He awakens in a dark room with the hum of machinery all around. There are things in his arm, needles, and he tears them out. He's lying on an uncomfortable cot, and he's wearing someone else's shirt that smells like cigarettes. But at least the Mako is gone. Yes, he rubs his forearms. It's all gone, except a trace beneath his fingernails. All gone, except the parts floating inside him.
He still feels sick, a wash of intense nausea that seems to emanate from every organ. This is Mako poisoning. He's felt it before when he woke up in the Shinra Tower once. Or twice. How many times had he woken up there, with the professor's lenses gleaming under a bright light?
He's not in the Shinra Tower now. It comes back in pieces like scattered photographs out of order. He was in Nibelheim, talking to… no, he was in an ancient city with structures that spiraled like seashells. Then, he was in a glacial landscape. And a seaside port.
Then it strikes him full force. He jolts upright.
"Tifa!" She'd fallen into a churning pool of pure Mako. Pure poison. His head hurts. He must've fallen in, too. No, that's not right. He jumped. He couldn't bear to think of her drowning in it.
And then what? Sudden sequences assault him. He remembers, in keen detail, the Nibel Reactor now. He'd stabbed Sephiroth in the back. He'd knelt by Tifa's side. He'd...been killed. He remembers dying; what a strange thought.
And he remembers the basement. The Shinra Mansion thrives with inexplicable agony. Jenova had become one with him there. It created him out of a husk.
He releases a breath and cradles his head in the darkness.
This must be an airship. Shinra-issue by the looks of it. The single port window shows moonlit clouds, but he can't see the ground, can't tell where they could be headed. Why does Shinra have him again? He recalls pulling Tifa out of the Mako, dragging her onto sand and dirt, and then waking to a terrible earthquake. A Weapon was digging and burrowing and destroying. He had to fight it; that was his mission.
"Tifa…" She must be nearby. He must've passed out, and Shinra picked them up.
He'd been working with them, he knows. The drones walked alongside him in Mideel. It's all a sickening blur, the head of that civilian popping like a cherry under the HK's guns, splattering across his uniform. He looks down and sees wires connected to monitoring devices taped to his chest. He rips those off, too. His eyes adjust to the dimness. He would turn on the light, but that could alert Shinra to his status. They don't have him restrained, which is good. That means they think he's still under their control.
He sighs. Their control meant death, he recalls now. The north crater collapsed when the Weapons emerged, and Hojo had… He'd awoken at the Shinra Tower, but he remembers dying. The pain of it. The endless crushing restraint of darkness growing darker, muscles fading into unresponsiveness. Panic firing off as survival instincts malfunction. Dying.
But it's over. He's awake now, and he must find Tifa.
Sliding off the cot, he touches bare feet to tepid wood. The slight vibration means he is far from the engine room. This must be a very large airship. The one in Junon, perhaps, though the sapphire-skinned Weapon had destroyed that city. Tifa had been there, too. She is a satellite to him, and though he doesn't believe in fate, he can't help but feel that the universe draws them together. Cait Sith was wrong, he thinks, about Aerith and… She floods back to him, too. And guilt puddles in his stomach. He should've grabbed her at the northern crater when he had the chance, wrenched her away from that Zack facsimile. But he'd felt compelled to obey it. He couldn't have stopped himself, even if he wanted to. And he hadn't wanted to. Handing over the Black Materia had felt right and natural. It was the only way to make the itching in his veins stop.
He presses to the door, a simple thin piece of wood, and listens. He hears nothing in the corridor. He tests the doorknob. Unlocked. There's an electric panel to the side, but it's offline. Very strange.
Cloud opens the door. The hall is narrow and lit with blue tracks in the ceiling. Everything is quiet. He slips out, closing the door behind him. In either direction are more doors, all closed, and he has no clue where to begin searching for her. She would be a prisoner, which is likely on the lower levels. He scours for signage.
The Shinra logo is rubbed off on most decks as he descends the tight spiral stairwells. He encounters no crew, and there's an inactive drone propped on an engineer's bench in one area, wires and wafer-thin circuit boards splayed out like guts.
Nothing about this place feels like Shinra. The urgency to find Tifa escalates because it's possible he's with a new enemy altogether.
