Chapter Text
Cloud’s first thought when he wakes up is I don’t remember fucking Vincent.
Now the train of thought that leads to this conclusion makes sense if you know him and Vincent. In the three decades after Meteorfall, Vincent was the one who still stuck to his old habits the most, and, well, who could blame him? Turk conditioning is no joke, and Vincent was among the first generation. Cloud has amusedly watched Tseng look at Vincent with near dreaminess in his eyes while lamenting that “They just don’t make them like that anymore,” usually followed by a sharp glance to Reno taking shots in a corner while Rude both supervises and enables him.
Vincent’s Turk habits mainly center around minimalism, the ability to get up and go at any moment in time. Getting him to settle down in Edge, or to at least lay ownership to a flat, took literal years of needling and persuasion. When he finally did, he didn’t furnish it much. There’s not even a fridge because between his severely fucked metabolism, basic immortality, and Tifa being right up the street, there’s really no need. All he has there are a few gifts the others have given him, and even those are few; most of them give him things he can use or things he can carry on his person, like pictures or materia or Wutai-forged knives. So there’s a sparsely stocked bathroom, one lamp in his bedroom, and a bed that may be the most uncomfortable mattress Cloud has ever slept on.
That last part is why Cloud ends up concluding that Vincent returned at some point and they fucked. He doesn’t open his eyes, nuzzling his face deeper into his pillow and ignoring how the bed frame is all but digging into his ribs, unsurprised that the fabric smells like nothing but himself. The place is almost never slept in and honestly, he’s surprised he’s not smelling more sweat and blood. He does a mental check on his body’s situation to find…nothing?
His hips don’t hurt, which with any other lay he’d find normal, but after a bout with Vincent is very, very odd. No sore spots that indicate bruises, and as he shifts a little he can’t feel any stinging stretches, so no claw slashes. He knows there’s no bites because he always just knows where the bites are, even after they heal. He doesn’t know why, (he has his theories about the various beings in Vincent’s body and how they’ve biologically affected him), but he always knows where Vincent has bitten him and how deep. If Vincent does nothing else he will bite him, and he also knows better than to cast a cure on him. So why the fuck is he smooth as the day he was born?
He feels so refreshed that he has to assume Vincent fucked him to unconsciousness, which happens almost every time they meet because they both get so pent up. But when they go that far there’s always aftermath and Cloud can’t find any-
A loud, stuttering snore cuts right through his line of thought.
Vincent doesn’t snore.
Cloud hears his heart kick into overdrive and tries to assess the situation without moving because what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck? No one is getting into Vincent’s house without at least one of them waking up, and Vincent would shake him awake to tell him if someone had joined them because he knows Cloud gets paranoid when his environment isn’t the same as when he fell asleep. He desperately strains to hear how many bodies are in the room, listen for the electric wiring, or damn it even some piping to make sure he’s at least in a place he can identify, but then it hits him.
He can’t hear. He can’t hear anything except for his own pounding heart. What. The. Fuck.
He dashes into motion because something isn’t right and being unable to pinpoint what it is always, always dangerous. He grabs the pillow with one hand and kicks his legs off the bed unceremoniously, relieved to at feel his feet hit steady ground when he crouches by the bed. A moment’s thought is lent to the fact that his feet have hit a cement floor instead of a wooden one- smooth, unforgiving, cold- and then his eyes are darting around, trying to catch anything to give him a clue what the hell is happening.
Cloud’s chest starts to heave when all he sees is darkness. His grip tightens on the pillow and his lungs tighten with it, his head getting light as he reaches for his senses and finds a deadness he has never felt before. His breathing is incredibly, stupidly loud, and if something is looking for him it will find him easily, and he needs to find a weapon, and for all he knows he’s cornered, and—
Another horrible snore interferes with his thoughts all over again, and he’s far too relieved when human, that’s a human, runs through his brain with certainty. Human with some shit sinuses, but a human nonetheless.
He’s more shaken than he thought—he forgot that the snoring was what tipped him off in the first place. He waits and tries to steady his breathing for a few moments, and once he’s calmed down he can place this once person’s breathing pretty easily, if only because they’re so damn loud. It’s something. It’s not much but at least he knows what he’s here with.
