my heart, like thunder
- chapter one -
We don't have a plan
Just pack your bags and run as fast as we can
We hold the future in the palm of our hands
At the end of the day, it's the little things what matter most in life. It's a truth the young don't know and the old learn the hard way, with long years of experience. How those little exchanges become sparks of memory recalled fondly down the line, or they stick in the craw as regrets you just can't forget.
Cid Highwind's had plenty of both in his life, fond memories and mistakes. The little things, that over time build up into big enormous things, the foundation of everything we're meant to do in our lives, great and small. Or, they make up horrible things that will take those lives away.
Like a cigarette. Just a single cigarette, repeated over and over again, until a man's life is ended far too soon.
Well, too soon for most folks. Cid's honestly kinda impressed he made it to 52. He's even more surprised to find he's feeling pretty damn good, for being a dead guy. The man blinks open his eyes. He does not see the gray hospital ceiling he's become accustomed to. He's not surrounded by weepy eyed friends, well meaning nurses, or his ever present, loving wife.
And, incredibly, he can fucking breathe.
"… the hell?" Surprise shocks the words out of him, and then surprises him again when they come out sounding so smooth. A hand leaps at his throat, pats over his bristled chin and face. When the hell did they come up with a cure for cancer and how did it do so much for the state of his skin?
He moves on autopilot, barely noticing as he stands up out of an all too familiar bed on legs that are as strangely young and healthy as the rest of him. Groaning, Cid rubs at his eyes, blinks at his hairy, blemish free arms, somewhat scarred but lacking the wrinkles and discoloring of age. They're strong, young, and certainly have to be part of some near death dream he's having in his twilight hours.
Stumbling through his old bedroom, Cid nearly trips into the bathroom, grabbing for the sink with sweaty palms. The face that greets him is very familiar, if nearly thirty years younger. The man gapes opened mouth, and the baby faced kid in the mirror gapes back.
"What the fuck!?"
A lot of time passes as Cid stands in the bathroom, staring at his own sweaty face. It takes the sound of the screen door slamming shut and footsteps moving through the house to shake him out of it. A voice calls out. "Cid?"
Fuck. Shera. The man's eyes water and he grips the sink tight, remembering the face of the sweet, sweet woman who'd held his hand and watched him die. The woman who stood with him every single damn day, when he deserved it and when he didn't, and right now – fuck, right now he really doesn't deserve it.
This is a dream, ain't it? Folks talk about this kinda flashback before death all the time, but he never imagined it would feel so real. Cid was picturing some kinda slide show or a highlight reel, not to wake up in his boxers in the house he and Shera first owned together, a year after the rocket originally failed and Shinra abandoned them both.
Fuck.
The room is a mess. His shower curtain's flung open, towels and dirty clothes scattered across a very gross floor. The bedroom's just as bad, trash overflowing, dirty dishes piling up on the desk, the bedside, the damn floor. He smells. Bad. Frowning, Cid lifts and arm and – yep. That smell is definitely him.
"Cid? You okay?"
"Uh – yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." The man manages, still very much dazed. He's also very much not okay, but there's no way to explain that in five words or less. "Gonna take a shower."
"Okay. I'm starting dinner. Let me know when you're hungry."
God, what a woman. He never deserved her, especially not now, of all the times in his godforsaken life.
No time to dwell on that, because if he starts now, he may never stop. Instead, he strips off his dirty clothes, picks up all the laundry in the bathroom and throws it into the bedroom, considering that moderate progress. Then he jumps into the shower to get clean and spends an hour standing under the spray staring a hole into the tile, waiting for the moment this weird dream ends and he goes back to listening to the machines tracking his slow descent into death.
No such luck. No matter how long he waits, the hum of the oxygen tank and the ticking heartbeat monitor just don't come back.
So he's… what? Hallucinating? Stuck in a very lucid fever dream? Or was all that, the whole life he lived before, the dream? He would consider it save he's not that creative. No way in hell he'd ever come up with Sephiroth and Jenova and Shinra experimenting with alien shit leading to a giant meteor barreling down on them outta the sky. Nope. If anything's the dream, it's this.
But it's a dream that's not ending.
Cid gets out of the shower, throws on what he thinks (and hopes) are clean clothes, gathering up all the dirty stuff and piling it in the hallway. The dishes are next; they don't make it to the kitchen, cause he knows Shera will do 'em if he does that, and he refuses to be more of a burden on her than he already has been for the last few decades of his life. He changes the sheets, scrubs the toilet, sweeps the floor, then collapses on his bed and stares at the ceiling while silently screaming in his own head.
What.
The.
Fuck.
"WHAT THE FUCK!?"
