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"The Incorrigible One" |
Thorne, Fear Sequel, death scenes and sexRough draft. Really rough draft. Really truly honestly rough draft that will be corrected. I apologize in advance. Ergh. This is a section from the second part of the "Fear" storyline.Failure is not supposed to be a tangible thing. However. (falling) Twenty seconds is not necessarily a long or short amount of time, he knows. Long enough to take about five disbelieving breaths, long enough to take five hesitant steps, long enough to imagine several thousand different outcomes if only the slightest correction or change had been made. Too late, too late. One battle going on too long, one sword slipping all too easily through cloth and flesh... her blood had felt like warm oil pumping through his hands, slippery and warm. By the time the battle is over, she is cold and stiff to his touch, a cooling doll that only wears her face. She had felt like sleep when he had laid her down and he has waited too late to try, even as he staggers back from the battle and casts cure after cure after cure. Too late. It isn't supposed to end this way. Too much has already been lost, isn't this enough? What hasn't he given, what didn't he do right? Behind him, Jenova continues to move in death-throes, sudden muscle twitches disturbing the steadily growing pool of blood that is thicker and blacker than that which Aeris rests in. Nothing about her moves except for a quiet stir of wispy hair around her face when he cuts the last cure spell short in a sudden, guttural breath. No else moves at first; after all, he is the leader, he should be the first to act. Somewhere in his mind, he hears laughter. Vincent looks, turns, and walks away. Tifa is kneeling next to Aeris and he wants to warn her to be careful, she'll get blood on her knees. Her hand is shaking just a little bit as it brushes back that stray wisp of chestnut hair and it seems like she'll fall when she stands up and runs away so raggedly and blindly, the same shaking hand shoved hard against her mouth. He wants to shove his own hands in his pockets but he has to remind himself numbly that they're still sticky with blood. By the time he can make himself take those steps, walk five steps, breath five breaths, pick her up and carry her away, he can feel himself trembling all over and there is nothing to lean against for support on the long walk up the stairs and to the water. He is afraid that he maybe will drop her and his knuckles are white with the effort to keep a grip without actually having to feel or realize what they are holding. (falling) No one says anything when he walks into the water and he doesn't either. By the time he wades back to shore, his hands have mostly been washed clean but he can still remember the way that the blood felt different, oil-smooth and such a beautiful shade of red, surely they can't find that in any flower that grows, surely it doesn't every show up in any sunset. He can feel a pain in the exact same place on his stomach as though the sword passed through him as well and he holds one hand over to keep it inside. He has a scar there, pale and shiny, the way scars get after time passes. He has never thought much about it except to see it without really seeing when he undresses; all Soldiers carry scars and the ones on the outside aren't even the most common. Dead tissue doesn't bleed, impossible, but it feels like something inside him has broken open and the wet cling of his shirt seems darker there, more purplish. When his fingers touch it, they come away kissed with watery red and he closes his eyes and steps back. They are waiting for him on the shore and they say nothing, not even Tifa although her eyes are nothing but tender when he can bring himself to meet them. Maybe they expect him to say something. Maybe he is supposed to cry. He does not feel so much sorrowful or angry as simply away and apart from it all. He might be. Even now, he might be somewhere else. Someone else's pants are the ones soaked from the waist down, someone else's scar is throbbing, someone else feels a desolation too heavy to bear, like a longing strong enough to bruise the sliver of space between muscle and skin, making everything heavy and hurting. Sephiroth is gone and Aeris is gone and he can't understand why either left him in the first place. This does not help him think of any words, let alone the right ones, to give away or the right thing to do, act, be. All he can do is keep them from having to be in his presence and he solves it the same way Sephiroth did--- to leave. Someone else might have voices calling after him to wait. Someone else might have friends who are trying to tell him something. Someone else can deal with it; all that he, Cloud, wants