His first thought is Barrett, because he snores too, but Cloud has gotten very used to how his partners sound in their sleep and that was not it. Also, if he was at Barrett’s, he would’ve been in Barrett’s very comfortable bed, so that’s a hard no.
His eyes still aren’t working properly because only now is he beginning to see vague shapes and lying forms. He does his best to be patient until he can identify the frame of a bunk bed opposite him and the silhouettes of two clothing chests at each end of the room. It’s casual, civilian, and almost reminds him of the way they used to bunk back in Shinra. He almost relaxes, and then his feet flex and he remembers. No one in Edge has concrete floors. Everything was wood, tin, steel scraps, and prayers back in the beginning; while they’ve been working on renovations and rezoning, concrete floors were nowhere in the drafts.
His eyes still aren’t fucking working like they should and it’s starting to annoy him. By now there should be a light grey tint over his eyes as everything comes into perfect clarity but there isn’t—just faint black shadows, and he does not like that at all.
Another snore blares out and Cloud shifts his feet in time with it, still cautious of waking up his new roommate. He doesn’t know enough; there’s no indication of how he got here or where he is, and his senses aren’t working well enough for him to collect information. Even his sense of smell is hindered for some reason, only able to pick up the faint tang of metal and sweat, so he can’t even identify the mystery person’s scent.
A loud creak sounds out behind him and he turns quickly, pillow coming up to his face to block the sudden flood of light. He considers charging, but he waits, squinting, letting his eyes adjust, then slowly peeks around his makeshift shield.
“Strife?” He can’t quite make out the person, their backlit figure just a black shadow to his now subpar eyes. The voice is definitely male, and definitely confused. “Hell you doing man?”
Cloud doesn’t respond because for some reason, that voice is ringing a bell, and on top of that, whoever this is is talking like him being here isn’t abnormal at all. Like Cloud being in a random place that is definitely not his home is normal.
“The hell you doing?” Is what he snaps back eventually, lowering his pillow but still squinting fiercely. He really does not like how fucky his eyes are being right now.
The one who was snoring abruptly stops and starts grumbling, and he shoots a glance up while there’s light still in the room. Bunk beds, like he thought. The one who was formerly snoring is on top of the other one, and that bottom bunk has a huge figure that’s now shifting against the light. He turns around and confirms that he had fallen out of a matching bottom bunk. This feels familiar. He doesn’t like that this feels familiar.
“I told you guys I was covering Hansen’s night shift,” the figure replies, now exasperated, and when Cloud turns to him again he can feel the blood draining from his face. “I mean, I’m back a little early cause get this, Hansen shows up around 01:00 on some ‘M so sorry man, had to do this and this and this’ and buncha’ other blubbering bullshit and—Strife, you good there? Bit pale ain’t ‘cha?”
Cloud can’t even move, cause he knows that face. It’s been years, been ages, but he remembers because he forced himself to remember. They started calling him Juvie because he was (1) always causing trouble and (2) raised under plate. People used to bet on how long it would be until he ended up with a dishonorable discharge. He died in one of the early waves of what he now knows was the Genesis War, but at the time had been filed as a desertion. Juvie, who Cloud has read the official death report on, is standing in front of him, helmet tucked under his arm and impish smile fading as Cloud goes unresponsive.
“Strife?” Concern puts a divot between Juvie’s brows. Juvie’s fucking brows. “You good man?”
No, no, no, Cloud’s head is screaming. Not this again, I’m not doing this again.
So he does the only thing he can. He goes into himself, wraps himself into a ball, and hurls himself from his body.
~
Cloud opens his eyes to a sea of green.
He blinks once. He wiggles his fingers. He curls his toes. He pops his jaw open then closed. Moves his neck to one side then the other, raises his arms up and brings them down. Cloud's urgency has died a little in the familiarity of the place, and so he relaxes a bit. Just floats for a bit in the place he has landed himself and keeps moving his soul’s mimicry of his body, stays aware of his individuality in the amalgamation of existence that is the Lifestream.
