#Just your normal postgame FFVII fanfiction like how you normally see in the regular vanilla canon with Cloud and Tifa and some others in it.

[nautilusopus]

The Number I

Chapter 1: A Very Normal Opening Chapter For This Post-Series Fluff Piece

Hooooooooooooooooooly fuck this thing's live now. This is easily the stupidest thing I've ever written. It's also the first thing I've ever technically published. Thank you so much to @cateringisalie, @fury-brand, and @limbostratus for helping me proofread and copyedit this magnificent piece of self-indulgent, petty, overcomplicated garbage for the world to see.

And to think this thing spawned from a joke about watching someone take a piss.

Four years after meteor-fall and Cloud Strife still isn't himself. The thing that haunts him comes always at the same time... and when it does, on a distant far-off world, a needle moves. Twisty AU. Warnings for future chapters.

At precisely 6:09 am, Cloud Strife heard a creak outside his window, sighed, and quietly reached for the hunting knife under his pillow.

He had already been up at that point, partially for a quick workout -- it didn't really do much for his actual physique due to the enhancements, but it had been a habit for so long it felt wrong not to. There was a small part of him that still felt a small thrill of satisfaction at his own ability to put himself through a morning routine that would have had most professional athletes red-faced and exhausted and not even feel winded.

He carefully crept towards the window, staying low to the ground, and crouched underneath it. If they were burglars, they were certainly persistent. Any thief with half a brain would have moved onto another building by now, after he had noticed them the first eight times. Salvagers didn't come in this far from the ruins of Midgar. And it should have been obvious, given the shabby look of nearly everything in Edge, that he didn't have anything worth stealing, save perhaps his bike, which wasn't even upstairs anyway. Yet nearly every morning at the same time, there they were. Figures, outside his window, in the corner of his eye. Watching, until the minute it was clear he knew they were there -- and, he somehow knew, trying to get in.

He hadn't brought it up to Tifa, let alone anyone else. They'd have thought he was mad, which was an option he hadn't entirely ruled out himself -- they never left any scent for him to follow, and he wasn't really sure how they had gotten onto the roof anyway. The hallucinations were one of the few things he had managed to leave behind with that mess four years ago, and what sort of hallucinations woke you up eight days in a row at the same time?

Barret would probably suggest a shrink again, and Cloud would brush him off and say he was fine, really, and Barret would just shake his head and give him a look and mutter under his breath. Tifa might actually believe him, but the thought of that appealed to Cloud even less. She did enough worrying about him as it was. And about the bar, and the kids that passed through it, and who knew what else she hadn't told him about. Tifa needed good news.

So, here he was, crouched under the window next to the tire he'd been using as a chair for months on end, ready to stab a complete stranger that for all he knew maybe just really really wanted food. There was a bar and grill one floor down, after all.

He sat in silence for what must have been two minutes. A quiet tapping started against the wood -- quiet at first, and slowly, then louder and more insistent. It grew in volume until a hundred fingers must have been drumming against the window, and a rushing sound began building behind it, until it felt as though the noise was coming from every wall. Something moved through it all.

Cloud jumped up from under the windowsill and yanked the window open, brandishing the knife at the rain.

"...fuck's sake..." he muttered, sitting down on the chair his family had insisted he replace his tire with, dropping the knife on the table. Upon further reflection, he got back up and pulled the screen down, the water already starting to spray on the papers on his desk.

He turned his chair back to the desk and away from the window. If he didn’t look directly at it, then nothing would be there, and there would be nothing to worry about. And truth be told, he was worried that if he looked at them, they’d somehow be able to see him. Today was a good day -- he had woken up and gotten out of bed knowing exactly what he was doing and why. No need to acknowledge anything to the contrary.

He thumbed through the papers absently. Most of them were bills -- not for him this time, thankfully. Invoices he had been meaning to send out to clients, largely for repair work, or delivery. A couple were accounts, but the numbers part of it all never made much sense to him, so he often had to drag in someone that had actually finished their primary education to help him. Usually that was Reeve, but Reeve's time was extremely limited these days now that the rebuilding effort had moved beyond literal construction of roads and buildings and was now focused on political infrastructure, and Cloud always felt a bit guilty about calling him over for the sake of paperwork, and therefore never brought it up. The end result was a large pile of stressful charts that he could never motivate himself to do alone.