"Cid?"
"Nothin' just – stubbed my toe!" He lies, flipping over and grabbing the pillow on his bed, proceeding to muffle his next few dozen curses into the fabric.
They'd talked about it a few times over drinks, with AVALANCHE. Just a dumb improbable hypothetical that would never happen.
What would you do if you could do it all again?
Course they had regrets. You didn't lead the lives they did without wishing things coulda been different. More lives saved, less suffering all around. It was just daydreams and impossible wishes, but there was something healing in talking about the things they wanted to be different, the ways they wanted to be different themselves.
Reeve had taken it a little more serious, scientist that he was. Cid, as the other major researcher on the team, theorized on it with him more deeply. How would it work? What would the rules be? Could it even be theoretically possible on paper? The answers they came to were, they just didn't know enough about the lifestream and how it worked. People in the physical world experience time as a single direction, but is that true of the intangible, those beyond the physical? They had no way of knowing.
It's possible he knows it now.
Cid's still half convinced the world he sees when he opens his eyes cannot possibly be real. It's too fuckin' crazy. Time travel? Really? Over the years, he and the rest of the old team have seen a bunch of batshit stuff but time travel ranks really high on the no fuckin way this is real list.
Not to mention – if time travel was possible, if the life stream could function as a conduit going both forward and backward, and it chose somebody, anybody, to try and go back and keep things from gettin' as fucked as they did, then why the hell would the person it chose be him?
You don't pick Cid fuckin' Highwind for a mission like this! You need somethin' built, you need a plane flown someplace, he's your man, but this… this? He's not even sure what this is! Is he just dreaming through his life again, unable to change a thing, or is is supposed to figure out on his own how to unfuck the five or six years of fuckery that led to Sephiroth and Jenova and Meteor all on his own?
For about the twentieth time, Cid whispers, "What the fuck."
Eventually he gets outta bed, he drags the clothes to the laundry room, he does the dishes, and eats dinner, most of it done in silence. He can tell its unnerving Shera, who watches him with the eyes of a fox, the eyes of a woman who knows him down to his bones and in another life was his wife for more than twenty years.
Aw hell. It's such a weird thing to think that they have so many years shared together but now, suddenly, Cid has had half a life with her she doesn't even know about. Shera ate her dinner and sat on the front porch to enjoy the evening afterward, choosing to give Cid space after interpreting his weird behavior as some kind of episode. She's not far off.
He can't stop looking up and staring at the back of her head. Thinking of their wedding day, their anniversaries, working together on alternative energy and building a company together, flying around the world, going to space… and none of it happened to her. Hands still soaked in water and suds, Cid gives up on washing dishes and just dwells on that. It's true of everybody he's ever known – none of 'em have half the memories he does.
Hell, if he's around twenty five that makes Cloud what,14, maybe? And he's still in Nibelheim with Tifa. Yuffie can't even be ten, and … Gods, the Wutai war would be happening around now wouldn't it? Barret's still with his wife in Corel, a town that still exists, Aerith is with her mom in Midgar, Nanaki should hopefully not have been caught by Shinra yet, and Vincent…
Ah, hell. Vincent.
Slumping against the counter, Cid stares out the window over the sink, out towards the grassy plains and the long line of the horizon.
Accepting it isn't as hard as he thought it should be.
But then, that comes with accepting death, after all. He'd long since been ready to say goodbye to those he loves cause his time had come. There ain't exactly a lot of work gone into curing cancer when they're still just trying to build infrastructure and fix the hospitals to the point they can function, let alone research. Cid had known, the moment he was diagnosed, that the outlook was bleak.
So, in a way, waking up decades earlier in his own younger body means he's actually gotten his friends back. Different friends, younger ones, but alive and safe and with every possibility he could see 'em again. Better than bein' dead. After he thinks about that, losing the memories they had ain't so hard after all.
The bigger problem is facing what all this could mean: waking up younger, with his memories intact. Knowing what's coming for the world in the years ahead. And he's the only one who knows.
How the fuck he supposed to stop any of this shit?
Gripping his hair and cursing – very quietly, because he's pretty sure Shera is about a minute from deciding to drag him to the doctor and check if he's having a stroke. Cid stalks across the floor of his bedroom, back and forth, for a half hour just trying to put together in his head some idea of what's to come and what he could do to stop it.
It's no fuckin' good. Damn it, this shit happened twenty five years ago! It's ancient history to him now! And even when it was fresh, it ain't like he memorized where shit happened or when! He ain't gotta a timeline or a map of "things Shinra fucked, please fix" in his goddamn head! He knows Sephiroth's gonna blow his cork, he knows pieces of Jenova are gonna flood the countryside and clones are about to be up everybody's ass, but he doesn't know when or where.