The Lifestream is a sight that you can only get used to when you recognize it is always changing. One moment you’re staring at mako green, the next a flash of someone’s fond memory is in your face. To be alive and in the Lifestream is dangerous, because look for too long and you’ll be in the memory too; and when the memory is not yours, getting out isn’t guaranteed. The key to getting in and out is staying aware of yourself, and if you need to go into anyone’s memory, only go into the memories of those that can acknowledge you.
Aerith warned him years ago that something like what he woke up to could happen. Not long after the geostigma crisis, he went to her saying that he wanted more than what he’d uncovered with Tifa. She had told him this possibility, that if he and Aerith got more meticulous exploring his memories, then he might have side effects for years. Waking dreams are what he’s called them in the past, random recollections of memory that sometimes happen in his sleep and sometimes hit him in the middle of the day. He’s gotten very good at managing them and working through them, but memories of Shinra are still difficult, especially when they’re sudden.
Cloud has to assume that he had a relapse. He’s not proud of defaulting and catapulting himself into the Lifestream, but a random memory of training in a Shinra facility isn’t as unnerving as a memory of waking up in a Shinra facility. He has to assume he’s still in Edge, or at least Midgar, and since Aerith is anchored to the church, he just needs to feel around and ask her to help him straighten this out some.
So he starts his search.
Searching the Lifestream is less moving than feeling around, like when you’ve dropped something and it rolls under the bed. The main difference is that the Lifestream moves, it circulates, and while a full turn can take decades and most souls are taken with the flow, some people stay anchored in places that were dear to them. Aerith is a Cetra, so things work a little differently for her. She can be wherever she likes, she just chooses to stay near Midgar, and Cloud has always been grateful for it.
Aerith, he closes his eyes and focuses on the picture of her in his mind: her smile, her staff, her pink ribbon, her hair down or braided or however she chose to wear it today. Aerith.
The Lifestream’s response is normal, but confusing. He feels it wrap around his mind, feels it leave a trail leading him to her, but Aerith isn’t reaching back like she normally does. He can get there the long way if he has to, but she usually eases the strain on him and reaches out, takes the outstretched hand of his soul and pulls him to her as he pushes himself forward. The Lifestream keeps the path open but doesn't help him along, which is typical of it. Aerith has described it as nothing but a channel for a river, a channel capable of change by the will of its inhabitants. The will has to be powerful, and Aerith herself is the resident expert in the intricacies of the Lifestream- which is why she should’ve sensed him by now.
He opens his eyes and finds the path the Lifestream has revealed to him and thinks of moving toward her. His soul obeys, and feeling himself move without making movement is disconcerting as always, but his worry overrules his discomfort. As he gets closer, the shape of her soul gains some clarity, and he hones in, nearly hurtling forward. Her presence is palpable, but it’s like she’s dead in the water. Which, considering the Lifestream is the realm of the dead, is doubly concerning.
When he gets close, he readies himself to enter a memory. It might be the church, teeming with children and pious followers. It may be her old home with Elmyra, flowers in abundance, Zack beside her as they tease each other back and forth. Or maybe he’ll find her in one of the many flower fields they saw as they chased Sephiroth, gazing at the sky alone. Wherever she is, it’ll be calm, and they’ll be okay.
His eyes go white for a moment like they always do when he goes from the all-encompassing stream to a confined mind, and his soul’s shoulders lose imagined tension when the church comes into clarity.
Aerith always remembers the church the way it was before: pews a little dusty but intact, the second floor disarrayed but loved, the doors open like always. There are people scattered within. A couple talks quietly by one of the stained glass windows, two women so close their hair is tangling, on the windowsill with their fingers laced together. A few children run past him and out the door, flowers in their hair, laughing. Even if he keeps it up the best he can and polishes the Buster and washes her ribbon in the pool she gifted them, it will never be the same as it was when she cared for it. It’s a second home to any who step in, always has, and always will be.
He turns to her and finds her where she always is, curled over the flowers, patting the soil dedicatedly. Her ribbon is in her braid, tied around the ends, and he smiles on instinct at the sight.