to do is go home but he doesn't even know where that is. They didn't see the blood soaking through his shirt but that doesn't surprise him either. He might not even really have a scar, for all he knows. By the time he reaches the shell-houses of the night before, he has managed to leave them all behind, words and touches or maybe just the intent of words and touches. It doesn't matter, the what-would-have-been or the what-could-have-been. They will live. His steps echo in a strange way on the winding stairs to the upper rooms of the shelter, hollow and flat and almost discordant. When he reaches one of the quietly glowing lights set in the walls, he stops for a minute and leans his ear against it to hear the quiet babble of not-quite voices---- like the sound of the sea in a shell. One good swing of his sword--- flat side out as so not to dull the blade, he learned that but he doesn’t know when or from who--- leaves a spider web of cracks in the crystal surface, and a final punch with his fist collapses it in completely. Darkened fragments of a thick, milky glass litter the stairs; they crunch dully under his boots as he goes his way, sucking his bleeding knuckles and not looking back. (falling) His room looks the same as it did when he left it, a lifetime of two hours ago. The blankets are still thrown back in a hasty sweeping tangle from where he clambered out of the bed when he had been sure that he was hearing voices. The hollow in the mattress still feels faintly warm, although that is probably just his imagination. Everything is familiar and that in itself is strange, he feels like there should be some catastrophic difference, something to mark what has just happened. Everything that is normal shouldn't be. Even everyday sensations, like that of his wet clothes clinging to his skin feel wrong and right and he's too tired to think too much on it but not tired enough so he can let it go completely. Once the idea that he is capable of doing something other then standing in the middle of the room manages to finally float up from some point in his mind, he starts to undress. Shirt, boots, socks, pants, boxers… There had been a strange piece of armor lying on the platform when they finished the fight, dull metal with barely any sheen but the materia slots gleam with a sheen that is redder than usual--- he can ask Nanaki about that, he might be interested. Sephiroth probably dropped it for him; he is fond of small dramatic gestures like that, give and take. He had slipped it on automatically before (you never forget to take what's not yours, says a small voice in his head but he ignores it, he doesn't know who it is and he isn't sure he wants to) and now he undoes the clasp and puts it on a shelf, trying very hard not to look at it. For a moment, the skin under where it has been stings as though he was allergic to the metal. Violence hits him hard, he wants to grab it, throw it hard, hear it ricochet off the walls with the same flat clanking of his feet on the steps, see it bend and disfigure. For some reason, he thinks it would sound like a sword falling, the same crash of metal on a strange surface... He doesn't, he can't do things like that. They feel as unnatural as the words he had tried to express to Sephiroth, trying to speak past the closing of his throat and the threat of tears and the still-warm weight of her in his arms. So he settles for kicking his wet clothes in a heap and then using the same propelling of foot to send them to the corner of the room. With jerky movements, he climbs naked into the bed and drags the blankets up after him, too tired to put on sleeping clothes, despite the cold he feels inside and out. He thinks he might have slept. Maybe not. Or he might have simply stopped thinking, that is not an illogical guess to take. He doesn't think he has moved, he feels stiff. It could be left-over fatigue from the from the battle though, pain and exhaustion fading into his muscles in a burn that is almost comforting in its familiarity. Exhaustion is a light way to put it, though. It seems incredible he can feel this way and still not sleep, more so out of the knowledge that he does this solely in that he can't bring himself to care about rest. The blankets are scratchy against his skin and he is more aware of his scar then ever. It feels tender, as though the fabric is chafing it and when he tentatively reaches down, his hands encounter the slick warmth of blood smeared across his stomach. When he looks at his hands, they are clean. ...Everything is wrong. Everything is normal and not normal and he can't even begin to comprehend it. His whole chest aches with a killing-wound that is not there, a bleeding scar that shows no blood and it seems like that ache has been there a while and he hasn't noticed it