Final Fantasy VII: Children of Jenova

Chapter 28

In the seven years since Sephiroth's defeat, the Gold Saucer had picked
up a few new attractions. Dio had finally gotten off his butt and built
a four-star restaurant in the thing, mainly because he was tired of
watching the paying customers go elsewhere for a bite to eat instead of
dropping their dough in the Saucer's confines. He had also built a
little something to keep the grownups occupied while their spawn ran
amok. This was Starlight Square. 

Starlight Square, to C.J., was the final frontier. The sign posted on
the door (No one under 18 allowed) gave the place that forbidden-fruit
air, and she had often said she couldn't wait until she was old enough
to see what lay on the other side of the door. Cid, in typical father
fashion, had just as often told her it was a boring place with no video
games or rides or anything. C.J., of course, was an intelligent child,
and she knew that places you weren't supposed to go usually contained
something interesting.

Naturally, in her apparently-over-18 state, C.J. was determined to get a
look at the place on their visit...if only just so that she could brag
to Zack that she did. This even took precedence over G-Bike on her list
of Gold Saucer priorities. 

Supposedly, Zack had somehow grown up just like she had. That was a
relief. It was bad enough in C.J.'s mind that all of her school friends
were afraid of her; she couldn't stand the thought of Zack hating her
too. He would understand. He /had/ to understand. 

Well, at least /she/ thought so.

Zack hadn't exactly greeted anyone warmly when they arrived at the
Saucer; even his own mother barely got a hug and a peck on the cheek.
Sure, this struck C.J. as odd, but she chalked it up to stress or
fatigue or his usual just plain grumpiness. But when she moved to
embrace him he pulled away, as if he had touched something slimy. 

"Do I know you?" Zack queried, his nose upturned and his upper lip
curled in what was obviously distaste while Sephiroth Obscura racked his
host's brain to try and put a name to this new face. He failed. 

"Zack--" Tifa stepped forward and took hold of his shoulder.
"Honey...this is C.J."

Zack's brow furrowed as he gave C.J. a thorough looking-over. "Can't
be," he murmured, shaking his head. "That's impossible."

While Tifa did her best to convince her son that yes, he was looking at
his best friend in the whole world, Vincent took a moment to survey the
situation. Everything seemed just right. Zack, other than his reaction
to C.J., was being fairly pleasant. Cloud was thrilled to see everyone.
And yet something just continued to rub him the wrong way about the
whole affair. Zack's eyes, for one thing. They still had that
blood-colored glow to them. And Cloud--although Cloud had never struck
Vincent as being the sharpest knife in the drawer, he seemed--well, a
bit vacant today. Like something was missing, perhaps. 

"Zack--" Tifa nudged Zack a bit closer to C.J., and again he scowled at
both of them. "C.J. missed you a lot. Aren't you going to at least--"

"/No./" Zack returned his gaze to C.J. and said, very slowly and
clearly, "I. Do not. Know. You." With that, he shook away from Tifa and
walked off.

As Zack spun on his heel and strode away from the gathering, Vincent
made a mental note to keep an eye on him and slipped into the shadows to
observe him from a safe distance.

"What the--" Reeve stared, slack-jawed, at Zack's back as the other
walked off muttering things he couldn't quite hear. "Look, I may be out
of line here and I know he's been through a lot...but that was just
plain rude! She was worried sick about him, and he--"

C.J. chose that moment to burst into tears and wail something about Zack
being scared of her too. Reeve found himself wanting nothing more than
to wrap an arm around her shoulders and give her a shoulder to cry on
and God help him, he actually took half a step in her direction to do
so. 

Cid stopped him. He did not so much as lift a finger in Reeve's
direction. Not a word, of either clean or unclean origin, left the man's
mouth. The look he pinned Reeve with said more than enough. /Touch her
and I will break both your arms and tie them in a knot behind your back/
was the general idea Reeve picked up, and he stopped where he was. And
then Cid did just what he had planned on doing; he took C.J. into his
arms and murmured little reassuring things to her as she bawled.

Reeve sighed, muttered something mostly inaudible about getting a room,
and strode away shaking his head.

*			*			*

Raven sat there in Scarlet's chair with her feet propped up on Scarlet's
desk holding a phone to her ear and cursing quietly. Where the hell was
Stuart? He had not come to work that morning, and to do so without
calling in was unheard of from the man. And he wasn't picking up the
phone either. 