“Aerith!” Cloud calls, the relief in his voice heard. He jogs up the aisle, not even bothering to hide his excitement. “How are you? Seen Zack lately?”
She doesn’t turn and doesn’t look up, and Cloud’s smile falters some, but he doesn’t let it get to him. Aerith is dead, and while she does all she can, she has her days where it’s not easy. She loves everything and everyone, but she loves their family just as much as Cloud, if not more. Not being able to be there with them gets to her sometimes, and the same thing happens to Zack. She’s certainly been patient with him in the past, so it’s not like Cloud can’t do the same.
“Marlene is going nuts over those new flowers you asked me to find for her,” he diverts instead, kneeling down beside her, knowing better than to infringe on the small circle of life. Even if it’s just memory, it’s still sacred to her. “She keeps complaining about how picky the flower is because it’s a Wutai native, but I know she loves it. She says thank you.”
Still no response, which is weird since the topic of Marlene always gets her to say something. He watches with growing confusion as her slender hands pull weeds up and away from her precious flower collection. The dirt clings to her fingers and even sprays out a little with each pull, surprisingly vivid. Cloud of all people knows the power of remembering a place important to you, so he doesn’t think twice of it.
“Is this a bad day?” He asks instead, quieter than before. She freezes at that, and he takes it as confirmation. “I’m sorry, I can leave you alone and come back. Just wanted to let you know I had a bad relapse this morning, Shinra memory, you know how it is. I’m going to head back home in a bit, but I just needed to calm down. I’ll be back at the church later, we can talk whenever you want.”
He finally raises his eyes to her face, and he feels his entire system lock up as he sees something he hasn’t had to read on her face in ages.
Wide eyes locked on her dirt covered nail beds and one cheek slightly hollowed, betraying how her teeth are worrying the inside of it. She’s afraid. She’s uncomfortable.
Cloud’s immediate thought is Fuck, what did I do? because his worst instinct is to blame himself first, but he logics his way through it and can’t find something he’s done to upset her. He of course then rockets to worst case scenario, that Jenova is putting Sephiroth together again— except Aerith hasn’t hesitated to warn him about that before and she wouldn’t hesitate now. It has to be something else. Something is going on he doesn’t know about, and either she can’t tell him or she’s currently uncomfortable telling him.
He’s watching her face intently so he catches when her cheek releases and her mouth opens hesitantly. Cloud nearly snaps to attention, taut as a bow.
“There are people here,” Aerith whispers, bending to the flowers like she’s speaking to them, which she does sometimes. “I can’t speak to you right now. I’m sorry, but I don’t know you, and I don’t know how to help you. I can listen, but I can’t talk right now.”
Cloud’s soul has no temperature. It’s just a projection. It can change shape, can change weight, can change forms altogether. Everything he feels in his soul is imagined, a mockery of the real thing, things his mind reflexively associates with emotion and therefore placebos to his soul.
He still feels his heart drop into his stomach. He still feels blood drain from his face. His hands still feel cold and his fingers still feel numb and he’s still trembling in place.
Aerith’s memory is powerful, powerful enough that to enter is to be part of it. Not everyone can do that. Zack can’t, because he’s been to his memory of his apartment. Zack will swear up and down the beer in his fridge tastes like it always has but no matter how many times Cloud takes one and pops it open, he can’t taste it. Aerith though, her memory is vivid, enhanced by her innate connection to the Lifestream. Cloud has planted flowers with her and felt the dirt in his fingers. He’s followed her slowly as she ran through fields and felt the high grass tickle his arms. He remembers that, and he can’t believe he didn't notice that the church doesn’t feel right.
When he kneeled, he didn’t faux-feel the ground like he does in Aerith’s memory, and he can't feel the ground now. Either a breeze should be coming through the door or a wave of Midgar heat, and he can’t feel either of those. Sometimes the people in Aerith’s mind are people she remembers, and sometimes they’re like him, former visitors that remember the church so strongly that their minds converge on Aerith's memory. Whichever they are, they usually acknowledge Cloud when he comes in. The ones who are real, who used to be alive, some of them greet him by name. No one batted an eye when he came here.
