Cloud Strife (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
anonfantry) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
onepassingnight2012-03-24 06:15 pm
anonfantry) wrote in onepassingnight2012-03-24 06:15 pm
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.
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.
no subject
He feels the touch of another's hand, resting against his own. He remembers what it was like, when he was alive and this was all solid and tangible. He remembers Cloud, after his first real mission in ShinRa, just having killed a man and coming to him to talk about it. He remembers the advice given, and how they both promised they'd be there for each other until the world stopped turning and his breath ceased. And he just continues to quietly smile, gently wrapping his fingers around the younger boy's palm. It's to say, 'it's okay. it's okay, I'm here.' Because he never left in the first place.
And he won't now.
There's a light tug on that hand, trying to guide his friend. They needed to get out of this storm, into the light, into someplace safe and warm and away from grabbing claws or snarling fangs. The monsters would be kept at bay, as long as he was around. Nothing would ever hurt Cloud again.
You control this world.
You control your own reality.
He wasn't all-powerful.
And he can't keep the monsters at bay forever.
no subject
Even if his words don't seem quite right, somehow, and Cloud can't begin to understand the meaning in them. It doesn't dampen his high spirits enough to matter. It does strike him as strange that a SOLDIER might not know better where they're meant to go from here, however. But he simply reminds himself that he isn't on any assignment he can remember, and that if Zack's here, that probably means he isn't either, and sets the mild curiosity aside. There'll be time for such reasonable leaps of logic when the rule of the waking world has reasserted itself.
His response sounds enough like permission to pick their destination, at any rate, that Cloud needs no other excuse to put his vote toward getting out of here.
"Come on!"
There's a mixed up little village around here, somewhere - that he knows without question. It's safer than the mountainside, if no less definite, made up of memories and speculation (echoes of Nibelheim and faded textbook pictures of Gongaga, which is a place he's only heard of once and will never admit to having looked up as soon as possible, afterward, just to know a little bit more). And his next step forward is nearly a bound, as he turns to pull Zack onward in his wake, instead, snow and miserable white alike melting out of sight.