Exasperated, she slammed the phone back down. Almost immediately, it
rang again. One more SOLDIER hauled off to the infirmary in a
mythril-reinforced I-love-me jacket gibbering something about a
"reunion." God. That made eight in the last hour, including Donna. What
the hell was going on? 

Unknown to her, a rather odd little creature was at that very moment
bouncing merrily down the hall toward the office she currently occupied.

*			*			*

"This stinks."

C.J. sat in a sulking heap on the foot of the bed in her room. The
others had all found things to occupy themselves with. Cid had made a
beeline for Wonder Square and was probably at that very moment directing
a few improper nouns at the Snow Racer machine. Reeve had apparently
sequestered himself in his own room; he didn't seem to be enjoying this
trip very much. C.J. had no idea where Zack had gone--not that she
really cared to find him after the dubious greeting she had received.
Buttmunch. 

Fine. She would enjoy herself without him.

Her first stop: Wonder Square.

Sure enough, her father was standing on the Snow Racer board, working in
profanity as a painter works in oils or a sculptor works in clay. A
particularly vile oath slipped past his lips as the digitized version of
himself on the machine's screen executed a technically perfect faceplant
against a very large rock. 

"Hi, Daddy," she said as she approached. "I'm bored." 

"Hi, punkin," Cid grumbled as he fed the machine a few more coins and
started over. "Daddy is going to kick the piss out of this machine in a
few minutes."

C.J. shrugged and went off in search of other games to play. The arm
wrestling game wasn't much of a challenge anymore, and after her third
win it began to make odd creaking noises and smell a lot like smoke. Mog
House failed to hold her interest as it once had. G-Bike would have
still held her interest had it not been occupied, and she grew tired of
waiting after a few minutes. And the UFO catchers were just plain lame
now. Surely there was something here to entertain her.

As she leaned against the Mog House machine to count her winnings (and
they were plentiful), she overheard some discourse between a little boy
and her father at the Snow Racer machine.

"Hey, Mister!" the kid whined. "C'mon, you've been playing that for
hours! Lemme on!"

"Where are your folks, kid?" Cid clamped his cigarette tightly in his
teeth as he rounded a sharp curve and wiped out in a most spectacular
fashion. 

Aha. There was fun to be had here after all.

C.J. waved the kid over. "You wanna play that game?" she asked him, and
the kid nodded emphatically. "Okay. Gimme a few minutes."

Again, C.J. strolled over to the machine and peered over Cid's shoulder.
"You winning yet?" she asked innocently. 

"No, punkin," came the grumbled reply, followed by more vulgarity as
Cid's digital counterpart ran over a Moogle. 

"Oh." C.J. was silent long enough for her father to regain some
semblance of control over his snowboard...and then, at a crucial moment,
she faked a rather convincing sneeze, nudging the tail of the board just
enough to send the cyber-Cid sprawling into yet another rock. "Oops.
Sorry."

"Junior--" Cid fed the machine a few more coins. "Can you go play
somewhere else for a little bit?"

"But I wanna watch /you,/ Daddy!" C.J.'s grin was wide and toothy...and
utterly evil. She remained silent for a few moments more. "Daddy?"

"What is it now, punkin?"

C.J. stood on the machine, careful not to disturb the board in the
least, and rested her chin on Cid's shoulder. "Can I have some ice
cream?"

"Sure," Cid replied, obviously not having heard a word. Perfect.

"Can I get a motorcycle?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"Can I go to the Starlight Square?"

"Mmm-hmm...damnit!" More coins down the hatch.

C.J. snuck a glance over at the kid, who was now lying on his side and
holding his aching ribs as he laughed his little head off. It wouldn't
be long now. "Daddy--" She watched Cid's image bounce back and forth off
a series of walls in a long tunnel. "I think the pinball machines are
over there."

"Goddammit--aaargh. Junior, please quit, you're makin' me waste all my
money.../shit!/" The expletive was directed at a large cactus that had
magically appeared at the end of the tunnel...and hit Cid's image right
in the kisser.

"Ooh," C.J. observed with a wince. "That /had/ to hurt."

A single vein was beginning to stand out on Cid's forehead. "I
don't--need--the commentary--Junior!" he ground out as he valiantly
ventured forth yet again. With each obstacle his racer encountered and
subsequently collided with, the volume--and vulgarity--level of his
grumblings escalated. Parents twenty feet away clapped their hands over
the ears of their offspring and hauled them to verbal safety.

