-Breathe-
04: Here to Eternity and that Pit Stop you gotta make…
'Never got to tell you
I don't know what I mean to you;
No need to explain, anymore…
…but I cry, I would die if I lost you…'
Alex Parks – Cry
Reluctantly, with about as much enthusiasm as someone would save and savour for a cold bath in the middle of winter, atop a frozen mountain, he tugged his boots on and then with a sigh, set off through the halls of massive structure with the sounds of the ball fading into the distance with those strange emotions the girl had roused inside him. Each step he took, he felt like he was becoming the old Cloud 'I Don't Give a Damn' Leonhart.
The training area cordoned off from the others, took him ten minutes to walk around to it – he passed a few students who looked as though taking shameless advantage of the free drink and the rare opportunity to indulge in such had left their livers almost dead and their stomachs bringing up everything they had ever eaten – including carrots and peas.
He noticed that no matter what you ate, you always seemed to vomit those up.
Cloud wouldn't have been surprised if a person, whose diet didn't include those two vegetables ever in the course of their life, managed to somehow chuck up carrots and peas. His line of thought was transgressing into the territory of vaguely foul, so he left it there and slipped into the training area.
Trepe was waiting for him there, stuffed back into his common leathers and thick clothes – he wore a reddish brown tank top of some thick material, leather sleeves that zipped up to the shoulder where they were somehow held onto his skin (probably duct tape) and thick trousers of some toughened material in the same brownish black as the sleeves. Typically, he carried the whip with him, ala bondage. It made Cloud shiver to think any further along the sickening lines it had been meandering down recently.
"You came," Trepe murmured to him. Behind the moon glasses, his eyes were bright and glowing an eerie red.
Cloud swallowed – this guy always seemed to completely unnerve him! "Yeah, well, you asked me to. Ordered would be closer."
Vincent indicated that they should walk. Unwilling to be so close but completely unable to deny such an order, Cloud stuck himself close to his side and thrust both hands into any available pockets, glaring miserably at the floor tiles as they passed. It was then that he was introduced to the random babble of information that seemed to occupy most of Vincent Trepe's free time.
He almost preferred the awkward silence of his comrades to this.
"So glad you made it as a SeeD," he blathered. He pushed open the door into the containment centre, "I mean, why wouldn't you have made it as a SeeD?"
Cloud grunted in what he hoped was a very noncommittal way and focused instead on making sure that the distracted attention of his tutor didn't land them in as some T Rexaur's lunch. He had no plans at all on being 'obento' for anything.
"Precisely. It was all down to how you junctioned everything so well… I doubt anyone could have done better really. Of course, Zack was a bit of a thorn in your side and everyone's side but how you coped so well with it, it made me proud to be your tutor and…"
Zack Almasy. What a pain.
Sure, when Zack kept his trap shut and wasn't trying to outdo Cloud at every turn, they got along great. Good friends make better rivals, in Zack's opinion though, so eventually, as they grew older it had turned to pure rivalry. He didn't even know when that had happened. Zack just loved being the centre of attention though and it was all Cloud could to do to avoid it at every twisting turn.
Their naturally clashing natures saw to it that they drove one another completely insane – Zack because he wanted that recognition – Cloud because he just wanted the hot headed idiot to shut up for more than half an hour in a go.
He scuffed an inoffensive rock from his path.
But things were never as simple as: "Shut up, you give me a headache." Not where friendship was concerned. Of course, the same could be applied to the babble of Vincent right now, but Cloud listened because he knew it wasn't for attention, it was just in his nature to drivel on about the stupidest of stuff. It was a natural thing, and something that he couldn't help. Just like Yuffie couldn't prevent her incalculable go-get-them nature or Tifa couldn't stop either her brash temper or her utter klutziness.
After enduring the utterly fascinating talk from the tutor, it was with relief that he saw the 'secret spot' and dived towards the balcony, gulping in fresh air and then staring up at the stars. Had the fireworks stopped? That meant the girl had gone home…
"You know, I asked you here for a very special reason."
Cloud stiffened in alarm, and then turned his head – he was positive bones in his neck should creak with how slowly and stiffly he did so. With wide, worried eyes he stared at his tutor, then his whip, then even more wide eyed back to the thin and pale face of the tutor.
Vincent noticed none of this, coming to stand at the balcony with a sigh, looking down across the grassy plain where Balamb Garden had rooted itself. "I actually wanted to tell you that I have resigned as a tutor. They called me a failure. In fact, my position as a tutor is over, as of midnight."
