Section One: Lamenting
Cloud's POV. About his life, about Nibelheim, about Tifa, about his parents.
Song: Pink - Family Portrait.
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Momma please stop crying.
I can't stand the sound.
Your pain is painful and it's tearing me down.
I hear glasses breaking
I sit up in my bed
I told dad you didn't mean those nasty things you said....
...It ain't easy growing up in world war three never knowing what love could be....
"Have you been drinking again!?"
"So what if I have?"
"You're never happy if you're not drunk!"
"I've had enough of you're bitching!"
A glass slams against the wall.
"Jeremy!"
"What!?"
"What the hell happened to us?"
"You and you're constant bitching happened!"
"If you want to leave, leave!"
"Fine!"
Daddy please stop yelling.
I can't stand the sound.
Make Mama stop crying.
'Coz I need you around.
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I'm Cloud Jeremy Strife.
Yeah that's me.
The Ex-SOLDIER boy.
The nobody.
The kid who always got picked on.
The kid who wanted to do more in life than stay in the quiet town known as Nibelheim. Just like every child's dream in a back water town, I wanted to be a SOLDIER.
Shinra Inc had started the SOLDIER program a few years before the Midgar - Wutai war. The almighty Shinra had won. General Sephiroth became an idol to heaps of people. I wanted to be like the General. The invincible war hero, nothing could stop him, nothing ever got in his way. He was respected.
I just wanted to be respected. I wanted nothing more than for everyone to look up to me. I wanted to be loved.
But she wouldn't love me.
She never even noticed me.
I was just the scrawny runt from next door.
She never saw me as anything more.
So I left.
I disappeared to Midgar. The 'Iron City in the Sky' as everyone used to call it. At least it was for anyone above the plate. It was the city of two totally different worlds, one below the other. One where crime was high, one where you'd be lucky to see past ten years old, one where you couldn't see the sun. The sky was a mystery to anyone living below the plate. The way the stars twinkled in the dark sky, the way the clouds drifted along the light blue atmosphere. The world below the plate, the slums. The place no one wanted to live in, but couldn't leave. Above that, the upper plate. The place where crime was non existent, people lived to the old age of eighty. The place where the sky was taken for granted.
I was unlucky enough to see the slums. I watched a mother cry as her baby was dying in her arms. I watched as a gang started to thrash a young woman just for a little gil. I watched as three boys, about ten years old each, sat starving to death, thinking about where their next meal was coming from. Waste littered the streets, all there was to drink was dirty water. I started to realise I took my own life for granted, even if it wasn't the best years of my life, I had clean water to drink, a bed to sleep in, even a mother that loved me.
Maybe I'm backtracking a little, but I knew my mother loved me. Even though I hated living at home. Her and my father never stopped arguing. The whole town looked at me funny because I was the 'bastard'. He left when I was about ten years old, saying he couldn't take anymore of my mother's bitching as he called it. I never saw him again.
Anyway, enough about that.
The Shinra building was the tallest, most amazing looking thing I had ever seen. It stretched far into the sky, glowing in the opaque sky. I had trouble remembering I was going to be spending at least the next two years there while I trained.
I hated it. I wish I'd never gone. Then I realised I was doing it all for a reason. For her. I wanted her to notice me. I promised her before I left I would be a SOLDIER, so I stayed. I got picked on all over again, threaten, beat up, all for her. The beating kept going, until a first class SOLDIER caught them one day and stopped them.
His name was Zack.
He offered to be my friend. I'd never had a friend before. No one wanted to be the friend of the blonde haired bastard from over the road. I just nodded at him.
It came to graduating. I never made it. I never was a SOLDIER. Instead of throwing the recruits onto the streets, they made them lowly blue Shinra guards. The itchy blue uniform that just screamed out SOLDIER failure. It was impossible to leave Shinra once you were there. There was no way out. I was stuck. My name would never appear in the newspaper.
A year later, I was ordered on a mission, to Nibelheim. My hometown. My hell. I tried everything to get out of it. I was told in no certain terms, that I was going and there was nothing I could do.