He’s hit with a frenetic energy, a desperation, and he suddenly jumps to his feet and shouts loudly. Aerith flinches, and he wants to apologize but he needs to confirm something and he needs to do it now. The shout reverberates off the glass and wood, muffled but unmistakable, and he twists around, searching for the few in the church. An elder woman close to the front continues her prayer undisturbed. The lovers by the window continue their quiet conversation. It’s like they can't hear him. Aerith flinched though, so she defintely heard him, but memories also reflect the holder. If he'd startled her the memory would scratch, a quick pause and then a resume when she’d gotten her wits back. But nothing happened. It’s like he doesn’t exist.
A man walks in from the outside, releases a breath like he’s been holding it a long time, and looks straight ahead, right at Cloud. Cloud flicks the man off, panicking a little and defaulting to being an asshole.
The man doesn’t even blink. It’s like he doesn’t see him. He just beelines to a pew and takes a seat, melting like the wood is the softest thing in the world, closing his eyes like he could go to sleep.
Cloud falls to his knees. The wood doesn’t make the thud it should. He starts hyperventilating on instinct, but he’s just a soul, there’s no breath for him to take and no breath for him to push out. He’s never felt so empty all his life.
“They can’t hear you,” Aerith whispers, and his head whips around, chest heaving for a heartbeat he doesn’t have. “You’re dead. I’m sorry, but I am the only one here who can hear you. You are always welcome in my church if you can find your way here again, but I have limits to what I can do for you.”
He suddenly remembers a conversation they’d had here before, a brief Lifestream visit he’d made after a wedding in Edge, covering his excitement to tell the story by acting like he was giving them a standard report. It didn’t fool Zack or Aerith, and they tag-teamed teasing him, but they’d gone on to talk about Marlene making the bride’s bouquet. He'd nudged Aerith as he knelt by her flower patch, fingers in the soil, recollecting how he’d told Marlene that Aerith always spoke to her flowers and that Marlene had been telling her garden stories ever since.
“Well, you’ve got it halfway right,” Aerith had confessed, a small reminiscent smile that was maybe a little sad. “Except I wasn’t always talking to the flowers. The vein of the Lifestream that went under the church made souls wander in sometimes, and they’d get lost and forget they were dead. It was a balancing act, guiding them back while the church had visitors, so sometimes I acted like I was talking to the flowers so people wouldn’t notice.”
“There are people here. I can’t speak to you right now.”
“I can listen, but I can’t talk right now.”
Cloud can feel himself go numb so fast it’s almost physical. His shoulders drop, his chest stops moving and he just. Stares.
He sits there a few more moments, the silence in his head so, so loud. He can’t think. He can’t breathe. He might as well be dead. He might be dead. Oh shit, Aerith said he was dead, he might be dead .
He knows, somewhere deep in, that this isn’t right and he’s panicking. A distant voice in him says he’s in shock, that he needs to not let this paralyze him, but what the fuck does he even do ?
You get yourself the fuck together and you analyze , that voice says, a bit stronger. It has the face of his SOLDIER self and a wolf crest pinned over its heart. You put the pieces together and you look at this dead on and you don’t dismiss any possibility. So what do we know?
Okay, fuck, okay. Okay, what does he know?
He woke up, in a Shinra bunk, saw Juvie who has been dead for years, and went to the Lifestream on instinct. He was able to go to the Lifestream on command, which means his body very much exists and is functioning. One thing his memory can definitely not fake is the Lifestream, it’s too much of a unique experience to be captured by any mind, human or Cetra or otherwise. So even if he somehow hallucinated Shinra and Juvie, there’s no doubt that he entered the Lifestream. He knows he has full control of his soul and his ability to maneuver the Lifestream proves that. Aerith’s presence in the planet was strong, but that unresponsiveness he felt may not have been because she was in trouble, that may just be how someone appears when they aren't dead. The more he entertains that thought, the more it makes a very fucked up kind of sense. Aerith has told him that she tried to deny her heritage, tried to block herself off from the planet so she could feel normal. It would explain the unresponsiveness.
