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jukeboxhound_backup) wrote2008-01-17 02:48 pm
fic: imperfect tense, ch.21 (ff7/ff8)
All previous twenty chapters have been revised, fixing some style, spelling, and grammar errors, plus soothing my discontent with some of the characterization. A few smaller scenes were added, but the storyline overall hasn't changed; I wouldn't say rereading is entirely necessary, but it's your choice. And, as always, concrit welcomed.
Past memories and Jenova’s voice.
Thoughts.
Imperfect Tense
By Hades’
Betaed by artimusdin
21.
The hot water did actually manage to soothe some of the knots tightening Cloud’s shoulders. He stood under the spray for a while, staring blankly at the tile wall while the heat turned his skin pink; then he shook his head and roughly twisted the knobs to cut off the water. Dressing in fresh, clean clothes that weren’t much different from what he already wore, Cloud eventually came to stand in the middle of his guest quarters with a lost expression.
It…was all just now hitting him, Sephiroth and Jenova and everything else. The last few days of talking and fighting and lying unconscious hadn’t left much room for introspection (had it really been less than a week since the Lifestream spat him out in this mad, futuristic world? It felt so much longer); and without the adrenaline or frustration to push him on, Cloud was left feeling bewildered, as though the other actors had changed the play’s script in the middle of the show without telling him.
Some part of him was jumping up and down and throwing a spectacular tantrum, while another part curled into a corner and cried its little heart out. Cloud himself just stood, unmoving and silent.
Zack had smoked, on rare occasions—usually when Sephiroth got him so flustered that he pulled out a cigarette to keep himself from decking his superior in the face. Cloud wished he’d picked up the habit if only to have something mindless for his hands to do.
Out of the dim recesses of his head came a memory of talking with Zell on the Ragnarok…and with something concrete he could focus on, Cloud abruptly slung Ultima and the weapon’s harness around his shoulders and set out into Garden, looking for the garage.
He didn’t want to bother asking for directions. It took half an hour of striding through the hallways before he found it, looking like a converted airship hangar located fairly close to the chocobo stables and full of both two- and four-wheeled vehicles. Cloud naturally gravitated towards the motorcycles without hesitation, running a gloved hand over the sleek steel bodies.
Some wandering up and down the rows was necessary before Cloud found one that immediately reminded him of Fenrir. The bike was large but not bulky, powerful without sacrificing speed, and painted shiny black; perfect. Unfortunately,
Ducking down behind the bike’s large frame, it occurred to him that this was the second time so far that Zack’s illegal adventuring had taught Cloud more than how to lie through his teeth to a superior officer. It was a simple matter to hotwire the vehicle, and a few minutes later, Cloud was on a remote road heading towards the Balamb plains under an empty night sky.
To be fair, it hadn’t always been Zack’s fault that Cloud got into trouble. While ships and trucks made Cloud’s stomach try to claw its way out of his throat, there was something about having nothing but some metal and rubber between himself and the road as he practically flew forward that kept him sneaking into the SOLDIER garage. Besides, with their salaries, the SOLDIERs always had the best toys, and what kind of soldier-boy could resist?
ShinRa’s absence for so many years had made a definite impact on the environment. Without the Lifestream being exploited, the once near-desert landscape was lush and green, the vegetation deadening the sound of the bike’s wheels. Cloud pushed the bike as fast as it would go, nearly deafened by the wind, and seized this moment of weightlessness while he could.
xxx
No doubt smelling the wilderness on him, strong enough to overcome the stink of mako that made them so wary, the chocobos swarmed en masse towards Cloud with coos and gleeful warking. His SOLDIER strength failed against the force of big feathered bodies pushing against him, making him stumble against the broad side of a blue bird while laughing quietly.
“Oi, oi,” he protested gently as a wing smacked him in the face, “back off, you featherballs.”
A gold chocobo stared into his eyes with great big woeful ones of its own.
“Oh, stop it,” he muttered, feeling a little guilty despite himself. He scratched behind its crest and was immediately almost knocked over as the bird pushed its large head against his chest, trilling happily.
