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Have a good weekend and stay safe!

~Eighteen~

Cloud and Reno arrived at Tifa's place together around five for dinner. Reno had bought a case of beer earlier to bring with them so that he wasn't drinking from the bar stock. They entered through the back of the building into the kitchen area and Reno greeted the girls and proceeded to open the beer case to put the bottles into one of the refrigerators.

"Hey," Tifa said to them. She looked back from the stove at them and seemed a little upset when she looked Cloud's way and saw his face but she didn't question what happened to him which meant she already knew. She looked away again quickly. "You guys are the first to get here. Marlene's out in the front colouring."

"Look at us, all punctual," Reno remarked. He grabbed himself one of the bottles and made his way out front to the bar area.

"Are you alright?" Aerith asked Cloud then.

"Yeah," he said in return. "Did Zack tell everyone what happened?" he asked her back.

She looked over at Tifa briefly and shook her head. Tifa spoke up then.

"Pretty sure Reno texted everyone that you were in a fight," she said. "Actually, the message said something about a shooting and a fight. Thought he was making crap up like usual until seeing the news this morning," she explained. "No one was killed, thankfully." She looked at Cloud as she said that and the message was clear. She'd been speaking generally but she'd been talking about him. She sounded a little annoyed and he couldn't really blame her.

"Sorry about keeping Zack from getting home last night," he said to Aerith and she gave him a sympathetic smile.

"It's okay," she said. "I'm just glad you're safe," she assured him. Though she seemed to really mean that, he also felt like there was more she wanted to say but she withheld it. Whatever it was he suspected it would have left him feeling guiltier than before.

He headed out to join Reno and Marlene then. He could see them sitting together at one of the tables.

"That looks sore," Marlene commented of the bruising on Cloud's face when she saw him.

"It's not too bad," Cloud told her.

"You should sit," Marlene advised and proceeded to get up to try and pull the one chair out from the table for him where she'd been colouring.

Cloud took the chair and slid it back for her. He sat down slowly across from Reno with Marlene next to him, trying not to aggravate the injury in his side too much.

"You should have told the police on him," Marlene said, sounding almost like she was chastising him.

"Who?" Cloud asked her.

"The butthole who hit you," she said.

He rose his eyebrows at her in surprise. "The what?" he asked, questioning her language, his tone stern then.

"That's what Reno just said he was," she said simply with one of her crayons in her hand that she pressed to the colouring book in front of her.

"Hey!" Reno piped up quickly after struggling to swallow a gulp of beer too fast. "Why are you ratting me out? Thought we had an understanding," he said to her.

"What understanding?" she asked without looking at him.

"I said before you get two bucks a week for not telling anyone when I say bad words around you," he reminded her and she did look up at him then.

"You still owe me for the time you stole one of the big bottles behind the bar and I didn't tell anyone," she argued, dropping the purple crayon in her hand and picking up a yellow one.

"Well, not anymore I don't," Reno countered, leaning down close to her. "You know what snitches get?" he asked.

"Stitches," she replied with next to no thought and was back to colouring.

"Don't teach her that," Cloud said to Reno, shaking his head in disapproval.

"Too late," Reno said with a shrug. He leaned back in his chair with his beer in his hand. "What I said was, Cloud got hit by a bully, right?" Reno spoke down to Marlene and she nodded. "And we don't put up with bullying right?" he added and she nodded again more emphatically.

"Right!" she agreed.

"See, I teach her moral junk too," Reno said to Cloud before taking another drink from the bottle in his hand.

"Colour with me," Marlene said then.

"What you got here?" Reno asked as he leaned forward again. He set down his beer and took the small stack of her colouring books and spread them out to see what she had. "Oh Fairy Princesses," he spoke excitedly and passed it across the table to Cloud. "That's definitely for you," he said, smirking.

Cloud just gave him an unimpressed look back as he opened the book to an uncoloured page. Reno decided on a book of sea animals. Cloud noticed after a minute Reno seemed to be taking the staying-inside-the-lines suggestion that kids were taught pretty seriously. He looked like he was concentrating pretty hard.

"Did you really have to text everyone about the fight?" he asked Reno then, which earned him a snort.

"Of course I did," he said unapologetically. "It's only a big deal if you make it one," he added.

All Cloud could do was sigh with exasperation. "You know if Kunsel's coming tonight?" he asked, deciding not to even bother with getting mad at him.

"No idea," Reno said without looking at him. "I hope not. He's the drunk wet blanket we don't need, if you know what I mean,"

"You know, you're awfully judgmental for being a functional alcoholic," Cloud threw back at him.