until now. He hasn't noticed a lot of things. Careless of him. But what he had seen... God. Sephiroth had looked so perfect. One step forward, that was all it took and he had been-- still is-- lost, completely caught in something invisible like a fly in a web and that was before he had even seen Sephiroth. He has managed to forget many things in his life or they have been lost to him some other way but it seems as though he has never forgotten the particular curve of smile or shine of eye and how he would-- still would, even now-- have killed for it. For a sign that he has done well. For approval that had never come back then and that he is afraid he has gained now for all the wrong reasons. The desperate craving hasn't so much gone away as changed. Or maybe changed... back? No sense in that. No sense at all. No use to think of it now. He knows he's fucked up. He knows he fucked up. But, everything had seemed to make sense at the time--- like being underwater, slow and smooth, everything crystal clear but coming from far away. A simple thing, a little thing. His chest still hurts and while he can feel blood dampening the sheets, they still look white to his eyes. (falling) "Having trouble getting to sleep?" The voice freezes him as he begins to sit up. Strange, so strange, it's almost normal and Sephiroth could be any member of Avalanche standing casually by his bed. There is no mocking tone to be found in his voice, only curious inquiry, and the light on his face is kind--- he can almost believe the curve of smile holds sanity. Sephiroth moves closer until he is standing directly at the head of the bed, one hand on the bed post and the other resting lightly on the sheets, blocking all escape. By the time he can even think about moving or calling out or just closing his eyes and dying quietly, Sephiroth sits down on the coverlet and there is nowhere to go except into the corner of the bed. The bleeding scar that isn't really bleeding lets out a fresh wave of agony in protest to his movement and he uses one arm to wrap around his stomach and the other to grope for balance and a weapon, crouched on his heels. "Is something wrong?" Pressing himself against the wall lets him go as far away as he can but that... that is not very far. He doesn't take his eyes off Sephiroth or the hand that is reaching for him, scream, you've got to scream, you've got to sound off and let it out, let it go, got to let everyone know... Except he can't and he knows it and Sephiroth knows as well. Even as the hand traces the exposed skin of his shoulder and a finger slides along the line of his throat, the scream that wants to come out has to work its way out from very far away, deep inside, and it's far too far to go. And so nothing comes out after all. He is ready to... do something, if not scream, ready to drag his own nails down his face, ready to break. And so this makes it all the more stunning when the simple truth of the matter slams home to him, the thing he's been trying to tell himself all along: he doesn't want to fall over that edge where Sephiroth went. He doesn't want to be insane. However, he thinks that if he were to ask others, some of them--- maybe even all of them would say he is already mad. And the only person who would know otherwise is Sephiroth. who is already insane, Sephiroth who is all he knows, Sephiroth who he is afraid to leave but more afraid to stay with. But Sephiroth already left him behind a long time ago. "You'll tire yourself out and you won't be fit to travel well. You ought to take better care, you know." Sephiroth slides the finger down from his shoulder and throat to the crook of elbow where he is protecting his scar. His own arm falls useless to his side and leaves everything revealed--- the skin is smooth and the scar is clean but he can feel it, the tickle of heat as it drips down his sides and the unpleasant crackling sensation where it has already dried and coagulated on the skin. When Sephiroth drags his finger along the scar, he can feel the blood easing the finger's movement. When the nail suddenly digs into the ridged skin and the warm trickling speeds into a thin, hot stream, he thinks the scream might come but it doesn't, it goes backwards, a sucked in breath of pain and disbelief and... want. God. No. Please, no. No to this. No to him. No to everything. “I worry about you, Cloud.” He has not thought Sephiroth could touch like this. Being gentle has never been an integral part of Sephiroth. But for one instant, in that caress, everything seems all right, normal even, and he can make believe that the man touching him is his lover, with motives that are no more terrible than a quiet brush of fingers over skin. He can find pleasure in it and he doesn't want that, doesn't want it at all. Does he? ...He