Author's Notes: Apparently, according to stats, I have far more people following this story than I thought. So, this chapter goes out to all you quiet people out there. That cheered me up. Especially those of you outside of the US (hi canada, uk, spain, greece).
I warn that this chapter is faster than normal ones, and that it's shorter than I intended (and still a longer chapter), but a mood came upon me that screamed 'get it down and get it down now.' I think the first 3000 words came out in around an hour and a half.
Pilot Wings: Chapter 12
They were innocent once, he remembered that more than anything else these days. It was a long time ago, but there was a time when the only blood on their blades were that of monsters, not of young men, old women, not of best friends and lovers. Not of old allies, of people you thought you could trust more than anything else.
They weren't innocent anymore.
They could never be innocent again. Never.
He could see that now.
He could also see that he was on the edge of panic, here holding the dead body close to him, glaring up at another man, Boyce. Ah, but on the edge of panic there is that moment of clarity, Nida had discovered, and that clarity was more likely to break you than the panic itself.
I don't have a chance is what the clarity said, resounding in his head with more force, more certainty than anything Siren had ever told him. I could barely stand now if I wanted to, and there is still work to be done.
I can't take it.
And there is blood everywhere. Blood on Nida's hands from the man in his lap. Blood on Nida's weapons from the same, not to mention the pool of spreading blood they lie in. Even blood staining his clothes, some of the man, some of his own, slowly his own life bleeding from him with each highly accelerated beat of his over strained heart.
There was a moment, but it's gone. I can't do it anymore. Only a miracle...
Problem was that Nida had never believed in miracles, and he wasn't about to start it right now. His magic was sealed in this place, so he couldn't heal, he couldn't bring his own victim back from the edge, though he was probably well over it right now.
"Give it up."
Boyce, always there, right on the edge of the conscious clarity before panic.
"I... I..."
A hand held out, halfway across the grand room. The man is radiant there, standing in pure white upon the black marble stairs. Nothing like the blood red of the man in Nida's arms, or the black of Nida's uniform. An angel holding out his hand, offering Nida everything he had never had before, would never have a chance at again. Power, glory, recognition, and most of all, life. Tempting, so tempting.
Do it. He can save me. All he wants is what I am.
The body laid aside, and Nida is struggling to his feet, weapons left behind as he staggers towards the vision of white and black so deep that even his own uniform seems bright in contrast. And still there is blood on his hands, no matter how much further he steps. Clarity is slipping quickly into flat out panic, and panic made you do foolish things.
"Come. Take my hand. I will take you to where you belong, far away from these lesser beings. You will be among us once more, as you were always meant to be. Together we will find Hyne and take what is ours. Vascaroon will join once more with Zebalga, and there will be eternity."
And the words made so much sense, so much sense, so much sense. He'd been living in ignorance these years of his life in Garden. How could he have not seen it before now? All he had to do was take the hand and his destiny would unfold before him. He was the bridge between mortal and immortal, all he had to do was put his mind to it and open himself up to the voice that had always been there, somewhere in the back, somewhere waiting for him to submit to the will of Hyne.
Ten feet. Five feet. Three feet. A foot. Still the hand waits. This is the only way he can survive. He must take the hand, he must be what he was born to be.
"Come, son of Vascaroon. Be our prophet, our guide. We will be your guardians, and wipe the world clean that you might serve us with your infinite knowledge."
Infinite knowledge, he liked the sound of that. Yes, he could see it now. A palace, somewhere, but also a shrine, and a grave, all at once. And within it...
And then Boyce is recoiling, hand moving to the monstrous axe. Nida doesn't understand. He's ready, ready to be what he is meant to be. Why is Boyce pulling away? Nida doesn't have much time left if Boyce does not help him now.
Then he understands it, just as the axe is being swept up to the level of his head.
I spit in it. His hand, I spit in it.
His choice was made for him. Betrayed by his own dying body.
