A/N: And after over a year I am back! Sorry for the long wait, but as I was in the middle of writing the original As We Fall, FFXIII-2 was announced and I was so bummed I decided to wait until it came out before continuing. But that led to me giving up on all my projects, so everything came to a stand still and I fell into a minor depression. I can't promise it won't happen again, but this time the whole story is written out and all that is left is the polishing. My apologies to those who were waiting and those who reviewed the original As we fall which I deleted to make room for this one.
CONTAINS SPOILERS! So read at you own risk. I only played about an hour into FFXIII-2 before getting to work on this baby which took about ten hours to write. The spoilers aren't all that big, but I wanted to let you know all the same.
For those who don't know, this is part 4 of a 6 part saga I am planning, so the other fics are Of My Dreams, When I wake, and In Our Hands respectively. This is about the ongoing romance between Cloud Strife and Lightning Farron and how their love affects not just their lives, but their worlds.
Thanks for all the support I've gotten over the last few stories, it really helps me as a writer to see just how far I can go.
AS WE FALL
Chapter One
Life in New Bodhum
Cloud knew he was surrounded, but he did not feel panicked in the least.
Well, at least this saves me time from having to find all of them. He thought with a smile.
They were called Bloodbaths, large, toad like monsters with great maws and barbed claws. Snow had warned him about them. The females, almost golden in their color, had an annoying habit to call out other males with her mating call. This meant within minutes one Bloodbath could turn into a dozen. They could always be found near the water's edge, even on Cocoon. But on Pulse they were much bigger. Heck, everything on Pulse was bigger.
Cloud found himself knee deep in seawater, six reddish grey shadows hiding underneath the surface. Which one was the female? It was hard to tell. One began to go very still. It was getting ready to charge. The Fusion sword sliced through the water just as the beast began to dart forward, the blade hardly meeting any resistance. As the body bubbled up into view two more struck at Cloud, but he was already gone, leaping up into the air in a smooth arc, his blade flashing through the waves. Three down, three left.
Then Cloud heard the mating call and silently cursed. The female was still alive. Four more shadowy figures under swam up, and this time they popped their heads out of the water and hissed at the blond man. Whether it was because they could taste their own dead in the water or that growing numbers had emboldened them, all seven monsters leapt out at Cloud at the same moment, their mouths wide open with dripping fangs. Cloud divided the Fusion Sword in two and did a 360 slice as they came at him, leaving most dead and some maimed. The surviving Bloodbaths, just two in fact, gave out cries of anger and agony before disappearing beneath the waves. The former mercenary quietly reassembled Fusion and looked down at the mess he had made. Green body fluids and entrails stained the water and littered the sand on the nearby beach. But already the sea was cleaning it up.
That's when Cloud heard the sound of an airbike. He recognized it immediately. The roaring was a giveaway that it had been remodeled. Army bikes are designed to be quiet to sneak up on the enemy. And civilians like airbikes that don't scare away the neighbors and that are built safety first in mind. No, this airbike could only belong to a group that didn't fit into the civilian or army category.
"Cloud! Are you ok?" cried a dark haired woman at him. She wasn't the one driving the bike, of course. She was the one holding the large gun.
The one flying was a blue haired young man dressed in fancy clothing decorated with feathers and other ornate, while the girl seemed happy to show off her skin to the point it was barely modest for most beach goers. The man, obviously adept at flying his bike, landed it several yards away from the rolling waves. Both riders got off, the young woman giving her friend another gun, and approached Cloud.
"Looks like the party is over." The blue haired man said, sounding not exactly disappointed.
"I wouldn't say that." Cloud said in a low voice.
The others looked at him with frowns on their faces, until they heard the roar.
"What was that!" The woman asked, her gun up at the ready.
"Look!" The blue haired man exclaimed, pointing a finger out to the ocean.
A wave started to come in, but it didn't look natural. It was dark and no wider than half a dozen feet, but it rose and rose until it towered the group. A large beast breached out of it, its roar like clashing boulders, flailing its arms about with huge muscles that looked capable of lifting several tons and great amphibious hands that could crush rock.
"It's an Alpha Bloodbath!" The woman cried out in horror.
