50 Drabbles of Radiant Garden

Baby

- baby -

. . .

Threatening darkness surrounded Cloud on all sides.

Unlike most people, he had learned how to tell apart figments of the mind from reality. With a foe like his, it was a helpful ability. So he knew almost immediately that this was a dream.

He instinctively moved his hand towards where he kept the Buster Sword and felt nothing but empty air. Well, dammit.

Cloud ground his teeth in frustration and began to walk. So his subconscious apparently felt the need to make him helpless here. What, more nightmares about...?

His thought was finished without an ending as he came to a sudden stop. He had heard something for a moment there. Almost like a whisper.

The young man shrugged it off. He doubted it. This was a dream out of many other similar ones. When it started, there would be screams shattering the blackness instead of whispers. They would be screams of pain, all hoarse from too many preceding it and all of the voices familiar to him.

Was it sad that Cloud had suffered so many for them to be predictable? Nevertheless, it always felt real to him, despite knowing them to be nightmares. He could never stop himself from trying to save those voices...

Again, he paused. A whisper, too quiet for him to make out. But loud enough for Cloud to tell that he hadn't imagined it the first time.

He slowly looked around as if he could see through the darkness – merely caused by habit, obviously – and crouched in readiness. Of course, Cloud remembered with despair, he had no sword.

Maybe he would be able to sense the attack and retaliate with a fist when it came.

Don't kid yourself. You're helpless here with no sword. Hand-to-hand combat was never your thing and you know that.

If you're lucky, maybe you'll intercept the first shot. But luck has always been against you. You've probably just brought a knife to a gunfight, figuratively speaking.

Cloud scowled at his thoughts. But slowly, inexorably, he found himself relaxing. Not out of presumed safety, but out of the sense that his thoughts...

... might be right. You know what always happens. You fail. In these dreams, you repeatedly taste success. It's constantly there.

But then it falls out of your reach, right when you manage to stretch your fingers towards it. And everyone dies.

If you've never had the strength to save them in your last dreams, why would you have any strength now, much less when you're awake?

Face it. You're finished. Here, you are as weak as a suckling infant, and out there in the real world, you're even worse off.

Weak... Weak... Weak...

It repeated itself through Cloud's mind like a mantra, as if filled with an unbearable and painful truth. He fell numbly to his knees and stared at his clenched fists with glazed eyes.

Fallen... just like a child.

It's not the truth. It can't be. This... this is a dream... But there was a strange pressure on his heart, beckoning with a soft voice to just give up and let go. It will be safe there... warm and comfortable, it seemed to say.

Cloud was tempted for a moment. His dazed mind swayed.

But then he realized.

"Sephiroth!" he shouted, his voice shattering the illusion.

. . .

His eyes shot open to the sight of a dark, starry night sky. It felt as if he hadn't slept a wink.