Mint Leaves

Disclaimer:  I do not own Square Enix or its famous titles and products. 
I'm not making money from this fanfic; it is purely for the reader's enjoyment,
free of charge, for absolutely everyone!

Author's note:  Cloud and Nanaki come to an understanding, and Cloud
shares what little wisdom he can with the troubled young companion.  This
is basically a light CloudxNanaki, folks... but there's no touching, nor
exchanging of fluids.. you know the deal. Basically, this is an R, not an NC-17. 
I wrote this on a whim.  I have to thank another writer for beta reading it
for me... but I don't know his name on AFF.net

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

"Can't say what day it is or year

But thou shalt have no fear

For I know your name

You can't believe what I did

And maybe I'm just a kid

But the we're both the same"

Katy Rose, Teachin' Myself to Dream

The former SOLDIER had not understood how the feelings came about. The only
honest certainty he could fully admit was that it had begun within Nanaki
himself. If it wasn't for him, Cloud would never have understood the spiritual
aspect of the Protector of Cosmo Canyon - that he was, in fact, really a person
and to choose to see him as anything else was as stupid as it was ignorant. It
was for these reasons that Cloud had begun to look at the red creature as more
than a friend, as well as someone toward whom he could actually harbor deeper
feelings for.

It never ceased to amaze Cloud that no matter how often he was startled to see
the being - not an animal, he firmly reminded himself - he still did a
double-take whenever he saw a red lion walking or trotting through the Highwind
corridors with his head held high or down low. He should have gotten used to his
presence for all the long adventures they shared since rescuing Nanaki from
Hojo's laboratory. But no matter how often or how rarely he saw Cosmo Canyon's
one and only protector, he had to kick himself in the ass to remind himself that
this was his friend and ally for months past and he should be ashamed at the
fact that he kept forgetting it.

It's not as though we often get chances to speak alone, Cloud thought,
sitting around the campfire at night as the fiery Meteor loomed above them in
the sky.

The only other flame in the dark was Nanaki's tail - another mystery that Cloud
craved to understand. He looked at the sleeping creature. Beneath the red fur
and assortment of meaningless jargon that were his tattoos lay layer upon layer
of almost permenantly active muscle, used with masterful conjunction with his
claws and teeth. The strange exterior belied Nanaki's true nature, a well of
rampant, teenage feelings and emotions that Nanaki would not voice. Cloud
assumed Nanaki didn't want to because it might complicate the dark matters they
had to contend with in the future.

Regardless, Cid's snoring was not making it easy to sleep, leaving every waking
moment an opportunity to dwell upon painful things (Aerith's death, Meteor,
Sephiroth and Bugen Hagen's death). Therefore Cloud peered intently from his
sleeping bag, looking into the waning firelight. "Can't sleep?"

Nanaki's sole eye had been half-lidded as he peered into the fire; it grew
focused and alert at Cloud's soft inquiry. The great and muscular shoulders gave
a remarkably human shrug before plummeting into relaxation. "Not really."

Cloud took a deep breath, snuggling deeper into his blankets and half-wondering
whether or not Nanaki wasn't cold, laying awake. Surely he had fur, but it could
barely be enough to keep him warm in this slightly chillier climate. He saw the
tremulations running along Nanaki's back and immediately thought first of his
health. He unzipped his bag and sat up, shifting the Apocalypse blade to his
other side as he spoke quietly. "Climb in."

Nanaki's lifted his furry eyebrows in alarm. "Don't be ridiculous."

"It's freezing out and you're shivering."

"I won't fit!"

"You will. Stick your tail out from the bottom." A pause. Cloud narrowed his
hard blue eyes. "I mean it. Get in."

Nanaki lifted his head, shifting slowly and curling his paws underneath his
chest, purely in an attempt to appear stubborn. But at last, with a huffing sigh
and the gentle jingle of his head dress, the wolf-lion rose and padded quietly
over to Cloud's side. Cloud, by some miracle, had bought huge sleeping bags in
Mideel a few weeks ago from their salvation store; Nanaki would definitely fit
inside. So, as Nanaki laid down, Cloud was struck by how large his body actually
was. He was alarmed, but it was Nanaki who started to laugh.

"I warned you," the red creature laughed.

