{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

[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."

[scarredmistress]

It hurt to see him like that. And it hurt because there seemed to be nothing Ying Fa could do.

But I can't fail... not again...

She sat down in front of him, doing the only thing she could think of. "Cloud-kun..." She reached out to take his hand. "You don't have to apologize..."

[phantasm_sky]

She sat in front of him and Cloud's eyes were glowing inhumanly with blue and he said, whispered, just as inhumanly. "Sephiroth." But then, the words again, and he focused. "Uh. I don't. I don't understand, Ying Fa." He considered the year between Zack with holes riddled through him and Tifa finding him.

"The last time it was like this, I was like this, I couldn't talk and I was Zack and now I can and I'm me kind of but maybe it would have been better. Maybe I. Would have. Um." Cloud lost his train of thought into hazy delirium-memories of beauty in the sick Midgar streets.

[scarredmistress]

Frightening. That was what it all was. But Ying Fa willed herself to stay. Cloud was her friend.

She considered using one of her Cards to make him feel better, but what? That, and she didn't want to risk hurting him even more. Using The Erase on herself had devastating effects, then what if all the others were like it? No, it wasn't an option. She'd just have to continue talking to him. Even if she had no idea what he was rambling about.

"You can make it better, Cloud-kun. There's always the sky, remember?"

[phantasm_sky]

Cloud turned back to her, not seeing her, and somebody walked up to him. The figure had no shadow, and when he turned to him, Cloud realized he had no face but he recognized him, he was him, and he was always with him. //Hey, kid.//

"Zack...," He said to him in response, unsure, forgetting about Ying Fa by his side for a moment. She told him to remember the sky and he knew those words from lying next to her while she talked about giving up and Zack had no face. "Zack, I. I'm not strong. I'm sorry." And he was. //It's okay, Spikey. Here. I'll take over for a while.//

"But you're not here. You're--" And then there was change, his voice changed from his soft speaking to a cheerful Gongaga lilt, his posture uprighting to a type of sitting swagger. "Hey, babe," He said, turning back to Ying Fa, smiling a smile that was never his own. "Who're you?"

[scarredmistress]

Ying Fa blinked, surprised, to say the least, with the sudden change. "Cloud-kun, what are you talking about?" she exclaimed, puzzled. "It's Ying Fa, remember?"

Panic coursed through her. She hadn't lost him, had she? Maybe, like her sometimes, he was just having memory lapses. But it... it was almost like it wasn't him. And when the hell did Cloud ever call her babe?

[phantasm_sky]

He pushed himself up to stand, wavering slightly on (your own? unfamiliar?) legs. Grinning a grin like a phantom, the man gave Ying Fa a thumbs-up and smiled, comfortingly. "Thanks, sweetheart. Cloud's here, he's just resting a bit. Getting used to her. Well. Not really. He's me, but...it's kind of hard to explain. But thanks!"

And with that, the grinning, blond, Gongaga-accented man, swaggered across the Commons and into the building.

[scarredmistress]

Ying Fa looked on worriedly as Cloud who wasn't really him stood up and left, in a totally different mood and fashion than when she first saw him. She bit her lip. She couldn't help... but maybe one of his friends could.

She got up and hurried back to the building as well, deciding to talk to the one person she knew for certain was Cloud's friend - Tifa Lockhart.