A noise from the end of the hall snapped him out of his intense focus on absolutely nothing constructive, and he hastily flicked the water off an account involving a leaking roof and got up, stashing the hunting knife back under his pillow. Tifa was awake.

Cloud crept downstairs, careful not to wake whoever was asleep on the couch in the back. He'd since lost track of who was here this week. Maybe Yuffie? He probably should have written it down somewhere.

"You're up early," he commented as Tifa came downstairs. Cloud was usually up by 7 (they had talked him down from 4 am, reminding him that most of society didn't run on military time and the extra sleep would do him some good), but Tifa usually slept in until 10 in preparation for the late shifts the bar usually offered.

"The storm woke me up," she said, rummaging through the fridge for eggs. "Maybe I should start a garden, with all this rain.” She paused, staring out the window for a moment. “Wouldn't have to bother taking care of it much." She took a can of corned beef hash from the cupboard and set about dumping the mixture into a frying pan.

Cloud watched her intently. He was banned from the kitchen after the incident with the dishwasher. "It's nice," he said quietly. Tifa looked faintly uncomfortable and refocused her efforts on chopping mushrooms, so he looked away.

The streets would likely be empty today. Cloud was one of the few people in the city that owned a vehicle, by dint of him building it himself, and nobody wanted to walk in the rain. Tifa wasn't the only one it set on edge these days.

"...Gonna be across town today. Broken roof," he continued. "Was gonna save it for tomorrow, but they'll probably want that finished now."

"You should visit Yuffie while you're out," she replied, grateful for the change in subject. "She stole from the till last time she was here, and she knows I'd probably break her fingers. She'd listen to you."

He shrugged. "Headed into the ruins today, too. Maybe she'll turn up. Don't think she's left for home yet."

Tifa looked up from the pan on top of the stove, which was now giving off the tantalising scent of grilled mushrooms. "You're fixing a roof in the ruins?" she asked, doing her best not to sound as though she thought he was wasting his time.

He seemed to notice anyway, and shook his head, looking a bit embarrassed. "No. Was thinking, it's been a while since anyone's checked on... things, out there."

A look of comprehension settled on her face, and she looked up from the pan at him. "D'you want me to come with you?"

He scratched his neck nervously. "If you like. You didn't really know him. Wouldn't you be bored?"

"No."

Cloud looked at her appraisingly.

"...It's something that matters to you. And I figured you'd need someone with you anyway," she said, shrugging. "Johnny comes in at five today anyway. We'll switch off and I'll meet you there." She dumped half the mixture in the pan into a bowl and set it in front of Cloud, and he relented.

They ate mostly in silence, with Tifa intermittently speaking to him about the bar, or the relief effort, or how he really should remember to lock the back door more often, but he didn't mind it much. He appreciated the company, and it was nice to spend time with someone that realised you couldn't really have much to say. Mornings made it more difficult. At the very least, his family said he'd been getting much better, and it helped to hear speech.

Eventually he got up and pulled on his boots. "You'll be here later tonight, for the dinner rush?" asked Tifa.

He nodded, so she could see. "See you later tonight," he confirmed, and turned to leave, pulling on his jacket from the hook on the wall nearby and opening the door to the now slightly less street empty.

Tifa dashed forward and quickly slammed the door shut again, causing him to jump. "Wait!" She produced a pair of tinted sunglasses he had left on the counter the night before. "Don't forget."

Cloud grimaced and put them on. He would look a bit odd, he supposed, wearing sunglasses in the rain, but that was the least of his problems. "Right. Sorry. Later tonight."

Tifa moved away from the door and went back upstairs, probably to resume sleeping. Cloud left Seventh Heaven and headed around out back for his bike and the crate of supplies he kept next to it.

He stuffed the crate awkwardly into the harness on his back (it wasn't really meant for things that weren't swords, but it would hold well enough for a few short trips through even roads), and dug his phone out of his pocket, flipping it open and cupping it under his body to shield it from the rain, scrolling through the tiny two inch calendar the screen offered. Roof, moved up to today. That first.