He imagined that he could hear Zack laughing hysterically somewhere, and sighed. Maneuvering around the chocobo took some skill, aided by the scattering of some greens to distract the majority of the flock, but he managed to lean against a post near an empty stall with an insistent bird pressing at him for more scritches. The chocobo rested solidly against him, letting Cloud feel its slow, deep breathing, and several times he had to smack it lightly on the beak when it went rooting for treats in his pockets.
“At least you aren’t liable to crush me,” he mused ruefully, thinking of a time when he was smaller and a strong wind could probably blow him over. His ribs wouldn’t have stood a chance against a chocobo’s weight.
Cloud stroked the chocobo (he wondered if it had a name, it felt weird to keep calling it ‘chocobo’) on autopilot. The hot shower and the bike-ride had left him feeling more grounded, more focused, and less like he was going to fall apart at the wrong moment. Being with the chocobos, who cooed and snuffled around each other with lazy contentment, was easing the worst of the tension in his shoulders, and even the constant hum of Garden’s facilities was muffled by the straw and wood of the stables.
Eventually Cloud ended up sitting on the ground with his legs crossed, leaning back against a feathery weight nestling behind him. Ultima had been propped against the short half-door of a stall, to avoid accidentally poking one of the birds. The chicobos he’d seen earlier had gotten bored doing whatever it was that chicks did and were now turning him into a makeshift climbing structure, the big golden chocobo looking on with what would have been amusement on a human.
Cloud knew he was wearing one of those little smiles that had once made Zack and even Sephiroth look at him strangely, but he couldn’t help it. There was something about these animals that made him feel nostalgic in a good, if bittersweet, way, and put things in a simpler perspective. Or, at least, a more bearable one.
It wasn’t long before he fell asleep surrounded by soft warking and warm feathers. He never knew if it was the placid mood that being in the stables had put him in, or if it was Aeris’ doing, that was reminding him of those rare moments of happiness in his life, the little ones overshadowed by the trauma.
He was dreaming of a time when, not unusually, he had just gotten out of the army hospital for injuries sustained during a fight. Being a little shy of the legal military age, Cloud was an easy target for the older, stronger, faster recruits, and he’d become well-acquainted with the doctors in a short amount of time.
He’d slipped into the General’s office—it was rare he ever went to the man’s quarters, there’d be no end of the rumors if he was seen—and waited quietly for Sephiroth to finish what he was writing. When Sephiroth finally put down the paperwork and looked up at him, something in his expression went so still that Cloud thought he’d already managed to do something wrong.
“Sir?” he asked tentatively.
Instead of answering, Sephiroth stood up and moved around his desk to stand in front of the recruit; Cloud automatically took a step back, then positively froze when he felt leather against his face.
If Sephiroth noticed his unease, he didn’t react. He continued gently touching a bruise that Cloud had forgotten was on his cheek, even though it was rather hard to miss. “What happened?” he finally said.
“Um.” He managed not to fidget in nervousness, or twist away from the strangely soft touch. “I wasn’t fast enough during sparring. Got knocked down.”
“What did you do?” the General asked, as though having ended up in the hospital hadn’t been embarrassing enough.
“I, er, kicked him in the b—in the groin. And knocked out the other guy’s legs. Then I don’t know, because everything kind of went black.” The back of his head still ached a bit, probably from where he’d struck the floor.
Sephiroth’s fingers stopped moving. “It was two against one?”
“…If I say yes, is someone going to get hurt?” He knew it wasn’t over-protectiveness on Sephiroth’s part; more likely it was possessiveness, like the kind a person has for an object they own. But that was okay, Cloud didn’t mind. Not when it was Sephiroth.
Sephiroth looked at him for a long moment searchingly. Having no idea what was going through the man’s head, Cloud held himself still and waited.
“I take it this wasn’t a ‘spar’ sanctioned by an instructor,” came the dry comment.
“…Well. Um, at least I know that I’m finally tall enough to kick higher than their shins.”
