[Milliways - by the lake at night]

Night after night after night now, he's in the trees. Without the proximity of the Lifestream, without the familiarity of the Planet, he's losing himself. Scattered, out of sorts, tired. And he no longer knows what to make of Lucrecia: if she's here he's been unable to find her and despite her reassurances or what he took for them, if she's gone it's without a trace again. He has to assume that means she... has better things to do than stay here with him. The weight of that realization, slow in coming, has been almost too painful to acknowledge and so he takes to the treetops.

Being away from everyone makes that particular reality blur just enough so he might be able to get through each day and each night.

(He... misses two people. One is Lucrecia. The other is Tifa, but... he feels inadequate as a friend these days. Falling back into old remote habits is far too easy.)

Up here in the trees by the lake, he can... observe without being seen. He can fly without being spotted. He can feel as badly as he wants without having to explain a single thing. Some nights, he doesn't even go back inside to his room. He can be repentant as easily if not more so from here.

And so he sits on a tall and hidden branch and watches and waits, and thinks about the things in this life that truly matter, and takes note of who comes and who goes, and tries so very hard to compartmentalize and bury away the sins of the past. As usual, he fails spectacularly.