|
|
Sink to the Bottom With You
Chapter Eleven
Idle Hands
"I'm tired of jes sittin' here doin'
nothing!" Barret Wallace
Just when
everything was making sense
You took away my
self-confidence
Now all I've been
hearing must be true
Guess I'm not the
only boy for you
That's what I get
How could you turn
me into this?
I told you I'd
never say goodbye
Now I'm slipping in the tears you made me cry
"That's What I Get"
NIN
Silence reigned unchallenged for half an
hour in the bar as Cloud and the others sat gathered around one of the tables,
shifting in their soggy clothes and chancing cautious glances at the band of
green material that Tifa had wrung in her hands like a handkerchief made for
weeping. The young woman idly wrapped
the headband of Yuffie Kisaragi around her gloved fingers again and again,
perhaps weaving some pattern that only she could understand, then unraveling it
again so that it pooled up on the wooden tabletop in a lonely pile. Then she would begin the whole process again
as Cloud watched her blankly.
He sat back in his chair, the wood creaking
as he did so, the only sounds made before the hungry, oppressive silence
swallowed them up. On his right side,
Barret and Rude glanced at him, as if expecting him to speak, to shatter the
screaming silence so that plans could begin.
But Cloud did no such thing. His
Mako blue eyes were impassive as they kept themselves trained on the green
material clutched in Tifa's hands.
What fate had befallen Yuffie and Vincent so
that his young friend had somehow lost the headband that she refused to part
with no matter how much Cid bitched at her when it slapped him in the face
while riding in the Tiny Bronco? And
where had that ship gone off to? And
what about Reeve? The Running Man? It was all his fault that Vincent and Yuffie
had ended up lost or captured or...dead.
He was the leader; the burden was on his shoulders. He had sent them off with the unspoken
expectation that they wouldn't really find anything. He hadn't even given them a Restore materia ? he had been so
certain that they wouldn't run into trouble.
Now it was his responsibility to take the blame for their plight and
find a way to get them and Reeve back.
Cloud wasn't ashamed to admit that he needed
both Vincent and Yuffie to help them locate their missing friend and get to the
bottom of the whole Running Man/Reeve/Neo-Shinra mess. Though Vincent sometimes scared the crap out
of him and Yuffie could only be accurately described as a brat, they both had
certain abilities and traits that were exclusive to them and only to them. They were part of AVALANCHE, and they were
his friends. At the moment, Cloud would
have given anything just to see his two allies again, hear their voices.
But no matter how much he told himself that
he needed to snap out of his melancholy state and get crackin' again, the
horrific image of Tifa and Reno in each other's arms kept rising up before him
like bile in his throat. He couldn't
escape from it by closing his eyes; it was burned onto the backs of his
eyelids. He couldn't escape from it by
fading back into the depths of his rational mind; all his thoughts were
occupied with that one image of Tifa stroking Reno's hair and rubbing his back
while he lay his head on her shoulder and held her against him...
It wasn't until Cloud had seen them together
that he realized that the very thought of another man so much as looking at
Tifa, much less touching her, in such a fashion made him angry beyond all
reasoning. And that fact that it had
been Reno he had seen her with made it even worse. He hadn't liked Reno very much to begin
with. Let's face it, trying to kill
Aeris and dropping the plate on Sector Seven had just rubbed him the wrong
way. Now Cloud, as leader of AVALANCHE,
and Reno, as the unofficial leader of the Turks, would probably be working
together more than any other two individuals in the search for Reeve. How was he supposed to work with a man
that...that...
God, this got more unbearable by the minute.
Raising his dimly focused eyes from the
headband in Tifa's hands, Cloud felt them settle on the woman who meant more to
him than anything in the entire world.
Her amazing burgundy eyes were trained on the headband in her fingers,
and he could only see the perfect curve of her delicate eyebrows and how her
long eyelashes shimmered in the light.
Her chocolate brown hair had spilled over her bare shoulders, and he
barely resisted the urge to reach across the table and run his fingers through
it.
In the chair beside her, Red suddenly
stirred, butting her shoulder lightly with his head, trying to ease her
anxiety. As Cloud's empty gaze shifted
to the fiery lion-like creature, Red turned to stare straight at him from
across the table. Of all the people
gathered, Tifa and Reno excluded, Red was probably the only one that had
guessed at what was bothering Cloud. He
knew that only something involving Tifa could unsettle the spiky-haired leader
of AVALANCHE so much.
Now the gaze he sent as his one good eye
locked onto Cloud's Mako blue ones was quite clear: She wants comfort from you, not me, not Reno, not anyone
else. You need to be there for her no
matter what.
If only it was so simple, Cloud thought dismally as he lowered his
gaze to the table, slouching in his chair.
He didn't look up again.
The heavy silence dragged on for another two
minutes before Barret's fuse expired and he pounded the table with his gun
arm. If Spike was going to mope there
by himself and not act like the leader everyone knew he was, then, by golly, he
was going to have to get everyone in gear until Cloud could get his spiky head
screwed on straight.
"I'm tired of jes sittin' here doin'
nothing!" he bellowed as everyone looked at him. "We need to get to work on somethin'! We need some sort of plan!"
"Yeah, well since you so full of ideas, do
enlighten us," Cid grumbled, a cigarette dangling from his lips and his arms
crossed over his chest. "I know I ain't
got nothing that even comes close to resembling a plan."
"We need to get our priorities straight,"
Rude suddenly said.
"What do you mean by that?" Red asked
calmly, but his golden eye glinted with suspicion.
"What Rude means," Elena picked up
cautiously with a glance at her fellow Turk.
"Is that we need to see what's more important: rescuing Reeve or finding
Vincent and Yuffie."
