Summary: Twenty years after Meteor, Cloud is less than entirely sane.

Status: This story is complete, but will be posted in parts (about once a week).

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Many thanks to: My wonderful primary beta, Marilena, who took my first version and pointed out so many rough spots. Also, thanks to Quaxicoffelees, for being so encouraging on this. All mistakes that remain are my own (I'd greatly appreciate if you could point them out if/when you see any, gracious reader).

Notes: As much as possible I've stuck to FFVII and AC cannon, except for a few deliberate twists—which, I hope, are subtle and small enough be viewed as different interpretations of events, not complete contradictions. Some background, such as the WRO, is taken from DoC and On the Way to a Smile, but I've pretty much ignored cannon aside from FFVII and AC—simply because I haven't got the other source material to look at.

Oh, and I suppose I should mention that this is gen-fic. To anyone who is looking for romance: sorry, but it's not something that I write often or well. (There is a tiny bit of het, I suppose…)

Spelling is Canadian.

With all that said…I hope you enjoy!

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Denzel leaned back in his chair and slouched, listening to Cid bicker at Shera, who rolled her eyes and swatted at him with a tea-towel. Cid, upon arriving at Barret's big, unused house in Edge, had immediately confiscated Barret's teapot—which was also large and unused, although this was thanks more to Barret's aversion to tea than to the fact that he still spent most of his time on the road, working as a prospector for new oil fields. The captain had promptly ordered Shera to brew up 'somethin' fuckin' decent', as Cid put it. In turn Shera calmly ignored him, pointing out that it was high noon in a heat stroke and far too hot for anything but iced tea.

Most of the other people in the kitchen were focused on Marlene and Yuffie, who were in the middle of an epic game of poker. At twenty-six, Marlene was more of a card shark than ever—but years of actively ruling Wutai had only sharpened Yuffie's innate ability to bluff, and with each hand huge piles of winnings would change sides. Both sat like stones, their expressions carefully controlled; every twitch or grimace or smile dripped carefully crafted manipulation. Denzel knew he'd have been cleaned out in a heartbeat by either one of them—his poker face had always sucked.

All of AVALANCHE, with relatives, had gathered in Edge just in time for the twentieth anniversaries of The World Didn't End Day. Denzel hadn't seen many of them in several years; his home, out on the frontier of civilization, kept most of his attention…as did his family. It was nice to be gathered here together again, even if he was shocked to note that Barret had gone completely grey and Cid's voice was as rusty as an old nail. Only Cait Sith and Vincent were untouched by the years—Denzel had to wonder if Vincent had even changed his clothes in all this time—but everyone appeared healthy and in good spirits…even with the spiky-haired hole in the group portrait.

Cloud had not come.

No one had expected him to put in an appearance except for Tifa, who even now kept looking up from the poker game to glance out the window; Denzel knew she'd been trying to get in touch with Cloud. Of course, she'd always been trying to get in touch with Cloud, leaving messages on his old phone number, and there never had been any sort of reply at all.

He shook his head slightly and growled to himself. Wishful thinking. No one had seen Cloud for fifteen years, since he'd taken off during the fifth anniversary of The World Didn't End Day.

We don't even know if he's still alive, Denzel thought, and felt cold. He wished Cloud would show up, so that he could yell at him, tell him what a bastard he'd been for walking out on them all and leaving no explanation, no forwarding address…so he could see that the man who had saved him all those years ago, pulled him from the muck and then abandoned him, was still…there.

He saw Tifa glance out the window again—and then her jaw dropped and she hurried over to the door. Over the noise of the betting and general conversation, a low thrum filled the air. It sounded like a motorcycle, but motorcycles were generally higher-pitched—except—

Fenrir.

Denzel stared out the window as all of his words deserted him, leaving him unsure of what to think, let alone say.

---

He can feel her standing behind him as he runs his eyes over Fenrir; right now he can feel everything. The high sound from inside of Marlene talking excitedly to Barret sends minute vibrations cascading against his skin and hair. Air disturbed by the slight swirl of Vincent's cloak as the ex-Turk walks out the door causes ripples. The noise of the others—outside, and too close—is like a thousand nails driving into him, and he wishes that he could deflect these missiles with his sword…not that he uses the First Tsurugi to deflect much of anything, these days.

