fic: eir's tomorrow (ff7) - ch.6, part 2/2

[jukeboxhound_backup]

part 1

...

If it wasn't for the fact that he'd likely get kicked out of the SOLDIER program, Cloud would have happily taken his rifle and shoved it down Sergeant Tokka's throat.

"You think ShinRa lets pussies into their army?" the man was rumbling, looming over Cloud's smaller frame like a mountain. "Strife, if I wanted you to do my thinking for me I would've put on one of your mama's dresses!"

The blond gritted his teeth. Just because he'd bothered to question one of the many pointless exercises recruits were made to do in formation showmanship…

"You think you'll be successful just because of your pretty face?"

Cloud twitched.

"No, sir, I can see how far that method got you in the ranks, sir."

There was stunned silence from the lineup of cadets, except for Elena, who muffled a snort. Sergeant Tokka seemed to grow larger with his fury, reminding Cloud of how he used to imagine the jötnar in his mum's tales as a kid.

An hour later, Cloud was saddled with a weeks' worth of night-duty. Elena tried to be sympathetic, but she wasn't exactly made for that kind of thing.

"Cheer up, Cloud, it's just a week. I'm surprised you didn't get thrown off the Plate, personally. And hey, you got to actually tell him what the rest of us were thinking!"

"Gee, thanks, Elena."

In all of his plotting, Cloud hadn't really remembered the monotony that was the hallmark of a cadet's life. Vincent had finally managed to contact him via coded messages through his PHS (though the sniper's increasingly cryptic missives were making him uneasy), but so long as he was in the regular army there was nothing else for him to do except wait.

Unfortunately, Cloud had never been good at waiting and the redundancy of classes and training in skills he already knew was beginning to slowly drive him insane. Something inside of him was being drawn tighter and tighter, until he was dropping and giving a hundred for every practice weapon that he snapped during sparring or the sharp retorts he couldn't seem to keep from saying.

It didn't help that he was required to attend bi-monthly doctor's appointments. At least Elena no longer tried to accompany him to those after he'd finally picked her up, bodily deposited her in the hallway, and closed the door in her face.

"How are you feeling, Cloud? Any strange voices, visions, night-terrors?"

The blond held himself very still on the table, eyes fixed on a far point over Doctor Libra's shoulder. He had already taken off his shirt and was now willing himself to continue breathing calmly, to not react, as the man poked and prodded at him with gloved fingers.

"No, I'm fine." He wasn't about to say that hardly a night passed in which he didn't have nightmares. The times he woke up screaming were rare; more often it was little more than a quietly choked breath in the dark that gave away his restlessness. He had learned over the years to let the images slide like smoke through his mental fingers until he was able to look up at the ceiling or the bunk above him without seeing twisted replays of Sephiroth, Zack, or the Plague's aftermath, or horrifying combinations thereof. (Post-traumatic stress disorder, Reeve had once tried to say, but Cloud had promptly turned on his heel and stormed out of the newly built WRO headquarters.)

"You've been eating properly?" the doctor continued.

"Yes." As properly as the army mess allowed, at least. But even when his stomach felt like it wanted to crawl up out of his throat, Cloud forced himself to eat the strictly proper amount of overcooked vegetables, soggy fruit, tasteless meat, and dry carbohydrates. It would be viciously ironic to let himself die of a poor diet when the height of Sephiroth's insanity hadn't managed it, and so he forced himself into the mess three times a day at precise intervals.

He was surprised to find himself missing his mum's hot shepherd's pie.

"You're a bit on the underweight side, but your records show that you've always been a little thin." Libra had enough tact not to say 'small'. "Your blood work came back with elevated levels of mako, of course, but you haven't demonstrated any physiological mutations, and you seem stable enough, despite a few write-ups for insubordination."

Cloud maintained his one-sided staring contest with the wall. The appointment in which Libra had insisted on drawing blood for testing nearly had him walking out the door; the only thing that stopped him was Libra's threat to take his situation to higher command.

After the doctor finished his routine, he took a step back and rubbed the bridge of his nose tiredly beneath his glasses. "Even though you fell into unadulterated mako," and it was obvious the doctor had his doubts about that story, "you seem fine, for the most part. What I'm worried about at this stage is how you'll react to the mako showers if you make it into SOLDIER."

For a moment, time stood still, and Cloud numbly wondered if the Planet's tinkering would be what held him back in this lifetime.

