Part 2: Remember
When Cloud drifts into consciousness, the sky will be coloured by blood. He will have known the answer once but will have lost it somewhere along the way. He will know he must accept the blood. His body will make room for that weight. (All of it will be his to own up to.)
A rose he will have known will have bled this much.
When he regresses he will be covered in it. (Blood will not rain from a
"Cloud!"
as easily as water would.)
He will curse and spit and know that he has been found only because he will have allowed himself to carelessly look up. He will have looked to the rivers of blood flowing between the dimming stars on
"Hi!"
and will have forgotten the intention of looking away. He will be partially lost of beauty and found of grace, and will urge blood to be paid in an unusual, impossible way. (Fingernails. Eyelashes. He will be true to the term 'impossible.') When he loses himself in memory he will tell himself it is only because he must remember
"What's up?"
in the sky; what will be watching him with critical eye. He will be watched, and the eyes will quite often be his own. The pained stare of she who will have taken blood from herself and forced the blame on him.
(He will have accepted the blame because it will have offered closure.) He will watch anxiously and his eyes will be bright for no reason. (Always bright for a reason he will not forget but will think of as nothing, if only for the salvation of reasoning.) When he sees an unchanging picture he will wonder if he deserves it. Green eyes, not as bright but more soulful, will smile at him. They will go to watch the unpaired wing he will bear, the wing he will distinctly remember the significance of.
He will see no malice in green eyes but will wonder why it is that, though
"I've been working hard this whole time..."
for a cause he will have deemed worthy, the only thing he will have found is more of that impure green and dirt. (A patch of bloody flowers.) He will feel
"...so exhausted."
after aching for redemption and repenting to an empty cause. (He will be the very cause of its emptiness.) It will be by his own choice. He will not know. He will accept time in the present. (Remember the past and acknowledge the future.) He will know the future will always be more of the same. He will catch drops of bleeding rain in a flower basket and sell them to his mind. He will be a salesman. And he will feel that
"I seriously hate this."
product that he is selling. (Holy blood. Holy, holy blood. No better deal. Flowers! Flowers! Only one gil.) His mind will slowly empty out its pockets. He will despair over the fact that he will have had gained so much money in a past world, for he will have to spend all of it. (One by one gil.) Every moment will be long; every bloodied flower will be a reminder of her, and his soul will cry as he digs out his life's earnings to buy them. (One deliberate gil at a time.) He will search himself in order to buy himself more pain. The experience will be frighteningly
"...like slave labor!"
and yet he will seek no refuge. He will understand that he can not flee from himself. He will be too afraid of what became of a silver-haired angel with the dirty-green glare, once upon a time. (He will not want to become the same way, so he will stay and endure.)
But he will be happy to know that any pain he inflicts in the future will only be unto himself. He will know it is
"Best not to complain, though..."
and that
"Still, that freaking 'hole..."
ordeal will yet offer hope to him. That is why he will not forget. He will remember. (When he sees the bane of his existence, it will give him hope.) Remembering will let him shower blood on bright flowers and watch them wilt under the weight, then thrive with unknown energy. If there will have been only one time he learned something from her, it will have been when she
"...said to always look on the bright side?"
and to never look away from who he is. (He will see at last the eerie glow they all used to tell him is in his eyes.) He will not enjoy his own company but he will be in it as long as it will take to move the haunting image of silver hair and dirty-green, brown hair and lovely-green away from him. When they move away from view he will be tempted to scream. They will not have left him entirely. They will have left him with a wing he will distinctly remember the significance of.
He will be tempted to scare, and will find that what used to boil,
"My ass!"
-pirations, will have begun to simmer low for to hide from someone's green eyes. He will always remember silver hair and dirty-green, by brown hair and lovely-green, figures that will have been long lost to a "brighter" place. Oblivion. (Oblivion is brighter than this place.) He will not find escape in the life he will have.
He will be forced to create a reason to live.
"So I told him, 'Listen buddy, you can look wherever the hell you want, but the only bright things you'll find anywhere in this dump are Cloud's eyes.' That shut the whiner up real good."
And he will understand that which must be understood. (He will feel the weight of the wing he will distinctly remember the significance of, and
the pointed force of silvergreen thorns on a pink rose too bloodied to admire
he will have remembered the need
to regret. He will have remembered the meaning of misery.)
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