Cloud grunted as one of Nanaki's paws stepped on his thigh. It took all of his
restraint not to cry out from the sudden pulsating pain as those claws
instinctively sank through his SOLDIER issue pants and into his flesh. It was
the sort of pain that traveled straight into his groin. Instead, he bit into his
glove and shut his eyes. Nanaki's apology was swift, his nose burying in Cloud's
hand to pry his glove from between his teeth. "Forgive me! Are you alright?
Perhaps I shouldn't..."

"No," Cloud panted slightly. "Stay." That said, he rolled onto his back, and
Nanaki seemed to follow instinctively, sprawling his chest against Cloud's. He
didn't rest all of his weight on his body but he rather balanced it between his
front paws and the rest of his body, which was sticking out from underneath the
bag's confines.

The red wolf-lion gave in to relaxation soon after. Shivering was no longer an
issue, although Cloud was undoubtedly trapped where he was. He didn't say a word
as Nanaki rested his head on his shoulder, his nose fanning his cheek with each
deep, colossal breath that he took. It was not necessarily an unpleasant smell;
Nanaki's meals consisted mainly of what the others ate - gruel, meat, fruits,
greens. Nanaki often browsed for his own greens, tasting some things and
spitting them out when they proved unsatisfactory.

Lately, it seemed Nanaki had been uncovering patches of mint leaves. His breath
smelled undoubtedly minty.

Not bad, Cloud thought as he slowly closed his eyes, the blanket of sleep
sliding over him.

* * * * *

It seemed only a minute passed before the next time he opened his eyes, deafened
by the unearthly shrieking of the lion standing over his body.

"Get off yer ass!" shouted the old pilot, before he roared, lunging toward the
monsters, swinging the Dragoon Lance like a pole vaulter. He landed atop the
back of a writhing Head Hunter, and its green body writhing as it shrieked in
its garbled, deep-throated trill. "Wake up, Cloud! It's a goddam ambush!"

Cloud looked up to find Nanaki standing over him. He got a worm's eye view of
Nanaki's stomach and a view of his ribs as well as they expanded and contracted
beneath fur and tissue with each warning snarl as the group of Head Hunters
closed in slowly around them. Each muscle was quivering and alive, and for a
second Cloud was in awe of the perfect creation, realizing in the back of his
mind that he was looking at possibly the 'only' one of this beautiful race's
kind.

Or he was until a Head Hunter grabbed his foot and yanked him out from
underneath Nanaki and threw him ten feet clear into the air, hungry for his
blood. He crashed into the ground and felt the air whoosh free like a monsoon
from his lungs. He struggled to his feet, gasping for breath until he saw Nanaki
dragging his sword by the handle with his teeth straight toward him.
Simultaneously, he became painfully aware that the monster that had thrown him
was closing in as well, shrieking with bizarrely happy bloodlust and a
terrifying sheen to its purple, multi-faceted eyes. Its sickle arms raced and
razed at the air in a mimicry of what it was about to do in just a few more
seconds.

Nanaki tossed the sword into the air. Cloud dove, his arm outstretched--

--and the sickle arms swished, raking in empty air. Cheated of its attack, it
spun on Cloud, who dealt it a swift, lethal Deathblow and sent it spiralling
into the dirt, where it went still and disappeared.

"I don't think so, bitch," Cloud hissed, turning to face the rest of the battle.

He found Nanaki scrabbling with a Head Hunter, kicking away with his hind legs
for purchase in the chinks in its armor and ever mindful of the violently
slicing sickled arms. While he was out of its reach, he chewed his way into its
carapace and tore its heart out before the thing finally gave a rattling wheeze,
like a winding-down motor, and perished.

Nanaki crawled out from underneath it, shaking his mane with a delicate jingle
of his head dress. He was covered in the monster's blood, but it hardly made a
difference to Cloud's eyes - it just made the redness in his fur stand out more.
Cid wandered over, shouldering his Dragoon Lance with a pissed look on his face.

"The last damn time I ever camp out in the Mideel region. Fuckin' whores! I
can't believe this shit!"

"We're leaving," Cloud said stiffly, limping on his torn foot toward the
campfire where Cid was already rolling up the bedding. Cloud suddenly wondered
if Cid or Nanaki had woken first. If Cid... would he say anything about seeing
Nanaki curled up inside Cloud's sleeping bag...?