It lunged at Cloud, who quickly leapt out of harms away as the others opened fire. Bullets punched holes in the monster's skin but couldn't reach any of its vitals, so it only got mad. It came down hard on the surface of the water, creating a mini tsunami of sorts that washed over the man and woman, throwing them back, tearing their guns out of their hands. Cloud went at the Alpha with both hands gripped solidly on the hilt of his sword and leapt high into the air, bringing his whole weight into an attack against the head. Small Bloodbaths are easy to cleave. Giant ones aren't so much. Cloud's blade cut into the skull several inches deep, but the skull was so thick it didn't kill it. Regardless the Alpha went insane with the burning pain Fusion was causing it and started to whelp and screech. Cloud tried to keep his grip, but was quickly thrown off.
"What can we do now?" The dark haired woman asked after her and the young man had searched for their weapons in vain.
"Yuj! Lebreau! Use your magic!" Cloud had to shout back, being separated from them. "Use lightning on it!"
The two NORA members looked doubtingly at each other; they weren't very proficient at magic at all. But swallowing their fears, they began to attack with everything they had. Their thunder strikes stung, but wasn't powerful enough to inflict injury. Cloud could see that the monster would soon be on top of them. So before the giant Bloodbath could strike back, Cloud called down Thundaga, using Fusion like a lightning rod. The sound of thunder was deafening and the flash of energy blinded everything that had eyes, and for a second afterwards, the world was silent and still. The Bloodbath was dead before it hit the water, its crisp skin causing the seawater to bubble with a hiss of steam. The others stared in amazement and then broke into cheers as Cloud retrieved his sword.
"That was so amazing!" Lebreau said excitedly. "I've never seen anything like it!"
"NORA sure could've used you back on Cocoon, Cloud." Yuj added.
Cloud felt embarrassed at the compliments. "Thanks guys."
The smile on Yuj's face vanished suddenly. "My bike!"
It had gotten knocked over and swamped with water by the Bloodbath's attack, and now laid on its side, the electrical systems crackling and smoking.
"No! I spent over twenty-five thousand gil on this baby, now look at her! It's going to take months to fix." The blue haired man lamented as he stood it upright.
"Just ask Maqui to give it a look. You know he loves to tinker on it anyway." Lebreau said as she finally located their gun. She squeezed the trigger to see if they were in working condition. All that came out was water and sand. "Blast! Two more guns out of working order. And the supply airship doesn't show for another two weeks!"
"It seems that this battle was more costly than we thought." Yuj muttered angrily.
"Well, at least no one was hurt." Cloud pointed out.
Yuj nodded in agreement. "By the way, nice going with your magic, Cloud. You're leaving the rest of us in the dust.
That's because I'm a l'Cie. But instead Cloud shrugged. "I just practice a lot."
"Hey guys." Lebreau called out, who was standing at the water's edge, letting the waves touch her toes. "These dead Bloodbaths are going to attract scavengers if we just leave them here. Cloud, think you could set them on fire if we piled them up on the beach? Then we can go home."
"What about my ride?" Yuj said in a distraught voice.
"We'll just hide it near the tree line and cover it with those large jungle leaves. You and Maqui can come for it later." Lebreau suggested.
The three of them worked for almost another hour, hauling up the carcasses of the battle. The giant Bloodbath had to be cut into portions to move, which Cloud did mostly alone. By the time it was all set ablaze the sun announced late afternoon and they began the long walk back to New Bodhum. It would've been only minutes by airbike, which Yuj would not stop reminding them.
"It's so hot out today!" Yuj said. Truth be told it was more humid than hot, but the Cocoon native wasn't yet used to the less regulated climate of Gran Pulse.
"At least what you're wearing is somewhat sensible." Lebreau remarked before glancing at Cloud. "All that this soldier boy is wearing is black on black on black."
"Yeah. It's not very fashionable." Yuj agreed.
"It's more battle practical." Cloud explained. "If you over dress that you lose freedom of movement. And if the colors you wear are bright it only paints you as a target."
"So you think what I'm wearing is practical for fighting?" Lebreau said as she did a small twirl to show herself off.
Cloud had to hold himself back from blurting out 'no'.
"Just be careful handling those big guns of yours, Lebreau." He warned. "Those types tend to heat up fast and without some kind of layer of clothing you could easily burn yourself."
"I'll keep that in mind." She answered.
"Speaking of big, how the heck do you handle a sword that size, Cloud? When Maqui was putting it together for you after you gave him the designs, I had the toughest time lifting just one of the smaller blades, let alone the whole thing!" Yuj eyed Fusion as it rested in its leather sheath on Cloud's back.
Cloud almost gave a sigh. As much time as he had spent with his new friends, his past had always been kept to the fact that he was from another reality and that it was a bleak place at best. Though he was secretly hoping they wouldn't pry any deeper, it was inevitable that questions would surface over time.
