The world looks better when you're falling, grace to comfort enough to crawling.
Who: Zack Fair (lapdogmyass) & Cloud Strife (memoriesclouded)
Where: The Park
When: Mid-afternoon on Friday the 7th.
Rating: PG
Summary: Two old friends attempt to gain closure about some things and rebuild others.
the log:
He saw the sunrise that morning for the first time in his life. Unsheltered by four precise gray walls--identical and sterile--an artful study in the impassive--devoid of the personal, or anything to indicate signs of life. Their shallow, reflective surfaces were there to nurture those few men who called themselves SOLDIER--if you could consider shutting off all contact with the outside world--and the uniformity of the dorms that choked out individuality with a quiet and orderly fist--'nurturing.' Not once in all his seventeen years had Zack Fair seen the sunrise. When he was younger, it had been because he preferred to nestle down under the warmth of his sheets--only waking when the bars of sunlight grew too bright to ignore any longer. When he joined SOLDIER, it was because he often rose well before the sun ever came up--the lights of the city just outside the floor-to-ceiling glass windows just beginning to wink out for the night.
But that particular Friday morning, six stories above the world, as he hung in the slightly askew and mostly boarded up window frame of an abandoned warehouse, he watched the sky turn from dove gray to nearly bloodless white, and then finally, the slow creep of the waving circle of the sun, that covered the sky in a brilliance of orange and salmon that was almost blinding to look at--the faint tendrils of shadow along the rungs of the fire escape below his dangling feet--dull with rust and age--disappearing as they grew backlit in pale yellow.
Zack hadn't slept. Not for the past four days. And it was clearly taking its toll on the young man--dark circles had begun to form under his eyes, and there was a slump to his shoulders that hadn't been there before. But as the sun crested the horizon, lighting up the industrial district into a hazy flare of silver as sunlight glanced off the hollowed out skeletons of the surrounding buildings he felt...calm. His head had been spinning for the past few days. Full of words, memories--circumstances that had nearly driven him mad. That had broken him down into something quiet. And although a part of him still wanted to lash out, to target something--anything--if only to feel less frustrated and helpless--he had settled down into a pleasant sort of numbness.
Which meant...
His eyes widened after a second. "Oh, man. I'm gonna be late!"
It was almost comical, how quickly he scrambled down from his perch. It took him the better part of twenty minutes to reach the park--after sitting up there for--he wasn't sure how long, to be honest. By the time he got there, the sun had risen fully.
I am probably am late, he thought to himself, with a twinge of annoyance. But it looked as though luck was on his side. After all, there wasn't any sign of Cloud. ...Yet.