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.

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[anonfantry]

That is not- The reaction he was hoping for.

The drastically increased speed doesn't do anything good to his already dangerously tipsy sense of equilibrium, and Cloud can't quite stifle a startled shout as his grip tightens desperately. At the same time, though, he is weighing his chances of surviving simply letting go. As fast as they're moving, it won't be pretty - but getting dragged to some terrible (and now apparently fairly pissed) beast's lair for future consumption doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun to him, either.

At this point, it's that or attempting to box the stupid wolf about the ears to slow it down. And he really doesn't want to get bitten, a possibility that still seems very real, as belligerent as the strange animal's been.

There's only an instant's worth of warning, as he tenses like he might want to hang on, after all (and he does, in spite of himself, as he's already able to picture himself a ragdoll battered and broken as he rolls back the way they've come). But the momentary hesitation is only that; a second later, his hands open and he doesn't even have to push himself off, caught in the slipstream as he bounces up with another bound.

And then it's all quite a bit like he'd imagined, the world a blur as it whips him backwards, spiraling through the air in the curious absence of gravity. Falling, after all.

[findmyownreason]

He senses the second the hands on his ruff loosen and he already knows what's going on before the weight even leaves his back. It has his claws digging into the uneven surface under them as he skids into a curving turn. It's a bit different when his body is elongated instead of mostly upright but it's a bit like the dynamics of being on top of Fenrir and he lets the weight of his back half work for him in the turn. His speed still has him a good distance ahead of where the smaller version of him is tumbling.

It occurs to him that he should let the kid deal with the results of making a choice like that. It's going to hurt like hell and it serves him right. It's not the worse thing he's ever going to go through in his life.

Except Cloud's already moving, muscles bunching and straining hard to pour on the speed and agility needed to charge back the way he came. Because it's someone who's going to get hurt. It shorts out the parts of him that insist they don't care and has him rocketing back the way he'd just come. He doesn't consider himself a hero. But he is a protector. Even to younger versions of himself that insist on getting themselves in bad spots. Which is some kind of awkward paradox he decides he doesn't want to think about too closely. He can't stop all of the kid's tumble but he puts his furry, non-rock and non-pointy body directly in the path of that freefall, angling himself to take the brunt of the impact and the resulting blows. It's what he's been built for and it's what he gave up almost five years of his life to be able to do.

[anonfantry]

It's a relief, though. Even as he expects the ground to come racing up toward him at any second (sooner than it does, by far overdue already), with the force potential to break most every bone in his body, there's something vindicating in it, too. He's reckless and childish and probably completely insane - but he still isn't going to let go of the last choice he has to make, regardless of how little the outcomes seem to differ.

The landing isn't what he expects, though it knocks the wind out of him just as well. A choked, confused sound escapes him in lieu of anything approaching actual words, as he collides not with the rocky, jagged ground, but with the same soft-solid, furred body that he'd only just let go of. He throws out his arms as soon as the strength begins to trickle back into them, the only subsequent blows coming from him, as he shoves himself back toward the weird equilibrium of the falling dream.

Then the world shifts again and gravity fails completely for his part, and he drifts upward with a scattered cloud of rocks and debris, tucking in his legs as he floats in case that thing decides to bite. Weirdly adamant as it is to have him, he won't put the possibility out of mind, where any lingering hurt from his fall goes immediately.

He won't look into the void still gaping overhead, either, won't think of how there's nothing at his back (just endless nothing) - his glare is half fear and half stupid determination as he swims awkwardly higher in midair.

[findmyownreason]

Cloud, having grown fond of gravity, does the bouncing and rolling for both of them. His gray body tumbles over broken rock and intermittent asphalt. It hurts. But he's gotten used to taking falls and even in wolf form he instinctively absorbs the blows. Paws dig in to stop the tumble. And all the time he's wondering where the younger him has gone. Did he absorb him back into himself? Was it that easy? Shouldn't he have noticed if he did?

Claws slow and then have his body stopping and he lays there for a minute, blinking up blankly at the sky.

As dreams go, this one sucks.

