Howling and Hollow (Cloud Catch-All)

[relativefugue]

WHO: Cloud Strife and YOU
WHAT: What does your heart desire? (A place for planned threads outside prompts!) Cloud is settling in.
WHERE: Around Town and the outskirts, depending!
WHEN: A week or more after arrival, ongoing.
WARNINGS: Probable mentions of mental health struggles and trauma.

SUMMARY: A catch-all for Mister Final Fantasy! Here he is, trying to...Leave. Inevitably, he will be settling in, whether he likes it or not. What are those weird bumps hidden in that chocobo fluff hair? He fell and hit his head, probably.

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[silver_soldier]

No negative reaction. No fear, no anger. Cloud seems to have retained his awareness that Sephiroth is on his side here, and that's no small thing under the circumstances. Sephiroth relaxes minutely.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs. "You deserve to know these things - perhaps need to - but I recognize perhaps better than anyone else how traumatic such knowledge can be." His gaze darkens slightly. "To realize the extent to which you were used, and victimized...how much of your life isn't as you thought it was. There is no gentle way to share such information, and likely no easy way to receive it, but...knowing the effect it could have, I've done my best to make it easier."

Sephiroth doesn't think he necessarily deserves any understanding for the mental break he'd experienced at Nibelheim - not, at least, in consideration to what his breakdown had led to. It's easy to extend compassion for weakness when weakness isn't synonymous with catastrophe, but when it is...well, he had been the dam that failed. No matter how much pressure he was under, his failure had killed so many downstream for him, and it was for their sake more than his own that it had been important for him to remain strong. He had never been in a position where it was safe for him to fall apart, and he'll live with the consequences for the rest of his life. In that, he's luckier than most of his victims.

But maybe...Cloud can have that safety, at least. Maybe Cloud can break down, and build himself back up, without any deeper horror or regret. And whether Sephiroth deserves it or not, Sephiroth supposes Cloud can't help but see, in this, something of what Sephiroth endured himself. It's not an excuse, and never can be, but perhaps at least...it can make understanding easier.

Though, as far as that goes...perhaps understanding his nightmare will only make it more distressing. Not that there's much Sephiroth can do about that.

"Can you stand?" He feels some small return to normalcy, to control, may help Cloud here.

[relativefugue]

Control- something Cloud has had taken away from him so much now, even without him knowing in the most dire cases- is absolutely something that helps return some semblance of stability to him when offered by Sephiroth. Control, agency, the choice to pull himself back together. Not just out of obligation to the Planet, or his friends, but for him. It is grounding.

Loss of control is, in many ways, a thread that connects Sephiroth and Cloud. The thought crosses the merc's mind vaguely as the painful haze begins to clear. He can remember- or maybe it isn't his own memory- when Sephiroth learned a horrible truth all too similar to his own. Of evil wrought from the very same source. How he broke down, and how Cloud's own living hell began. As much as it would be so easy to just continue to hate Sephiroth with all his being, and only remember the flames swallowing up his home...He cannot help but consider that perhaps his hero was suffering, too. It certainly does not forgive his actions, but at the very least, gives Cloud pause. In the end, it makes Sephiroth just that much more human in his eyes. Further teases apart Jenova, the monster, from the man standing before him with concern written ever-so-vaguely on his features. Against all odds and against all Cloud knows, Sephiroth seems to care about him. Again. It was not a one-off thing. That apology, and those gentle words ring as genuine.

How? How could he care this much? No amount of guilt or wish for repentance could ever bring a man to be this drawn to someone, not this organically. Could it?

They are still holding hands. Cloud decides to play it off, say nothing about it, and use Sephiroth as a brace. Even if the silver stays kneeling, he can reasonably hold on for most of the way, given their height difference. So he tries, slowly working his way to standing on wobbly legs. Once he's steady enough to feel confident, he lets go, and straightens up. He chalks up the pang he feels over their hands parting as another symptom of his loss of stability.

"...Guess so. Not the first headache I had to deal with." He pauses. "As if Hojo needed to give me more reasons to hate him. Now Red is gonna need to leave some for me when we kick his ass." If he gets home. Or, when.

[silver_soldier]

Sephiroth, of course, rises with Cloud. His hand remains rock-steady in Cloud's the entire time, letting the blond brace himself as much as he needs. His hand, when released, lowers - slowly - to his side again.

"For whatever it's worth, in my world - my timeline - your group does kill him." Sephiroth sighs. "I wish I could find any satisfaction in that, but he was - will be, I suspect, in any timeline, under any circumstances - an unrepentant, amoral madman until the end. But perhaps that doesn't matter. Even if something snapped in him, and he suddenly regretted all he'd done, feared death and begged for his life...I doubt anything he could suffer would feel like justice. Like my own suffering in the Lifestream, at the hands of my own victims. Pain that serves nothing, solves nothing. I wouldn't hate him less...and it wouldn't make anything better. Perhaps you'd feel the same, as well."

Though, of course, he's only extrapolating. It's equally possible other victims might be more righteously sadistic...but, if there are victims like that, he doesn't quite think that would be Cloud. Or Nanaki, or any of Cloud's friends. At heart, all of them are good people - it's why they go through so much, sacrifice so much, for the sake of the world. Righteous rage they may feel, and deservedly so, but he thinks they would feel the same emptiness and meaninglessness in revenge that doesn't redress that he's perceived. That he feels, thinking of Hojo suffering. Hojo deserves to suffer, far more than any of the people he's harmed, but it wouldn't improve anything. Not really. Beyond, at least, stopping him from continuing to make the world worse. Good for a bitter smile, perhaps, and no more.

