Title: Don't Care
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Rating: G
Length: 633
Author notes: spontaneously written in an hour after seeing the prompt
Summary: Cloud gets a job - an he's not taking it because he cares at all.



He shruggs, when the man, who hasn't introduced himself yet, says: "It's a dangerous job and we need someone who won't be a problem."

He wonders who will be the problem here. They are a ragtag group from what he could see at a glance: A guy with a gunarm and tatoos and a younger woman who looks a little too eager to make him agree to this. The third person is the only one who looks like he could slip under the radar or remain professional, if he tried. "You came highly recommended," that man says.

That sounds like an exaggeration. Cloud hadn't been in Midgar - back in Midgar - for long, but he'd taken a handful of odd jobs inside and outside the slums. "For the right price, I'll listen," Cloud says.

A look passes between the three.

"Don't you want to know what we need you to do?"

He shruggs, pulling up his arms in an uncaring gesture. Cloud remembers whats important: He needs to eat, he needs a place to stay and preferably he would like to be able to get himself somewhere else than Midgar in the long run. For all of these he needs money above all else.

Why do you want to get away? You just came back, a voice that sounds like his ow, whispers in his mind. Why did you leave in the first place?

He has no real answer.

He just knows he came into Midgar, because this is where the jobs are.

"We're AVALANCHE," the young woman whispers, the men looking cautious suddenly. "Still in?"

He frowns, not eactly sure what she's implying.

"Jesse," the reasonably calm guy warns his companion.

"Listen," the burly, gun-arm guy presses in an angry tone. "We don't have time to pussy foot around. We're AVALANCHE. You heard of us. We're…"

"Can't say that I have," he replies. And he still doesn't care. He just wants to get to the point.

It is then that suddenly someone comes in from a door behind the bar, saying: "Barret, I think we need…"

The voice makes him look up. His eyes meet surprised brown ones over the bar. They stare at each other for a long moment, before the woman asks: "Cloud?"

She knows him.

And it takes him a terribly long moment to grasp for her name from inside his memory, even though it's there, indelible, like an inscription edged into stone. Even though he has to grasp for it, it is there, will forever be there. "Tifa?"

The memories that are attached to the name wash over him like - oh planet forgive - like an avalanche.

The word edges itself into his mind like her name, something that has been happening recently with all the things crashing in on him as if he's relearning language, life, motions. It takes a moment to not gasps and clutch his head, not show confusion or weakness - and everything smoothes out and calms.

"You know each other?" Jesse asks.

"From home," Tifa says and she sounds shaken, just saying it.

"That's right," Cloud says, trying to keep the memories straight.

Tifa looks him up and down, slightly confused. The other's reacted like that, but they had told him they were looking for him because he was a former SOLDIER.

"How much?" Cloud asks, and waits for the man, who he now knows as Barret, grumbles an amount at him, but he and Tifa keep staring at each other as if nobody else is in the room.

It's his first day with AVALANCHE. He has no intention to stay. But he'll take the mission and that's it.

Tifa smiles at him.

He nods back.

Really. He doesn't care.

Right now, he even believes it.