onepassingnight | oo1 ❄ I've seen this somewhere before

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oo1 ❄ I've seen this somewhere before

The scenery within this new (perhaps not quite) foreign subconscious is a confused jumble, as if its unsuspecting creator cannot quite decide just where to be — a snowy mountainside has burst up from beneath the streets of a staircase city set into the rise of sheer, seaside cliff. The pieces are whole, details sharp and clear on narrow, towering buildings all crammed close together and rocky outcroppings with their blankets of heavy snow (still falling, as it is, in weird pockets only over corresponding ground).

But these little scenes are shattered among each other, shifting constantly, uncertain as the blank, white sky above, which reflects a dull grey in the ocean below. Where these two endless, colorless stretches of space reach to meet on the horizon, they blend seamlessly, as if meeting the edge of this conflicting reality might be as easy as setting sail for the fragile inner boundary of the eggshell shape it almost appears to be locked within.

Bright and cold, the silence falls as heavy as the inclement weather, in each vacuum of space that covers the mountainside, doing its best to muffle the staccato beat of his boots on uneven pavement broken over icy faces of stone and the competing race of his heart, now trying its hardest to burst clear out of his chest. (And in a dream, who's to say it mightn't?) With his rifle hugged tight against his back by its strap, where it beats a solid rap against his shoulder blades, a sharp reprimand for every stumble, a lone soldier in drab blue is fighting a very literal uphill battle.

The uniform he wears obscures all of him but the lower half of the pale, strained expression writ across his face, solemn as he barrels up the insurmountable slope in leaps and bounds, shadows chasing behind as he rounds a street corner onto another craggy patch of open ground. Snow kicks up in misty clouds around his ankles as he stumbles, but doesn't stop, always only one step ahead of his pursuers.

They're monsters, or maybe only the distant memory of a child's imagining of such, solid enough as they crumble up out of the earth in his wake. But they fade to dust as phantoms while he manages still to evade the catch of claws and snapping jaws at the heels of his badly scuffed black boots, the shirttail tucked under his belts. Shameful as it is not to stand and fight, outpacing them is this dream's objective, instead, and he can't seem to stop his feet from moving on, hands scrabbling at each new hold to pull himself higher.

At least not on his own.

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On reaction, her hand reaches behind her and removes her lightdisk as the newsprint rolls across. She's jittery. This isn't normal. Not that Quorra is an expert on normal or dreams or Users, but it doesn't feel normal. It just feels wrong compared to the other dreams she's seen and been a part of. That hasn't been many, but it's enough to make her worry.

Her eyes go back to the man as she nods. Her grip tightens on her lightdisk and she steps closer to him. He's the dreamer, she realizes, so he'll be able to navigate the chaos that is happening around them. She turns and runs behind him, the balls of her feet lifting her off the ground just long enough for her to complete stride after stride.

"You'd better be safe there too!"

"Don't worry about me."

He's been resigned to his fate since he started to run - time unremembered, now - but there's no excuse suitable for letting a someone else fall into harm's way. Not if he can do something about it. The apathy is clear in his tone, but there's nothing frail or faltering about it; he may not yet be fit to protect anyone, but that doesn't mean he won't go to the end trying.

The street ends in a towering steel wall, the massive boundary to this end of the staggered steps of the city, but she's right in trusting his sense of direction, at least. A door (that may or may not have even existed until their arrival) he shoulders roughly open leads into the bottom of a stairwell (no elevators in his dreams), a construct of gleaming, unpainted metal. He stands aside as he holds it open with his back, pretending not to see the shadows race dizzyingly across the desolate street behind them.

"Just keep moving."

"Of course I'm going to worry about you." Quorra insists. He might be a stranger, but too many strangers have never come back from helping her. She's not going to let it keep happening. Flynn was the last one. No one else is allowed to be selfless for her.

She follows after him, quick on her feet and glancing over her shoulder every now and then. Her lightdisk hums and brightens, ready to be thrown at anyone or anything that can be a threat. She looks back to him.

"You too. You're not staying behind."

"I wasn't planning on it." And he means that, too, no matter what else his stubborn attitude might say, as he shoves the heavy door shut behind them, on whatever still lurks under the city streets. There's something decidedly grave in the set of his pronounced frown below the edge of that gawky, backlit visor, painted paler than ever in the sallow illumination of static emergency lights that line up the stairwell. The end's too high above to be seen.

Settling his own weapon back securely across his back, he catches hold of the railing of the lowest landing and nods, upward to the invisible ceiling so far overhead.

(Let's go.)

"I'll keep up."

Following his notion, she puts the lightdisk back on her back. She's still tense and ready to fight if she has to. A lifetime of fighting for her existence has made her hesitant and unwilling to be completely comfortable in any environment.

"You'd better." She says before walking forward.

