Chapter 24. December 9, εуλ0007

Running.

That was all Cloud could think about, running faster, his Mako-sharpened ears pierced by the alarm blaring. He had to run.

He wanted to get away.

The reactor… it had been... something… when he set the bomb. A flash, and something snapped his mind, a recollection that wouldn't untangle, stinging. HURTING. So he ran.

Train station. He ran through Sector Eight, ignoring people shouting, car alarms blaring, chaos everywhere. In the distance, the flames that had shot to the sky when the reactor blew still were visible, burning bright into the midnight sky above. The ubiquitous Shinra news media surrounded him, the first of the news reports already leaking out, a bombing at Reactor One, causalities, arson, terrorists suspected.

To the right, a flash of pink, the color a bright contrast to the dull gray wear of others around. He turned to see a young woman tumbled to the ground, the person who bumped her rushing off without notice.

Cloud stopped running.

Aerith reached for the trampled flower, sadly fingering destroyed petals as she drew it to her chest. Why did beauty have to be so fragile? A simple bloom, so symbolic of all she had lost.

Tears threatened. Months selling about the plate, making her way through anonymous crowds but still every day a reminder that Zack was supposed to be there with her. A glimpse of the life lost to her, never to be whole again. She missed him so badly, some days more than others. This was one of the bad days, when his absence was so foremost in her mind, every step taking her back to him.

He'd promised…

She looked to the sky.

Zack, where are you?

A worn leather glove reached into her field of vision, offering to help her up; she took it, and was pulled gently to her feet. She lifted her eyes to her savior, and nearly gasped in surprise.

Those eyes…

A wash of familiar sensation, emotion and memory swirling in response to vibrant aquamarine. The glow of SOLDIER. So long since she had seen that – but even so, it was something more that piqued her curiosity. Like she knew him.

Or was MEANT to know him.

"What's going on here?" she asked, only now taking in the chaos around them as she emerged from her distracting thoughts.

"Nothing you need to worry about." The voice, not the same. Nor the face, nor the height. But still, that resonance she couldn't shake- could it really be as simple as a chance reminiscence? What did it all mean? Suddenly, she knew she HAD to meet him again.

"Look, you shouldn't be selling flowers out here. It's dangerous right now. Just… get out of here, okay?" He made to pull away, but she firmly tugged him back instead.

She reached into her basket, carefully selecting the prettiest flower of the bunch, feeling a tinge of regret as her fingertips brushed the broken bloom hidden within.

"Here. For you." Reaching forward, she neatly tucked it into the buckle of his shoulder strap, giving it a little tug to ensure it would stay in place.

He looked down. , surprised. "What's this supposed to be for?"

"Let's just call it… a memento." A sign, a guarantee, that they would meet again. A symbol of reunion – things that she held dear from her past and hoped to see again. She needed to find out more.

And alarm, and she knew she couldn't linger any longer. "Until next time. Nice meeting you!" she said hurriedly, and scurried around a corner, leaving the stranger momentarily confused. Her last glimpse was him raising his sword as Shinra troops closed in.

The sword. As Aerith fled, it really hit her with a thump, her heart suddenly pounding out of her chest. How had she not made the connection sooner? It struck an emptiness in her heart, right at the moment she'd chosen most fully to inhabit that hole.

But there was something even more than that, a duality within him, struggling for control. He was split, conflicted, a fissure she wanted to heal; wanted to protect this lost soul that didn't even know it needed to be found. A direction he wasn't ready to know about. A destiny for which he needed a guide. He didn't… he couldn't… understand how much his path had changed this day.

And beneath it all, the way her own heart responded, thrumming its way slowly back to life. Emotions she'd thought lost to her.

She was certain beyond words she would find him again.

Follow the yellow flowers…

An hour or two later, flopped onto a seat on the train back to Sector 7, and Cloud found himself thinking of that strange girl. What's her deal, anyway? Something about her just… bothered him. An affinity of some sort that he couldn't explain, that whistled in his soul when her fingertips brushed him as she secured the flower in its place. A kind of familiarity, of promises and protection.

He looked down where the flower still resided, undamaged. Somehow, it had come out of the fighting pristine, much better than he himself. He could use a drink. He was ready to have Tifa make him one.

Hell, he just wanted to see Tifa.

