- A Cloud Fanfiction -
Disclaimer: I don't own FF7 or FF8. I wish I did, I could make them do all kinds of wrong stuff then, teehee!
A/N: I love Clorith pairings. I have to admit, they're my favourite pair, with Tifa/Aerith coming second.
This fanfic has the characters from FF7 set into the FF8 world.
So here, enjoy this new fanfic. Probably will be updated sporadically...
- 01: Remembering to Breathe -
"I'll be leaving soon, and I don't want to lead you on...
...so if you feel the need, close your eyes and share this dream
It will be eternity...
Forever for tonight,
I will be there, to hold you through the night...
Forever for tonight
I will love you, forever for tonight..."
- Blessed Union of Souls -
Breathe.
In and out, take in the world, expel your fears. In. Out.
I know the routine of it by now. I have practised it for so long that it has become reliable, just like second nature and I find it easy to continue pretending that I am breathing, not just making my chest rise and fall.
I have lived an incredible life. I have seen many incredible things. I have done even more incredible things.
What things?
Let's see...
Once upon a time, I was born in a northern border town called Nibelheim, cold in the winter and sparse in the spring. We made fortunes from tourism, small time trades and the new reactor due to be built and completed, with honours and nods from the ShinRa Corporation. My father, I don't know him. I don't suppose I ever will. My mother, she was vibrant, alive. I'll always recall her that way.
I grew up insecure, probably some by product they'll say, of lacking a father. But through insecurity, I harboured a childhood flourish of equally childish love for a girl beyond my reach, Tifa Lockhart. Lackheart would have been closer. She wouldn't have stepped from her ice throne if a gun were pressed to her pretty pale neck, back then. No, she never saw me, lonely little boy and his lonely little fears. So one day, after a failed attempt to be noticed, I started to get stronger.
I picked fights.
Sounds brutish? But it worked. I applied to Soldier and left Nibelheim with a handful of promises I intended to break and forget, leave everything behind and in Midgar, this city of dreams, city of new beginnings, become a great Soldier, worthy of returning home, kicking down that ice throne and pushing all their faces into the mud, cause then, they'd have no choice but to remember me and my name for once!
Only...
It didn't go according to plan.
That's called 'Fate', if you haven't guessed by now. Fate, a shorter word for 'kicking-you-in-the-balls' was having a field day with my life. I wish I'd never heard of the bloody city and their infernal corps!
So it was, years after the fact, I came back to Nibelheim. What a dump. It had degraded, but Tifa was there. She looked worn down. I stayed away; I wasn't sure what to say; now my pride had the hole in it called 'failure to enter Soldier'. So we paraded around each other and pretended we never saw one another. Then Sephiroth took one hell of a turn towards batshit crazy and burned the whole town down. Awesome, go you!
...not.
Pretty much everyone died in that fire. I don't remember escaping, Zack probably helped me.
Zack. My friend. My best friend.
He'd never once asked me to be something I wasn't, ah, how I appreciated that, how I loved to be just me. Thank you, Zack, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
...so as it was, some time after the Sephiroth and his 'Mummy loves me so much' incident, I came to in Midgar with Zack's sword. I didn't know it then, but he'd been shot dead by those treacherous ShinRa dogs. But to my surprise, years must have fallen away in-between my recollection of events, because Tifa was there, because she was older and tired, care worn. Where is your ice throne now, maiden? Oh... it melted. When did that happen?
I still don't have the pieces of the puzzle that is my life, not all of them. I get the general picture though. So from that moment on, she took me in and I worked as a mercenary for Avalanche. I did some pretty awful things, bombs, killings, uprisings and rebellion. But it was worth it, because slogging through the dross with Tifa and Barrett, I eventually fell from grace onto her front garden.
Aerith Gainsborough.
Such kind eyes. You didn't once pretend I was something better, or should be something I wasn't. You didn't force flimsy words and promises on me, even after we had to take on ShinRa to get you from harm. With companions too many to name, we took up my cause of following Sephiroth because he seemed the natural target, because I hated him for what he did to Nibelheim, because he'd really ruined that pretty upholstery on the top floor of the ShinRa building. Hell, it could have been because he used the same hair shampoo at me, at that point in my life. We followed... because he called, because he wanted me to follow him.
Tifa, Barrett, Red, Aerith, Cait, Vincent, Yuffie and Cid. And me.
...we waged war on Sephiroth's trail.
Along the way, you reached out to my caged heart and let it fly once again. You filled me with dreams, with need, with knowing and I was able to breathe freely, I was able to... fall in love.
When?
...I don't know...when I fell in love. But I did... I fell hard. I fell so hard it hurt.
Did you return it?
A secret whisper of Sephiroth trying to find something in a hidden temple and we spent time in the Gold Saucer, hunting for clues, hunting for remnants of your forgotten, forsaken past, sweet flower. My sweet, wilting flower...
So I took you high above the dross of the world, where fire bloomed in the sky like the flowers in your beautiful gardens, and you'd lean to see, so I instead could watch the smile in your eyes and how I enjoyed it, how I loved it so. And just as suddenly as you were laughing at me, trying to tell me another secret you didn't have words for, you were gone.