For some reason, this made Sephiroth’s seriousness turn into a sudden chuckle. It was quiet, and brief, but still laughter. Cloud hoped this was a good thing. Then the seriousness came back, and Cloud found his head tilted back with a hand on either side of his face, holding him gently. He could see the differing shades of green in the General’s eyes, and it was somewhat intimidating, being this close.
Without warning Sephiroth was leaning forward to kiss Cloud—and no, he didn’t make that high-pitched sound of surprise, thank you very much—and it was strangely light. Not at all like the usual possessive, consuming lip-locking that left him panting for breath and, uh, other things.
“…Sephiroth?” he murmured questioningly when the General finally pulled away. It was almost like he’d been trying to reassure himself of something, kissing Cloud like that, but that couldn’t be right. What would the General need reassurance for?
What he didn’t know was that seeing the innocuous little bruise on Cloud’s face had suddenly struck Sephiroth with the knowledge that this, this boy was frighteningly fragile, even with those lethal groin-shots. He and Zack were SOLDIERs, they could walk through a Comet storm and come out relatively unscathed, but Cloud was…human. Physically, at least; rare was the person that wouldn’t use his intimacy with the General of SOLDIER to jumpstart their own ambition, but Cloud wouldn’t even use him to threaten the older cadets. In fact, he thought the blond would even be offended at the mere suggestion that he couldn’t handle things himself, and for some reason that produced a brief flare of something unfamiliar but pleasant in Sephiroth’s chest.
Cloud did not squeak again when he was pulled back into a kiss, one that was more familiar for its intensity. It made the bruise on his cheek hurt a little, but he returned it as best he could, his teenaged brain quickly getting distracted by the press of a muscled body against his own.
A tiny beak gnawing painfully on his scalp woke him up around early morning, to judge from the sunlight coming in through the high stable windows. Cloud wasn’t sure if he should be grateful, disappointed, or entirely disgusted with himself for his reddened cheeks. He hadn’t blushed since Aeris died; it was hard to care about such stupid little things after that. Now he thought back over what he was just beginning to remember of his own—not Zack’s—adolescence, and muttered a soft, “Damn it.”
Careful not to squish the tiny body, Cloud carefully extricated the chicobo from his hair, noting that it was the same black one that had so fiercely tried to take down his leather gloves yesterday.
“If Selphie were here, she’d be squealing all over you,” he heard Zell call out with in a laugh in his voice. Cloud twisted his head towards the stable entrance, belatedly realizing that the overly affectionate gold chocobo was still sitting behind him like a giant protective hen, and found the other mercenary with a tray in his hands and a grin on his tattooed face.
“Figured you’d be here,” Zell continued, nudging his way through the dozing chocobos. “You seemed to really like it here last night, and I couldn’t find you in your quarters.”
Cloud just watched him. His gaze had flicked to Ultima to check its closeness without even realizing he’d done so. Somehow, Zell’s unexpected presence had brought him back to reality with all its ugly little facts, surprising him out of the little world that chocobos seemed to carry around with them.
The martial artist set down the food-laden tray in front of Cloud, but didn’t sit down himself. “Nothing fancy, just some coffee and a scone and a couple sausages. I didn’t think these birds would appreciate seeing egg omelettes,” he grinned.
“Why?” Cloud finally asked with a furrowed brow.
Zell straightened and shoved his hands into his pockets with a shrug. “I didn’t think you’d show up for food as long Sephiroth might be around. Hey, it’s not like it’s a bother—we’ve all gotten used to doing the same thing for Squall. The guy could fall asleep on an ice pick, I think, but he usually just settles for conking out over his paperwork.”
“…Aa. Thank you.” Cloud meant it, and the widening of Zell’s easy-going grin said he understood. As Cloud started eating, feeling rather self-conscious with someone watching, Zell continued talking.
“Oh, yeah, some business stuff. Quistis is talking to Laguna—apparently he tried to do some damage control about the rumors concerning Dollet and the monsters and whatnot. Some of the extremists are claiming that Ultimecia’s back too, which is really stupid if they send a whole country into a panic. But Laguna’s got a way with people, so none of that should be a problem. Vincent and Seifer took Sephiroth down to the Training Room, I think they’re testing to see what he can do. You know, what with him having been dead and all.”
