To Nibelheim of Hel's Domain
May. 26th, 2013 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raajCid had known for quite a while that Nibelheim was always going to be a hurt for Cloud and Tifa. This was his first time being in the village himself, but Yuffie had blabbed about AVALANCHE's drive-by of it to him years ago, back when Cloud had gone--shit, there wasn't a good word to describe it--he'd gone and handed the black materia to Sephiroth, then disappeared in the collapse of the crater. The little oddities that had been there all along and the big fucking neon signs of underlying weirdness had come to the forefront of everyone's mind and they'd all talked about Cloud. Even him, newest to the group as he was, he'd noticed some things. But he hadn't known about the cover-up job done on the past Cloud had claimed to have, that Tifa had been adamant they'd shared.
"So they said it was gone, and we get there and hel-lo! Totally there. And I was thinking yeesh, I know someone said fire--what, like a kitchen fire? Because nothing was missing. It looked like your perfectly ordinary yawn-and-put-it-on-a-postcard dinky town. But then we got further in, and...some of the things there..."
The fact that Yuffie had then started to go quiet had told Cid a lot more than a thousand of her babbled words would have, and certainly more than her faltering conclusion of "there was seriously bad mojo" had. ("No shit, you found Vincent there.") When even the loudmouthed brat was tiptoeing on a subject, you knew it was sensitive like a sunburn.
So he'd known it had hurt back then, and that was why about a year ago, when a sweet, stubborn, didn't-know-how-to-take-a-load-off-even-when-she-was-dead flower girl gave them a way to heal Geostigma and he suddenly had a fuckton of transportation jobs ahead of him, getting victims all over the world to her church, Cid had mentioned to Cloud and Tifa as an aside that in the first batch, along with some folk from his town (and he didn't give a damn if that was unfair bias or not: it was his airship, and it was The Shera for a reason), were going to be people from Nibelheim, if they had any sick to send. Casually, just letting them know so they didn't get surprised if someone mentioned it later on, or if they saw a face from a bad run-in.
Tifa's pleasant smile had gone pinched, like she'd just bitten into a lemon--or she was debating how hard she needed to punch something--while Cloud's shyer one didn't exactly change so much as get left behind by his suddenly remote eyes. They'd been talking about cleaning up Aerith's church after the mess of fights with the Sephiroth remnants, and keeping an eye on it with the influx of strangers sure to come, and somehow Cid had just known that they were thinking something neither of them would ever say: nothing from their hell of a hometown should touch the church's sanctity, Aerith's memory.
They both knew damn well they couldn't say it because they were talking about sick people. But they'd faltered, and Barret had blundered in to say he'd be the one there to meet the airship and make sure everything went smoothly in the church, and that had pretty much said it all to Cid. Nibelheim, and the concerted effort of scores of actors to bury it under a replacement, was always going to one hell of a sore point for them.
So being in Nibelheim now, Cid had known there was going to be some weirdness with Cloud. Especially with them going up to the reactor itself, a structure that AVALANCHE had given healthy distance in their traveling. He'd even offered the guy an out before the airship had touched down: they'd checked every other reactor across the continents and hadn't found a hint of anything insidious like Deepground had been--the former, literally underground organization being the reason why they were globetrotting now, checking every old Shinra structure, reactor or otherwise, and making sure there was no way they were hiding something that would fester and blow up in everyone's face later. The town was the last place they could think of to check, and Vincent and some WRO crew had already swept through mansion once, probably wasn't anything up in the reactor if the other reactors were clean, so in that case he and Vincent (and oh, yeah, like Vincent was going to have barrels of fun in the mansion, but he was more cool about it) could handle what was simple recon--
The younger man had straightly looked Cid back in the eye like he was a fucking moron for taking chances where Nibelheim was concerned and reminded the pilot that the whole excursion had largely been his idea to start with. "I'll be...fine. Just tell me if I'm acting off."
Well, shit, what was off when it came to re-experiencing the place where your life had gotten flushed down the drain? That required honest thought. Cid figured it'd be off if Cloud didn't act weird at all. So tension could slide. Tight-lippedness around the current residents could slide, even if Cid loathed doing all the talking since Vincent sure wouldn't contribute more than his bare minimum of a chipped two-gil.
