fic: eir's tomorrow (ff7) - ch.10

[jukeboxhound_backup]

Slightly revised version.  Short explanation here.

Eir's Tomorrow
Chapter 10

Author: jukeboxhound 
Co-conspirator/beta: artimusdin 

FF7 || R || Sephiroth/Cloud || chapter: 7,750 words
The Planet isn't willing to let death take away its greatest weapon. If Cloud can't save the past, then he'll be damned to watch history repeat itself.

10.

Once he was out the gym doors, Cloud broke into a sprint. He was just able to make it to the bathroom down the hall from his barracks and slam into an empty stall before his stomach rebelled violently, vision blurred by tears, shivering from the cold sweat that had broken out all over his body. The tiles were cold and hell on his knees, the smell of chlorine and vomit thick in his nose, and he leaned his forehead against the seat until a second wave of nausea had him dry heaving.

Dimly he registered cool hands holding back the longer pieces of his hair from his face. At first he thought Sephiroth had followed him before he realized the hands were too small and feminine.

"Elena, what're you doing here?" he finally managed, wincing at the raw burn in his throat. She snorted.

"Keeping you from getting puke in your hair, apparently. Saw you running by. Done?"

A minute passed without his stomach trying to crawl out his throat. "Yeah, think so," he rasped, flushed the toilet and turned to face her, sitting on the tile floor. She sat on her heels with a hand braced against the plastic door of the stall, seriousness replacing the usual smirk or sardonic expression.

"What happened?"

He nearly retched again, skin still crawling, whispers still in his ears promising power and darkness, and behind it all the rolling waves of the Lifestream. He focused on the ache in his knees, the coldness from the floor starting to seep into the seat of his pants, and the gentle rise and fall of Elena's chest as she breathed.

"Did you fall asleep somewhere and have a nightmare?" she hazarded, and he latched onto the excuse with a sickly, lopsided grin.

"Yeah, I was in the gym, fell asleep on the mats while stretching."

"Liar," she said mildly. "How're you feeling now, able to stand?"

"Give me a few." He paused to take in the dark circles under Elena's eyes, the shadows bringing out the lighter brown of her irises. "Are you all right?"

"What? I'm fine."

"You've been avoiding me."

"Have not," she replied automatically, but when Cloud just crooked a brow, she added, "Okay, maybe I was a little jealous."

"Um. Of what?"

"You got picked for a mission because you're a special snowflake. With a SOLDIER and a Turk. But that's not important anymore."

"It's not?"

"Look, I found some stuff I need to tell you, but not if you're going to keep vomiting or whatever," she said impatiently.

He couldn't help the laugh that bubbled painfully out his throat. Bracing himself against the side of the stall, he managed to get to his feet with only a little dizziness and the wry acknowledgment that he probably wouldn't be sleeping that night.

"What did you find?"

"I went poking around on that whole Project LAZARUS thing," she said quietly.

"What?"

Elena opened the stall door, glanced around to make sure they were alone, and then closed it again with a conspiratorial air. "After you left for your mission I went back to the computer lab. The problem is that the financial spreadsheets you found before were all that was stored on that server. I figured the more interesting shit would be on a higher level somewhere, so I got a passkey to the fiftieth floor – "

"Shit," said Cloud.

" – by being the awesome resourceful girl I am, and guess what?"

Elena was so normal, so her, that he was beginning to feel a little more grounded, the whispers seeming a little more distant. "You gave the guard a blowjob so you wouldn't get thrown off the Plate?" and if the humor was strained, well, at least it was there.

"No, asshole, and remind me to spread some rumors about you and the sergeant later. I got into the server and found loads of sensitive shit you wouldn't believe. Did you know that President ShinRa has a fund just for permanently renting out a suite in the Honeybee Inn?"

"Yes."

"…Okay, well, thanks for telling me. So this LAZARUS thing is the current baby of the Science Department and is being headed by Hojo, big surprise there, but apparently it's also being called the 'alternative SOLDIER method.' It seems that for whatever reason Hojo's old way of making SOLDIERs doesn't work anymore and he's trying to find another. Looks like five specimens have already died and he's working on the sixth."

"It said all this?" Cloud asked numbly, and Elena shook her head.

"Don't be stupid, of course not. It was all in legalese, stuff like 'alternative methods required' and 'search for suitable experimental subjects ongoing, funds requested.' But if what you told me about him experimenting on people is true, then, well, it doesn't take a genius to read between the lines."

"Shit," Cloud breathed again. Elena huffed wryly, long bangs fluttering.

"Yeah, that's what I said. So how do you make a SOLDIER, and why wouldn't it work anymore?"

"It's the mako showers," he said softly. "You introduce mako to a living being in small amounts to build immunity, like a poison, and while it enhances the body, it also would make most people go crazy. It's why there's such a rigorous program to make the cut. Hojo also gives the subject his own special cocktail, but why wouldn't they work? The regular SOLDIERs just get dead cells anyway, so it's not like he needs…" He stopped.