12:23 am arrival, the speaker announced. So around midnight, then, possibly a little after. What had she been doing out so late, anyway? Possibly selling to the after-theater crowd. Loveless Avenue was always full after a show.

On a normal day, anyway.

Well, that got shot to shit. He couldn't imagine she was selling many flowers that night. He wished he'd slipped her a twenty or something for that flower, something to make up for her loss.

There was plenty of loss this night.

That bomb… it had been much larger than he had expected. The bomb you set, nagged a voice. You pushed the button. What was that to him? This was a war, there would be casualties. It wasn't even HIS war. He was just here for the money.

For a promise…

He didn't want to think about that. Not now.

The train dove below the plate, cutting off the lights from above, only for the lights from below to replace it a moment thereafter. This time of night., the fake lighting was the same, the only difference being that here it came from above as well. Cloud looked out the window, back up at the plate, running through the numbers he knew, giving his mind something to focus on, to calm himself. Plate 300 meters up. Midgar four miles in diameter. Twelve and a half square mile area; miles that contained fifty thousand people spaced above, two hundred something thousand crammed below. Thirty-thousand plus people with power knocked out, but not for long. Shinra was good. They'd have backup systems in place, restoring power to the afflicted sectors by the time he woke up in the morning.

It was a hopeless cause he'd tied himself to. Shinra was insurmountable. He should know… he'd once been one of them.

The barracks, rising through the ranks. The Mako treatments, the speed and strength he'd got from that. His memories were hazy, flickering still images only, but enough to know it had happened. As if his eyes and his sword we weren't proof enough of that.

The memories before were clearer, the further back they went. Before… before… even in the depths of his mind, it was hard to say it. Before everything he'd once known was wiped off the face of the earth.

And there was only the one face left to remind him every day that it had existed.

She'd be up, he knew. Staying back this evening, watching the fort, or whatever one could call a bar-cum-terrorist hideout. And home – well the place he lived. for the moment at least. Probably not for much longer. The itch to get away was still strong – but Tifa pulled him back in, at the same time as he wanted to run from her, run from the memories so wrapped up with her.

Across the aisle, a man lifted up his newspaper. The headline screamed. TERRORIST BOMBING AT REACTOR ONE. Shinra moves quick. It had been what, 9, 10 pm when they had set that bomb? 10:10 maybe when it tore the reactor into pieces? The thought hustled him off the train, the buzz of information following him into the shadows. A billion gil worth of damage. First train 5:04am. Once piece of information meant as little to him as the other.

Innocent lives lost. That was the last he heard before the noise of Sector 7 swallowed him whole.

He'd lagged behind. Barret was already waiting at the door to Seventh Heaven, yelling, cursing. It was old news. Cloud ignored him, heading inside, where the welcoming committee was waiting.

It was one small person bigger than he expected.

Tifa stepped from behind the bar, a small girl glued to her legs. Tifa looked down, warmth in her gaze that melted Cloud's heart – warmth that even destruction and despair had not worn out of her. He wished he could feel the same.

"This is… Marlene," Tifa began, at the same time as the girl – about four years old, Cloud guessed - ran to Barret. "Daddy!" she screamed, and suddenly Barret's façade dropped, melting into a pile of mushy goo as he grabbed the girl in his arms. "How's my little girl?" he asked, swinging her around. She shrieked in delight.

So this is Barret's daughter, then. He'd heard about her, but Barret had kept her away while they made their plans; he knew Tifa watched the girl sometimes, but this was the first night he'd seen her inside the bar. No one else to babysit while we blew a reactor sky-high. Nothing a little girl should be involved in, or anywhere near – it was her future that was being shaped, but a future she wouldn't need to worry about for years yet.

Barret set her down, and Cloud took a closer look at her. Not Barret's real daughter then. Tifa was completely believable as her mom – hell, it had been five years, she'd had TIME to bear a child of Marlene's age – but she was obviously no part of Barret's genes.

Not that it mattered. She had people who cared about her, a mother of sorts…

"A flower?" Tifa's voice interrupted him, and he looked back at her. "For me? You shouldn't have." Awkward, a little forced, but wishful.

Cloud remembered the beautiful girl he had got it from; somehow, it felt wrong giving that same flower to Tifa. "Um, here," he said, dropping it down, and thrusting it towards Marlene.

