{Thread} Run, Cloud.

[phantasm_sky]

Characters: Cloud Strife (OU), anybody who wants to find him.
Where: Outside in the commons by the Obex
When: After Jenova' appearance.
Summary: Cloud cannot handle the interference of Jenova on his mind and body. He tries to get away from her, only to be knocked out by the Obex, and wakes up, hurt and confused.
Warnings: General Cloud!crazy.

It hurt.

Comments

[marcheradiuju]

Marche had been worried about Cloud, even if he didn't really know who he was. He had started wandering around the Commons, hoping he would see him, and he thought he would recognize him because he looked distressed. He had walked all the way around the compound, and finally came to where Cloud was. He ran over, and knelt near him. "Um... you were the person who made that journal post, right? My name's Marche... are you all right?" Marche wondered just how many injured people he would run into lately.

[phantasm_sky]

Cloud heard a voice (into the chorus) from very far away. He lifted his head and saw a person who he didn't recognize and didn't know. There were ghosts around him, sweet dead people who smiled at him with their flesh falling off but the blond boy was alive.

"You're not dead," Cloud whispered, his gaze on him shaking a bit. "You're not dead. You shouldn't join the dead. I'm sorry, but you shouldn't be here."

[marcheradiuju]

Marche blinked, and tilted his head. "I'm not dead. You're not either. No one's dead here. Are you... are you all right? Do you need help?" Maybe he had a confusion effect on him. He raised his hand. "Esuna!" He called out, hoping that would help the other blond regain his senses.

[phantasm_sky]

Cloud cocked his head at the other blond. He lightly reached out to swat away Mr. Lockhart, who was hovering near the boy's shoulder, his skin burnt and falling off. "You should probably not be here, kid. I mean. I mean. I'm not really here in my head right. Right now. I mean." He sighed, unable to string words together in the way he wanted. "I'm sorry."

He blinked as the boy tried to yell something at him.

[prodigyprincess]

She had been walking along the edge of the wall, still annoyed she had yet to run into her brother or the Ienzo was here when she saw him just ahead. The counterpart to Lieutenant Strife back home!

"Hello!" she called cheerfully as she approached, then her face paled as she saw how sickly he looked.

"Are you all right?!" she cried, running towards him now.

[phantasm_sky]

There were so many people, so many different shades of souls and Cloud lifted his head and squinted at the figure running toward him. She reminded him of somebody when he was young. Tifa, perhaps, running towards her trainer or maybe it was she who was young, Yuffie. But it didn't really matter, did it? Because Jenova was here and Cloud knew, somewhere in the bag of his fogged mind, that this was not real

[prodigyprincess]

"Miss Gainsborough? She isn't here, Master Strife," she started as she approached him slowly, visibly disturbed by his behavior.

"M-Master Strife? What's wrong?"

[phantasm_sky]

"Miss Gainsborough. Desired test subject," Cloud said dryly. He felt like crying. "She. She. Aeris is dead, isn't she? Again and again and again until she's not but then she is and. Um. This isn't about her. It's about...it's about her he said, nodding at the buildings. "And this."

And, without looking, as if he didn't notice, Cloud dug in one short fingernail, and pushed, drawing a thin line of blood. It was very cold. And his skin healed, again, cells forming and stiching him up again. "I'm sorry, kid." He told her, wondering where he was and where Zack was. They were supposed to go to lunch. "I think we're lost."

[featheredsnake]

She didn't have the heightened sense of smell the Wolfriders received from their wolf-tinged blood - and why would she want to, when her own abilities, far stronger than anything the savages could dream of, stemmed from the pureness of her being? - but even Winnowill could tell what grew in the Commons was not grass. It looked like grass. The verdant blades felt like grass against her skin. But it wasn't...grass. Alien to her as the brightmetal forged by Two-Edge.

Oh well. Nothing could be so different that it would be out of her control.

Her eyes opened at the distant sound of voices, and then narrowed in annoyance. She stood from her resting place under the dappled shadow of a tree and located the source of her disturbance. Ah. So much chaos and unstablity came from that one. And among the taste of his thoughts, there was a tang most delicious to her. Fear. Her lips curved in a slight smile. Perhaps this would actually prove to be a welcome interruption

[phantasm_sky]

So many people, coming and going in front of him in a flurry of colors and voices that reminded him of flames and very clear glass. Cloud looked around, and saw nothing but cold cut cliffs and open sky but then it was all glass and then, again, it was the grass of Econtra. But now there was a woman in front of him, in white.

Cloud looked at her in the eyes, his own delirious and shining-blue from the Mako and the fire and the ice and whatever was in him, he didn't know, but there was always calamity in his veins.

She said something but he didn't understand why she was here and what she had said. He didn't understand a lot of things. He didn't understand why he was broken and weak but kept on existing or why the sky was so blue or why she was in front of him. But it seemed like the right thing to do was apologize. Cloud slumped back onto his haunches. "I'm sorry," He told the woman (dressed in souls and hair of death). "I really am," He told her, sweetly. He hoped she believed him.