Hmph. More affirmation than impatience, he huffs wordlessly in response to her challenge. He isn't the type to give his word lightly, and it's a minor personal offense for even a stranger to think otherwise. Unwittingly, she's given him more motivation than he needs to keep moving forward.

In the way of dreams, passage through the unfathomably tall stairwell feels as though it spans far longer than the handful of seconds it takes in memory to recollect. The doors on all the landings but the uppermost are locked, the windows either blotted out by the same unnerving white as the sky over the confused landscape below had been, or filled with some impossible view of yet more mixed up memories (in one, for instance, the dizzying sight of a quaint village as seen from above - in another, glistening black city streets packed with people). These are insignificant moments in time, unimportant to the dream but always hovering on its fringes, just the same.

At the top, the door is not only unlocked, but left conveniently ajar - which is perhaps for the best, as the lights far below them have just begun to flicker out, the echoing, distant sound of something following up (or attempting, at least) after them. Outside, a runway in the shape of a massive platform stretches far into the distance beneath a far more natural sky - trapped in the glow of early morning light and dappled with thin clouds and the exhaust trails of aircraft.

Preoccupied with the worried thought of barricading the door behind them, Cloud makes a distracted attempt at what he assumes is reassuring conversation, in a situation like this. "Um, what's your name, anyway? If we're going to be stuck together..."

Her hand trails across the wall as they move up and up. Her fingertips can feel the cold concrete through her gloves, and she wonders if this is what his world looks like. She's only had one dream, and that was of the Grid. If she dreamed of her home, maybe he does too. It's not her place to ask, she's fairly certain of that.

She turns her head as they reach the top, eyes widening slightly as the lights flicker out. She gulps, her hand reaching out to try and find the dreamer to draw it to his attention. But her hand stops short. The echos and distant sounds make her whirl her head around again to look ahead of them and down the runway.

"Quorra." She answers without hesitation and looks back at him. "What's your name?"

Under the natural sky, it's a little easier to think. Here the air still smells of the ocean, but only underneath more industrial scent markers - fuel, exhaust, and the sharp tang of steel mask the fresh morning air. There's nothing closer or more convenient for it, so Cloud picks up the block that was holding the door and jams it under the edge, again, from the outside.

With a last determined kick from the flat toe of his boot, he turns back to the stranger - no, Quorra, now. It's an unusual name, but he's never had room to speak on that.

"Cloud," he says, setting his back on the stairwell and its blocked off, sealed shut door. As he does, he lifts off the clunky helmet masking his face - an unshakable force of habit he's learned well since realizing that introducing himself without attaching a face to the name is largely pointless.

"It's nice to meet you, Cloud." Quorra thinks his name is just as strange. Named after the things in the sky. The things that both the Grid and the User World had - one of the few traits they share. She turns and looks up at the natural sky, eyes scanning over the cloudscape.

She wants to ask what's going on and where they are. Why it's happening. But, she doesn't think he really knows. Maybe Cloud doesn't know he's asleep. She didn't know she was dreaming the first time. Especially since she never had a dream like it before. A smile spreads on her face as she closes her eyes. It's new and exciting, even if it's dangerous and she's a little scared.

"You, too," he replies, automatic, as it's expected. There's even a faint, distracted smile in return that he casts back over his shoulder after he gives the door one last, wary glance. It doesn't belong there, and might disappear as soon as he turns his back, again, but for the moment he still worries something might break through.

At least there's no shortage of clear space to fight in, now, though - the runway might as well be the top of the whole world, spread out beneath the vault of sky and a good, long walk from edge to edge.

"I mean, if we weren't sort of in trouble, anyway."

"It's still good to meet new people." She insists. It's how she met Anon, Flynn and Sam. Always some kind of danger. Something that threatens the way the existence of the Grid. It's not a problem now. She and Sam are in the User World, and she's learning.

"Yeah." He nods again, though his conviction is not so great. It's probably only the distraction, the concern - it isn't as if he can be so choosy in making new friends, anyway, and for the very few that he has, to begin with, the circumstances of their first meetings haven't been much better.

Just as he opens his mouth to say something else, the droning roar of engines preemptively drowns him out, a great shadow rolling slowly over the runway beneath the huge metal bulk of another passing airship. Cloud makes a face (a flatter version of what appears to be his default frown) and turns his gaze up to watch until the earth-rattling sound begins to die down.

No use trying to talk over that.

"Er... Maybe we should get moving, again."

Her head tilts at the uncertainty of his voice. All she can do is offer a smile and hope that he believes it. Her head then snaps around to look at the airship, her eyes wide. It's nothing like the Recognizers of the Grid, but it's enough to make the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

"It might be a good idea. Where do we go?"

The ship's a largely unremarkable sight to him; time spent stationed in Junon has either assured his desensitization or eventual deafness, and so long as he isn't slated for a ride on one, airships have become no more significant than the occasional, benign distraction - or annoyance. Where to go, now, though - that's a good question. It seems they've plateaued, and the door to the stairwell is gone, after all, forgotten as he moves into a far more meaningless dream.