Cloud perked a brow.
"Then I'll just be a regular SeeD, just like you. Who knows, maybe we'll end up on missions together." Vincent smiled, a sad little wisp of a smile that briefly taunted his features, and then vanished.
He folded his arms, huffing; "So you brought me all this way just to tell me this."
"Yes!" Trepe's expression slid towards tormented anguish, "I wanted to talk to someone and thought … well… don't you ever just need someone to talk to, Cloud? Don't you ever just wish you could open up to someone and tell them everything?"
"I spent so long… Cloud… I want to meet you… no, I know, but I mean… I want to meet… you…"
His blue eyes hardened, "No." His voice was rough, he knew that and harshly he turned his back on the tutor, "You can't go through life hoping that someone else will fix all your problems. It doesn't work that way."
"But that's not what I-"
"I assume we're done here?" He actually didn't wait for the assent and left by the door. However, like a shadow trailing after it's master, it wasn't all that long until Vincent joined him, his eyes bleak and shining a little less than the half hour before.
As he was about to turn and give the tutor another piece of his mind, there rang out a sharp cry and he turned in alarm. Vincent's hand dropped with practiced, all too dangerously casual ease to the whip hung from his belt, "Someone's in trouble."
Great deduction there.
"…"
Together, they ran off into the jungles of the training centre.
The girl was called Marlene, but she looked nothing like the girl in the ballroom, despite wearing white of a sort too. Her dark eyes had pinned him to the heart, as he stood with heaving chest over the corpse of the monster he had slain moments before in order to protect her. Blood seared his skin in spatter marks and the sword felt heavy, far too heavy in his hands. But he looked back because she seemed to see even deeper than he could have reasoned.
When she left, she whispered their names, both of him and Vincent.
But he was sure that he had never seen her before in his life.
Cleaning up, he had gone back to find his room had been moved into being a single one, thankfully they had moved everything he possessed across without damaging a single thing and he laid out on the bed, arm over his face whilst trying to wring sense of the night. But every time he closed his eyes, there was fire lacing the darkness and exploding into blooming hearts of magic, falling from the sky.
Tomorrow he was to be given his first mission as a SeeD, something easy no doubt, and he desperately wanted to sleep, but cynicism told him that sleep was probably the worst thing for his mind. Unfortunately, his body didn't agree, held a conference, rebelled against the mind and shut down.
As things stood, Cloud Leonhart was fast asleep and dreaming…
It was a forest, filled with flowers and leaves and he was speaking to a girl whose face he called beautiful, perfect but it was hidden to him – he knew in his dream that she was familiar, he could have picked her from a crowd of thousands – no – millions. But knew when he woke, it was smoke and mirrors and she'd be a phantasm to him.
She was laughing gently, and with a hand that was soft as summer sunshine laid to his skin, she tilted her head and murmured, "You know I'll be back, when it's all over."
"I know. Promise me then."
"I promise, I promise I'll be back."
She promised.
Like all promises made to him, it was broken but in the cruellest way possible.
In that dell of flowers, trees and dappled light, he caught the sadness in the shadows and curled up there to weep into his hands brokenly, swearing he wouldn't weep again, swearing he'd rely on no one again.
This is what came of trusting.
This is what came of relying on other people.
There was only him left to blame for this.
"…why did you leave me…?" he wept.
He wept.
"Come on, mission time!"
It was the yelling through the corridor that jolted him from deep sleep into sandy eyed awareness of the world that was his, not the world he lived in, in his dreams. He scrubbed a hand onto his cheek and frowned, getting out of bed and to his feet. With a yawn, he reached for his clothes and meandered for the communal showers. Yuffie was in the hallway, trying to juggle ten different things at once, but he purposefully ignored her in the favour of hot water.
And it was blisteringly hot, much to his relief, scouring away the dreams, the sand eyed sleep like state that also came accompanied with the dreadful 'early morning stares' that afflicted everyone before coffee break and the dirt of last nights rumble in the training ground. Once he was clean, he dried himself down with a fluffy towel that had seen better years and peered at his reflection in the mirror. The scar, slanting down his face, seemed to be growing less angry with each passing day to move reluctantly into the shimmering silver of true scardom.
He thumbed it briefly, scowling at the sensation it brought, then moving away, brushed his teeth and quickly dressed.
