random song drabble meme.

[jukeboxhound_backup]

One paper down, one and a half more to go.  I thought I'd celebrate with some other drabbles, inspired by songs randomly played for me by Pandora.com while trying to study.

Unbetaed, somewhat random and weird.
(Links to lyrics included, if someone's curious.)

Null Device—“Word and Deed”

Maybe it was inevitable, although Cloud doesn’t like to think so.  Doesn’t like to admit that he’s as helpless now as when he was strapped down to a steel table with light in his eyes and knives in his flesh and voices in his head.

 

He walks through Nibelheim, even though if Tifa knew he was here she’d be angry.  Would look at him with those sad red-brown eyes and not understand.  He didn’t tell her where he was going when he left so suddenly with Fenrir, let the voices do all the decision-making although he’d never admit that.  The villagers-that-aren’t move around him, pretend not to notice anything out of the ordinary and he might as well be walking through a ghost town.  Maybe these not-people are the real ghosts.

 

‘Real ghosts.’  He likes that.  Thinks that it describes himself pretty fucking well.  It’s hard to lay the dead to rest when he looks around and realizes that the voices are more real than the living.

Hooverphonic—“Dictionary”

I’m just a puppet, Kadaj says, and Cloud feels something inside of him clench with revulsion and horrible, undeniable jealousy.  He doesn’t want to admit to himself the silken allure of allowing Sephiroth to define him, not when he’s fought so hard these last two and half years to find himself.  But the truth is staring at him with mako-green eyes and broken amusement, like his reflection, and the silvered temptation is almost too much to bear.

Piano Magic—“The King Cannot Be Found”

Zack stares down the Masamune into Sephiroth’s face.  He might as well be looking at one of those creepy glass-eyed trophies in Heidegger’s office for all the life he sees behind feline slit-pupils; and when the katana slides back out of his body and he’s thrown through the door of the reactor, he idly muses that at least he won’t have to pretend not to break again.  Losing Angeal was bad enough, he doesn’t think he could survive losing Seph and Cloud in the same evening.  Surprise—turns out he can’t be the hero of this story anymore.  Heroes beat the villain and ride off into the sunset with his two best friends and girlfriend; heroes don’t die at the hands of a friend-gone-batshit-crazy and leave his girl and his wingman behind.

 

He doesn’t seem to have the best of luck when it comes to protecting his loved ones.

Tool—“Prison Sex”

Cloud doesn’t like to be touched.  It took nearly snapping Yuffie’s wrist when he felt her small hand sneaking into his pocket to make it a conscious realization.  She’d backed away, eyes wide but not with faked innocence, and all he could do was mumble an apology as he dug out a potion.  The others had looked at him with varying degrees of concern and wariness, making his skin crawl (don’t look at me don’t fucking look) and his words rather terse as he says something about setting up camp.  He manages to avoid Tifa’s overbearing concern by slipping away into the forest on the pretense of finding firewood.

 

That night he pretends to sleep, automatically keeping a minimum of three feet between himself and everyone else as usual.  Vincent does it too, but for different reasons.  At least, Cloud thinks so, although he can’t be sure because he’s not even sure why he nearly snapped Yuffie’s forearm.

 

He’s woken up before the sun has risen to a golden claw on his arm.  The shine of the metal in the light of the dying embers makes him kick out instinctively, but Vincent neatly sidesteps him and backs away without a word. 

 

Neither mentions the fact that Cloud has been whimpering in his sleep.

 

After everything goes wrong and Aeris’ pink dress is stained red and He starts calling His puppets and Cloud is terrified by the realization that he can’twon’t resist, he never mentions that Sephiroth’s touch as He received the Black Materia had been familiar.  Not friendly-hug familiar but gripping-hands-sweaty-skin familiar.  Cloud doesn’t know why and he’s afraid to prod too deeply.

 

People tend to die when Cloud remembers.

Static-X—“Cold”

His God’s fingers are cold, so cold against his overheated skin, burning lines of ice into his flesh and marking him, marking him as His.  He presses himself closer to his God, wants to crawl inside his God and lose himself in Him, he wants to do whatever will make his God happy.  And his God is already happy with him, cradles a small black-and-red sphere in one hand while the other—

 

The other is gripping his hair while He slides into him as easily as his God’s mind slides into his own, pressing him down and filling him up and He’s speaking, whispering mine my puppet mine and that’s all that he ever wanted.  His head is forcibly yanked back and something like a mewl is drawn long and breathy from his lips, a sound of worship and surrender.

 

This is all he ever wanted.