Who: Cloud Strife (
mirageof_deceit), & Uzumaki Naruto (
couragetodare)
When: December 13 - Morning
Where: The Flooded Ruins
Format: Paragraph, Past tense
What: Cloud dealing with issues, namely people coming back from the dead. Then he heads for the mist.
Warnings: N/A
Cloud leaned against the Ultima Weapon driven into stone and stared at the little device in his hand. There was a play-back feature, and, feeling like some glutton for punishment, he continually rewound and watched the video that displayed Aerith on the tiny screen. She was smiling like nothing had happened asking questions he didn't even care about like she always did. Why did she have to be available in picture anyway?
He had tried to text her, to say anything, but it seemed to be beyond him. One letter was the most that he could manage over the last few days, and his chance to contact her was passed. He felt like a fool, such a ridiculous fool for putting anything on in the first place. She would be able to have the number on this Forge device, but she wouldn't contact him. She didn't know he was here in the first place, and... she now had Zack apparently, the real thing.
Sighing, he finally flipped the Forge closed and allowed it to teeter on his upraised knee as he folded his hands behind his head and stared up at the sky. Anatole wasn't safe for him to go to, not after the incident with Reno in the Public Market. He had no doubt that nothing good would come out of that encounter, and it was so easy to blame the Turk for Zack's appearance... convenient even.
Oddly, he remembered Zack taking Reno's place for a punch. He rubbed the bridge of his nose where the healing bruise was still touchy. Zack protected Reno, and it was Zack. The look, the feel, the words, that dopey smile and need to stick a nose into everyone's business... that was definitely the Zack that he knew. The dead friend who would have been alive if Zack hadn't been some kind of saviour and dragged him out of Nibelheim to Midgar. Idiot.
It wouldn't be Zack without those qualities. Damn idiot.
He was supposed to be better then the confusion churning in his brain, and he hated having so many unanswered questions lurking. How long had he been following along with just a hunch, only to find clarity at the end of the journey. Now, he was apparently stuck in a new world with a Turk and two dead friends. He couldn't face them; he felt like a complete coward, but he still couldn't face them. Their deaths were a result of his weaknesses. If he had been stronger as he was now, he could have saved them both, could have been a real hero with a will to stand on his own two feet. Instead, he stood by and watched their lives being taken.
"I killed them with inactivity," he murmured and clenched a fist. In Aerith's case, he had almost killed her by his own hand, by the sword that Zack had once prized. In the end, he had stood frozen while Sephiroth murdered her. Some bodyguard you were.
However, there was one small glimmer of happiness in their alive status. They weren't a part of the Lifestream to circle the planet in an endless cycle of life and death. Maybe they would even find each other again and be happy too, since that's what they both deserved after all of that mess. Perhaps, even on a different world, they could find peace and just enjoy the new chance at life this Anatole had given them. He could rest if he knew that they could at least have that, he decided. It wouldn't be so bad.
Of course, now what was he to do? He couldn't spend his entire time aching over unanswered questions and sitting around in the Ruins hoping to go home. He needed to find a way home. No, he needed a chance to be able to find answers to the questions back on Gaea, and he had to find a way back in order to do that. The Door in the middle of town was useless; everyone warned him off of the mist the lurked all around. Yet, no one had gone out to explore it properly. Monsters and creatures came from it apparently; he'd killed a few himself, but was the way home out there?
Shifting himself to rise to his feet, he caught the falling Forge with one hand and tucked it into a back pocket. He had Gravity and Comet, and Ultima Weapon had never failed him. He would let Zack and Aerith live their new lives together, as it should have been back then. No conflict, no troubles by him, and that was the way that he liked it. They would be better off, he decided.
Grasping Ultima Weapon's hilt, he pulled the sword from the stone and flipped it around to settle into the clip on his back. Screw what people thought of the mist; he'd make his own way.
Looking to the mist that thickened in the distance, Cloud narrowed his eyes towards it. He leapt from the stone ruins that he had taken up as a camping spot, he began to jump and walk his way closer and closer to the mist. He paused only long enough to plan his trail and to wait for the bubbling of a creature to pass by under him and then leapt to a new block of ruins.
[Naruto, me thinks? Don't mind the length... Cloud thinks too much. :)]