The only thing he can remember with clarity is Nibelheim. A lot of shit starts there, and he knows it burned down five years before he met Cloud. That puts it around when he was sixteen. Cid's sure of that, 'cause they celebrated Cloud's 21st on the road that year they were traveling. He and Barret tried to give the kid a somewhat normal welcome into adulthood, but the kid's mako enhanced tolerance made it near impossible for the older men to keep up with him. It didn't quite go as planned, but he hopes it was a good memory for the kid.
One he won't have this time, if Cid has anything to say about it.
Nibelheim's the key. He's gotta get there, and keep Cloud from ever leaving to join those fuckers in Midgar. He's gotta get rid of whatever it was that drove Sephiroth nuts, something about the mansion and obviously the piece of Jenova in the reactor. He's gotta find all of her, which is gonna practically be impossible, though maybe if he takes a piece from Nibelheim and uses it to attract the others… but hell, they barely beat some of those things when they were a team. How the hell he supposed to do it alone!?
Alright, well. One step at a time. He's gotta stop Cloud from heading to the capital. He's gotta stop Sephiroth from losing his shit. Specially since non enhanced Cloud ain't gonna be able to keep up with him.
Hell, long as he's fixing his friend's lives, he could try and stop them building the reactor in Corel… maybe get a warning to Nanaki in Cosmo Canyon… Yuffie won't be safe to see for years with the war goin' on, and he ain't got a lick of an idea how to fix that.
Gods, he could use some help.
The thought of the one and only person who might be able to help comes to him for just a moment before he represses it. Waking up Vincent just isn't a good idea yet. Of course he can't leave the man to suffer forever, but he can't imagine waking him up now. The last time, the entire group was there to drag him outta his shell. He and Cloud really saw eye to eye, and it was the kid that brought Vince around to staying in the world of the living and tryin' to move on.
The man really didn't like Cid back then. Who could blame him? Cid's never been that socially aware, always stumbling right onto the land mines and forbidden topics everybody else avoids. He's crass, he's an ass, and Vincent Valentine nearly came close to killing him a few times on the road, Cid's pretty damn sure. If he went by himself to wake the man up, he'd probably lock himself back in that coffin and throw away the damn key.
So, no, Vincent probably won't be helping him. Maybe when Cloud's older, Cid can try and get the kid to approach him. He's a gentle soul, and nobody can deny those adorable big eyes anything. Especially if he's younger and not as jaded cause he never got kidnapped and tortured, which is not gonna fuckin' happen.
Right. No more pouting and freaking out, Cid thinks with a firm nod, tightening his fists. Time to get to work.
First, he's gotta talk to Shera.
….
Aw, fuck.
Talking. He's gotten a hell of a lot better at it over the years, specially with her, but that doesn't mean that this isn't… fucking weird. Cause this ain't his Shera, whose seen him grow and change over two decades. This Shera's just a kid, staying with a very selfish man out of guilt, misplaced loyalty and a tragic lack of self preservation.
Maybe it wasn't the love story most people would imagine, but Cid did love Shera, in his own way. Sure, he sometimes stayed away for weeks if not months flying across the world, while Shera stayed in Rocket Town researching and developing technology no one else could fathom. She revolutionized energy right when the world needed it most, when Mako was an impossibility and gasoline was proving to have its own very bad setbacks. They both had their own lives, and they were fine with the distance.
Even when they were together they weren't clingy. Cid can count the number of times they've kissed on one hand. They never had sex after the first year of trying, just didn't work out. Sometimes he wonders if maybe something's broken in him that keeps that shit from working, but it seems to be fine when it's just him and his hand so, who the fuck knows. It stopped bothering him a long time ago.
But now that he's standing here, years before the wedding ever took place, Cid can't help but take another look at the woman, and the relationship they'd shared.
It hadn't been bad. Maybe most folks would think it weird. He's not sure how much of it was built on love so much as a desire for stability in a world so deeply unstable. He and Shera grew up together, in the orphanage of a small town that doesn't exist anymore. As far back as he remembers, she was the only one always at his back. They took care of each other, cause no one else was gonna.
Now, he can't help but wonder if they hadn't gotten married so quick after Meteor cause… what else were they gonna do? The team had split up. Cloud was dealing with his own shit, Barret was dealing with his own shit, both of them traveling the countryside figuring things out. Tifa was left with the kids in Edge, while Yuffie and Nanaki went to their respective homes to help rebuild.
