Cloud Strife (yourlegacy) wrote in makebelievelog, @ 2014-01-09 16:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | cloud strife |
Who: Cloud and Zack
What: Cloud uses his ornament to visit the friend who saved his life.
When: Backdated to January 4th, night.
Where: The Lifestream.
Warnings: Probably none.
The ornament had been in Cloud’s possession for a few days. He’d tucked it away on a corner of his desk, the box that contained it buried beneath several layers of half-finished paperwork. With no space in his filing cabinets, and no other storage to be found in the sparsely decorated room, there had been no other option for keeping the thing out of sight. It may have been better to simply dispose of it, but Cloud couldn’t bring himself to go so far. The nagging thought that not using the ornament would be a waste kept at him with all the tenacity of a Tonberry.
Cloud had never been a man given to trust. As a child, he’d learned how easily trust could be betrayed, how readily the people who were supposed to protect you could turn on you instead. Later experiences had confirmed this truth. His outlook had improved in recent years, but he was reluctant to abandon caution when a stranger promised him the stars. That was, in essence, what the ornament represented. One bite, and Cloud could spend a day with anyone. It was a ridiculous notion, though so very tempting.
Perhaps that was why Cloud found himself so restless tonight. His eyes gleamed in the dark as he stared up at the ceiling, trying to chase the remnants of a dream away. There had been so much blood in the air. Gunshots had deafened Cloud until he could hardly detect the explosions from heavy artillery until they shook the earth beneath him. All around him had been a green haze, swirling and thick, blinding him. He hadn’t quite been able to tell if it was the haze that kept him from moving, or his own body.
Zack’s death was a frequent nightmare, fragments of memory coming to Cloud asleep or waking to claw at his heart. Sometimes, he had only flashes, snapshots of individual moments. Others, he would find himself retracing his steps, an actor in a role that he could not change. The dreams that reached back to when he had been cocooned by the effects of mako poisoning were the rarest and the most unsettling. Knowing how helpless he had been to help Zack, how firmly their fates had rested on his friend’s shoulders when Zack should not have been alone, always left Cloud sick to his stomach. It didn’t matter how many times Zack or Aerith forgave him. Cloud would always wish he could have done something differently. If he could have saved Zack, how different might things have been?
Unable to return to sleep, Cloud pushed his blanket aside and rose. His bedroll was laid out against the wall at a right angle to his desk, and he crossed the space in a handful of determined steps. Before he could change his mind, he pulled the box out from beneath the papers, letting the sheets scatter haphazardly onto the floor, his chair, and the desk itself. Cloud opened the box and crumbled the ornament into pieces with one hand, then chose one of the smallest.
The moment he swallowed, the world shifted around him, and he found himself facing a dark-haired man with brilliant, glowing blue eyes several shades darker than his own.
“Hey, Cloud,” Zack said, smiling. “You’ve really got to stop falling into the Lifestream, man.”
“ … Zack … ”
“Yeah. That’s me. Nice to know I’m memorable.” The older man grabbed Cloud by the arm and pulled him in for a rough hug that soon devolved into a loose headlock. Zack ruffled Cloud’s hair until the other man shoved him away, Zack’s broad smile echoed in the slight upturn of Cloud’s lips.
“I missed you,” Cloud told him, although a dozen other comments lingered at the tip of his tongue, most of them born of the skein of Zack’s personality that remained firmly tangled in the fabric of Cloud’s own. The, You’re a pain in the ass, response to the noogie sounded like Cid, though.
“What, no ‘sorry’? No frowning?” Zack leaned in close for a better look at Cloud’s eyes, then made a show of checking him for head injuries, once again manhandling Cloud’s hair. Cloud breathed an exasperated sigh and slapped those hands away. Zack grinned and made a show of backing off, palms raised in surrender. “Okay, okay. Just wanted to make sure it really stuck.” He lowered his hands to his sides, and his expression relaxed into warm approval. “I’m glad you got the message.”
“To stop dragging all of that weight around?” Cloud shrugged. “Couldn’t afford the extra fuel for Fenrir.”
“Sure you couldn’t,” Zack responded with a roll of his eyes. “It’s not like you’re rolling in gil.”
“Most of it went to rebuilding Edge,” Cloud pointed out.
“Most of it, but the part you held back isn’t anything to sneeze at.” The taller SOLDIER poked Cloud in the shoulder. “You and I both know you have an emergency fund tucked away.”
“For emergencies,” Cloud stated, flatly.
“For Tifa,” Zack countered, grin returning.
At that, Cloud shifted a little uncomfortably. It was strange, standing in the Lifestream. There wasn’t any ground to scuff his boots against in embarrassment. “For AVALANCHE.”
“Which includes Tifa.” The green mist around them swirled and took on the vague outline of a bench. Zack dropped onto the seat with boneless grace and stretched his legs out in front of him, slouching down as far he could go without falling off. “You ever going to talk to her about it?”
“It?”
Zack huffed an exasperated breath. “Your feelings, Cloud. How long have you been living together, and you still haven’t brought it up?”
“She deserves—”
“She deserves you, if that’s what she wants. Maybe you should ask her instead of threatening any guy who looks like he’s going to hit on her.”
“I don’t threaten.”
“You glare at them and edge a little closer to your sword if you think they’re going to make a move. I’m in the Lifestream, man. I see everything.”
“That’s … not really comforting, Zack.”
Zack beamed. “But it’s true.”
“It’s not—” Cloud sighed and slumped to sit beside Zack in defeat. “We’ve got twenty-four hours. Are you going to nag me about Tifa the whole time?”
“Nope. Just long enough to win.” Another slap on the shoulder signaled Zack’s satisfaction at his victory. “I know you didn’t come here to talk about your sad lack of a love life with yours truly, even if I am pretty awesome in the romance department. Just ask Aerith. And make sure you ask Tifa when you get back. If you don’t, I really will start following you around everywhere. Shower, bathroom, whatever. Think about that.”
“Zack. I lived in the barracks,” Cloud pointed out. “Privacy wasn’t really an option.”
“Yeah, but those guys weren’t me. I can go through walls, Cloud.”
There was no reasoning with Zack, Cloud remembered, and decided to cede this particular battleground as well. Besides, the idea of Zack’s ghost hovering behind him while he was in the shower was a little disturbing.
“So!” Zack plowed on, cheerfully ignoring Cloud’s inner monologue. “Twenty-four hours. That’s not nearly enough time. The Lifestream’s huge, and I’ve got stuff to show you. “ He abruptly pushed off from the bench, and as soon as he was no longer in contact with it, the mist collapsed beneath Cloud and dumped the smaller man on the ‘ground’. “Oops. Sorry.” Wincing, a chagrinned Zack reached down to give his friend a hand. “Forgot that goes away if I’m not focusing on keeping it here.”
“Am I going to survive twenty-four hours in the Lifestream with you?” Cloud asked, warily, wondering for the first time if he shouldn’t have used the ornament to go visit someone safer, like Vincent.
“Of course you are, Spike.” Zack’s helping hand became an iron grip on Cloud’s arm. “Just wait until you see what I cooked up the other day … ”
Cloud allowed himself to be dragged, although the idea of walking anywhere in the Lifestream seemed ridiculous when Zack could apparently give it shape with a thought. For all of his protests, he couldn’t help but smile at the warmth of the other man’s hand, the solidity of his presence. This was all temporary, and Zack was still dead, but Cloud knew what he needed to know. Zack was happy. Twenty-four hours at the SOLDIER First’s questionable mercy was definitely worth seeing that smile again.