It sucks even more when he finally turns his head and sees - shit. Sees himself floating away. Or - swimming away? It's hard to tell but the look on that young face -

Right about now is when Cloud would usually let the kid go. If that really is a piece of him escaping into nothing, how badly does he really need it? It sure seems determined to go and he doesn't feel anything important missing inside himself. Nothing from his mostly miserable cadet days seems worth all this trouble to hold on to. It feels a bit like giving up. He doesn't like that. But he's also annoyed. Whatever that bit is, it's stupid determined to get away. It's not his nature to force things on people, even rebellious bits of himself. In the end though it's both the fear that if he lets one piece get away others will start to drift off as well and the floating. Damn, the floating. He's only floated twice and both times it was indicative of Very Bad Things. Sure the kid doesn't seem to have the Black Materia on him but if he ends up anchored overhead writhing, Cloud suspects he's going to be in big trouble. With a grunt, he pulls himself back to his feet and manages to make it over to underneath where the younger him is doing a good swimming imitation. If he has to jump up there to knock himself back down it's going to hurt. Instead, he lifts his head, plops his butt down to sit, fixing mako bright eyes on that escaping piece of self and very softly says:

"Woof."

[anonfantry]

Oh, come on.

Just when he thinks he's shut of that big, ugly thing - all potentially poignant out of the frying pan and into the fire metaphors notwithstanding - it stalks back around to plant itself right underneath him. If he's determined past the point of it being in any way a potentially beneficial trait, the wolf must be twice as much so. Which, well. Sort of leaves them at an impasse, doesn't it?

Because there's no way in hell he's going to paddle his way back down through the uncomfortably floaty atmosphere, even for that seemingly reasonable offer of woof.

"Leave me alone!" feels like a perfectly sensible response, all things considered, as he fights not to panic in this doubly perilous position. Reaching back for his gun is the next most logical step, but the awkward tug of war that that apparently simple action precipitates, when he finds how badly he's tangled up in his own uniform from the struggle and the fall, renders him fairly defenseless, instead.

"I'm not going with you!"

[findmyownreason]

When the floating him starts to tangle with his gun strap, Cloud's haunches tense, muscles going tight and prepared. It's almost writhing and it's uncomfortable to watch because it reminds him of things he thought he'd left behind. The fact the kid's going for his gun only registers as a background fact, the same as the yelling. As far as Cloud's concerned he's saved the kid twice. It should earn him immunity from being shot. At. Shot at. He's got SOLDIER reflexes whether he's furry or not.

And he's not sure how stable the younger him is in that floating position to go rapidly spinning to aim.

Instead he watches the struggle.

...

he really was a wimp back then.

A miserable wimp determined to be more than a wimp no matter how many times he messed up. A back paw comes up to scratch at the back of his neck. He's really not upset that most of his memories from that time are vague. Especially with the floating version of himself to help him remember how it felt. He hated that, being trapped being... himself.

How's he supposed to make sure Denzel never has to go through that?

Standing up, he trots directly under the struggling teen and sits down again. He can't talk but he's bad with words anyway. Instead, he goes for the dog routine and carefully lifts his paw. He's either offering to shake or to untangle the gun for the kid. It's hard to be that expressive with paws.

"woof."

[anonfantry]

Grabbing for the weapon lost somewhere behind him is not doing any good, no matter how he fights, and maybe that's just another, slightly subtler manifestation of so much useless anger and overpowering insecurity - but he isn't in any state to go psychoanalyzing dreams he doesn't even know he's having, here.

It's just about all he can do, anyhow, not to simply let that nauseating outrage get the better of him and send him spinning off into so much nothingness. Because the swimming is backpedaling, now, too, and after all of that running there's only so much of his already pitiable reserves of strength left over. He can take a shot at the wolf (if he can ever get his hands on his rifle, again) and be set adrift or he can try to stay put and hope it doesn't pursue him any further, but he can't do both, maybe never could've, even if he wasn't so damn tired.

"I'm not coming down there!" He'd take off a shoe and throw it, at this point - except he's somehow certain his fingers would only tangle in the laces and beside that it's quite likely that dumb animal lying in wait below him would walk off with the boot just to spite him. "You're wasting your time."