Author's note: I wrote this as a friendship fic, but one of the muses put his foot down at the end - it's up to you if you want it to be friendship or shounen ai.
Fragments
People aren't reborn, not really. They die, become part of the Lifestream, and parts of the Lifestream give life to new people. That's the cycle. The dead are gone even though their energy remains. That's the endless, careless cycle.
Cloud knows that. He knows it's stupid of him to keep looking for the ones he's lost, the ones he's still missing.
And yet, as years grew into centuries and finally too many for him to keep counting, he can't stop searching for them.
It's the little things, the things that no one else would think about. The way one girl smiles, the way another glares, the way a third bounces. The way one boy wants to change the world, the way another wants to hide from it, the way a third wants to save it, the way a fourth just wants to get away.
It doesn't matter if the girl smiles because she made it onto the track team and not because a new kind of flower grew for her, or if the other girl glares because her boyfriend was late to pick her up and not because someone implied she's not strong enough to fight, or if the third girl bounces because she aced her chemistry exam and not because she managed to steal Cid's materia again. It doesn't matter if the boy is a budding politician and not a terrorist, or if the other boy writes melancholy songs in the darkness of his bedroom instead of becoming a hermit in the wilderness, or if the third boy is a human activist and not an overgrown feline, or if the fourth will be satisfied as a pilot and never dream of space.
It doesn't matter, because Cloud can see the fragments of his friends.
He keeps looking, because the fragments will come back and he will watch them and protect them if he can.
Even when he can't find them, when he misses generations, he's not alone. Because there are fragments of someone else, someone more important than the friends who helped him save the world, held deep inside of Cloud.
And as long those fragments are with him, eternity isn't so bad.