Every living thing screams its doings at him. Once he would have cried for the simple joy of this knowing, this realization that something else is out there, alive, that the world is not dead and that he's not hallucinating the presence of something as simple as a living flower. Now he wishes nothing more than to return to the dead ruins of Midgar—his solace against these increasingly frequent attacks. People, with their own personal lifestreams flowing through them, are the hardest to bear.

"Cloud," Tifa says, and he barely keeps himself from wincing as he turns. Turning moves his senses, sends the knives swirling about him, leaving long trails of sparkling blood in their wake.

"It's good to see you again." She's smiling, he notices.

It's not, he wants to say. It's not good for him to be here, not now, not with everything crying out at him. On the trip here there was only grass and the occasional creature, far-off; their silent screams faded quickly and it was only like riding through sand. That, he could ignore. This…he cannot.

He summons up a smile he cannot feel, twisting one corner of his mouth upwards. His long greatcoat—thick enough to provide some protection in the dead of Midgar—feels like it is made out of gauze, and he really, really hopes that she's not going to touch him.

Maybe some small amount of luck remains with him, because she doesn't. It's a brief consolation. She won't stop talking, and the vibrations hurt like hell with her this close.

Can't flinch, can't flinch…

"You haven't changed much," Tifa says, and this time he can't tell whether or not the smile is genuine. There's grief in her eyes, and a plethora of her emotions wash over him with every word—guilt, joy, resentment, anger, hope, despair, happiness, worry—for so many reasons—that he came, that he didn't come, that she didn't see him, that he never answered the phone, that he never called, that she never tried something else, that he looks terrible, that she's aged, that he still looks younger than Vincent does—he can't match emotion to reason. It's so confusing that he almost doesn't notice that he's practically reading her mind; when he does notice, it doesn't surprise him. Why shouldn't he be able to, with her lifestream pulsating shrilly at him?

I have changed, he wants to say, but the words are stuck in his throat. Everything changed and it's still the same—I'm no different than twenty years ago—than twenty-five, twenty-seven…

"Cloud," she says, some of the worry creeping into her voice—and then she's reaching out to touch him, and he stumbles backward out of reach, some small, broken part of him crying, Please, no, I can't take this—

"'m sorry," he mumbles, backing away frantically, her hurt making his nerves cry out in agony. "Mistake—to come—"

It stops.

Everything goes dead, and he sags with relief. The attacks—he can think of no other word for them—grow more frequent and last longer, longer than the respites, but they still end eventually. Sight and sound seem non-existent during them, though, and it takes him a moment to return to relying upon them.

There's a hand on his arm, touching him—he can't feel it, now, past the numbness in his skin, but he can see it—it belongs to Tifa, he realizes. She's looking at him and he has no idea what the look on her face means, though it is obviously supposed to mean something. Her emotions are dead to him now; he cannot feel her.

"Cloud—what's going on?" she asks. There's something in her voice, some tone, but he has no idea what it is. He's too busy basking in the numbness.

"I can't stay," he mutters.

"You don't look well," says a voice from the side, and he has to look at the speaker to realize that it's Vincent. The others have come outside, now, and he hadn't noticed them moving. It's a strange, welcome sensation.

"I—" he starts, halts, as he has so many times before, but this time he is given no chance to continue; as he pauses, his senses return.

The hand on his arm—that complex, personal stream of life so close, too close, too close—is enough to make him choke back a scream as he falls backward. They're all about him, and their beings a rasp across every fibre of his being. They're talking at once, now, their voices growing louder and the demand for his attention becomes a merciless need, an overwhelming insatiable hunger gnawing at his mind and why did he ever think that this was a good idea—one last chance to see them—because if he thought he was going to die then, he is definitely dying now.

---

Transition is instantaneous. One moment he is certain he is dying, and the next he is opening his eyes; his head hurts, but he can think, and see, and the only whispers of life are from bacteria; that's all that lives in Midgar, now. Bacteria are simple creatures, single-celled and simple—they're almost soothing, really.

No, he realizes as he wakes fully, that's not all there is. There are people, here, but they're far off, far enough that he can barely sense them at all.

The ring of a phone splits the air.