Luckily it betrays him twice, the last of his panicked energy failing him, and he falls, barely missing the sharpened axe head that would have easily taken his own head from its shoulders.
What now?
Nida had no more energy or ability to fight now than he had just a little bit ago, and now he was separated from his weapons to.
What now?
And the blade is being redirected, momentum finding the surprisingly nimble old man twisting around to bring the blade down at his skull.
What now?
And then, suddenly the feeling of floating, his body light and peaceful in a river of green. The words 'not here, not yet' pass through his mind, swept in and out by the river of green. He feels as if there was more, so much more, then nothing.
This was the first morning, Nida realized as his eyes fluttered open, freed from the river of black, in a long time that he'd awoken not because of a nightmare, but because he was genuinely well rested... or something like that. At least it was the first morning he awoke relaxed, feeling oddly comforted by a dream that had fully floated away long before he'd even awoken, even though the nightmare, memory, was still there with him. It was horrifyingly vivid, and yet Nida wasn't bothered by it right now.
A hand moves from the task of holding him up, just barely off of the bed, and pauses to rub at the bridge of his nose. It's early, he can tell that just by the amount of light, and the strength of it, peeking around the edges of the curtains in Cid's room. Cid isn't awake yet, which isn't surprising, because that man could honestly sleep through anything at all if it wasn't something he absolutely had to be up for. The previous night had been long as well, Cid trying his level best to make Nida far too physically fatigued for his mind to invoke the horrors so often visited upon him. Nida chose not to awaken his companion as he slipped from the bed, pulling on boxers he found discarded on the floor and ignoring the slight twinge of pain in his lower back.
Today was going to be one of those lazy days, Nida could feel it in his bones. He'd have plenty of time to get in some morning practice, shower, change, and start breakfast before Cid would awaken, and even that would be only because of the smell of bacon. Cid would rise, shuffle into the kitchen, grab a cup of tea Nida had prepared from the counter, and wrap an arm around his waist as he peeked around the younger man to see what was cooking. Nida would smile, accept a kiss that tasted of tea, sugar, and the cigarette Cid would have had first thing in the morning while still in bed, and tell the old pilot to sit down if he wanted to eat. Then Cid would swear affectionately and obey.
Nida got as far as the shower part when the phone rang.
"Highwind's asleep," Nida said into the phone as a greeting. No one ever called for him after all.
"Ah, good, Nida," the man, Reeve most likely from the tone of voice, "just the man I was looking for." He barged right on ahead, not letting Nida get a word in edgewise, as if completely ignoring the fact that there was even anything other than an answering machine on the other end.
"It's Reeve Tuesti. I've got some exciting, and promising news. It would be best if you heard it here though, so we can act quickly if it is decided that it is prudent. Cid should bring you tomorrow morning. Bring your things as well, I think this one might work. Oh, Mideel by the way, that is where I want him to bring you. Mako is the answer. I should have seen it before. Mako! Thank you. Have a nice day."
And then there was no more Reeve on the other end. Nida actually stood there for a good minute and a half, as if he expected for Reeve's voice to return to explain, or at least continue something that sounded more like a conversation rather than a pre-recorded and highly practiced speech.
Then there were arms around his waist and the scent of recently smoked cigarettes. Cid's rough beard on Nida's bare back, and his equally rough hands making their way down Nida's equally bare body, dangerously close to the barely held up towel at his waist.
"Who the fuck was that?"
Finally Nida was shaken from his stupor.
"Reeve."
Okay, so maybe it isn't fully shaken yet, because his mind is still racing with the speech from Reeve, repeated on a loop both wonderful and horrible, making him both fearful and hopeful, longing and aversion. And still the words circle and circle and circle.
He's almost on the edge of a panic, he realizes. And there, there is the clarity.