The next time I saw you, you were dead.
Sweet, sweet Aerith; dead on the end of the slick and sheer masamune blade, sliding forward and never once, a single breath escaping your broken body. Did you know? Did you?
Pointless.
Break my heart then, cruel Fate! Kick hard as you can!
So to your watery grave I let you sink, let you float free. Go on... be free.
Incredible things, we waded north through snow and blood, to face the wound of the Jenova crash site, the calamity from the skies where it hand plunged deeply and wounded the world so bitterly that it wept the very life force. There, in amongst the snow and the clutter, we fought hard.
...and I sank into despair.
You know the rest, it's pretty standard fare. We clubbed together, we overcame, we kicked butt and even in the end... even then! You saved us. You saved me. How can I repay that?
So now, I lie here, trying to breathe, because it's all I can do.
Out and in. Expel what I was. Take in what is happening.
Out... in...
...out...
...I have done... incredible... things...
She was old. Not simply 'older', but old. She had wrinkles where she would have frowned in brief amounts when younger, the laughter lines shared sparingly with the world that had encased her in ice from the moment she was waking, to the moment of her passing. It wouldn't be long now. She was marginally surprised she had managed this long.
Every breath was pained, but her eyes filled with a thousand secret tortures, they gazed at the two pictures on the dresser that bore marks of old coffee cups which never had ownership of coasters, a cracked vase and a doily that had been stained some time back with a drop of the aforementioned coffee. There were other pictures of course, spotting her well to do home, as befitted a supposed Saviour of the Planet, as befitted someone who had lived their life and tried hard to never regret, tried hard. She'd tried hard, hadn't she?
She'd loved, a few times. Reeve, her deepest love, her greatest joy and most secret woe - ah, that he should fall and die before her, but that came with the gap in their ages she could only assume, and bitter the brew that was remaining life, she drank it and lived, because he would have wanted her to. Two sons, five grandchildren and a handful of close friends that were fading memories, but splinters, two sharp and painful remained in her heart.
Vincent had gone looking years back for the answer to his constant mutations into other forms, and had never returned. Reports surfaced when she was into her thirties and already a mother, swept from her feet with the bustle of her children's lives, that his cloak had been found in a waterfall gorge sculpted from crystal. Yuffie had gone in a similar way, in battle, but then... wasn't it a ninja right to die in the midst of the thick of fighting? Yuffie, she had eventually escaped the shackles of her lonely childhood and become a truly wonderful leader for her people, as well as the loving aunt for Tifa's children when she and her husband needed time away. Cid had been the first to go, in his sleep. Such luxury, that age brings sweet surrender instead of the struggle between what is life and what is only the hell of not being with your loved ones anymore. Shera had followed him under quickly enough, and so it was Tifa and Reeve had seen to it that their family always had someone to support them in their darkest days. Barrett had passed much the same as Cid, sleeping softly with his daughter Marlene taking it in her stride so well, that Tifa sometimes wondered if perhaps, she too carried some Cetra blood in her far distant past she knew nothing of. Red, unchanging if a little grizzlier, had returned home and despite the distant letters, she knew that their phase of living together as companions was over. Proud little Nanaki was a warrior grown now, after all... and Tifa had her own life to cope with when suddenly Reeve died of heart complications brought on by working with the dangerous, essential Mako for so long.
The grief had almost been too much.
But... never as bad as those times before.
Her hand crept from under the covers and smiling, she brushed her fingertips over the flowers placed on the bed stand, yellow and soft, glowing with life that was quickly failing her. The picture on the left was in a frame of solid silver, scrolled with flowers and stars.
You liked flowers, Cloud, and you loved those stars, Aeris. Now you're both touching them without me, both reaching to the sky far, far away. Reeve's gone on ahead, he said he's waiting for me... won't you both wait for me too? I won't be much longer... my best friends, my love... please...
Tears filled her eyes and they moved without volition to the other photograph in a frame next to it, of herself in the wedding dress she'd picked out, a brilliant splash of white and her favourite blue accents around the hemline. Beside her, Reeve tried hard not to tug at his collar, all the while holding onto his excited and radiant bride with one hand, a smile curling the corners of his mouth and hitching his goatee only a little. Behind them, the congregation was clapping and before them, Denzel and Marlene waved at the camera, older and still as youthfully exuberant. She'd only been twenty six then.
Aeris had been missing from her life for well over five years, Cloud, for less than a year. Two best friends, taken, in a blink of an eye.
Only the pressing engagements of her own future had prevented her from going totally insane, immersing herself entirely in the wedding, in the reception, in the dresses and those picky little details she always had a tiny problem in sorting out; she supposed it was just her nature to gloss over the little things.
I wish you had both been there, to share in my joy.
Not much longer now. Not at all.
