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year 5, quarter 3
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When Yuna was finally able to take a break from the blond man’s bedside, she was startled to see that the eastern horizon outside the window had lightened to a bright blue. It had been a long time since she’d had to stay up all night tending to the wounded--the last time had been at the Djose Temple with her guardians, and that felt like forever ago. A lifetime where she’d still had faith in the church and in the path of a summoner.
Now the only thing that Yuna had faith in was in forging her own path forward.
From the adjacent bathroom, Yuna splashed a little water on her face in an attempt to refresh herself before meeting her own tired, dichromatic eyes in the mirror. It had taken a long time to stabilize the man that Caius had brought to her, and for a while, Yuna had thought that she might end up having to send him instead. The severe magic burns would have been one thing entirely, but he had lost too much blood on top of that. Something had impaled him all the way through his lower chest, causing severe damage to his internal organs and making that her first order of business to attend to. He was lucky that the blade appeared to have been oddly thin. If the wound had been any worse or if Caius hadn’t found him quickly enough, then Yuna wasn’t sure that all the magic in the world would have been able to stop him from suffocating on his own blood.
Letting out a breath, Yuna brushed back her mussed hair before returning to the front room of the loft that she’d been renting. Right now it doubled as her own apartment and as the Dragonblade’s Provo operations that she was starting to get set up, so the room was a mismatched collection of her own furniture and weapons that other members had needed to store somewhere. Her patient was laid out on a couch near the front door where Caius had placed him. He was probably stable enough to be moved to a bed now, but Yuna wasn’t strong enough to move him safely on her own. The last thing that she wanted to do was jostle his healing wounds.
The man--Cloud, Caius had called him--was a patchwork mess of bandages, though Yuna had at least managed to sponge off some of the dried blood once he was out of the danger zone. She’d had to remove his sweater and shoulder armor to get to the wound on his chest, and she hoped that wouldn’t spook him too badly when he woke. She’d left his pants completely alone for that reason, even if they were as filthy and bloodstained as the rest of him had been. It was better to let people do certain tasks on their own until they specifically asked for help.
Cloud’s hair had been matted down with sweat from the aftermath of whatever battle had gone down in the middle of the city, but the blond spikes reminded her enough of Tidus that Yuna didn’t have to wonder why she was going so far to save a stranger. “Stupid,” she murmured to herself, rubbing her eyes and telling herself that she’d clearly been awake too long. Cloud was stable now, and it was time to get some sleep before she opened up that particular hole in her heart. She’d done her best not to dwell on the people waiting back on Spira for her, and this wasn’t a good time to start.
“Here,” she murmured, leaving the man a glass of water on the coffee table in front of him in case he woke up while she was gone. All squared away, Yuna went straight back to her bedroom and fell on top of the blankets in a heap. In her hurry she even forgot to remove her boots.
Post by Cloud Strife on Mar 27, 2021 14:44:27 GMT -6
In the dim depths of the Shinra mansion's basement all Cloud saw was the blinding white flare of pain. There was no space for his senses to perceive anything else. Needles in his nerves. An acid burn coursing through his veins. He thrashed against the restraints until his body failed him. He cried for his mother, and he slipped away into the dark.
A black void stretched out infinitely in all directions and he sunk through nothingness in a slow descent. Voices drifted in and out of the murk. He wanted to tell them to speak up but he couldn't form words. He willed his fingers to move but he couldn't feel them.
The voices stopped.
He found a strange comfort in nothing.
Laughter clawed the inside of his skull. A distant point in space, the only thing visible in the darkness, the glow of those cat's eyes. Monster's eyes.
...A puppet made up of vibrant Jenova cells, her knowledge, and the power of Mako. An incomplete Sephiroth-clone. Not even given a number. ...That is your reality. Ha, ha, ha...
The world was on fire. Cloud squinted against the burning orange light to the charred buildings beneath. Too tall for Nibelheim. Windows shattered with the heat. There laid corpses strewn across the square, burned, mutilated. Tifa and Aerith motionless on the ground. Slick black pools beneath them reflecting the dancing flames. Terror choked him like hands around his throat and he couldn't will his feet to move. Not to run to them. Not to slip out of the way as Sephiroth appeared and skewered him and a lightning bolt of agony shot through his chest and his vision whited out.
He woke gasping for air and every breath burned so deeply his eyes watered with the pain. He sat up half an inch and collapsed back into the cushion, biting back the anguished cry until it was little more than a muffled exhale. He screwed his eyes shut and laid there measuring his breathing, how deeply he could inhale before it hurt too much.
Not very.