So, Cid followed suit – he went to Rocket Town, reuniting with the woman he'd left very much in the lurch, and who had for most of his journey not been sure if he was dead, arrested, or in the middle of committing more crimes. Cid's pretty sure he asked her to marry him to make her stop having panic attacks every time he left the damn room.
It's not the worst reason to get married. But maybe this time he can handle things better, keep Shera from suffering so much, and keep himself from becoming so dependent. It's only been a year since the rocket – this time, maybe they can stay friends, and one day Shera can meet and fall in love with somebody who doesn't lose his damn boner every time they get naked.
"Hey, Sher?"
The woman's sitting at the table in the kitchen when he calls her, nursing a cup of tea. At the sound of his voice, she stands, as if coming to attention. The alertness in her face – an awareness of his focus and the possibility it might be negative, be anger… it hurts to see. Especially because there's not a lick of judgment or sorrow in her face, as if she's okay with being his verbal punching bag. A spike of loathing strikes him hard in the heart, and Cid clears his throat.
"Sorry, didn't mean to disturb you, just, uh," Sighing, Cid runs a hand through his hair. As he does, his eyes fall on the cup on the tabletop. Not Shera's, but the one across from it. A steaming hot cup of tea, prepared the way he likes it, as if it was just made.
"Are you okay, Captain?" The woman's gaze narrows in concern. Cause he's talking normally and not just sulking around and shouting at her.
Fuck I'm a piece of shit.
"Yeah, uh, I'm fine," He sits at the table, a trembling hand drifting to the cup. … fuck, what the hell is he supposed to say? "You uh, better sit down. I gotta talk about somethin."
He apologizes. Profusely, deeply, over and over. Explains some of why he was the way he was, not trying to make excuses so much as help her understand it wasn't her fault, it was all him. His insecurities, his unhappiness and selfishness lashing out. There's crying and weeping and sobbing on each other's shoulders, mostly on Cid's part, but by the early morning they've both gotten a lot off their chests.
That's when he explains what he's gonna do.
"I need some space. We both do," He starts, voices a little rough. "I gotta figure out where to go from here and I'm not gonna get that moping in town. So, figure I'll head south a while. Spend a season on the road? You can have the house to yourself, do whatever you want. Relax, research, whatever's your fancy. No need to worry about me, yeah?"
Cid lifts his gaze to meet her wet eyes, and the soft smile on the woman's face.
"Yeah, Cid," She says softly. "I understand."
His packs his bags, traveling pretty light. He grabs his spear and camping gear, and a few things from his office, throwing them in a bag onto the back of his bike. Shera packs a few bags of his favorite tea when he's not looking, and he smiles and leaves it be.
Before he leaves, he writes two letters. One is addressed to Bugenhagen in Cosmo Canyon, a vaguely worded "warning from a friend" about Shinra looking to get its hands on some talking cats. The second is a far more detailed, revealing letter to Corel, addressed to Barret Wallace. Explaining the history of Rocket Town and how Shinra fucked them all over, choosing to value profit over the lives of the people who lived there. He hopes it'll be enough to turn the tides of fate for two of his friends.
Then, after a thousand assurances to Shera that he'll keep in touch and double checking his PHS again and again, he's packed and in the saddle of his old Harley, riding south.
Approaching Nibelheim is a bit of an anxious situation. Sure, he's pretty sure his timeline is right… but if it is wrong, there's every possibility he's walking right into the hands of Sephiroth on a rampage or Hojo running his clone-a-thon and neither of those situations would turn out well for him. He's gotta remember he's not working with a team this time around, and stealth is gonna be the key word.
If that brat Yuffie can manage "stealth" loud as she is, Cid's pretty sure he can manage something.
Thankfully, the town is neither on fire nor being torn down and rebuilt into a pod people paradise by Shinra. Looks like he was right; it's still a normal town, and Cloud and Tifa are probably normal kids, somewhere around here.
Great. That's step one. Now he's just gotta figure out the rest of it and save the world, somehow.
Cid stops the bike just outside town, eyes trailing over the rotting sign, nearly tilted onto its side, half buried in snow and reading, "-LHEIM". The road ahead of him is a thin sliver of dirt, cleared of snow only on the main strip, which is barely a strip and more a stretch of fifty feet. There are twenty houses total that he can see, and there's no way more than a hundred people live in this place, and that's a generous estimate.
"Poor kid," Cid sighs with a shake of his head. "Had to be hell in a place to grow up." Shy effeminate boy in a backwards hick place like this? No wonder he ran off to prove himself in the army. Cid's still got time to stop that now. First he's gonna find the hotel, the only one in town, which apparently… is closed.
"Fuckin' seriously?"
