It's been a while since I wrote anything outside of Kingdom Hearts. I'm trying to branch out a bit more. And I know I've already written for FFVII, but I've been replaying it recently. When I went back through Nibelheim, I ... I couldn't stop thinking about how Cloud must've felt, returning to the home he swore was burned to the ground, only to see it rebuilt and ... and fake. It turned into something that wasn't his home town. And, futhermore, it was infested with Failed Sephiroth Clones, and no one seemed to care.
So I guess all that musing brought up this short fic. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: Nomura and Square-Enix.
It was a quiet town, then. It was a silent town, even, with broken walls and rotting dreams, with a ghoul on every corner and a chip on every shoulder, some kind of awful, weighing thing that broke spines and hearts.
It was a quiet town, then, back when he was a boy with a rattail in his hair, before he was angles and planes of muscle: back when the broken walls weren't in his mind and the rotting dreams weren't a grand scheme of puppetry.
The ghouls were as ignored as ever, the only constant in its account. It was amusing how these fake people welcomed babbling cloaked figures, incoherent in speech and sight into their home without a moment's thought, but when he tried to defend what intact memories he had, he was the stain on the cobblestone.
He didn't want to return to this town of plaster and plastic, that smelled like newly painted halls camouflaged by the scent of antique … except not as pretty.
The angel at his side just smiles at him with knowledge (all that wonderful knowledge she has, that she gets without ever really knowing why), but he can see her wings burning a sadness in her eyes. She can see an oblique aura in this town--and everyone knows creatures (places, people, hearts, anything alive) don't have an ambiance so perfect.
He would never admit to sighing as he takes the vials and vases these numbered swine have to offer, would think (if he could) it's just too damn ironic how prototypes of the man he's destined to kill are trying to help him. But he drinks and drinks delicately, like a wine glass labeled "Mind Source" from '64, aged to perfection, and he feels the new power searing in his veins with just one thought: "here's to you, my king".
He supposes it's a mindless ministry this Great General wants to create. But that's not the real reason he wants to eradicate the sermons.
The town knows. The town's always known: it knew what he wanted the day he left it, because the wind moaned between the buildings, as though crying for the dreams it knew would never be fulfilled.
It was a warm town back then. But the town only knows now because it's an unspoken cynicism on the back of a throat, and he wonders if he wants his old, boring home surrounded by mountains back again, wonders if he likes having to become this "self-destructive hero".
Chronological, hooded monsters seem to know why, too, and one of the creeping green eyeballs looks at him with comprehension:
he's afraid. Cloud's afraid of becoming a slavish disciple to The New Religion; The New Religion where everyone has eyes with a look that could kill angels.
Maybe his angel will save him?
But every time he turns a corner
to see the sun resting on the ground,
he stands and waits for "Hallelujah".
… and waits.
And waits …
… and he waits.
"Hallelujah" never comes.
Instead, he remembers telling a dark-haired man with a smile larger than life …
remembers telling him "goodnight".
Goodnight, sweet prince.
Good night.