Apparently Cid hadn't seen... or he had, and didn't give two bricks of shit.
Cloud joined him and began rolling things up while perfectly aware that Nanaki
was moving around them and picking things up and trying in his own small way to
be helpful. It was difficult - Nanaki's teeth weren't designed for carrying
things, but for shredding, killing, rending into flesh. The image of Nanaki
trying to carry things in them, barely captured in glances, were enough to make
Cloud smile and shake his head.

A few minutes later, they journeyed back to the Highwind and clambered up into
its metal belly. Cloud approached Nanaki to speak to him, since they would now
have some time to exchange information, but the other shyly ducked his head and
trotted around a corner to hide.

* * * * *

Really, what did I expect? Cloud thought to himself as he lay awake in
his dark room, the steady thrum of the Highwind's turbines lulling his senses a
little bit. After Cloud had taken a long shower, Nanaki bustled in as he was
leaving. The wolf-lion had managed to work the nozzles to get the right
temperature in order to rid himself of the blood that had been caking his fur
all day - all without saying a word to Cloud.

Whatever is on his mind is none of my business. He's a friend; if he doesn't
feel like sharing his feelings - about his grandfather, about anything - with me
or the group, why should I feel like shit?

He had barely finished that train of thinking when the door's hinges groaned.
There was a gentle scratching, a muted snuffling from the hallway outside. It
was still going on when Cloud opened the door. After a second of staring at the
wall across a corridor devoid of any human life, he looked down.

Nanaki was sitting hunched in the middle of the floor. His long muscular limbs
looked hunched and tense, his ears drooped, and his paws habitually kneaded the
unyielding floor beneath them.

"Red?" Cloud murmured, rubbing the tiredness from his eyes. "Nanaki?"

The lion's tail made a depressed, half-looping S-shape on the floor. When Cloud
spoke, Nanaki looked up and fixated his single bright eye on his face and made a
decidedly grand effort to look cheerful. Cloud was dumbfounded; what the heck
was Nanaki doing up at half-past eleven at night? What's more: why was he coming
to Cloud's room? He would have thought if something was bothering him, he'd go
to Vincent, maybe, no, he was too cold. Tifa? She listened well...

"Can I come in?"

Cloud snapped back into reality. Me, then, he thought, stepping aside.

He was captivated by the fluid motion of Nanaki's body as he rose from the floor
with little effort and padded quietly into his single, small room. The sound of
tiny bells and whispering flame drifted in his wake. Cloud hesitated, then shut
the door.

"What's keeping you up tonight?"

And it was hard to think of what to pay attention to, now that Cloud's tentative
world of black was now invaded by the red blotch that had its own spotlight. Red
was hard-pressed to speak. He turned his head one way and then the other slowly,
his one eye fixating on no single thing. Cloud figured he was trying to stall by
cross-examining his room.

Before Cloud could press Nanaki further, it was: "I'm supposed to be strong..."

"...."

"But I'm not."

Cloud sat down on the edge of his bed slowly, rubbing his eyes again
methodically. Nanaki was waiting for another opportunity to say something and
needed to be given such an opportunity, but Cloud couldn't figure out what he
could have said to make it easier.

But he couldn't be quiet. "It's okay... everyone's dealing with a lot of their
own stuff right now. It's not easy to stop and think about what you're feeling."

"But that's just it!" The fiery tail whipped out straight. "I think too much!
Sometimes I wish I could just STOP thinking, and keep fighting, and not feel
like a burden-- Do you think he's proud of me?"

Cloud tilted his head slightly.

"Grandpa..." Nanaki hunched his shoulders, all at once appearing vulnerable and
sickly. As if he were going to expel a hairball right there. "Do you think he's
proud?"

"Why wouldn't he be? You're doing your duty - protecting Cosmo Canyon, by
fighting Sephiroth. You're doing everything you can." The blond warrior scooted
closer, before changing his mind. "Come on up here." He patted the blankets.
Nanaki balked at the strange gesture for a second.

Nonetheless he hopped onto the mattress and laid down almost immediately, head
rested on his paws. Every line in the lion's body spelled exhaustion. Cloud kept
his hands to himself, despite the urge to reach out and stroke his ears and
ruffle his mane.

"Perhaps I am leaving myself open for too much doubt." A heavy sigh, a shudder
from the bones out.

"I understand."

Nanaki pricked his ears. "You... do?"

Cloud felt an inkling... and now he did understand.