Slowly he opened his eyes, blinking until the world came into focus. He recognized nothing. Someone must have dragged him off the street.
I should be dead.
But few things were ever as they should be.
He tilted his head one way, then the other, taking in what little he could see without sitting up. Not a hospital. He lifted his hands, a bloody bandage wrapped tight around one forearm, dry crimson smears on his skin, blood under his fingernails. He pawed feebly at his chest, feeling the bandages. Even that hurt too much.
Cloud opened his mouth to speak but all he could muster was a hoarse, pathetic sound.
Get up.
A tall order without the adrenaline to back him, but he tried it anyway. He let one leg slide off the couch until his boot found the floor. He braced one elbow against the cushion and the opposite hand grabbed at the back of the couch. When he began to push and pull himself up he couldn't spare the effort to stifle his scream.
Somewhere in there everything went dim again. When his senses returned to him he was sitting up on the couch, sunk deeply into the cushions, arms limp at his sides. Sweat beaded on his skin. He sat there and took his shallow breaths and thought that maybe he should wait a while before trying to stand.
He thought that he'd have a lot to explain to Tifa and Aerith.
Yuna wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep when her eyes flickered open. She felt like she might have heard something to rouse her, but she couldn’t entirely rule out that it had been part of a dream either. Rolling over in bed, she frowned when she realized that her boots were still on, and the entire busy night came back to her as she squinted up at the full sunlight streaming in through a gap in the curtains.
Cloud had some cruel wounds inflicted on him. Yuna hadn’t seen any so dire since the failed Operation Mi’ihen against Sin, but she desperately hoped that he’d be able to pull through. She should really go check on how her patient had fared during the night anyway in case he needed another round of healing, but she gave herself another few seconds to lay there until the sound of a thump from the front room had her sitting up in alarm.
It looked like whatever had woken her up hadn’t been a dream after all.
Peeking out into the hallway, Yuna did her best to smooth down her sleep-strewn hair before she strode out into the living room. She had been fully expecting that maybe another member of the Dragonblades had dropped by, so she was completely taken aback to find the blond man sitting up in the middle of the couch.
“Oh! Putting a hand to her mouth, Yuna crept forward a few steps. “You’re awake! You...probably shouldn’t sit up so soon though.” That might have been an understatement. It didn’t look like he’d ripped anything open again, but his face was deathly pale, as if just getting that far had cost him a great deal.
“My name’s Yuna. I’m a healer who works with the Dragonblades. I think Caius was afraid to take you to a hospital in case-...” Well. There were still a lot of questions about what had happened to cause so much destruction in the city. Caius had missed the battle so he hadn’t been able to tell her, but the Provo authorities were probably interested in finding who was responsible. Cloud didn’t need to hear that when he had just woken up though. Yuna felt her cheeks grow a little warm as she glanced to the side. “You don’t need to talk about that yet though.”
Approaching the couch, she knelt to retrieve the glass of water that she’d poured for him earlier and left on the coffee table. “You should try to drink something if you can…” Holding it out, Yuna held it by the base to leave it open-ended on if he wanted help or wanted to try by himself.
Post by Cloud Strife on Apr 14, 2021 19:34:36 GMT -6
The pain was static in his mind. Bursts of white if he moved the wrong way. Patterns of snow and pins and needles and itching and fire and the big one, the bolt of lightning through his chest, if he got any more bright ideas like trying to get up. Cloud mustered a blank stare at a vague point in space hovering a few feet in front of him. As far as blank stares went it was a C+ effort. He lacked the energy to withstand the slow gravitational pull on his eyelids and the world got dimmer from the top down, millimeter by millimeter. He inhaled acid and exhaled fire and regretted every second of sitting up. Of existing. He grasped at the unconsciousness he'd left behind but it was sand between his motionless fingers.
Somewhere in the back of his mind a drive that wasn't quite a conscious thought urged him to get up. Tifa and Aerith were still in Sonora. He had to get back to them, tell them what happened...
He wished Tifa was here.
Sounds drifted in from somewhere beyond his small sphere of awareness. What kind of sounds? He willed his brain to process the sensory input like he was trying to start a dying engine. Sweat chilled on his pale skin. Sounds. Think. Soft ones. Flat. Tentative, like... like quiet footsteps. He furrowed his brows. His skull ached. Another sound followed, longer, lighter, fuller--
Someone's talking.
Huh?
Snap out of it. Someone's talking to you.
His eyes moved first, tired mako eyes sweeping in slow motion across the room until they found a person. She was talking at him. Introducing herself. Yuna. Cloud hadn't heard the name before. Nothing in the sentence clicked until she said the name Caius, and even then he had to grope around in the fog of his mind. Caius, where did he know that name from?
