Chapter 25: It’s All in the Mind.
“Are you listening, Cloud? I’m trying to help you here, the least you can do is show some signs of…. you know, life.”
“……”
“And now I’m turning into a nagging wife. Great. This surely isn’t going to drive me crazy or anything.”
“Tend-… oh wow, that is something I never thought I’d hear coming out of the mouth of a guy!”
“Hey, that’s sexist.”
“Well…. yeah, maybe, but I’m trying to imagine Barret saying something like that — or even better: Cid — and my mind immediately starts laughing like a lunatic.”
“I… can’t blame you for that. But I’ll do you one better: try to imagine Yuffie saying it.”
“Um…. yeah, I can’t. Sorry.”
“It’s OK. Now then…. are you ready for some tender feeling? Secret wishes?”
“You kiddin’ me, bro? I live for that sort of thing.”
“I mean… finding out that your life is a huge lie is never easy. Or that Sephiroth’s been rummaging around in it. Or that your life has been one big failure. Or that…”
“You lost me after ‘I’ll be here for you’.”
“Hey, no need to be rude. Or ungrateful.”
“Yes. We just went through the real version not that long ago, remember?”
“……”
“Well, a rebuilt version, granted, after it was burned to the ground, but… you know….”
“A young, sexy, hot guy who just…. mmmmmm…. sorry, what were we talking about again?”
“……..my life?”
“Oh. Haha. Uh… sorry.”
“What? My parents or Sephiroth’s? You know that we can’t influence any of this, right?”
“…..yes.”
“Well… look on the bright side; at least Sephiroth can’t butt in here and be a huge troll.”
“Yaaaaaay.”
“That’s the least enthusiastic ‘yaaaaay’ I’ve ever heard.”
“Though in hindsight, I do find it amusing that the reason why he didn’t mention who his father is was because… well….”
“Hojo.”
“Genetics can be funny sometimes, huh?”
“….yeah.”
“Well… I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m almost missing ‘detached, cool Cloud’. You’re going to get a crick in your neck if you’re going to stand around like that.”
“You might wonder why we didn’t tell you that from the start, but… uh…. yeah, that’s a good question, actually.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Timing is everything.”
“But I could have gone through more of my childhood or adolescence while also being reasonably mentally healthy?”
“Timing is everything.”
“But…. my mental health.”
“TIMING IS EVERYTHING!”
“And two mooks, but who cares about them?”
“…..”
“I mean… what did they do with their lives?”
“…..um…”
“And I was so disappointed that Cloud didn’t return anyway.”
“….well.”
“But anyway, where were we? Oh, me helping you through your problems. Isn’t that nice of me?”
“…..yes.”
“Yes. Let’s… let’s drag this experience to the breaking point.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“Yaaay, psychiatry in baby steps.”
“Psychiatry is always about baby steps, Cloud.”
“Oh.”
“Though this must be the first time I’ve taken baby steps in the baby steps. However that works.”
“Remember all those stars? Jeez, that’s awfully demanding of you.”
“No, I meant… *sigh* …just the sky. Were you also this difficult as a child?”
“….yes. I mean…. no.”
“Sure, she thought I was cute then, but… but….”
“Um… don’t worry. You’re still quite the prettyboy today, Cloud.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. That’s probably why Aeris put me in a dress.”
“I need to have a talk with her about that.”
“……”
“Wait, I can’t do that anymore, can I?”
“Which doesn’t make any sense, since that would imply that before we met again, you had no story. But then, Sephiroth is full of crap, so…”
“But how much has he been my scriptwriter? That is the thing that keeps me up at night. And sitting on a well.”
“Um… little by little, Cloud. Let’s do this slowly.”
“Tifa, if I need to do this any slower than I already am, I’m going to have to sit down.”
“And that’s a bad idea because…?”
“I dunno.”
“And you know, it’s important to remember that…. you gotta beliiieeeeeve! I learned that from a flat, 2D cartoon dog.”
“Uh…”
“Still better than taking advice from Sephiroth.”
“Oh, we’re doing the ‘still a better love story than Twilight’ thing, huh? I can dig it.”
“Look, Tifa, I’m already confused enough as it is. Can we please not start arguing about semantics as well?”
“Oh, so we are talking about memories. Just… really deep ones. Like… moody deep.”
“Well, we’re having an argument in the lifestream, and I’m not even sure if I’m arguing with you or myself. Or both. Or neither. Anyway, real talk. About real memories.”
“Hmmm, OK, understandable. Desperate, but understandable. I guess if one thinks there’s no such thing as bad publicity, anything that gets you noticed is a good thing.”