The drive over helped wake him up a bit more -- weather was another thing that helped, he had noticed. Outside stimulus that wasn't overwhelming, the way sound and light and scent could be, and the act of driving gave him something familiar to focus on.

He should have been focusing on it, anyway. After the first two days, he had started keeping track of it. 6:09 am, every day, without fail. It seemed like the sort of thing a human would do -- whatever they were up to, it was planned and consistently executed. But they didn’t have any scent. Everything had a scent. Even water, if you could believe it. Maybe they were hallucinations after all. He considered sleeping outside, and seeing if he could get a glimpse of them as they approached the building. The idea didn’t appeal to him much, though. If he was outside, they would know he was there, and see him, and…

He couldn’t think of anything worse than having them see him, but that only made him feel worse.

A loud honk cut off his train of thought, and he swerved quickly to avoid an oncoming truck. You’re still thinking about it, he chided himself. That’s not important. Your job is.

His hair was plastered to his face from the wind and the rain by the time he pulled off the overpass. He didn't speak much to the first clients -- out of pragmatism, not inability -- and got straight to work after a few quick questions. An out-of-place pipe rather than an actual hole in the roof, fortunately, that was welded back into place with fire in about an hour. The couple had been a bit suspicious as to how he got onto the roof of a five storey building that quickly, but then he was a young man in his prime who did this for a living.

By this point the rain had let up a bit, and he checked his phone again in the lobby of their flat. Dislodged pipe, check. Next... of course, that sink. It had been a week already, hadn’t it?

He checked the time and saw he had about an hour left to get there, so he made a quick run to the nearest store, consulting another list on his phone that he'd saved as a memo by now: bread; tomatoes; some sort of greens he couldn't pronounce the name of; dish soap; and two rolls, the kind with berries baked into them. He awkwardly shoved the bag over his shoulder to hold it in place during the trip, and made his way back into the city again.

He had barely knocked on the door when it flew open and he was hurriedly pulled inside. "You look like a drowned cat. Didn't I tell you last time to get a hat or something?" said the old woman currently somehow leading him into the kitchen by his sleeve. Ms. Suk. She was a regular of his. He opened his mouth to answer and she cut him off again. "Never mind that. Get yourself situated, I've got a lot more work for you today than I planned."

He unpacked the groceries and sat down at the table, not removing his jacket. She simply shook her head and busied herself with the tea kettle. "How's that nice young lady doing? Tessa?"

"Tifa," he said. "We hired some extra hands. Too busy for just the three of us anymore." He watched her work, suppressing a pang of guilt.

"Mm. About time, too. It's a shame about Shinra, really, she could have been quite successful working for the president, all his fancy dinners and such. She's got the talent to. Don't get up," she warned, as he moved his leg slightly in preparation to help her with one of the lower cupboards, "I'll not have you tiring yourself out this early."

A few minutes later, and after much uncomfortable staring at the tablecloth on his part, she had tea set out for the both of them, and a cheese sandwich for Cloud, with the rolls set off to the side. Cloud chewed in silence for another few minutes.

"My sink," she began, regarding him shrewdly over her teacup, "has not been draining properly since the day before yesterday. I suspect I must have accidentally dropped some silverware down it. I'm sure you're aware of how clumsy I can be. Bad joints, you know."

Cloud nodded. It seemed like a fork and bits of cloth lodged itself in the drain every week at about the same time, for about two months now.

"It's very fortunate you're here, I can never make heads or tails of any of this myself," she continued. "You can take off your glasses, you know. I don't know why you'd bother in this weather."

Cloud finished his sandwich and started on his roll. "Medical condition," he said. That part wasn't entirely a lie. "Too much light gives me headaches."

"Mm. Well, it's a good thing it's raining out then, isn't it?" she said brusquely. "When you're finished, we can get started."

It didn't take long to get the dishes cleared away, and after setting then by the sink, he had the u-bend unscrewed, this time removing a handful of yarn. He reassembled the pipe and showed it to her.

"Well, how about that," she said offhandedly, and he set about washing their dishes while she fiddled with the portable radio in the background. She was unable to get it to produce anything other than heavy static and distorted, indistinct voices neither of them could make out properly.