When the blond's head jerked to the left and the woman who'd emerged from a shop in that direction did a double-take, that was off. It quickly grew to 'worrying' as the woman, who looked a good few years above Cid's age, shrank against the entrance and held her handbag against herself like a shield, while Cloud's look continued long enough to be reclassified to stare without seeming like he was truly seeing her or remotely considering the effect he was having on her. Cid knew from his days as a Shinra pilot that a SOLDIER's glare was commonly intimidating; ignorance about the mako glow didn't keep a person from seeing an inexplicable, disconcerting quality in an insanely strong man's eyes. The fact that Cloud hadn't really been SOLDIER didn't make a difference there. Most folk didn't know that tidbit. They did know his name and face for having been able to kill the world's strongest one.
"I doubt you're staring 'cause she's a looker, so quit it," Cid muttered out of the side of his mouth.
"Huh?" Cloud sounded as lost as someone hit by the confusion spell, his eyes wide as he half-turned to Cid. The lady must have thought she'd been in a stare-down with a bear instead of a man; as soon as Cloud's eyes were off her she scurried across the open space of the village to what was presumably her home, an unremarkably humble one-story, and rushed to get in.
"She looked like a hag to me, personally."
"...Cid."
Heh. Guy was definitely back on the ground with them if he could get prissy over a little language. Though when the front door of the house slammed closed, Cloud reacted to the sound, wincing and just barely managing to check himself from looking to it.
Vincent did observe the door, apparently drawing thoughts similar to Cid's about the possibilities of the residence. "You seemed to recognize her."
Well. Vincent wasn't much for conversational gambits, but Cid figured that broached the question fine enough and just quirked a brow at Cloud. They could talk about it or keep moving; the guy's call.
Come to think about it, he'd recognized her. One of the Geostigma passengers. Probably Barret had been a smart man, then, relieving Cloud and Tifa of any greeting duties for that batch.
"...I went into my mother's house," Cloud said slowly, confirming their thoughts, "and she was there. She said I was sick, for saying--" He laughed, quick and mirthless, and ducked his eyes from any scrutiny. "I was sick, yeah."
Sick from having his head fucked around with, and even if Nibelheim's reconstruction had just been icing on the cake at that point, it had still been shit icing. Cid summed up his feelings with a hocked loogie and thumb of his nose. "With that kind of act, she knows what she said was a load of crap. Don't think about it."
Easier said than done, no one could pretend otherwise, but Cloud nodded, his pained expression smoothing into a more familiar focus. "Yeah. Let's get this done."
His tension actually eased in the mansion. Not completely, but Cid snorted to see the kid's shoulders loosen, his arms move a bit more naturally--ready for a fight and probably anxious about memories, but not scared of a confrontation he couldn't handle.
"Cid?"
"What?" he drawled back.
The younger man's brow wrinkled in confusion before he shrugged it off and turned to Vincent. "You okay?"
"Of course," came the predictably toneless response. "I know these nightmares well."
...He was putting on the airs again. Two pairs of blue eyes met each other and rolled. It was a fucking hoot: sometimes, Cloud and Vincent were perfectly on the same wavelength. But sometimes? Cloud was definitely more on Cid's. Which was a good thing, as Cid was pretty sure he would've pitched both his friends off the Highwind years back if they were always swapping talk of sins and guilt and shit. Vincent was a decent guy, but the world didn't need two of him.
This kind of exchange was so familiar to the three that the melodramatic ex-Turk simply ignored both blonds, stalking further into the mansion. Cloud picked up his pace to cover Vincent's side, while Cid had their backs. Granted, nothing was likely to get the drop on Vincent or Cloud in the first place. If anything, they'd hear the monster before Cid saw it, so the pilot was more literally watching their backs, idly watching to see if they were more bugged than they'd let on.
And after a few more minutes and a fight with those weirdass chain-danglers--almost human, but not, with strong arms to swing by and blades instead of legs--Cid realized he'd caught something off, if not what he'd been looking for. "Huh. The hell is that, kid? Your shoulder still acting up?"
"...Sometimes," Cloud admitted as he re-holstered his fused sword. "You could tell?"
