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21. Cloud: Transient

Cloud drifted. He couldn't be sure for how long, or even where he was in the real world. In his mind he drifted like flotsam on the tide. Sometimes he was aware of shifting, jolting, or stinging pain that came and went. Sometimes he even registered voices and pulled himself high enough to peep out over the rim of his own consciousness. Eventually he always fell back, and the memories of what he'd seen and heard dissolved in the tide as he went drifting again.

He imagined he was a little kid. Nibelheim, his mind whispered. Nibelheim. There was something important about the town, but he couldn't grasp what, so he went backwards in his thoughts trying to find it. He kicked snow, climbed trees, crossed that damn rickety bridge with Tifa and listened to the bellows of tupping dragons, wyverns and other things from the forest late at night.

He used to lie in bed and listen to them, wondering whether he'd ever go on a dragon hunt. You had to be tough to hunt dragons. Even if the men did let him go, would he die like his dad? People always said he was useless. They called him weak and stupid, even though he wasn't. Well, not stupid, at least, and he'd worked all his life not to appear weak. Still people compared him to his father, and never in a good way, which always made his mother saddest.

Her face undulated into view like a pond after a rock had been thrown into it. Her smile, her cheeks, her hair rippled into view, as she held out her ladle and said something … something Cloud couldn't hear properly …

"Mom?" He tried to go to her, but she pulled away without actually moving her legs. He tried again, but she kept moving away from him. He started to run, but she was fading, darkness invading the space where she'd been. "Mom!"

Flames erupted around him. Cloud threw up his arms, but they didn't burn. He tried to go through, but it was like fighting a strong current. He was borne back and couldn't see his mother any more.

"Mom!" He sounded desperate now. For some reason he wanted – no, needed – to see her again. It was vital and he couldn't say why. "Mom! Mom!"

"… say something?" echoed a voice from someplace distant.

Cloud drew a breath that wasn't really a breath. "MOM!"

"… lips are definitely …"

"… increased brain activity …."

He sank back, suddenly exhausted and unable to reach his mother no matter how hard he tried. The midge-like voices kept buzzing, but he wasn't listening. They were random thoughts, nothing worth taking any notice of – not compared to the sudden weight in his chest. He felt bereft, but he couldn't remember why.

Something had happened. Something terrible. To his mother? To himself? To someone else important to him?

All of the above?

"… more docile specimen …"

"… kidding? It's practically dormant …"

Nibelheim. He had to try harder to remember why that was significant. What had happened there? And where was he right now? What was going on? Yet each time he grabbed for the thoughts they liquefied and ran through his fingers like he was trying to grab handfuls of water.

Cloud drifted, still searching for answers that slipped farther and farther out of reach.