"I think the key word there is 'functional'," Reno countered. "He's never going to let go of that grudge he has against me," he spoke bitterly.

"Do you care?" Cloud asked to that. "You don't want to be friends with him, do you?"

"Hell—" Reno started to respond, but met with Cloud's raised eyes he glanced at Marlene who looked up at him briefly. "Uh, I mean, helloooo," he corrected himself, avoiding the use of the mild curse word. "No. I'd just like to be able to be in the same room and not have him looking at me like he's picturing me getting run over by a steamroller."

"You can't really expect that though," Cloud told him. "Just 'cause the rest of us are willing to let go of the past, doesn't mean he will," he pointed out.

"Oh, what, like I didn't have to earn that from you and Fair and the others?" Reno said fast, sounding a little annoyed. "I put my buttocks—it's an anatomical word I can say it," he said, looking at Marlene who giggled, "on the line. I lost sh-tuff too," he said, stopping himself before he swore, "by trying to atone or whatever you want to call it. It's not like it's been all sunshine and puppies for me."

Cloud smiled a little at his declaration of self-pity. "Tseng said he'd bring you back to the Turks," he reminded him.

"Yeah, and I said no. I picked my side," Reno replied.

"It's hardly sides now, is it?"

"You think it's not?" Reno was quick to argue. "I love Tseng and the guy loves me, we're like family, but I'm not one of them anymore. They're still Shinra, baby boy, and we are just the ants at the giant's feet," he concluded.

The front door to the bar opened then. Zack held it open for Rayna, then Kunsel and Johnny.

"What's up?" Reno greeted them as a group before turning to face Cloud again. "Well, I guess that answers the question about whether he'd be coming tonight or not," he commented of Kunsel.

Cloud looked at Kunsel briefly. He seemed sober, or at least more so than when he'd seen him before. He looked tired and disinterested in being there with everyone though. Cloud looked away from him to Zack then as he was coming over.

"Hey, Marlene," Zack said when he was standing at their table.

"Hi, Zack," she greeted with a bright smile, only looking up at him a second before going back to her colouring.

"Hey, how you feeling?" Zack asked Cloud then. "The pain meds working?"

Cloud nodded. "Yeah, they're great," he confirmed. "I owe you for that."

"No way," Zack said. "I'm just happy you're okay. Did you get in some rest this afternoon?" he asked.

Cloud could feel Reno's smug and knowing smirky expression without even looking at him. Before he could respond, Reno did.

"Yeah, you could say he got it in," he quipped.

Zack looked from him to Cloud and back at Reno. "Okay," he said. "Wasn't asking you."

"Yeah, I did," Cloud told Zack, shaking his head a little at Reno's joke.

He knew Reno was going to take every opportunity to mess with him since he knew about something Cloud didn't really want anyone else to know about. Marco. Reno actually knew something as well that Cloud didn't want Marco knowing. His real name. He hadn't been too worried about Reno giving him away in front of Marco since Reno almost never addressed him by his name. Still, he wanted to make sure it didn't happen so he asked Reno not to mention it in the chance he was ever around Marco again. He really wasn't ready to have Marco know in case somehow the name rang a bell for him and he recognized it and the significance of it. Since Marco was still going to be leaving at some point soon, he decided there was no real harm in keeping that secret from him.

"That's good," Zack said. "You should probably go back home after dinner though," he advised. "Try to get some sleep."

Cloud nodded. "I probably will," he told him. That was probably not true. He hadn't given Marco an answer yet on whether to pick him up later or not to go back to his hotel room on the plate, but he was pretty sure he was going to.

Zack gave him a gentle squeeze on his shoulder before heading away to the back, into the kitchen to see Aerith. Reno started chuckling to himself then.

"Can you not?" Cloud asked him.

"Not what?" Marlene asked.

"Nothing," he assured her.

"Hey," another voice said then and they all looked up at Kunsel standing where Zack had just been moments earlier. He had his hands in the pockets of his hooded sweatshirt and seemed a bit nervous.

"Can I talk to you outside a minute?" he asked Cloud, barely looking at Marlene and not acknowledging Reno at all.

"Uh, yeah," he said a little hesitantly. He didn't want to feel so awkward around Kunsel but after their short conversation as few days earlier it was hard not to. He put down Marlene's crayon and pushed his chair back to follow him outside.

"So, I guess I owe you an apology," Kunsel said when they both stepped outside and the door was closed. He put his hands back into the pocket of his sweater.

"Why?" Cloud asked, though he did know why already.