The doors are locked tight, a sign hanging in the window reading CLOSED in red. A local explains in terse, tight language that implies they were angry to be asked or even looked at by someone so clearly foreign and smelling of diesel exhaust. Apparently the 'tourism' in the area isn't really thriving in the height of winter, what with the storms burying the roads in feet of snow for months at a time. He's arrived just in time to spend the whole season here, because the bike ain't riding down those hills if the snow gets any higher.
"Right," Sighing, Cid thanks the man, who'd already walked off in a shuffling rush, shoulders hunched up to his ears. Then he starts walking his bike down the road, to the far end of town.
The mansion's actually pretty cozy once he's inside and shut the door behind him.
He drags his whole bike in with him, cause he ain't trusting to leaving it on the street. Sounds like he's gonna be here a while, and given the importance of the town, its probably not a bad idea to stick around. Looking around the dank walls of the mansion's main hall, Cid stands with his hands on his hips, wracking his mind for memories and hankering desperately for a cigarette.
He ignores the urge. Before he left Rocket Town, he took all his cigarettes and buried 'em in the backyard. Thought about burning 'em, but figured that might be the wrong way to go about it. Instead, he bites his lip and ignores the feeling, sitting down by his bike and digging into his bag.
It's time to start figuring this shit out.
…
Two hours later, he ain't got shit figured out.
Okay, he's got a list. Things he wants to stop, moved into a few categories since he's gonna have to prioritize.
Main list: Save Aerith. Stop Sephiroth. Stop Meteor. Stop Shinra. Stop Jenova.
Second list. Save Corel & Nibelheim. Save Nanaki. Keep Cloud from joining Shinra. Save his friend Zack. Replace Mako Energy. Help the remaining SOLDIERs with the degeneration. Find the Black Materia and chuck it as far into outer space as he can.
Besides those lists, he's got nothin'.
He's got no idea how he's supposed to do these things. Cid knows what's gonna go wrong in vague terms, knows the path history is on, but tryin' to pinpoint the places to influence, the things he can change… hell, the very thought has his stomach clenching and the urge to smoke rising to a deafening pitch. Cursing, the man flips the notebook shut and tosses it across the room in frustration, before shutting his eyes.
He's just gonna get some sleep and deal with it in the morning. Things are always easier after a night's rest, right? Just don't worry about it. He drags out his sleeping gear and settles in for the night, trying to ignore the pounding headache, the absolute lack of desire for sleep at all. Still, he lays down, closes his eyes, and he tries.
He thinks about his friends. Not the ones from his other life, but the ones living here and now. A smile spreads on his face. Man, he can't wait to see what a little Cloud and Tifa look like. Fourteen years old, with squeaky lil' voices and awkward limbs, with acne. Hah! The heroes who saved the world, as little kids with acne! All by himself he chuckles, then he laughs, warmly and fondly.
Placing a hand against the rough, aging wood, Cid thinks about the friend below him. Still sleeping, hopefully with some measure of peace, in spite of it all. The man aches to think of what Vincent's been through, that he wasn't able to go back far enough to stop it, but at the least it's over now. He can sleep. And there's something soothing about the idea that the man is so close by, that he's safe. Even if they don't know each other and can't see one another, Cid knows he's there. It's enough.
With that thought, after hours of tossing and turning, he finally slips into a restless sleep.
On his second day in town, Cid Highwind learns that Nibelheim does not have restaurants.
It has a bar, which opens at noon. If he's gonna have breakfast, it's gonna be homemade. He hits the only supermarket in town, a dinky hole in the wall that has bread, eggs, milk, a few other staples and barely anything else. He buys enough to make eggs and grits, heads back to the mansion, and pulls out his electric skillet.
Sitting there waiting on breakfast, he remembers cookin' on the road. Grits had received a mixed reception the few times he made it for the gang. A chuckle escapes him at the memory. Yuffie had been disgusted. She called it wet dirt, and when Cid tried to get her to take back her insults she'd flung a spoonful of it at his face. The two of them had run around the camp like children (which only one of them was) until Barret grabbed Cid by the collar and dragged him back to the campfire, telling him to cool his jets and act his age.
Gods, he misses Barret. Of all his friends, they understood each other the best; same generation, same background growin' up in piss poor hick towns. As much as it might not matter on the grand scheme of things, he hopes he can save Corel, save Barret's wife and his friends. The man deserves so much better than he got.
Just the thought, the pressure of it, has his headache rearing back to life and the man loses his appetite. Cid switches the skillet off and sets his bowl down, groaning.
How the hell is he supposed to do this!?