This sound—it doesn't hurt. It's clean, emotionless, and as dead as a rock…more dead, because rocks are closer to Gaia than cell phones. Slowly, carefully, he moves, turning his blood to acid in his veins—and then, before he can stop to think about what he's doing, he flips the phone open. It's slim, more compact than his old phone was, and it has a vaguely futuristic feel to it…although maybe that's just present-day technology. He's slipped into the past, and he spares a moment to wonder where his phone is. Before he'd left Midgar he'd kept it with him at all times, but he has no idea where it's gone now.

"Cloud?" asks a voice over the phone, tinny and fake. It feels no more real than the ringing. "Are—are you there?"

It's Tifa's voice, a living voice, and it doesn't hurt. He feels like crying from the loneliness that wells up inside him, quickly replaced by anger at his own stupidity. All these years he'd gone back to his habit of not answering the phone, for fear that he'd have an attack while talking—but hearing someone live is no different from listening to messages. Both are dead. He's cut himself off for nothing.

"Yeah," he says, his voice hoarse from dehydration and disuse—and probably screaming as well, judging from how his insides feel like jelly.

There's something like a muffled sob on the other end of the line, then the sound of the phone being handed off. He's surprised he can actually hear that, but maybe his hearing has improved, too. It doesn't hurt, though, so he doesn't give it much thought.

"We took you to a hospital, but they couldn't tell us what was wrong," Yuffie's voice echoes from the phone; she sounds so much older, more sombre, more mature than he remembers. But then, she's the Lady of Wutai now, isn't she? "We…well, we tried lots of things. Eventually we went to Cosmo Canyon. Some of the elders there have followed in Bugenhagen's footsteps. They were able to figure out—Cloud, why the hell didn't you say something?"

She's angry, but not screaming; on the contrary, her voice is tightly controlled. He can't get the picture of her at twenty-one out of his head, when, at their get-together five years after Meteor, they'd all gone out and gotten drunk and she'd danced on the table. She'd looked nearly as she had at sixteen, if maybe a little fuller around the edges. It's the last real memory he has of her; the attacks were starting to get bad by that point, and he'd left for Midgar a day later. He's confused by how adult she sounds now.

It was another reason for going to that most recent gathering—to see how everyone had changed—but now that he tries to think of it, he can't remember how any of them looked. Everything else was more overwhelming.

Why hadn't he said anything, in the beginning? He'd gone to see a doctor, but the doctor was clueless. Maybe he hadn't wanted to worry them; maybe he just didn't want to talk. He can't recall; it's all hazy, just like his life before AVALANCHE.

"I can't remember," he says finally, coughing.

"Cloud, you need to sort this out," she says gently, making him blink. If it wasn't for the faint accent, he'd be more inclined to think he was talking to Tifa than Yuffie. "You can sort this out, if you try, okay? We've left you supplies. Use them. When was the last time you ate anything?"

She sounds motherish, and that leads to a startling thought: maybe she is a mother. She's what—thirty-six now? And she's the leader of a country that needs an heir. It's strange to think that Yuffie might have kids.

But kids or no, she has a point. A quick search of his memory comes up with nothing about eating anything. "Um," he says eloquently.

It would really, really suck if he was not just long-lived, but immortal. Not that he's tried it—it's not something he feels he wants or deserves—but the possibility has always been there in the back of his mind, a comforting escape. Yet he must have been for weeks without eating or drinking anything, and while he feels like death warmed over, it's not from lack of food.

"You are an idiot," Yuffie replies, sighing through the phone. "Look, Vincent wants to talk to you, so I'm going to hand the phone over to him, alright?"

He can hear the phone being handed off again before he has a chance to reply. There's silence for several moments, the sounds of people moving in the background, and then Vincent's voice, forever young, says, "Cloud."

"Vincent." It feels weird to be greeting him this vocally. Usually they just nod at each other, even over the phone—which is not as difficult as it might sound. Of course, that was fifteen years ago, fifteen years in which Vincent's been doing—well, something not involving coffins, he thinks—and he's been holed up with the dead.

"Do you understand?"

"No." It is an immediate response; he doesn't understand anything. He doesn't know anything, except that living…hurts.

"I see." Vincent is silent for a long minute—but then he explains, in terse tones. Information is wonderful.

"You are yet tainted by Jenova."

I knew that.