"For whatever I said to you the other night," Kunsel said first and then shrugged. "For bringing up the thing you had with Rand," he added more specifically and Cloud found himself questioning the guy's word choice.

It actually sort of bothered him. A lot. The 'thing' he had with Rand? What thing was that? Some twisted imitation of a relationship he hadn't been able to understand at the time.

"Did Zack tell you to apologize to me?" he ended up asking.

Kunsel shrugged a little. "Yeah," he confirmed. "But just 'cause he asked doesn't mean I don't still owe it to you."

"You don't need to apologize," Cloud said then and he almost actually called Kunsel 'sir' then. It was hard not to look at him and still see him in his SOLDIER uniform. The guy didn't sound all that sorry anyway, but whether he was or not, Zack shouldn't have asked him to do that.

"Well, I'm sorry anyway," Kunsel told him. "I wasn't looking to dredge up any sensitive or upsetting shit. You know, I think I got so used to you being like some kind of robot, I just wasn't thinking. Last I saw you, you know, all you seemed concerned about were the people who messed you up. Rand, Hojo, the president, Genesis—"

"It wasn't me though," Cloud said as he cut him off softly.

"Yeah," Kunsel said, seeming to agree at first. He looked down and kicked at the ground a little before looking back up at him intensely. "But you said that it was, you know. When I asked you about it. You said you remembered everything. That you knew you had an implant in your head, that you could remember the things that Hojo did to you and to Zack, but you still protected that son of a bitch."

Cloud lowered his head to his words and exhaled deeply. "So are you angry at me then?" he questioned.

"Angry, no, why would I be angry?" Kunsel asked back in a casual way but it almost sounded sarcastic.

"You seem angry," he said.

"Well maybe you're just imagining it," Kunsel suggested. "You haven't always been so good with understanding people and their feelings," he commented condescendingly.

"Like you mean, when I had an implant in my head?" he asked sharply, a little shocked and confused by the argument Kunsel was making. Kunsel didn't answer that inquiry. Instead he sighed and put his hands to his face to rub it tiredly.

"I'm not angry at you, Cloud," he said when he finally looked at him again. "I'm angry about what's happened to my family. What the president and the company did to me and them. I'm angry that because of your 'Keeper', Zack's got a conviction against him so he's got a bunch of conditions he has to adhere to and he's always going to have that on his record. He can't leave the city so if he and Aerith want to take a vacation after they're married, they can't really even do that. This last year has been complete and utter hell for all of us, including you, and it kind of confuses me that you don't seem to be angry or emotional about it at all."

That was wrong. Cloud was angry. He was never not angry or emotional about what he'd been through because of Shinra. What Zack had been through. He felt like he was constantly struggling with his emotions over it. That he was always angry. He just didn't show it the same, and if he let the anger consume him he wasn't going to survive. It barely felt like he was doing that now.

"I'm sorry about what they did to you," he told Kunsel, deciding not to try to prove the depth of emotion he did feel. "I wish I could have done something."

"Yeah?" Kunsel replied quickly. "Well, what you could have done is just let that son of a bitch, President Shinra, get his head blown off that day at the parade. You could have used your super-human strength or your freak power of lighting things on fire to kill Hojo, or Rand, rather than letting him sleep with you. You should have just snapped his goddamn neck! That might have saved Zack from having to deal with him for you. You protected all the people who hurt you and nearly killed your friend instead?" he accused heatedly.

Their conversation was escalating quickly into something Cloud hadn't been prepared for when he stepped outside. He'd been forgetting to breathe as Kunsel was talking and it had him feeling a little light headed. He paced toward the building so he could put his one hand against it, to assist him in holding up his own weight. He thought about what Kunsel had said and knew he must have found out at some point that he was responsible for what happened to Johnny that day.

Mention of it found him reliving that sort of hazy moment in his mind when he'd forced Johnny to shoot himself. Afterward, he'd gone after Rayna and Zack, attacking them with his SOLDIER blade. He had no excuse to give. He didn't know how he'd been capable of what he did to the people he cared about the most. No one had been telling him to do that. Not in the moment.

"I just can't see how some implant makes you do everything that you did when you supposedly had your memory intact," Kunsel said then.

"You don't think I ask myself that every day?" Cloud fired back at him then. He pushed himself away from the wall again to face him. He was devastated by what the conversation had turned to. "You think that's easy to live with? I remember almost everything I did but I can't remember what I was thinking. For the rest of my life I'm going to have those memories. What I did to Johnny. I'll always hate myself for that and no matter how hard I dig and dig for the reasons, I'm never going to have that answer. That's what I have to live with. I'll always be wondering, and I'll always feel guilty, and I don't know what to do, Kunsel, I can't go back. I can't change it."

