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The first days of work consist entirely of finding people under the rubble. Barret and Cloud take point on that, lifting the heaviest pieces of debris, while Red sniffs out the survivors and the others perform medical service, extraction and healing.
Having things to do is like purpose, and purpose is like work, and work keeps you tired. Work knocks you out at the end of the day. They live on the Highwind for the first few weeks, and bring as many refugees on as the ship can handle, transferring them to camps, or safer places farther from Meteor's epicenter if they want. As they all salvage Midgar buildings, the ones in the slums and fallen structures that can be repurposed at the city's edges, people begin to make homes among the ruins, building and rebuilding as they go.
On the Highwind, Cloud and Barret bunk together, Marlene sleeping in an adjacent compartment with Tifa. It's close quarters. Neither of them have really been in the mood to fool around lately, beyond gentle kisses after the ship's lights go out, hands rough with calluses exploring skin before stilling as one of them falls asleep, and then the other.
One night, Barret's awakened by something, and before his sleep-blurry eyes have cleared, he feels the shakes through the mattress. Memories rumble in him. Mineshaft mania. Men would get the shakes sometimes, hear a support beam settle, see a kerosene lamp flicker how it shouldn't. A vein would crumble out into hungry, awful darkness. The shakes would come, shaking hands, shuddering lungs, quaking spines and buckling legs.
Cloud's breathing hard, half thrashing in their shared cot.
Barret rolls over, places his hand on Cloud's chest, trying to steady him. "Just a dream, man," he says. "Wake up."
"No—" Cloud shudders. In the dimness, Barret sees his open eyes by their soft luminescence—sees them flick around the ceiling, sightless, dilated with fear. He seems to register Barret's hand and words, but not Barret himself. "No, no, not them, not them, not—"
Barret shakes him a little harder. "Wake up, man. It's okay. You're okay."
At this, Cloud seems to become aware of Barret's presence. He turns his head. He's sweating. His pupils—this is weird, and it would be hard to see if it weren't for the glow of Cloud's mako eyes, but it almost seems like they're dilating and contracting slightly, even more erratically than his breathing.
"Barret?" he asks.
"Yeah, man. You were having a nightmare." Though it almost seems like Cloud isn't fully awake yet.
Cloud launches up suddenly, turns and throws his legs over the edge of their ship-tiny bed, curls his arms around himself. He shakes, shakes, shakes. His breathing is fast and irregular. From his position, his back towards Barret, it's impossible to tell what his expression might be.
"Everythin' okay?" Barret asks quietly.
In a quaking voice: "It's not safe."
Barret leans up. "Huh? You seen somethin' wrong?"
But if Cloud had seen something wrong with the ship, or thought of something wrong with their next mission, he'd have said so immediately, not in the middle of the night. He'd have said so decisively, not like this, his voice fearful and distant.
"It's not safe…" Cloud says, rocking forward on the edge of the bed, curling tighter and tighter. He breathes a few times, erratic and speeding up. "It's not safe… he could… it's not… 's not safe…"
For a moment—just a moment—the awful thought rises up. That Cloud's trying to warn him of something real. That he could be alive, somehow, still. That Cloud, vulnerable in sleep, might have been—
No. Barret knows what this is. A bad dream. A glance into the awful dark. The fear of it all collapsing.
"Hey, man," Barret says softly, sliding towards Cloud, reaching his good arm around him. Cloud flinches, but doesn't jerk away—only trembles, shakes harder. "It's okay. Talk to me." He gets close enough to slip his short arm around Cloud as well. "You're safe. Ain't nobody here but us."
Cloud doesn't speak for a few moments. Barret holds him, as Cloud's shivering slows. But it doesn't completely stop.
"Talk to me," Barret repeats.
Cloud struggles to speak. "He—" Pause. Shiver. "I saw myself—" He chokes on the words, his throat making a wet clicking sound. Tries again. "…It was like when—" Lips press together, swallow it back, like forcing down his own sick. His voice has a tremor Barret hasn't heard since… Right. Back after they lost the Black Materia the first time, when he woke up in Gongaga, it was like this. Curled in a ball on the bed, his eyes wide and wild, then screwed tightly shut. He was shaking like this then, too.
"…I was back in the Crater," Cloud finally says. "But this time, this time I…" He stops. If Barret's dark guess is correct, this is the closest Cloud's ever come to talking about it, about what it was like to be connected to Sephiroth. "I…" His voice, quavering, is thick with shame, as though trying to confess something hideous and unspeakable.
Barret squeezes tighter. "Alright, man, if you don't wanna say it, you don't gotta. All I know is, that son of a bitch is dead. You're here. He's not. It was just a bad dream."
Cloud takes another shuddering breath. Barret can hear tears in it. "I'm sorry," he chokes. "I fucked it all up. All of it. It's my—"
"Nope." Barret squeezes him even tighter and rests his cheek next to Cloud's. "None of that bullshit. We all fucked up. We all gotta carry that weight. We all in this 'til the end of the line, ain't that right?"
The pressure of Barret's hug seems to be doing its work; Cloud's muscles are slowly unclenching, the trembling slowing. "Had my share of bad nights, too," Barret adds. "After they burned Corel. After they shot Dyne offa my arm." He pulls Cloud back slightly, back from his position on the edge of the bed. "Just gotta breathe through 'em."
A few seconds pass. Barret feels Cloud's lungs expand and contract against his grip. "…Easier to do when you're not crushing me to death," Cloud eventually grunts out, and Barret knows he's back. Back from that darkness where the fear takes you.
"C'mere," Barret says, releasing Cloud and pulling him around, turning to face him. Cloud's eyes shine a dim blue-green in the dark, no longer wide and darting; he shuts them, slides closer, and buries his face against Barret's side, under his arm. "That's right. I gotcha."
They ease back down onto the bed. Cloud doesn't speak again, and Barret doesn't push him to, letting him lie there until his breathing slows into the cadence of sleep. Tomorrow, there will be more supply runs, more logistics. More looking people in the eyes whose lives are ruined because of Avalanche's fuckups, and trying to make it better for them, one step at a time.
"Yeah," Barret mumbles to himself. "We all gotta carry that weight."