On some level, Cloud was aware that he was dreaming. Even still, the series of memories held him in a death-grip. His nightmares were always bad, but this sort of dream was much rarer. Every emotion, every sensation, he felt it all over again.
He was sitting on the floor of a cell, with his left shoulder pressed up against the wall. He was cold, bruised, and probably bleeding. Zack was crouched in front of him, one hand reaching out to gently grip his shoulder. Suddenly, a voice boomed behind them.
"Alright, you know the drill." An orderly called from outside the cell door. "Opposite walls, right now!"
Zack glanced over his shoulder at the opening door, but didn't move to follow the instructions. He stayed right by Cloud's side.
"Cloud, listen to me. We're gonna get through this, alright? You and me, we're gonna-"
He didn't get to finish what he was about to say. Two orderlies barged into the cell to take them away. One of the men seized Zack by the shoulders and shoved him towards the opposite side of the room. Cloud tried to rush to his friend's aid, but the other guard kicked him in the side of the head. The blow threw his head into the wall next to him.
The gray concrete filled his vision as he tried to push himself up again. His attempted resistance was met with two more blows to his head and another to his ribs. The orderly seized him, yanked him to his feet, and spun the younger man around. Now that he was standing, Cloud could see Zack pinned against the opposite wall by the other guard. He stretched his arms out in a final attempt to reach his friend. He didn't get far before he felt the orderly's arm wrap around his throat to hold him back.
"ZACK!" he cried out, feeling completely helpless.
Without warning, the scene changed. Now, he was being held down to a cold metal table by several orderlies. Fingernails dug into his skin as rough hands strapped his wrists and ankles to the table. He was managing to put up a decent fight, but he knew that it was pointless. Faintly, he could hear Zack putting up a similar fight somewhere off to his left.
Once he had been strapped down, a painfully large needle was inserted into his left forearm. That was when Dr. Hojo's face appeared looking down at him. His lips were curled into a smile, but his eyes held no emotion whatsoever.
"Time to get to work, gentlemen." was all he said.
A familiar hot pain burned through his left arm as the mako made its way through him. His vision blurred with a slightly green tint to it. His body shuddered and convulsed in response to the mako. He could hear himself screaming, and he thought he could hear Zack screaming next to him, too. He thrashed against his restraints as the pain spread throughout his whole body.
All at once, everything stopped. The pain disappeared in an instant as he found himself sitting up in the bed he shared with Tifa. Even though the physical pain was gone, the memory wasn't. He moved over to sit on the side of the bed dangling his feet over the floor. He laid his hands in his lap palms-up as he tried and failed to get his breathing under control.
As he stared down at his wrists, more unwanted visions filled his mind. The harsh fluorescent lights above him. A table of blood-covered medical instruments. Laying on the cell floor reaching out to grab Zack's hand. He shook his head violently to try and clear the memories away.
"Go away!" he whispered to the memories. "Just go away, dammit!"
"Could? What's going on?" Tifa's soft voice came sleepily from behind him.
"I, uh… Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."
Tifa climbed over to his side of the bed so she could sit beside him. She stared at him in silence for a moment, her expression concerned.
"The nightmares again?" she asked tentatively after a while.
He could have tried denying it, but there wasn't any point. "Yeah." He responded weakly while ducking his gaze. He hated when this happened. He hated how weak and pathetic and must have looked to her. Heroes weren't supposed to be like this.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she offered.
No! He screamed on the inside. I don't want to talk about it. I want it to go away and forget it ever happened! But the words came pouring out before he could stop himself.
"It's just… I'm so frustrated. All of that stuff happened years ago, I should be over it by now. So why aren't I? Every time I feel like I'm finally getting better, I go to sleep and I relive all of it. Even now, I can still see it. I can still feel it." His fingers brushed across the little scar on his left forearm from the countless needles. "Why can't it just go away?"
"Cloud…" Tifa trailed off as she seemed to be searching for the right words. "They imprisoned and tortured you for four years. Trauma like that doesn't just go away. Healing takes time, and more importantly, it means taking care of yourself. Trying to bottle it up like this, it doesn't do any good." She patted his shoulder comfortingly.
"I know that, but I don't know how." He confessed as he finally looked up to meet her eyes. His face was more vulnerable than she had ever seen it before. "I wouldn't even know where to start."
"You could start by letting me in. You never really told me what actually happened there."
He didn't want her to know what happened to him. He didn't want to talk about the nights he had spent bloody and broken on a cell floor, crying himself to sleep. He didn't want to burden her with the horrors he had experienced. But maybe he needed to.
So, he started to talk. It was more rambling than talking, really. He jumped from one event to the next, sometimes forgetting details and having to go back and explain over again. Some things he vaguely described while some scenes he divulged every graphic detail. Incoherent as it was, Tifa listened quietly to every word. When he ran out of things to say, they were both in tears. They sat on the edge of the bed, crying into each other's arms until well past the sun came up.