It was a three day trip. A three day trip stuck in a truck, then a ship, then a truck again. Did I mention I always get motion sickness? I sat at the back of the truck trying my hardest not to vomit. I sat turned away from everyone, including Sephiroth. I couldn't face my idol while my face was about as green as it could get. I ignored everyone around me. I was still pretty pissed off about going on the whole mission.
We arrived. Arrived at my nightmare. Everything was still the same as it was two years ago, when I left. I stood looking at the house of misery for about an hour, before I decided not to go in. I didn't even want to see my own mother, how pathetic am I? I went to the Inn, slept. All I could think about was my father, and what happened all them years ago.
The next morning came around slowly. I was the last one up, even though I must have had the worst night sleep of my life. I stepped out into the open air and saw her.
Tifa Lockheart.
The love of my life.
The one I did all this for.
She was our guide to the reactor. I was afraid that she would be. I made sure my helmet wouldn't come off and walked quietly towards to where everyone else was standing. Even though she couldn't have known it was me, I couldn't help but think she somehow knew. I was acting sheepish as it was. Zack talked to me while we were walking, asked why I wasn't talking to her. I just ignored him.
We came to the bridge, the source of a nightmare. My mind seemed to fly back to when we were younger and the bridge snapped. Tifa's dad beat me up for that, and no one stopped him. I snapped out of it and began to walk over the damaged beyond repair bridge, that was somehow still standing, but not for long. I was just my luck that it snapped again. Luckily nothing happened to her.
We finally came up to the reactor. I was told to stay outside, Zack saying that I didn't have authorization to go in the reactor. Neither did Tifa. I was stuck guarding the entrance, her staring at me.
She asked me if I knew someone named Cloud.
Of course I lied. I said no I'd never heard of him.
She seemed a little disappointed. She went and sat a little way away from me, drawing pictures in the dust with a stick.
Sephiroth stormed out the reactor an hour later, Zack trailing behind. I gave him a puzzled look. He gave me a baffled look back. He stopped letting the General go. The three of us walked back slowly. We learned no one got in the way of an angry Sephiroth. Me and Zack bid farewell to Tifa. I went back to the inn. Zack said he was going to check on Sephiroth. I left him to it. I took another look at my house for a while, before chickening out yet again. And again I had nightmares.
I awoke later on during the night. I was unbelievably hot. I shed the covers. Something told me to look out the window. The whole town of Nibelheim was on fire. Sephiroth was stood just near the gates of the mansion, the man I recognised as Tifa's dad yelling at him. Sephiroth slashed the older man with his Massume. Tifa's dad fell to the floor. I saw Tifa run out from her house, starting to following the General.
I dressed quickly, running up to catch up with the pair of them. I ended up back at the reactor. I had lost track of Tifa ages ago. Something told me that she was here. I entered and saw the lifeless body of the girl I loved on the floor of the reactor. I virtually jumped down and ran to where she was. I decided to move her. I picked her up gentle, placing he softly back onto the floor. I heard a scream. Hesitantly, I left her alone to look. I saw Zack, my only best friend's body flying through the air, Sephiroth's Massume still out of it's sheath. The General turned and walked into a room with the words 'Jenova' above the door.
Without thinking, I picked up Zack's buster sword and ran after Sephiroth. General or no General, no one was going to hurt my friend. I ran in. He saw me. He face gleamed a fearsome smirk. A smirk someone used when they had just lost their sanity. He tried to swipe at me. I blocked it with the sword I was holding. Sephiroth's face twitched a little. I managed to draw him out of the creepy room.
I lost concentration for a spilt second. It was all he needed. I felt a pain in my gut. It was a pain like I had never felt before. Looking down I saw a glint of metal. Sephiroth's Massume. I felt my strength start to drain away from me.
I closed my eyes slowly. I thought of what would happen to Tifa, Zack, me. I couldn't let him win. I couldn't let him take away the only two people I cared about. My eyes snapped open. Before I knew what I was doing, I managed to lift the man I thought was unstoppable, by using the Massume still stuck inside me. He kept on clinging onto the handle. With all the strength I possessed, I jerked the sword sideways. Sephiroth lost his grip, falling into the Mako pit below.