Now that's vicious irony, a voice murmured darkly.

Still massaging the bridge of his nose, Libra didn't notice his patient's sudden tension. "I shouldn't be telling you this, but soon the recruits in the SOLDIER program will be going through the preliminary mako trials. You only get exposed to a fraction of the amount that a proper SOLDIER does, just enough to judge what your body's reaction will be, but it's possible that it'll be enough to harm you or others. Your body appears to have reached an equilibrium, and if it gets tipped, well. Bad things could happen."

"But you don't know that," Cloud replied firmly, finally meeting the doctor's gaze. Judging from the man's surprised blink, his own eyes were glowing a little more brightly than usual. "Of course it's possible that I'll mutate or lose my mind, but it's just as likely that I'll simply absorb the extra mako. The reason people get mako sickness is because their bodies aren't used to such high levels of it, but I've been living with it for years." More than you'd ever believe, for that matter.

"I'll get a second opinion from my colleagues – "

An image of Hojo looming over his prone body with a scalpel and a quiet mutter of fascinating, just fascinating had Cloud snapping, "No. No, just Commander Gysahl, if anyone."

"Strife, I understand why you might be uncomfortable with it, but you're in no position to be making demands of me. This matter is far more serious than you seem to understand."

Libra had been willing to accommodate Cloud thus far, but the sternness in his voice clearly said that he wouldn't do so for much longer. Thoughts racing (this can't get back to Hojo and it will if this leaves the infirmary), he tried to come up with another brilliant excuse, to pull off some bit of acting that would make everyone just leave him alone to do his job, but all he could concentrate on was the knowledge that he couldn't, couldn't live through those years of hell again.

"Please, sir," Cloud whispered, "please. I know this is a big deal, but I don't…I don't want anyone else to know." A little bit of truth makes lies more believable, Vincent had once told him, and made it harder to trip himself up. "There was a doctor in my village who always wanted to mess with me. He thought my survival was fascinating, and he…he hurt me and the people I loved. Can you honestly tell me that the same thing won't happen here in ShinRa?"

Doctor Libra was visibly stunned, and for a moment Cloud felt like the most shameful creature on the Planet to be using his own past traumas, however distilled, to manipulate another person. It was like being one of those teenagers that used to try sneaking into Tifa's bar and using their own sordid history to win pity and booze, like one of those old men that spoke endlessly of past battle-scars to try and validate their current pathetic existence in a world that had left them behind.

But then Libra said quietly, "I'll speak with Commander Gysahl on the matter. You're dismissed, Strife."

Cloud escaped without another word. That night, he pushed weights until he collapsed into a sweating heap.

When the cadets were finally given leave to go under the Plate for the first time, Elena managed to catch Cloud's arm as they filed out of their Tactics classroom. She was practically vibrating with energy, hair flying about her face.

"Cloud, you've totally got to come with me and the others down to the bars."

"No, thank you." He didn't bother trying to shake her off. In some ways, she could be just as stubborn as Zack.

"Why not? And if you say it's because you've got to study, or because you're gonna go to the fucking gym and practice the exercises you already know how to do, then I'll kick you in the balls."

"All right, then I won't." Besides, they were approaching the locker rooms and Elena would soon have to leave him for the girls' side anyway.

"Cloud, seriously, you act about as socially acceptable as herpes. That's sad for a teenaged boy."

"What is it with you and venereal diseases?"

"I'll tell Sergeant Tokka I caught you sneaking into the SOLDIER armory. Of course, that means you'll be put on some hardcore cleaning duty, which means you might not come to the bars, but it also means you won't have time to put in extra hours at the gym."

"But I haven't been sneaking anywhere."

Elena smiled at him beatifically, but he wasn't about to think that she was merely joking. The last time he tried to call her bluff he'd ended up scrubbing all the toilets in the barracks, and so he just sighed. At least she wasn't trying to blackmail him into something that could get him shot down by Tseng. "Fine, whatever. I'll see you tonight."

Before he could disappear into the locker room, however, Elena forcibly pulled him to the side. "If you really don't want to go, fine," she said seriously, "but Cloud, this whatever-this-is isn't healthy. You probably haven't realized it, but the other cadets are wondering what the hell's wrong with you. You hardly talk to anyone, and they know you only talk to me because I make you." Something like pain briefly crossed her expression. "I know you want to be a SOLDIER, but if you have to turn yourself into a freaking robot to do it, then what's the point?"