"No, you can't," Kunsel agreed. "None of us can. But you've got everything now. I've got shit. You're free to do whatever you want. You don't even have to stay in the city. You get counselling and medication, and money if you need it. You've got a whole group of people to depend upon who at one point you were just willing to sacrifice to do what you were told. But that's not good enough. You have to take it for granted and get yourself wrapped up in whatever, fights, shootings..." he spat at him, pulling his hands from his pocket finally so he could gesture to Cloud's facial bruising. "And you're still letting Zack come running to your rescue to help you with something that could have been avoided."

"That's not what I—" he tried to say but he stopped, finishing with a huffed exhale instead. He felt like he was fourteen again, in front of man, defending his actions.

"You know, you had the power to take down that whole company," Kunsel told him. "Do you even realize that? They made you into a weapon no one had ever seen before and you could have used the power they gave you and destroyed them, but you gave that up to be normal. Which is fine. I guess," he said, breathing a little harder and quicker. "But you should at least be satisfied with that choice and get your shit together," he advised.

The door opened then, though neither of them noticed until Cloud heard Marlene's voice as she said his name.

"Hm, yeah?" he said, looking at her quickly. He found himself immediately releasing the tension in his body that had been building without him noticing. He felt it when he opened his hands and realized he'd been digging his fingers into his palms.

"Are you coming back?" she asked, oblivious to the heaviness of the air between him and Kunsel right then. "Tifa said to call you back. Dinner's ready," she said.

"Yeah, I'm coming," he told her. He took a few steps toward the door. He grabbed it and Marlene turned around to run to where some of the others were pushing tables together and putting out cutlery. He let the door close again gently. "You know what," he said then, looking back at Kunsel. The man looked like he was reading himself for some kind of expected insult. "Thank you, sir," he said, bringing confusion to Kunsel quickly.

"Thank you?" Kunsel questioned in a harsh tone.

"I owe you that," he said. "For mentoring me, sir. I know that probably wasn't something you wanted to take on but I thank you for giving me the honor of learning from you," he expressed sincerely. His words had Kunsel staring back at him in silence. "That's all I want to say because I don't think you really want to hear anything else from me. I guess I've disappointed you and maybe I'm responsible for some or all of what you've gone through the last year. I don't know what else to do, so I can at least thank you," he explained sorrowfully.

"It may not feel fully real to me now, and I know I wasn't able to show you what that meant to me, but when I think about the time we spent together and how you guided me to become the best SOLDIER I could be, like I dreamed about when I was younger, well it makes me happy now. It's one of the only things I can look back on during that time and feel good about. It may not have meant the same for you but it means something to me. You were fair and patient, and good to me. I'll always cherish that," he said.

Kunsel looked back at him blankly at first but he saw the tears that built in his eyes very suddenly. An expression of pain or shame came over him and he turned his back. He was facing away, crouching down with his hands at his face when Cloud left him outside. He nearly walked into Zack when he went back inside. Zack noticed the emotion in his eyes and was immediately concerned.

"What happened?" Zack asked him and he just shook his head slightly.

"It's not important right now," he told him.

It wasn't. They were there for what they all considered a family dinner. It was when they were supposed to be able to kick back and relax with each other and have some fun, forget their problems for a few hours. Those dinners actually meant something to him and nothing was going to ruin that. Zack went outside then to talk to Kunsel and as the food was being put out, they could actually hear what sounded like yelling before Zack came back in alone, looking both hurt and angry. When Aerith went to talk to him he seemed to dismiss her a little before it looked like he was apologizing.

"He left," Zack told Cloud when he sat down next to him at the table.

"I'm sorry," Cloud replied. "I didn't mean to make him leave." Zack gave him what he thought was an annoyed expression but it wasn't at him.

"It wasn't you," Zack told him. "He didn't want to be here. I was stupid to even try to get him here in the first place." He shook his head and put his arm behind Cloud, resting it on the back of his chair. "I really miss the guy I remember," he spoke sadly. "I feel like I really let him down as a friend. I don't know what I'm supposed to do now, Spike. It feels like I've already lost him," he declared and he looked like he may cry then.

"You haven't," Cloud assured him. He knew that from some of what Kunsel had said to him outside. Kunsel still cared about Zack a lot. That hadn't changed. "You'll work it out," he told him, though he felt like the comment wasn't really helpful. He couldn't think of anything to say that would make Zack feel better.

