[voice]

[pyritic]

[ /CRICKETS CHIRP

There's silence at the start of the feed, then finally a quiet rustle of fabric. It's fairly late at night for talking, but Cloud's voice is low anyway. ]

...Do you ever feel like...some of the gray in the city, got inside you?

Comments

[voice]

[agoodfamily]

[... even in Nakama's rather dark mind, that's a depressing question.]

Cloud? Are you okay?

[voice]

[pyritic]

Nakama... [ He's not trying to be depressing (though it is pretty much ending up that way), and hearing the concern makes him shake his head. ] I'm fine. Trying to make sure everything stays fine. [ and make sense of whatever the heck is going on up in his head ]

[voice]

[agoodfamily]

Do you just mean the lack of colour is making you sad? Or... something more literal?

[voice]

[pyritic]

This place could use redecorating, but that's not it. It's not sadness...they said they wanted that too. If our feelings are what bring back color, gray means no feeling. It's not sadness, happiness, or anger. It's nothing.

[ ...yeah okay that was depressing. Trying to switch gears now. ]

But you're still the same, right? It's probably just me.

[voice]

[agoodfamily]

I know what you mean, though. [Quietly.] I've felt nothing before. Just gone numb. Sometimes that's all you can do.

But me, it's... it's complicated. Things have happened here, and things have changed, and I feel - mostly better. More colourful, if anything. But I had less to lose than most people coming here, I think.

[She doesn't mean that the loss of her mother doesn't sting every single day, or that she isn't haunted by memories of her pilot friends. Just that - well, this is the only way she can be alive now.]

[voice]

[pyritic]

...Sorry. Sounds like it was pretty rough. [ He's not connecting it with the possibility of her being dead--no one's told him that kind of thing yet--but it sounds like a pretty hard-knock life for her to be okay with coming here.

And the idea of numbness being all you can do... ]

There's gotta be something more I can do. Something I should do... [ But he trails off in thought, tapping his foot against the floor; he doesn't know what he's supposed to do. He doesn't even know if he should be here or back home--which is part of the problem. He knows where he wants to be. But if he still felt the same, he'd know that's where he should be, too. ]

[voice]

[agoodfamily]

It's not so much that - [Although it was rough, most of it] - it's just that I don't have anything left to go home to. Or I don't know if I do, anyway. It's so hard to find the gods to ask them anything...

[But this is about him, isn't it?]

A job probably wouldn't be enough, huh? I've felt better since I got one, but if there's no army here, you can't really go back to what you were doing back home. Is there any way you could start a sort of - not army, but a more defensive group here? To protect people?

[voice]

[pyritic]

Yeah, they're being a little too lofty. [ Something to remember if he sees Heimdall--and hopefully he'll know when he sees him, since Cloud didn't get to meet him. ]

I've got a job. Security. [ Which is one heckuva an irony considering what he's done recently back home. But then again, it kind of convinced him he could probably do the job better than any Shinra bozo. Nakama might see him down at the bank sometime. ] And I was a SOLDIER back home, Nakama. Quit that years ago. I fight for different reasons now. [ Or you know. He's just a headcase about his reasons and he's still chafing at any longterm planning for being here. And being a jerk about it >_> ]

[voice]

[agoodfamily]

Oh, I'm sorry. [And she sounds it, deeply sorry and embarrassed for the gaffe.] What is it you feel like you have to do, then...?

[voice]

[pyritic]

...........You really don't feel safe here?

[voice]

[agoodfamily]

[That seems like a bit of a non-sequitur, or at least an odd return to an earlier topic when she asked about a more recent one. She has an answer, though.]

Not as safe as I did. [Darkly.]

[voice]

[pyritic]

[ Well, that's mostly because he doesn't know how to answer her question. That's part of the problem; he's floundering, and he doesn't know how to deal with that besides trying to tamp it down.

And that kind of statement is getting his attention. Unhappily. ]

What happened?