Cloud wasn't sure if he should be humbled or angered by her blunt honesty. He settled for a stunned stare.

"Seriously, just one night getting drunk and doing stupid shit. You won't get court-martialed and your parents aren't about to see their baby boy acting like the kid he is. C'mon, Cloud, please?"

Marlene had made Cloud immune to the beseeching, puppy-eyed stare a long time ago. This time, it was the sincere earnestness in Elena's face. For a long moment he silently stared back at her, but eventually he sighed and allowed himself a small smile. "All right, I'll come."

"Yes!" Elena threw her arms around his shoulders and pulled him into an awkward dance that forced the other cadets to scurry out of the way of flailing limbs. "This is gonna be so awesome, I can't believe you actually – gods, wait 'til the others hear about this, we're going to have so much fun – "

She left Cloud standing in the middle of the hallway, dizzy and bemused.

Of course, by the time he'd dropped off his schoolbooks in the barracks that evening and been ambushed by Elena (who had decided that he was seriously needed intervention in his fashion tastes), shouldered his way onto the cramped train, and finally found himself in a bar… Well, Cloud had to keep reminding himself of how happy Elena had been when he agreed. Otherwise he was liable to bolt.

The bar that Elena had decided on looked only slightly less sleazy than the others dotting the slums like a pox, and of which 'less sleazy' meant the grimy front windows were whole and the sign had a fresh coat of paint.

It said SEVENTH HEAVEN.

Cloud froze in his tracks, mentally thrown back to another time in which the sign, older and flaking, had only been able to say SEVENTH HE before the rest was swallowed up by the black stains of Plague.

"Gods, Cloud, don't chicken out now!" Elena grabbed his wrist and pulled him along, flashing smiles almost unconsciously to the men leering at her. Cloud stumbled after her before remembering his balance and deftly slipped his wrist from her grasp. She pouted briefly, then got lost in the excitement of her first day under the Plated granted by ShinRa, bounding up to the bar and ordering the most unnaturally neon drink she could find. The bartender was a young woman with short-cropped brown hair and lidded eyes that made her glance feel weighty; when Cloud settled for a regular beer, she gazed at him for a long moment

(the One Who Will Burn the World, the Planet whispered)

before popping the top of his bottle. He took it from her silently. When he sipped at it, he couldn't help making a face, thinking that his mother's ale made this beer taste like cheap, watered-down piss.

"Let's go!" Suddenly Cloud was swept up into the whirlwind that was Elena determined to make him relax in a greasy, dimly lit, and cramped environment. He pushed away the thought of the woman with deadened eyes and forced himself to live in the present, at Elena's side.

It had crossed his mind that he should be wary about how much he drank. After all, even if SOLDIERs had some measure of protection against alcohol and even if the Planet had done something to him, Cloud wasn't exactly a SOLDIER himself. But as time passed in that grim little bar where so much had happened to make him who he was, and as Elena grew progressively more flushed and forceful in her attempts to train some sociability into Cloud, his vision began imitating curved glass and his balance cheerfully waved goodbye. Between remembering the password for the jukebox that would take him to the HQ of the future AVALANCHE (or had they already been founded? He couldn't recall, his head was feeling oddly muzzy) and telling Elena once again that he didn't want to dance around, damn it, he lost track of how many pints passed through his hands.

"No," he was saying to her. He couldn't count how many times she would appear and he would sigh or snarl or simply give her the flat expression he'd learned from a young Sephiroth. But this time she didn't go away, and instead leaned forward until her eyes were all he could see.

"Why don't you like me?" she wheedled, and Cloud said he didn't not like her, he'd worn something other than his uniform at her insistence, hadn't he? That didn't count, she rebutted. She could see why he didn't really talk to anyone else, they were all stupid, macho, dickhead, horn-dogs, but she was gonna be a Turk and besides, blonds had to stick together in the face of adverty. No, adversity, she annunciated carefully, and for some reason Cloud was suddenly having to stifle giggles. No. Manly chuckling.

