Disclaimer: You think I own this? Go take your meds.

A/N: I think this could be a fun one. Everyone enjoy, alright?

Panic comes first, the sudden realization of just how helpless humans are. How thin skin is, how nails are no substitute for claws. Humans are fragile things, needing armor and weapons to defend themselves. Cloud is keenly aware he has neither.

Boot prints are following him, that he's sure of now. The circles he's been traveling in are the best way to not get lost .

(How can he get more lost than he is now? He doesn't even know how he got here wherever here is)

The prints didn't mean much at first. In this empty place where the wind doesn't blow and the quiet is practically a living presence snarling to not be disturbed who knew when those tracks were made? A year ago, ten years ago, yesterday?

He's never wished for a compass more in his life and he hated orienteering. It feels like he's been going in circles for hours, how far does this forest go? The woods all look the same, maybe those tracks might lead somewhere.

(Anywhere)

Where they came from he doesn't know but when his own smaller bare prints start getting swallowed up by the large stamp of a boot, when his tracks are the ones deciding the way then Cloud knows he's in deep shit.

All those self-defense techniques won't help him now, not when he doesn't know where the man is, what he has, or why he's following an unarmed boy. By now naïve is something Cloud isn't and its not hard to think the worst of people anymore. Cloud knows whoever the watcher is, he can't (no girl he's ever known had boots that big) be friendly.

The panic is overwhelming. Some living thing has moved into his abdomen, struggling and twisting like a moth trying to free itself from a chrysalis.

(When he looks down it's a surprise to see his stomach looks the same and nothing is visibly trying to claw its way out.)

Cloud is used to the helplessness of the labs but there he never had the chance to fight, to realize how easily damaged he is. Fragility is still new to Cloud, strange and foreign but he's beginning to realize how terrifyingly true it is.

(He could break. Like a piece of his mother's china. Just like that.)

Here there's no Sephiroth to kill the dragon in one stroke. Or kill Tifa in one stroke.

(Shut up shut up shut up don't think about it, not now.)

The prints are army boots. The man is probably tall, giving him at least a height advantage. Probably armed as well. Part of his mind might be screaming in panic, hyperventilating and urging him run and hide, but another part is watching everything from a safe distance. The world is in sharp, clear, cold focus. What he can do – break off a sharp branch, head to whatever those ruins are, set up an ambush if he can – what he must do to survive is logically laid out like its the most obvious thing in the world. It doesn't actually feel like he's really there, more like this is a scene from somewhere and he's watching it distantly.

The safety of this distance is only in his head (Is it his head inside his head?) but he needs it right now. Needs to not stop moving. If he stops then the hysteria will set in, he'll be a helpless bundle of fright, an easy target for whoever's following him.

He'll be damned before he's an easy target. Everything else he can't control but the little scrap he can he'll cling to no matter what.

(All he has left.)

The looking around for whatever he could use led him to the ball. A small red ball like the one he had a lifetime ago.

- Hey, we're going to be late for dinner if you don't hurry! Mom'll be worried. -

He practically leapt out of his skin. A boy is standing there, a few feet behind the ball. A small boy with spiky blond hair.

Its a face he's very familiar with, no matter how young it is. Cloud is sure he's lost his mind now, sure this is some sick dream and he almost wants to go back to the labs, back to the burning, at least he's pretty sure that's real.

The boy he's looking at is himself, at the age of ten.

He doesn't faint, but it's a close thing.

Review? Maybe there'll be more?