"Yeah. It's okay to be scared." He sighed heavily, reaching up to pinch the
bridge of his nose, thinking. "I'm a little scared, too. I mean," he sighed,
"everyone's expecting a lot out of me. Yet at the same time they don't want me
to feel pressured. I get a lot of mixed messages from Tifa, because she's my
friend. But she also wants to respect Aerith's memory. There's other things too,
but they're not important right now."

Nanaki nodded, ears pricked to listen.

Cloud continued, feeling a little keen to say the "right words". "Anyway...
what's not okay is that you shouldn't hide that you're scared. Not only is it
unnecessary, but it makes you a liability, you know? If you're scared, and
nobody knows it, you may end up being forced to make a decision with altered
judgment. You have to look at your fear and accept it, and push it aside.
Dwelling on it only makes it stronger. Do you understand?"

"Yes. Yes, I understand. Forgive me." Nanaki looked crestfallen.

"Don't apologize." Cloud offered one of his rare smiles. It made a huge
difference in Nanaki's demeanor. "I just have one question: why do you eat mint
leaves? I mean, besides the obvious answer..."

Nanaki sat up slightly, rolling his shoulders and grinning wolfishly. "Honestly?
It makes it easier for me to talk to people. Like you, for instance... certainly
you wouldn't find it easy to carry a conversation with one whose breath stinks
of a thousand dead things."

Cloud blinked, disbelief flashing through his mind. Did Nanaki just try to sound
funny? It was a weak attempt but the timing of it more than made up for it. He
chuckled, shaking his head from side to side. "You're a weird dude, you know
that?"

Nanaki sniffed his face. "And you are one to call names!"

Cloud laughed again, reaching out to push him away. Instead he indulged in his
instinctive desire to pet Nanaki, praying he wouldn't take offense.

His bare fingers, aching to touch his mane, reached. The distance closed in less
time than he expected, and his fingers curled delicately into the rough,
stick-straight spikes that seemed thinner near the tips and thicker near the
roots. Regardless, he had not expected the flood of sound that began to escape
Nanaki like the grating rumble of a motorbike - until he realized he was
purring. Nanaki rose quickly, thrust his neck underneath Cloud's arm and pressed
himself as close as possibe perhaps in an effort to regain the warmth of the
previous night and some semblance of the comraderie they had tried to forge.

"I miss Grandpa."

"I know."

Cloud felt stupid for not seeing it much sooner.Knowing that Nanaki was still a
child firsthand was different from having someone else tell him so: the blond
former SOLDIER knew it now. The blond former SOLDIER knew it now. Nanaki was
just a young boy trapped underneath a layer of false adulthood that had been
thrust too soon upon his shoulders. Responsibility, duty, honor - all these
things rushed at the young mind beneath the cruel fangs and terrified the boy
inside. The fear of failure - the possibility, really - was unthinkable.
Considering it must have felt like knives which cut open his secret worries,
before Nanaki sewed them up before anyone noticed he had been looking.

He understood now why it wasn't Vincent or Tifa or Cid that Nanaki would have
spoken to - Cloud was also in a position he hadn't asked for, for which fate had
suited him well, unfortunately. For Nanaki, it was hard to tell if he was ready
to take on a leadership similar to his own, without sacrificing his own sense of
self... and without sacrificing others.

Cloud flattened out on the blankets. Nanaki seemed much smaller. He could easily
stretch his arm over his chest and bury his nose into his shoulder. He did so -
breathed deeply with his eyes closed, trying to name the scent that pervaded the
thick, red coat. He raked his hands over his back to scratch at his tattoos,
wondering at the so-familiar-aroma.

He's like a scratch and sniff Nanaki. The thought almost made him laugh.

Cloud relaxed, body pressed into the bow-like curve of the other's spine. Nanaki
was also quiet and relaxed, sprawled out with his flame tail dangling over the
far end of the bunk, swishing and swaying, quite possibly with a mind of its
own. With no regard to how big he really was, Nanaki used his body like a
blanket - trying to cover as much space with as much of his body as possible.
That gave Cloud just another good excuse to snuggle as close as possible and
wonder at the fresh, clean smell of his fur.

Cloud took a deep breath, his head pillowed on his arm before dawning
realization came over him, olfactory sensors firing as the scent filled his
nostrils. Nanaki groomed frequently. He slept in the dirt. He ate scented
leaves...

His coat smelled strongly of wind and mint.