The next thing I remember, I fell to the floor. The strength I had gained before completed drained from my body. The last thing I saw was a man with greasy black hair looking over me. My eyes surrendered to the darkness.
~*~*~*~*~
Green.
All I could see was green.
I could hear tapping, as if someone was tapping a pen against glass.
I could hear laughing. A greedy laugh. A laugh of someone who had most likely lost his sanity.
As the days went on, it felt like the green was fading. I realised it was liquid. I wondered how the hell I was breathing. I couldn't move much. Maybe I drifted in and out of conscious. I can't remember how long I was floating in this green liquid, it felt like forever.
I can remember the liquid draining away. What I imagine was a door opened. I felt like I was falling until something caught me. I think I blacked out again, or I just wasn't taking it in. Next thing I remembered I was laid on a cliff near Midgar, Zack laid on the floor, lifeless, riddled with bullet holes. It felt like seeing him in Nibelheim all over again. I decided Shinra could go to hell. They ruined my life. I wasn't thinking straight at the time, but damn it all to hell I knew I hated Shinra.
I know now I had spend the last five years of my life in one of Hojo's Mako tubes. My eyes now glowed bright blue. I was beginning to feel stronger than I ever had in my life. Somehow I dragged my sorry ass to Midgar. I ended up on one of the trains that went round the central support structure. I ended up in sector seven.
I saw her again.
Tifa.
She found me sat on the steps outside the station stop in sector seven.
And the rest is history.
I stole Zack's identity. Maybe I was too ashamed of my own. Maybe I was so messed up in the head I never noticed what I was doing. He saved me from the Mako tube and all I did in return is steal his sword and pass myself off as a SOLDIER.
Tifa knew the truth, yet she lied to me. She told me that she didn't want to hurt me, that it wasn't the right time to tell me the truth. The woman I had loved and admired for half of my life had lied to me.
I just couldn't get over it.
A few months after the Meteor, I left her. She cried, she yelled at me. Telling me to get over a dead girl. I wasn't even interested in Aeris. And that's the truth. She was Zack's girl. I didn't need to take anymore away from him.
I told her to her face that she shouldn't have lied to me, treated me like she did when I was thirteen years old. She looked at me and told me I should just let the past drop.
So I did.
I let it drop, leaving her in the process. She yelled at me some more. I blocked her out and left. Left the pretty little house in Kalm. I marched right out of Tifa's life.
And I'm glad I did.
She let me make a fool of myself in front of the whole of AVALANCHE. She let me tell my fake story, one implanted in my head by Hojo. The one that had no ending. All Hojo wanted was another Sephiroth to replace the one I killed all them years ago.
He failed.
At least all my memories are my own now. Some I wish I never had. Like deciding never to see my mother when I went to Nibelheim. I was in the same town as her and I never went to see her. She died in the fire. I could have seen her when I was there and I didn't. The last time I saw her was when I was fourteen and leaving to enter SOLDIER. She was crying, telling me not to go. That she didn't care who I was.
I should have took her advice. Maybe none of this would have ever happened. Maybe Sephiroth would have never gone to Nibelheim, lost his sanity and took the whole town with him. Maybe the whole world would be different if I wasn't even born. Maybe if my father never left.
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....I don't love to destroy me like it has done my family....
"I promise I'll be better. Daddy please don't leave!"
"Cloud, you'll understand when you're older."
"But I need you!"
"Sorry Son."
A slam of a door.
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They say kids suppress bad memories. Maybe they do, but they always wish at that moment in time that it never happened. And when they grow older, they wonder if it hadn't have happened, what would their world be like now.
I wonder what would have happened if my father never left. What if Tifa always liked me?
Maybe I'd be better off at this moment in time, instead of being stuck in a town I don't know, around people who have no idea who I am.
AVALANCHE want nothing to do with. They think it's my fault Tifa is so upset. It's my fault that she won't come out her room.
It's not my fault she lied to me.
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