"Giggling," declared Elena as she leaned forward farther, and Cloud was forced to put his hands on her waist to keep them from toppling off his corner stool. But this meant that two drunken teenagers, or at least teenaged in body and hormones, were suddenly pressed chest to breast, he sitting with bent knees and her standing between the inside of his thighs so that her hips were molded against him. Cloud was no stranger to sex, had learned that it could be used as a source of comfort and also of pain. And that kind of understanding combined with the alcohol and puberty (and here he'd thought that five years with Hojo meant that at least he hadn't suffered the last half of pubescence, but the Planet had to fuck that up too) meant that he was unsurprised when Elena's lips clumsily met his and he responded in kind. He could feel her breasts pressed against him through her blouse and his own shirt, the softness of her skin at the top of her pants. She tasted like alcohol, but so did he, and the headiness of it all wasn't making protest very likely anyway.

(Poison, the Planet whispered with the urgency of a mother bear worried for her cubs. Unfinished work.)

Hardly anyone noticed and nobody cared as the two cadets stumbled out into an alley. It was filthy and littered with the cast-off shit of humanity, but that didn't seem to matter. Cloud pushed Elena against the concrete side of a building neighboring the bar and dimly noted her wince at the impact. He pulled away to murmur an apology, perhaps explain that it had been so long since he'd been intimate with anyone that he'd forgotten to curb his strength, but Elena wasn't having any of it. She had already recovered by the time he managed a syllable and then he was being pushed down onto an over-turned crate, the girl sliding over his lap to straddle his hips.

(WEAPON, came a hiss in the back of his mind.)

The forceful motion made Cloud's blood run hotter; his teeth flashed in the gloom of the alley as he nipped at Elena's lips, jawline, neck, and his intoxicated mind had fallen back into the familiar patterns. When she tilted her hips forward he instinctively arched into it, managing to find an awkward, stumbling rhythm. When he slipped his hand under the waist of her pants and his fingers found slick warmth, her groan was long and chest-deep.

When her fingers found him in turn, they both managed to come in a sweaty tangle of limbs and half-buttoned clothes.

Cloud lost track of time after that. He vaguely remembered feeling indignant as she wiped soiled fingers on the wall with a moue of distaste, and there was an unconnected memory floating around of her returning to the crowd in the bar. He remembered catching the eyes of the barkeeper. The rest was a haze.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, he woke up feeling like Yuffie had used his head for staff practice.

"Fuck," he groaned, wincing as his scratchy voice made the headache worse, then silently cursing again when the motion added to the pain. Figuring there would be pain no matter what he did, he cautiously cracked an eye open.

Then he very nearly had a heart attack.

"Hi," said Aeris cheerfully, smiling down at him.

"You look like shit, yo," Reno added, just as cheerfully. His words sent a curl of cigarette smoke wafting into Cloud's face.

"…What the hell?"

...

Aeris hadn't had a good night. She'd woken up around four in the morning with a raging headache and, with the cries of the Planet fading from her dreams, crept from her room and stole away to the abandoned church that had unofficially become hers.

The cool interior soothed some of the aching in her temples, but the voice of the Planet was even clearer. It came as a susurrus of whispers that trailed along the slight wind, and when she kneeled at the edge of her flower patch and dug her hands into the soil, the ghostly chill of running water streamed up her fingers.

WEAPON. Sickness. Death.

The knowledge hit her like a bitter flavor on the back of her throat. Swallowing a few times, eyes closed, Aeris struggled to hold her own sense of self together without shutting out the vastness of the Lifestream.

WEAPON. Poison. Sickness.

Aeris didn't know how long she kneeled there at the edge of her flowers, lit by the faintly orange light of the Plate that came in through the broken roof, but it was long enough that a firm grasp on her shoulder shocked her back into her own body.

"Reno!" she gasped. She rarely saw the Turks that shadowed her and, in their own way, protected her, but now the redhead was giving her a lazy smirk.

"Look sharp, yo. You've got a customer that followed you home."

Blinking in surprise, Aeris followed him to the door of the church. An unconscious teenager was slumped on the worn stone steps, drunk if the smell was anything to go by, and she wondered why on earth the Turk would've shown himself for a mere boy. Early morning light was easing the greyness of the underside of the Plate.

(What she didn't know was that as Reno trailed her from Elmyra's home to the church, he'd spotted the kid stumbling down a parallel street. It wasn't exactly an unusual sight down in the slums, and as a relatively new Turk, being assigned to follow a little girl chafed at his pride, even if she was an Ancient. Cissnei was better at this sort of babysitting job. But between Aeris' distracted insomnia and the odd mutters of the boy, the redhead's natural aptitude for intrigue was piqued; maybe he didn't believe in all that Lifestream bullshit, but it seemed like the drunk kid knew exactly where he was going, and so he just might turn out to be one of the many odd incidents that occurred around Zack Fair's new lady-friend.)