doesn't want to go insane, he holds that to himself like broken shield. All he can think is that Sephiroth’s smile must not touch him, that the press of lips would be just the thing to send him spiraling out into the blackness and what would happen if he loses consciousness now? But losing consciousness is only the smallest thing. He thinks maybe the smile will send him to a—- (falling) ---blackness further than mere insensibility. There has to be be noise of some kind. They must hear Sephiroth talking to him, how could they not? Don't they care? Everyone is asleep or gone (or dead, that little voice says, but he ignores it, he is too afraid of what is happening outside to pay much attention to the inside of himself) and help is not coming for him. "You're being very quiet tonight." He makes a choked, involuntary noise as though in reply to that because Sephiroth has just pressed down harder on the weeping scar, smearing the wet across his abdomen as if he's finger-painting. Pressure, pressure, then another gentle touch. The caress is slow and Sephiroth slides his palm along the scar again before letting it travel lower. His mind goes blank and white as the grip cups and curves in just the right way, firm and knowledgeable. "You like this." Sephiroth breathes the words into Cloud's ear, and his hand flexes to make low-smoldering pleasure flare up and burn him all over. "You think you've been doing something useful this entire time? Something that's worth everything you won't talk about? You think winning a battle means the war is over?" (I would talk about it if I remembered it, he wants to say, I would talk about it if I knew what you were talking about. Why don't you remember it, asks that little voice, but he doesn't answer, he remembers hearing the voice even before this great blank in his memory and that is wrong, wrong, wrong.) There is a brief, wet touch against his ear and he flinches away from the stab of Sephiroth's tongue, both the feel of it and the words that roll off it. “The Planet is dying and people are hurting and you’re just running around with your sword and your head full of ghosts. Is it worth it? Is it worth her life? Your life?” (But you're hurting the Planet and you’re hurting me, he wants to say, you're hurting me and you don't even care. Why did you think he would care, asks the voice, but he ignores it, he doesn't know how to shut it up.) "Please." He does not know what he is asking for and the word is as meaningless as bubbles from the mouth of a drowning man. "But don’t you want this?" The heat, the motion, Sephiroth's hand and Sephiroth's voice both touching him with surety. (No, he wants to say. Yes, he wants to say. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I want you to leave me alone, he wants most of all to say, l want you to leave me alone. I thought you didn't want to be alone, the voice says, but he ignores it, he is afraid the voice is right.) "I've caught you, Cloud. And you've always wanted me to touch you. Did you think that would change anything? You’ve always been mine. Is it worth it?" Sephiroth grips a little tighter, but it isn't painful; it is anything but painful. The only thing that hurts is the aching void where he thinks his sense of reason used to be. His hands scrabble at Sephiroth's but there is no strength to their struggle. (falling) "It's always going to be like this. Always. You think you've made a difference? You've only done a single thing for me. You're not done yet. I’ll show you what it you should value." Sephiroth lets go of him, suddenly, and moves back. He is hardly aware that he is the one moving closer to Sephiroth when he scrambles upright, anything to be off the bed. "You see what happens when you don’t listen to me, Cloud? You've gone and hurt yourself." He holds up a hand covered with blood and smiles as he licks it away, his tongue lingering around the shape of his fingers as he sucks them clean. There is little light in the room, so the blood looks dark on Sephiroth’s hand, dark enough to be black and he wonders if mako travels through the whole bloodstream or just settles behind the eyes. Sephiroth has only moved a few feet from him so he can see the blood well and it doesn’t glow. It just looks like blood. His own blood. There is nothing special about his blood. He thinks, very clearly and with great certainty for the first time in a long time, This is not the same. This is not my body and this is not the same blood as before and I am not the same person, and the smeared blood and every inch of his flesh burns like fire, like pain. So he runs. He hears his feet pounding against the ground and his heart pounding in his chest and he cannot be bothered to care about if he is leaving his friends to their deaths. He runs fast and hard, the