Chapter 3: Theories from a Circus Freak
Cloud wanted to go somewhere else. He didn't know where, but it
didn't feel right to be telling his story in such a public
place.
It was strange to be telling his story at all--except not really,
not to Cid... Not to Cid or Barret or T--his mind shied away from
finishing that thought--or any of the others. Not back before they
had learned about Jenova. Not when his own history had him so
confused that he'd had to share it in hopes that someone could make
sense of it for him.
They left the cafe and walked aimlessly through the First District
until Cid snapped his fingers. "You used to sit on the water
tower."
"Hmm?"
"The water tower, in Nibelheim? With Tifa?"
"Oh," Cloud said. Well, he couldn't avoid thinking about her
forever.
"If you don't mind a few fights, follow me."
Cid led him to the Second District, through a strange shop full of
gears and electric lights, up a ladder, and across the
rooftops.
"Here," Cid said after they cleared one roof of Search Ghosts. He
pointed up at the stars. "How's this?"
"Not bad."
Cid gave him a hard look, and Cloud was glad for the dimness
Traverse Town's perpetual night.
"Tifa..." Cid said.
"Is dead," Cloud answered. She'd arrived in the Underworld some
time after he had. Only, she was supposed to be there.
"Ah." Cid flopped down on the shingles and scratched his chin.
After a moment, he dug through his pockets and produced a piece of
straw which he clamped in his mouth. Cloud supposed that not even
the nicotine patch could change the habits of a lifetime.
"You married her," Cid said.
Cloud didn't want to imagine it. He walked to the edge of the roof
and peered out at the courtyard below.
"Together you opened up a new bar. Called it 'Lockheart's'--I guess
you knew a place called 'Strife' wouldn't get much business. Of
course," Cid added, "after three years you divorced."
Cloud could well believe that. "Did we?"
"Yeah, and a good thing it was, too. You couldn't stand each other.
But afterwards, you were really good friends."
Cloud cleared his throat. "That sounds about right."
"Yeah," Cid said and stretched out full length to stare up at the
stars. "Yeah. It felt right."
Cloud glanced at the sky, but the stars were all wrong--there was
nothing comforting in an alien sky. He balanced on the very edge of
the roof and wished that the building were taller. He wished for
the Shinra building, to be poised nearly seventy stories above a
sudden hard landing.
Even that didn't help. He no longer had any reason to fear
falling. He sighed and went back to sit next to Cid.
"Do you know," Cid said conversationally, "how fucked up it is when
your past history is only a possible future--a mighty unlikely
possible future--to everyone else?"
"Do you know," Cloud answered, "how fucked up it is when your past
history is only a pack of lies cooked up by a mad scientist, a
megalomaniac, and your own Mako-hazed subconsciousness?"
Cid grunted. "Touché."
"I should think so."
They let a moment pass in silence. Then Cid rolled onto his side
and looked at him. "Well?"
Cloud was with Vincent the day their world was destroyed. By
chance, they'd met at a weapons dealer's shop. Vincent had been
buying ammo, and Cloud had been looking for a birthday present for
Tifa. They'd been talking when all hell broke lose.
They ran through the city, helping everyone they could. Far ahead,
Cloud saw the Highwind's engines fire to life. He turned to
Vincent--who should have been just behind him--and saw him running
back the way they'd come.
There was a boy there. Cloud remembered him with perfect clarity.
He couldn't have been more than five or six, his hair was an unusual silvery
white, and he was being swallowed up by the Darkness. Instead of
panicking or struggling, the boy was still, letting the Darkness ebb
and flow around him. And the Darkness seemed strangely slow to
take him. It had only coiled itself around his left leg when
Vincent reached him.
Vincent grabbed the boy's shoulder, and Cloud saw the boy's eyes for
the first time. They were a luminous Mako green. A tidal wave of
Darkness suddenly welled up around them, and Cloud flung himself
after them. "Vincent!" he shouted. "Don't--"
He'd woken up in the Underworld, Vincent's cloak and gauntlet beside
him.
"The day the Darkness came," Cloud said, "I was somehow thrown into
the Underworld."
"No shit?"
"No shit, I swear."
"Fuck..."
Cloud smiled at Cid's eloquence. Some things never changed.
"It wasn't bad. It felt... a lot like being in the
Lifestream."
"Huh."
"Like maybe the Underworld is just a gathering place for many
planets' Lifestreams... or something. I don't know, I don't think
we're supposed to understand it."
"But you weren't dead?"
"No," Cloud said. "I wasn't. But..." How did one explain
it?
"Hey, kid, don't clam up on me now, okay?"
Cloud traced the shingles under his hands. The corner of one was
broken, and he rubbed his thumb over it until splinters bit into
his skin.
"I wanted--I thought... I thought I should stay there. Because of
Aerith and Sephiroth and... all that business. I thought I belonged
there with them."
Cid sat up. "But Aerith--"
"She wasn't there. She should have been there--I should have been
able to find her."
It had been ages before he accepted that Aerith simply wasn't there.
And then there had been dealing with Hades...
"I guess the destruction of a world creates too great an influx for
the Underworld to handle all at once. It took them a while to sort
out who belonged there and who didn't. And then Hades packed up all
of us misfits to ship us out."
"You met Hades himself?"
More than just met, but that was another story, for another
day.
"Yes," Cloud said. "I did. Anyway, one of the misfits was this
strange little man. He called himself Doctor Odine, and you
wouldn't believe it, but he made Hojo seem perfectly
normal."
"Damn right, I wouldn't."
"He looked like a circus freak, but he was a scientist. He told me
this story about time compression that was..." Cloud stopped and
tugged on a lock of his hair. "I don't know. Either it was
absolutely brilliant or it was the stupidest thing I have ever
heard."
"'Time compression'?"
"That's what he called it. But now, he was studying... 'The Effects
of Darkness-Induced Dimensional Rifts on Space, Time, and
Causality.'"
"What the fuck does that mean?"
"I don't know. I might not have gotten it right, but he had this
theory--"
Cloud grabbed Vincent's cloak and rolled it into a tight ball.
"Okay, this is the Darkness." He tossed it to Cid.
"No," Cid said. "This is a ragged old cape."
"Look, will you just play along?"
Cid tossed the ball high. It unfurled in the air and fluttered back
down, spreading over Cid's legs much like the Darkness
might.
"Okay, Leader, I'll play."
He hadn't been called that in a long time. Cloud swallowed.
"When Darkness eats away at a planet, it starts small and gets
bigger." Cloud tapped the cloak.
"Duh," Cid said.
"Dr. Odine's theory was that Darkness expanded on more than three
dimensions."
"Huh?"
"That while it's spreading geographically over a planet, it's also
eating its way--backwards and forwards--through Time."
Cid blinked.
"And at the... I think he called it the horizon?" Cloud held out the
hem of the cloak. "At the Darkness's horizon, two adjacent points
may actually be at two completely different times.
"But," Cloud rushed on before Cid could speak. "Past, present, and
future can interact at the horizon because of their physical
proximity."
"And you think he's right?"
Cloud hadn't, but... He pointed to a spot on the hem. "Twelve
years after we defeated Sephiroth."
He moved his finger a centimeter over. "One year after we defeated
Sephiroth. That's when I think our world was destroyed," he
explained.
He moved his finger again. "Well before Yuffie first met us." And
again. "When Sephiroth was five years old."
"What does Sephiroth have to do with this?" Cid asked.
Cloud dropped the cloak into Cid's lap. "Maybe nothing."
"And if this doc is right, that means--"
"We're fucked," Cloud said.