Once he'd replaced the towel, he stepped back out into the hallway to hear Reno thundering down the hallway, laughing at something or the other. He avoided any conflict by walking directly into his room to pick up the gun blade, the case and all magical bullets for it.
Sighing to himself, he waited out the merriment of the jovial and irresponsible Reno and the steady crunch of Rude's boots until they had both passed and he stepped out into the hallway. Leaned on the wall of the corridor was Zack, who opened his violet eyes to look at him.
Cloud just looked back – he could play the 'stare' game as well as anyone.
"Take a picture, it lasts longer," muttered Zack, finally breaking the eye contact and moving down the hallway after his cronies. Cloud watched him go, then shrugged and started for the entrance way where he was supposed to meet their headmaster, foul mouth united his self.
He wondered if he would catch any new obscenities today – it was beginning to be habit forming, waiting to see what new collections of curses he could pick up from the man who was supposed to be an example of 'diplomatic' magnitude. The most diplomatic thing that Cloud had seen the somewhat easily irritated headmaster do was to not smoke in a no-smoking area.
Cloud Leonhart was a very, very cynical young man.
But he liked being that way.
It was with slowly decreasing vigour that his spirits at escaping the Garden began to wither and die within him as he spotted a flash of bright yellow among the flower sections on the outskirts of the bridge to outside the Garden. Wearily, he turned the corner so he could fully face Yuffie.
Like he, she was now able to wear whatever clothing she felt like as a SeeD. Whereas Cloud had simply opted for basic jeans with zips up the sides, a few belts, white shirt and a leather jacket with a fluffy ruff that ended at mid elbow, bearing the insignia of a lone wolf on the right shoulder, burned into the leather. Yuffie instead, chose to look like a maypole.
It wasn't a completely awful choice of colour on the girl as she danced back and forth, from foot to foot, but had the colour been one whit brighter he would have personally styled his stylist and his own sense of fashion – if it was him, that is. She wore her bobbed dark hair down to her shoulders, a kind of unusual forehead protector with a broken mountain in the centre, symbolised on a patch of shining metal. Otherwise, she wore a denim-like material in orange-yellow. It was cut so it left her shoulders as exposed as possible and as much of her legs as possible too it seemed. It barely curled over the curve of her backside. On her legs she wore knee boots, the same ones she no doubt wore in their first mission together.
She was smiling at him. Brightly.
"Cloudie, you're in my group?"
"…"
"Ah, I knew we'd end up being good friends. Didya see Vincent or Jessie on the way here?"
"….No."
"Aw man, who's gonna give us the orders then!" She leaned on the wall and made a little sound of frustration. He eyed her – the wall wasn't particularly tall, perhaps a mere four feet high in fact and acted as a railing more than a wall.
"Headmaster Cid." He muttered, catching sight of the old man himself wandering towards them, cursing away and puffing away on a smoke to feed his addiction, which was truly disgusting.
"He's coming here? Yeah ri- oh!" She looked down and blushed guiltily; no doubt she was going to badmouth the guy before she had caught sight of him. She waved a hand all innocent like, "Hey Headmaster Cid."
The old man was looking even more drained today if that was possible, as if yesterday someone had given him the kind of illness that everyone avoids you for having. His skin was pale and covered in a light sheen of sweat on his brow (Cloud was unsure if this was actual illness, general unfitness or because his lungs were caked into a 40-a-day habits muck). His eyes were alert however tired looking and he grunted something.
"…Sorry?" Cloud asked, hoping he had heard wrong.
"I said, Tifa should be here. Just wait and I'll debrief you all soon."
"Tifa."
"Yes."
"As in 'Disaster Dincht'?"
"That's right."
"On a mission. With me."
The old man flashed him a grin and Cloud died a little more inside; he really wasn't the luckiest man alive. More like the 'bad' luckiest man alive. He glanced at Yuffie cautiously to see if she shared at least a morsel of his trepidation for their own survival at having the rather kamikaze Tifa in their group. She looked pleased. Pleased! Why would anyone be pleased? It was like having his death warrant signed and sealed for him.
Then with a hum and a whiz, he glanced about to see the girl in question arrive. On a t-board, a kind of hovering skateboard that promised high speed collisions and lots of blood and whatnot spattered everywhere, especially if the driver was reckless enough or confident enough to try it without a helmet.
She kicked the board into standing and grinned at the little group.