"Mom," it was the voice of her eldest son. The boys, both of them, had taken time off to try and take care of her. She knew their pain, it was in their dark, warm eyes whenever they looked at her, that the person who had once been so vivacious and alive, was slowly fading away at their fingertips. She re-assured them, she was never in any pain, it was simply her time to go. Like all things, her time had come.
"I was just thinking, that's all."
Kane, the elder of the two, nodded and leaned back, his expression tight and pained. He looked very much like his father, but the younger of her sons, Jace, had inherited the unusual eye colour that was predominant in the Lockhart family, wine red and those eyes swam with emotions. She wasn't as good at hiding his emotions, but ever since he was little, he had always confided in her. A mother's boy, many would call him, but she was relieved for such a good relationship with her children, especially after their father had passed on. They filled her hours with calls and little emails, with visits from her grand children and community support in the village they lived in.
You'd not recognise Nibelheim now, Cloud. It's alive, it's vital. It's the world I wanted to see when I was growing up; it's the world Aeris would have loved to be in. Is this her promised land? Did she leave it behind for our children, and our children's children? What a precious gift...
Her breath caught with tears and both sons looked to her. Jace took her hand, his was so much larger and hers much frailer than she ever recalled.
"Mom, just breathe," he reassured her.
But after all this time, after all my losses, can I breathe easily?
This is it. This is it... and it's painless, like falling asleep.
"I need to tell you," she said in her voice, the only thing left about the woman who had run the life of the Tuetsi family clan for so long, who had bullied, coaxed and downright cajoled them into living their lives to the fullest, the only thing left that was strong. The only echo of her youth. "About things."
Kane looked uncomfortable, hands in his lap but his eyes on her, she looked just as steadily back; no one had gone toe to toe with her in the past fifty years and won. Not since Aeris had bullied her into letting her go that fateful night...
"I have lived," she went on softly, "An incredible life. I have seen and done many things. I have loved, and lost... many... many times. But in the end, I truly lived. Your father often said, he thought I was living my life for two people. In time, he was right. I lost my best friend when I was so young, in such a terrible way that I should have prevented. I suppose I lived for her too. You look around yourselves and all you see is grass and life. All you see is life. That is her last gift to you. Not to us. My generation, we are passing, we are gone. When we are gone, only your memories of us will keep us alive, and the stories they tell. Stories of how Cloud the Valiant took down the great ShinRa..."
But in truth, he was frightened of himself and everything in his head that he couldn't understand...
"...of how your mother faced down a horde of demons to protect a sacred cave to the tribe in Cosmo Canyon..."
I reacted in blind panic. There were feet and fists, I panicked because I was so inexperienced and I didn't want to die, so I fought.
"...of the Last Ancient who gave up everything, so we could have tomorrow."
But she said she'd come back. She promised... she promised...
"I've heard them all before," she whispered and looked to the side, "But the truth is... Cloud and I, we hardly knew each other. I wish my life had been exemplary, but it wasn't. I hated, with all my heart, what this world had come to be. I hated myself for never knowing what to do. I bore it with me like a wound. Cloud was so traumatised by what ShinRa had done to his own fractured personality that it took everything we had to keep him moving sometimes. And Aeris... sweet Aeris, she had the most reason to hate of all of us, and yet... she never did. But in the end, even she couldn't keep a simple promise. That's all those people are, fairytales."
"Mom," Jace whispered with a wince.
"I think... I loved well enough. I love you both... take care of her last gift, it's all we have left to give to you now..."
And she was breathing slower, and slower. She sank into the bed and her fingers felt weak, the light outside growing dim and someone was calling her name from far, far away. But she smiled, because now she could sleep and somewhere, in that blackness that curled around her, Cloud, Aeris, Reeve... they were all waiting for her.
And so that's the end, isn't it? It's over.
"Is it all over?"
The stars twinkled gently.
"No... we've decided, to move you along, to migrate you."
"Migrate...?"
"The Cetra, your souls don't belong to this planet... so we'll move you to another planet where magic is growing there. Think of it as a second chance."
"Like a game over screen and you get to press continue?"
"Sort of, very much like it, only you'll be changing characters a little, at least some of you will be."
"...will... everyone be there?"
"Maybe. Are you ready?"
"...are they?"
"Does it matter? You only have one decision to make, to rest... or to find out if it could have been any different."
"He needs that chance... I need that chance. I think we all do."
"So you'll caretaker a new planet?"
"I'll do my best."
"That's all we've ever expected of you, Honoured Daughter. That's all."
She breathed. She breathed softly in and then just as softly out. Good, she still remembered how to do it. She still remembered. Those memories, they'd mostly be stripped away to start with but she wondered, deep in her heart of hearts, how much would the strings of fate still bind them all together. Whether anything would really be different this time around...
And fading, she left, between one breath and the next.
The shimmering figure saw each soul off, sending it on a journey far away, to start a whole new story on another world that needed heroes, that needed them more than this world did now it was safe and protected. That world would need their strength and their weaknesses, it would need their love and their fears, and it would need everything about them if it was to make it through.
"But I have faith in you, Aeris, Honoured Daughter, and those that go with you."
...and the Cosmos smiled.