"Damn weather," muttered Ms. Suk, and switched it back off. "Well, I suppose we'll just have to talk to each other, won't we?" She led him upstairs and gestured to several boxes.

"I need all of this moved downstairs and out of the way. It's mostly things my son sent me from Kalm four years ago to help us get by, but it doesn't do me much good these days, and if I trip over them one more time in the dark I'm going to disown him." She brought out a mug of water and set it on a nearby table for him. "Off you go. I'll let you know what needs keeping."

In the next hour he'd come to regret the lack of a functioning radio. She spoke frequently of her own family in between sorting through dusty boxes of blankets and unused china, of how her son had gone to work for Shinra and had set aside some money for her to live, about how much nicer things had been since she had come to Midgar from western Wutai, about her sister who hadn't gotten out of the city in time, but when the conversation turned to him he found himself drawing a blank. He mostly tried to redirect it about his family as well -- Barret, coming by with Marlene to visit every other week, Nanaki's letters (he wasn't entirely sure how he was writing them), Cid visiting every now and then to remark on his bike or other things he'd built. Ms. Suk continued to probe elsewhere.

"What about you, dear? Where are you from?" she asked.

"...Nibel," he said, after a pause. She nodded thoughtfully.

"Thought you had a bit of an accent, but I couldn't quite place it. Your Standard's quite good." He took a sip of the water and unpacked another box that only looked a few years old compared to everything else. Clothes, mostly, with some photographs he set aside for an end table downstairs. "You don't see many people around from that region. Was it nice there?"

"Cold, mostly." Ha. "The weather's nicer down here."

"I'd imagine so. Your parents, were they natives?"

"I --" Something tore through him, like putting weight on a broken leg, and it opened its mouth to speak. He tore himself away from the daze in his head back to the dimly lit room and the sound of rain, suppressing a wince. "Yeah. Yeah, they were."

"Do you speak much of the language yourself?" she asked. He took deep, slow breaths, not caring for the moment about the mess of old scents that did nothing to help him orient himself. "You're a bit young to, I'd think, but if they knew some perhaps you picked it up?"

"A bit. Just phrases. Suffixes. Stuff that gets mixed in." God, how he missed that radio.

"You've got a good ear, then. Most boys your age don't even know there are other languages. I suppose they speak it up there a bit more. Pah! They did a lot of good for the world, but if there's one thing I begrudge Shinra for, I suppose it's all that culture that got washed away. Nobody's bothered to remember. When I was a girl, we used to... did you want to take off your jacket?" she suddenly interjected. "You look like you're about to have a heat stroke."

It was true. The heat of the house, combined with the work, his own body temperature, and the stress (god, the stress) had sweat running down his face. He hesitated for a moment, braced himself for the inevitable, then obliged. If it'd keep her on the subject of Wutai, maybe his head would stop pounding.

Instead she fixed her eyes on the melted-looking scar running up his left arm and disappearing into his sleeve. "Ah. Goodness, you're certainly lucky, aren't you? Or perhaps very unlucky, as it were. How old are you?" she asked, scrutinising him more carefully.

"Nibel was hit pretty hard. That's why I came to live here, after it was over." Another lie, covering up more questions he couldn't answer.

She nodded curtly. "Well, we're happy to have you, dear," she said. He felt the pit of guilt in his stomach twist a bit tighter, but at least it had the intended effect, and she switched the topic to the rebuilding effort and kept it there for the next half hour.

By the time they were finished, he had a trash bag he dumped out the back, a full bin for recycling, and a pile of old clothes. Ms. Suk scooped the clothes into an empty bag and pushed it into his arms.

He stared at it blankly for a moment. "...Should I put them in the wash?"

She "hmphed" amusedly. "Those? Of course not. What am I going to do, wear them? At my age? Something like that, it'd be awful on my figure. I'd look like porridge someone poured into a sock, if they fit at all. They're yours now."

Cloud blinked. "I can't take these," he objected.

"Why not? They look about your size, and you could do with something decent to wear that isn't worn thin. Makes you look like a hoodlum, and we both know you're certainly not too good for anything I could offer you, don't we?" she said pointedly. "Go, get them out of my sight. They're only taking up space. And here, for your trouble," she added, pressing a wad of gil into his hand. He was certain it was quite a bit more than what he had asked for. She handed him the pocket radio, too. "Something else for you to fix. It's obviously broken."