She shrunk back shyly, but the present drew her out; as she took it from Cloud's hands, she squealed in joy, the happiness of the young , when everything is new. She smiled at Cloud, a bright smile full of joy and hope that spread to her eyes – and Cloud met her gaze back, it striking something he couldn't explain, a familiarity not unlike when he had met the young woman topside tonight. Eyes trusting, almost knowing – but really, she was too young to know anything yet, wasn't she?

"That was very thoughtful of you." Tifa's tone indicated her approval, and she leaned over to stroke the little girl's hair. "Marlene, aren't you going to say thank you to Cloud?"

"Thank you to Cloud!" the girl repeated properly. He didn't much care for children, but somehow he was touched. Perhaps he wasn't totally jaded. Not yet, anyway.

He rose, meeting Tifa's smile, hers wide and open to his forced and thin. "Welcome home," she told him. "Looks like everything went well? The news is already spreading."

If you want to call that kind of destruction "well"… "We did the job." He harrumphed. "Barret and I fought together, then we fought with each other."

Nothing new there… Cloud was a fighter. Tifa remembered him starting fights with the other kids, nearly as far back as she could remember. When had it started? She couldn't tell, exactly. He'd always been sweet and shy around her, never a bad word to her, but it seemed anything could set him off with the others. And he WOULD fight, too – a scrappy little guy, fighting tooth and nail. Sometimes he got his ass handed to him.

Sometimes he won.

Either way, he always kept fighting.

But what had happened to change him over the years, she wondered. At least those fights bore the brunt of passion. Now… he didn't seem to care, one way or another. Indifferent. Almost lifeless, empty, sometimes, when she'd talk to him and it was as if he would go off into another place, someplace she couldn't follow. Was it into those memories? The ones he couldn't recall – the damaged ones, something that had happened after he left for Midgar.

Something that gave him memories of a burning Nibelheim he hadn't seen. Yet again, she wondered what had happened to him while with Shinra. He'd got into SOLDIER, that was for certain – the burning eyes told her all she needed to know – but at what cost?

Behind him, the other AVALANCHE members were talking, laughing. Cloud didn't much care to join them at the table, slumping down on a barstool. He moped silently while Tifa joshed with the others, staring off into space until the clatter of plates indicated they were getting up, going downstairs with Barret, leaving he and Tifa alone in the bar.

Tifa stepped behind the bar, watched waited, his hard-eyed stare never dropping. Sometimes... she could see a glimmer of the boy she remembered. She wished she could see it more often. She wanted him to throw his arms around her, draw her close, have him comfort her and tell her it would all be okay – but she kept her distance, unable to bridge that gap.

"How about something to drink, Cloud?" she asked. "You look like you could use it."

"I could," he affirmed. "Give me something hard. Better yet. Make it a double."

Tifa nodded, pulling a bottle of her better whiskey off the shelf. The stuff she could get was cheap, but she made sure no bathtub swill ever graced her shelves. A splash of this, a few drops of that… a few swirls with ice, strain. Strong. Bitter. Done. She pushed the glass in front of him, and he took a large swig, nodding in satisfaction.

Thinking to join him, she grabbed a bottle of tequila. Splash of lime juice – the preserved artificial goop, all she could get in this place, this time – pinch of salt, and she had something that would go down relatively easy. She took a sip, feeling the pleasurable burn travel down her throat, burning away the ugly taste of the things AVALNACHE was doing.

It's for a greater good, she thought, wondering why she was trying to convince herself.

She was tempted to sit down next to him, but something about him made her not want to enter his bubble – she took the seat at the other end. The farthest she could sit away from him, and still be at the bar. She wished it could be otherwise. Those thoughts that wouldn't leave her head needed some company.

She was glad to have Cloud back – really glad. Even as sullen and withdrawn as he was, there was something about just HAVING him here… You came for me. You really did. She'd nearly given up on him after Nibelheim, told herself to forget that silly promise she'd asked for, but it had a hold on her still.

Do you remember our promise? She still hadn't asked.. What if that was another of those memories he was missing?

She turned to look at him, but his expression was buried in his glass, he staring at it on the counter. She sipped her own, dulling the painful thoughts. Are you still my hero, Cloud? Did you come here now to save me?

She knew she needed saving… she just wasn't sure from WHAT…