"…the last remnant of that taint. You are its last hope, Cloud. It knows it cannot take your mind through force, not with the tenuous grip it currently has…but as long as you survive, it survives as well—and so your survival is its first priority…"

His breath caught.

"To be rid fully of the taint, Gaia would have to destroy you, but you are its most powerful protector and weapon—more so than the WEAPONs, for they can never be sentient. Gaia seeks to counter Jenova, but the gifts of two such…beings…clash. They are not human enough to understand it."

"I can't work through that," he says, feeling a rush of bitterness at Yuffie's earlier words—at his own stupidity. He's been living his life out for a promise, for guilt, for nothing, and now he's tainted and it's killing him while not letting him die. He should have taken the low road a long time ago.

"You might be able to find a way." Vincent is silent for another moment, as if thinking. "Have you truly found nothing that helps?"

His throat closes up over a vehement 'NO'—because that's not true. In the beginning, he could try and push it away. Katas, meditation…that had helped. In some instances he'd been able to push it away entirely. But the attacks grew stronger, and the cost of moving began to take its toll. He'd had to flee to Midgar.

"Not anymore," he says instead, distracted by that last thought.

Why had he fled to Midgar? Well, to escape the attacks, of course—but how had he known to come to Midgar? He'd never really thought about it.

"Maybe," he amends.

---

The bar was buzzing with talk. Though it was barely quarter-full, it seemed even more crowded than normal; the personalities of everyone who was here now spilled over past their physical forms, particularly Yuffie's and Cid's. Those two were currently engaged in a loud, heated game of dice, punctuated with much insults and swearing. Denzel would have been worried if Tifa hadn't quietly warned him about those two.

At the moment Tifa was chattering away with Cid's wife, Sherra, but Denzel could see the way that his adopted mother kept glancing at the door, even if no one else seemed to have noticed. Barret was busy teaching Marlene how to play poker—she was actually a shark at it, but Denzel wasn't about to tell Barret this and bring up the number of times she'd beaten him—along with a stuffed cat toy that was apparently a robot, and Red XIII and Vincent were talking at a table near Sherra and Tifa. Cid and Yuffie, of course, were oblivious to everything but their game.

It felt like home, like family. Or it should have—but Cloud wasn't there. Of course, there was still a lot of time left before dinner and sometimes Cloud was late—he'd gone out three hours ago to pick up the cake—so Denzel just settled back to sip his coke and wait. After a time he got drawn into the discussion with Red XIII and Vincent, since while Denzel was kind of nervous around adults-not-Cloud-or-Tifa, Red XIII didn't really qualify as an adult…although Vincent was doing a lot more blank-staring than talking.

Another hour passed, then two, and Cloud did not appear. By this time both Vincent and Red seemed to have clued in somewhat, because they both started glancing toward the door as well—at least, Denzel thought Vincent was checking the door, but it was really hard to read the red-cloaked man. Interacting with Vincent was always a bit awkward. Marlene really loved him, and would go on and on about him if given the chance—in return, Denzel teased her endlessly about her cruuu-uuush—but whenever Denzel had to actually talk to him, he was always hard-put to not say something stupid like, "Do you know you look like a vampire?"

Three hours, and now dinner was late; Tifa didn't seem to have noticed what time it was. The dice game kept getting louder, but it felt angrier to Denzel; he caught Marlene's eye and gave her a worried look that she returned with just as much concern. Barret and the robot didn't seem to have noticed, but everyone else definitely had. It didn't take six hours to get to the bakery and back—it was two if you walked. On Fenrir it should have been about twenty minutes, maybe half an hour in this rain. Getting stuff from the bakery always took an hour or two, and long lines of people buying last-minute treats for the anniversary of The World Didn't End Day could explain a bit more, but six was past ridiculous.

The door banged open, and Denzel looked up quickly.

Cloud stood in the doorway, dripping mud and water onto the deliberately large welcome mat—deliberately large because this was a bar and lots of people liked to get a warm drink in cold, rainy weather. But Cloud was long past doused; he was so drenched that even his hair was beginning to droop—what hair Denzel could see, at least. Mud covered him almost completely, coating his clothes; it looked like he'd made some attempt to get it out of his face, but the end result still left brilliant blue eyes staring out from a muddy grey mask.

He looked ridiculous.