Unaware of the racing thoughts behind the Turk's nonchalant exterior, Aeris leaned over the boy and checked for a pulse. It was strong and steady beneath her fingertips, so she looked over to Reno. "Will you help me carry him inside?"

With much grumbling and insincere talk of sordid favors, Reno hefted the kid over a shoulder and brought him none-too-gently to the edge of the flower patch. Sitting back on her heels, Aeris watched the boy sleep, patiently waiting for him to wake up.

She didn't know why but he felt familiar, like an old dream or someone she had known as a child. She could imagine what he looked like when he smiled – she had a feeling that it was a rare occasion, and so memorable just for that – but she couldn't think of a name or even where she might have met him before. Perhaps he'd been another specimen of Hojo's, like Elfé, but her time in the lab was a hazy childhood nightmare that only gave her momentary chills, nothing concrete, nothing she could work with. But undeniably there was mako inside of him…

No, she corrected herself. It wasn't the derivative that ShinRa produced and pumped into its SOLDIERs. It was purer, lighter, as though a minute part of the Lifestream had been diverged and now flowed through him like the small tributary from a larger river. It was the same butterfly-quiet whisper and watery coolness as the presence that touched her dreams and sometimes her flowers.

Okay, so maybe Reno had had a point here.

Mother, I wish you here, she thought, brushing aside some wayward strands of hair from the boy's face unselfconsciously. I wish you'd been there to teach me about our people.

A frown was forming on the kid's face. Aeris withdrew her hand and leaned over him, casting a shadow over the upper half of his face.

"Fuck," came the quiet groan, earning a chuckle from Reno, and eyes that were startlingly blue cracked open.

"Hi," Aeris said, smiling.

"You look like shit, yo."

"…What the hell?" He tried sitting up, but Aeris immediately put a hand on his chest and firmly pushed him back. He looked sickly enough as it was without him trying to be all stoic about it.

"Don't sit up, silly, you'll just make yourself feel worse." She moved her hand to his forehead, laying her palm over the damp skin, and allowed some of the green coolness that talked to her in dreams to pass through her fingertips. The lingering traces of the alcohol (so that's what the Planetthought was poison, she mused wryly) were like lines of rust being washed away.

WEAPON. The swiftness of a bird's flight, the Planet told her.

When she pulled back her hand, the boy was already looking healthier. Reno had pointedly wandered away to lean nonchalantly against a pillar, looking for all the world as though he had decided to wash his hands of the two and was now ignoring them. Aeris doubted that was true.

"You're in the old church in Sector Five. We found you on the steps."

This time she didn't argue when the boy slowly sat up, his eyes flickering everywhere as though expecting something to explode. "I, I don't…"

"You were pretty wasted, I think," Aeris grinned. Her smile widened when he flushed slightly. "My name's Aeris."

"Um, Cloud. Strife."

Reno audibly snorted, ruining his image of apathy halfway across the church. Aeris herself didn't laugh, even though she wondered if it was a made-up name or a porn-star kind of a name, but he looked serious enough. That just made her wonder what he would look like with a good night's sleep and possibly some makeup. Those eyes would look great with a bit of eyeliner, she thought, which brought her back to a rather important question.

"Are you a Cetra?" she asked bluntly.

The swiftness of a bird's flight.

"What?"

"You're not a SOLDIER, even though your eyes glow, and last night the Planet had its equivalent of a heart-attack. I think it thought you were trying to poison yourself or something."

The boy, Cloud, choked. "Poison?" he repeated, flushing anew as his young voice squeaked. Aeris couldn't help giggling.

"The Planet did this kind of flailing thing and woke me up, and I think it was you that it was getting all panicky over. It doesn't do that for just anyone, you know, so – are you a Cetra?"

WEAPON. Rebirth. Evolution.

Cloud was looking a little dazed, as though someone had woken him abruptly from a dream, plunked him down in a classroom, and told him that the rest of his future depended on how well he did on the surprise exam. His gaze was also still doing that restless flickering-around thing, and Aeris got the strangest feeling that he was trying not to look at her, that when he did he didn't want to look away. It was eerie.

"No, I'm not, I'm…" He paused with a furrowed brow.

