fic: eir's tomorrow, ch.5

[jukeboxhound_backup]

Chapter 5

 

Eir’s Tomorrow

 

Author: Hades’ Phoenix

Co-conspirator/beta: artimusdin

 

5.

 

When the slow, steady breathing of his new squad-mates and someone’s occasional shifting became the only sounds in the dorm, Cloud opened his eyes and looked around.  A faint orange glow emanated from the safety light placed over the single door, allowing him to see from silhouettes that the nine other cadets really were asleep.

 

Moving slowly, taking extra care not to make the springs in the mattress squeak, he sat up and slid from the bed to land lightly on his feet.  Cloud gently pulled his knapsack from under his bed, keeping an eye on the others and a hand on the bag’s buckle to smother the metallic clinking.  Someone turned over with a muffled snort.  He paused, holding himself still until that someone’s breath evened out once more, and then he crept towards the small dresser opposite his bunk.

 

The furniture might have sounded like a bit of luxury, but in reality the dressers were really more like lengths of particle board with drawer slides that tended to stick.  Pieces of crap, really, and Cloud poked at one, dryly wondering that the thing didn’t just fall apart at the touch.  For all its wealth, ShinRa cut the corners on cost wherever possible.

 

(Sometimes at the expense of the troops, Cloud suddenly remembered; Zack would snarl as he talked about platoons that didn’t have enough backup artillery in Wutai and half the men would end up dead or worse.  SOLDIER always had the best, he said caustically, which left the regular grunts with the leftovers.)

 

Setting the knapsack at his side, the blond reached for the lower drawer and started to work it open.  The slides creaked, and one tried stubbornly to stick in its track, but with patience and several pauses as some random cadet stirred Cloud managed to work it open.  Then he lifted out Sephiroth’s storybook, wrapped in Ifalna’s shawl, and buried it under his extra uniform; the data discs followed, on which he’d written Mum and Dad’s Wedding and Family Pix.  He put them in the shawl as well, knowing that when the officers pulled a surprise check on their dorm they’d see the bundle and figure him to be one of those homesick, ‘mama’s boy’ types.  (Being small, blond, and blue-eyed would help, he mused irritably.)

 

He put away the now-empty knapsack and slipped into bed, hoping his night-terrors wouldn’t choose that night to show up.

 

xxx

 

Despite the war raging in Wutai—or rather, because of it—Midgar had become home to a fair number of Wutanese.  Periodic SOLDIER patrols prevented the refugees from forming a solid community, but there were a few alleys where one could see a prayer flag or a paper lantern breaking up the filthy monotony of the slums.  It was in one such alley that Vincent found himself slinking along in the shadows, following a teenage boy with distinctive almond eyes under the dirt streaking his face.  He’d spotted the boy milling around the market with the other children, but the way he moved screamed of a self-discipline the others noticeably lacked.

 

Maybe that wasn’t so strange, considering how many refugees had fled to Midgar and brought their culture with them, but Vincent was nothing if not thorough.  So he tracked the oblivious teenager, using both experience and the talents that having Chaos in his head gave him, and found himself in a dingy street lit by the sad, dim glow of greasy lanterns.  A few people were out walking, occasionally conversing with one another in their lyrical tongue.  Vincent observed gil being traded for what looked like packets of tea or other small items, certainly nothing that appeared to be some kind of weapon. 

 

Of course, it was unlikely that someone from the slums would be so sloppy.  But.  One could never be too careful.

 

The boy was now looking around surreptitiously.  He couldn’t see Vincent, he was far too young and unskilled for that, and yet suddenly the Turk felt his shoulder-blades prickle with the weight of someone’s gaze.  Immediately Vincent pulled himself into the shadows as far as he could, narrowed eyes picking apart the gloomy alley—but when he spotted no one and the feeling didn’t leave, he wisely backtracked the way he’d come.  Not without making a mental note of the area to explore later, of course.

 

He’d started his information-gathering in Midgar in the name of vengeance against Hojo, willing to accept the word of a little spiky-headed boy who was far too old for his body, but over the years he’d come to see just how deep ShinRa’s shit infiltrated every aspect of life on this Planet.  These days he couldn’t even be sure he was still doing this entirely in the name of revenge.

 

xxx

 

They stood in a blue-uniformed line of panting, sweating recruits in front of the sergeant.  He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with straw-colored hair that looked down on the newest cadets without pity.

 

“Stop whining and stand up straight, children,” he rumbled, “or you’ll be doing another circuit.”