"What? What does he need?"

"He's not trying to make new SOLDIERs, he's trying to make more…Firsts." He caught himself at the last moment before he said 'clones'. "The Firsts get an added boost to make them that much more powerful than other SOLDIERs, it's why there're only three right now."

"And whatever that 'boost' is, it isn't working anymore and he's trying to find something new," Elena realized. "And he's testing it on humans until he gets it right."

"Probably." Sephiroth had living Jenova cells, and Cloud was willing to bet that the other two generals did too. But without Jenova calling the shots behind the scenes, Hojo wouldn't have the god that he was trying to create. "Wait, how are you not dead yet?"

"Told you, I'm just that awesome." When Cloud continued to stare at her, Elena wilted slightly and admitted, "All right, I was caught."

"Then you've got to get out of here, if they realize that a trooper – "

"Who also happens to have a sister as a Turk and a father who's an instructor in their Academy," she interrupted. "And the guy who caught me was a Turk."

"Did he know what you were looking for?"

"Most likely. But Cloud, he was a Turk."

"I give you until morning, at most."

She ignored that. "Think about it. What's a Turk going to do when he finds what he thought was a regular trooper breaking into top-secret files?"

"Don't tell me you got recruited."

"Well, no, not yet. But I'm not dead, either, and that should tell you something. Remember, I have a pretty good idea how the Turks operate."

"Planet, Elena, just…be careful. You're fucking around with some powerful people."

Elena didn't reply, just stared at him for a long moment before suddenly leaning forward and kissing him. She pulled back with a grimace. "Oh, ew. You taste disgusting. You really need to get rid of that bile flavor."

"What." He said that often around her, didn't he?

"You're my gay best friend, not like it matters."

"I don't think you can assume something like that, and I'm not – "

"Besides, that's the first time you've ever acted concerned for me," she smiled, a little sadly and unfortunately accurate, and it was too much like Tifa and even Reeve, so long ago, when someone was well aware that he or she didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. It scraped Cloud's already raw nerves and he fumbled, managed, "You don't know what you're getting yourself into."

"Turk family," she reminded him, and he sighed, looking down at his feet. "So, what really happened? I know you weren't puking out your spleen because of a nightmare."

"I saw Sephiroth in the gym," he admitted. She blinked several times.

"General Sephiroth? Huh. Wait, you saw him, or you actually talked to him?" When Cloud didn't reply, her eyes got round. "Dude, you talked to him? You like him, don't you?"

"Wait, what?"

"You've got a crush on him, and because you're so emotionally stunted you had to run to the bathroom to puke."

"I don't have a crush on him, Elena."

"I wonder if his talent with a sword translates into talent with other things."

"Elena, seriously."

"What? You both need to get laid, anyway."

Cloud groaned. Thinking of Sephiroth like that made him jittery and confused and maybe a little panicked. "Elena, is that all you found on Project LAZARUS?"

She gave him that sly look. "You know it took me ages to get that info, andI had to deal with Rude getting all up in my face."

"Rude, as in, the Turk?"

"Um. Forget I said that," Elena blushed.

…

It was dark and silent in his quarters when Sephiroth finally walked through the door, draping his long coat over a chair and heading straight for the bedroom. He fell on his bed without bothering to turn on a light or take off his boots and stared up at the ceiling.

You've built everything you know on straight-out denial, you idiot. So Sephiroth braced himself for some painful self-reflection. Can't blame other people this time.

…

"Who among you likes being lied to? Who among you is satisfied scavenging for your family's food from the gutters while what little money you have goes to feed men eating off crystal? Who among you is happy to stand back while those same men fuck your women and exploit your children? Who among you is happy breaking your backs to build palaces?"

There was a roar from the crowd. Vincent made sure to keep his head low under the filthy blanket he still wore, listening carefully while shuffling through the mass of people that stamped and yelled. The speaker was a man who sounded young despite a face already as deeply lined as someone twice his age, dressed in the greasy overalls of a salvager and standing on the back of an overturned crate.

"I got two little'uns at home!" he cried. "Am I going to die knowing that my daughter will have to sell her body and that my son will have to sell his soul just to eat? ShinRa promised us a better way of life, but all it's given us is death!"

Louder cheering. Vincent, knowing what to expect, was moving steadily towards the fringe of the crowd near an alley to escape the press of bodies.

"ShinRa says it took over Wutai to bring civilization to them, but what do we see? Foreigners! Refugees, coming in and taking the jobs from the very citizens ShinRa swore to protect! How can those assholes expect to take care of the world if they can't take care of their own fucking people?"

"That's not our fault!" a little girl in a silk tunic cried, her almond eyes squinted with fury, but her voice was too small to be heard over the cries of the crowd. Vincent only heard her because she had been pushed back to the fringes near where he crouched.

"We can't trust some distant authority to remember us and our children. Now is the time for us to take our lives into our own hands! Now is the time for us to rise up and bring power back to the people!"