"I'm sorry. It seems as though the only certainties I can give you are ones you'd prefer not to have." As far as Sephiroth can tell, the divergence point of their timelines...it seems to be after Cloud's return to Midgar, after Zack's death. He doesn't fully understand it, but there can be no doubt that everything prior to that point seems to be the same for both of them. There's no doubt, after all, that this Cloud was in Hojo's care for those four years; their connection was hint enough, and now Cloud's own memories confirm the circumstances under which that connection was created were indeed the same. The Nibelheim massacre was the same. Sephiroth suspects that, if he questioned Cloud's life back as far as he cared to go, everything he knows of Cloud through Jenova, that it would all dovetail exactly. There's hardly a reason for anything else to vary, anyway; certainly all preceding events were not particularly major events in Cloud's life. Aspects of his relationship with Tifa, perhaps, but then if those had changed, wouldn't Cloud's relationship with Tifa now - would his joining AVALANCHE at all - have changed to reflect that? No; it seems there is a distinct branch, somewhere between their worlds, and Sephiroth feels he's at least able to pin down - roughly - when it happened. Primarily observation and process of elimination, but he feels there might be a touch of intuition involved as well.

But...well, as he's said, the unfortunate aspect of that is primarily that all he can do is unearth the traumas Cloud's own mind has tried to lock away. Things that happened before Midgar. Any reassurances about the future, any happy endings there might be...they won't mean anything to a Cloud who isn't guaranteed to reach them. For whom things are already very different, and may only change more. Sephiroth would like to hope that, somehow, they can change for the better - if nothing else, perhaps Aerith doesn't have to die - but hope isn't something that comes easily to him. It never has.

[relativefugue]

Cloud can slowly feel himself coming back into full control of himself, the final remnants of the visions around him fading into nothingness like they'd never existed.

"There's no ifs about whether he's going to get what he deserves in my timeline. We will stop him. And then some."

As intially appealing as the idea of Hojo suffering intensely seems, Cloud, in his heart of hearts, knows that would serve nothing, just as Sephiroth mentioned. Yes, he does feel the same. Why create even more suffering to perpetuate a cycle Hojo already pushed along so much himself? Wishing for that makes one no better than the madman. He deserves a painful end, and needs to be stopped- not prolonged suffering, even if it would be poetic. Cloud is simply not a man who enjoys or does well when faced with the suffering of other human beings. Beneath the cool facade, he has a powerful sense of justice. Clearly something Sephiroth knows well.

As for the certainties...

"Not wanting them doesn't change if I need to know them or not. You're still..." Cloud pauses, making the realization in the midst of vocalizing his thought, "....Helping." He is. Sephiroth has been helping this entire time- just as he swore to. Impossibly, against every instinct and experience instilled in Cloud from home, Sephiroth is helping him. This mess makes it tangible. Touchable as the warm hand that remained so steady throughout his harrowing experience.

Those mako eyes dart away to focus on ...anything else. The gesture is almost sheepish.

"So thanks."

[silver_soldier]

Even more than the gratitude...being told that he's actually helping, and in particular that he's helping Cloud - someone he, or something wearing his face, has done so much harm to - means so much to Sephiroth that his breath actually catches when he hears the words. Guilt, regret, shame, helplessness...those feelings have been so much of his life. Long before Jenova.

He'd managed to help people, it's true, even in ShinRa. Other SOLDIERs. Civilians. Friends. This isn't the first time he's ever felt as though he's made a positive difference. But...it's certainly never been as much of his life as he would have liked. This feeling that maybe things are better because he exists.

He can never undo what's been done in his name, with his body, but...perhaps he can in fact make things better for the people he's harmed. And this is the first truly tangible proof of that. And, for the first time...his continued existence doesn't feel quite so selfish.

"I'm glad," he says, faintly. And even in those two words, his voice almost breaks.

[relativefugue]

Cloud was already starting to think of his strategic retreat, much like a wounded cat trying to slink away and hide...

...But the raw, genuine emotions that he sees and hears on Sephiroth from his expression of thanks knock the breath out of him momentarily. For a time, Cloud cannot tear his eyes from Sephiroth's- this is perhaps the first time the merc holds prolonged eye contact with him since they started interacting in this strange new world. His lips part in an expression of shock, but also almost wonder.

Cloud Strife is left to just take that in for a few silent beats. To let it sink in just how much helping him truly means to his hero. To someone he thought long dead.

...Clearly, he's compromised. Clearly, he needs to slink off and process all of this. Alone. Where the silver cannot continue to see the gentle, vague pink that dusts his warm cheeks.

"It's fine," Cloud manages, in a voice much smaller than he would have liked. It's soft, clearly the blonde's gentleness coming through. Always when he tries to stifle it with a stone-cold mask. He takes a step back, and turns away, regarding Sephiroth over his shoulder once that magnetic eye contact finally breaks.

"...See you around. Got jobs to hit."

He departs rather immediately after, mind alight with thoughts both shocked...and a little flustered.