Cloud silently thought that they should have just asked him, he knew exactly what Sephiroth was capable of.
Zell chattered on for a bit, and Cloud slowly relaxed again. The martial artist was kind and entertaining without Yuffie’s hyperactivity; it was a bit like listening to a cross between Reeve and Cait Sith, if Reeve had ever been less harried with reconstructing the Planet.
Then Zell said, “It should only take us about four, maybe five days to get down through the western continent to the ruins if we use the golden chocobos. We’ll stay the first night in Timber—we shouldn’t push these birds too hard after crossing all that water, especially since it’s been a while since they’ve seen some action.” He patted a bird on its rump fondly, earning an indignant squawk.
Cloud frowned, thinking back once more to the Ragnarok’s map. “Why not go down through Esthar?”
“Eh, well, Quisty and Seifer aren’t so sure that’s a good idea. At least on the western continent, we won’t have to worry about going through customs or having Laguna try to join us. Estharian politics with the rest of the world is rather tangled, and if a group of armed Balamb SeeDs go running through on golden chocobos without much explanation…yeah. Probably not a good idea.”
Cloud just shrugged. Either way, at least it wasn’t a repeat of AVALANCHE’s months-long globetrotting quest. That had kind of sucked, especially after he’d pulled a scorpion out of his boots for the sixth time in as many days.
“Sephiroth’s a bit of a trip, isn’t he?” Zell said out of the blue. Cloud twitched. “From what you’ve told us about him, I’m kinda surprised he hasn’t thrown a fit about having Vincent tail him around everywhere. Actually, no, I think I’m more surprised that he hasn’t taken off Seifer’s head yet. Even Squall took his fair share of swings at that asshole.”
Apparently Cloud wasn’t the only one suspicious about the man’s passivity. Not even Seifer, however, could possibly be as purely aggravating as Heidegger, or Palmer, or President ShinRa himself. A stray thought about the last part of Zell’s words made him wonder if anyone had known about the relationship (which was no doubt brief, violent, and regretted by both men) between Squall and Seifer, but of course he kept it to himself.
Eventually Zell left Cloud alone with the chocobos, taking the half-emptied tray with him. Cloud struggled to his feet, moving delicately to avoid stepping on a protesting chick, and gave the gold a firm pat on the beak when it grumbled unhappily at him. He looked around for something to do, something to keep himself busy, and mused that the stables were showing the lack of regular caretakers. Thinking about how both Sephiroth and Squall had always seemed so worn by their commanding positions now made Cloud glad that he’d never had to worry about so many mundane details.
Saving the world might be a rather all-consuming responsibility, but it didn’t involve paperwork.
A moment of thought, and then he was picking up a pitchfork and moving to the beginning of the row of stalls to start mucking them out. (Might as well make yourself useful as long as you’re there, his mother used to say, with dark circles under the vivid eyes her son had inherited. Nothing cures ailments of the heart like hard work—focus on the present, sweat it out, and then the nightmares can’t get you.)
Halfway down the row, he started getting lightheaded. Pausing only for a drink from a convenient water faucet, normally used for filling the birds’ buckets, he pressed on. He’d finished one side of the stable by early evening, when Zell showed up once more with another tray and some more useless conversation while Cloud ate. That night, covered in sweat and feathers, he fell asleep pressed against the same cooing gold chocobo. Between the memories of suffocating mako-green and agonizing laboratory-white, he dreamed of a life of riding across the world with a bird faster than any motorcycle or wind. His days would be filled with high mountains and open plains, with only the endurance of his mount setting any sort of limit on their freedom.
His nights would be filled with the comforting knowledge that he meant absolutely nothing to entities as vast as the stars. No heroics. No need for sacrifices.
Thursday morning found Cloud already back at work mucking out the stalls, his shirt lying over Ultima’s hilt as he sweated. Several times he was forced to lay down the pitchfork when a chocobo wandered over and demanded scratches in that impossible-to-reach place behind its crest, but it was hard to get irritated when the birds trilled so happily. The gold chocobo (who actually was a hen, Cloud figured out when he’d finally gotten tired of calling her an ‘it’) trailed him the entire time, casting a warning eye at the others when she deemed they were getting too close to her personal scratcher.