The crowd was deafening.

Then shots rang out.

The man on his crate took a bullet between the eyes, the back of his head exploding into fragments of bone and tissue and his body crumpling. The cheering of the crowd became screaming and cursing as people fought to get away from the open market area.

Pressed against a wall in the shadows, Vincent tuned out the chaos and followed the bullet's trajectory. One of the crumbling buildings overlooking the less permanent ramshackle shops was hiding a sniper, perhaps a SOLDIER, but most likely a Turk. He was already moving along the walls, avoiding the surging crowd: somewhere little-used, with easy entrance and multiple exits in case the position was compromised. The building he was eyeing looked dangerously decrepit and wasn't used by people in the slum, other than squatters and junkies. A stranger in their midst wouldn't be noticed.

Vincent slipped into the building, the yelling and noise from outside dimming. It was cooler and damp inside, with old wallpaper hanging in strips to trail on the filthy floor from otherwise bare walls.

Something shifted behind him. Whirling around, Vincent pinned – a kid?

"Get your filthy hands off me, I ain't into older guys, asshole!"

It was the little girl in tunic and shorts. He blinked at her slowly in bemusement, but didn't loosen the claws he had around her neck.

"You're following me." And she hadn't done a half-bad job, either.

"I ain't following no one, Mr Demon, and if you don't let me go I'll have no choice but to go all ninja on your butt," and when he tightened his claws briefly she changed tactics without missing a beat, "and it's your fault for being all sneaky and whatever and if you kill me then my tou-san is gonna whip you like a whippy thing!"

'Mr Demon'?

No, he was wasting time with her when he should be tracking down the sniper, who was likely long gone. With a grunt he released her and moved towards the stairs that looked dangerously unstable, ignoring her indignant cries for him to come back and face her like a man, damn it.

On the second floor he came across someone passed out on a pallet of rags, a reedy young man with a track-pocked arm thrown wide. There was no one on the third floor, just more old needles and dirty clothes. He silently raced up the stairs to the fourth, weapon half-drawn and back covered by the stairwell.

Against all logic and hope, the sniper hadn't fled; he was leaning against the broken window, a red ponytail standing out brightly from the blue suit of a Turk and a pair of goggles roughly pushed up to his forehead. Vincent could only see part of the left side of the other's face, just enough to note part of a crescent tattoo or scar curving across the cheek. The Turk's hand curved around the butt of his rifle, which rested on a tripod braced against the windowsill.

Not one of the old M89SR models. An M110 semi-auto. Researching the advances in firearms for the last twenty years had been probably the most enjoyable aspect of his new job.

It took Vincent just a few seconds to cross the room, and by the time the Turk had turned and lifted a smaller pistol, a blow was already coming down to the base of his skull and stunning him into unconsciousness.

The little girl that had followed him up the stairs whistled. "You've done this a lot, haven't you, Mr Demon?"

…

When Sephiroth was next aware of his surroundings, daylight was coming in through the bedroom window. Late for work, then. Pity.

Shifting brought his body awake with screamingly stiff muscles. He had spent most of the night thinking along these lines, laid out in neat mental bullet points like a properly neurotic strategist:

Cloud, looking an awful lot like one of Gast's angels, hadn't been the result of mako delirium or a child's loneliness but rather as real as anything to do with the Lifestream could be. (The metaphysical implications of that, fascinating but currently irrelevant, no, stay focused, man.)

And yes, it was Cloud. Sephiroth was now as certain of that as he was certain of his name, as certain as he expected the sun to rise each day. It had to do with senses that couldn't be accurately described in words.

It was possible that Cloud hadn't abandoned him so much as the Planet had done something. Sephiroth remembered the weird fits when Cloud couldn't talk, or talked to the floorboards, or the strangely inhuman way he'd look at Sephiroth sometimes. The question, then, was why.

("I'm not going to kill you again, Sephiroth, I can't. And that's one of the things I'm going to fix, all right? I'm not going to kill you, ever, and everything's going to be okay.")

That sounded a lot like what Cloud had said just last night, about protecting him, before it felt like spiders started crawling under his skin and he started hearing things, things that reminded him of Jenova and the day she'd suddenly disappeared. The same day he'd started thinking of himself as 'person' rather than 'subject' and it had been such an incredible revelation he couldn't understand how most people could take it for granted.

("I'm not going to kill you again, Sephiroth, I can't.")

How could he be so sure of the future? Refer to it as though it'd already happened? What was it Gast used to say: a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Sighing, Sephiroth stood, raised his arms above his head and heard his spine pop. A new sense of purpose, determination, some measure of anticipation. Now he just needed to track down a skittish, possibly unstable person and convince him to talk.

He snorted.

…

Cloud's dreams were green fire.

The Planet had sensed his touch with the Calamity's Son and wasn't unhappy but something much more visceral, the primal fear of a threatened animal. This old-young human was Its own, was a more self-aware and evolved WEAPON than the others, but was so much more vulnerable. As soon as Cloud's head hit the pillow that night the Planet was waiting.