"I asked, 'course I could tell." Actually, he'd nearly missed it. It'd only been a momentary tensing of the shoulder, tell-tale because Cid realized he'd seen the gesture back in their visit to Gongaga as well. "Shit, you're only twenty-three--"
"Twenty-four."
"--yeah, okay. Too young to be fallin' apart. Next you'll be bitching about your hips coming out of place."
Cloud pursed his lips, looking frustrated that this was even a topic for discussion. "I don't know. It started after the fight with Deepground. I must have gotten hit there, and not realized until it was too late to catch with a Restore."
"Well, if anyone could pull off something that boneheaded..." Dumbass had probably gotten too distracted in the worry over Vincent's disappearance. Cid hadn't worried at all, because he had a full crew to bark out search and rescue orders to.
Still, it was strange that injury would be bugging Cloud even now. Deepground had been weeks ago.
And then Vincent was either perceptive or just plain pessimistic enough to ask a question the pilot hadn't even considered. "Is it getting better, or worse?"
And judging from Cloud's hesitance, pessimism was justified. Incredulous, Cid glared first at tall-dark-and-morbid, then turned on short-blond-and-stupid. "Why the fuck would it get worse, and why the fuck haven't you said anything?"
Cloud (currently dubbed dumb knucklehead in Cid's train of thought) gave an exaggerated sigh. "We'd already crossed the Corel mountains by the time I realized it wasn't going away. I want this done, and then I'll--" He pursed his lips, obviously having to think, obviously having originally planned to just mosey on home without even thinking about it. "--I'll check at WRO headquarters if Dr. Watts is there."
Of course. Watts had been one of the first medical personnel invited to work with the WRO in providing charitable public health services, as Reeve had been well aware of both the man's altruism and resourcefulness in caring for Cloud when he washed up as a vegetable on the shore of Mideel, only peripherally aware of the world around him. Which was the same reason the man had found himself in the odd position of being the sole medical personnel willingly visited by one otherwise notoriously doctor-shy Jenova War hero, like he'd managed to bypass part of a crippling fear of chemical smells, scalpels and needles simply by not being cruel to a helpless human being. ...Not that anyone particularly liked thinking about Cloud's previous experience with doctors; they focused on the fact that there actually existed one he would go to see before being completely incapacitated by injury or disease.
"All right?"
Though with his stubbornness, he'd still wait until he was half-blind with pain.
"Pft. Making me sound like a worrywart..."
"I killed half a dozen monsters yesterday, Cid. I don't think you 'sound like' anything."
"Hnf." Cid chewed on his cigarette and had to grudgingly conclude the kid might be right. It seemed odd with how quick he usually healed up, but Cloud's fighting ability was at its usual par despite the injury. They'd fought through worse.
"...What, you too, Vincent?"
Vincent quirked a dark eyebrow at Cloud's plaintive tone. "Merely thinking." When Cloud cocked his head, he added, "it might annoy you, but the concern should be appreciated."
The way he said 'concern', might as well just make it 'motherhenning'. Cid spluttered. "Jump off a cliff and fucking--I'm not--"
Vincent had to be smirking under his mantle, the way he dipped his face, and Cloud didn't have anything to hide his amusement behind. Assholes. Cid told them as much before demanding they get their lily-asses in gear again. He didn't let his crew keep them waiting, so like hell he'd let them keep the crew waiting with their precious little chit-chat.
**
Not quite relevant to the fanfic but I had a lot of fun with the idea of "Doctor Watts", the unnamed NPC who takes care of Cloud in the clinic, managing to pop up in Cloud's life again with the idea that Reeve was originally doing some kind of hiring/coordinating work with doctors around the Planet for a public effort led by WRO into researching Geostigma and taking care of its victims (though this obviously did fall short in some ways, but they were trying) and seriously did look at Mideel's region and go "Ah, THAT doctor, he's a good man...hm, clinic got wrecked, let's arrange some more resources so he can care for his patients", thus Watts has some business relationship with WRO. At some point both Watts and Cloud having connections to WRO leads to the discovery that Watts actually is the one doctor Cloud can tolerate being seen by, partly because Watts has an excellent bedside manner and works easily around Cloud's awkwardness and part of it really being because Cloud was aware on some level of both him and the nurse and recognizes the two as people he can trust. He still doesn't like a trip to the doctor, but he's not one step from a panic attack like he might be with another doctor. It mostly just popped into my head since it's so popular to give Cloud a phobia / discomfort about doctors given Hojo and I started to wonder about the doctor he actually sees in canon.