And what if they've already executed her? His heart constricts. No, he'd know if she was dead. There is no reason behind this fantastical logic, only that he refuses to believe she could be dead. But if he can't find her... Then he'll get the hell off this ship, find Barret, and beg for forgiveness. He'd seen Barret in Mideel, hadn't known him at the time. His orders were to terminate, and he would've done it. He wouldn't have felt remorse because this was war, Rufus had explained. It was luck that Barret had gotten away when the ruby Weapon attacked.
Ahead, there's a light on. This deck is for crew quarters with a mess hall at the end, and someone is rummaging around down there. He wants to see if it's a Shinra MP or some other unsavory character.
With his back against the wall, he peers into the mess hall. And all the air leaves his lungs.
Tifa is brewing a cup of instant coffee turned away from the doorway. She's unaware of him, stirring the mug with a plastic straw. Her fingers tap against the counter.
"Tifa," he says through a smile. Relief buoys every cell.
She turns and spills the mug, steaming coffee well forgotten.
"Cloud!" She dives at him, wrapping arms around his ribs, squeezing. And squeezing.
His arms go around her. He inhales the smell of her hair, her skin. He kisses her cheek, her temple.
"You're okay!" she says. "You're awake!"
"Yes," he replies. "And we have to get off this ship. I think I saw signs for emergency landing pods. We can detach one of those, and—"
"What? No, no." She begins laughing. "This is the Highwind, Cloud. We're safe."
He pauses, racking his brain for any reason why those two sentences should make sense.
"Cid stole it," she relays. "This is our ship, not Shinra's."
He feels very foolish. Of course, that explains the lax security measures, the inadequate staffing, the scrubbed logo. And Tifa was never in danger.
"Oh," he says. "That's great. And you're… you're fine."
She nods. "I'm fine, but you were poisoned by the Mako. The medical aid told us it could take months for you to recover."
Months, maybe, for a normal person. He wants to share her enthusiasm, but his miraculous recovery only exemplifies their differences.
"I've...been poisoned before," he says, rubbing a hand through his hair. "By Mako, I mean."
"Right, of course," she says. "That explains the eyes." It's a joke, but a nervous one. He doesn't want her to feel nervous with him.
"It's okay," he says, keeping her close. "I'm not human. We know that now. No sense in hiding."
Her lips press in a smile, but her eyes are sorrowful. Maybe apprehensive. He expects her to let go in revulsion, but she doesn't. Her fingers tighten around his shoulders.
"I know. That's what saved us. If you weren't part of...Jenova, then the Lifestream would've killed us both. We'd be cycling around in the Planet right now."
Instead, they were treated to the intimate horrors of his mind. He glances away.
"I'm sorry about what you saw. Especially that basement."
She pauses, then, "It was scary, I admit. I never thought… What you had to endure…" but she can't finish those words. "You aren't like that thing we encountered at the northern crater. You aren't like Sephiroth."
He waits for her to ask it: What are you?
"Is everyone else on board, too?" he asks.
All except Vincent, Tifa explains. And Cid is looking for a way to keep in touch with Reeve.
"Who?"
She waves it away. Explanations later. The rest of the group needs to know he's awake.
"How long was I out?"
Two days. Well, three since it's nearing morning. She releases him and heads off towards the corridors.
"Wait," he says. He doesn't want this soft, undisturbed time with her to end. "Can we wait to wake everyone else up?"
"Why? Are you still feeling ill?"
"No, it's just…" He takes a deep breath. "I'm just glad you're okay. I don't know what to say to the others yet."
A quiet moment passes. She's studying him, peering into him.
"It's really you, isn't it?" she whispers. "The one in the basement."
He nods. "Yes." And I remember everything, he wants to say. Every excruciating detail pushed away before. The laboratory, the Mako in his lungs, the sword severing his insides. "How did you do it?" he asks.
"Find you?"
"Put the past together. Those memories…"
"Zack's, I suppose."
"And Sephiroth's."
"What were they both doing in your head?"
He isn't sure, but he has an idea. "We were inside the Lifestream… You must've heard an echo of him. But somehow you pieced it together. How?"
There must be a sound method of retrieval, should he need it in the future.
Tifa doesn't have a good answer. Within the mess of his consciousness, she'd floundered.