“Why, thank you, dr. Krüger.”
“And girls think boys are dense about their feelings.”
“That’s a bit below the belt.”
“You use suspenders.”
“Um… that’s not the point.”
“I mean… back when we were kids, before you asked me to come to the well, I barely even knew you existed.”
“……”
“…..oh.”
“Am I going to regret this?”
“If you have a heart… maybe?”
“That answer makes me more afraid than anything else.”
“Oh dear lord, it’s the ‘tender memories’ part. This does nothing to make me less afraid.”
“I thought you were the one who were going to be a pillar of support for me in this endeavour. Should I give you a shoulder to lean on, Tifa?”
“I… might take you up on that. I’ll add it to my desire to have you come rescue me.”
“Erm…. all the time?”
“Of course not. I’m not crazy or anything, but you were kind of the top of the social chain in this tiny town.”
“….why?”
“Because we were kids, and girls who do… shall we say ‘less feminine things’… tend to be more popular with boys than those who don’t, even if we never really understood why. Although the explanation might be as simple as ‘people with similar interests just play better together’.”
“So… what about boys with feminine interests?”
“Uh…. I wouldn’t know. I was a loner, remember?”
“Oh, right. You used to come around to my house just to stand around outside.”
“Aaaaand?”
“Well, I honestly found that kind of weird.”
“Well, what did you do when the kids already inside told you I was there?”
“I…. uh, kind of ignored you. I mean…. you didn’t even knock on the door. You just stood there and stared!”
“We never spoke, and I’ve never been in your room, but you thought we were close?”
“Um…. well, everyone thought I was so nice.”
“Yeah, I mean… when you dragged us all along on your mountain hike, they all blamed me when everything went wrong, but I’m getting ahead of myself.”
“I was a weird kid, no question about that.”
“Boy, this thing turned really awkward, really quickly, didn’t it?”
“Yeah. Well, that’s prepubescence for you.”
“So, you turned into a chuunibyou, basically?”
“Um…. what exactly is that?”
“Actually… never mind. Forget I asked.”
“I had to deal with a guy spending so much of his time standing outside of my room, staring in, and then suddenly that very person asked me to come to the well in the middle of the night.”
“Why?”
“Um… well, you see… uh, nothing. I totally wasn’t worried that you’d murder me, dump my body in the well and wear my dress.”
“Look, I’m not into wearing women’s dresses, OK? That was totally Aeris’s idea.”
“That’s the assumption you take offense at?”
“Huh? Oh! Yeah, I’m totally not into murdering little girls and dumping their corpses either. I promise.”
“I believe you, but I can also tell why we never learned whether there were any boys with feminine interests in our little sleepy hometown.”
“Well… before Sephiroth burned it to the ground, that is. And then Shinra rebuilt it and filled it up with actors who were told to live as the last inhabitants of the town did. I mean… it takes a lot to make this bizarre fever dream of my own past seem like the more normal version of events, doesn’t it?”
“Well, we’re not done yet.”
“Is it kind of weird that, once you were beyond my reach, suddenly I was far more interested in you?”
“Well…. yes, but…. we were kids?”
“That’s a ‘get out of jail free’ card in most situations, isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
*whew* “Good.”
“Most situations.”
“Oh, bugger!”
“And we’re back to that thing I mentioned earlier.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t remember what that might have been because my mom died!”
“Oh, don’t worry, because I blame the adults for that.”
“Um… that’s not how mountains work. Or death.”
“Yes, I know that now, but…”
“We were once kids.”
“That’s an Oscar bait movie title if I ever heard one.”
“Do we even have academy awards in this universe?”
“Nah.”
“So… I know this bridge broke down during the flashback with Sephiroth from earlier, but it didn’t break this time, right? I mean… you’d think the people living nearby would have just taken it down if it was that untrustworthy.”
“That would have been the sensible thing to do, yes.”
“We are sensible people, aren’t we?”
“Yep, deffo. Anyway, back to death mountain….”
“And then they all blamed me for everything.”
“Well, I was unconscious for seven days, so there wasn’t much I could do about that.”
“And why would they assume I brought you there when… you know, we never socialized much, did we? I’d assume they would blame the other boys instead — or, you know, you making a rash decision in your grief — but I guess I was just the easily available weirdo they didn’t need to feel bad for blaming, huh?”
“Yikes! Good thing I didn’t die, then.”
“Indeed.”
“And this turned really awkward again.”
“Wait, so… when I later told you I dreamed about you coming to my rescue….”
“No, that didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“That must have done wonders for your public image, huh?”
