18. To Wake Me from the Nightmare

Cloud figured that the only way Sephiroth could have gone was across the desert (if he wasn't going back to Gongaga); a traveler they met on the way confirmed this. Barret grumbled something about Sephiroth playing hard-to-get, flitting just out of reach like some prim girl. Tifa seemed to think that wasn't an accurate analogy, and Yuffie accused him of being a sexist (her go-to accusation). Barret fell into a pouty silence.

The air was getting cooler. They weren't paying much attention to where they were going. Cait Sith got more silent by the minute. In retrospect, all these things should have been a clue.

Cloud vaguely remembered thinking that the road was somewhat familiar, then looking up; but he froze in place as soon as he did. It was one of those moments; every cell in his body seemed to be screaming, out of place, out of order.

"What the –" Tifa gasped. Cloud had stopped so abruptly that Yuffie bumped into his back. Cloud stared (didn't dare look at Tifa), and blinked. It was too strange; he was convinced it must be a dream, though he knew it wasn't. But how?

"What's wrong?" Barret asked. Then he saw it too. "What's that sign say?"

"Nibelheim," Nanaki read, in his flowing voice.

There was a deafening silence. Cloud stared at the worn-out sign, then at the town in front of him. Few people stopped to stare back at them. His head was spinning fast and maddening – how were there people in the town? How was there the town?

"Didn't you say," Barret said, cautiously. "That the whole town burnt down?"

Cloud did dare to look at Tifa, then, and found to his relief that she was looking as bewildered as he felt. So it wasn't his hallucination – the town burning down, his entire quest for Sephiroth and vengeance – unless, of course, they were both hallucinating.

"I did," Cloud said, only remembering what he was answering after he did.

"Well, don't take this the wrong way," Yuffie said, skeptical. "But it looks pretty un-burnt-down to me."

"Yeah," Cloud agreed, for the lack of a better thing to do. The town looked exactly how he remembered – before the fire.

"What's going on?" Tifa frowned, biting her lips, almost drawing blood. "My house is there, too – look –" She looked at Cloud, then, desperate and searching. "You don't think – Cloud – that it was somehow – but we have the same memory –"

"It wasn't a dream," Cloud said, sounding much surer than he felt. What could he say, anyway, except to deny the possibility? He did remember, clearly, the intense heat of the flames; also the red and yellow and white, the smell of air burning.

"We should go inside," Aerith suggested. "Find out what is happening."

Cloud hesitated, but nodded. They couldn't ignore it and move on, now that they were here. Here – Cloud wondered if Sephiroth was here, too, to reenact his glorious beginning.

"Hi, welcome!"

Cloud stared at the innkeeper; it wasn't someone he recognized. But then, why would he? Everyone he'd known was dead.

"It's a hundred gill a night. How many rooms do you need?"

"We need answers, that's what we need," Barret growled. The innkeeper turned his curiously blank eyes to Barret, blinking placidly.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean, sir."

"This town," Cloud started, almost pushed forward by some invisible hands, almost choking on his words. "It was burnt down five years ago. Everyone died. What happened after that?"

The innkeeper now looked bewildered. "I think you've mistaken this town for another, sir."

"Isn't this Nibelheim?" Tifa asked, impatient. The innkeeper nodded.

"Yes. And I was born and raised in this town. What you say – such awful imagination – never happened here."

"You're lying –" Tifa said, eyes widening. The innkeeper blinked, putting on a smooth face of being slightly insulted, but indulging in the mad delirium of the obviously troubled travelers.

"Do excuse me, Miss, but I think it's you who's mistaken."

Tifa looked like she wanted to say more, but Cloud shook his head; there was no use. They walked (Cloud in a sort of dream-like state, wondering if this wasn't another one of his hallucinations) into the store next door. The man at the counter beamed when they entered; another unfamiliar face. Too polite, again, too pleasant, like they were re-enactors of life, not the thing itself.

"Hello! Are you visitors? If you're looking for boots, you've come to the right place. We've been in business here for a long time –"

"No, you weren't," Cloud said, though he knew it was futile. The man widened his eyes in almost a comical shock.

"I don't understand. Why do you say that?"

Cloud considered him for a moment. Tifa looked at him, with a frown on her face. Cloud finally just shook his head. "Never mind," he said, and walked back out.

"What's going on?" Tifa said, almost to herself. People passed them by; never gave them more than a curious but polite glance, which wasn't right. People in Nibelheim weren't like that at all. But then, they had all died.

Tifa was confused; no, that was putting it mildly. She was aghast, furious, desolate, all at the same time. She knew that Cloud had never really loved the town, and she had always sympathized; why would he? It hadn't liked him. But he must be feeling – similar to what she was feeling, right now, at seeing the town like this, an after-image – a ghost. Except that Tifa had loved Nibelheim; despite everything, she had. The buildings were almost exactly the same as she remembered, all in the exact same places. The mountains and the trees and the tiny brook were the same; it was the people that she couldn't stand. She didn't understand what was going on.