Sephiroth isn't the enemy, he cried as he had cried so many times before, but the Planet had sensed the way Cloud's touch had ignited something, the force between two powerful magnets or colliding thunderstorms.

The Calamity. Clones. Unnatural drives.

Fuck you and your 'unnatural drives,' Cloud snapped without thinking, and for a short eternity his senses were overloaded with agonizing white static.

Reunion.

He clawed his way to some semblance of language. Wasn't Sephiroth's fault, Hel knows it couldn't have been Reunion, impossible, can't be, wasn't Sephiroth.

But the Planet was already beginning to comb through the threads of his being, ruthless in its efficiency and determination to root out weakness, angry enough to reach through the dead-zone of Midgar

momma, help me

…

Zack wasn't dreaming at all. It was after curfew and he'd been summoned to Sephiroth's quarters. He'd never been there before and never dreamed he'd have a reason to be, and he was in Sephiroth's private quarters while the man himself, wearing casual slacks and a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, leaned against the kitchen counter and sipped tea. Tea.

"Um, sir, if I may ask, what the hell?"

Zack could swear Sephiroth's expression was amused. "I spoke with Angeal today," he said, and Zack, who had been shifting his weight right at that moment, tripped over himself with a yelp. Sephiroth politely waited for him to find his feet again.

"Angeal? Seriously?"

"Yes. It seems he's reconsidering the wisdom of his recent actions."

"So is he here then?" Zack couldn't help rocking on the balls of his feet restlessly, torn between wanting to hug the crap out of his mentor and knocking his teeth in for being such a stupid jerk-off. But Sephiroth just shook his head.

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant, he isn't."

Figured.

"Actually, I called you here because I wanted to talk about Cloud Strife."

These days, who didn't? Zack thought wryly, but there was no heat behind it.

"I know quite a bit about Private Strife, more than most in this company do." A subtle warning that even the SOLDIER Second understood: keep your mouth shut. "Angeal told me that you'd taken a liking to him at the beginning of the mission. What I want to know is how you feel about him now."

Zack shifted in place again. "He's a good kid," he said finally, because as weird as Cloud was, he seemed genuinely earnest. "Pretty serious. Quiet, I guess." Sephiroth's eyes gleamed, but he didn't say anything. "I think he handled the blades from the Genesis clones better than his rifle. Didn't seem intimidated by Tseng at all, and you know how scary that guy can be. I mean, who can talk about dead people like he was discussing the weather? Creepy."

"Tseng has a certain frankness about him, yes," Sephiroth said mildly. "Now, what do you really think of Private Strife?"

"Sir?"

"You're repeating your mission report. I want to know what you actuallythink."

"Why?" Zack asked suspiciously.

"Lieutenant, I promise I have nothing but his best interests in mind. There are circumstances, however, that may require my interference, and I need as many details as possible."

Zack peered at him closely, resisting the urge to poke him with a stick. "I got called down to the trooper barracks, y'know, had to help restrain Cloud. He was flipping out over a nightmare or something. Talked him out of it, but I didn't see him again until the Banora mission. He was all intent and serious and like 'bring it on' without being an ass about it. I guess it was a little creepy, too, he kept looking at me like I had all the answers to something.

"Then he went all SOLDIER on Genesis, which was kinda crazy. He said some things…"

Sephiroth was staring into his teacup, a pensive frown pulling on his lips. "I'm going to tell you something that ShinRa can'tknow. Cannot. Do you understand, Zack?"

First name. Crap. "Uh, yeah. I mean, yes, sir."

"You may have heard that Cloud has a high level of mako in his body. The real reason is rather complicated and involves the Lifestream, though I don't know everything myself. Hojo can't be allowed to get his hands on him."

"Doctor Hojo?"

"Yes. The rumors about his human experimentation are true."

Zack's eyes went huge.

"How do you think Genesis, Angeal, and I all came to be how we are?" Sephiroth smiled humorlessly. "Angeal's told me how much you've always wanted to be a SOLDIER, even now, but Zack, you have to understand that SOLDIER was designed as a police force to maintain ShinRa's power. If Hojo found a way to make SOLDIERs even better than we are, he wouldn't hesitate to take it, and I believe that Cloud might be the kind of specimen he's looking for. It helps that cadets are relatively easy to make disappear without anyone except the family really caring, especially ones that have only been around for the last four or five months."

Wake up thinking I should get laid sometime soon, and now I'm getting into government conspiracies. "And the reason he would want Cloud is because of the mako or Lifestream or whatever?"

"I believe so, yes."

"And whatever he has to do with the Lifestream is also the reason he knew about whatever's making Genesis and Angeal go AWOL."

"Most likely."

"Medical requesting Lieutenant Fair's presence immediately!"

Startled by the shrillness of his PHS, Zack flipped it open with a sharp, "Excuse me, sir. Fair here, what's up?"