"Until I met you, the one in the mansion."
He flinches. That scene brings phantom needles into his chest, staggered injections. It would be best if it all remained buried, but then he would lose himself again.
Once she understood what he was missing, she explains, the truth presented itself to her.
"As if it wanted my help."
"Of course I did," he replies, unsatisfied but knowing the facilitation of her discovery may very well remain a mystery. Then he remembers something else. "But, Tifa… there's more."
"What is it?"
He looks to the windows. Small round ports overlook dark clouds. He finds the meteor easy enough; it's larger than the moon and distorts the atmosphere in shimmers of vermillion.
Tifa stands beside him. "It's not your fault," she says, except it is. But that's not why he called her over.
"When I gave the Black Materia to Sephiroth, we connected. My cells picked up information from his, and I saw something. Through Jenova."
She gives him a cautious look. Might as well tell her the worst of it.
"That isn't a meteor," he says. "It's another calamity. Another of her species. That's what is summoned. That's what wounds the Planet into catastrophe."
Tifa becomes very quiet, eyes fixated on the meteor. She clutches Cloud's forearm.
"But we can stop it, right? You can...communicate with it somehow."
"No, Tifa."
Panic tightens her arm to his. "There must be some way. If it reaches the Planet… That first calamity destroyed the Cetra."
"Almost, yes."
"So this one could cause another mass extinction event." She pauses, one hand creeping towards her mouth in shock. "We cannot let that happen."
"There's no choice."
"There must be."
Cloud says nothing for a while. Tifa is defiant and hopeful, but he's seen the history of Jenova within her ancient cells. A millennium of frozen data is alive in him.
"The Cetra stopped Jenova," Tifa continues, desperate. She blinks fast.
"They subdued her," Cloud corrects. "I'm...sorry, Tif."
Then he recalls a white forest, luminous tree trunks of pale twilight.
"Aerith spoke of a balance," he says, wanting to give her something to hold onto. He can't stand to break her like this. "She believed her materia was the source of rejuvenation after a cleansing like the Black Materia."
"Cleansing? You mean annihilation."
"The ultimate destruction magic," Cloud agrees. "We need to find Aerith and her materia. It may be the only way to protect the Planet."
Tifa nods and regains her composure, soothed by this possibility. The future is no longer hopeless.
"The team has been trying to figure out a way into the crater," she says.
"Yeah, I know it's sealed by an energy field. Aerith is inside, I'm sure of it. And Shinra plans to relocate the Junon Sister Ray into Midgar to utilize the remaining Reactors there. They expect it to be powerful enough to crack the barrier."
The intimate knowledge of Shinra's plans reminds them both of how recently he was entrenched in their corporate bloodstream. He clears his throat.
"I was in Midgar before finding you, and the cannon hadn't arrived yet," he says.
"So there's no way through that barrier."
Cloud shrugs. "I don't know."
They watch the meteor together. The airship hums along, indifferent to the turmoil cascading through Cloud as the last few (days?) hours collide and merge. All those splintered fragments of the dead boy from Nibelheim and the recreated SOLDIER from Shinra have become a single thread, thanks to Tifa. A miracle, he thinks. He could've been amnestic forever, existing as only a sharp blade in Shinra's arsenal. He'd been so close to that edge. So damn close.
"Tifa."
She turns to him, worry passing over her features.
"Thank you," he says. He doesn't know what more to say. There's so much he wishes he could express, but everything comes up short.
So he kisses her. Along the windows, he holds her, feeling every ounce pressed onto him. But her muscles remain tense, and he releases her, realizing it will take time for her to stop seeing him as what he truly is: an infection spread atop necrotic skin. Needles, and organic material from the stars.
"I'm sorry," he says.
She rubs her arm.
"You're afraid of me," he infers.
She interlaces fingers with his.
"I was," she says, looking down at his knuckles. "I was, at first. But after all we've been through… I think you're more human than you realize."
Could Hojo have been lying? Unlikely, given the void of Cloud's life before the basement, the searing memories of death, the unexplainable link to Sephiroth and Aerith. No, he knows that Hojo isn't wrong. Yet an inkling of doubt remains. Is that memory of his promise with Tifa simply a misfiring of copied chemicals? Perhaps.
