A/N: Aheh. Been a while, huh?
56. Cloud: Drifting
Cloud was caught between some semblance of dreaming and waking. Mostly he sank into velvet nothingness, insensate to the world. It was better down here in the dark. In the dark, bad things couldn't get you. How strange that children were always so afraid of monsters lurked in the shadows. As Cloud had long since learned, monsters roamed freely in the light. In the dark they could still get you, but at least the gloom cushioned you against the pain they brought with them.
Now and then discourteous pockets of reality intruded. A long time ago he used to claw for them, before his survival instinct realised it was better not to know what was going on outside. He swam away from those flashes of sensation, sinking deeper into comfortable oblivion. Cold air on bare skin, a hand on his scalp, the smell of … something. Blood?
No, no, no! He was safe down here in the dark. He didn't want to be in the light where the monsters cut and sliced and peeled and laughed. If he stayed useless, they didn't come for him so much.
Coward, whispered some distant voice. It sounded like his own.
He wasn't able to think back in words anymore. They floated away in pieces, random syllables and guttural noises that made even less sense than the reality flashes.
Coward. Coward. Coward!
He swam deeper, trying to escape everything – including the ghost of who he used to be.
Unfortunately, as he might have been able to realise had he been more sentient, life moved in circles. Everything is curved lines, cyclical structures and rotations that bring the end back to the start back to the end back to the start again. So it was that he somehow reached a nexus point within himself and crossed right through, emerging on the other side of the darkness where the surface loomed brighter.
"… sometimes I wonder whether I could've done things different in Nibelheim …"
What?
"… all got regrets …"
What was that?
"… shouldn't have let him go into the mansion archives …"
Was that his voice again?
" … but seriously, who leaves documents like that lying around unsecured for someone like Sephiroth to just pick up and read like it's not going to drive him batshit? I ask you …"
He was too deep for it to be anyone else.
"… should've sent you away at the first sign of trouble, buddy …"
What was this?
"… just stood there next to that stupid JENOVA tank like … like he was some totally different person, not the SOLDIER I knew at all …"
JENOVA. Images detonated. Blue skin. Bubbles in glowing liquid. A single baleful eye. A sweep of silver hair. Pain. So much pain. His entire gut was on fire with it. And that name. Sephiroth.
"What? Cloud, did you … did you just say something?"
Flames. Pain. Sephiroth. JENOVA. Flames. SOLDIER. Pain. Sephiroth.
"… Cloud? Cloud! Can you hear me in there? It's me, Zack. Come on, buddy. Please let today be the day…"
Flames and pain and Sephiroth and JENOVA and pain and SOLDIER and flames and Cloud and Zack and Sephiroth and JENOVA and SOLDIER and Zack and flames and painpainPAINPAIN!
He retreated, flailing back into the deeper dark, trailing half-real thoughts like torn gossamer. Bits of consciousness stuck to him, settling over him as he cowered away from the light.
SOLDIER.
Zack.
Sephiroth.
Pain.
"… Cloud? Please …"
Cloud.
SOLDIER.
Sephiroth.
Pain.
SOLDIER.
Cloud.
SOLDIER.
Cloud.
SOLDIER.
Cloud …