Aeris tried not to show the disappointment that sunk heavily in her breast. It was hard not to hope that with the Planet's actions and the feel of the Lifestream behind Cloud's eyes…well. Elmyra tried, of course, and Aeris couldn't have asked for a better mother, but there were just some things that the woman couldn't understand about her adopted daughter simply because they saw the world in fundamentally different ways.

"Aeris? Are you okay?"

Cloud's tentative voice startled her from her thoughts. "Oh, yes, I'm fine, Cloud. I'm sorry, I tend to drift away sometimes."

What she didn't know was that Cloud was staring at her and trying to fit in his distant memories with the present. Somehow Aeris seemed less confident than he remembered, a little lonelier, not quite the same girl that huffed at him indignantly when he tried to pull his macho protectiveness on her.

Shit, he was thinking frantically, shitshitshit! Things are already so different – Sephiroth used to be the only general – but Planet, don't tell me Aeris herself is different!

Without thinking, Cloud shifted to sit on his heels and put a hand on Aeris' shoulder. When she looked at him, surprised, he managed a small smile and said, "I'm not an Ancient, but…I'm not sure what I am, either. The Planet, it wants me to do something and it, er, messed with me, inside."

(The relativity of events, the Planet was whispering to Aeris, but she couldn't quite grasp what it was trying to say. The concealed power of predator not yet fully grown. Rebirth.)

When he trailed off, she laughed genuinely. "That's okay, Cloud, you don't need to explain it to me."

No, he probably didn't.

"Just make sure you don't scare the Planet like that again or it might have a seizure," she teased, and considering what had happened in the past it really wasn't that funny, but Cloud couldn't help snorting quietly. Only a few minutes in Aeris' presence and already he could feel the muscles in his shoulders relaxing.

Ifalna, if only you could've seen your daughter.

But then she took his hand as it fell from her shoulder and asked seriously, "Cloud, do you know why you're here?"

The question made him tense again. Aeris must have felt it, because she shook her head and continued in an increasingly distant tone, "There's a lot you probably can't tell me, but I know there's something coming. The Planet feels…restless, like it's waiting. I can feel it moving inside you

(like a puppet?)

and whatever it is – well. I want to help you any way I can."

Cloud blinked. She giggled again and immediately the surreal distance in her gaze disappeared. "You should probably go get some real sleep while you can. I've heard the drill sergeants can be…what did Zack say? A real pain in the ass?"

"Probably more than that," he couldn't help adding in a mutter.

"You know Zack?"

Realizing his mistake, Cloud tried to backpedal, only he wasn't used to lying to Aeris. "N-no, not personally, but everyone knows what Z – er, Lieutenant Fair is like."

She hummed, unconvinced.

"I hate to break up this little sock-party," Reno suddenly chimed in, "but I think Private Strife better be gettin' his ass back to the barracks before it gets nailed to the Plate by the higher-ups, yo."

Almost immediately Cloud's hands tightened around Aeris' as he fought the urge to push her behind him. Back off, a part of him wanted to snarl, she's mine, mine. It was the unexpected possessiveness rather than the threat of a court-martial that encouraged him to release her and stand up rather shakily.

"He's right – "

"Oh, pish," she said with some of the same fire of the person Cloud remembered. She deftly plucked a flower from her garden without disturbing the others and tucked it behind his ear before he could protest. "You look sad even when without a hangover," she told him wryly, "but it's hard for anyone to look mopey with a flower in his hair."

Long after Cloud left and Aeris went to walk the slums with her flowers and a yawn, she weighed his words with the Planet's. Either he was unaware of what exactly the Planet was saying to her about him, or lying. She didn't think it was the latter.

...

Doctor Libra had served on the early Wutaian battlefields as a field surgeon and seen things that, even now, gave him the kind of nightmares that caused him to wake up in a cold sweat, a scream in his throat. He decided that entering the office of General Sephiroth with delicate, potentially top secret news took the same sort of courage as amputating limbs while under enemy fire.

"Enter."

The general's office was scrupulously clean and efficient; the only object out of place was a copy of LOVELESS sitting unread on the windowsill. Sephiroth himself was seated behind his desk with several folders opened in front of him, which he closed and put aside.

"You said you had something of urgency to discuss with me."

Though there was nothing in the low, neutral voice to say so, no doubt the general was confused by the doctor's presence. After all, the SOLDIERs were attended to by either Hojo himself or his closest assistants, whereas Jerold Libra handled the main troops and cadets.