Cid's eyes narrowed. "Does it matter? Chances are the same bastard that took Reeve captured Vincent and
Yuffie, too. Don't go tryin' to make us
pick favorites amongst our friends.
They all mean the same to us."
"But think logically," Reno interrupted,
defending the position taken by his friends.
"If the same person that captured Reeve did not capture Vincent
and Yuffie, too, then we need to see who's the one that needs the most help
faster. Vincent and Yuffie are members
of AVALANCHE, but that's all they are.
Sure, Yuffie's pop may be some big shot Lord of Wutai, but she's just a little
brat. Besides, much as I hate to admit
it, Vincent and Yuffie are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. Reeve, on the other hand is the President of
Neo-Shinra and..."
Rude picked up where his friend had left
off. "Alone and without Cait Sith,
Reeve is virtually helpless."
Reno sat up straighter in his stool and
placed his hands on his knees, staring hard at everyone gathered around the
table. "You all know what Rude, Elena,
and I are saying is true. Reeve's more
important here."
"Says who?" Barret demanded, brown eyes
glittering dangerously. "You and your
Shinra buddies? Now, I ain't sayin'
that Cat ain't as important as Vincent and Yuffie, but he ain't more important
either, ya get my drift?"
"We understand," Rude deadpanned, expression
hidden behind his dark sunglasses. "I
just have this bad feeling that Reeve's in serious danger."
Cid snorted. "And Vincent and Yuffie aren't?"
Cloud abruptly grew tired of all the
arguing. "Look, everyone," he said
flatly, gazing at his teammates and ex-enemies through the strands of his blond
hair. "Face it, there isn't much we can
do right now. That cave is the only
lead we have on Vincent, Yuffie, or Reeve.
That cave is also basically off limits until we get the proper equipment
and manpower to investigate it. When
the rain dies down somewhat, we'll go take another look at the cave." His eyes darted coldly back and forth
between Tifa and Reno. "And this time everyone's
going."
Tifa shuddered slightly at the hidden
meaning in his words as she wrung Yuffie's headband tighter around her fingers
and lowered her head, too depressed to get angry at how unfair Cloud was
being. Reno, however, had enough anger
for the both of them. If she wasn't
going to yell at Cloud for being an asshole, then he would gladly take up the
job.
"You know, Strife," he snapped, narrowing
his aquamarine eyes. "You got serious
problems with pride."
Cloud glared at him. "And those would be what?"
"You've got too much of it, and you don't
know how to swallow it."
Cloud didn't reply as everyone except Tifa
and Red wondered what the hell was going on.
Reno's hard gaze never wavered from Cloud's
angry face. "You're taking out your
anger and frustration on Tifa there because you know you're a failure...in more
than one area."
"Since when did you become her personal
defender?" Cloud snapped, tensing in his seat.
"Ever since you became her attacker," Reno
counterattacked viciously.
The precarious damper Cloud had put on his
anger suddenly snapped, and he leapt to his feet, knocking the chair down
behind him. His Mako blue eyes blazed
with anger. "Reno, I'm so goddamn sick
of your @#%$ing attitude!" he swore, hands clenched into fists.
Reno leapt to his feet, eyes on fire. "You gotta problem with me?!" he demanded
furiously.
"You know I do," Cloud seethed.
Reno dropped one hand so that it hovered
over his nightstick. "You want to take
this outside, then?"
"Reno, stop it!" Elena exclaimed, not
because she favored Cloud over Reno but because she knew that this wasn't going
to help their situation.
Tifa suddenly leapt to her feet, eyes moist
with tears and Yuffie's headband clutched tightly in one hand. It was clear she was tottering on the edge
of a breakdown and was horrified with the way Cloud and Reno were behaving
towards each other...all because of her.
She felt it was all her fault.
"Stop it, you two! Stop it!" she cried, her gloved hands flying to her hair as if in
intense pain. "All this fighting is
pointless! We need to look for?"
Just then, the door flew open, and Vincent
and Yuffie strode in, covered with mud and looking like a pair of drowned rats.
Everyone in the entire bar felt their jaws
hit the tops of their shoes (or in Red's case, paws) as they beheld their two
friends, who, a day before, had been in tip-top condition as they set out for a
cave to investigate the strange presence of a ghost ship. Now they looked as if they had been through
hell and back a dozen times.
Vincent's hair was unbound and drenched with
mud and rain, some of the larger mud clumps falling the floor with thuds as
rain dripped off of his ravaged clothes to make a puddle on the floor beneath
his muddy boots. His black shirt and
pants were ripped in several places, the cloth hanging open like gaping doorways
to reveal bruises and cuts gracing his pale flesh. His shirt had become untucked during the trip, and his entire
right sleeve up to the shoulder had been torn off, exposing a nasty black and
blue bruise. His red eyes revealed
nothing, but his split lip and disheveled state told the story for him.
Yuffie was the more battered and ridiculous
looking of the pair, wrapped in Vincent's cloak, which was so long that it
dragged on the floor behind her. Her
tanned legs were covered with mud and bruises; her yellow sneakers were in no
better condition. Rips and tears dotted
her modest covering of tank top and tan shorts, and rain had plastered her
hair, unbound by her headband, to the sides of her face, a few wayward strands
dangling into her stormy gray eyes. A
huge, yellow and black bruise was swollen under her left eye; similar ones
graced her slender belly and her right ribcage.
They were a truly horrific sight, but Tifa
had never seen them look better.
That is, until Yuffie stamped her foot on
the floor and yelled, "Don't just standing there gawping like a bunch of
retards! It's freezing balls over
here! Do something, you idiots!"
Author's Note: Alright! A short chapter, at last. Thought I'd give any readers a break after
those two last novel-length chapters.
Thanks to whoever's reading this.
Comments are always welcome.
e-mail catalina2717@go.com
