InsaneJournal

Cloud knows that his memory is sometimes... unreliable, that his head is more than a little messed up thanks to the high levels of mako he's been exposed to. There are odd gaps within his memories, things he should be able to remember but somehow he can't. There are strange, contradictory snatches of events and conversations that don't make sense. Mostly these are centred around his time with ShinRa, but he thinks that's understandable. After all, between his time as a SOLDIER and his time with AVALANCHE, there are several years that he spent in Hojo's less-than-tender care.

What is more disturbing to him is that some of the blank spots in his memory are along the course of this journey, and the others never mention them. Some of them he could explain by the fact that he's been known to space out thinking about something, but other times... Perhaps it's the results of a concussion, as his head often hurts afterward, or even the after-effects of a particularly brutal limit break. As the others never say anything, neither does he; maybe they assume he does remember.

His dreams are often disturbed as well. He's taken to setting up his own bedroll some distance from the others, with the excuse that his enhanced hearing makes it harder to sleep. In reality, it's because Vincent took him aside only a short time after joining them, and quietly told him that he sometimes talks in his sleep. The gunman wouldn't look at him as he said it and didn't add anything more, but Cloud is grateful all the same. As a fellow test subject, Vincent must understand how hard it is to know that other people might discover just how bad the nightmares can be.

He's just as grateful that for the most part he doesn't remember his dreams. They're nothing more than broken fragments by the time he wakes up. Possibly even as he dreams them, they're nothing more substantial than that. Flashes of fire and smoke, the acrid stench of processed mako. A world submerged in glowing green, voices that speak of things that make no sense. Sometimes they scream at him and he wants to put his hands over his ears and scream back.

Not all of them are nightmares. He's still a young man, and it's only normal that sometimes his dreams take a more erotic bent. These are just as scrambled in their way, but he figures that's normal. In dreams, the subconscious mind puts things together in ways the conscious mind does not. He doesn't really remember these, either, but he's glad of that. He's not sure he could look Tifa in the face the next morning if he dreamed about her naked and... doing things.

This dream seems just as fragmentary and strange as any other. He's dreaming of warm flesh pressing against his own, rubbing, holding him down. Textures dance across his skin; leather and long silken strands. The long sweep of wing curving around him, stiff feathers brushing against his legs, his nipples, even his cock. It makes him cry out and arch into it, even as he thinks, I'll get them dirty, because he knows that pre-ejaculate is weeping from the sensitive head, and the sticky, milky fluid doesn't belong on such smooth, glossy black.

When he wakes, he can feel the languid sense of exhaustion that accompanies one of those dreams, and is grateful that he does sleep away from the others, especially if he talks in his sleep. It's already fading from his mind, though, so all that lingers is that pleasant feeling of satiation and the memory of another's touch.

So he doesn't know why, when he sees a feather lying on the ground near his bedroll, he stoops to pick it up.

It's long and black, larger than any he's ever seen. The strength of the shaft suggests that it must be a primary flight feather, and he wonders what bird would have feathers of this size. There's something almost familiar about it, that strange sense of a missed connection he gets when his mind can't or won't put things together. He brushes it almost absently against his cheek, trying to grasp whatever memory it is that dances just out of reach. The shaft is stiff, only the tip of it bending to the pressure of his touch, but the interlocking barbs along its length are more yielding, with a smooth, satiny feel that is cool to the touch.

Too cool.

It should be warmer, he thinks, but doesn't know where that thought comes from.

"Cloud, breakfast is ready," Tifa calls from the campfire, and it jerks him from his thoughts. He quickly finishes rolling up his bedding so that he can go eat.

And he doesn't ask himself why he carefully tucks the long, black feather in his pack first.