.005 short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow

[findmyownreason]

It's a sky of storm clouds, dark and threatening, piled against each other, the air thick with the scent of ozone - but it's a silent sky.  The clouds don't move, there's no storm wind, no rumble of thunder or flares of lightning.  Instead the sky is static, heavy.  Indifferent.  Strange streaks of a living, glowing green trace across the sky in

Comments

[tasercopter]

Me? I don't want nothing.

[Reno puts on her nonchalant Turk air, but she really doesn't like the look of that wing. Not to mention the metal hand? Rude and the others aren't with her, and if Cloud goes crazy, she doesn't want to have to try to take him down on her own (as if she could actually accomplish that).

The corpses? That's just a part of life. She's seen so many of the dead, and she already knows about those two being dead, so that's no real shock. Who wants to keep dead bodies around, though? They're not good for anything. A quick glances at the scattered dead reveals nobody else she knows.]

Don't worry, I'm not trying to bother you. [She's just innocently standing at a far remove from you and your dead bodies, idly swinging her Electro-Mag Rod.] What do you want? [She figures asking his own question back at him is as good an idea as any.]

[findmyownreason]

[His eyes narrow because everyone wants something and he's run out of pieces of himself to give away. It doesn't make any difference anyway. Sacrifices aren't rewarded and even when the 'hero' wins, he still loses.]

That section's yours.

[his eyes flick toward a corner where the bodies look particularly broken and unrecognizable, where they're heaped particularly high. There are three bodies toward the front, two men and a woman that seem specifically set aside from the others.]

The Plate and Sector Seven. Congratulations.

Tell me when you figure out how to get them to forgive you so I can do the same.

[tasercopter]

[She's got everything she wants, and even if she didn't, she sure doesn't want anything from Cloud. She turns to look at the section he indicates.]

Don't you mean President Shinra's section? Cause if I didn't do that, someone else would've. [And she might've gotten shot for disobeying orders. Not that she thinks that's some big sob story. Turks follow orders, end of story.] And if you're counting everyone I've killed following orders, there ought to be a whole lot more. But fine, I did it, I'll take it. I'll go over there and hang out later.

Don't need you to forgive me, or anybody else. [What good's forgiveness do? She thinks about it, but the things she's done are her business, her burden.]

So where's the section with all the people you've killed? Like when you blew up that reactor?

[She doesn't need some ex-terrorist moralizing at her.]

[findmyownreason]

This is my section.

[the wing against his back spreads wide with a snap of leather and bone but he's not just talking about the stairs. He's encompassing the entire floating island. And every single dead body on it.]

We're sharing the kills from Sector Seven. [one gold claw lifts, gestures vaguely but it's easy to see where the piles of bodies go from crushed to burned and crushed, full of white lab coats and soldiers' uniforms instead of civilian clothes.] First reactor's there. Second one's just beyond it. Why? Need to pick through their pockets?

[waterfell]

He's alone. That's her first thought somehow. So with her eyes on him rather than the surroundings, Mercury steps slowly forward. She doesn't let herself pay attention to the sky that reminds her far too much of an Entropi attack, or wonder why Econtra should be surfacing in her dreams so frequently now.

Her expression is carefully neutral, if anything vaguely irritable with herself for the emotion that impels her to do it. She doesn't answer any question, voiced or unvoiced, but instead looks down at him from her standing height for a long, silent moment.

She holds up bandages and ointment. Her face still gives away little, but the gesture perhaps speaks for itself.

[findmyownreason]

Blue eyes the color of broken lightning look up at her and he doesn't raise his head. What's she doing here in the middle of all his failures, his faults? If she's here to mock or throw accusations, he's not interested. He knows what he is here. He doesn't need her reminders. The bandages that unfold in her raised hands though have his eyes flaring for a second, electric in that blue.

Healer?

It's a side of her he never expected to see.

He's - not sure what he's supposed to do with it. His eyes don't flinch and he doesn't move when he says:

"It's a little late for that for me, isn't it?"

[waterfell]

She's healed death wounds before. (Everything, everything reminding her.) Whether she should or shouldn't, she doesn't leave the people she knows to their deaths. She smirks with some of her arrogance. It isn't too late if it's a dream. "Not if your doctor is me."

That's what she'd say it comes down to, now: just a competition, a fight, something she intends to win and the injuries, or illness, lose. And even if she does lose, she won't have sat back and done nothing.

She takes out a small phial of water (of course). His wounds go beyond normal treatment; she'll use magic.

[findmyownreason]

His eyes look up at her and for a long moment they're simply blank, reflecting nothing. The wing finally shudders against his back, shifting the slightest bit. Voice flat, he asks:

"Why would you bother?"

[kaiserknuckle]

He's not the only one dressed strangely, though if Tifa notices herself looking different it's not something she reacts to. She's never been one for concern about herself, it's the other people looking sad and broken that she reacts to, even when it's Cloud.

Especially when it's Cloud.

She's unafraid, and approached him with unabashed worry, coming to stand not too far away from him. "Cloud..."

can't see the link. Amano outfit?