Sonora. The house. Right.
Why wouldn't he want to take me to the hospital...?
Oh.
Rubble and screaming. Black char on crumbling stones. The smell of burning wood and the crunch of broken glass underfoot. A wave of sickness washed over him and Cloud buckled beneath it. He looked down at his hands. They rested palm up on the bloody couch cushion, fingers half curled, spotted with dry smears of crimson. His chest burned. He didn't have the energy to steel his expression into anything other than a broken reflection of shame and regret.
When Cloud lifted his head again she was offering him water. He ran his tongue reflexively over his bottom lip, dry and cracked like Corel hardpan. His throat felt lined with sandpaper. When he opened his mouth to speak a wordless, raspy sound escaped him like air leaking out of a tire. He tested his dominant hand, tried to curl his fingers into a loose fist, but the nerves in his forearm lit up with pain. The wound there was deep, down to the bone. It was a scratch compared to his other injuries.
With his other hand he reached out and took hold of the glass. A tremor settled in as he pulled it back towards himself. The water rippled but didn't spill over the edge of the glass, and he tipped it back and drank greedily. The effort of drinking, like everything he did, spiked the pain in his core but he was too thirsty to care. Water dribbled out of the corner of his mouth, down his chin. He grimaced as he lowered the glass.
"Thanks," he said after a moment. His voice was hoarse.
"I think..." he started, then a tickle in his lungs became a cough and the cough felt like it was ripping his chest apart from the inside out. He dropped the empty glass on the cushion beside him and grabbed at the bandaged wound for what little it did until the coughing subsided. His eyes stung. He measured his breathing until the worst of the agony ebbed away and let himself sink deeper into the couch cushions.
He looked at Yuna. She seemed tired. They had something in common.
"...I think I got blood on your couch," he muttered weakly. "Sorry."
[attr=class,bulk] Yuna regretted mentioning why Cloud wasn’t currently in a hospital after his expression turned raw with pain. She hadn’t meant to make him reflect on what had happened so soon, but she also didn’t want him to panic about waking up so injured in a strange place without any context. There really wasn’t a good answer on how to approach him, and she found herself wishing that Caius would come back soon. Yuna had no idea if the two blond men were close or not, but there was probably only so much that she could comfort Cloud as a stranger.
He chose to try to drink the water on his own, and she watched carefully in case she needed to jump in. He kept a hold of the glass though, even if his hands shook and a few droplets spilled out down his chin. He thanked her in a hoarse voice afterward, and Yuna shook her head quickly. “You’re doing really good for how bad your wounds are. I can tell you’re strong.”
She had meant to encourage him, but the words fell a little flat when he started coughing like the water he’d just drank was going to all come back up. Worriedly, she retrieved the empty glass where he’d dropped it on a cushion, setting it on the coffee table next to him before dragging over a trash can in case he had to throw up. She hoped Cloud wouldn’t notice that it was half-full with the bloody remnants of his own sweater, but it didn’t turn out to be necessary anyway as his coughing tapered off and he sank back into a laying position.
“I think I got blood on your couch. Sorry.”
Yuna stared at him for a moment, raising one hand to her mouth to try to cover up her laugh so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea. That was what he was worried about? What he had risked a coughing fit to tell her? Whatever had happened in the town center, her first impression of Cloud was that he was sweet and didn’t like to be a bother. She could see why Caius had saved him.
“Don’t be. You aren’t the first. This is what I do for a living.” She paused for a beat, finding it odd to introduce herself that way, even if a healer really was all that she was now. “At least it is here,” she amended, settling down in an armchair near the couch so she could look at him. He’d probably need several more rounds of healing before he was up and about, but if he was awake and talking, then Yuna liked his odds of survival.
“Is there...anything I can do for you?” She asked a bit hesitantly. It was a heavy question given Cloud’s situation, so she quickly clarified. “Like anyone who should know that you’re here? Or anything you might want the Provo authorities to know?” Yuna wasn’t at all up to date on the situation since she’d been so busy with Cloud, but Caius had made it sound like the blond man had been the only person found in the wreckage. Yuna didn’t want to get the injured man all worked up, but to her that certainly sounded like the person who Cloud had been fighting must have walked off in better condition than Cloud himself.
