Hi there! Here's a little appetiser for the readers. You deserved a lot more for the reviews and the waiting ~ and for that I apologise ~ but I just can't force myself to write. Hopefully you'll like it either way. Have fun.

[I miss you Joe]

Disclaimer: I own the plot and whatnot. I do not own the characters themselves.

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I pretended I didn't understand. It made no sense to me what he was saying.

We were quiet for a while. I could hear the cold metal around me howling at the slightest touch of wind. They were suffering, those trains. Almost as much as I was, I suppose. But they were far stronger than me, they were braver. They endured. I endured nothing. I flinched and crawled into my bed, hid under the covers every time I reached my limit. I had a limit. Trains don't have a limit, do they? They just lay there, waiting for nothing, expressing their grief over the coarse whisper of the wind.

Finally, I looked up from the snake as she slithered away from my foot. Zack didn't find her interesting enough, said she was plain. He had developed quite the philosophy about plain things. Cheap, he once called them. You can find them on every drug store, he said. I didn't agree with him then. Plain things were always rare to find. People often found them disturbing so they struggled to smother them under complicated things, complicated words, complicated clothes, complicated thoughts.

I asked him again what he meant.

"I just think it would be for the best. I mean…" he stretched his legs forward, seemed uneasy.

"Have I done anything to upset you?" I was pretty sure I hadn't.

"You never do anything…" he sighed, never looking at me.

I took my fingers to my mouth and carefully bit my thumbnail until I could feel no taste. I was still waiting for him to talk about it, about that night, although my consciousness strived to repress that memory. I figured now was a good moment for him to bring it up. He didn't.

"This is all we ever do, Cloud. It's not normal" he said.

I watched him raise and getting out of the wagon.

"You mean coming here?"

"Yes. No, I mean…" his hands were on my knees; he talked slowly now – "We sit here nearly every day. I watch you draw, you listen to me talk about some nonsense, we wait until the church clock strikes and nothing ever happens. Now tell me, what is this?"

I narrowed my eyebrows, sternly, "This is friendship." I said.

He laughed, backed away. "This is your idea of friendship? We barely ever talk anymore!"

"I never talked much…"

"We always talked about something!"

"We still do—"

"About nothing!"

"Well, tell me what you want me to say then and we'll talk!" I straightened up.

He chuckled. "That's not how friendship is done, Cloud."

I nearly yield then. "That's how I've always done it!"

His eyes turned dense for a moment, his lips stiffened.

He looked at me as if I was the most intolerable thing on Earth, but he didn't seem mad then. Only after, when his lips parted open and the words came pouring out, uncontrollably it seemed…

"You know what? I'm sick of this friendship! You never really got me in the first place. You always assumed I would be there for you when you needed. Did you ever really mind? And even when I tried to show you how much I cared for you, you never really appreciated me, did you?"

My hand stopped halfway from reaching my lips again. My eyes opened wide at him.

"I don't… I don't understand…" and I reckon I still don't.

"Of course not. You never understand anything I say or anything I do. From day one." he laughed.

"If you wanted us to do something different you could've told me." I left the wagon and followed him across the railway, towards the fence - "We could have gone to the theatre or hang out at the mall or go to the beach... I dunno, we can still do that stuff, right?"

He stopped; dragged his feet as he turned around.

There were those eyes again: the eyes I didn't recognise.

"You are a messed-up kid, Cloud. You always were and I loved you for that."

My mind wanted me to reply but no word came out.

"Today I'm just sick of you."

I am sick of you, I am sick of you. Sick. Sick. You.

The words echoed in my head for what seemed like an eternity. He hated me. I never knew why and I would learn later he himself didn't know why either. It was just how things were supposed to be for us.

I couldn't hold on forever, pretending that I wasn't upset, that I wasn't mad at him, that I wasn't angry. I couldn't hold on forever and pretend I didn't miss him. One day – it was only a matter of time – Edea noticed it. She had too, she was an insightful woman. Grandma Grace often said she had inherited the quality from her.

"You two…" she muttered, biting the end of her reading glasses - "What is the thing?"

I stretched my naked legs upwards, my back against the cold floor. I then yawned and sat up again, still chewing around the best answer. I ended up shrugging anyway.

She squinted. "You really don't know or you don't know what to call it?"

I shrugged again. "I guess I just don't know."

"Hum… My guess is that you need to find yourself some new friends, kiddo." she said, her dark, pointy fingernails tapping the table.

"What?" I almost laughed, "I have plenty of friends as it is. I have Aerith and Barret and… I have them."

She smiled, tenderly, and reached for a little notebook within her handbag.

"What if I invited Rufus for dinner some time?" she suggested, harmlessly.

I sat straight. Rufus, Scarlet's Rufus? Suddenly I felt bitter. Selfish too. Miss Scarlet was still in a coma; she had been so for nearly a year now. Edea stopped bringing it up after a while and the subject fell into oblivion like so many others before it.

Right then and there, when I lifted my eyes at her again, she looked older. Her curly dark locks were a mess and her emerald-green eyes had lost their glow. She seemed lost.

I felt like hugging her but I wouldn't know how to do it.

"Do you think he would come?" I asked instead.