But in hindsight, maybe she should have guessed.

Tifa's house was the only building in the town, it seemed, that was different. The outside was the same, but when they entered, Tifa saw that it was almost entirely empty; minimum furniture, walls stripped bare and gray, a naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. They almost immediately crouched in anticipation of some evil. The air changed; but there was no one inside.

They did, however, find a bunch of papers on a desk in what used to be Tifa's room (now bare, except for a steel desk in the middle of the room). Cloud snatched it up, read it quickly with his eyes.

"What's it say? Read it aloud." Barret said, trying to peer at the paper. Tifa startled; she had almost forgotten about the others. They probably guessed how strange it was, but really they had no idea. Cloud finished reading, wordlessly handed it to Tifa. She tried to read his face but couldn't, other than a faint trace of horror and disgust that was his default whenever – so she should have guessed – she looked down at the paper, and started reading out aloud, slowly.

"Periodic Report to Professor Hojo. One, clone activity report. Two, confidentiality report." She had to pause for a second, while Barret growled something incoherent with the word Shinra in it. "A total of eight people have visited this town this quarter. Fortunately, none knew about the incident five years ago. Therefore no one knows the town was restored exactly as it was then. We have paid and moved the required number of people into the town, all sworn to secrecy, and we do not report any problems at this time."

"Those scoundrels –" Barret said, heated. Tifa held up her hand. She felt numb.

"Wait, there's more. A handwritten note at the end of the paper." She had to screw up her eyes to see; it was more of a scratch than writing, in blue ink, scrawled and tilted either in urgency or excitement. "I… must… get rid of all those that… stand in the way of my research. Including that one from the… Turks. The… altered one. Currently asleep in the basement."

There was a short silence when she finished reading. Tifa put the paper down, quietly, thinking she'd like to tear it to pieces.

"What," Aerith finally broke the silence, a frown between her eyebrows. "Was that last part? About the… one from the Turks?"

"Another victim of Hojo's mad project?" Nanaki suggested. Cait Sith remained disturbingly quiet, even the whirring sound of his body was muted. This tugged at the back of Tifa's mind in an annoying sense of foreboding, but she didn't have time to dwell on that right now.

"Where's this – basement? Cloud, do you think –"

Cloud nodded, before she finished her question. "The Shinra Mansion. Must be."

"You wanna go there?" Yuffie asked, slightly horrified.

Everyone looked at Cloud; he was their leader. Cloud hesitated, but only for a little while. He made decisions quickly. He didn't seem to doubt. That was some comfort for them – or, at least for Tifa.

"We're going," he finally nodded. "This person… might need our help."

Thoughts and dreams and emotions and memories all flowed together as one continuous stream. Time became meaningless; there was no way to measure it, save for the repetition of that one thought – he did not know the meaning of it, just that it repeated. To wake me from the nightmare. To wake me from the nightmare. To wake me…

Sometimes it was save – sometimes not – but it kept repeating. A flow. Always. Stretching into forever beyond and forever behind. Eternal repetition –

Until, one day, someone woke him up.

He opened his eyes. The light blinded him.

"Who is it?"

It took a while before he realized he'd spoken. Before he remembered his own voice; low, ancient, decayed, horrifying, shattering. Someone had woken him from the nightmare, though.

He sat up in a blink; it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the sudden light, but they adjusted fast. Light – flipping from the darkness – air rushing into his long-unused lungs, a blink, and he saw a pair of unfamiliar eyes staring back at him. Not the dull, gray eyes of the scientist; clear blue, screaming something inaudible – no, it wasn't the eyes that were screaming, it was the voices inside his head.

"Who is it?" He repeated, while the blue-eyed man stood still and almost frozen. He decided then that it didn't matter, one way or another. Staring – frozen. He remembered. "You must leave."

Another voice answered, loud and not very pleasant to the ear; hollered. "Whaddya mean we must leave? We woke you up!"

He frowned; the voice was too loud; sound had been absent for too long, save for the almost mute whispers in his head.

"Not so loud, Barret." This was yet another voice. He looked at the girl who spoke. She looked at him too, and said, "I think you've been having a bad dream." Her eyes were green; deep green. She was looking at him with something like – curiosity – and he turned his head. He realized that there were more people in the room; another girl, a strange beast – two beasts. And then another girl, who was half-hidden by the shadows, but his eyes worked quickly in the dark too. She had coal black eyes, hands on her hips.

"Man, do you look out of sorts," she was saying, "Even I feel bad for you."

All he could notice were their eyes. Because he remembered, the blood-red that had stared back at him.