"You aren't like Jenova," she says.
A perfect mimic, he thinks, but there's no way to be sure. Shinra monopolizes that research, and the only specimens in the world are at the northern crater and inside him.
She looks up at him. The burnt outline of the meteor crests into view behind her.
"I need to tell you something else," he decides. "Aerith also carries Jenova cells."
It should've been harder to tell her, but mental exhaustion robs him of apprehension.
Tifa goes silent, rubbing his hand hard. "Oh," she says after a moment. "Oh…"
"And I think Sephiroth has the ability to manipulate or coerce her."
There was a transfer of knowledge in that millisecond when they both touched the Black Materia. He glimpsed Sephiroth's raw anger, his insanity, his desire to wound the Planet and reset all life because that's what Jenova would want. Except Cloud's experience with Jenova is not at all similar. She is a warm mother, and perhaps the Black Materia originated as a cleansing ritual until Sephiroth warped its purpose.
"How? Can he do that to you?" Tifa asks in alarm.
This never occurred to Cloud. The compulsion he felt at the north crater he attributed to Jenova, not Sephiroth. The urge to follow and confront the dead General… wasn't that vengeance?
"I...don't know," Cloud admits. "I don't think so."
"We have to find her."
"Except there's another problem." Cloud hates being the continual bearer of bad news. "The Mako cannon in Midgar is going to pull a lot of energy out of the Planet."
"So it could break the barrier."
"It's going to attract a Weapon."
Tifa blinks. "How can you know this?"
He rolls a shoulder with discomfort, a gesture that doesn't soothe without the usual weight on his back.
"Shinra was tracking the Weapons, and we think—they think—they are attracted to Mako."
He watches the information process in her.
"The underwater Reactor at Junon," he recites. "The shores of shallow Lifestream beneath Mideel. And now, Midgar."
"If Shinra knows this, what are they doing to protect the city?"
Cloud doesn't need to respond. Tifa almost laughs.
"Of course they don't care about the city…" she says in dismay.
"With all Reactors pushed beyond capacity to power the cannon, I think it's very possible Midgar is where the next Weapon will attack."
Tifa's shoulders slump. "So, we need to defend the city. Protect the cannon. I can't believe I'm saying this. We have to protect Shinra."
He nods, though he doesn't like it any more than she does.
"Is there any other way through that barrier?"
He can't think of anything. "I've tried to reach out to Aerith, to find her where we spoke before. But she's gone."
All of this information is crushing Tifa, he can tell. He squeezes her hand.
"What were you doing in Mideel?" he asks.
"Trying to contact Aerith," she sighs. "Nanaki thought maybe we could use the Lifestream to convey a message. But it seems you and I fell into it, and we had no such luck."
"Nope," he agrees and brushes hair away from her cheek. He wants to kiss her again.
"We need to wake the others. Tell them everything you've said about Aerith and Sephiroth, the Weapons and Midgar. Seems we need to defend the city. And hope Shinra eliminates that barrier."
"I don't want to wake them up yet." This time feels scarce and precious. He feels as if his real self is finally interacting with her. No urgent pressure to follow a dead man across the globe. No underlying itch to uncover some forsaken truth. "Let everyone have a few more hours of rest."
It will be dawn soon, he notices out the windows.
"Let's just have this time together."
She's hesitant.
"I'm actually pretty hungry," he says. "And thirsty. Anything good to eat around here?"
The change of subject relaxes her. She smirks.
"Not unless you enjoy stockpiles of freeze-dried rations."
He doesn't. Nobody does, but he smiles and laughs and tells her that's exactly what sounds good right now.
Anything sounds good aside from facing tomorrow. He wants to stay here forever, drinking coffee and eating terrible crumbly paper-wrapped meals. They sit and talk about Yuffie's antics and Barret's grumblings, and for a moment, he does feel human. He forgets about the divide between them and enjoys listening to her voice, watching her eyes. She is vibrant and beautiful, and something has convinced her that he's worth saving. He doesn't know what love feels like, but it must be close to whatever this is.
All the questions swirling in his head, around his condition and the fear of losing himself again, go on pause. For now, it's just him and Tifa. It seems impossible that he could have ever forgotten this bond.