"Doctor Libra wants you down in East Medical five minutes ago. Apparently there's a situation that needs your attention."

"What – "

"Look, I'm just an orderly here, no one tells me shit and Doctor Libra is ready to rip out his hair. I'd suggest getting down here to East, ASAP."

Zack snapped the phone shut with a scowl and blinked when he realized Sephiroth was coming back out of the bedroom with his black coat and the Masamune at his side. The general arched a brow. "I think I know who the cause of this emergency is, and I would like to be there."

"Wouldn't that be kind of suspicious?" Zack pointed out as he was herded out of Sephiroth's quarters. "Big famous general visiting a measly little recruit? Seems to defeat the whole 'hide and protect' thing."

"Not unless it's the same general that sent said recruit on a difficult mission."

Zack grinned. "Ooh, smooth one, sir."

"Thank you."

"I bet no one's beaten you at chess ever."

"I haven't played since the last time I lost to Lazard."

"Fine, you just totally lost all your cool points. Sir."

"I prefer Go."

"Yeah, I'd want to go too."

"'Go' is actually a Wutaian strategy game, Lieutenant. Very ancient."

When they reached the infirmary's double doors, they slammed open, sending Zack reeling back a step with an awkward squawk. Libra shot him a poisonous look.

"Took you long enough…er, General Sephiroth, sir?"

Sephiroth bowed slightly. "I apologize for the intrusion, Doctor, but I wish to know if the problem comes from Strife's recent mission."

"Oh." The doctor blinked a few times behind his thin glasses, but there must have been a sound behind him because he suddenly flinched and grabbed Zack's arm. "Both of you come in then, please. Lieutenant, I don't know what you did to calm Strife down last time, but you need to do it again."

"Uh – "

Zack was hustled into a private room barely large enough for the bed. Cloud's limbs had been strapped down to the metal rails on either side of the mattress, and it suddenly made sense when the blond's body started twisting against the padded leather restraints. Cloud's eyes were narrowed in glowing slits, mouth moving in inaudible whispers.

"We got the call about half an hour ago," Doctor Libra said tiredly. "Same deal as last time; went to sleep with his squad, woke up like this. His squadmates said he wasn't screaming, just flailing and hissing. When they couldn't wake him up, they called the infirmary."

"Why?" Zack demanded. "The SOLDIERs have mako too and don't act like this."

"When the SOLDIER program first began, some did," Sephiroth broke in softly. "The scientists hadn't perfected the procedure and some of the candidates began displaying symptoms similar to both mako poisoning and Cloud here. Doctor, may we be alone?"

Libra looked at Cloud helplessly, visibly frustrated. "His regular exams have been completely stable, there's no reason this should be happening."

"Doctor," Sephiroth said firmly. Libra finally nodded, letting himself out of the room and closing the door quietly.

Zack had seated himself on the edge of the bed, struggling unsuccessfully for a moment to find a comfortable way of draping his legs over the long rail, and took Cloud's clenched hand in his own. It was smaller than his, with blunt fingers and a square palm lined with the calluses unique to swordsmen. Trying to ignore Sephiroth's looming, he started saying whatever came to mind.

"Geez, Spike, don't you know you're not supposed to end up in the hospital the day after a mission? Especially when you were all badass with the clones' sickle things and whatnot, I mean, seriously. I hope none of the older cadets said you had to have a quota on hospital visits, you'd be stupid to do this on purpose."

Cloud's weird muttering faded, though his half-lidded eyes still glowed like a SOLDIER's.

"I don't know what's got you screaming so much at night, but maybe you should think about talking to someone. I'd listen, or try to, wouldn't even talk all that much. Or hey, maybe Sephiroth, although," and his voice dropped to a stage-whisper, "I have it on good authority that he's even scarier than Genesis before morning coffee."

Cloud didn't laugh, but his head turned slowly to face Zack and his eyes focused on the lieutenant's face. Before Zack could start again, he murmured, "I don't want them to give you a number."

Numbers again. Apparently it meant something, judging from Sephiroth's suddenly sharp breath. Zack patted Cloud's hand. "Don't worry, kid, the only number I've got is Aeris'. I swear that chick from Rocket Town didn't mean a thing." He hesitated. "Speaking of Aeris, I went to see her the other day. She said she'd actually met you."

"Always teasing me," Cloud muttered.

"Yeah, she would. But she said some weird things."

"Bitte, es tut mir leid! Bitte!"

"Cloud?"

"Bitte!"

"Cloud!" Zack barked, and bit the inside of his cheek as Cloud shook his head, appearing to focus again.

"Never getting used to that," he grumbled faintly, "what a fucking trip," and that pretty much endeared him to Zack. Cloud looked at him, then Sephiroth, and finally the white walls around them. "I started screaming again, didn't I?"

"Close enough," Zack admitted.

"You've been screaming?"

Cloud twitched at Sephiroth's flat question. "Planet," Cloud said, going distant again, and Sephiroth frowned.

