The Hero
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Before you read this, toss as much angst as you can out the window. Its meant to be read as what Cloud sees as fact, not self-pity. K?
Hero. The word brings to many minds pictures of knights in shining armor, slaying the dragon and winning the fair maiden. Boys wanted to be the hero. Men wanted to be the hero.
The word made Cloud shudder.
He had stopped believing in heroes long ago, when his personal hero had nearly killed him and burned home to the ground. When his other hero had died.
When he had been under Jenova's influence. When he had been too late. When he had won the fair maiden and fled.
A hero was superhuman. He was never too late, never stressed, never controlled by another, never crazy, always able to stop any disaster from happening. Heroes didn't die.
No one could live up to such a thing.
Once he had dreamed of being Tifa's hero, of saving her from something – he'd always envisioned a dragon – but even that dream was hollow now. He knew heroes didn't exist in life. Tifa's fairy tale prince was a myth. He was only a survivor.
He'd met "heroes," had worked with Sephiroth and Zack, both his personal heroes. The illusions had been ripped from him brutally, one finally cracking under pressure and the other proving once and for all the thing heroes weren't supposed to be: mortal.
Admittedly he'd seen others do the same, but these men were heroes, they couldn't have such weaknesses. It wasn't allowed. So many trusted them, depended on them.
He hadn't understood then. Cloud had been so young, but even the older soldiers had believed it. That both men were invincible.
Now the word made him cringe.
It meant all those people – even AVALANCHE and Tifa – wanted him to be invincible for them. To always be able to fight off the monster in the dark.
But he knew he wasn't invincible. Knew what would happen if he failed at the critical moment – he'd seen it happen twice, his own heroes had failed him right in front of his eyes. Their falls had been all the harder for their successes and their greatness.
He was just as great. Planet's Champion, Savior of the World.
Failure had visited him too. His mind wasn't all there and never would be, he had been controlled before, and he had been too late before. Yet he could deal with that, as a soldier it had happened to him before. He was human and he knew it. Invincible was impossible. Survival was what he knew.
Then people had branded him hero.
Forever afterwards the thought echoed in his mind: How hard will my fall be?
The End