He's been in this clarity before, with Boyce's hand held out to him, the most wonderfully terrible offer in the world placed before him: live forever, or die now. And that memory, his very worst moment in a whole war of bad moments, finds him shaking. First it is just the slightest tremor in the hand holding the receiver as he tries to put it back on the cradle. Then it's up the whole of his arm, down his back and straight to his legs. The shaking is out of control. The phone dropped.
"Nida!"
All he can think is that he must have given in, back then, there on those stairs. Because he couldn't remember how it ended, could barely remember how it had started. He remembered the offer, and the hand, and the blood, Hyne the blood. Now his eyes closed and he could see it all over again, the blood on his hands and the body in his lap. He was still alive, right here and right now, wasn't he? Or was he still in the dark hall, looking down on the body with the stairs before him, the offer pending, and the temptation so great? Either he was so close to the choice, or he'd already made it, and made it for the worse. Nida wasn't sure which it was, because his eyes were open again, and he could see both the body in his arms, and the battered little table Cid kept the phone on. Both the blood on his uniform, and the towel around his waist.
Cid's arms and the blood.
"Nida!" Cid shouts again, except it's not again, not just yet. Because he's not at the phone stand anymore, he's laid out on the bed he'd been in, though still in the towel, and Cid was beside him, his hand raised and red.
There was a stinging in Nida's cheek, and his mind hazily connected this with the fact that Cid's hand was red. The connection occurred just soon enough for Nida to raise his arm and deflect the next blow, leaving a look of sheer relief in Cid's eyes.
"Thank Minerva. I thought..."
"Let me up," Nida insisted, as Cid was hovering over him.
"Not until the doctor has had a look at you."
"I don't need a doctor," Nida insisted.
"It's been almost an hour since you passed out at the phone stand."
That took all the will out of Nida for standing up. An hour? It felt like less than seconds. But he could remember the blood and Cid's arms.
"No, don't you go zoning out on me again," Cid hissed, slapping Nida across the face again.
"Cid!" Nida practically hollered, grabbing Cid's arm and pulling him down closer. "Stop that! I'm not zoning out."
"You fucking were. Same look in your eyes, and your eyes were going all wide, like you were focusing through the fucking roof or something!"
Okay, so maybe he had been zoning out. Slowly Nida pushed Cid away from him, and despite the man's protests he began to sit up in the bed. He kept Cid call all throughout the knocking on the front door, the entrance of the town doctor, and the quick examination as well as questions. Nida easily passed through the questions about drugs and alcohol, denied any awareness of heart problems in himself or his unknown family, said he'd had no recent head injuries, wasn't weak around the sight of blood, nor had there been blood, but had to grudgingly admit to the minor sleep deprivation. Memory loss Nida just shrugged at. There were times in his day that he easily could miss and never know it, such as his morning warm ups. His body was so used to them that he could easily go through it without noticing, and still think he remembered it because his pattern was so normal and complete, and he'd be able to tell from the ache in his body.
Finally the doctor left and Nida was faced with a worried Cid and a look that said 'you didn't tell him every fucking thing.'
"Before... I was dreaming before I woke up. Except when you were there, I was seeing the same dream while awake, and I wasn't sure if it was real or not. I lost my grasp on reality for a few moments. I... don't know. I'm almost worried that if I close my eyes again, for anything longer than a blink, it's going to happen again. I feel like I'm losing it Cid. Or maybe I already have."
Then he felt himself taken into Cid's arms, held tight and close. Nida rested his head on Cid's shoulder and tried not to think about the fact that he just wasn't sure right now. Not about anything. And he was too afraid to even seek out Siren's pendant that he could have her comforting mental touch. For all he knew having her there would send him into the waking dream, or reality, once again. Or that he wouldn't find her at his summon, and only prove that what he had seen was reality.
So he stayed there, silent for a long time. Eventually Cid released him, fetched clothes for Nida from the dresser, and went to finish breakfast. Breakfast followed in a reasonable measure of time considering Cid wasn't the sort to cook breakfast that was anything other than bacon often, and Nida was the sort of man for eggs with his bacon. They ate together in bed, Nida's back against the wall and his tray placed between him and Cid so that, if he did have whatever kind of attack that was again, at least he wouldn't go into the food.
