Chapter 3

Falling

—

Oh Hell, I'm no good at this...

Cloud stood hesitantly at the door of a run-down stone hut which was marred with the black scorch marks of a Mako explosion. He had been pacing in front of the door for over an hour, practicing the long over-due speech he would deliver to the parents of his dead friend.

'Mr. and Mrs. Morse, I'm sorry to tell you this, but your son has been dead for over seven years...' No, no, that's too blunt. How to break it slowly...

Cloud sighed as he ran his gloved hand through his disheveled hair and began to re-trace his well-worn path in the ground in front of the house. He stared down at the dusty ground, as if it could offer an answer.

Zack...Zack was...he was brave, strong...saved my life...flirted with my girlfriend...

Cloud scowled at himself. He needed to concentrate, but all he could think about was Tifa.

She was never my girlfriend, I blew that chance a long time ago.

Cloud stopped pacing as his thoughts wandered off again. He wondered where she was, and what she was doing right now. He hadn't even asked what she was going to do after the war against Sephiroth was over.He had been too busy planning their adventure together.

Cloud's frown deepened as he rememberedthat he was now alone and it was all his fault. The words "If only I had asked her sooner" had been plaguing his mind for the past five years, since he was sixteen years old and saw her growing closer to Zack.

And why shouldn't she? he thought to himself sourly. The man was attractive, cool, strong... everything that I wasn't... and it's no one's fault but mine.

As Cloud stood lost in his bittermusings, the door to the hut slowly opened, revealing a dusty-looking, haggard old man leaning on a knobbed cane.Cloud snapped out of his reverie as he heard the creaking reluctance of the opening door. The old man smiled when hesaw the startled expression in the clear blue eyes that seemed to radiate the greenish glow of Mako– the eyes that reminded him so much of his son.

"Ah, the SOLDIER boy, come in, come in," gestured the old man with his heavily wrinkled hand, a broad smile overtaking his entire face.

Cloud managed a small, sad smile for the old man's sake as he stepped beyond the threshold, dreading that the words he was inevitably going to have to say would strip the old man of his benevolent smile forever.

—

Three hours later, Cloud was slumped over a bar stool, his face pressed to the sticky surfaceof the counter. His fingers lazily traced the rim of his sixth seven and seven as his vacant eyes stared unseeing across the bar. The tiny bar, like everything else in Gonaga, was falling apart and practically void of life. The bar keeper stood watching him from a distance with pursed lips and slowly shook his head. Cloud didn't care. Cloud didn't care about anything in the world as he sat in a drunken stupor, not even trying to make sense of the distorted shapes and muffled sounds around him.

A vague shadow of a thought passed through his hazy mind, and his innate soldier sense detected the opening and closing of the entrance door. Distantly, he knew that a solid figurewas now sitting on his left side, but Cloud ignored this thought. He closed his eyes and began humming to himself, a song he had heard long ago while he was hiding under the window of a certain girl's bedroom.

"Ah, Highwind," croaked a brittle, dry voice.

Cloud's eyes opened wide for a moment and he ceased to hum.Astonishment quickly turned to annoyance as Cloud's eyes narrowed, but he didn't acknowledge the stranger in any other way.

"Some pretty young girl teach you that song?" Inquired the man's voice, jestingly.

Cloud, with more agility than a cactuar, leaptfrom his drunken stupor, sending his bar stool flying across the room as his fist closed around the man's neck. Cloud panted with the effort of the sudden movement as he glared at the figure and felt its calmly beating heart beneath his fingertips.

The figure flinched, but otherwise remained still, seemingly unperturbed by Cloud's menacing grip. Cloud could not see the man's face, as his body was clad in a black robe from head to foot with a heavy hood shielding his face from view.

The man laughed– a dry, hoarse laugh that Cloud's quickly clearing mind found dimly familiar. The man saw the confusion passing over Cloud's face and laughed again, only prompting Cloud's fist to tighten.

"And who the hell are you?" Cloud asked slowly through gritted teeth.

