Cats in the Cradle

Three Years Later

Alone, in the dark corner with his coat covering his face and the drink coursing through his blood was Cloud Strife, not the man he once was. His once golden hair was now mattered with dirt and it no longer held its spike, it hung lifeless over his illumine eyes that were the only part of his body that still looked alive. His face was drawn, crow's feet clung to his eyes and his lips cracked. His appearance often startled passers by, the shadow with glowing eyes that peered into your soul. Even his own team had abandoned him, his friends. At first they looked after him, bailed him out of the trouble that the drink would land him in, but one by one they lost faith in his sanity. Soon it was only Tifa that stayed with him, lending her house to him, lending even her most precious possession to him, her body, her virginity, even as she knew in her heart that she was nowhere to be seen in his eyes. All he saw was his lost one, the one that died.

But Tifa stayed with him, hoping that one day he would wake up from his eternal nightmare. He would wake up and see that Tifa was with him all the time. She was the one who looked after him, who needed him. But it never happened. Cloud began to drink more and more, to see things that weren't there. He talked to her, entire one sided conversations, he touched her when nothing was there, and he called out her name when he released himself inside Tifa. Finally, Tifa herself lost faith in the man she tried to love.

After that, Cloud Strife lived as if he were unable to die; drinking more than one man should be able to. In the bar he got into drunken fights with anyone would look at him, breaking bones with lethal force even in his drunken state. Often waking up in streets he couldn't name with the sun far too bright in his sensitive eyes, he'd stumble back to the bar and spend the entire day in the shady corner ignoring the looks he got from everyone. Nobody else mattered; the only eyes that truly saw him were the emeralds that followed him everywhere he went, looking on him with pity, looking on him without hope for his redemption.

By Daze Riot