Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Suspended Within ❯ Prologue and Part I : Beginnings of a Dream ( Chapter 1 )

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Prologue
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// monologue //
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Dreams.

Somehow, I stopped dreaming the day Zack died. I don't even have proper memories of how he died until I visited the underground laboratory at the Shinra mansion. A dream there told me about his link to my past.

Dreams.

They have come back. After Sephiroth was gone for good. Now and then, dreams come back and bring me back to the times I had forgotten. After a while, it did not feel like I was just recalling my memories. I don't just remember them the 'normal' way the doctor I met at Mideel said I probably would. I seem to be in them, going through what I had been through all over again.

Dreams.

Now and then. Then and now. What's the difference?

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- A week after Meteor's fall -

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The day was peaceful.
Everything was over - the fighting, the destruction, the noise.
Only silence was left.

Cloud lay on a patch of sparsely grown grass, looking at the sky. The sun was only an hour away from crowning the earth in her full glory.

//I never realized the sun could be this bright.//

Stretching lazily, Cloud did not bother to look around him. His defences and skills of observation totally lax for once; which surprised, or even perhaps shocked him a little. He had not meant to let his guard down like that out in the open, even if he had just saved the whole world from destruction. Any monsters that happen to take a stroll would just chance by a good meal.

//If a Mako-filled being can be considered as a good meal, that is. The monster would probably die of food poisoning.//

It was over. All over. No more talks of destroying the world from anyone now, and no more annoying voices in one's head conflicting.

Safer Sephiroth in all its seraphim glory had been fought. And he went down with equal grandour.

Cloud then visualized the moment when he was fighting the silver-haired man one-on-one for the last time.

//Strange...I could picture him dressed in something else other than that black trenchcoat, but how? And there was oftentimes a dark-haired man beside him...Ah yes, that had to be Zack. Sephiroth? Beside Zack? And...where do I fit into the picture?//

Cloud squinted his eyes and placed a gloved hand over them, blocking out the sun's burning rays.

Right after the ordeal of Meteor falling, the spikey-headed youth had let go of all tension that held him together, of all responsibilities that tensed his muscles for action. Now that nothing else seems to preoccupy his mind anymore, he felt he could just fall asleep then and there.

He did not remember much of his past, even after all those battles. He had figured out who he was, or at least, came to the resolution that he would face up to what he really was. It had ended there, and there was no one alive from his past to tell him more.

So the past had to come back and tell his story to him.

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- End Prologue -
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Standard FFVII disclaimers apply
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Suspended Within

A FFVII fanfiction by Nefas

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Part I : Beginnings of a Dream
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Just make believe
I am who I want to be
My dream

Just make believe
That I am who I am
My ambition

Beyond pleasure
Fill my void
With your dreams
That which I sought

Just make believe
I am real
I am free

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All I saw was a long, empty corridor. A solid cage of grey metal and concrete dressed the narrow aisle that seemed to go on forever. So distant and cold that I could only sit there and remain still. Very still.

The room doors were all shut, and hushed was this dorm.
I knew in my mind the other troopers were all behind these steel doors. The doors were not as heavy as they appeared to be, for with a light tug, I had closed the one behind me an hour ago.

Silence.

How I hated such silence.
Silence which made me think, which made voices from the past trespass the barrier I created.

Voices which flood my mind.

"You're a loser, a bastard!"

Sarcastic voices like such would echo, dragged from the deep recesses of my mind back into my life. Children's voices sounded, none of them sweet and innocent; no one would know how twisted and poisonous I can perceive children to be.

My mind wanders. Again.
A sigh escapes, and memories seep in to replace the unbearable silence.

That was only two years ago...

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- 2 years ago -
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I opened the door, and my mother was there.
She hurried over and wordlessly led me in by the arm, and sat me down on the bed as she brought over a basin of water. She always prepared a basin of clear, soothing water at the side of the room.

In our small house, everything was accessible, all the assets we had could be seen and counted just by looking through in one clean sweep.

I glanced out the window when she held out a wet handkerchief and helped me rub the nasty, mud-caked bruise at the corner of my mouth. A 'present' given to me for being different.

The others were still with their games, prancing around the pitiful excuse of a fountain. How loathful they were, with their silly games of mindless catching and hiding.

"My dear, you mustn't think of hating them," a mellow, calming voice sang beside my ear.

I flinched at the words, for they were never wrong. Mother was always right; she knew me inside out.

Girls are nicer. Granted that most of them are not that nice, like the older ladies around the shops, they are still all right. How would I say it? The old ladies around would suddenly stop their chattering when they see me, and would look at me with wierd wrinkled frowns which I don't really find offensive.