It was almost noon before Nida started to talk, and once he started nothing could stop him. Still, part of him kept most of the truth from Cid, though he offered far more details about the recent war than he had given at the meeting with AVALANCHE. Nida spoke of Boyce, the Zebalga, and the Legend of Vascaroon. He spoke of Hyne and the aim of the Zebalga tribe. And he spoke of the man who had died in his arms.
He didn't tell Cid about the offer from Boyce or why it had been extended.
He didn't tell Cid his true role in the war, or what he had thought was his role.
And he didn't tell Cid that the man who had died had been Nida's lover.
Or that he'd lost his life on the tip edge of a halberd, Nida's.
And when he'd unloaded all that he was willing to part with he sighed and told Cid about the dream from the night before, not pointing out it was a memory, and it's resurgence after Reeve's phone call. He left out the panic he was feeling even now, and tried to keep his breathing even.
"I see," Cid said at length, though he obviously didn't, not fully. The man lit a cigarette, his first since Nida began his telling, and took a long draw. "I see."
"Well, I don't know about this mako shit Reeve was spewing, and nothing about not knowing what is real or not, but damned if I'm not going to call Reeve about this. I don't know what he's up to, but he has to know you can't handle a trip to Mideel in a condition like this. And you sure as hell can't handle Mako like this. Bet you're one of those hyper sensitive types, like Cloud. Single fucking drop and you'd start to lose it. Any real amount and you'd be poisoned like you'd never know."
Nida couldn't make heads or tails of what Cid meant by this, but he allowed that to pass, and waited there, sitting up against the wall, for Cid's return.
Snippets of the conversation floated in to the bedroom every now and then. And by 'snippets' Nida would have meant almost a full fifty-percent of the conversation for the way Cid was shouting and apparently parroting back Reeve's words.
"...make it."
"...ssed ou..."
"... mean out cold."
"How the fuck did you know about that?"
"What do you mean? What is fucking happening already? The fucking hell are you talking about Tuesti?"
"Spacial what? Temporal the fuck?"
"Now you listen here, I'm not fucking bringing..."
And then, for a time there was silence save for the word 'oh'. Well, not quite silence. Nida could tell that there was still a conversation going on, but it was almost as if Cid was actually minding his volume now. That was far more worrying to Nida than the few things that he was making out from Cid's shouting. Finally there was one last shout and the sound of a receiver being slammed back into place.
"Tomorrow!" Cid roared, and then the bang.
Then Cid was back at Nida's side, holding him and telling him that they'd be off for Mideel once the sun came up in the morning, and promising to keep him comfortable. Just relax, he said, and I'll take care of you.
It was this that worried Nida most of all. He wanted to scream and riot. He wasn't that fragile, he didn't need a fucking nanny.
Except he didn't have the energy to do it anymore. An odd feeling had settled over the whole of the house.
There were three more 'attacks' that day, each with a seemingly random trigger, and each of the memories, though all haunting and horribly bloody, lasting for different amounts of time. The only thing that was regular was how long it took him to 'awaken' from each, a steady lessening of time between the black out and the awakening. An hour for the first, fifty minutes for the second, thirty for the third, twenty-seven for the next.
Cid grew more and more worried throughout the day, and Nida could sympathize. In fact, the worry and rushing around the house put the old man asleep long before Nida decided that all the tossing and turning didn't mean he really wanted to go back to those dreams. Something told him that if he went to sleep again, he might not actually wake from those memories. Maybe they would suddenly be real, and he'd make the wrong choice.
With the decision made that he could no longer attempt to sleep, Nida slipped from the bedroom where he'd spent most of the day under the watchful gaze of Cid, first fetching the black leather diary he'd been writing in for almost two months now, well before the winter had truly set in here in Rocket Town. He'd made his way through all of the important parts of being a SeeD, and of the Sorceress War, but he'd never written anything about...