Post by Cloud Strife on May 9, 2021 11:03:13 GMT -6
Cloud lifted his arm and wiped away the thin trickle of water from his chin in a clumsy motion. His arm immediately fell to the couch cushion with a dull thud and lay there motionless like the strings puppeting it had suddenly been cut. He only had so much energy in him and he had to ration it. I should be dead, he reminded himself, the thought periodically drifting through his mind like a leaf on the wind, and the only reason he wasn't was because of Yuna.
She was very good at her job.
When she asked if there was anything she could do for him he wanted to tell her to knock him out for a couple of days. It was a stupid thought. A weak one. This was the price he had to pay for his choices. Though his mind was still sluggish with exhaustion it was never far from thoughts of Tifa, of Aerith. They were still in Sonora. In a dim little bar in the slums, listening to a droning newscaster talk about the destruction in Provo... How fast did news travel in this place? A vague sick feeling drifted over him like a slow wave. He needed to tell them he was okay--
Yeah. You're really okay, huh?
Cloud closed his eyes for a moment and took in a slow breath, feeling the air move through his windpipe, his lungs expand until they hit the threshold where cool air became a sudden sharp burn. He let the breath out.
Was there anything he might want the Provo authorities to know... Any explanation for what he did, for the destruction left behind, right? Justification. What was he supposed to say? Pre-emptive self defense? Just trust me, officer, that guy was going to destroy the planet? It needed to be done. Whatever the consequences, Sephiroth had to be stopped. He had to--
Cloud inhaled another breath, pressing it just past the point where the pain started, letting it linger there. He opened his eyes.
"Don't think the Provo authorities are gonna care about stuff that happened on another planet," he said, fixing Yuna with another tired stare. "I've got... I've got some friends in Sonora." He paused, stifling a weak cough. "I should tell 'em I'm okay."
It sounds stupider when you say it out loud.
"I just... don't want them caught up in whatever I have coming to me." He paused a beat and looked away. There was something sharp and painful constricting his throat. "I wasn't just picking a fight. Sephiroth, he tried to destroy the world-- He slaughtered so many innocent people-- I couldn't let him do it again. I couldn't give him the chance."
There was something pleading in his voice and in his eyes. I'm not crazy, it said. Please don't think I'm crazy.
[attr=class,bulk] Cloud looked like he was having trouble processing her questions, and Yuna chided herself for trying this so early. The man was barely conscious--she’d seen enough wounded to know that he’d probably spend the next few days drifting in and out of sleep. That was the best thing for him to heal really, and she probably should have waited before asking him anything at all. Still, if he had anyone out there, then she didn’t like to think of them spending an entire week wondering if Cloud had died before he was on his feet again. It would have been a reasonable conclusion given his injuries. More than reasonable.
Cloud muttered something about the leaders of Provo not caring about what had happened on another planet, and Yuna gave him a slightly sad smile in return. “I can’t argue with that. They’ve never done much to even help integrate us…” She wasn’t overly surprised that Cloud came from elsewhere too. Given that Caius had struggled to lug in the biggest sword that she’d ever seen in her life after Cloud’s prone body, she hadn’t been inclined to think that the injured man was an average citizen here.
He went on to admit that he had some friends in Sonora who would want to know that he was okay. She didn’t argue with his use of ‘okay,’ though she did hide a private smile behind her hand. It was something that Sir Auron or Kimahri would have done. Claim that they were doing just fine after they had been impaled and had a building dropped on them.
“I think you’ll definitely be okay,” she agreed to be polite. “After a lot more healing and bedrest at least.” She hoped that he hadn’t noticed her fighting off a tiny laugh. It wasn’t at his expense--men were just funny about these things. “Your friends though...maybe I could convince Caius to go. I shouldn’t leave you here alone yet, and I’m...not the best at navigating Sonora anyway.” That was an understatement, but she liked to think that she wasn’t doing too bad for someone who was still learning to use machina. Even knowing that most of Yevon’s teachings were fabricated, it still made her a little uneasy to pick up something that had been forbidden back on Spira. She could only hope that feeling would fade over time.
“Or if you know where they live, we could send them a letter,” she added, looking at Cloud more solemnly as he started explaining what had happened to him. His voice was raw and painful, and she clasped her hands together tightly in her lap before leaning forward to speak to him more gently.
“...I understand. There are some people from my home that I’d feel the same way about. I’d be too worried about what they could try to do here.” Maester Seymour. Lady Yunalesca. Sin itself.
Shaking her head, Yuna pushed those thoughts away for another day. “If this Sephiroth really is that dangerous...then I think your friends would want to be involved. And some other people too.” Relying on others was a lesson that she’d learned the hard way while dealing with Seymour, and it looked like Cloud would have to be hit over the head with it too. “Just don’t confront him alone next time, okay?” She finished with a tilt of her head. “That’s an order from your healer.”