He doesn't know when things happen. When does the Corel reactor get built, when does Shinra come in to kill 'em all? He doesn't know exactly when Cloud heads off to Shinra, or when Sephiroth's heading to visit Nibelheim. There are so many moving pieces and a single thing goin' wrong could set them back so far in the fight against the real threat.
Maybe… maybe he should visit Corel. Could he convince Barret to help him? But the man has a sick wife, he can't leave her… half the rest of the gang are still kids. Could he convince Nanaki? A strange former Shinra employee comin' outta nowhere asking the guy to join him might be real suspicious. … Nope.
He has to do this, and he's gotta do it alone.
Cid spends the rest of the day in the mansion, trying for the life of him to figure out the goddamn riddles. What fucking moron put the key to the basement in a locked safe, hid the four dials to the safe throughout the mansion, made the safe code a fuckin' puzzle, and then had a monster sealed inside it!? He's suddenly very grateful that he wasn't present for all this shit the first time around.
Man, if he didn't remember the team mentioning the monster in the safe at the last minute, after runnin' his ass across the mansion lookin' for shit all day, he'd probably be dead. Sweat laden and covered in monster guts from the little creatures runnin' round the place, Cid puts the last dial on the safe and leaves it be, promising to return to it in the morning.
"Damn, this shit…" His chest heaves as he stumbles from the room. "Would be so much easier… with the gang…"
His head hurts. Stumbling down the main stairwell towards his camp, he nearly collapses into his bedroll without noticing the man standing in front of the main entrance.
"Good afternoon, sir," The man's voice catches his attention and he jumps, surprising him.
"Ah, hell, sorry," Wiping at his forehead, Cid takes a deep breath. "Been a long day,"
"Looks like it," The stranger eyes him up and down, holding his hat in his hand like an old fashioned gentlemen. He steps forward, extending his hand. "Brian Lockhart," He says. It takes a second for Cid's brain to catch up and take his hand.
"Cid Highwind,"
"Here for a little sightseeing?" The man asks. "Unfortunately you've picked the worst time of year to do it."
Of course… it clicks in an instant. Lockhart. Tifa's dad was the mayor, and in a small town like this, a stranger riding in on a bike and holing up in the abandoned mansion down the street is gonna make noise. He's here to feel him out. Cid's hackles lower, and he smiles.
"Naw, nothin' like that. Was just passin' through when the storm got so bad my bike couldn't keep up with the snow. Decided to crash here but the hotel's closed, sure you know." Cid gestures and the man nods. "Saw this place and figured it would suit for the night. From the looks of it nobody's been here in a while, but if it's got an owner I don't wanna step on any toes." From the looks Brian's giving his gore-soaked clothes, Cid chuckles, lifting his arms deprecatingly. "Heard the monsters roamin' around and figured I'd clean house."
"It's true, this place hasn't had an owner in some time." Brian looks to be relaxing too, now that he's spoken to Cid and has seen he doesn't appear to be some maniacal serial killer. "And you've done us a favor taking care of anything crawlin' around in here, so thanks for that. I'd offer you a room at my place but I'm afraid your bike would have to stay here."
"Don't worry bout it," Cid shrugs him off. "Whether the storm passes or not, I'm not gonna stay here all winter. I'll take a while to rest and then leg it if I gotta. And I don't mind the place, it's private, and not too cold once the doors're closed."
Brian nods, as if he expected the answer. "Well, you need anything, you come to me, or you can ask after my girl, Tifa, she's always round town." They shake farewell and Cid walks him to the door, before shutting it tight and collapsing at the base of it with a huge sigh.
The headache is worse in the morning.
Opening his eyes hurts. Groaning, Cid turns into his bedroll and tries to sleep it off a while, but it won't go away. He forces himself up and tries to make breakfast, but the smell just makes him nauseous.
Fuck. There's no way he can fight Lost Number like this. Fuck.
How the hell is he supposed to save the world? Him, a total fuckup? Sick from nicotine withdrawal and completely lost as to how to change what's coming? Anybody would've been better to send back than him. Hell, Aerith died way sooner, she shoulda been the one, she coulda fixed it all in a day...
Resigning himself to pain and self loathing as his schedule for the day, Cid collapses back into the bedroll.
It takes three days for the illness to pass enough that he can see straight again. Days of nausea, insomnia, exhaustion and a pounding headache. There was no point fighting anything while he was like this, when a normal monster could punch his ticket, let alone something like Lost Number. Every day he's stuck waiting to feel better, he curses himself, his weakness, everything and anything related to tobacco, and whoever's bright idea it was to send him back and not anybody else.
When he can finally see again, he's too tired to try tussling with Lost Number. But he's gotta make some progress, so it's time to hike up the mountain and do some pokin' around at the reactor, see if he can't figure out a plan.
