I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair...

[rufuself]

Who: Cloud Strife (backing_wind), Rufus ShinRa (rufuself), Kiryuu Ichiru (taintdbysin), and Rude (collected_cool) (with a cameo appearance by Dark Nation the WonderCub....)
When: Sunday night of Tribble Week after Rufus has returned from the dead
Where: 5-C, Rufus's room
Summary: A slumber party of sorts takes one of those nasty turns in the night as such things will....
Rating: R+ for

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[taintdbysin]

Silver eyes shot open when Rufus started screaming followed closely by his upper body. Wide eyes watched the man in fear as one hand slowly reached across the bed to touch Cloud's shoulder. Ichiru couldn't look away and he hugged his tribble tight enough to make it squeak.

"Oni-chan. Oni-chan. He's...yelling. And Nation's howling."

After last week Ichiru knew what it was like to be caught in a nightmare and unable to wake up. He had been having a nightmare himself, only interrupted by Rufus and Nation.

Gently he was shaking Cloud's shoulder. "You have to help him."

[backing_wind]

Cloud's eyes were already open. He blinked up at the ceiling, waiting patiently for his sleep-addled brain to make sense of his surroundings. Cloud was a very quiet sleeper, and the transition from sleep to consciousness was always quiet as well, no matter how violent the circumstances. Once he got oriented, it was a completely different story, but he wasn't physically capable of startling awake.

He turned his head toward Ichiru, registering the sound of his voice. Then the sound of Rufus's voice, then Dark Nation's wails. Ichiru's words sank in over the course of a second or two... You have to help him...

Immediately, and with all the speed that his enhancements allowed at half-power, Cloud jumped up to land at Rufus's bedside. For a quick moment he glanced around wildly for the threat, instinctively prepared for a deadly fight.

[collected_cool]

It wouldn't be the first time Rude had pulled an all-nighter. Or the last. It was just part of the prerequisite. 'Must be an insomniac'. Not a particular difficulty around here, since there was enough to worry about around this place. Granted, he'd been alert, just off... somewhere else

[rufuself]

Rufus shied as violently as he was able to, impeded by blankets and such. Not being even slightly awake, he recognized neither of them; they were just part of the nightmare, the horror. In his mind he was in the labs, held down by his father while Sephiroth advanced to do... to do... something, no way to know... sword in one hand, green glowing syringe in the other, Hojo hovering in the background cackling like a lunatic....

Because he was still tangled in blankets, Rufus simply panicked in complete fury. In his befogged mind, those blankets were thick leather straps binding him; he thrashed under Rude's hand, snarling and shouting.

"I'll kill you if you touch me again! I'll kill you, do you hear me??" he raged, working one hand loose to seize the front of the Turk's suit in a tight, fisted grip.

[taintdbysin]

He had known that Cloud and Rufus were in the room but the big man outside was not something he expected and it had the little boy scurrying away from all of them. Silver eyes were wide as he squeezed his tribble causing it to make a soft squeaking sound.

Ichiru had no idea of what they could do to wake Rufus from his nightmare, and he didn't think that there was anything he could do anyway. Once his back touched the wall, he pulled his legs to his chest and covered his ears with his hands. No sound, he couldn't bring himself to make a sound and just tried to block out the ones that the man was making.

[backing_wind]

Cloud stepped back immediately when Rude burst into the room. Not only did he have no idea how to deal with Rufus and was afraid of breaking him, but he didn't want to be mistaken for someone trying to murder Rufus yet again...

He turned to Ichiru and sat down within easy reach of him. "Rude can handle it..." He hoped, anyway.

[collected_cool]

Let Rufus do as he pleased-- it was just a dream and Rude's suit had taken worse beatings than Rufus clenching into it. Ichiru and Cloud were things to be aware of, mostly Cloud, as Rude was a wary man most times. He grunted, scowling, and lifted his hand off of Rufus' chest to backhand him.

Not hard. Rude had a fine-tuned sense of his own strength, regardless of them being dampened. But enough to certainly sting, not something a Turk would normally do, but that wasn't something he really was, anymore, was he? At least not in terms of employment. Though he didn't remove Rufus' hand from his suit. He knew these kinds of dreams.

[rufuself]

The backhand was enough to awaken Rufus, though he came up still fighting, disoriented. Hyperventilating, unable for a long moment to get a deep, clean breath, he stared up wild-eyed at Rude. It had been just enough--just the right amount of shock--and after that first brief blink, coherence melted back into his brain. He realized he was awake... cold sweat plastered hair and clothing to his body, and the sudden drain of all that adrenaline left him shaking, weak on top of the weakness from having resurrected.

"Rude?" he said breathlessly, blinking like a moogle. "My hand won't work."

[taintdbysin]

At the slapping sound Ichiru looked up. As mean as it may have seemed it at least had drawn Rufus from his nightmare. The boy scooted closer to Cloud until he was pressed into the older male's side. Rufus wasn't really someone he cared about having just met him today, but it didn't mean he wasn't concerned a little.

"It'll be okay now, right?" Ichiru asked quietly so as not to startle anyone.

[backing_wind]

Cloud's arm was slung over his knee in a perfectly at-ease position. He looked around the darkened room and glanced out to the bright common area of the suite, trying to figure out if he should be doing something besides sitting on the floor. "Probably."

[collected_cool]

Well. That solved that! Granted, it didn't seem had to answer Rufus, placing the cub next to the man, possibilities running through his mind.

"Which arm?" he asked. The man sparred the two across the room a glance, just for a second to better assess the situation. "One of you two-- water."

[rufuself]

Somehow Rude managed to pry Rufus's hand loose, which was a huge relief in more ways than one--for the sudden release of muscle tension took all the adrenaline out of him like air leaking from a balloon. Rufus felt relief warring with nausea; he could not seem to calm the breathing no matter how he tried, though it did help when Rude propped him up.

"Trying to," he said, nodding nervously. "I... feel like the last train to Sector Three just ran me down."

He glanced over at Cloud, blinking rapidly. "It was the labs," he said in soft tones, striving for matter-of-fact. "It felt very real."

[taintdbysin]

It didn't take him long to fetch water, and Ichiru ran back into the room. Slowly and with extreme caution the boy approached Rude and Rufus. The water bottle was held out to the giant man and once it was taken from him, Ichiru would scurry back to his spot next to Cloud.

"Here you go." His voice was a quiet whisper.

[backing_wind]

Rufus's comment did not help Cloud's attempt to snap out of it. He winced at the new onslaught of images and had trouble not falling back into his old habit of grabbing his head in response.

"Labs"... "It felt very real"... all those memories imprinted in the the mako, stolen from the living and the dead by Jenova... Mako memories from thousands of souls, recycled over and over in the Lifestream. Cloud couldn't tell which belonged to him, or his cellmate, or the scientists, or long-dead ancestors, or a different race entirely, his brain couldn't keep up it could never keep up or block it out he didn't know what reality was anymore he'd never know again dear gods please make it stop--

Cloud grabbed his head anyway, with both hands, and started focusing on resisting the alarming convulsions that usually came next. He could survive this, it was just a flashback, it wasn't real...