And C.J. blinked innocently up at her father.

"Daddy?"

"/What,/ Junior?"

"Do you kiss Mama with that mouth?"

That did it. In a flash, Cid was off the snowboard (and the kid on it
just as quickly) and running after his cackling and giggling daughter as
she led him on a merry chase through Wonder Square. At first, there were
serious threats of spankings and groundings, and then not-so-serious
versions of same, and then just before Cid finally lost the race against
his Mako-enhanced daughter, yells and laughs similar to hers. As C.J.
disappeared down the transport tube that would take her to the Starlight
Square, he stood in the lobby and shook his head, chuckling softly.
"Aah, shit-" Remembering his unfinished game, he dashed back into the
arcade...only to find that the damn kid was finishing it for him.

Well, there was always the submarine game...

*			*			*

C.J. stopped and leaned against a wall to catch her breath, still
laughing softly. Oh, the /look/ on Daddy's face when he'd jumped off the
game and started chasing her...she looked up at the sound of familiar
voices and watched Elena and Reno pop out of the tube and walk through
the forbidden door. As she moved to follow them, she felt a hand clutch
her elbow roughly. Instinct and training took over, and she tried to
counter...but the hand was stronger than she expected. "What the hell--"

"Come with me," Zack said simply as he released C.J.'s arm.

"What do you want?" C.J. cast a pained eye upon him. "You're being a
jerk, you know that?"

Zack gave a smile C.J. did not like one bit. "You know that sword
everyone's talking about? I bet you could get it out of that rock. Why
don't you come give it a try?"

"I don't want a stupid sword!" C.J. fumed back at him. "What's your
problem, buttface?"

"My problem..." Zack shook his head and chuckled, a low, dark sound. "I
should ask the same of you." He gazed at the door Reno and Elena had
just passed through. "Such a bunch of fools you've gotten mixed up with.
Carrying on like nothing's wrong with the world." His eyes travelled up
and down C.J.'s body, and C.J. could almost see beams of rusty light
sweeping over her. The sensation was not a pleasant one. It was not the
same as the visual gropings she had gotten from Archer. This...this was
like someone looking right through her, as if she were one of those
models of people they had in the science room at school, the one with
the clear skin one could see all the insides through. "Like nothing's
wrong with having their children grow up in just a few short little
days. Oh, of course the thought has crossed their minds...but it just
hasn't /stuck/ like it should." 

C.J. found herself unconsciously backing away from Zack.

"That was clever of him," he commented with a thin smile. "I honestly
didn't see it coming. Not that it's going to make any difference in my
plans, though."

"What the hell are you talking about!?" C.J. spluttered at him. "You're
weirder than normal, Zack. Get away from me."

Zack regarded C.J. with a puzzled look, and then he nodded once, slowly.
"I see...you don't remember what happened to you in the Lifestream, do
you?...no, you don't...I wonder why he bothered to erase those memories?
For your own protection?" He shrugged and turned away from her. "Doesn't
matter. You're going to get me that sword...C.J." And with that, he
vanished back into the transport tube.

C.J. stood there, shaken by Zack's words, staring at the tube. /How did
he know--/ 

Again she felt eyes upon her, and she felt compelled to get out of the
room in which she stood. Going down the transport tube was out of the
question. That was the way Zack had gone, and now she /really/ didn't
care to see him again. 

That left the forbidden door. She opened it and passed through with
nothing more than a smile and nod from the doorman. She was officially
in Grownups' Territory.

The eyes she had felt upon her had indeed been of the red variety, but
they had not belonged to Zack. Nor had they belonged to any other that
wished her harm. Once C.J. was safely inside the Starlight Square, their
red-cloaked owner slipped out of the shadows in pursuit of Zack once
more.

*			*			*

At about the same time that Zack was harassing C.J. an ocean away, Cait
Sith IV achieved self-awareness, thought the immortal words "I think,
therefore I am," and promptly forgot about the whole thing. He had more
important thoughts to think. 

He bounced down the hall, ducking into an empty office here and a
janitor's closet there if he thought someone was approaching. He thought
it a bit odd that security was as light as it was, but then again he'd
been intercepting radio and cell phone transmissions about SOLDIERS
flipping out and such, so maybe that was it. That was kind of creepy,
though, even to Cait Sith. 

Still, he was grateful for anything that would keep the attention of
whoever might still be running around here off him.