Jenova tends to be pretty fiesty when you get her attention. But is this Jenova gonna be like the others? He never really understood how all that worked. Some creatures get her cells in 'em, and she turns 'em into mad ravenous monsters they gotta take down. But is her body itself gonna go feral? He knows part of it was in the Shinra tower, according to Cloud and the gang, did that one stay asleep or go nuts?
Fuck, he hates trying to figure this stuff out alone.
He wonders what Shera's doing, back home. She couldn't have come with him – it would have required way too many explanations, and she's never been much of a fighter. Back in Rocket Town, she can focus on her research and maybe develop some Mako alternatives years ahead of time. Though, last time she was workin' on it cause of everything that happened… will she invent them again? He really hopes so.
The town is still laden in snow when he steps outside, wincing from the bright light reflecting off the piles of white spread everywhere. The headache is there, but manageable, and he's not so nauseous anymore. It'll have to do.
So, backpack on and spear at the ready, he turns to hike up the mountain. He's not gonna ask for a guide – that would require explaining why he wanted to see the reactor – but it can't be that hard to find, right? It's a damn reactor. Oughta stand out. Right?
…
Three hours later, he's lost on Mt. Nibel.
Fuck.
…
He sets up camp for the night, giving up on the idea of finding anything in this blistering white hellscape. It's freezing, but once he gets a fire going and crawls inside the tent, well, it's better than nothing. Better than wandering around in the freezing cold with no idea where he's going.
Ain't that just a metaphor for what he's been doin' this whole time? Hell, even before he woke up in another life, his first one was a mess, he was always just stumbling blindly in the dark…
Be nice if he could figure out his footing for once in his life.
It's easier to navigate come morning. In the early light, the reactor gives its position away with a bright burst of green into the sky, to the far left of his camp. He makes a mental note of the general direction before eating a quick breakfast, cleaning up the site, and heading out again.
Apparently he wasn't too far off last night. Only an hour's walk finds him crossing a long rickety bridge towards an ancient wreck of a place.
"Whew," Cid whistles, eyeing the tall silver stacks and long curving tubes alight with life. "Damn this place old," He'd heard Nibelheim got one of the earliest reactors, but this is early. He can see the seams coming apart on the thing. He ducks in through the door, forcing it open with a long creak and stepping into a heavy darkness that's been left undisturbed for years, maybe decades.
He coughs heavily, for a long time, which might be the cigarettes but it might be the nasty filth that's been left to fill the dank air of this place. No one's been here in ages. Cid would bet Shinra built the place, kept it up a year or two, then left the town to fend for itself in the long years since. Theoretically, reactors can run without any interference for years at a time, but for safety's sake you'd think they'd have some regular upkeep at least.
"Damn cheap bastards," Cid coughs one more time, before wiping at his mouth. The taste of ash lingers, and his nausea is back, full swing. Unfortunately, being where he is, he has a feeling it's only going to get worse. He barely walks in the door and is already proven right by what he sees.
The tubes still have people in them.
Fuck, this shit is dark. He knew it was, but he didn't know the details. Cid was the last of the team to join up, and he came along after they'd already passed through Nibelheim once. While he heard about a lot of it later, both the version Cloud falsely remembered and the more accurate one, none of it was as horrific as seeing it himself. And he's definitely sure he would remember that the reactor was full of goddamn monster corpses!
"What's the point of this, huh?" Cid asks himself, using a spear to pry open the fourth horrendous bottle of evil shit. "So you find an alien, you figure out how to use her to modify humans, fine. Then you find out, oh, whoops, do a little too much and they get fucked up! But why the hell," With one final yell and a lurch, the glass breaks open and the corpse topples out. It already seems to be in its death throes, but Cid stabs it through the chest to be sure. "Why the hell," He gasps, "Would you fucking keep them all!?"
"It makes no damn sense!" He continues to complain as he moves to the next one. "Prof Gast was the original guy right? He creates the Jenova Project and SOLDIER here in town. When the program was done why'd you leave the alien behind? Won't she important?" That Cid really wonders about. "Gotta wonder if Hojo knew she was a threat, too. Keep her safe, but keep her distant, huh?"
Least, that's his theory. Why else would he leave his precious alien specimen in a reactor on a mountain, cover it up with false walls and machinery, and hide the real body behind them?
By the time he's done prying all the tubes open, ensuring the bodies are done for, and removing the machinery covering the real Jenova, Cid's exhausted. He collapses onto the metal feminine figure with a heavy gasp, coughing as he leans on his spear. He doesn't rest long; he can't with that eerie… thing… hovering in the air behind him.
