His dreams never came easy.
Sleep was difficult, he often woke in a haze, bleary eyed thinking that a friend, a lover, a loved one, would be sitting at his feet. If there was one thing he was incapable of... it was letting go.
The grip the past coiled around him was stifling.
He had fallen into the dark of it underneath the starlight, knit in all of his grief; he rarely gave this memory any room to speak the truth it needed to.
The stone hewn walls dimly lit by the green glow of mako; flickering, casting warm translucent shadows, only vaguely illuminated what this place once was. Still is. His birth place. Sephiroth's birth place. The origins of everything. Of loss, of grief, gilded with hope, love and strength.
Buried as deep as the rest of ShinRa's secrets, the basement held so much horror, so much pain, so much suffering; and the damp smell of mold mixed with the almost sewage-like scent of processed mako, burned his eyes and nose. This place was burned into him like a brand, it had remade him, killed him, resurrected him and built him into what and who he was.
It was this place that gave him all of his strength, his power, the battle prowess he had needed to both survive and stop the destruction that Sephiroth and his father wrought through their willful malevolence and machinations.
A place he had tried to forget, tried so very hard- until it broke him, and he fragmented over and over, becoming a dangerous mixture of experience, a shattered mirror that reflected his childhood, the girl he wanted to notice him, the man who became his best friend, the monster that reconstructed him; and none of them at all.
His mind had been too fragile. They were right to not choose him for the SOLDIER program.
Instead, he became a labrat, with Zack, always facing him; while he drifted in and out of consciousness, his best friend promising him over and over with his expression that they'd get out of here some day.
But the days turned to weeks turned to months- and they both lost count of how many passed. Between the screams, of Hojo stripping him down to his bones, of injecting, mixing, surgically enhancing; shushing him with his concoctions to force him into the darkness of unconscious mind and thought- he could not remember anything of the outside world.
He would be taken from the room, same as Zack, only to be returned to his tank, after sedation or waking long enough to feel the ache of each part of him being refined through Hojo's hands. Only did it refill once a day for feeding and relieving them both. He couldn't recall much of it. Zack was keeping the time of it all, observing, waiting for the right moment;
It all feels so vivid. So wildly real that when he has this nightmare... he is frantic. He nearly chokes when the mako invades his lungs as he comes to; he is wide awake, and in panic punches the glass over and over.
One.
The tank shakes. The pipes shift with a terrible metallic sound.
Two.
It begins to buckle.
Three.
Spiderweb cracks travel across the surface and connect in the center.
Four.
The mako begins to leak from the fissures and then he slams his feet into the weakest part of the glass, causing it to shatter; it all rushes out with him and he coughs, gasping, falling on his knees, his chest aching, his eyes bright with the infusion in the low light;
White hot rage burns in his fingers, he rises after he catches his breath- and flips over an entire desk, all of its notes, glass beakers, lamps and burners and needles; tearing books from shelves, overturning the jars lining them, he picks up the end of the familiar oak desk that "the professor" would sit at- with great ease and slams it into Zack's tank.
It connects with his prison, wood splinters, the legs break off one side, but he lifts it again and slams it hard in succession again and again until it gives way. He never wanted this. Not for him, not for Zack, not for Tifa- and having known he killed Sephiroth was not enough back then.
He will never go through this again. Never.
He drops the broken desk and goes about destroying everything within reach. There's a commotion outside the door, he can hear the guards, but.... this is his nightmare, isn't it? So as the door opens, he waits behind it, lets him enter a little- and slams it into the first guard, knocking him back with a yell He can hear a gun being cocked. It's fired. He dodges their bullets effortlessly- He picks up a unbroken jar and slams it into their head with brute force when they attempt reloading with shaking hands.
He can hear their neck snap as they crumple to the ground.
The second guard has no time to yell for help. Cloud grabs the end of his rifle and uses its weight to slam it into their chest. Ribs shatter and break under the force, he grabs the barrel, flips it around, and uses the heel of it to connect with his face under his helmet; the second falls flat on his back.
Both begin to evaporate at his feet in swirls of green particles and light; they're dying and he doesn't care. They're complicit. One of them fed him. The other hauled him to and from the surgery suite. No matter how much he screamed or cried there was no escape. There would be no mercy here either.
But it's... strange. He'd expected to wake by now... his knuckles are bleeding, and he can feel the sting, it must've been from the glass- and then it dawns on him. Maybe he's not dreaming at all.
In the corner of his eye, a man with shock of black hair, pale skin and hollows of eyes where twin stars sit looks stoically on; he does not move, he does not smile- Cloud blinks and he is gone. Strange, that... he shakes his head. Zack.
That's right... Zack! FUCK.
He turns on his heels then to see his friend alive, he goes to him and kneels, offering his steady hand to his shoulder and tries to bring him to his feet; the ache returns to him, in a way he can never rid himself of;
He had died so long ago, but Cloud lived on for the two of them... bearing his legacy at his back with the weight of all that came with it.
Freedom did not come without cost.
Neither did becoming a hero. He had come to embrace both and what they had meant; but if he can save anyone... right now... it's him.
"Can you walk?"
He asks with urgency;
"There were only two... but there's more upstairs. We have to move."