Tifa had exchanged her uniform and short skirt, for a serious looking set of gauntlets with thick ridges on the knuckles. She wore a heavy blue jacket that reached to mid arm and mid torso, with several straps and belts decorating it, as well as embroidery of the family Dincht crest on the back. Under this she wore a fitted white shirt that was tucked into a possibly even shorter skirt of black. Her saving grace was a swathe of cloth down her right leg to mid leg which seemed to act as some kind of guard tactic. On her feet, she wore boots much like Yuffie did, but hers were heavier and had a frontal spike on each foot, small but enough to add extra damage, as Cloud recalled, Tifa was a martial artist and used kicks to devastating effect.
But she was beaming at them, "Hey, hey, hope I didn't keep you guys wa- HEY!"
The garden red robe who had accompanied them tugged the t-board right out of Tifa's hands and she glared at. He just said in a monotone kind of voice, "This is prohibited on the Garden grounds. I will confiscate it."
"What?"
"You may apply for it again when you return from your mission."
She went an interesting shade of red, "That's my property, I shouldn't have to apply for it!"
"Tifa," Cid said, not unkindly, "You are SeeD now, you must be an example to the other students. So please, abide by the rules for me?"
She huffed and crossed her arms. Cloud noted that she still wore her hair pulled back into a strange little quiff – it kind of suited her. He then murmured, "We're all here now, can you explain the mission to us?"
That felt like one of the longest sentences he'd ever made and inwardly he ground his teeth. Cid, with infuriating slowness, looked over all them and then set his hands to his hips as he began to lay out the details. "Alright then. The mission involves you giving support to a group known as the Forest Owls in Timber. That place you can easily reach by train, so we pre-booked a room for you on the train leaving from Balamb. When you get off the train a representative will be there to greet you. He will say, "The Forests of Timber sure have changed," whereupon you will reply, "But the owls are still around." This is to authenticate you as SeeDs. This is a professional mission, live up to the name!"
"Alright!" Yuffie exclaimed happily, turning to Tifa, "You hear that, our first real mission helping people!"
"And here, this might help you a little on your way there," Cid muttered, palming some crummy looking, cheapskate lamp into Cloud's hands. He resisted the urge to palm it back and shrugged it with a sour look into their backpack for the journey. "Be good." He said in a magnanimous tone and then with a grumpy look for the rector who stood close by, they both went off. Cloud could hear the muttered cursing even as the Headmaster left them.
On a second thought, he drew the lamp out and stared hard at it.
What a piece of junk.
"I'm sure if we ever need to fend a hobo off, this will come in useful," he mumbled.
Tifa, jacket rustling as she moved and that hair looking firmly set into place with enough gel to hold down a house in a hurricane, peered across, leaning to do so. Her dark eyes narrowed and then she moved her gaze up to his, grinning. He felt uncomfortably trapped, despite there being enough degrees of escape left around him. "Hey Cloud," she said slowly, "Do you even know what that is?"
Yuffie peeked too now and he was forced to wait under their scrutiny, "Yeah, it's a junky lamp."
"Oh ho ho," she laughed and took it with a blur of motion, a snatching swipe of her hand that he couldn't follow. The protest died on his lips; it wasn't worth the aggravation, so as they started walking from the garden into the rolling plains he suffered the various hops and skips of Yuffie in front.
Eventually, even his patience couldn't control itself and he snapped, "Can you put the lamp away?"
"Mmm? This old thing? You know, maybe a good buffing would help it."
"Sure. Whatever. Just put it away."
"After the buffing," Tifa persisted and with the lamp in hand, rubbed it vigorously on her jacket. All around them came a rather ominous rumbling noise, the ground itself slowly shaking with increasing vigour. It brought the energetic swooping of Yuffie to a standstill as she fell back with a pointing hand to the ground. Several cracks had begun to emerge, renting the ground and from the cracks a dark hand clamped onto the earth. With the sky darkening to an illusionary like state, the creature that dragged forth from the darkness was horrifying in its repulsiveness, curved horns and bat wings.
"Who wakes me from my slumber!" It boomed in hollow tones, reeking of brimstone.
Cloud glared across at Tifa who was, irrationally, hiding the black dull lamp behind her back. Catching the look of unholy ire, she went red, shamefacedly so, and muttered apologies as the denizen of the Hells came swooping for them, looking for a fight. Cloud loosened his gun blade.
…a fight it would get!
And it's not even midday yet
(( A/N: sorry it's so short, can't seem to focus, gah! Starting on CH 05 - and yay, Love Not Often got finished finally! ))