Reset

There were times when Cloud was reluctant to shower.  It was the nightmares of being imprisoned in a deadly, silent world of mako. The waking after them made reality to Cloud surreal and abstract. He questioned as to whether he was still stuck in Hojo's laboratory deep within the recesses of Shinra Mansion.

After all, it wouldn't be much of a feat for an addled, desperate mind that only remembered the agony of mako, needles, and scalpels to fantasize the statistically impossible series of events that happened. Zack's and his escape from the mansion was nothing short of a miracle. Defeating the mad resurrected General Sephiroth two more times after the Mako reactor more so. It made a mind wonder if those slivers of green in his dreams were truly real. If waking from that surreal landscape of green inside a mako tube was just his way of retreating into a sweeter world of his own machinations.  Passing out when the pain was too much for a body to handle. A terrifying notion that was, made his heart race when his thoughts wandered to such speculations after the mako night terrors. Perhaps, this was all a cocoon that wrapped him from the harsh truth of an utterly hopeless situation where one's freedom would finally come in the form of death.

He could still be in that mako filled prison treated like a lab rat under the care of Hojo, Cloud thought darkly. Cloud walked towards the shower stalls near the cadet barracks in a daze thinking still, with Zack by his side in another cylinder much like his own. Zack and he both drowning in acid that ate and healed; simply waiting for relief that came momentarily when tubes emptied of mako. Before a new sort of horrifying realization set into a lethargic conscience after seeing a hazy coat of white and polished black shoes of the mad doctor. The doctor who'd come deciding to dissect them inside and out in hopes of finding that one single anomaly that killed the Mad God he'd created at the reactor.

A shudder went through the blonde, whether it was at the cold of the morning against warm overly sensitive skin or at stark memories which cut through his brain just as precise as Hojo's proficient use of a scalpel. Cloud was not sure. However, as horrible as those hazes of memory were it couldn't stop a mind from thinking/wondering.

Mechanically, Cloud went through the motions of disrobing. Far too gone into his pondering to fling his shirt and boxers on a bench to avoid them getting wet. Instead left them a puddle on the floor. His shuddering rasp of breath echoed loudly in the stark white room lacking the hustle and bustle in the evenings when cadets would shuffle wearily in to wash the sweat from heavy training. It was too early in the morning for others to be populating the area. Oddly comforting in a sense no one would witness how close he was to an existential breakdown. He shook his head lightly and braced his shoulders while padding into a stall.

He hated showers as much as he loved them. Just as he enjoyed the way hot water sprayed kneading at sore muscles after afternoon drills. Cloud also despised how it brought a sort of niggling terror at the pounding sound it created when his head was under its spray.

Water battered his pale skin scalding hot while streaming down his pinking flesh in rivulets washing away the sweat and grime. But never could it wash away the ghostly feel of mako coating his skin and the taste that rolled in his tongue constantly after his nightmares. Cloud dropped his head to block out that sound the shower made and pressed his body against the wall of stall in a desolate sprawl, forehead, chest, arms, and fists to the slick, cool tile. Closing his eyes he took a breath, water dripping off his long blond lashes and down his slightly upturned nose.

His thoughts continued to eat at him. They gnawed at what little questionable rationality he had left. It threatening to leave nothing but a broken man in a teenager's body. A failed experiment drowning in semi-madness grasping at straws in attempt to make sense of why he was in the past. Pale slick fingers tugged at errant blond wet spiky locks in trying not to think of the sound or anything at all. The flare of pain helped some to concentrate on washing instead. Yet the sound is still there urging him to listen and his thoughts kept chewing at the little sanity left.

Could still be in that prison of green, the thought coils in Cloud's head making his chest tighten leaving him breathless. Could still be there, where the pressure of the slick neon green goo thick like coagulated blood made his ear drums pop. It enhanced the sounds of his mind screaming at him for anything/anyone to abate the burn that tore him asunder inside out whilst he detachedly wondered where it came from.

Cloud cannot help but often wonder at the impossibility and improbability of his situation as he relived his cadet days while his mind was that of a veteran ex-SOLDIER. A experiment that saved the world to boot. Made him question whether or not he was still in a mako tank making this entire twisted adventure up or was he really the fallen hero that was sent back in time because the guilt that ate at him? He wasn't sure and that scared him the most.

Maybe, somewhere, along this fantasy gradually turned nightmare his brain decided to hit a reset button in hopes of getting the happily ever after with the man he crushed/admired  since childhood. To cruelly replay events differently from the intricate web he'd woven while encased in the mako tank. Why? Because every time he took a shower he could still hear the sound under the spray of water. The muffled agonized sound of his own voice screaming begging for a death that wouldn't come.

The lithe cadet slid against the tile clutching his head with both hands as the world wormed to brilliant green while awake. Idly, Cloud pondered if he finally crossed the line between waking and sleeping as a pale body defying the laws of physics in a tube floated within glowing mako, beautifully, abstract, and green.

Blonde lashes fluttered open to reveal blue glowing empty eyes at the dull echoing sound of someone tapping of a finger against glass.

Was it really such a thin line to cross?