 

Immediately the cadets struggled to force themselves into some semblance of order.  Even Cloud was reacting to the strain of having to run so many laps while taking periodic breaks for push-ups, but he was feeling invigorated, as though he were finally doing something to prepare for the known future.  It didn’t matter that this was only the first of the seventy-two weeks of physical training. And that was before he could even think about taking the SOLDIER exam.

 

It didn’t matter because all he had to do was look up at the soaring ShinRa skyscraper and know that somewhere inside, Zack was alive and laughing and using his iron stubbornness to make Sephiroth smile his rare, sincere smile.

 

The sergeant had the kind of voice that didn’t need to yell to be heard very, very clearly.  “I ain’t here to mother you, so save your tears for your pillows tonight.  If you can’t handle a few laps around the track, then you’re in the wrong fucking place, sweethearts.”

 

Cloud tuned out the typical tough-guy talk and was one of the first to get back to the locker rooms.  He stripped and showered perfunctorily in the lukewarm water—cadets were allotted three minutes tops—and was dressed in time for his class on materia.  He’d forgotten how strictly regimented a recruit’s life was; there wasn’t a minute that passed in which he wasn’t told what to do or think, and after the independence of his last life and the freedom his mother had given him growing up…

 

Keep your head down and your scores up, he told himself, as he already had countless times.  You know all this.  There was a time in which you could single-handedly pull down most of SOLDIER.  Don’t make waves, don’t hit the sergeant, don’t kill the other cadets.

 

He was quickly losing the good mood that the running had put him in, so he distracted himself by coming up with the various ways one could use a Fire materia.

 

It only stands to reason that when one makes a solemn oath not to stand out, Fate will smile before spitting in one’s face.

 

Women were rare in SOLDIER, both because of ShinRa’s tendency towards discrimination and because women were, generally speaking, unable to build up the physical strength that was trademark to the program.  As far as the company was concerned, body mass was more important than agility or intelligence.  And so, the girls that did manage to pass the recruiting benchmarks usually ended up with the Turks or as troops in the regular army. 

 

With that in mind, Cloud was somewhat surprised to find that one of the few females among the cadets was in his own squad, and that her name was Elena.  As in, Elena with the big mouth and more bombs than Cloud had neuroses.  And the event that gave him a reputation among his peers naturally had to include her.

 

It happened a few weeks after the start of classes and physical training.  Until then he was thought of as one of those kids that was far too serious to be any fun, and so was usually left alone to study or, more often, hide out in the gym.  That evening he was heading back to the dorm to drop off his books before going down to the cafeteria when he walked into several male cadets harassing a pretty blond girl.

 

“C’mon, babe,” one of them wheedled, “I’ll make it worth your while.”

 

“I doubt that,” the girl snarled, and the familiarity of her voice made Cloud blink in silent shock.  Somehow he’d managed to miss Elena’s presence all this time.  “Fuck off, motherfuckers.”

 

“Don’t be like that—“

 

One of the guys reached for her arm but she twisted out of reach, swinging her bookbag like a mace.  “Don’t touch me, you disgusting little genital wart, Planet only knows what kind of diseases you’ll fucking spread.”

 

She had quite a mouth, Cloud idly mused, standing just outside the door and waiting for her to finish off her harassers so he wouldn’t end up getting caught in the crossfire.  Unfortunately the threat of her book bag didn’t seem to faze them, and she wasn’t quite fast enough to avoid the powerful grip that got a hold on her wrists and another that tossed her bag aside.  A third was working on the buttons of her uniform while others looked on, leering.

 

Cloud suddenly realized that if he remained standing unnoticed in the door then he would witness a rape.  He’d forgotten that Elena wasn’t a Turk at all, who could shoot someone in the face at point-blank range and hardly bat an eye at the blood spattering her suit (and who would be quite offended if a man had the brass balls to think he had to rescue her), but was a sixteen-year-old girl isolated with a number of repressed, hormone-driven teenage males.

 

The guys were stunned when one of their number suddenly dropped to the floor in a soundless heap.  Cloud stared back, finally prompting them with a quiet, “You’re in the way.  Leave so I can go get something to eat.”

 

There was another moment of silence before one snarled, “You look enough like a girl, Strife, wanna join this bitch here?”

 

“Call me bitch again to my face, you gods-damned coward, and I’ll break your fucking nose—“

 

Cloud had heard enough comments on his appearance to let the insult pass with little more than a mild glare.  “Just get out before you’re discharged for sexual harassment and attempted assault.”

 

Predictably, one of the boys didn’t appreciate hearing this from someone who looked like jailbait and threw a powerful punch.  Cloud leaned to one side and let the surprised boy’s momentum carry him forward, casually holding out a foot so that he took a load of tiled floor to the face.