same way he used to run when he was small, the same way he used to run when he first came to Midgar, arms pumping and head tucked down. He cannot be bothered to care about the fact he is remembering things that are not real. Slipping on the spiral stairs, almost banging into the wall. Twist his ankle, wrench his wrist, stab his palm with the glass he broke, stumble to one knee and get up and run again and forget that this graceless passage has happened before, or so his mind tries to tell him. The little voice in his mind yammers loud and shrill and he can be grateful for its distraction for the first time because he can ignore everything else. He realizes, on his third fall, that the voice was his own all along but it seems unimportant in the grand scheme of things. (---this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way it ends, he didn’t wait for me, he left me, he left me, i’m so sorry, i didn’t mean to leave you either, i never meant to forget you, whoever you are---) And he wakes up when he falls to his knees for the last time, at the top of the stairs that lead to the lake where he left Aeris. It is more like fetching up against a hard surface, an unexpected wall. Beyond the lake are the stairs that lead to the place where Aeris knelt and died without a murmur, but he does not have to look that far. Sephiroth stands at the bottom of the stairs and he holds his hands out to Cloud. He looks back at Sephiroth helplessly because there is nowhere else to look. Sephiroth's eyes are tender and inflexible, the same look as a man with his finger on the trigger, who knows he will hit the target. "It’s all right. I'll fix it. I'll fix you. You don't need to worry." (falling) He is bleeding impossible blood from his stomach and real blood from the palm of his hand and he doesn't want to be insane but he thinks that maybe the descent will not be such a bad one if he gets to rest at last. Twenty seconds. Twenty footsteps. Five footsteps. Maybe Sephiroth will be kind and kill him. (no i never i never i never wanted I neverwantednononoinever the edge where is it?) Once, he dreamed of dancing on a high cliffside. He is still falling; he is waiting for the end. He knows he always used to look to someone else before giving in, there was never anything that couldn’t first be talked over with that person. But Sephiroth waits for him at the bottom of the stairs and Sephiroth is the only one left who knows. “Come down here, Cloud. It will be worth it.” And he knows with that sudden terrifying certainty that he is not done falling, that he has a long way down to go. The Cheshire Cat grinned at 09:27 p.m., Saturday, June 29, 2002.Catt, original story Alice, opening/introductory thingie.Thorne, battlefields, the booming pr0n industryContinued from insert. There was something strange about bathrooms. It really did feel as though he was invading something more personal than the bedroom and he didn’t know why, maybe because it was where so many of the baser things took place. Little everyday actions that people got used to, things that while might be performed self-consciously in the beginning when done together, slowly became the normal way of things. He was willing to bet they showered together for other reasons than water conservation. Feeling a little more human, he wandered back into the bedroom. It looked different in the morning, but maybe that was just the light. There was a blanket half thrown over the window to serve for a shade but it was easy enough to see that although the bed had been made, the pictures were still out, although shuffled into a neater pile and flipped over. All that could be seen was the blank back of the topmost photo and the cryptic phrase "Too many daisies." He flipped it over, expecting to see Strife—somehow, his mind was separating Cloud in the living room from Strife in the pictures--- and wasn’t disappointed. He still couldn’t figure out what daisies had to do with the picture, which was rather normal as the pictures went. Stiff pose, guarded eyes, but normal. Cloud must have thought it as safe to leave that one on top. It didn’t take too much time to go through the stack, even going slow as he did and carefully committing each picture to his mind, taking his time to examine whatever details were there. The ones on top were mostly the two together, or posed pictures. One with both Zack and Cloud soaked to the skin, hair plastered to their skulls and their clothes nearly transparent, like when Cloud had come in earlier from the rain. One with the two standing in the middle of the very room he was in, only the room in the picture was so messy that it was hard to tell. More pictures, getting better. The series of undressing, the one with him curled in the bed sheets. Another one that he bet Strife was