He's never seen her complete like this. Still gotta head, a torso and legs, but no arms… wonder if that was on purpose. Gasping, he stands, still using his spear as a crutch, as he turns to face the woman's body.
"Don't look like you're a threat on your own… else, you'd kick my ass right now, huh?" Cid frowns. "And I dunno if there are other pieces of you, yet… you're still here. Sephiroth hasn't come. Hojo hasn't experimented on the townspeople. If I take you out now… is that it?"
It feels too easy. He has to be missing something, right? And how's he supposed to really, absolutely take care of her, with no chance she'll come back?
Cid stands and considers it as he looks at the monster that's behind so much of their future suffering. She's gotta go, no doubt about it. And he's pretty sure her cells haven't spread too far yet, or there'd have been stories of huge creatures attacking cities or rampaging in the countryside. That shit didn't start until later, when Sephiroth started messing with Cloud and sending Jenova after him.
But it's also very likely this isn't the whole of Jenova. Her damn arms are missing. Would Hojo really leave for Midgar without any part of her to experiment on? If he gets rid of most of her, of the head, is that enough to remove her ability to mess with the other pieces?
Cid thinks back to the mansion, and the library he knows is in the basement. That part sticks out in his memory; Cloud told them all about Sephiroth's days long deep dive into the research kept there.
He's gonna have to do some studying.
And… fuck.
The thing's gotta come with him.
It takes a while, but with the remaining tools in the reactor and all the extra bits from the monster tubes, he manages to slap together a pretty decent sled. Getting the creature down the stairs and outside is the worst part; it takes an hour to dismantle the attachments on the tube without damaging the actual container itself, then he's gotta widen the door frame, burn all the corpses he left behind… it is a gruesome day's work.
But it's done, and leaves him with a sun setting over the snowy fields as he steps back outside. Jenova is strapped on tight to the back of a sled, rigged together with metal sheeting and thick glass, with a moderate engine tied onto a makeshift propeller. It's not his best work, but they'll be headin' downhill anyway, so gravity should give 'em a hand.
The engine lasts most of the way down the mountain, and by then they've got such momentum they really don't slow down. There's so little life on Mt. Nibel – besides the monsters – there's not really any trees or plant life to avoid, just some craggy rocks and broken road that make it a little bumpy. Once the land evens out and the town's in sight, the sled slows to a halt, and Cid makes the rest of the journey pulling it along behind him.
As impossible as it seemed this morning, he's finally got it done: the reactor is safe. No more nightmares on the mountain, though he's still left with the one he brought down it. But it's a step in the right direction, and despite the bitter chill settling into his chest, the aching cough in his lungs and utter exhaustion he feels right to the bone, Cid's grinning as he pulls Jenova into the mansion.
"How do you like that?" He gasps, hands on his knees. Once he catches his breath, he moves around the thing to the front doors and slams them shut. "Gonna need to seal you off someplace… monsters are gonna get even rowdier now that you're around…"
He picks a room in a far corner of the first floor, pushing her in and shutting the door. It won't stop the more tenacious ones, but there's nothing here that could break through that glass, and he mostly just needs to keep her away from his area of the mansion, or else he'll never get any sleep.
Tonight, he needs it. He settles into his bed roll with a sigh of relief, and he's out the moment he shuts his eyes.
The next day, after a long night's sleep, he finally takes on Lost Number.
It's not actually so bad once he faces it down. The monster might've been rough on a young Cloud and company, early in their journey, but this Cid Highwind has faced Sephiroth and Jenova and countless others dozens of times. Now he's got those experiences in his head and his young man's physique! The thing never stood a chance.
Sliding open the secret door, Cid feels hopeful for the first time in a while. He's also honestly a bit anxious. This bit feels… sacrosanct. Important. The man hesitates in the doorway, staring down into the long dark stairwell, before sliding the key into his pocket.
He wasn't part of the team when they found Vincent, he only heard the stories. A former Shinra employee. Betrayed and captured by a scientist, turned into an experiment. Left to rot in the dark. Found in a goddamn coffin, just sleeping his life away.
The images those stories brought to mind are very much like what he's seeing now. Mold filled stone halls and creaking staircases, utter darkness and the smell of dirt and rot. Halfway down the long dark hall, Cid comes to a halt.
There's a single door to his left. A small barred window in the wood reveals a room full of coffins and corpses. The man can't help it. His throat grows tight, and a wavering hand reaches out for the handle, before he hesitates. His movement shifts, and he simply places his palm on the door.
It's not the time. Reluctantly he lets his hand slide away, and Cid heads down the hall, refusing to look back.