Cloud nodded numbly, struggling to come up with something to say that wouldn't sound as inadequate as "thanks".

After another quick exchange and her thrusting another package into his hands "for the road", this one containing some sort of spicy baked egg and cabbage mixture that he could never remember the name of, and he was hustled out the door into the now sunny street again, until she found something creative to stuff down her drain next week.

“Get a hat!” she yelled after him.

He flipped open his phone again, wondering if he should perhaps get a proper watch. A bit past noon, with five hours to kill. He could head out to the ruins early and see if there was anything worth salvaging, but it'd be more efficient if he just picked Tifa up himself. And besides that, it'd be easier to get where he was going without carrying a box full of scrap metal and screwdrivers and a bag of clothes all day.

There was a small crowd of patrons in the bar by the time he got back. He came in through the back, set down the crate and the clothes, put his food in the fridge, and made his way towards the front and slipped in behind the bar and began washing the dust off his hands.

"You're back early," she said over her shoulder, fetching him an apron.

"The roof thing took less time than I thought," he explained. "Tables or bar?"

"Bar. I need to help out in the kitchen," she said, and slipped into the back without another word as he set about making drinks for the patrons.

As it turned out, there wasn't much to do either way. Once the initial crowd cleared out, business slowed to a trickle, and Cloud found himself leaning against the counter with his back to the door, chewing at a hangnail on his thumb.

Tifa reemerged from the kitchen and crossed her arms. "That's bad form. What if someone walked in?"

"Nobody's gonna walk in."

"You don't know that."

"Yeah, I do. There aren't any cars coming, and the sidewalks are empty for at least a block both ways."

Tifa uncrossed her arms and sat down. The vibrations-off-the-sidewalk thing still freaked her out a bit, he suspected, but also Cloud really wanted to win his petty argument for not doing anything.

"I brought food."

"I saw. Kimchijeon?"

"Sorry?"

"The food."

"Oh." He scratched his neck. "Got some clothes, too. Dunno how well they'll fit. The shirts'll be nice, at least. See if there's anything that'll fit you in there."

"Oh!" She smiled. Most of her clothes doubled as work clothes these days and were worn threadbare much like his own, and she'd been putting off buying anything nice for herself for months. "I'll make something for you to bring over next time."

"That'd be nice."

He stood in silence for another few moments. Now that the sky had cleared up, the whole bar was comfortably warm from the sun filtering in through the windows. Tifa was prepping some sort of drink mix, occasionally glancing out the window just in case. His hair and jacket had finally dried out.

They were always busy, it seemed -- he and Tifa and Barret and the rest of the family. That was a new experience; having something to do or be done constantly. People to see, and things to fix, and a room of his own to keep tidy. Or not keep tidy at all. If he wanted he could do nothing at all, for a whole hour. Maybe two. Maybe even a day. (A day, he had thought, seemed like far too much time. It wasn't as though he disliked work.) And then, if he got lonely, he could go downstairs or open his phone and talk to someone that expected nothing of him but his company, and maybe for him to wash dishes or do laundry sometimes.

It was too perfect. He had always suspected as much, and two years ago he'd received an unpleasant reminder of how easily it could be taken away. Having something to lose, for the first time in years... that was a new experience, too. All it took was one mistake.

He thought of the people looking in through his window and wondered if he was on the verge of one of those mistakes right now.

"Hey... Tifa?"

She looked up from the bottle she'd been unscrewing. "Yeah?"

The words caught in his throat. "...If it's all the same to you, I'm gonna head out early," he managed to get out. "Let me know when you switch off, and I'll come pick you up."

"Alright," said Tifa. "Remember, later tonight."

"Later tonight."

Cloud quietly seethed at himself the entire ride back into what was left of Midgar. She'd been so patient. Coming up with the system they had, letting him live in her building, putting up with his presence. If we're having any trouble, we'll talk to each other. Even if it's stupid, she'd said.