Nida shook his head and laid the book on the kitchen table, seating himself to write.
This time he wrote the full truth of what he had been telling Cid that morning, and every word was more damning than the last. Finally, in sheer disgust, Nida threw the pen away from himself and rose from the table. What a coward he was, a weak man of a weak and foolish line. He knew his blood line, even if he had never known his parents, and it sickened him. Nida couldn't even bear to bring himself to write it.
So, to battle the urge to sleep, Nida explored. Not that there was much left of Cid's house that he didn't know at this point. In fact, Nida was certain he knew it all from his almost year in this world, but he still looked. Through photo albums he flipped, through piles of junk he sifted. For hours he passed his time like this. And dawn was swiftly approaching.
Before he turned off the light in the junk filled room, Nida returned to the bedroom and fetched something from among his possessions. He returned to the messy room and reached out for the often considered jewelry box and carefully opened it for what, somehow, felt like the final time. The way that Cid's pilot wings caught the light from the uncovered light bulb above his head was beautiful. Nida's fingers brushed over the golden eagle and the red and white square on its corner that he'd been told was the logo for Shin-Ra. Apparently these wings had been made just before the failed attempt at space flight. Cid had never worn them since that attempt.
Nida reached into the pocket of the pajama pants he'd been using since changing from the towel, and his fingers brushed the metal in his own pocket. A gold and steel Quetzalcoatl with a beautifully Balamb Garden logo upon its breast made of ivory, ebony, silver, and pieces of adamantine. Pilot wings worn for his own first flight in space, but not the most recent, longest, or most important. Just for his first time free of the atmosphere. Nida fished the beautiful piece of metal from his pocket, admired the glowing blue of the adamantine in the logo. This was the most beautiful piece of metal he'd seen on his world, save the Lionheart and the Ragnarok.
For another few minutes Nida looked at the two sets of wings before finally closing the box, slipping the metal in hand into his pocket and returning to the kitchen, and to the notebook.
He pondered it for a few moments before jotting one last note to Cid in the back and writing in big, block letters, on the bottom of the last page about the recent war: I am of Zebalga bloodlines.
Then he heard Cid stirring in the bedroom, and Nida closed the book. There wouldn't be time for breakfast today.
-------
By the time they landed outside of Mideel that next morning, just as dawn was happening there, Nida had had at least four more recurrences of the odd state of unsureness, of memory and reality all at once, or maybe reality and delusion. He couldn't be sure any more. The black outs were getting shorter and shorter, until the final one found him slipping seamlessly from the final moment of panic as Boyce's blade swing down at him back into the probable reality of walking the halls of the airship.
This, Nida noted was a good thing, as Cid didn't notice the slips anymore, allowing Nida to walk the distance from the landing site to the tropical city all on his own, and allowing the blond pilot more comfort than Nida's state had previously afforded him. The old pilot thought Nida was better, and Nida couldn't bear to tell him the truth. The sun had finally made it completely above the horizon when they entered the city, only to find Reeve, Vincent, Cloud, and Nanaki there, all watching Nida horribly closely. Had he not realized that the concern in their eyes was for him he might have thought them worried that an outsider was entering their private tropical haven or something.
"Cid, Nida," Reeve said as greeting, before gesturing that the two follow the larger group.
A flash of people running before him across a carnage strewn battlefield, and explosions on either side, and then Nida was back admiring the lush foliage and extreme beauty of this city. There were few places back home where you could enjoy a climate like this without having to worry about dangerously powerful predators. Reeve and the others led Cid and Nida into a large building of what looked like nothing more complex than wood from the outside – a bunker of concrete set into the side of a cliff, but he only sees that now that Seifer and Squall have brought him out of it, and only for a moment because of the bombs – but turned out to be beautifully constructed on the inside to appear like a full research facility. Everyone sat around a large table – Laguna, Ellone, Rinoa all protesting the idea of Squall going, he's too valuable for this sort of thing, they need him leading, and Nida offering his own expertise in getting the job done – Reeve sitting sternly by a monitor – BP 110/70, quite healthy our pilot, despite the leg – and looking as if he was readying himself for the big reveal.