“Yeah, well, all the adults were pretty much ‘See? We were right to mistrust him. He’s out of control.’ Which, as I’m sure you can imagine, did not make things better.”
“Yes, well… it would probably have helped. But, you know… concussions and fall damage.”
“In hindsight, ‘fall damage’ sounds like such a fun way of describing ‘someone falling to their potential death, or at least various times of hospital bed-bound…edness’.”
“Well… no. But I already knew that.”
“Oh. Well, why the hugely dramatical moment?”
“Because I was still controlled by Sephiroth, and I need to find out how that happened. And you know what they say about the past and stuff.”
“Uh…. I dunno.”
“Yeah, neither do I. Let’s move on.”
“Um… why?”
“Hey, if you’re going to drag me back and forth all over the place, I’m going to get in on that fun.”
“….wut?”
“Just kidding. No, something important happened there, I can feel it.”
“It better.”
“Oh, listen to Miss ‘Let’s Take Our Time’ here.”
“I was…. there.”
“Where there?”
“Here.”
“Where here? There?”
“Everywhere.”
“And here it comes.”
“Waaaaaaait for it….”
“I AM MOOK!”
“I remember thinking ‘Great! As if I needed one more reason to get nervous and fidgety whenever you got close to me’. Especially since you… uh, grew up. Quite a lot.”
“Oh, it wasn’t you being all shy and stuff. I mean… you might not know this, but a lot of girls love being flirty with shy people and watch them get all fidgety. Well… at least during those formative teenage years.”
“Which we’re still in, by the way.”
“Well… yeah. So…..”
“Uh…..”
“Hee hee. Still entertaining.”
*cough* “Anyway….”
“I was the military version of a high-school dropout.”
“Now, now. As we established, it’s not easy to become a part of SOLDIER! It’s more like a very high-end college with some nefarious human experimenting on the side. I mean… you HAVE to WRITE the title in all-caps. It’s that IMPORTANT!”
“And Sephiroth’s sarcasm certainly didn’t help.”
“…yes, we’re all very aware of that.”
“You even got the Princess carry you wanted so much.”
“I was unconscious. It didn’t count.”
“Oh, come ON!”
“But no pressure, hey.”
“Shush! Don’t interrupt our moment.”
“Sorry.”
“And of course I got stabbed.”
“C’mon, Cloud. Believe in yourself.”
“But I totally ignored the pain, lifted him up by the sword piercing my chest and then threw him off the ledge like Darth Vader threw Palpatine into space.”
“TOO FAR!”
“Which will probably be very shortly. Except for me. Even my lifestream dream self needed time to grow up. Or something.”
“Hey, don’t make this complicated.”
“And everything you saw down here wasn’t?”
“Not in the same way, no.”
“You big failure. You need someone to look after you, don’t you. Not that I really care that much about you, but I guess I can do that if you really need me to.”
“Uh… Tifa, I’m not into tsunderes.”
“Oh. Well… let’s just go, then.”
“Anyway, how do we do that?”
“….um… I dunno.”
“What?!”
“OK, don’t worry. I’ll figure something out.”
“Got it! We’ll take the magical elevator.”
“That makes no sense, but whatever. I just want to get the hell out of here now.”
“But we had such fun times.”
“Yeah, sure. I just had to endure all my life’s failures and embarrassments in an astoundingly short time, and pretty soon, I’ll have to relive all that with the rest of our team. They’re waiting for us, aren’t they? If they haven’t all ran away screaming, that is.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve spent most of the last couple of days staring at you, sitting in your little wheelchair; drool running down your adorable face.”
“Oh, for the love of… did the others see that too?”
“Some of them, yeah.”
“…I think I want to go back down.”
“Now, now, Cloud. Be brave.”
“He’s right behind me, isn’t he?”
“Well… yeah. And…?”
“Nothing. I’ve just always wanted to say that.”
“….you’re being weird.”
“Yeah, well, if that’s the worst thing I’ve even been, I should be fine.”
“I guess.”
“Is this the kind of conversation you had inside the lifestream too?”
“Yeah! Cool, isn’t it?”
“No.”
“Rude.”
“Well, at least our little SOLDIER boy is back. That’s gotta count for something.”
“Not really.”
“You still got some life stream on you. Go take a shower.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.”
“What did she mean? Oh, but we already know all that, don’t we? But how can you know yourself? How can anyone? Where do we all go from here?”
“Can we ever repent? The things we have done?”
“Sure. Ya just gotta get on that train and then blow it up. With bombs.”
“So there is a way to get offa this train?”
“I guess. Explosions fix everything.”
“Will the two of you shut up! I have the worst headache right now.”