He had only managed to finish four stalls before the stable door opened and the SeeDs, plus one general and one former Turk, trooped in with the sun still new in the sky. They all paused when they saw Cloud, except Zell, who simply looked amused. Cloud, who had unconsciously sensed Sephiroth’s approach, just stared back, pretending that his heart wasn’t pounding.
“You smell like a fucking bird,” were Seifer’s first words. Judging from his scratchy voice and flatly-delivered words, he either wasn’t much of a morning person, or he’d just had an argument with someone. Since neither Fujin nor Raijin were with them, he was betting on the latter, but wasn’t stupid enough to ask. “You look like one, too.”
Cloud’s case wasn’t helped when the hen standing behind him put her head on his shoulder and glared balefully down her beak at Seifer. Zell snorted so hard with laughter he nearly lost his sinuses. Rolling her eyes at the boys, Quistis said, “You ready, Cloud?”
“Yes. I’ve already saddled the birds.”
“Without help?” She sounded surprised. “How in Hyne’s name did you get them to stand still long enough?”
“What, were you a breeder or something?” Seifer grumbled.
“Yes.” When he wasn’t trying to keep the planet from exploding, of course. The Knight’s mouth clicked shut.
Sephiroth was looking at him with a slightly tilted head. Only someone who knew the man very well would have seen the tiniest of smiles on his face, expressed more in his eyes than anything else. Suddenly uncomfortable and ruthlessly suppressing the blush that tried to reestablish itself, Cloud put away the pitchfork and pulled his shirt back on. The hen warked grumpily when she was dislodged from his shoulder.
As the others took the reins of already prepared chocobos, Cloud set about saddling the gold hen, having decided that he could hardly leave her behind. She was still young and, recognizing the chance to get out of the stuffy old stables, practically vibrated with anticipation as he tightened the belt around her midriff. Cloud stroked the enormous beak soothingly, waiting for her to calm down a little before putting the final buckle in place, and thinking that maybe she reminded him a little of Zack.
An angry warking behind him made him whirl around as quickly as he could without startling the chocobos. Both Sephiroth and Vincent were standing a fair distance from the last two mounts, which were dancing in place anxiously. The flock had had time to get used to the unnaturalness of Cloud’s presence, aided by the fact that he gave damn good scritches, but the sheer wrongness of these two was an entirely different matter.
“Shit,” he growled under his breath. Handing the reins of his bird to Quistis, he slowly walked towards the two nervous chocobos. “Hey, hey, you silly monsters, calm down,” he murmured, forcing himself to focus on them and not the general standing very close to him. A few strategic rubbings just behind the crest made the first one settle, and without breaking eye contact, he said, “Sephiroth, put your hands on the reins. Don’t move too quickly or hold your arms out very far—you want to keep yourself as unthreatening as possible.”
It wasn’t like the general was a rookie with chocobos, not when they’d been practically the only reliable source of transportation during the Wutai War, but he followed Cloud’s words without comment. There was some nervous dancing, but Cloud maintained his hold on a dangerously sharp beak and kept up the scritching, so it didn’t take Sephiroth too long to pull himself into the saddle without incident.
Really, thought Cloud, it wasn’t like handling these birds was particularly difficult. It just took some patience, a little more common sense, and a decent amount of respect for what were, technically, monsters. Plus lots of scritching. Even when he was still in the military, he’d never understood why the majority of other recruits had been absolutely hopeless at understanding that.
“Thank you,” Sephiroth told him in a voice too low for anyone else to hear. Cloud just gave him a brief glance before moving to help Vincent, going through the same motions. It took a little longer, but eventually everyone was settled, and Cloud closed a gate that would keep the rest of flock from following them outside. Some adjusting of supply packs, a few obligatory complaints from both Zell and Seifer, and then the long plains of Balamb stretched out in front them towards the western sea.