He thought he heard footsteps once more, and ducked into another nearby
office. The plaque on the door identified it as that of some guy named
Archer Shinra-Langley. Okay, no problem, this guy was pushing up daisies
according to the stuff Cait had been able to go through. He'd be safe in
here for a bit. And while he hid, he could gather a little more info. 

And make a couple of phone calls.

First, just because he could, he called a pizza parlor down the street
and asked for seventeen ham, pineapple, and anchovy pizzas to be
delivered to the Shinra tower. His predecessors had always wanted to do
that. As he relayed the order, his eye was caught by a small framed
picture on the corner of the desk. Its subjects, all three of them, were
dressed in identical blue suits; one looked strangely familiar. The name
his brain wanted to put to the face was "Rufus," but for some reason it
didn't quite seem right. Cait's forehead wrinkled in a little cat-frown
as he added ten large orders of breadsticks to the tab. No, that wasn't
Rufus. The hair was in a slightly different style, and the face in
general was a bit thinner. But the eyes were identical. He thought about
the name on the door. That, and the fact that a baseball cap reading
"Designated Drinker" was present both in the photograph on the man's
head and in person on his desk, brought Cait to the conclusion that
Archer was the designated drinker in question. As Cait threw in a
request for five super-subs and one small diet cola, his little brain
began to process the data. And by the time he finished ordering and
asked the whole schmeer to be billed and delivered to one Bob Palmer, it
clicked. And the answer was enough to make even Cait Sith shudder.

But again, he had more important things to think about. He made a quick
long-distance call, rattled off a prerecorded message, and hung up with
a wicked little grin on his face.

And finally, he dialed the number to the office of the president.

After five rings, someone answered. "This better be life or death. What
do you want?" came the tired greeting.

Cait cleared his throat. "Hi. I was wondering if the network printer was
running."

"Look, I'm not bloody tech support--yes, it's running, okay?"

"Well, you'd better catch it before it gets away!"

Cait cackled and slammed the phone down just as the shrieks began, and
satisfied that the coast was clear, he bounced right back into the hall.

*			*			*

Two words escaped C.J.'s lips upon seeing the alleged garden of
unearthly delights that was the forbidden Starlight Square. 

"That's IT!?"

Okay. The ceiling was glass, which offered a nice view of the night sky
and the Gold Saucer's nightly fireworks display. That was pretty. There
were a bunch of nice colored lights hanging up, most of them aimed at a
large dance floor. That was nice. And there was some good music playing,
and a few people were on the dance floor gyrating to it. Fine. Sure. But
C.J. certainly didn't see a damn thing that merited the "no kids" label
on the door of the place. 

Well, maybe the alcohol. Okay. Whatever.

With a disappointed sigh, C.J. picked out a stool and perched upon it. A
few minutes of patting her pockets rewarded her with the pack of clove
cigarettes, and with hardly a thought about it she extracted one and
stuck it in her mouth. A few more moments of pocket-patting later, she
came up with a match which she struck on the sole of her boot, touched
to the end of the cigarette briefly, and then deposited in a handy
ashtray. As she did so, a bottle of cream soda appeared next to the
ashtray, placed there by a smiling bartender. 

"Um...thanks," she said, and dug in her pockets once more for money. The
bartender shook his head. 

"It's already been paid for," he explained, and pointed a way down the
bar where Reno, Elena, and Reeve had claimed a trio of barstools. All
three of them were waving her over. 

"You oughta be ashamed of yourself, young lady," Reno mock-teased her as
she parked herself on a fourth reserved stool. "Six years old and you're
hanging out in seedy bars like this. What do you have to say for
yourself?"

C.J. giggled. "I've been in worse. I was a bouncer for a couple of days
when I was in Branford. This is nothing." She took a look around and
pulled a face. "Boy, is it ever nothing. This place is kinda lame. I was
expectin' something a little more--I dunno--"

"Grown-up?" Elena offered, and C.J. nodded.

"Yeah. It's just a bunch of people sitting around drinking and dancing
and stuff." She flicked ashes into the nearby ashtray and took a shallow
drag off the clove. "It's kinda boring."

Reeve watched her, watched the cigarette on its path from ashtray to
lips and back, and laughed a bit. "Well, with most folks, all you have
to do is get some booze in 'em and they think this is the greatest thing
since sliced bread." As if to illustrate, he took a quick sip from the
bottle at his elbow (which contained a fizzy amber liquid that was in
all likelihood NOT cream soda). 