[featheredsnake]

Winnowill tilted her head to the side, considering the words. Guilt, sorrow, regret clung to them and this strange human like a spiderweb. Cloying, unshed tears sparkling with a terrible beauty. So conscience-ridden, much like her dear, belated Voll. Well, well. He was indeed...interesting.

She knelt down to his eye level, inquisitive amber locking with chaotic blue. Carefully she reached out to his mind with her own, the touch seemingly tentative, unsure. Far from it, for she knew exactly what she was doing. Merely a graze told her what he - Cloud Strife, such an calamitous name - had meant. Previously suppressed turmoil was now overwhelmingly close to the surface. Who, or what, could have brought on this change?

She retreated from his mind with a practiced lightness as near undetectable as her entrance had been. "But has she not already forgiven you?"

[phantasm_sky]

Cloud moved to stumble to his feet, but they couldn't hold him anymore, and the man fell like a rag doll to his side, again. There had been Jenova and Sephiroth and Aeris and the Planet, all in his mind, and he could always feel them there. He could always feel them and it confused him, because they left part of themselves there and sometimes, it was hard to find himself but they changed him again and again

[scarredmistress]

If there was one skill Ying Fa had developed over the course of her six-year self-training, it was looking out for her friends who were in trouble. So it wasn't a surprise when she suddenly felt an uncomfortable tingle zap through her body. She couldn't tell who was the person concerned, but she knew she had to be there. Despite the headaches she was still having, she willed herself to get up. She had to help.

Concentrating posed a problem because of the pain in her head, so she relied on her instincts instead. And her instincts led her to a crowd and... wait, that was-

"Cloud-kun!" she called out, making a run for it and kneeling beside him as well. She then looked at the others who had come. "What... what happened...?"

[phantasm_sky]

She was familiar to him. Cloud looked away from the others (crowds that scared him and tousled him and left him standing still) and looked at the newcomer, his eyes glowing with mako and delirium. He had hated the glow of his eyes--so hard to sleep, sometimes

[scarredmistress]

Ying Fa was distraught. She had no idea what was going on, and that itself was frustrating her on so many levels. Cloud was so lost and confused and... he painfully reminded her of the man Xiao Lang had become. Someone she couldn't understand or even reach, no matter how hard she tried.

But she had to try. Cloud said that's what he'd do, didn't he?

If...Ying Fa, if you lose yourself? I'll bring you back. You do the same for me if it happens. But I'll always try to bring you back.

Yes, she'd do the same.

She moved closer, and she was glad that, at least, he recognized her. "Cloud-kun, I... I'll be your strength, if I have to," she said, looking into his eyes with her green ones that were lined with fierce determination. He was her friend. She might have failed Xiao Lang, but she wouldn't fail this time. Never again.

She then started to help him up. "Would you like me to bring you to your room...?"

[phantasm_sky]

She considered his face and Cloud remembered a golden gondola with brilliant fire exploding in the too-dark sky and her taking his face in his hands going :I want to meet you I'm trying to find you: and then she did but then there was a sword through her spine and she was going going gone.

She, yingfaaerisghostshovering, tried to help him up but Jenova was in there and in him. Words came out of her mouth, exploded like miniature bombs, but Cloud couldn't understand through his haze of derangement and just stayed put, not cooperating with her attempts. "I'm sorry," He told her very earnestly and very shamefully. "I'm sorry about the thing. You know. Death."

[turkonfire]

Reno wasn't the type to care much about anyone else besides himself and the Boss and the Turks. But they weren't here, Cloud was, and Reno's drinking partners needed to be sane and not having breakdowns over calamities that should be dead.

With some degree of worry hidden inside, Reno started walking through the compound in search of the blonde. He spotted a small crowd once he reached the Commons, and in the midst of them was Cloud, which he strode toward with hands in his pockets.

"Spikey," he called out, pace quickening unintentionally until he was standing with the others. "What's up?"

[phantasm_sky]

There were all of these people around him, all different slashes of color in a white, white mountain world and Cloud stared around at the snow that brightened into grass and there was who? in front of him, now

[turkonfire]

The Turk recognized that Mako glow in Cloud's eyes. With a glance at the others he sat down beside the blonde, casually, like it was just another Jenova-free day. But he didn't have a damn clue how to fix this.

"Blame the fuckin' Indigeo, dude," he said. "Maybe it's sadistic 'n' likes doin' shit like this. Fuckin' with prisoners' minds 'n' shit."

[phantasm_sky]

Reno sat down beside him and Cloud looked at him nervously and then away at the sky nevously, his white namesakes drifting over them, and back at Reno. For some reason, the feeling that lightening was going to strike him wasn't going away. But. Reno wouldn't attack him. He tried to focus, but his cells were singing cold universe songs and it was all very distracting.

"Um. Um. Reno?" He shook his head, blond spikes going every which way before he stopped again. "We're not fighting, are we?" He remembered fighting with the redhead, a lot. And whiskey. Cloud wass confused. "'Cause I don't have the Buster Sword with me. Zack never. I mean. I'm sorry."