And then Reeve's eyes go wide as he's looking at Nida – so wide, so wide as if they were alive, but the blood is everywhere – in almost disbelief.
"Cid told me on the radio that you were doing better," Reeve began, "but you're not. Are you? They are still happening?"
Cid spoke up to deny – not Zebalga not Zebalga not Zebalga the constant mantra – but Nida cut him off.
"Almost constantly since we landed. Something you say, something I see, it triggers it. Quick flashes of memories, and all running alongside reality. Like double vision."
Reeve nodded to himself, then gestured to Vincent. The man was instantly at Nida's side, and before Cid could protest, again, Vincent was injecting Nida with something.
There was nothing. No flashes, no double vision, just a slight tingle from where the needle had gone. Nida was sure that something should be brought forth by the needle, but he just took it in stride. If he thought to hard maybe they would come and take away this brief respite.
"What is happening to you is because, we believe, of this 'Time Compression' thing you spoke to us about, back when we were trying to gather detailed information as to how you arrived here..."
Nida shook his head and cut in. "Only things I've done, nothing I don't recognize."
"But, without the sedative Vincent gave you, the sights were almost constant? Who is to say that it would not soon start showing you potential futures of yourself? Your death? The death of loved ones? Do you really want to run the risk of exposure to that if we can avoid it?"
Nida didn't have to think hard to know he wasn't looking forward to anything like that.
"Good. Vincent will stay there to administer more shots if you need. Just tell us if you need more. Otherwise, please listen to what I have to say to you today."
"May I ask a quick question?"
"Of course."
"What are Cloud and Nanaki doing here?"
Reeve smiled kindly, though he looked almost annoyed with the question. "They will fill in details I cannot."
With that Reeve launched into a long, and again obviously rehearsed speech. Apparently in these last months Reeve's people had managed to uncover more documents from a trio of doctors named Hojo, Gast, and Valentine (here Nida looked curiously at Vincent). These documents had yielded a minor amount of information about another situation and series of tests involving a man referred to only as 'Subject Alpha-D'. This man had appeared one day in the middle of Midgar and started rising up a storm, threatening people and talking about events that did not exist. Some of the ramblings had been much like what there had been to hear in Nida's speech to AVALANCHE: a war; sorceress; compression; and wanting to go home. So much fear, so much suffering. For nearly a year and a half the trio would study the man between other projects, having a set group of four research assistants watching him night and day. Towards the end, the records said, the man began to black out, and then go mad.
For obvious reasons Reeve had found this information interesting, and demanded all other records related to this to be found, as well as any of the research assistants that might still be living. Luckily for him, one of them was actually still working in science, and actually worked for the WRO, though he was close to retirement at this point. The man told of things he had never written in his reports to superiors: the horror of the man in those final days; how often he would weep and act as if he was interacting with things that weren't there; and how, in the end, his eyes just focused on some point in the distance and he responded to nothing else again, save one thing... Mako.
Nida was sure it was a kindness Reeve did that he didn't share details of the experiments done upon this man with Mako, only the results of the final experiment: total immersion within mako. Here the testing had both yielded interesting and disturbing results.
"Balamb," Reeve said, his tone carefully measured, "was the final word on his lips. The researchers did not know the importance of this word, but they were told to record, and they did. They didn't feel it important to share the words of a dying man with their superiors. Over the next few days they said he just... faded away. He was there, and then he was no where, except more gradually."
"I don't understand why you bring me here just to tell me this horrible sort of news."