I don't like boys. The boys in the town are silly, they don't know anything. They only know how to hit me with stones and make me do humiliating things. They don't want to play with me, but it's all right. I don't want to play with them either. They're jerks.
The older menfolk around would scold me when I did something wrong. They would beat me when I did nothing wrong.

There was a girl a year younger than I was. I always hear people calling her "Tifa". So her name must be Tifa.

She looked like a nice person. Though she never said a kind word to me, she never said a bad word either. She would always look at the other boys in this strange fierce manner when they beat me up. She's the leader of the stupid gang, but she was okay. She didn't join them in hurting me.

I wish she'd look at me in the eye, and smile, or something. I'll make her see I'm much better than any of the losers she hangs out with.

Then the soothing voice whispered beside my ear again.

"Don't go out if it hurts you, Cloud."

"......"

"I'll cook dinner, so just stay here and study your maths. I'll call you when the food's ready."

"Okay, mom."

Often, I wondered what the boys meant when they called me a 'bastard'. I never knew the exact meaning of the word. The way they call me that and link it to words like loser, scum, or rubbish, I'd guess it'll be all along the same lines.

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Cloud realized that he was sitting down, leaning at the door, still in his trooper uniform, helmet on the floor by his side. Feeling dazed and dreamy, he tilted his head to reveal his eyes, and stared blankly at his surroundings.

Same grey metal.
Same cold steel.
Same concrete cage.

At times, he would not bother to change out of his uniform, since it did not matter to anyone. Wearing it helped him fit in with the rest, and remain nothing more than a 'trooper' to his superiors. He was tired, and did not want to catch anymore attention than he needed to.

The first and last time he tried only brought shame and disappointment to him in a long run. The young boy, drunk in his thoughts, covered his head with his arms and tried to forget the far-fetched promise in Nibelheim he made to himself and the world two years ago...

The dormitary was not so quiet anymore, as light footsteps sounded through the corridor. The young trooper's head was still heavy with those haunting words of his past. Cloud tilted his head up, and the sound of footsteps were gone.

Perhaps it was just an illusion, perhaps he was too exhausted from the day's work, but he was grateful for the silence to be broken for the night; enough for him to break the train of depressing thoughts.

Strands of his unkempt golden hair leaned over his shoulder, which his hand absently caressed as his shoulders crouched over, nearly touching his knees. He wrapped his free hand around his calves, and nearly succeeded in blending himself in with the cold steel door of his quarters.

"Cloud?"

A young man's voice questioned the figure huddled against the door.

"What are you doing here?"

Cloud slowly lifted his head, and stared upwards. It took him quite a while before he could register the face of an officer.

With a jump, all dream-like traces of thoughts vanished from his mind. The blond teenager hopped straight to his feet and did a silent salute, for in all his shock, he still could remember that it was in the middle of the night, in which no one in his decent mind would shout 'SIR' in the middle of the reverberation-sensitive dorm.

The aforementioned officer raised an eyebrow, then smiled. The corridor lights flickered dimly, and accented the tanned youth's already firm features. A large burden of a sword behind his back, yet he had made his way skillfully to Cloud's side.

Cloud looked down.

"It's okay," the dark youth comforted as he gave a small grin, "we all need our time alone. Must've been terrible having no personal space, sharin' your room with three others."

Cloud refused to look up, head still bowed down in possible shame. He was reproaching himself.
"I must have appeared so useless right in front of Zack!
I'm a fool - no wonder I never made it into SOLDIER!"

Zack looked at Cloud for another moment, and ruffled his hand through the trooper's hair. Which immediately after caused the dark youth to quickly recoil his hand and inspecting it, for he suspected he may have gotten a splinter in it, with the way his subordinate's hair was spiking out like a porcupine.

Satisfied that he would not need to get a needle to pick out the splinters from his hand, the dark-haired boy signaled for the fairer one to follow him.

"Sir?"

"Don't call me that, I'm your friend, right?"

"...Zack, where are we going?" Cloud was slightly dazed, for his SOLDIER friend never gave much of a reason for what he did.

"Something fun, of course!" came Zack's hushed but excited reply. "Want to see the Great General Sephiroth train?"

That lit up the young blond's eyes. He had always idolized Sephiroth, the strongest SOLDIER ever to walk on the earth. He always fantasized that if he were as strong as Sephiroth, no one would question him about where his father went, or how rich or poor he was, but they would just take him as he is. To see him as Cloud, not just a boy without a father, a loser. A bastard.

At that point, Cloud couldn't resist asking.

"Zack, what's a 'bastard'?"

Zack stopped in his tracks, and grabbed Cloud's arm firmly, but not painfully. The ebony haired-youth's eyes glistened with a sharpness of a predator, but his target was not Cloud.

"Who called you that?"