All it would take was one mistake, though. Maybe a panic attack at a bad time. Maybe if he had one of his bad days at the same time as one of hers, and neither one of them handled it well. Maybe if Marlene saw. She wasn't there often, and she had seen quite a lot for a girl her age, but there was no point in scarring her further.

That was the point of this trip, though, wasn't it? For his own benefit. Something like that. Some things were a lot more difficult to fix than others.

He pulled his bike up alongside an old abandoned church in what used to be Sector 5, opened up Fenrir and removed the centre blade Vigilante, and proceeded into the city. Strictly speaking, civilians weren't supposed to be here, and going any further on a vehicle was impossible due to the millions of tonnes of twisted steel piled high, with human remains they hadn't been able to retrieve sealed away under concrete and melted skyscrapers. If it was decomposing at all, it was doing it very, very slowly. The earth here was still barren -- not even bacteria seemed to thrive here anymore.

Cloud had been one of the few people "allowed" to head as deep into the city as he was today. If a building collapsed on or underneath from anyone else, it would have been a problem. Cloud and Yuffie were both light enough to navigate unstable ground, and athletic enough to get through what would be completely impassable territory to anyone else.

It had to be him, visiting like this. There was nobody left that would care about that spot on what was left of the sixty-eighth floor. So every week, he came back. One day it would all crumble, but until then it was something that he considered his duty. The world had already forgotten him, so Cloud couldn’t afford to.

It was eerily silent as he climbed higher and deeper into the ruins. Occasionally he'd hear the creaking of metal, as more infrastructure crumbled in on itself, but there was nothing living here for hundreds of miles. The silence set him on edge, and he switched on the radio, which now seemed to be working properly. He'd try to get her to take it back later, if he could convince her to.

Cloud delicately hopped off the top of the six storey building he'd scaled and landed lightly on the wreckage of a train below it. The tracks were mangled and the supports keeping them up had collapsed years ago, but he'd found one could still mostly follow them in towards the centre of the city. Every now and then, he thought he recognised a building. It was impossible to tell anymore. Sector 6 looked just as bad as everything else.

Eventually he reached something that did look familiar -- a pile of shattered glass that had once been part of the neon sign next to it: Shinra Electric Power Company. He made sure his gloves were on properly, bent his knees, and took another leap, managing to get a handhold on the ledge of the second storey. The stairs were blocked on many floors due to collapse, and some passages he'd discovered the last time around had since collapsed in on themselves, so he'd opted to cut his way straight through the ceiling rather than bother shifting rubble. It was faster that way, and at the very least if the building collapsed in on itself anyway he'd already have his sword out to cut himself free before he was crushed.

On the sixtieth floor, the trumpet solo the radio had been broadcasting was suddenly replaced with heavy static again. He stopped to retune it, but it only got louder. He was surprised it had gotten reception this far out at all, and clipped it onto his back pocket again. Perhaps the signal would sharpen if he made it back outside at the top.

On the sixty-first floor, the signal did sharpen, but the jazz solo did not resume. The indistinct voices he had heard before became slightly clearer, but no more intelligible. Cloud saw something move out of the corner of his eye.

His sword had already been out, but now he switched it to its wider stance with a quick flick of his wrist and held it at the ready. Something else moved, and he whipped around to face it.

They were all around him now, and no longer at the periphery of his vision. Shapes he couldn't make out, as though his eyes didn't quite focus on them. The shadows outside his window were here now, with no glass to view them through. He took a step back, and they seemed to move with him. He could hear the distorted noises more clearly now, and it was no longer coming from the radio. They had no scent.

He wanted to get away, to attack, to yell at the shapes, anything, but suddenly his thoughts felt muddy and confused, and his sword clattered to the ground as his hand didn't quite want to grip it properly anymore. The shapes moved faster and they seemed to twist the world around him as they moved, as though they were taking the world and dragging it with them, like ink splashed through water. The noise was deafening and overwhelming, and the air felt thick.

Cloud Strife abruptly stopped thinking.

It was a curious sensation, if it could be called a sensation at all, given he couldn't process it. Every thought he'd had was snuffed out as quickly as it came, and nothing else followed them up. He simply existed, mind inert, his sword still lying at his feet. If the shapes were still there, he wouldn't have known, or cared.