She chuckled, "I wouldn't know, but no one can blame me for trying."

"Yeah…" a brief pause – "You do that."

Strangely enough, a week later, he did show up at her doorstep. I could barely recognise him though. He wore black overalls, jeans and a t-shirt, and seemed even smaller, tinnier than me. We shook hands like two casual acquaintances who meet up for a drink after a long day at the office, and he asked me how my mother was doing. I just said she was alive. Probably not the best choice of words…

Edea prepared a list of what-to-talk-about subjects, as she wasn't really at ease with the idea of having the boy around all by himself. She asked him about school and girls, while I tried to talk about sports. It was my second worst choice of the evening: I know nothing about sports.

Grace would have been a blessing that night but she was down at the casino in a nearby city, playing bingo with her gals. She said the only reason she ever went there were the rich, old fops who offered young girls her age just about anything to get a little attention.

"Some brandy, some cigars… by the end of the night maybe a few diamonds…" she laughed.

By the time our second dish came out, we were done talking.

Just three broken shadows watching TV with no sound…

Edea's plan failed, of course. Rufus and I had nothing in common, nothing to talk about, nothing to hate or admire about one another. Of course I blamed it on the timing, with Scarlet in the hospital and my innocent obliviousness towards a broken heart. I guess I was lucky, somehow. Most people dream of feeling nothing of that sort. I once knew someone who didn't, but he wasn't that lucky…

But Aerith knew better.

"Can I borrow your sketchbook for a week or two?" her voice caught me off-guard. We were having lunch at the school cafeteria – it was such a noisy place as it was we barely ever talked.

"What for?" I asked, playing with the noodles in my plate.

"Well, if you must know…" she smiled – "Remember that drawing you gave me for my birthday?"

I pretended to cough, pretentiously. "You mean my masterpiece?"

"Yes, well…" she drank down her orange juice – "an old friend of mine goes to an arts school in Vane and I've sent him a copy of your drawing a couple of months ago. Turns out he really, really liked it."

I squinted, suspicious. "You sent him a copy of my drawing? How the hell did you do that?"

"It's not rocket science, you know? Anyway" she tilted her head "He thinks you have a very good shot of getting into his school next year. You just need to send over your portfolio. I think that's it."

I didn't know what to say for a moment. An arts school… by then I had no idea such a thing existed.

"And I want to go to an arts school?" it was a plausible question.

Aerith shrugged. "You might. You're always drawing after all" she said.

"But why in Vane?" I repeated, "Aren't they our enemies? I mean, our enemies' allies, anyway…"

"Cloud! I can't believe you just said that!" she retorted.

I laughed. "Well, aren't they?"

"Don't you dare laughing at me!" she said yet again, straightening up and folding her arms – "That is a very serious accusation! There are no enemies in war, only fear and suffering and death!"

"Hum, is that so?" I sank back in my chair and smiled, "Fear and suffering and death among friends?"

"Among frightened people, yes." she was calmer now, "Do you feel like the enemy, like the threat…?"

I looked at her in silence, bit my fingernails, shrugged.

"I just don't want anything to happen… to the people I love, I guess…?"

"My point exactly." she nodded, contended. "Now about your sketchbook—"

"Again, why would I need to go to Vane?" I insisted.

"You don't need to as in need to, but maybe it would do you some good, to learn and improve yourself. Wouldn't you like that?"

In the end I did give her some of my sketches but I still hadn't made up my mind. Half of them were quite good, and I chose them just in case the idea began to grow on me. The other half was terrible, mostly unfinished good-for-nothing sketches of Grace.

When Zack and I started talking again, I didn't immediately tell him I had applied. I didn't think it necessary, and I didn't want to bother him. Deep within I reckon I just didn't want to give him the trouble of over-thinking his behaviour towards me, knowing there was a slight possibility of me moving away. Not that he would do that, though he did over-think sometimes.

Especially with me…

The house was quiet for a change. It was late of course, and I never knew what possessed me to get up and pick up the phone that night, since I never do it during daytime. I was glad I did it as soon as I heard his voice though.

"Hey, what time is it?" it was a deep, hoarse mutter.

"Nearly three…" I kept quiet not to wake the rest of the house, "Why do you ask?"

I heard him chuckled on the other end of the line. It was easy to tell he was not in himself.

"Zack… Why are you calling me?" I whispered, tightening my grip around the receiver.

I listened to nothing but silence for a while longer, his breath fainting at the distance. Part of me wanted to play it safe, bring an end to the conversation as soon as possible and ignore it even happened. It sounded so simple in my mind, and yet I couldn't keep away. I couldn't force myself to shut him out.

I didn't want to hurt him, but I didn't want it to hurt either.

"It's late…" I said. I hated his silence.

"I miss you…" a whisper.

"Yeah, we haven't talked in a while."

"Can I see you?" he asked, his tone suddenly higher. I nodded nearly without thinking.

"You mean right now?" I asked back.

I couldn't hear his answer. He laughed for a while, sounded completely out of himself. I asked him where he was and he said he was waiting for me. I tried to laugh with little success. I hated him like this, like that, but I too wanted do see him. And so I left.

Things are happening: what my sound like pointless dialogue is never pointless.

So, please review? :)