kicking himself for not avoiding, fresh from the shower with a towel held protectively before his waist and a look of almost comical surprise and distress. One taken unaware from a bird’s eye view in the training hall, small figure with blonde hair and a sword. Noticing what Strife was doing wrong with his left leg was a reflex to the familiar pattern. That was one of his customary work-outs. Less than five photos left and he stopped for a moment, remembering how Zack had fished about in the drawer. There was more in there, he was almost certain. He shouldn’t. He knew that. H also knew he was going to do it anyway. He had thought the drawer would fight him almost as much as it had fought Zack, as though guessing his intentions, but it slid open as smooth as silk. When had the privacy he valued so highly for himself and distance from others cease to matter? Probably at the same time he started calling Cloud by his first name naturally, or maybe before, when he first felt Zack standing beside him as he examined the bedroom. There were enough in the drawer for almost a double handful. As he glanced at the closest glossy surface, the first thought to cross his mind was that if he had doubted it before, he was wrong because Zack really was a good photographer and apparently knew something about tripods as well. He doubted Zack would trust someone else with the camera in the situation. No one could convincingly hold that look on their face or quite twine their limbs that way for anything less than the real act. No poses, no pretensions, it felt as though he had just opened the door on them and caught them in the act. He supposed that was the difference between a good picture and an excellent one. The Cheshire Cat grinned at 02:02 a.m., Thursday, June 20, 2002.Catt, As-Of-Yet-Untitled Rufus Story.Thorne, Unhinged, someone hit meFrom Unhinged and God does it need work. In fact, this whole entry sucks hard. but someone who knows who she is and will be blamed accordingly recently asked for it. So here's my eye-gouging contribution lifted straight and unedited from a year old e-mail. Quick recap: Cloud can see odd things. Vincent is strange. Hojo is sadistic. Sephiroth takes a shower and irritates Zack. Zack fixes a ceiling fan. A drag show happens. Cloud is abducted. The Turks cut off someone’s head and put it in a pot. Cloud meets Hojo and learns his destiny. Zack organizes an army of clones. Sephiroth kicks in a door. Cid takes over a Bob convention and renames everyone involved. *** “Six has been procured, sir. Now, the only one of us to be found is the seventh.” “Highwind?” “That’s him, sir.” “Give me his vital stats.” The sound of flipping pages. “Cid Highwind. Age, thirty-two. Height, 5’8”. Birthday, February 22. Fights with a spear. Limit breaks inclu---“ “You’re boring me.” More flipping pages. “Swears like a sailor and has the uncanny ability to curse in random ASCII characters. Enjoys tea. Runs like a duck.” “That will do. Fetch him.” *** Cloud enjoyed an unusually peaceful walk home, during which he enjoyed several violent thoughts--- generally involving the great displeasure of others. He pushed the door of the lair open, heaving a sigh of relief that seemed to work its way up from the very soles of his feet. "Hey, guys! Guys? I'm back! And man, have I got the weirdest story to tell you..." The first thing that caught his attention was the very large hole in the wall. This was immediately followed up by the note that several spaces on the walls where the sword collection was displayed were empty. And right on the heels of that deduction was the observation of a what looked like a group of clones performing a complicated religious ceremonial dance around a larger model of Sephiroth molded of a sickeningly familiar metal. He couldn't see Sephiroth or Zack anywhere; or indeed, anyone else who looked like he might be able to delegate the responsibility of Dealing With This to. Cloud sighed. Suddenly, he had a strong desire to have let this world, full of waiting pitfalls and insurmountable obstacles and things that not even incredibly good sex could solve, have been destroyed by Meteor. Sephiroth had had the right idea, he decided. Speaking of which--- He started shifting and picking through the rubble, and did his best to ignore the destruction and the Clones who occasionally wandered in and out of the room. Where was the phone? If he could just manage to call Sephiroth or Zack, someone, anyone, it would help him feel like he had achieved an action of at least minor normalcy. Sirens jolted him from his search. Reluctantly abandoning his toils, he peered out into the dazzling sunshine. Since when did the wall contain a large hole in it? He tentatively stepped through the hole and was somewhat bemused but not really surprised when