There was a quiet round of snickering, followed by a round of barely contained, wheezing laughter, punctuated by Marlene asking innocently, in her best little-girly voice, "Cloo-ooud, did you get into a fight with a mud monster?"

"And here all these years I've been chasing after you with a comb, when all I really needed to tame your hair was a mud puddle," Tifa teased him gently, but Denzel could hear the underlying edge of worry. He sympathized; he was worried. Cloud wasn't crinkling his eyes happily in his strange way of smiling without actually smiling. He hadn't done so for a while, it seemed.

"Mm," Cloud replied, completely without eloquence. Most of Cloud's 'Hm's or 'Mm's were far more eloquent than anyone else's—Denzel figured it was probably because everyone else used actual words more than not, and didn't need to make their 'Mm's convey everything from, "This dinner was the most scrumptious thing I've tasted in ten years, Tifa," to "GET AWAY FROM FENRIR BEFORE YOU SCRATCH IT!" But this one was completely unreadable.

And then Cloud just turned and climbed up the stairs, not even taking off his muddy boots, and vanished from sight.

The laughter died. Tifa took a step toward the stairs, looking like she wanted to follow him, but didn't; instead it was Cid who went, after a quick conversation of glances with Vincent.

Dinner that night was Cloud-less, and much more subdued than the night before had been. There was no cake. There wasn't even much alcohol going around with the adults, and Yuffie didn't do anything so enthusiastic as dance on a table again.

Denzel later learned that Cloud had packed up a few things in his room, slipped out the back, and taken off with Fenrir. Presumably he never looked back. Certainly he didn't return.

---

Seventeen years ago, Aeris's church was deserted. The geostigma plague was gone, and with it, reason to venture so far into the ruins of what had once been the greatest city on the planet. Nowhere else in Midgar would anything living grow; even monsters had ceased to inhabit the city due to a simple lack of food. The church's pool was still a haven, of course, but it was a long and difficult pilgrimage to find it. In a recovering world, such a trek was unfeasible.

He has avoided the church religiously since he came here.

Eighteen years ago he stopped living there and moved back in to his room over the Seventh Heaven bar. It wouldn't have made sense to have stayed; why should he live in a place dedicated to her when she didn't want him there? Or, rather, when she wanted him to be elsewhere—it wasn't that he wasn't wanted. The issue was rather the opposite.

As he looks at it now, trying not to cringe away from the feel it, he wonders if that is still true…if it was ever true.

Nineteen years ago things had been getting rough, and he'd been spending more and more time away from the bar, much to Tifa's dismay. But he couldn't help it. Then, when his geostigma had manifested, he'd started running into all kinds of problems. The Ultima Weapon was continually pale and translucent, and after he'd nearly gotten his head removed in a fight with some of the more stubborn denizens of the wastelands, he'd found the First Tsurugi waiting for him in the church, lying in the flowers.

Now he stares at the closed doors, trying to work up the courage to venture nearer. In his conversations with the others—particularly Vincent—it had come up as a popular suggestion of something that might be able to heal him. Even though the sense of life from beyond prickles at him badly, it makes sense; if he bathes himself in the presence of Gaia, the planet might be able to loosen Jenova's hold on him.

But for all the logical reasoning behind coming here, he is afraid. There is a sense of power and foreboding about the building that he has never felt before, and it fills him with dread.

Don't be stupid. This is her church.

Cringing, he reaches for the hilt of his sword with his right hand, ready to draw it from its sheath at an instant's notice—only to realize that he left his sword in Fenrir, and he's not wearing the sheath anyway, just as he hasn't for years. He hadn't even worn it when he'd gone to that reunion party. But this place evokes memories and feelings that stir old reflexes.

He shakes his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Timidly, he steps forward, closing the gap between him and the door. The power he feels emanating from beyond it frightens him.

Stop delaying…

Before he can over-think it—not that he hasn't already—he reaches out with his left hand and tries to push open the door. Tries is the operative word.

His left arm flares, screaming in agony, before he even manages to touch the door. He gapes at it in horror and surprise, unable to draw enough breath to scream—this is geostigma, come back to haunt him, his flesh bubbling, oozing with black, with the taint of Jenova. This is a burning, searing menace and defilement to the holy place he has tried to enter, melting away into darkness and leaving him floundering on the brink of insanity.

