Cloud watches people, from his corner of 7th Heaven; he watches people, because avoiding them is slightly impossible. He watches and tries to ignore the eyes watching him back.
The eyes on him don't bother him, or at least he tries to tell himself that; it's not true, but Cloud doesn't like the truth. It seems as much a weakness as anything else. He's a hero, he tells himself, and the Zack voice in his head laughs and agrees, and hero's are always watched.
But he's always been shy; less painfully so now, because life taught him he was worth something and people do listen to him and the world respects him. But still, he's always been shy and he thinks that always will be a part of him, a trait never fully examined, never grown out of, never likely to simply leave behind, no matter what happens.
The eyes don't bother him, just make him slightly uncomfortable, hyper-aware of everything; his movements and the movements of people around him and if he were more high-strung than he was, Cloud thinks most people would not survive around him. And so he watches them and doesn't shift uncomfortably and when someone laughs too loudly or moves too suddenly, he stiffens but doesn't react. And he lets their curiosity, the simple curiousness of simple people, wash over him, because even if the eyes and the curiosity and the watching make him uncomfortable, they're still safer than his thoughts.
It's easier to handle these people than memories of the eyes that watched him for years; it's easier to deal with the curiosity of the people whom he saved than the probing eyes of the man he spent years chasing. He doesn't want to remember the labs or Sephiroth, or any of it, and so he lets the people stare and doesn't react.
And as time passes, he realizes, it becomes a little less difficult to not react and it becomes a little easier to let the eyes slide off his back. But the memories don't become any easier to deal with; the eyes that haunt his mind don't fade at all.
He wonders if that is something he should be concerned about; but it's only a passing thought and he ignores it in favor of concentrating on resolutely not thinking. That's always safe.