he found that had somehow ended up entering Midgar's main avenue. *** "It is time that we come out into the open." "I thought we were already in the open." "In a way we are, but we shall now be even more in the open." "The pamphlets?" "The pamphlets." "Print them." "It has already been done." "Excellent." *** A red-headed man was walking down the street. He was a rather ordinary man, if men can ever be called ordinary, who walking down an ordinary street with a rather ordinary use of the feet. His name was Johnny. How droll. The table on the sidewalk, however, was not ordinary at all. In fact, it could best be described as extraordinary. On it were several strongly scented candles in the shape of the letter, "C", and sitting behind it was a rather nervous looking, middle-aged man wearing a sweater vest and smiling anxiously. "Please, sir, take a pamphlet." Johnny looked skeptically at the man, but eventually he shrugged, walked over to the table, and took a pamphlet. He started reading through it. His eyes widened and he opened it up to read more. Finally, when he was finished, he turned to the man in the vest. "Now," said the man, "do you finally understand?" "YES! I do!" Johnny replied. "All of my life, I have been looking for meaning. I have been seeking something to be a part of, something to belong to, and now I understand. MY NAME IS CID! YOUR NAME IS CID! WE ARE ALL CID!" The man smiled. Johnny rushed to the local legal office and demanded that they change the name on his birth certificate to Cid. Nobody there said anything, for his was the fiftieth such request they'd received that day. *** ...News-flash... ...and in recent news, polls now show a perfect tie between the Shinra Republican and Shinra Democratic Presidential candidates, Cid and Cid. Many experts attribute this to the recent decline in Midgarean interests in politics. Others, though, point to evidence showing that the voters simply are having difficulty telling them apart... ...End news-flash... The Cheshire Cat grinned at 01:00 a.m., Wednesday, June 19, 2002.Thorne, Battlefields. Git me some cawfee.From battlefields continuity, part of previously posted snippets that involved Zack as photographer and Sephiroth as spying. He woke up to sunlight on his face with the feeling a Stilva had taken up residence in his mouth and was making itself as at home as possible. There was a sharp pain in his neck when he tried to turn it and he supposed that was more work of the Stilva. He was in a vertical position and not lying on his side as he usually slept. Springs creaked beneath him, something else he wasn't accustomed to. This was quite possibly the noisiest bed he had ever encountered. Focus. He needed to focus his eyes. When he tried it the first time, he only saw a haze of red. Perhaps he was in hell, the result of refusing to accompany Zack any time he visited the church in the slums and scoffing prayer. The fiery version of hell where he would be hit by flare spells every second and the flesh be melted from his bones and... He realized the problem in focusing lay in the fact he hadn't opened his eyes yet. Perhaps he wouldn't need to reevaluate his mortal soul after all. With the surprising realization that opening his eyes really did require movement, he managed to take in his surroundings, wince from the sunlight, and realize there had to be more than one Stilva in his head, judging from the sudden increase in pain. Something was wrong and he couldn’t quite place it at first, couldn’t quite reconcile the scene before him with what he knew he should be seeing. It was like looking at one of those optical illusions, full of odd curves and shapes that refused to resolve into something that the eye could manage. Recognition seeped in; Zack's apartment. A snowfall of papers all over the room. Coffee mugs in various states of emptiness scattered wherever there was a clear surface, and sometimes even where there wasn't. It must be a different version of hell, one without flare spells but where various executives would shout at him constantly over not finishing his paperwork. He thought he would prefer the fire. More things to take in. Person. People. Zack, face down on the carpet with one arm under his head and one hand just barely grazing the top of a file folder, as though he could keep reading with his fingertips even while sleeping. Cloud, huddled beneath the afghan in a small mound on the couch, showing only a tumble of blonde hair and a bare shoulder slipping out of his cut-down shirt, looking very young. He looked down and realized he had fallen asleep in the armchair; at least that explained the squeaks. He stretched and disturbed more papers, sending the ones on his lap down in a softly rustling shower. The joints in his knees popped loudly when he extended