Trapdoor (Part 17)

by anza (08.12.05)

The train ride up to Nibelheim was quiet.

Half an hour in, Kadaj fell asleep in Cloud's lap. Now, his head was pillowed on his beanie, while Cloud had spread his raincoat over his brother. With a murmur of thanks, Kadaj had pressed his cheek right against Cloud's stomach. The oldest brother had had a hard time not jumping up or shoving his brother to the compartment floor. The only consolation he had was that at the time, Kadaj was so dead to the world he hadn't heard his little gasp of shock and the red he knew spread across his cheeks.

He had put one hand on Kadaj's shoulder to keep him from falling off the narrow seat, and now he brushed his thumb over the rough cloth of his raincoat. Kadaj's breathing was smooth, even, and deep. Cloud yearned to take his finger and stroke down the side of one pale cheek - but instead he stilled his hand, feeling the heat at his fingertips ripple through him.

It was folly. It had always been. Once again, he was struck by the mocking sadness of his misplaced feelings.

Like a child, wanting to cry. Like a bird, wanting to fly. Like watching the world beyond the cage. Cloud was always these things, reaching for the sky, reaching for impossible things. If Vincent had given him the keys to saying no, then he was certainly saying no too much now. There had to be a limit to desire, to feeling so deeply - certainly human propriety, certainly someone out for his safety and reputation, would pull him back before he and Kadaj dropped into that trapdoor.

Kadaj. It would have been better if he hadn't come on this trip at all.

It was because he knew what it was to be left behind. It had been his fault, he didn't deny it - yet Vincent, in all his stoic silence, hadn't said a meep before leaving. And he remembered it, the moment when he reached out and his hand met air instead of the red, red dream he thought he'd been dreaming.

He pitied Kadaj. That's why he was here now, sleeping softly in his lap. He knew what it was to be left behind, discarded, only the tattered once-beloved banner as a landmark in the passage of time.

----------

The train ride up to Nibelheim was long.

It was the bleak morning of the third day. They had stopped twice, but no one had stopped in front of the compartment door or tried to open it, so Cloud's pistol remained where it was, digging into his tailbone. Kadaj had his earphones in, lying horizontally on the seat with closed eyes. Cloud rested one hand against the windowsill and stared at the passing scenery.

There was nothing to do but dream now. But Cloud was reluctant to dream about the future; he decided to go back in time instead of forward.

He remembered his first fight with Kadaj. It had been over a piece of cheesecake, but it was more than that. Cloud had been testing the waters, seeing where he could step, and where he couldn't, and somewhere along the way, he'd stepped on sore spots without knowing.

"You're so damn protective, nii-san! Why can't you leave me alone for a minute!"

Cloud had been dumbstruck. He couldn't imagine wanting to be alone. He recognized that it was him who was wrong, that he was the one who really wanted the attention. It had been about three months in, and when he had quietly noted a mistake on Kadaj's ten-page essay on the difference in experiments that used lead-based placebos and been awarded with a smile...well, he couldn't help but want to see it more. Vincent had smiled, just a little quirk of his mouth, and commented, "You're going to be a slave to them soon." He remembered nodding absently at first, and then vigorously when it sunk in.

Taking his numb, slack face for heartfelt pain, Kadaj had immediately apologized, touching his arm tentatively at first, and then flinging his scrawny arms around his brother's neck. Cloud had been shocked again, but gradually he relaxed, and then melted. Kadaj was quiet, trying to show he was sorry by keeping silent, but Cloud had wished he would say something, that he would just smile that happy smile.

He vowed from that point on that he would never, ever let anything take that away.

----------

Kadaj was asleep again, head in Cloud's lap. Cloud himself couldn't fall asleep; the rattle-clank of the train had kept him awake for more than an a full day already, and he was sure it would keep him up for the few more hours it took to get to Nibelheim. Outside, it was dark, the trees blacker than the night and the stars above. Quietly he placed a hand on Kadaj's shoulder to keep him from falling off the bench completely, and stared out, completely and utterly lost.

The passage of time had been so strange. He hadn't said a word, and yet it seemed twenty-seven years had whisked before his eyes before he could even attempt to open his mouth. Cloud knew that something had happened, though, things that had shaped him into the person he was now. But all of the images blended in his head: school, his mother, the Turks. Vincent with his dark hair, Reeve laughing, Tifa tossing an empty tray like a frisbee at a man who was causing a commotion. Yazoo asleep on his desk from overstudying, the smell of fresh cookies in the oven, the first time he had ridden a motorcycle. A fight between him and Reeve over which company Shin-Ra should buy three centimeter steel screws from, Zack's face and his bright eyes, the taste of Wutaian sugar candy. A dream when he was five about flying. The first time he had hit someone. His mother finding him in his bed, asleep with a book tucked under his arm.

The first time he had fired a gun and killed someone.

He closed his eyes. He was tired, even if he couldn't sleep. They kept on flashing in front of his eyes, half-snatches of the past. They were past. And though some of them made him turn away, wanting to hide himself, coldly he comforted himself with the knowledge that he would never have to face many of them ever again.