The bar keeper, after seeing the menace writhing through Cloud's features, had been slowly creeping toward the door and now ran through it, leaving the two men alone in the dingy bar. The aura of a smile seemed to surround the cloaked man as he cleared his throat under the ever-tightening grip of Cloud's hand.

"Just an old man," the brittle voice answered. "Just wanting a drink, like you."

Cloud stood, glaring at him for several silent moments longer before throwing his hand away from the man's neck in disgust. He pulled up another stool and grumpily sat down on it, paying no more attention to the cloaked man.He buried his head in his arms on the counter.

"My, do you treat all strangers you meet with such manners?" the man asked with a slight air of sarcasm. He produced a flask from underneath his robes and unscrewed the cap. Cloud ignored him.

"Really," the man continued, "I meant no harm. One can hardly blame you for your present condition, however..." The man trailed off, seemingly waiting for Cloud's reaction. There was none.

The man took a quick drink from his flask and cleared his throat, directing his voice across the bar.

"So how did they take it? The boy's parents, I mean."

Cloud's hidden face pinched into an expression of annoyance again at the man's instance of bringing up painful memories. He briefly wondered how this man knew of the nature of his visit, but then again, if he was among the town's fifty-odd occupants, then it was entirely natural that the news could have spread to him already.

Unfazed by Cloud's stoic silence, the man took another swig from his flask and continued on as if he were having a conversation with the empty shot glasses.

"Yep, mighty sad thing, to hold on to hope for so many years only to hear the cold hard truth in several minutes.It ain't an unfamiliar truth, though, is it?"

Cloud sighed, weary of this man's pathetic attempts at subtle accusation. If he was trying to prove a point, he might as well get to it.

"Why the hell do you care, old man?" Cloud asked with his eyes tightly shut. He rose from his position on the counter and rubbing his temples with his fingertips.

"Friend of the family," the man replied dryly before taking another drink. "I was just wondering why you took all the trouble to tell them? I mean," he continued, his voice gathering a tone of accusation. "Would it have been so bad to just let the old couple live out their days in wondering bliss than to have to end life with the knowledge that all they had held on to for so many years was impossible?"

"Dammit!" Cloud shouted, pounding his fist to the counter. "What difference does it make! At least they don't have to wonder now! At least they know the truth instead of constantly second-guessing themselves!" Cloud turned to look at the man, his face easing from contorted rage to the pained lines of sorrow.

"It was my duty," he continued, "as the only one who knew of Zack's death, to tell his parents. It's all that I could do..." Cloud closed his eyes in pain and cradled his aching head in his hands.

"Ah, but I think that it was the least that you could do. You couldn't face the truth in your own life, so you had to force it upon someone else," the cloaked man said quietly."The truth of loss, the truth of pain..."

Cloud slowly let go of his head and stared steadily at the cloaked figure.

"You know what I mean, don't you?" the man continued. "You ran away from your truth, but you thought that you could even out the guilt by giving a form of that truth to someone else. Trading one person for another, as long as it wasn't you who was suffering..."

Cloud's anger began to boil up inside him again, and he clenched his fists together. The cloaked man saw this and shook his covered head.

"Don't be angry at me, it was you who chose this path. You were the one who let her go without seeking the truth."

A ferocious cry of anger erupted from Cloud's mouth as he grabbed one of the empty glasses from the counter and hurled it against the wall. He stared at the shattered glass, his intoxicated mind reeling from the sudden movement as much as the sudden revelation. The fact that the man somehow knew of how he had left Tifa didn't register in his mind as much did his own guilt.

Cloud staggered as he tried to get up and lurch toward the door, clutching his head that was rent with the piercing effects of alcohol and guilt. He thrust the door of the bar open into the sharp, coldness of the air that cut into his warm lungs.His foot caught on the threshold and he sprawledinto the dirt.

In another fit of frustration and anger, he threw himself and his anger at everything in reach– tearing his clothes and his hair, beating the trunks of trees while tears streamed down his face. He screamed like a mad animal, not bothering to try to choke back the sobs that racked his body. The shadow of the cloaked man stood silently in the doorway, watching him when he fell to his knees in the dirt.

"I can help you find her again," the voice said quietly.