forward. "You- You just left the person you loved to rot in the ground. You just let her die. You didn't even try to save her, and you never ever even tried to bring her back. So don't even talk to me. You don't understand what real love is, you self-centered bastard."
Pain struck in waves of red irises, pupils. Thick lashes clotted with the smothering ache of guilt.
Cloud's head lowered in self-defeat. "Oh God, Vincent," he said to his scuffed boots. "I'm so sorry. I'm so so sorry. I don't know what got into me. I'm just...tired, and frustrated, and scared. And I feel so bad all the time, man. All the time. I didn't mean it, I just-"
But when he looked up, Vincent was gone.
He waited a little while for his friend, but when only silence responded to his sad, weak calls, he settled on his knees once more, holding out the purple-gray materia towards the ceiling, an offering. His eyes closed, he focused his heart's energy on the form at the bottom of the azure lake. Focused on the face he knew would be sweetly and gently and calmly waiting for him, demure and angelic as she always was. And her voice would rise up from the deep, would laugh with him with unbridled joy and innocence. And they would be so so happy.
Cloud cast.
And it was not a haze, or fog, or sparkling clouds, or even a thickness of the air that floated over the lake. No, it was a thunderclap, a tearing open of the heavens without anything moving, an internal hellish retch.
Cloud opened his eyes and looked to the center of the lake his head swirling with the reverberating mental shock. Rubbed at his eyes with his fists, his sight bleary beyond comprehension. What...what was that in the middle of the lake? A splash? A fish? A gentle wave, a ripple, a rock?
No....there was a current, there was movement there was....oh God...Cloud couldn't scream for trying. There was a hand reaching up towards him, a pale, smooth...familiar hand beckoning towards him, slowly rising, growing closer...
With the movements of the moon, with the passing of the waves,
the ...tide...rises.
And then
She...rises....
"Aeris?!"
TBC.