"So they said it was gone, and we get there and hel-lo! Totally there. And I was thinking yeesh, I know someone said fire--what, like a kitchen fire? Because nothing was missing. It looked like your perfectly ordinary yawn-and-put-it-on-a-postcard dinky town. But then we got further in, and...some of the things there..."
The fact that Yuffie had then started to go quiet had told Cid a lot more than a thousand of her babbled words would have, and certainly more than her faltering conclusion of "there was seriously bad mojo" had. ("No shit, you found Vincent there.") When even the loudmouthed brat was tiptoeing on a subject, you knew it was sensitive like a sunburn.
So he'd known it had hurt back then, and that was why about a year ago, when a sweet, stubborn, didn't-know-how-to-take-a-load-off-even-when-she-was-dead flower girl gave them a way to heal Geostigma and he suddenly had a fuckton of transportation jobs ahead of him, getting victims all over the world to her church, Cid had mentioned to Cloud and Tifa as an aside that in the first batch, along with some folk from his town (and he didn't give a damn if that was unfair bias or not: it was his airship, and it was The Shera for a reason), were going to be people from Nibelheim, if they had any sick to send. Casually, just letting them know so they didn't get surprised if someone mentioned it later on, or if they saw a face from a bad run-in.
Tifa's pleasant smile had gone pinched, like she'd just bitten into a lemon--or she was debating how hard she needed to punch something--while Cloud's shyer one didn't exactly change so much as get left behind by his suddenly remote eyes. They'd been talking about cleaning up Aerith's church after the mess of fights with the Sephiroth remnants, and keeping an eye on it with the influx of strangers sure to come, and somehow Cid had just known that they were thinking something neither of them would ever say: nothing from their hell of a hometown should touch the church's sanctity, Aerith's memory.
They both knew damn well they couldn't say it because they were talking about sick people. But they'd faltered, and Barret had blundered in to say he'd be the one there to meet the airship and make sure everything went smoothly in the church, and that had pretty much said it all to Cid. Nibelheim, and the concerted effort of scores of actors to bury it under a replacement, was always going to one hell of a sore point for them.
So being in Nibelheim now, Cid had known there was going to be some weirdness with Cloud. Especially with them going up to the reactor itself, a structure that AVALANCHE had given healthy distance in their traveling. He'd even offered the guy an out before the airship had touched down: they'd checked every other reactor across the continents and hadn't found a hint of anything insidious like Deepground had been--the former, literally underground organization being the reason why they were globetrotting now, checking every old Shinra structure, reactor or otherwise, and making sure there was no way they were hiding something that would fester and blow up in everyone's face later. The town was the last place they could think of to check, and Vincent and some WRO crew had already swept through mansion once, probably wasn't anything up in the reactor if the other reactors were clean, so in that case he and Vincent (and oh, yeah, like Vincent was going to have barrels of fun in the mansion, but he was more cool about it) could handle what was simple recon--
The younger man had straightly looked Cid back in the eye like he was a fucking moron for taking chances where Nibelheim was concerned and reminded the pilot that the whole excursion had largely been his idea to start with. "I'll be...fine. Just tell me if I'm acting off."
Well, shit, what was off when it came to re-experiencing the place where your life had gotten flushed down the drain? That required honest thought. Cid figured it'd be off if Cloud didn't act weird at all. So tension could slide. Tight-lippedness around the current residents could slide, even if Cid loathed doing all the talking since Vincent sure wouldn't contribute more than his bare minimum of a chipped two-gil.