Cloud hesitated, then replied carefully. "No one in particular. I'm just curious."

"Well, to call someone a 'bastard' is to say that his parents are, like, not married to each other."

"...I see." Cloud's head drooped, slowly putting the cruel word in place with the children who had played with him.

"Hey, you know guys in the army all speak like that. Rough and tough, ya know, language isn't something they're particular with," the taller youth offered an explanation to his blond friend, who at this time, decided to snap out of all that moodiness and enjoy this late night treat of watching his idol in action.

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If I make it into SOLDIER, I'll appear in the newspapers. Maybe I'd fight alongside Sephiroth. If I were only as strong as Sephiroth, everyone would respect me...

And Tifa will definitely notice me.

"...oud?"

I thought I heard my name. Did someone hear my thoughts?

"What are you thinking about now, Cloud?"

I did hear my name, and I looked around me.
Where was Zack? He was here only a moment ago...
The walls and ceilings are distorted, and I looked at my hands. My gloves...not the usual black Shinra fare, but more armored and protected, with straps of metal and leather.

Was this all a dream?

Vaguely, something was bugging me, trying to tell me something. Maybe I should just shut all my other senses and listen.

"You shouldn't be here."

Then I decided to open my eyes.

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"Cloud?"

A female voice sounded. It wasn't his mother, for she would not have sounded as sweet, as birdlike. This voice was less mellow, and much younger.

The man's eyes opened, and blinked a few times.
"What's up, Tifa?"

The girl smiled and sat over the ledge of the low wall beside the boy. Cloud dragged himself up from the patch of grass and sat up, leaning on the waist-high wall. The pair were not that old, yet all the fighting had taken away their childlike features. Tifa's smile was innocent, yet not in the least naive or gullible.

"Did I disturb you?"

"No."

Swinging her slender long legs over the edge casually, Tifa looked at the far away ruins that was once Midgar. Even as they spoke, red glows of still burning amber and metallic ashes floated lazily towards their direction. Only a few days ago, the ashes belonged to the magnificent city that ruled the world.

"What were you thinking just now, Cloud?"

"Nothing in particular. I'm still a little dazed from all that has happened."

"Me too," the young lady empathized, placing a gentle, gloved hand on Cloud's unarmored shoulder.

"So many things have happened...and sometimes I think it's all my fault. I keep thinking that I could have stopped Sephiroth long ago...that I could have stopped Zack's death..."

"It's not your fault. You couldn't do anything," the gentle voice came again, each accented syllable increasingly haunting.

"Don't think about it if it hurts you."

//The blue-eyed boy glanced up at his mother for a moment as she said those very words, wondering why she had said this. It was impossible not to ignore the bullies, and out of his control to make them stop piling insults on him. His mother only smiled. As if nothing happened.//

Cloud shuddered as Tifa's voice sounded, then took out his buster sword and subconciously ran a finger down the edge.

Noting the near-invisible frown on the young warrior, the girl asked, "why don't you tell me about Zack? He must be a very nice person. I'd like to know...if it isn't inconvenient."

"......"

"It's okay if you don't want to talk about it. Just remember I'll be there if you need me."

With that, Tifa stood up and patted Cloud's shoulder.

"I'll be with the others at the inn." She gave a smile, but it was tinged with pain, for she knew her friend was in some sort of turmoil which she probably could never understand. It would be best to respect his privacy and leave him alone for a while. She walked off, leaving Cloud to rearrange his thoughts as he stared blankly at the mess of distant debris.

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Meteor was gone.
Holy was gone.

Sephiroth...was gone.

//Sometimes I would not hear what I want to hear.
I am a puppet, a mere servent at Jenova's beck and call.
Sephiroth works for Jenova. And I work for him. One word from him and I would hand him the black materia and would kill Aerith if I had enough time to do so.//

However, it's all over.
No more Jenova, no more Sephiroth.
No more talks of Black or White Materia now.
No one knows where they all are...

As if they never existed in the first place.

As if nothing ever happened.

//Why am I still feeling so empty after all this?
I can't seem to see anything beyond this debris.//

**Because you were a puppet, and will always be a puppet...**

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This phrase was not as painful as it used to be when it rang through Cloud's head. He had come to terms with having been a servant under Sephiroth's will, and admitted himself to having once been weak.

There was still something he couldn't place.
Was Sephiroth under Jenova's control, or was Jenova under his control?

"That," Cloud thought, "I'll probably never know for as long as I live."

Then another thought struck Cloud.

"How long would I live?"

The whispers of the winds ceased, and there was silence once more, allowing the blond hero delve into dreams without needing much persuasion.

Already, the thin line between dreams and reality being treaded on was breaking...

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~ End Part I - Beginnings of a Dream ~