"Cloud," Zack said seriously, "Aeris said you're a Cetra."

"No, I'm not. Pretty sure. No."

"She tends to be right about this kind of thing."

"I'm not a Cetra, I'm." He cut himself off and winced, tried to move his hand and finally realized he was tied down. Panic twisted his face, but his gaze shot to Zack and he slowly relaxed.

"It does explain a lot," Sephiroth thought aloud.

"Sephiroth, I need to talk to Rufus."

"The vice president?"

"Yes."

"Whoa, Rufus ShinRa?" Zack interrupted. "What the hell do you want to talk to him for?"

Cloud didn't answer.

"I don't know what you're planning, Cloud, but do you really think Rufus ShinRa is the way to go?" Sephiroth asked as the blond pulled uncomfortably at the restraints, body tense with a nervous, tightly-wound energy. "I don't think – "

Doctor Libra came in at that moment, saw Cloud's anxiety, and managed to throw both SOLDIERs out of the infirmary with the threat of impromptu prostate exams.

…

"All right, people, listen up."

Cloud had been carted off to the infirmary already, but all of the remaining cadets were too keyed up to go back to sleep. For some reason the near-silent pantomime of fighting had been worse than the screaming. Now they turned to Elena, who stood in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips.

"I know this is really inconvenient when we've got Sergeant Tokka breathing down our necks at reveille, but we owe it to Cloud to keep our mouths shut about his night-terrors."

"Why?" demanded an older cadet, Ricky. "He's the one that keeps waking us up."

"Remember the time you fucked up royally in the obstacle course and Tokka was ready to rip you apart? And who was the one that distracted him and got yelled at instead?" she snapped. "It certainly wasn't one of your other squadmates."

"Not to mention Cloud got a bit of payback on the old asshole a few weeks ago," Joe the future chocobo-rider commented dreamily.

"Kinda wondering why he's got such bad terrors anyway," Small added timidly.

"I'd like to see one of you get thrown in mako and survive," she growled, and there was promptly an uproar.

"Thrown in mako? Why isn't he in a coma?"

"Is that why he's so intent on SOLDIER?"

"Explains a lot, though, doesn't it?"

"Shut up!" Small roared, his large frame towering over the other cadets. The noise died down again as Elena mentally kicked herself six ways from Sunday for her big mouth.

"Look, he's one of us, weird as he is. Until he actually hurts one of us, let's just keep this to ourselves, got it? Who knows what would happen if the wrong people heard about him."

There was a general mutter of agreement, even if Joe had to smack Ricky upside the head.

…

When Cloud met up with Vincent in Midgar the afternoon he got out of the hospital, and hadn't that required some fast talking with the steadily more suspicious doctor, he stopped in his tracks and narrowed his eyes.

"Okay, start talking."

Vincent, no longer dressed as a dirt-streaked vagrant but in simple worn workclothes, merely stared back.

"Last time I was here, it was like walking into a war-zone. What the hell did I miss while I on that mission?"

The noise of Wall Market did better to give them privacy than any number of coded messages or thick walls. But the tension was still there, making the shopkeepers more short-tempered than usual and the children less unruly. Cloud swore that some of the people wandering around weren't civilians at all but troopers.

"There was an anti-ShinRa rally," Vincent told him, ushering him along the street into Sector Two as though heading home from work. "People are getting sick of the conditions that they've been driven into, and the increasing number of refugees is only making it worse."

"Who died?" Cloud asked cynically.

"Four people, including the one on the literal soapbox. Several others were injured in the panic. It was very nearly a riot."

"I'm guessing it was a Turk that killed the preacher?"

Vincent looked at him sideways. "You're very familiar with ShinRa tactics."

"Bad for my health, I know. So where are you taking me?"

Instead of replying the sniper led Cloud through a narrow alleyway that opened up into a filthy, rundown street strung with paper lanterns and tiny multicolored prayer flags. The few people they passed, all of whom had the dark hair and almond eyes of Wutaians, watched them like hawks.

Cloud had felt like an outsider over the years for a wide variety of reasons, but this was the first time he'd been acutely aware of his own skin and hair color. With a start, he realized that Vincent himself fit in neatly despite the lack of healthy olive-colored skin; it had simply never occurred to Cloud that the man might have Wutaian ancestry.

He was led into a shop that was cramped with handmade wares, most made from paper and thin wooden sticks. It smelled heavily of incense and what might have been tea leaves, and for a moment Cloud was taken back to his short time in Wutai. Yuffie had been as proud of her nation as Barret had been of Marlene and now he wondered what it would've been like to see the country before ShinRa had broken it.

A long scroll painted with a stunning image of Leviathan drew his eye, and he was so intent on following the whorls of color (not unlike the Lifestream, such rich greens and blues) that he almost didn't notice the small elderly woman that appeared from the back of the shop.