Post by Cloud Strife on Jun 14, 2021 21:54:49 GMT -6
He wanted to lift his hand, scrub it down his face, wipe the sleep from his eyes. His arms were still leaden. He had exhausted his depleted reserves when he had the silly idea to sit upright and his muscles only had the capacity for the rest Yuna insisted he still needed. Cloud wouldn't argue the point. His eyes drifted to the window, the warm rays of sunlight spilling in. His mind ached for sleep, between the thoughts of his friends and the thoughts of the rubble he'd left behind in the town square. The blood on the cobblestones, the carbon char on the walls. His chest throbbed and his bandages itched and his throat hurt. The weight of everything settled on him, pinned him in place on the bloodstained couch.
Don't confront him alone next time.
Next time.
After everything there would still be a next time.
He didn't have it in him to despair at the thought. He'd been so close to peace only to have it torn out of his hands. Maybe he'd never get it back. Maybe he was doomed to this perpetual fight against a living nightmare, the monster scratching at his brain and murdering his friends. No escape. Not even in another world.
If sitting up and moving managed to spark the faintest bit of life in his mangled body, it had all drained out of him now. There was a dullness to the mako shine of his eyes. He wished Tifa was here, and Aerith, safe in this place and not hunted down on the streets of Sonora by a silver-haired madman.
The tendrils of panic wormed their way through his mind and became the roots of his coming nightmares.
"Yeah, you're right..." he exhaled. He wanted to take Yuna's advice. Order. It was a sensible one. He understood that, on a logical level. But the vision of Tifa and Aerith dead on the ground kept returning to the forefront of his mind in sickening detail. Orange light of the fire glinting off pools of blood. Sephiroth's smirk, the cruelty in his laugh--
He just needed to be better. He needed to be stronger, and faster, and tougher, and then he wouldn't need to ask anybody else to take the risk.
No, he just needed Tifa and Aerith, here.
God, he needed sleep. A deep sleep, the sleep of the dead.
"Tifa and Aerith... The apartment's in the slums. Or there's the bar Tifa's workin' at..." Cloud muttered directions to both places as clearly as his exhausted mind would allow. Months of living in Sonora and he navigated mostly by landmarks still. Some of the streets in the slums didn't have names. It hadn't seemed worth it to learn the names of the ones that did. "...Any way you can reach 'em..." I don't want them to worry, he almost added, but he knew that was an impossible ask.
His eyelids were weighted down by boulders and when he closed his eyes it was a long pause before they opened again.
"I think... I should probably sleep..." he mumbled. "...Thanks, Yuna. For helpin' me."
[attr=class,bulk] Cloud agreed that he probably shouldn’t confront Sephiroth alone next time, but in the end Yuna wasn’t much more than a stranger to him. She might never know whether or not he listened, but she hoped that he would. He seemed independent to a fault, but Yuna was in no place to criticize that. It was a bit like looking into a mirror at every single time that she’d left her guardians behind to handle something herself.
“Tifa and Aerith...” Yuna repeated, doing her best to commit the directions he gave to memory. The names didn’t ring any bells, but maybe Caius had met them before since he clearly knew Cloud. “Alright! Just leave it to us. It shouldn’t be hard to find the bar.”
Cloud was starting to look like he was drifting off toward sleep, but he seemed to realize that fact himself as he mumbled that he better rest. Yuna didn’t blame him. The amount of pain that he was in must have been intense even after so many healing spells. “Of course. I’ll come wake you up later to change your bandages. If you need anything before then, just let me know.” Once he was on his feet, she’d really like to move him to a proper bed too. It was a little embarrassing to just leave him on the couch, but Yuna wasn’t going to be able to move him alone without hurting him more.
As she rose to her feet, Cloud thanked her for helping him. Completely out of habit, she gave him a slight bow with her hands clasped in front of her. She’d quickly learned that bowing wasn’t done much here on Zephon, but it was hard to change something that she’d been taught to do since she was a child. “I don’t mind, Cloud. I like to help where I can. Though I might have some words if someone brought your Sephiroth here.” Really, she hadn’t been sure at the time that Cloud hadn’t been at fault for the skirmish, but she’d decided to trust Caius’ judgement until proven otherwise. She was just glad that she hadn’t accidentally healed a would-be murderer.
“Good night Cloud,” She finally added, taking one last look at the injured blond man before turning back to lightly step into the kitchen on the way to her bedroom. If he was settled in for the next few hours, then Yuna thought that she could use a little more sleep herself.