 

While they were distracted, Elena twisted out of the loosened grips on her arms and put an elbow into someone’s stomach, a knee to another’s groin.  When the last guy quickly raised his hands in the air in surrender, she sneered, “Go crying home to your whore of a mother, bastard.”

 

Mentally sighing, Cloud tossed his bag on his bunk, shoved Elena’s into her hands, and took her gently by the arm to steer her towards the door.  “Just go report them.  Getting them kicked out is better revenge than anything else you could do.”

 

She jerked her arm back in the hallway.  “You better not think I’m gonna let you fuck me just because you stopped them.”

 

Cloud raised an eyebrow.  “Good to know,” he muttered dryly.

 

“I’m gonna be a Turk,” she declared fiercely, “a better one than my sister.”

 

He winced slightly and, glancing both ways down the corridor, put a hand to her elbow to make her stop walking.  “You’ve really got to watch what you say,” he murmured seriously, making sure to hold her gaze.  “There’s a reason Turks don’t have last names.  If someone knew who your sister was, they could use you against her.”

 

Elena’s eyes widened, but Cloud was already walking away to the cafeteria.  He was already cursing himself for having gotten involved, hoping that this would just be seen as a case of one cadet protecting another, not as an indication that there was something different about him.  It was too early in the game to be questioned—he was already incredibly lucky that no one had gotten a good enough look at him to see the faint glow in his eyes that shouldn’t be in anyone that hadn’t been exposed to mako. Like a SOLDIER.

 

What he didn’t count on was the news of his actions getting circulated around the other cadets.  In this environment rumor was one of the few entertainments left to them, and stories about the quiet little blond ‘beating the crap’ out of two older cadets only increased when two were dishonorably discharged and the rest put in the stockade.  Cloud himself refused to comment, impatiently waiting for someone else to do something stupid so that he’d be forgotten again.

 

He also hadn’t counted on Elena’s persistent curiosity.

 

“Mum and Dad’s Wedding, huh?  Is Family Pix your code for porn?”

 

Cloud froze at the sight of Elena lounging on his bunk and holding up the data discs between two fingers.  The few other cadets in the room were too busy with their own matters to pay attention.  He forced himself not to run over and make a scene.

 

“Why were you going through my things?” he growled at Elena, grabbing her hand and snatching the discs.  She pouted.

 

“I gotta practice, don’t I?  Besides, I was curious.  I saw you a couple weeks ago hiding them, I’m a really light sleeper—“

 

She stopped as Cloud’s hold around her wrist tightened until the bones creaked, making her flinch.  He hardly noticed.  If the stupid girl had looked at the discs instead of stealing them, then Cloud would have a bit more to worry about than being noticed by a bunch of teenagers.

 

Pulling her close, he whispered, “Don’t ever touch my things without permission again.”

 

 “O-or what?” she stammered, trying to hold onto her bravado, which was killed when Cloud replied in complete seriousness, “I’ll kill you and every person you’ve talked to.”

 

(Because there was no fucking way he was going to allow anyone to ruin his plans.  The Planet was still dying even with Jenova gone and he had a limited amount of time before the future came back to haunt him, quite literally, and if killing Elena—whom he gotten along with well enough Before, considering she was a Turk—was the only way to ensure her silence, then so be it.)

 

“What the hell is wrong with you?” 

 

He’d obviously scared her, and it made him feel a little bad to have done that to a young girl but he didn’t regret it.  Better to be scared now than to have to kill her later because she had too big a mouth.  So Cloud stared at her, willing her to understand the severity of his words, prompting her with a flat, “Do you understand me?”

 

“Y-yes.”

 

Good.  He nodded sharply and released her, moving to put the data discs away as she brought her knees to her chest and rubbed her aching wrist.  No one had noticed the little exchange.

 

That night, his terrors came back.



Next

Comments

[amarissia.livejournal.com]

Omigod, Elena. You actually made me like Elena for a minute. I should probably go take my temperature. :) Way to go, Cloudy, can't repress that hero impulse.

*is very excited about future chapters*

[etrix.livejournal.com]

OoooOOO I'm so happy to see another chapter of this up and running. Nice way to carry on the story.

I love the way you've integrated Cloud from the old world and Cloud from this one. He's actually very scary for being, what, 15? (I'll have to go back and read from the beginning... again).

Looking forward to more.

[blondeshadow.livejournal.com]

Alright, I haven't read yet, but I actually screamed when I saw this post.

I just thought you should know. Oh, and here's a cookie. <3