He stood there, completely motionless, scarcely breathing. He took a step forward, then another. He began to walk, at first aimlessly, and then with purpose. He went to the sixty-second floor, and then the sixty third. At the sixty fourth floor, he stood in the centre again, this time for longer. The world seemed static at times, and spun around him at others. His breathing came in odd spurts, as though his lungs simply stopped working on and off.

His phone rang.

Cloud coughed, stumbled forward onto his stomach, and cried out, his sunglasses clattering off his face.

He didn't answer it right away, nor did he pick up on the second or third calls, and simply lay there, trying to pretend he wasn't shaking slightly. The radio had moved onto another song more prominently featuring a saxophone. He felt sick and disoriented.

He put his glasses back on, went back downstairs, collected his sword, and began descending Shinra Tower, frequently stealing glances over his shoulder. He saw nothing but rubble.

He walked back to Fenrir, replaced his sword in his harness, rather than inside his bike, and drove back into Edge, trying to sort out his thoughts. His head throbbed.

He remembered very clearly walking up the stairs. The motion, the sounds of his footsteps, the careful observation of his surroundings and the fixed staring at nothing with his eyes unfocused. But there was a strange period of nothing that accompanied all of it. He hadn't thought anything, been aware of anything, felt anything the entire time. It was as though a portion of his life had simply been replaced with images shot from a camera.

There had been something in that tower with him. He was certain of it, though he didn't know how. He wasn't harmed, as far as he could tell, apart from a scuff on his cheek that would already be healed by the time he got home. It hadn't felt like anything he'd experienced before, even with Sephiroth. That was the worst part of it all, he thought. If it was related to him, he'd at least know how to deal with it. Sephiroth was dead. Explicitly dead, killed twice over. The first time had been fairly thorough, he'd thought, until it had turned out the dead part of him needed killing again, two years after that. None of it had made much sense to any of them, but that had destroyed him for good. He had at least sensed that.

A sharp stab of pain in his head brought him back to the present. Sephiroth might have been dead, but the genetic tampering was still irreversible. He'd have to deal with it sooner rather than later.

When he got back home, Tifa was standing there looking concerned, which was almost worse than looking angry. "You didn't answer the phone. What happened?"

"...Not really feeling well," he supplied lamely. "We'll go back out there some other time."

"Jenova?" she asked, to which he gave a small nod. Whether or not it was the problem before, it was certainly the problem right now.

"If you need me to find someone to cover for you, you'll have to let me know now. If you’re not feeling up to it I can find someone to fill in." She looked over her shoulder at the clock. It was nearly eight. “Do you need me to sit with you for a bit, or…?”

He waved her off. "No, I can still help. Just gotta deal with this real quick."

"You're sure?"

"Yes. S'cuse me." He hurried up the stairs to Tifa's room and closed the door. She'd almost certainly seen his sword out of its storage and on his back.

He removed his boots, his harness, and his gloves, and sat in the middle of her bed with his legs crossed. He took a deep breath and calmed himself, and quietly found the source of his headache and dove into it.

This "meditation" was something he did every day, as a means of keeping himself in check. Jenova would always be a part of him, whether it was in his head or his DNA, so Cloud had given up suppressing it. In his case it was a temporary measure at best. Instead he had opened himself to it, trying to supplant it and incorporate it into himself, to take all that deliberate gnawing at his psyche and make it his own. Progress had been slow but steady, although not without its drawbacks. The benefits far outweighed them, as far as he was concerned. And he'd learned quite a bit more about Sephiroth, and himself perhaps, than he'd intended to. Some things he'd shown to his family. Others, he'd been afraid to acknowledge, even though he knew he'd have to sooner or later.

Usually it was something he did before bed. Clearly that wasn't an option today.

Half an hour later, he emerged, feeling a bit odd as he usually did after it was done. He glanced around the room and noted that there hadn't been any fallout from the process this time. If he were in a better mood and didn't have a dinner shift to attend to, he might've taken that as a sign to experiment with some of the more mundane things he'd uncovered. He slid off the bed and put his boots back on.

As he headed to the door, he paused and glanced under the bed, at the box he knew was hidden there, and the odd white materia kept stored in it. Perhaps it would help if he...

Best not to, he thought, and closed the door.