When the blond's head jerked to the left and the woman who'd emerged from a shop in that direction did a double-take, that was off. It quickly grew to 'worrying' as the woman, who looked a good few years above Cid's age, shrank against the entrance and held her handbag against herself like a shield, while Cloud's look continued long enough to be reclassified to stare without seeming like he was truly seeing her or remotely considering the effect he was having on her. Cid knew from his days as a Shinra pilot that a SOLDIER's glare was commonly intimidating; ignorance about the mako glow didn't keep a person from seeing an inexplicable, disconcerting quality in an insanely strong man's eyes. The fact that Cloud hadn't really been SOLDIER didn't make a difference there. Most folk didn't know that tidbit. They did know his name and face for having been able to kill the world's strongest one.
"I doubt you're staring 'cause she's a looker, so quit it," Cid muttered out of the side of his mouth.
"Huh?" Cloud sounded as lost as someone hit by the confusion spell, his eyes wide as he half-turned to Cid. The lady must have thought she'd been in a stare-down with a bear instead of a man; as soon as Cloud's eyes were off her she scurried across the open space of the village to what was presumably her home, an unremarkably humble one-story, and rushed to get in.
"She looked like a hag to me, personally."
"...Cid."
Heh. Guy was definitely back on the ground with them if he could get prissy over a little language. Though when the front door of the house slammed closed, Cloud reacted to the sound, wincing and just barely managing to check himself from looking to it.
Vincent did observe the door, apparently drawing thoughts similar to Cid's about the possibilities of the residence. "You seemed to recognize her."
Well. Vincent wasn't much for conversational gambits, but Cid figured that broached the question fine enough and just quirked a brow at Cloud. They could talk about it or keep moving; the guy's call.
Come to think about it, he'd recognized her. One of the Geostigma passengers. Probably Barret had been a smart man, then, relieving Cloud and Tifa of any greeting duties for that batch.
"...I went into my mother's house," Cloud said slowly, confirming their thoughts, "and she was there. She said I was sick, for saying--" He laughed, quick and mirthless, and ducked his eyes from any scrutiny. "I was sick, yeah."
Sick from having his head fucked around with, and even if Nibelheim's reconstruction had just been icing on the cake at that point, it had still been shit icing. Cid summed up his feelings with a hocked loogie and thumb of his nose. "With that kind of act, she knows what she said was a load of crap. Don't think about it."
Easier said than done, no one could pretend otherwise, but Cloud nodded, his pained expression smoothing into a more familiar focus. "Yeah. Let's get this done."
His tension actually eased in the mansion. Not completely, but Cid snorted to see the kid's shoulders loosen, his arms move a bit more naturally--ready for a fight and probably anxious about memories, but not scared of a confrontation he couldn't handle.
"Cid?"
"What?" he drawled back.
The younger man's brow wrinkled in confusion before he shrugged it off and turned to Vincent. "You okay?"
"Of course," came the predictably toneless response. "I know these nightmares well."
...He was putting on the airs again. Two pairs of blue eyes met each other and rolled. It was a fucking hoot: sometimes, Cloud and Vincent were perfectly on the same wavelength. But sometimes? Cloud was definitely more on Cid's. Which was a good thing, as Cid was pretty sure he would've pitched both his friends off the Highwind years back if they were always swapping talk of sins and guilt and shit. Vincent was a decent guy, but the world didn't need two of him.
This kind of exchange was so familiar to the three that the melodramatic ex-Turk simply ignored both blonds, stalking further into the mansion. Cloud picked up his pace to cover Vincent's side, while Cid had their backs. Granted, nothing was likely to get the drop on Vincent or Cloud in the first place. If anything, they'd hear the monster before Cid saw it, so the pilot was more literally watching their backs, idly watching to see if they were more bugged than they'd let on.
And after a few more minutes and a fight with those weirdass chain-danglers--almost human, but not, with strong arms to swing by and blades instead of legs--Cid realized he'd caught something off, if not what he'd been looking for. "Huh. The hell is that, kid? Your shoulder still acting up?"
"...Sometimes," Cloud admitted as he re-holstered his fused sword. "You could tell?"
"I asked, 'course I could tell." Actually, he'd nearly missed it. It'd only been a momentary tensing of the shoulder, tell-tale because Cid realized he'd seen the gesture back in their visit to Gongaga as well. "Shit, you're only twenty-three--"
"Twenty-four."
"--yeah, okay. Too young to be fallin' apart. Next you'll be bitching about your hips coming out of place."
