oo1 ❄ I've seen this somewhere before

[anonfantry]

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.

Comments

[isomorphology]

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!"

[anonfantry]

"It... Did?" Mouth still agape, Cloud continues to visibly flounder, as if there's any room left for his practical disbelief. Another half-turn back, and one of those idly milling seagulls is replaced in a flurry of feathers by a miniature chocobo, which toddles around in a warking circle before he decides against it and the bird vanishes altogether. The rest have taken off in a startled scatter, but he hardly notices.

Lucid dreaming is a new feat for him, and there's no easy learning curve. Just the thought seems as if it should wake him - but it doesn't, or at least not yet, and he's left just to stare.

"I guess- This isn't real. But you're not a part of my dream, either, are you?"

[isomorphology]

"It did!" Quorra nearly starts bouncing where she stands. Instead she runs over to his side, pointing up to the sky.

It's beautiful. She's only seen the colors like it before on some sunsets and sunrises with Sam. It looks different in a dream, but still just as gorgeous. She stands close to him as he manipulates the dreamscape, her head tilting at the sight of the chocobo. She's never seen a bird like that before.

"No." Quorra smiles sheepishly. "I'm from somewhere else. Sometimes we run into dreams that belong to other people."

[anonfantry]

"That's... Really-" Crazy? Unbelievable? Impossible? He's run clean out of potential descriptors (not all that verbose, to begin with), and so he settles again for that apprehensive silence that hopefully isn't too hard to decipher. Setting his sights back on the faraway horizon, Cloud shakes his head and watches the familiar shades of sunset invading, pale clouds painted with gilded edges the color of fire - it's a memory, not a conscious effort, this time, and comes through much clearer for it. Sunsets off Junon are always pretty spectacular, but he's gotten so used to them that his gaze drifts aimlessly, without transfixion, as the shadows grow long around them.

"...So what do we do, now?"

(If I don't wake up)

The thought sends a few of those shadows trembling with the fleeting threat of becoming more of the monsters that had been hounding him, before, but he manages to tamp down the fear - this time.

[isomorphology]

"I don't know. We could try talking?" She laughs and sits down on the ground, despite the fact they are on an airfield. Cloud can change it to however he wants it to look. Quorra hardly feels like she's in danger when she knows that. Maybe it's a bit too early to trust him, but she does. Cloud seems like a good person.

"What do you want to talk about?"

[anonfantry]

Visibly taken aback by her simply making herself comfortable in the middle of the runway, Cloud hesitates before realizing - oh. Well, it hardly matters, does it? As long as he can keep control of things, here, then there shouldn't really be anything to worry about.

Just. Waiting out the dream without somehow putting his foot in his mouth or mortally wounding himself by embarrassment, alone.

"Um. Okay." With a slight nod, he looks around (almost self-consciously), before awkwardly taking a seat a good few feet away. When prompted for a topic, though, he's still at a bit of a loss.

"...I don't know. Uh- What kind of place are you from? The Grid - it kind of sounds like a city."

Not touching on that inside a computer bit, just yet.

[isomorphology]

"The Grid is a computer system." She clarifies. "TRON City is the hub of the Grid. There was another city... a long time ago." Except it was destroyed by CLU when he went to purge the ISOs.

She quickly glances down before looking back up at him. "Now I'm in the User World. I guess you'd call it the real world? I'm supposed to help change the world, but I have no idea how to do that."

[anonfantry]

"So you're- Not really..."

(A person?)

No. That sounds a lot meaner than what he intends to ask, because she certainly seems real enough, so Cloud cuts himself off in a way he hopes comes off more thoughtful than chagrined. Pulling his knees in toward his chest, he rests his arms over them, looking out toward the horizon, again.

"You're supposed to change a world you've never been to, before? That doesn't sound very fair."

[isomorphology]

"Like you?" Quorra guesses and shakes her head. "No. I'm... not a User. I'm something else." She isn't sure if she should explain that she's an ISO. What they are, and why they were eliminated. It might be best if no one knew that.

She laughs. "I'm not alone. I think that makes it easier."

[anonfantry]

"Oh." Of course she isn't; hadn't she mentioned someone else? (Or maybe he'd just imagined that.) "Yeah, I guess so.

"Even if it's still a... Pretty tall order, it must be a lot better with somebody else."

[isomorphology]

Quorra leans forward, more engaged in the conversation as it goes on. "I think it is. Doing things on your own for too long weighs you down. It gets lonely."

[anonfantry]

He doesn't make any conscious effort to, but pulls farther in upon himself as she leans in, just the same. Shoulders hunched, knees wrapped up against his chest by thin, pale arms. His reply comes out far more defensive than he means it to sound, "Yeah, well, maybe some people are better off alone."

[isomorphology]

"I don't believe that."

Quorra frowns. No one should be alone. She can't imagine what it was like for Sam, not having his father. Flynn had her, and she had him, and it's made the last thousand cycles so much easier. She doesn't even want to think about what it is like for someone to be alone for so long.

[anonfantry]

He's not very old, but Cloud's sure he knows enough about life to think her noticeably optimistic, for that assessment. Alone is just a state of being, and some people are. He doesn't complain, even prefers it, sometimes (most times, maybe). It's easier to shut people out, though he doesn't think of it that way - he just does, instead.

Like now, carefully cordoning himself off against anything in this idle conversation that might have already struck a deeper chord. "Doesn't mean it isn't true," he mutters, before lifting his voice just a fraction in dismissal, "Not important, anyway."

[isomorphology]

"Maybe it is important." Quorra leans back on her hands. "People shouldn't be alone. So, why are you alone?"

[anonfantry]

"Maybe I like it that way." A huff he intends to sound irritated comes out more like a sigh, though it steels him enough, still, that he shoves himself up to his feet a second later. "I don't need anybody."

[isomorphology]

She blinks. "Why don't you need anybody? I always thought everyone needed someone."

[anonfantry]

"I'll be fine by myself." It's not like he isn't, most of the time, anyhow. Like he hasn't been for a long time. Settling his helmet back on over the painstakingly blank (but really not all that much so) look on his face, he shakes his head. "Since those things aren't coming back, you should be, too."

[isomorphology]

Quorra frowns and doesn't agree. For some reason, it just doesn't seem right. People shouldn't be alone. Flynn had her, she had Flynn. Why would someone want to be alone.

"I'll be fine here for now." She agrees. Meaning she's not planning on leaving.

[anonfantry]

"Suit yourself," he says, cool as he wishes he was, in tone of voice. It's his dream, and he wants it to be over, can't justify abandoning a stranger probably stuck within it just as surely as he is - but over the years, he's become something of an expert at pretending to be preoccupied, courtesy of endless hours of guard duty, and as he turns away, that's exactly what he begins to do.

There isn't much to guard, up on the great, empty runway platform, but he'll make a game show of it, just the same. Maybe a march to the edge will help him figure out how to get out of this gracefully (or at all).

[isomorphology]

Quorra just decides to stay until he wakes up. People wake up without meaning to, and dreams come to an end. It's simply how things work in this sort of place, and she's gotten used to it. Instead she tilts her head up again and smiles at the sky.

"It's calm."

[anonfantry]

For one long moment, he seems unlikely to respond, as if dedicated again to the illusion that he's just a statue standing guard. Then, hesitantly, he offers, "There's a beach, too. You know- The ocean?"

He imparts this casual fact at an almost inaudible level - or at least close enough to that she can choose to ignore him, if his bad attitude really has gotten ahead of him.