"Yes, sir, I do. It concerns a cadet slotted to take the SOLDIER exams."

Sephiroth gestured to the chair in front of the desk. Libra sat down. He was grateful that the general didn't waste time with pleasantries.

Handing over the folder he carried, the doctor said, "Some weeks ago there was an upset in one of the barracks that required the intervention of myself, another doctor, and SOLDIER Zack Fair. One of the cadets was having severe night-terrors that his squad-mates couldn't wake him from.

"Naturally I gave him a complete physical. Blood tests confirmed the absence of drugs, recreational or otherwise, and on the whole he had no obvious symptoms of a mental disturbance." One of the papers that Sephiroth was flipping through had the complete results of Strife's medical tests. "I checked his entrance psych exam and found only mild tendencies towards depression and social anxiety, certainly nothing beyond the norm for a teenage boy. He passed the other sections more or less successfully, but the exams that the recruiters make candidates take just isn't detailed enough to tell for certain."

"What do you suspect, then?"

Libra allowed a momentary regret to pass over him. He knew he was breaking Strife's confidence and the doctor-patient contract, but this was something that the primary leader of SOLDIER needed to be aware of. There was something in the boy's stubbornness that made the doctor ruefully acknowledge that barring any sort of utter global calamity, Strife would probably take SOLDIER by storm.

"Take a look at his blood tests."

The First flipped back a few pages before going very still. "He has mako-poisoning?"

"That's the strange thing, General – he doesn't. He's fully cognizant and aware and is able to keep up in his classes. Easily, if I'm remembering his grades correctly. It defies all logic. All known medicine, for that matter."

"Did he explain how he came to have such high levels of mako?"

"He claims to have come from a small town on the western continent that surrounds one of the earlier ShinRa reactors. On top of the constant low-level exposure typical to those towns, he apparently he fell into a pool of mako as a child and somehow managed to survive."

A slight frown line marred Sephiroth's brow. "There shouldn't be any mako leaking to the surface near a reactor."

Libra just shrugged. He wasn't exactly an engineer himself.

For a long moment Sephiroth stared at the folder in his hands, considering. Libra didn't interrupt, and was startled when he was suddenly asked, "Do any of the cadet's superiors know about his condition?"

"Sergeant Tokka is his squad commander, sir, and no, he doesn't. Strife specifically requested that I keep the matter between him, myself, and Commander Gysahl."

"And you felt it unnecessary to alert Strife's sergeant?"

"There are circumstances that made me feel such discretion was necessary." Like the sergeant's utter irascibility and renowned dislike for new recruits. If nothing else, working in ShinRa forced employees to learn diplomacy.

"Yet you would share this information with me?"

Libra had the uncomfortable sensation that he was being tested somehow, but he didn't know how, or why. So he replied truthfully. "You're the leader of SOLDIER, General Sephiroth. Lazard may be the legal head, and you share your rank with the two other Firsts, but you are the one that will have to lead Strife when he passes the SOLDIER exams. I believe it necessary for you to know more than anyone, except perhaps myself as the boy's current physician."

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Doctor," was the neutral response. "I will consider the matter and speak with you further at a later date."

"Thank you for receiving me, General." Libra stood at the same time as Sephiroth and they shook hands over the desk. He could tell that the SOLDIER was carefully holding back the strength in his grasp.

"'Strife'," Sephiroth was saying, "is an odd name."

The corner of Libra's lips quirked. "His first name is Cloud. Odd as it is, it has a certain ring to it, doesn't it?"

He winced at the sudden tightening of Sephiroth's hand.

...

When Cloud finally left the church at Reno's less-than-subtle urging, his mind was detached from his surroundings as though separated by a pane of glass. He sidestepped street urchins and harried-looking strangers on autopilot, unaware of where he was going, trapped in a mental world of muted nothingness.

Gradually the odd blankness of his thoughts gave way to slow observation of the people around him. Most were poor, overshadowed in more ways than one by the Plate that covered the sky. A few were obviously Wutaian refugees, looking hunted and drawn. The presence of small mako-fueled monsters, slinking in the shadows of alleys, was like the muted rasp of sandpaper against his skin. The lingering headache was due more to the constantly looming presence of the Lifestream than a hangover.

And with thoughts of Aeris, more subdued than he had ever seen her, smiling in the crumbling ruins of a church.