I have sinned, coming here, he thinks dazedly, unable to comprehend why everything grows dark.

---

He wakes to pain, and the sense of small, microscopic bacteria crawling about as they live and split and kill themselves, and thinks that he's woken up like this far too many times. His left arm is throbbing with agony, but when he tries to move it he finds that the sleeve of his coat is empty, although there is no blood staining the shoulder. For a long moment, all he can do is stare at it.

Then he laughs, a weak, crying laugh that leaves him gasping for air, because even that much forced movement is enough to overwhelm him after he's just had his arm ripped off—or dissolved, or whatever. The lack of blood makes him think that it must be cauterized somehow, but he can't bring himself to care enough to look. He's not dead; that's all that matters in the end. It means he'll never be able to fight properly again, not unless he extensively retrains himself to compensate for the sudden loss of weight and ability to balance, but that doesn't matter, not really—he hasn't fought anything for the past fifteen years except himself.

Stumbling to his feet, he flees back to his 'home'; the place with all of his supplies, and his makeshift shelter. He doesn't try the door of the church again; been there, done that, and he's got no desire to be completely armless. Or legless, as he's more inclined to kick in the door at the moment than to show the civility of opening it properly. So he hobbles away instead, sore, tired, and with ghostly pain lingering where his left arm should be.

Maybe I can get one of those claws like Vincent, he thinks giddily as he collapses next to the pile of preserved food, aware that he's half-hysterical from shock—and the dawning pain of being turned away. An arm might be an acceptable sacrifice if he'd gotten something in return, but he has nothing, has lost everything, and he's bitter and cold and tired. Getting a prosthetic would mean coming into contact with people—lots of people, probably. Doctors who make a living by crafting fake limbs don't live in hamlets.

The phone rings. He curses it, but it won't stop ringing. All he really wants to do is pass out again, but his body doesn't seem to be cooperating and the phone's high pitch is irritating. Briefly he considers smashing it, but if he does that his friends will probably come by to investigate. They've made sure to call every single day since they dropped him off here.

He flips it open.

"Cloud?" It's Yuffie's voice; it usually is. She'll start off the conversation and then pass him to one of two of the others. Never everyone; never more than three people per call. He wonders if they think he'll shatter from the sudden human contact, but by the time he's done talking to three people he's exhausted anyway, so it doesn't bother him what they think. "How are you doing?"

"Peachy," he says, his voice higher and quicker than usual; he thinks dimly that maybe this whole losing your arm thing has fucked him up more than he thought, which means that he's really screwed. "Just peachy!"

"What happened?" she asks quickly. He imagines that he can feel her worry seeping through the phone; it's a nice daydream to just imagine it. If she were closer then there would be no need to imagine, and no way for him to daydream.

"I don't think Aeris likes me anymore," he blurts, twitching. He wants to bury his head in his hands, but his right hand is holding the phone and his left is—well, not there anymore. Instead he flops down on the ground; his hair cushions his head nicely. It's an advantage. "Or Gaia."

"Cloud?"

"Took my fucking arm," he mutters dazedly. "It's just kinda gone."

"What?" she cries, her voice tinny and distorted by the phone. It's not a reassuring sound, and some part of him wants to snidely point that out to her. Another part wonders—since when did he begin to expect Yuffie, of all people, to act like his mother? Aeris and Tifa…well, he's got a screwed up past, and they're both that type of person. But Aeris is gone—and hates him now, anyway—and Tifa always sounds like she's about to start crying over the phone. Still…Yuffie's a weird replacement.

"Vanished," he says, feeling acid well up in the back of his throat. "Tried to open the door to the church, boom. There you go. I'll be fine."

He hangs up the phone before he breaks it, dropping it to the ground so he can fumble to clutch at his left arm—or rather, his left shoulder. Damn it, nothing that doesn't exist should hurt so much. The shoulder-guard is in the way, and he thinks bitterly how useless it is even as a memento; he is clearly banned from that world now. It's difficult to undo the buckles with one hand, and even harder because his hand is shaking so badly, but somehow he gets the damn thing off and throws it as hard as he can, watches it fly over the ruined walls of a low-slung building and disappear.

The ache of loss is almost enough to drown out the faint whispers of life brushing against his skin, and he lies there helpless, shivering and hoping that his friends don't venture into his ruins to look for him.