Cloud pursed his lips, looking frustrated that this was even a topic for discussion. "I don't know. It started after the fight with Deepground. I must have gotten hit there, and not realized until it was too late to catch with a Restore."
"Well, if anyone could pull off something that boneheaded..." Dumbass had probably gotten too distracted in the worry over Vincent's disappearance. Cid hadn't worried at all, because he had a full crew to bark out search and rescue orders to.
Still, it was strange that injury would be bugging Cloud even now. Deepground had been weeks ago.
And then Vincent was either perceptive or just plain pessimistic enough to ask a question the pilot hadn't even considered. "Is it getting better, or worse?"
And judging from Cloud's hesitance, pessimism was justified. Incredulous, Cid glared first at tall-dark-and-morbid, then turned on short-blond-and-stupid. "Why the fuck would it get worse, and why the fuck haven't you said anything?"
Cloud (currently dubbed dumb knucklehead in Cid's train of thought) gave an exaggerated sigh. "We'd already crossed the Corel mountains by the time I realized it wasn't going away. I want this done, and then I'll--" He pursed his lips, obviously having to think, obviously having originally planned to just mosey on home without even thinking about it. "--I'll check at WRO headquarters if Dr. Watts is there."
Of course. Watts had been one of the first medical personnel invited to work with the WRO in providing charitable public health services, as Reeve had been well aware of both the man's altruism and resourcefulness in caring for Cloud when he washed up as a vegetable on the shore of Mideel, only peripherally aware of the world around him. Which was the same reason the man had found himself in the odd position of being the sole medical personnel willingly visited by one otherwise notoriously doctor-shy Jenova War hero, like he'd managed to bypass part of a crippling fear of chemical smells, scalpels and needles simply by not being cruel to a helpless human being. ...Not that anyone particularly liked thinking about Cloud's previous experience with doctors; they focused on the fact that there actually existed one he would go to see before being completely incapacitated by injury or disease.
"All right?"
Though with his stubbornness, he'd still wait until he was half-blind with pain.
"Pft. Making me sound like a worrywart..."
"I killed half a dozen monsters yesterday, Cid. I don't think you 'sound like' anything."
"Hnf." Cid chewed on his cigarette and had to grudgingly conclude the kid might be right. It seemed odd with how quick he usually healed up, but Cloud's fighting ability was at its usual par despite the injury. They'd fought through worse.
"...What, you too, Vincent?"
Vincent quirked a dark eyebrow at Cloud's plaintive tone. "Merely thinking." When Cloud cocked his head, he added, "it might annoy you, but the concern should be appreciated."
The way he said 'concern', might as well just make it 'motherhenning'. Cid spluttered. "Jump off a cliff and fucking--I'm not--"
Vincent had to be smirking under his mantle, the way he dipped his face, and Cloud didn't have anything to hide his amusement behind. Assholes. Cid told them as much before demanding they get their lily-asses in gear again. He didn't let his crew keep them waiting, so like hell he'd let them keep the crew waiting with their precious little chit-chat.
**
Not quite relevant to the fanfic but I had a lot of fun with the idea of "Doctor Watts", the unnamed NPC who takes care of Cloud in the clinic, managing to pop up in Cloud's life again with the idea that Reeve was originally doing some kind of hiring/coordinating work with doctors around the Planet for a public effort led by WRO into researching Geostigma and taking care of its victims (though this obviously did fall short in some ways, but they were trying) and seriously did look at Mideel's region and go "Ah, THAT doctor, he's a good man...hm, clinic got wrecked, let's arrange some more resources so he can care for his patients", thus Watts has some business relationship with WRO. At some point both Watts and Cloud having connections to WRO leads to the discovery that Watts actually is the one doctor Cloud can tolerate being seen by, partly because Watts has an excellent bedside manner and works easily around Cloud's awkwardness and part of it really being because Cloud was aware on some level of both him and the nurse and recognizes the two as people he can trust. He still doesn't like a trip to the doctor, but he's not one step from a panic attack like he might be with another doctor. It mostly just popped into my head since it's so popular to give Cloud a phobia / discomfort about doctors given Hojo and I started to wonder about the doctor he actually sees in canon.