Reno just laughed. "Including you?"

"Nu uh." Reeve shook his head and winced a little. "I'm in no mood to
get faced right now. I still don't know what hurt worse, that gas or
that hangover the other day." He put the bottle down. "And right now, I
think I'm either still queasy or I'm hungry. I'm not sure which. Guess
there's only one way to find out." He waved the bartender over and spoke
a few words to him. 

"Hungry, I think," Reno replied with a bit of a frown. "Come to think of
it, getting something to eat sounds like a good idea..." He glanced
toward the dance floor, then at Elena, then back at the dance floor.
"After, of course, I go out there and show off my bitchin' moves." He
winked at Reeve. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do, boss." With that, he
was off to the dance floor. Elena sighed and rolled her eyes.

"I'd better go keep him from embarrassing himself," she said and
followed. "Though I get the feeling it might be a little too late for
that..."

*			*			*

"Knock knock!"

Raven turned a weary eye up from the desk to the closed office door.
"What?"

"You're supposed to say 'who's there!' Knock knock!"

/I do not have time for this shit./ "Who's there?"

"Banana!"

/All right,/ Raven thought with a mental sigh, /this is ridiculous./
Even as those words passed through her mind, the immortal words "Banana
who?" left her mouth, and she cringed inwardly at the knee-jerk response
invoked by, of all things, a lame-ass knock-knock joke. 

Silence.

"/Fuck,/" Raven muttered under her breath, and tried to concentrate on
just how the hell she was supposed to cover security for the whole tower
with most of the SOLDIER troops being carted off to the funny farm. And
just as she /almost/ had it, it happened again.

"Knock knock!"

Raven snapped her head up. "WHAT?" Silence. She rolled her eyes. "Who's
there?"

"Banana!"

"Banana who," Raven sighed. Silence. A low, wordless growl seeped up
from Raven's throat as she tried to recapture the elusive solution once
more.

"Knock knock!"

Raven's hand clenched, snapping the pencil held within it. "Who's
there?"

"Orange!"

"Orange!? What the fuck--"

"You're supposed to say 'Orange who...'" the annoying voice singsonged
outside the door.

"Orange. Who." The words came through gritted teeth, and Raven was sure
puffs of smoke were wafting out of her ears.

"Orange you glad I didn't say banana again?" This was followed by a
cackle. A very...familiar cackle. Of course. That smartass with the "Is
the printer running" call.

"You son of a bitch--" Raven tore out of her chair, knocking it over as
she stormed toward the office door. When she flung it open, she found
nothing in the outer office except furniture and empty air...

Wait a minute.

Raven glared at a strange-looking lamp in the corner. 

For one thing, it was a little too short. For another, another lamp
stood in another corner, sans shade. And for another, from the shade
down, the lamp greatly resembled a Moogle. Raven scowled at it. 

The lamp scowled back and blew her a raspberry.

And that was all Raven was going to take. "Why you little--" She rushed
forward, any further words lost in a scream of rage, and tore the shade
off the lamp. 

"Hi, honey!" the cat thus revealed exclaimed, and then proceeded to leap
up and plant a sloppy kiss right on Raven's lips.

Raven made a noise--/gak!/--and shoved the cat away. Once she was clear,
she went for her guns.

But it turned out that the obnoxious little feline had some firepower of
his own. From seemingly out of nowhere, he produced a cigarette lighter
and an aerosol can, and he fired this makeshift flamethrower straight at
Raven's feet. "How's about a hot foot, babe?" he cackled as Raven danced
an absurd little jig to avoid getting her feet incinerated.

"Shit!!" Raven leapt out of the trajectory of the flames once more,
watching with dismay and alarm as they decided to catch on the carpet.
The sprinklers kicked on, drenching the office and everything in it,
including her. She drew her pistols and fired--and missed. The cat and
the Moogle were bouncing around the room like superballs, and she
couldn't get a clear shot in. That didn't stop her from trying, though.
By the time Raven went through the clips of both pistols, the office
bore more than a passing resemblance to a slice of Swiss cheese. A shot
or two had grazed the beast; small singed-edge holes in artificial fur
revealed what was probably mythril armor beneath it. Raven reached into
her pocket for the extra clips she usually carried and found them
missing. Before she could remember what she'd done with them that
morning, it was already too late. 

Before she could react, a pair of large, furry hands clamped around her
ankles and yanked hard, sending her crashing to the floor ass-first.
"Where's your boss, Raven?"