"Yoshida-san," Vincent said politely, bowing at the waist. The woman returned his gesture with a crinkled smile as she came around the counter, her dark eyes sharp.

"Vir-san, I see you have brought a friend."

"This is Cloud Strife."

Cloud awkwardly bowed at Vincent's words and nearly leapt out of his skin when his wrist was grabbed. Yoshida's hands were gnarled and liver-spotted, but her fingers were strong and her palms crossed with the deep lines of hard work. He forcefully fought the urge to lash out. Only Elena touched him on a regular basis, and even then it wasn't that often since he'd once accidentally blackened her eye after she tackle-hugged him from behind.

Yoshida-san examined him closely, finally tugging at him until he leaned forward so that she could stare him in the eyes. Cloud had no idea what she was looking for, and she didn't say anything when she eventually released him and went back around her counter.

"You know what is more dangerous than thought, Vir-san?"

"Charm?" said Vincent drolly, and the woman's eyes crinkled in another smile. Her voice was croaky, but her accented words were clear and purposeful.

"Even more than that. It is dreams."

Cloud couldn't help thinking that this old woman reminded him of his mother. Vincent seemed to be taking it all in stride.

"Thoughts are powerful, but also, how you say, stagnant without the power of dreams. Thoughts change the present, but dreams shape the future."

"Dreams can be deceptive," and there was a definite note of old pain in the sniper's voice.

As she spoke, Yoshida was taking out a square of paper from a long, flat drawer and folding it without any sign of arthritis or hesitation. "Dreams are deceptive only if you are stupid," she declared firmly. Cloud kept half an ear on their odd exchange as he looked around the shop, trying to figure out why Vincent had brought him here and why his fingers were beginning to itch as though he was holding a materia.

"He brings new gods into my store," Yoshida said, jabbing a finger in Cloud's direction.

"He's from the western continent, between here and Wutai."

"His gods come from cold lands. Warlike."

Cloud glanced at her sideways. "My family has always followed our ancestral gods. My mother said it's why our name is 'Strife.'"

He couldn't help thinking that when Vincent arched his brow – yes, just like that – he looked an awful lot like Sephiroth.

"Death? No such thing. There is only rebirth."

He jumped again when Yoshida thrust a hand in his direction. On her lined palm sat a wolf folded from grey paper, nearly the same shade of grey as Fenrir.

"A wolf is powerful and very loyal, but dangerous." With her unoccupied hand, she turned Cloud's hand over to show the semi-circular series of tooth-marks scarring his skin, and then turned it once more to set the wolf figure on it. She tugged his necklace from under his shirt, letting the carved Ice materia turn slowly on its cord. "My people were not happy when Vir-san said he was bringing an outsider here, but you understand. You know what it is like to be without home or loved ones. That makes you child of Leviathan in spirit, if not by honor of blood."

"I…thank you," he whispered.

She patted him on the cheek with a grandmotherly smile before turning to Vincent. "No more dawdling. They are waiting for you."

"Thank you, Yoshida-san," he replied with another bow, and guided Cloud out of the shop.

Hand carefully curled around the paper wolf, Cloud followed Vincent to another building that looked like a general store. Barrels stood outside alongside a table of fruits he'd never seen, jars and packages of equally unknown foods lining the shelves inside. Much of it appeared preserved, perhaps because of the distance from Wutai or simply poverty.

Vincent led him into the back of the store and up several flights of stairs, completely silent on the rickety steel staircases. They came out onto an abandoned floor, bare and gutted save for evenly spaced support columns. A few of the windows were cracked, all were grimy, and the dust and cobwebs were thick against the walls. Several Wutaian warriors and a slumped figure bound to a chair occupied the middle of the empty space.

"Reno?" Cloud said in confusion, earning a sharp look from Vincent.

"You know him?"

"He's a Turk. He was the one that brought down the Plate. Well, would have brought down the Plate. Rather picky about his booze, too. What's he doing here?"

"He was the one that shot the man trying to convince the crowd that ShinRa was oppressive and needed to be brought down."

"Ah." He waited, and finally Vincent added, "Given your unique position in the grand scheme of things, it might be prudent to speak with him."

"Reno won't break," he said confidently. "He'll tell you everything except what's useful."

"Of course," and Vincent's tone said that as a former Turk himself, he'd have already guessed that.

The Wutaians still tensed as Cloud started forward, hands in his pockets, body language relaxed but alert. He'd tucked the paper wolf safely into his back pocket.

"Sorry to say this, boys, but jailbait don't much do it for me," Reno slurred through a bruised face. "Nice change in tactics, but you might've had more luck with tits."

He was slouched in the chair, hands bound behind its back and his shirt torn. His goggles were gone and most of his visible skin was bruised but not bloodied. Cloud stood a few feet away in front of him and wondered if time was actually going to mellow Reno. "What do you know about AVALANCHE?" Cloud asked, and from the way Reno's green eyes flickered, he knew he'd taken the Turk completely off-guard.