After dinner, he was outside with Reno and Marlene watching the two of them throw a ball back and forth. He couldn't really participate on account of his ribs being sore. The pain medication had worn down to what felt like nothing and he was uncomfortable. The discomfort must have been showing in his facial expression. Both Zack and Tifa had been pretty insistent on him going home to rest. He did plan on resting, just not at home. He had sent a text to Marco after dinner letting him known he'd be free around eight if he still wanted to pick him up at his apartment.

Zack and Aerith were engaged in a pretty serious discussion inside the bar and Johnny and Rayna had been helping clean up. Johnny stepped outside on his own though not long before Cloud was planning to start heading home.

"Hey," Johnny said when he joined Cloud where he was leaning against the wall at the back of the building.

"Hey," Cloud said back.

"You seem quiet," Johnny told him. "Is that just from the pain, or…"

"Yeah, I guess," Cloud agreed. He supposed it was part of it.

"You okay?" Johnny inquired and he shrugged.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he affirmed. "Just feel dumb, more than anything," he admitted.

"Why? What happened? Just heard it was a fight. Was there more to it?" Johnny asked.

"It was just my choices coming to bite me in the ass," Cloud answered a little jokingly.

"Oh, yeah. I've had a lot of experience with that," Johnny said through a half-smile. "You think you'll learn and get smarter but you just find something else to make bad choices about. Just life, I guess. We're all really just a bunch of idiots making one mistake after another," he concluded.

"Yeah, seems like it," Cloud agreed softly, nodding a little.

"What went on out front earlier with you and Kunsel," Johnny asked him then. "You were out there awhile."

"Hmph...more bad choices coming to bite me in the ass?" Cloud replied lightly at first. "I dunno," he remarked softly then. "He wanted to apologize for something he said the other day. Then it just turned into…I don't even know what. It's been years, and when I see him, I still feel like I did when we were at the Academy and he was an officer and he just thought we were these pain in the ass troublemakers, you know," he tried to explain. "Only it's worse now, like the trouble ruined lives."

"Was that not what we were?" Johnny asked him.

"What? Troublemakers?" he questioned back and Johnny gave a short nod. "Well, you definitely were," Cloud agreed. "I just wanted to follow the rules and get recruited."

"So you were a rule-following pain in the ass," Johnny said back to that.

Cloud laughed a little but he became serious again as he thought about it. "Yeah, maybe that was always my problem," he muttered and Johnny hummed in question. "Maybe that's why I did what they wanted me to do, why I couldn't go against them, even after all they did…even when I was the one who had the power."

There was silence between them a moment. It took that brief few seconds for Johnny to realize what he was talking about without him being any clearer or more specific and that it must have been related to something Kunsel had said. "That's bullshit," Johnny responded firmly then. "They always had the power. That's why they were able to control you and use you. Just 'cause not everyone can see them, doesn't mean the shackles aren't there," Johnny told him.

"But they weren't there that day I made the decision to attack you and Rayna a Zack. They weren't there when I put that bullet in your head," Cloud declared almost angrily.

"Yes, they were," Johnny said, his voice level and calm.

"Why don't I believe it, then?" Cloud threw back fast. "Why can't I see the shackles when I look back. "Why do I feel like I may have been able to do something different? Why doesn't my mind just accept that I had no choice if I that's really true?"

"Because," Johnny replied, "Because it's scary to know how severely and entirely imprisoned you really were," he stated clearly. "You don't want to accept how little control you did have. You don't want to think about how deep that internalized feeling of being restrained and dominated actually went. That the torture and systematic destruction you were put through and the utter fucking hopelessness could actually change you without you even realizing it. In ways you never even expected. It gets into your DNA. It's a tiny part of everything you do after that."

Silence followed Johnny's words. They both just watched Reno and Marlene while a warm breeze was passing through the slums, pushing little bits of paper and or dirt across the ground.

"How the hell do you always do that?" Cloud asked him then as he wiped at his eyes a little before any actual tears could make it out from where they were gathering.

"Do what?" Johnny said.

"Always find a way to make sense of or give reason to something that seems like it has no explanation?" he inquired. "What's it like to walk around knowing you've got ten times more useful advice and wisdom than anyone else? Who do you even go to for advice when you're the one with the best of it?" he asked. He really did wonder about that.

"The mirror," Johnny replied, smirking a little when Cloud glanced his way.

Cloud smiled but really he was serious about everything he said. "Thanks," he said.

"Anytime," was Johnny's simple reply followed by a subtle, reassuring smile.