Nails and Tacks

Prescribed pills, to offset the shakes

To offset the pills you know you should take it a day at a time.

I am alone in this bed, house, and head.
She never fixes this, but at least she...
I am alone in this bedroom.
She never fixes this, but at least she makes me forget.

-- Nails for Breakfast, Tacks for Snacks by Panic! At the Disco

It's not fun to be insane, especially when you know it.

It's even worse when everyone around you knows it too.

Two years. Two goddamned years, and I'm still not any better. I haven't slept straight through the night in… longer than I can remember. That's a bad sign. God, everything's a bad sign. The nightmares, the depression, the paralyzing fear of abandonment, the voices—

Yeah, the voices. They never stopped talking to me, Jenova and Sephiroth. That's how I knew it wasn't over. That's why I kept up on my fighting skills, why I never really tried to find a steady job. Delivery man? That's hardly what I want to do with my life. If I thought it would be worth something, I'd make an effort at having a real life. I'd get a real job, I'd tell Tifa I love her more than life itself, I'd… do something with myself, instead of just planning for the next catastrophe.

Because it's not over. It's never over. Even though Kadaj and his brothers are gone, Sephiroth isn't. He said he wouldn't just be a memory, and he meant it. I can still hear him and Jenova, hissing to each other in the back of my head. I wonder sometimes if I'm the only thing that keeps bringing them back, if my body is the last reserve of Jenova cells left and I keep dragging them both back into existence. Were that the case, I'd probably kill myself. My life isn't worth keeping that threat around.

Tifa knows something's wrong. God, I love her so much. She… she's what's kept me alive and sane, after all that I've been through. She puts up with my breakdowns and nightmares and disappearances, and tries so hard to help me. I know she loves me, and that's why I'm trying to get better. She deserves better than… well, better than me, really, but if it's me she wants, I'll be damned if I'm broken and crazy. She's the one who suggested I start talking to you. Tifa knows her limits. She knows she's not capable of giving me the help that I need.

I'm not entirely sure you're capable either, Doctor, since all you did was give me a shopping list of medication to take and send me on my way.

It's not medication that I need, it's… reassurance that the world's not going to need me to save it again. I'm so damn tired of being a hero, you know? Saved the Planet twice, you know. That's two times more than most people. Don't you think I've gone well and above the call of duty? Let someone else handle the next disaster. I'll warn them when Jenova starts shrieking again, just let me have a normal life.

Just give me permission to be nobody.

You know, maybe Tifa's more capable of helping me than she knows. When I'm with her, I can forget that I'm crazy. I can forget about the hell I've been through, and I can pretend we've got a normal life. Maybe somewhere along the line, I'll stop pretending and it'll all be real. Me and Tifa and her bar and my real job and a couple of kids. That'd be nice. I'd like to wake up to that some morning.

All I wake up to these days are my nightmares, which wouldn't be so bad if they were just nightmares and not memories of things that happened to me.

I'll keep talking to you, Doctor, even though I think you're just as nuts as me. I'll take your damn medication for a week or two before I get sick of it and throw the pills out. Because there's part of me that really hopes I'll get better, because once I'm better I can be normal.

I wanted to be a hero, once. I was more insane then than I am now.