his legs and he sat back guiltily, half expecting the others to wake. Massaging the stiffness out of his neck, he sent out messages to the rest of his body to see what the situation was. The general response seemed to be unfavorable. Coffee. Coffee was the answer. Preferably with a shot of something stronger added in, but he didn’t think he should tempt fate at this point. It would simply involve standing up. Simply. Simple. Stupid. With an effort fueled mainly by a sudden demand of his bladder, he pushed himself to his feet and started threading his way through the room’s mess, feeling as though he was trying to complete the world’s strangest ballet. A stride over paperwork, a careful maneuver around Zack, swing one leg over the remains of the midnight sandwich run, one hand on the couch arm to avoid falling on Cloud as he went into the home stretch. Cloud’s hair brushed against his fingers as the young man burrowed deeper into the cushions and he jerked his hand away as though burned. The kitchen was so normal in comparison to the living room’s chaos that he nearly forgot what he had come for. He measured water and coffee beans with mechanical precision, familiar actions that his mind didn’t need to follow. When everything was percolating in a semi-reassuring manner, he walked to the into the bedroom, avoiding the sight of the bed, and went about drowning his head in the kitchen sink and reliving the pressure on his bladder. He wondered which toothbrush belonged to which person. Somehow, the intimacy of using someone else’s toothbrush seemed much less appealing than the way the towel had been shared. There were three blonde hairs plastered to the bowel of the sink in short curves. The shower-drain was mostly clogged with black hair. There was something strange about bathrooms. It really did feel as though he was invading something more personal than the bedroom and he didn’t know why, maybe because it was where so many of the baser things took place. Little everyday actions that people got used to, things that while might be performed self-consciously in the beginning when done together, slowly became the normal way of things. He was willing to bet they showered together for other reasons than water conservation. Feeling a little more human, he wandered back into the bedroom. It looked different in the morning, but maybe that was just the light. There was a blanket half thrown over the window to serve for a shade but it was easy enough to see that although the bed had been made, the pictures were still out, although shuffled into a neater pile. (insert) The coffee maker was beeping insistently when he came back. He hastily removed the pot, poured a cup, and swore when he accidentally splashed some on his hand. The milk in the refrigerator was sporting a suspicious smell and he discarded it, looking for the sugar. As he searched, he drank the first cup black in four swallows. The second cup went down a little more easily and he made it last ten sips this time, gratefully letting the stale taste coating inside his mouth dissolve away. Back in the living room, he could hear movement. Leaving the milk and sugar for a lost cause, he poured a third cup for Zack and made his way back into the living room. The groaning stopped when he walked in and then increased. Zack had managed to rise to his knees and kneel on top of the triplicate set of Materia Level Confirmation reports. He thought that they must have gotten to that set of papers fairly late in the evening; the handwriting on them looked more like the smears caused by spiders killed in a sudden and violent fashion than it usually did. "Uhn," Zack said, almost coherently, and stared at him in bleary accusation. "My neck." He massaged said neck with one hand while continuing to glare. "You drugged me, didn’t you? You drugged me and violated me with a rusty sword while I was unconscious." The room did a brief, but graceful dip under his feet and he sat down in the armchair, pretending it was what he had meant to do the entire time. "The way you look right now, I’d rather fuck a Malboro." "Fuck." Zack didn’t lay down so much as he collapsed. "Fuck. Fuck." He started to drink Zack’s coffee as well, deciding he needed it more than Zack did. He wondered if Cloud drank coffee. There was a half-empty box of teabags in the cabinet as well, smelling faintly of cinnamon, mint, and chamomile. He wished he had left more hot water. Tea was good, made him think of easier mornings of a warm mug and warm hands, sitting in yellow sunlight and feeling like the mug was full of sunlight as well. Probably much easier on the innards, too. On the couch, Cloud was waking up. The Cheshire Cat grinned at 01:26 a.m., Tuesday, June 18, 2002.testingTesting, 1, 2, 3... |
"The Other Incorrigible One" |