Quickly he nodded to Vincent, feeling the edge he'd come to notice he wasn't walking over any more, and the man injected him.
"Well, first of all, the serum Vincent is using on you happens to be from the studies done of this man. But mainly... Well, here I should let Nanaki take over."
The red beast nodded, something he exaggerated so that all the humans could see it before speaking.
"When we were at the Mako spring, do you remember what Siren said of the feel of Mako?"
"She said it felt like home, but not quite. Why does that matter?" Nida responded, his manner flippant. He couldn't help it though. All it sounded like right now was that he was being given less than half a year before he was completely mad, and around six months before he'd want to die.
"Mako is the Lifeblood of this planet, and we would suspect it is that of many other worlds as well," Nanaki said, unshaken by Nida's tone. "We learned in recent years that the Lifestream is capable of... transportation to other places, where it settles again. Thus recent discussions suggest that all worlds with life have a Lifestream of their own. This is further suggested to us, at least for your world, from the fact that you told us that magic wells up from the ground, and information you gave us about Siren's ability to find these things, as if she was connected to it. Plus all creatures have this magic and share it, even humans who cannot access it. This would be part of your world's equivalent of the Lifestream."
Here Nanaki paused, as if to let something sink in, but it was obviously something only he thought was important, so he resumed. "It has been my belief for a long time that all of these Lifestreams are interconnected. Siren's comment about how ours was like her home, but not quite, only made me suspect this more."
"And the point?" Nida demanded. The serum or sedative or whatever was starting to make him sleepy, and the last thing he wanted to do was fall asleep. Would he wake?
"If these Lifestreams are interconnected, they would be an ideal way for you to be returned to your home, with Siren as a guide, since she knows what the Lifestream she is from feels like in ways that no flesh and blood creature can understand."
"The problem is," Cloud said, speaking for the first time, "We can't be sure how you could be transported through the Lifestreams, how they are connected, and most importantly, if the Mako would affect you powerfully. Mako poisoning is very dangerous, and it would degrade your condition far more quickly than the pace you are already..."
'Degrading,' Nida's mind provided, knowing no one actually wanted to hear it said.
"This is fucking crazy!" Cid shouted, and Nida was surprised it had taken him this long to speak up. "You fucking bastards think throwing him in a vat of Mako is the answer! Like fuck I'm going to let you do that!"
"Firstly, it is not your decision to make, Cid," Reeve said, voice still utterly calm. He must have practiced this part too. "Secondly, we still aren't sure the best way to accomplish this. We aren't sure what the exposure of this other man to Mako did to him. He might have returned to where he came from, for I do believe he was from Nida's world. He might have gone elsewhere, this odd combination of a Time Compressed body and Lifestreams throwing him off course or destroying him. We just do not know. And we cannot know."
And then the arguing began, Cid and Reeve shouting at each other as if it would accomplish anything at all. Slowly Nida could feel the edges returning to his mind, and for the first time since they had started he was sure of what they were, a horrible side-effect of Odine's attempt to recreate Time Compression. And he knew with certainty that it was killing him. Slowly, and viciously.
"I'll do it."
Still the arguments continued around him, and finally Nida slammed his fist down – Squall's gloved fist on a conference table in Esthar – on the table.
"I'll do it."
The attention is all on him – words cut through Squall's fist on the table, confident voice of the pilot leaving no question at all that he would not let his superior do the impossible and die for it.
"I'm not going to live with this, all of the worst memories of the worst times in my life. If it's going to kill me to try this, I'm going to do it now, while I can still consider that what I'm seeing isn't the reality I'm living in at the moment. And you are either going to help me or I'm going to find this 'Lifestream' myself and throw myself in. Understand?"
They all stared at him.
No one spoke.
But Cid's eyes met his, and Nida could feel his own heart breaking again, and see a body covered in blood in his arms, killed by his own actions, heart cut right in half.
And as long as Cid was staring at him, he couldn't shake the image.