So Aerith is alive. She’s alive, and that means the church he’s in isn’t a memory. This is the actual church, like it used to be, with other people inside it who are also very much alive. Meaning he just exited the Lifestream on accident in his haste to get to Aerith. And it’s likely that Aerith can only hear him, not see him, because he isn’t experienced enough in doing this to make himself visible. Fuck.
No, don’t think too hard about it, just analyze. He gets down off his knees and sits down properly, one leg outstretched and his arm slung around the other to hug it to his chest. He stares down the aisle of the church and out the doors into the fake sunlight of Midgar’s underbelly. Put it together Strife, pull yourself together. Cry later, solve now.
Aerith is real. There is no denying that. Her presence as a Cetra is solid in the Lifestream, it's just not the blaring beacon he's used to, so he can’t doubt that she is alive. The Lifestream is incapable of lies, and his brain can fuck with him sometimes but it doesn’t fuck with him this coherently. Which means he has to conclude that he wasn’t relapsing and that yes, he did wake up in his old Shinra bunk. He doesn’t like it but it’s the only explanation he has.
Gods damn it, it doesn’t feel right or sound right but what’s happening is no longer the question. Cloud, somehow, is in the past.
He looks back at Aerith, and now that he knows, he can see it. Her tricep doesn’t have that scar she got on the road when she took a nasty fall in the middle of a fight. Her skin doesn’t have that slight sun kiss to it, still pale and perfectly fair from being under plate for so long. There’s still a small bulge in her braid where the White materia rests, and her hands are a little too dainty, the wear from a long journey no longer there. Or rather, it’s never been there at all. Cloud can feel a headache coming on already.
One thing he does know is that he can’t see her like this–young, mostly unharmed, and most importantly, alive –and then not say anything to her. Realizing he’s a stranger, reduced to just another ghost in her ear- it feels demeaning at first, and then it’s just depressing. But maybe he can do something with this. Maybe he can, gods, Cloud doesn’t know- give her hope? Reassure her? He’s always been kind of shit at it though so he can only hope it lands right.
“Aerith. Don’t worry about responding,” he murmurs instead, matching her quiet tone even though no one can hear him. “Thank you for telling me and trying to help, but I’m not dead. Not quite.” A pause again, which he thinks he’s going to have to take plenty of. “I’m…more like you. I’m very close to the planet.”
“You’re like me?” The quiet astonishment in her voice gives Cloud pause, and then he remembers that that’s something Aerith never heard her entire life. She’s been the last Cetra for years, even if she tried to deny it.
“In a way,” he treads carefully, trying to find out how to explain. “I wasn’t born close to her like you. I’m similar to you but different. I don’t think I have time to explain right now. But I want you to know that…” He has to stop himself from saying I love you. “Well this will sound weird, but you’re important to me Aerith. If you ever need help, do what you always do. Pray. Gaia hears you, and she’ll answer. Don’t forget that.”
He watches her carefully, only able to see her side profile from this angle, but he catches her tiny nod. Cloud takes a deep breath that doesn’t exist, and his soul mimics the feeling of blowing air out through his mouth. This is harder than he thought.
“And honestly, I don’t know how likely this is to work,” he confesses, huffing a laugh because the situation gets hysterically funny if he thinks about it too long. “But if you need someone quick, if you need someone to save you and you need it fast, ask for Cloud in your prayers. Again, not sure if that will work, but Gaia has a funny way of operating sometimes. If I can, I’ll be here. I promise.”
He launches himself to his feet before he can lose his nerve, steadies himself by taking one last look back. Cloud’s eyes devour the sight, commemorates it, sews every detail into something he won’t forget. Aerith, her dress, her ribbon, her staff, and the patch of flowers that never died. He is in the past. Aerith is alive. Aerith is alive, which means he can keep her from dying. To keep her from dying, he needs a plan.
Step one. Figuring out why the fuck he’s in the past in the first place.
“Bye Aerith,” he says, forcing himself to reach for the stream that runs beneath the church, feeling the bottom of his soul sink into the river.
It pulls him along, and the world becomes a blur of color until everything is perfectly white.
“I’ll see you again.” Cloud isn’t sure she hears it, but that’s okay. He said it for himself.