He wondered what he could say. "My long sleep –" Almost to himself, he began, an extension of the swirling thoughts in his head. "Has given me time to atone –"

"What are you saying?" The blue-eyes finally opened his mouth. He imagined them turning red, bloodthirsty and hungry; he had to warn them.

"You must leave. This place is not safe."

"If you mean Hojo," the blue-eyes started, carefully, looking for something in him. "He isn't here right now. Nobody's here."

He stared. Thoughts were going madly around in his head. "Hojo?" He asked. "You know – what do you know?"

"Well, Sephiroth –"

That was his signal; that woke him up. He sprang from the – the coffin, he was lying in, up and standing in one fluid motion. The seconds in between were meaningless. His battered red cloak swept the floor.

"You know Sephiroth?" He asked, voice laying low inside the room. If the blue-eyes was startled at his speed, he didn't show.

"You know Sephiroth too?" He asked back.

"Tell me what you know," he demanded. Blue-eyes considered him for a moment, nodded slowly.

He listened to the story he was telling; with no inflections. Five years – madness – fire – village – Shinra – it felt familiar.

And, Sephiroth. Had that much time passed?

"So – five years ago, Sephiroth found out he'd been created – about the Jenova project."

He wasn't talking to anyone in particular, but the blue-eyes nodded. He thought about what he'd said. He supposed this was another weight on his burden; not unexpected, but it struck him in a cold sort of sorrow. A lot of time had passed; but time had been meaningless to him, living in eternity. It did raise a question – a weary one – would atonement ever come?

"Hey," the blue-eyes said. "Who are you? How do you know Sephiroth?"

He shook his head. "Sorry. I cannot say."

"Hey –"

"Then at least tell us your name," the blue-eyes spoke over the large man's protest.

He paused; searched his mind. It came slowly, covered in dust; he hadn't thought he'd be using it ever again.

"Valentine – Vincent Valentine," he said, feeling the weight of it on his tongue. "I'm – I was with the Shinra Manufacturing Department in Administrative Research."

They all stared at him, blankly. Vincent shook his head. "Otherwise known as the Turks."

"The Turks?" The big man narrowed his eyes in distaste.

"Formerly of the Turks," Vincent said. "I have no affiliation with Shinra now."

"My name is Cloud Strife. I used to be –"

"SOLDIER," Vincent realized, noticing the unmistakable glow of green around the rim of his eyes. Also the uniform; first class; he didn't know why he hadn't noticed them before.

"Used to be," Cloud nodded.

Vincent heard himself ask, though he hadn't planned to, the question breaking out like water falling from atop a mountain. "You were also with Shinra – do you know what happened – do you know Lucrecia?"

Cloud looked a little surprised at the urgency in his voice. He shook his head.

"No. Who is it?"

"It's –" Vincent blinked; a quick hope, but quicker defeat. He shouldn't have hoped in the first place. "It's the woman who gave birth to Sephiroth."

"What?" One of the girls shrieked; it echoed, against the walls.

"I thought Jenova was – his mother –"

"That is only partly true," Vincent said. He was weary, but Cloud might deserve an explanation; if what he said was true, and he was really trying to stop Sephiroth. Which should have been Vincent's job. Would've been. "Sephiroth was born from Lucrecia, who was the assistant to Professor Gast, both of them working on the Jenova Project."

The sun, the snow, her laughter; in his memory she had been alive, in that timeless purgatory, but now –

"Was it – were there experiments on human bodies?" Cloud said, surprising Vincent a little; he caught on quickly. He nodded, run out of words to say.

Except one; that is, the only thing he could ask for.

"If I go with you, will I see Hojo again?"

"I don't know," Cloud said. "But we're going after Sephiroth. So I guess – sooner or later –"

Vincent nodded; that was good enough. He'd thought he could sleep away his sins, to atonement, but couldn't remember why he'd thought that. Pause to this nightmare – a temporary escape; if it was his punishment he would gladly suffer, but not before he fulfilled his quest. For her.

"I want to go with you, then. Being a former Turk – I may be of help to you."

"Alright," Cloud nodded, easily. Vincent thought it strange that he didn't ask the others, but none of them seemed disgruntled by this. Perhaps they were used to it, Vincent thought, collecting weary travelers on the way.

"Alright," Vincent repeated, thinking that he'd smile if he only remembered how to do it.

These pieces. Memory or imagination?

"I don't know," Cloud says. "What pieces?"

The pieces rush through; he blinks, watches.

Are you okay? Scratched on sheets of green, desperation in his eyes.

We can get out.

Let's get out.

Then, lastly, Feeding time.

[A] No effect detected from Mako Radiation Therapy, Jenova.

[B] Reaction detected.

Shot for resisting.

… Currently unknown. Submit there is no need for pursuit. Diminishing consciousness. Awaiting further instructions.