"Well... Where are you from? I can escort you back. You should probably stay in until we're sure the danger's past."

"The Gird." Quorra shakes her head. "Except I'm not even there right now. So, we can go wherever you want to go."

Her eyes go back up to the airship. Sam has told her about planes, but she wonders if they are anything like the airship. She hasn't gone to an airport and seen it for herself just yet. Sam told her they may have to, given he was going to be CEO of ENCOM again.

"The Grid?" He hardly has to clarify, given his incredulous tone, but- "Never heard of it. Is it in Midgar?"

The name sounds about right, at any rate - or so his short stay of experience in the city says, though by now he's become far more accustomed to the workings of this port than that massive hub of civilization (for a given value of civilized, in that equation).

Regardless, though, that means something of a change of plans. The Company facilities are probably out of the question, given she's obviously civilian, but there's an exceptionally cheap inn in the upper city that he knows of (and not a bad place, either), or perhaps lower town hospitality-? (Though in the latter most case, he certainly wouldn't be able to follow her all the way, given the small fishing village's reeking opinion of Shinra.)

Noting her close attention to the passing airship, he lights upon another idea, "Oh, uh, were you- Waiting for a flight?"

"No. It's inside a computer." Quorra smiles at him and laughs a little bit. "I've never heard of Midgar... so we're from different places. I don't know how yet, but sometimes I meet different people when I fall asleep."

Maybe it's a side-effect from being in the User World. She hasn't sat down to figure it out just yet.

"No. I was exploring when I found you."

"Um..." The smile softens the blow a bit, but the disbelief in his hesitance is unmistakable. "Inside a computer" is not any figure of speech he's ever heard before, and the weirdness miraculously doesn't stop, there.

"When you-" Fall asleep? Now he's certain she's messing with him, or maybe just not all there, though if it's the former, he can't even pretend to get the joke. "Uh, okay." Right. So. Maybe he'll just... Focus on the stuff he can handle, for now.

"You were looking for something? Or lost?"

"No. Exploring doesn't always mean you're looking for something. Sometimes you just want to know where you are." She smiles. "You've never just explored before, Cloud?"

"Not since I was a little kid," he admits, struggling (and meeting moderate success) to sound nonchalant as he shuffles his feet and casts his gaze away. "I don't have the time for that stuff, anymore."

Idle pastimes, hobbies - these are undertakings he's always gone through alone, anyway, and back then it had been just for something to occupy his time. In recent years, he's found it much simpler and easier just to bury himself in his service and in training.

Her head tilts as she glances around. "But, we're in a dream. You can have all the time you want! Especially if you go into another person's dream."

"But I'm not..."

Asleep - the word sticks in his mind rather than finishing his sentence, snagged on some hook shaped like certainty. The world seems far too real to be a dream; he can smell the scent of the ocean on the breeze, the fleeting taste of fresher air, and the sharp, pungent exhaust overtop it all. He can feel the cool morning atmosphere, carrying along the promise of unseasonable heat, and the weight of his uniform and the gun on his back.

And even without all of that to convince him, it's difficult enough to overcome the staunch position of his better sense.

"That's impossible. Besides, even dreams end, eventually. Nobody can have all the time they want."

She doesn't pretend to understand dreams. The are strange to her as the User World. How she can be in places she has never seen or meet people that she's never met before... she keeps meaning to ask Sam about it, but it never seems important enough to ask about. He is so busy with preparations for ENCOM. He and Alan work into the night.

"Is that how dreams work?" She asks. "I wake up back in my own world, but when I go back to sleep? Sometimes I'm here. Sometimes I'm in other places. I don't understand dreaming."

"Sort of," he fails to clarify. Dreams don't work just any which way, though, and that's probably hard to explain for somebody who does have a way with words. Cloud, decidedly, does not, and so he's left to work with what he's got.

"If this is a dream, we should be able to do anything. Like-" Concentrating on the task at hand, now, the trooper rounds on the far edge of the airfield, toward the horizon. "Decide what time of day it is, or change the color of the sky."

His skepticism remains largely intact, right up until the unearthly blue bursts through the soft orange of Junon's sunrise, turning the whole world ahead abruptly to a sunny afternoon. Just the way he'd imagined it, a moment before.

"Wh-What the-?"

Well, he hadn't really expected it to happen. The passing flock of bright, white gulls scattering all around them as they change course to light on the runway startles him just as badly, as he whips back around to face Quorra, dumbfounded.

Her eyes widen as the sky changes. The only control she's ever seen like it was when Flynn could manipulate the code of the Grid. Quorra moves in a small circle, spinning around to take everything in view. The sky changes from blue to orange. Colors she thought she'd never see.

"It worked!"

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