CHAOS. Darkness. UnnaturalMutationKill –

"…You're losing focus on your environment," Vincent, dressed like a gutter-dwelling vagabond, told him, looking down unconcernedly from where Cloud had pinned him by the throat to a wall. The blond had to resist snarling back and released him with ill grace, ducking farther into the shadows away from the shifting mass of people behind them.

"Did you get my last communication?" If 'communication' was what it could be called. The encrypted message that Cloud had received on his PHS took more than an hour to decipher and left him with a headache afterwards. (Just what he needed: to start developing migraines on top of everything else.)

When Cloud nodded sharply, Vincent kept his voice low and straightforward. "To lose sight of one's goals is to take the rest of your allies with you."

"And to be too careful is to let opportunity slip past you," he retorted coldly. He made a fist with one hand and had to consciously make himself relax when the knuckles creaked. "I was…just reminded of those goals, Vincent. And I'm tired of waiting. I've spent months doing nothing but going through the motions, jumping through ShinRa's fucking hoops, and for what? To become a SOLDIER? Dear Hel, Vincent, I have the whole of the gods-damned Planet behind me! I can't destroy all of Jenova's cells, but her mind is already long gone. Zack and Aeris are still alive, and the Plague – "

He stopped abruptly, jaw clenching tightly. Vincent waited patiently.

"You once told me you were damaged," the Turk said finally. Cloud stiffened. "Perhaps you were. Perhaps you still are. But you also said that only cowards don't try."

The boy made a harsh cutting motion with his hand that didn't seem natural to him. "I am," he hissed, still with the presence of mind to keep his voice low enough not to be overheard by casual passersby.

"Then break out of your anger and think, Cloud, if you really aren't just a fourteen-year-old child," Vincent replied just as icily. "You bring down the wrath of the whole of the Planet while going against ShinRa, and what have you achieved? You destroy ShinRa, you destroy Hojo, you destroy Midgar, but will you be able to stop the destruction there? Such selfishness is just as cowardly an act as giving up your goal because you've given up everything else.

"Fighting Jenova and Hojo before might've required brute strength and will, but Cloud, ShinRa itself has become the backbone of modern society. You can't just rip it out without killing whole populations of people in the process."

Before Cloud could say anything, the Turk stood up from against the wall and pressed something into his hands. "I've made contact with the Wutaian resistance," he murmured. "This will be the last time I speak with you in person. My messages will be brief and sparse, to avoid detection by the Wutaian operatives who think I might be betraying them. If you get cornered or captured, show that. It'll give you limited protection."

Glancing down, the blond found himself holding a small paper bird.

"I'm sorry, Vincent," he whispered.

The Turk just gave him a last hooded glance before melting into the crowd. Cloud stood with the black bird in his hands and, for a moment, wished for one of Zack's tackling hugs.

...

Zack was having problems of his own. First Genesis went MIA with a large number of SOLDIER troops, then Angeal. Director Lazard was acting strangely. Sephiroth was becoming less of his hero and more of an annoying bastard with every passing day. Hour. Nanosecond.

Building a flower cart or three for Aeris was a welcome break from the general oh-crap-everything's-falling-down-around-my-ears kind of day he was having. The first one he built was a piece of shit, but he was a SOLDIER, not a fucking carpenter, and at least it managed to get one of those beautifully heart-stopping smiles.

And a kiss. Damn but he was one smooth operator.

"Zack, do you know someone named Cloud Strife?"

Or not, if she was thinking of another guy.

"Strife? Nah, don't think so."

"Really?" Aeris tilted her head thoughtfully, causing a section of brown hair to slide carelessly over a bare shoulder and draw Zack's eyes like a magnet.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Um. Well, it sounds a little familiar. Come to think of it, it might've been that one cadet that flipped his lid one night. I guess his nightmares were so bad that they had to call me and a couple doctors in."

"Nightmares?"

The sincere concern in her voice made Zack look up from the temptingly pale shoulder under the thin strap of Aeris' dress. "Yeah. It was kinda scary, but it must've gotten all worked out. I haven't heard anything else about it since then, and that was some months ago. Maybe it was just a one-time thing. The crap they serve in ShinRa and call 'food' would be enough to make anyone have indigestive nightmares."

Even though she laughed, the shadow that had been growing in her eyes didn't leave. Zack silently made a note to look into things when he got back to ShinRa.

chapter 5 || main post || chapter 7