Raven tried to kick her way to freedom, but it wasn't happening. The
Moogle's hands were too large and its grip was too strong. "How the hell
should I know?" she spat. In reply, the Moogle hoisted her up into the
air by her ankles. She was, at that point, extremely grateful that her
skirt was tight enough such that it did not flip down over her head.

"You know where she went, don't you?" The cat chirped, resting his chin
on his forepaws. "You better tell me..."

"Go to hell!"

"Tsk, tsk. " And the cat grinned at her...a wide, evil, toothy
"cheeeeese" grin. "Let's see if the widdle Raven can fly," he suggested
and gave his mount a kick. And the Moogle flopped Raven back onto the
floor like a sack of flour and began to inexorably drag her down the
hall.

*			*			*

It seemed to Cloud as if he was viewing the room he and his son shared
at the Ghost Square hotel through a sort of semi-transparent membrane;
as if what he was seeing wasn't really there. 

Or as if /he/ wasn't really there.

Everything seemed so perfect...and at the same time, everything was
horribly wrong.

/What am I doing here?/ his mind queried again. /How did I get here? How
did Zack get here?/

He sat on the foot of his bed staring at a wardrobe made to resemble an
iron maiden, right down to the soft, safe foam rubber spikes lining the
inside. As his eyes travelled over the bolts and hinges that held the
contraption together, the room snapped into sharp focus before him. For
a brief fraction of a moment, he got an image in his head of himself
sitting right where he was, with the rest of the world and whatever it
was that his mind simply refused to grasp at the moment closing around
him like the fake iron maiden against the wall. Only the spikes on the
inside would not bend harmlessly against his body when it finally
closed. Oh no. They would drive into him, sharp and wicked, piercing
flesh and bone, sliding silently into his heart. Even then, he thought,
they would not stop. They would not stop until they had sliced through
his mind, his soul, and whatever remained of his sanity.

And then the thought was gone; only a slight acceleration of his
heartbeat and a bare hint of a cold sweat on his brow indicated that it
had come at all. It had been erased fom his mind, whisked away by a
simple thought of /Everything's fine./ The pale shadow of doubt was
still there, lurking at the fringes, but ignored. Everything was fine.
That brief instant of clarity had dissolved back into the slightly hazy
view he had grown accustomed to over the course of the last few days. 

Tifa was in the room now, he realized, and she was speaking to him. He
heard her voice, but the words never quite made it to the part of his
brain that distinguished speech from noise. It was as if he was hearing
her underwater, through someone else's ears. 

"...ng with you..."

Cloud grunted his assent to whatever it was Tifa had said and nodded
dumbly. 

"Hey!"

A hand gripped his shoulder--small, slim-fingered, but no less strong
for being so, and shook roughly. "Cloud, are you even listening to me!?"

Slowly, as if he were sitting in a tub of molasses, Cloud swung his head
around to face her. "Uh...sorry...what did you say?"

The look on Tifa's face was an odd mix of annoyance, frustration, and
fear. "I said...there is something wrong here. Seriously wrong." 

Cloud shook his head. "Everything's fine. C.J.'s okay. Zack's okay.
We're all here."

"Zack is NOT fine!" Tifa stood up again, quickly, spinning to face Cloud
directly. "And neither are you! You're acting like this is all perfectly
normal! IT ISN'T! You saw how he acted when we showed up!"

/She's right.../ Cloud shrugged. "He's had a rough time."

"So has C.J., and look at her!" Tifa shook her head and sighed. This was
getting nowhere fast. "Cloud, you saw it yourself...he's not--he's not
Zack."

Cloud winced a little. /She's right./

/Everything's fine./

Cloud made a little grumbling noise and rubbed his forehead.

"Cloud..." Tifa sat next to him again; her hand went to his shoulder.
"What's wrong?"

/Everything./

/Nothing./

Cloud's hand dropped back to the bed as the world again came into focus
and he realized where he was, how he had come to be there, and what was
happening all over again. "I..."

/This is wrong./

/Nothing's wrong./

"Cloud?" His name, wrought in Tifa's voice, reached his ears and passed
them to the part of his brain that distinguished words from noise. "Are
you okay?"

/No. No!/

/Yes./

/No...I'm not.../

/Yes. Everything's.../

"...fine." Cloud shook his head once as the veil descended once more.
"Everything's fine."

And as he spoke those words, another formed in his mind. 

/reunion/

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