"Big fucking snowball. Fart too loudly in the mountains during winter and suddenly you're in deep shit, yo."

"What does Rufus have to do with AVALANCHE?" Cloud continued, unperturbed.

"Careful, kid, the VP won't be too happy if hears you shitting up his name like that."

"What makes you think I was talking about Rufus ShinRa?"

Reno smiled wryly when he realized that he'd walked right into a rather obvious trap. "You kidding me? How many fucks have the misfortune to be named 'Rufus', yo? You say 'Rufus', I think that spoiled rich bastard. Say 'Sephiroth' and I'll probably think of the general, but hey, that's how word association works.

"So why'd the slant-eyed sons of bitches bring you in? Like I said, you ain't too hard on the eyes and all, but I prefer a bit more flesh up top and less between the legs, you catch my drift. Less of the hick accent too, yo, makes me think of chocobos and the weird shit you country people get up to with 'em."

It was almost reassuring to know that Reno never really changed. Once upon a time, after the Remnants, before the Plague, Cloud would get to drinking with Rude and Reno and either end up reminiscing about their sordid history or trying to beat the shit out of one another for old times' sake. "Used to hear stuff about the SOLDIERs, yo," Reno would smirk. "You want my opinion, they were just a bunch of fucked-up mako junkies boning each other, sometimes taking some time out to go kill shit so they'd still get their pension. Whoa, Strife, hold your shit, I didn't mean no disrespect!" Or sometimes, "Shit, Strife, you must be a damn good fuck to keep Sephiroth coming back from the dead."

"No more than the shit you Turks get up to," Cloud retorted dryly. "Always did wonder about Dark Nation and why the VP would need a dog if he's got you."

Reno snorted with laughter, voice cracking from dehydration. "I like you, kid. I might've taken you out drinking if I wasn't gonna die at the end of all this pussyfooting around."

"You probably will," Cloud agreed mildly, "but then again, I've learned Turks are a bit like cockroaches. You'd survive even if a big fucking meteor hit the Planet."

Reno's smile was dark and proud, a fuck you to a world that hated his kind. "We would, yo."

"You're lucky, then. Most people would die if that happened. Too bad that the Planet's dying anyway, but hey, you'll find a way to survive, right?"

"Ah, fuck," Reno groaned, "you're one of those gods-damned eco-terrorists, aren't you? What the hell you quizzing me about AVALANCHE for if you're fucking part of it?"

"I'm not. AVALANCHE just happens to want the same thing I do."

"Saving the Planet? Good luck with that shit, yo. Fuck a couple chocobos and kiss some whales while you're at it."

"No, I don't particularly like the Planet." Good thing said Planet was too vast and old to really understand subtler human emotions. "But Rufus had something to do with AVALANCHE, and I need to know what that was."

"He's a ShinRa, fucktard, the only thing he'd have to do with AVALANCHE would involve bullets and Molotov cocktails."

"That's not how Elfé put it."

A pause. Reno looked at Cloud with new interest. "She mentioned Rufus to you, did she?"

"Yes. And I'd threaten to kill you if one of the Turks tried to take her out, but she seemed like she could take care you herself."

"I should fucking say so. That broad took out a hundred bandits at once, all by her cute, asocial little self."

"And then the Turks let her wander around freely," Cloud finished sardonically.

"What can I say, we're just a bunch of bleeding hearts."

"Or that Rufus had ulterior motives."

Another slight flicker in Reno's eyes. It seemed time would also teach him better self-control when taken by surprise. So if Rufus was quietly sabotaging the company but not willing to go so far as to encourage mass destruction, then it was possible he was angling for a different approach in ruling the people than his father. He was also more politically acute than President ShinRa, which meant he was as aware of ShinRa's role in society as Elfé.

"Reno," Cloud said suddenly, "do you think Rufus has abandoned his original goals?"

"People like him are stubborn, yo," he drawled vaguely.

"You know Hojo, right?"

Reno's look was as dry as a desert.

"Then you should know that even Turks aren't safe from him." He glanced over his shoulder pointedly. "You should ask that guy Vincent sometime about it, since Veld isn't around anymore."

…

After the two visitors left her shop, Yoshida straightened the stack of paper from which she'd taken the grey sheet to make the wolf and then hopped off her stool. She knew every inch of her shop despite the clutter, knew the location of every little lantern and tealeaf and tag-board doll, and so she didn't hesitate when she reached for an object sitting on a low shelf behind a lucky carved cat.

The object was about four feet long, six inches at its widest point, and light enough for the old woman to lift it with little trouble. It was pearly white and looked not unlike an enormous tooth or spike. Yusheng hefted it a few times thoughtfully. She hadn't been unaware of the blond boy's distraction while in her shop, his chi as strange as anything she'd ever felt but still human, nor had she missed what was most likely causing his restlessness.

She'd seen the calluses on his hands and the empty space at his side. It was a pity for a swordsman not to have a sword.
 

chapter 9 || main post || chapter 11