Embrace Your Dreams

[OOC: I'm pretty sure most of the game has him defriended. But today was the day that I was going to throw him into Nibelheim - There's a calendar with his name on it, it's been marked down and waiting there for years - and it feels wrong, somehow, to just let it pass without anything at all.

So, fic. Today, for a Puppy...]



Everything is a blur. A blur of hot blues and freezing reds, all tied up in the green haze of the mako bubbling up from down below. You feel your body trying to shut down around you, silently curse yourself for using the last of your Potions, for wanting to save that other Phoenix Down for another day. You couldn't cast a Cura now if your life depended on it.

Maybe it does.

The steps are cool against your face, but all wrong angles, sharp and uncomfortable and an unwanted reminder that you're still alive. You are. You refuse to let go. You let him wander alone up there, let him take a sword, just infantry, not even SOLDIER, like yourself, to face the greatest. To face the madman that probably killed you. And that... that should bother you more. So many things should bother you more than they are, right now. But every time your eyes slide closed, you see white feathers, and that seems inviting, somehow. Just feathers. Enough to ignore the faraway sounds of fighting, up the stairs and away in another room, in another world. For a moment, you slip away to be with those feathers.

For that moment, everything seems a little clearer, a little less immediate and painful and stark. It's weird, you think, how letting your mind slide away into that kind of haze can bring the whole world into focus. You remember the girl you left behind for this mission, all bright eyes and a playful smile and you ache again, even here in the mist, surrounded by the sun and the sky on all sides, to be able to reach out for her. To be able to hold her and whisper to her and tell her that everything is going to be okay.

Everything... will be okay... right?

The feathers are silent.

And then the sound of footsteps above you jolt you bodily back into the present, onto the angles pressing against you and the pain and the tiredness, and you don't need to look up to know that he's hurt too. That you sent him away and you killed him. Your heart aches as he falls, as that shock of bloodied blond hair comes into view, and you murmur your reassurances, he tried, he did well, and you try to reach for him, to pat him on the shoulder as you always used to, but even that's too much.

Feathers. Clarity. The sky. One of your friends used to be terrified of that sky. And you'll never get to show it to her, beyond letting her look into your eyes.

Pain. White jackets and stretchers. The occasional black suit shifting into your blurred vision. The Turks are here, maybe she's here too, not your friend, the other one, the one you want to spend all of your life with. And you can, now. They have you. They'll help you, because they're friends. They're family. They'll help you and they'll help him and see? Everything will be okay, you tell the feathers.

But the feathers just seem so sad, so tired, as that twisted laugh cuts into your thoughts, and you can't even cry out, can't even struggle when you realize what it means.

Nothing is going to be okay again.

Live or die today, your life is over.