[findmyownreason]

He doesn't move from where he's sitting, even when she walks into the very center of all his sins, all his failures, and comes to a stop in front of him, his eyes unblinking and never leaving her form. She shouldn't be here - but it's not the first time she's walked his soul.

At her voice though, his eyes shut. Don't say his name like that, Tifa. He doesn't deserve the way you say his name, all heartstrings and safety. Why do you think he doesn't dare answer his phone?

Your voice makes him weak inside. And he can't afford that. Which is the same reason his eyes snap open, cold and sharp on her, and, without lifting his face, he growls:

"You're next. And then the kids."

Oops. Yep. XD

[kaiserknuckle]

She doesn't fear him. Not even here, in this land littered with bodies and storm clouds. His growl doesn't even make her blink, his sharp eyes only causing her to frown and put her hands on her hips. She doesn't understand why he's dressed the way he is, why he's so angry, but he's threatening her and the kids, and she knows that it's something he wouldn't even do.

"Don't say things like that," she replies, putting her hands on her hips. She cocks her head to the side, still frowning. "You won't hurt us. You won't hurt anyone, that's just not like you."

She glances down and softens, dropping her hands from her hips and kneeling at Aerith's side, reaching to place the flower girl's hands on her chest. A glance over to Zack, and she moves to do the same for him, before finally standing.

"It wasn't your fault."

s'all good. If he wasn't so busy emoing, Cloud would very much approve

[findmyownreason]

The single wing flares a little when she kneels down on that side, a whispered rustle of skin and bone. Stretching to cover the living or hide the dead, it's impossible to say because it retracts before it does either. He doesn't say anything until she's done arranging his greatest sins

[findmyownreason]

His eyes watched her approach but other than that he still didn't move. When she finally stopped though, the wing shifted, a slight movement.

Why Yuffie?

He liked Yuffie.

And she had the least reason to be here of all of them. She needed to leave, go back to sunlit places and gruff friends that adored her. She'd been hurt enough and he hated the thought that he might add to it. So it was a growl, she wasn't welcome here, when he said:

"Maybe Valentine wasn't the real monster after all. Go away, Kisaragi."

[findmyownreason]

Somewhere deep inside Cloud there was a snarky brat that loved responding to Yuffie's snarky brat. Looked forward to it, in fact. At the moment though, there was just no energy left to find that part of himself that had curled up and disappeared along with so much else.

He's not Vincent however, so he's really bad at the cryptic, morbid statements that don't necessarily make sense so much as give you a feeling of dismissal.

"Sorry if the setting doesn't meet your standards. I was just about to start stinging them up from the pillars by their entrails before you showed. Are you planning on staying for that part?"

[hisdreamsmyfate]

He'd thought getting out of the labs would be enough of a victory for the nightmares to stop.

They'd find somewhere to crash, and he would get Cloud back on his feet because there wasn't any way the boy wouldn't recover. Except... here he was, in an unfamiliar place, in an unfamiliar outfit, and staring down at said friend. He'd noticed the bodies - and maybe he understood himself being among the dead, but Aerith? They didn't even know each other!

And that sharp tone, the fury in his voice was so unlike the kid he knew - he had to take a step back in the shock of it all. If he would ever have to die, like... this, it would never be Cloud's fault. Ever. Een if it somehow, by some chance, was... Zack wouldn't blame him. They were friends. And he wasn't about to leave him own wallowing in misery like this.

So he doesn't respond. Vocally, at least.

He just walks forward, wrapping his arms around the man and trying to pull him into an embrace.

awww - bitty Zack - the cute is too powerful!! is he kid or adult in the dream?

[findmyownreason]

Cloud's eyes have a second to flare wide at the gesture, so huge and shocked a blue that it would almost be comical if they weren't surrounded by dead bodies and his dead best friend wasn't the one trying to embrace him. As is, Cloud's shooting backward with a strong beat of that leather wing so fast it's as if he's been burned, putting distance between him and the other man so quickly it's almost as if he's blinked out of that space and into a new one further away. And maybe the most telling thing of all is the way he hisses as he does it.

His KH self in the dream! But he still has the mindset of his FFVII self. ;u;

[hisdreamsmyfate]

"Cloud..."

He wants to reach for his friend, to pull him back, shake him, tell him this was all a dream and just wake up wake up wake up. He hates seeing the other like this, so conflicted and mortified. It's not Cloud, and it never would be. He had to get his old friend back.

"I don't know what happens in the time you're from," He begins quietly. "But beating yourself up like this is just gonna make it worse. You've gotta stay in control of yourself! Don't let whatever-this-is beat you down!"

damn it, LJ!

[findmyownreason]

He's thrown. A part of him wants to react to Zack's words. Has the other man actually looked at what's around them. How can beating himself up about it make anything worse? If anything, he's been going too long trying to pretend he doesn't deserve fate's payback for what he's done.

But the other part of him is still stumbling over the fact that - it comes out almost accusatory.

"You're a kid!"