"Where I come from, weapons are very individualized. Trust me when I say mine isn't the craziest out there. But it might be the heaviest. I…um…I was enhanced, you could say, which made me stronger." Cloud could have been a little vaguer, but seemed to feel the need to share just a little more about himself. "My first sword, the Buster Sword, had been handed down to me. I inherited it from a friend when he died."
By their silence he could tell they were reading in between the lines. He had been a lab rat, tested on for days and days. A friend of his died saving his life, at which point Cloud was given the dead man's blade. Lebreau and Yuj quickly glanced at each other, as if to agree to stop asking questions.
Lebreau raised her arms over her head and stretched, yawning loudly. "I hope someone is cooking a decent supper when we get back. I could eat a whole behemoth, and then sleep for a week."
Yuj scoffed. "Like you did anything. Cloud was the one who killed all those monsters single handedly, even used some unbelievably powerful magic to do it. He's a fighter born. We should give him the whole supper."
"I had to listen to your endless chatter about your wrecked airbike. I've more than deserved some food." Lebreau shot back.
This went on for a while, eventually turning into how each one of them liked New Bodhum. Since Cloud hadn't seen the old one, Lebreau and Yuj happily gave him details and stories of their old life. It was pleasant to hear about happy memories for a change, with troubles few and far between. They told him how NORA was founded and for what purpose. NORA seemed to Cloud more like a street gang than a rebel group. He imagined Lighting must not have liked Snow Villers all that much at the start. Life was comfortable on Cocoon, so what was the use of rebelling? Then Cloud's mind went to Avalanche, the terrorist group that Barret Wallace had put together. They had been the real deal, getting their hands dirty, drawing public attention and getting real jobs done. And to think back in the day when he was cocky, Cloud thought they were a joke. He wondered if Barret would take a liking to Snow if they ever met, but then pushed that thought aside. There wasn't even a chance of it happening, so why think about it?
"Ah, Bodhum sweet Bodum." Yuj sighed as the village came into view.
"Not bad work for a bunch of rookies who didn't know how to hit a nail with a hammer." Lebreau agreed.
Cloud only nodded. Unlike Edge, the construction that had happened on this beach had really brought everyone together. Cloud knew everyone in New Bodhum by name, and they knew him. He wasn't as sociable as he would've liked, but he felt far more comfortable here than he ever had back home. But there was always a shadow in the back of his mind.
Lightning wasn't there.
"Drink at my place?" Lebreau asked as they crossed the gate. "It'll be on the house."
Yuj accepted in a heartbeat. But Cloud hesitated.
"I have things to do back home." He said, trying to sound truthful. "What if I came around later tonight?"
"Well you better." Lebreau said with a laugh. "You do remember that today is the first anniversary of New Bodhum, right?
"Of course."
He hadn't.
Yuj seemed particularly excited. "Yeah! We're going to have the gallon of milk jugging contest as well as arm wrestling competitions. Everyone's bringing food, we're going to play music, tell stories around the bonfire, and have sparring matches, fireworks, just all sorts of things!"
"Sounds like fun. I'll catch you guys later."
The two friends headed straight for the bar while Cloud made his way along the hot sand to his house. Many said hi to him along the way, knowing he had just come back from getting rid of some pulse monsters since it was a group of wandering kids that had come across them in the first place and warned the rest of the village about it. Cloud's house was near Snow's, one of the furthest away from the beach in case Pulse beasts attacked by land. So far hardly anything, save bloodbaths and the occasional giant fish, attacked from the sea. Every house was raised off the ground in case of flooding or rogue waves. The tropical storms on Pulse were brutal, unlike Cocoon's more regulated weather, and now the inhabitants had to build more practically. Cloud climbed the ladder up to his front door and pushed it open, glancing back for one more look at the horizon. It almost caused him to smile. Once inside, Cloud rested Fusion alongside the door and wandered off to his bed, dropping in on it with his full weight. It was not yet evening, the anniversary just a few hours away, but Cloud was tired all the same.
Something was pressing up into his chest, something pointy and cold. Cloud reached for it and touched the necklace Lightning had given to him on the day he proposed. He remembered having given her his wolf head earring. Cloud thought it had looked good on her, and how happy she felt having her own necklace close to his heart. But even that was dampened by the truth he was holding back from her. The truth was he was going to be leaving her.
A truth he had been reminded of that very same night.
XXXXX
Over a year ago…
"You are holding back. Do you truly believe that by refusing to augment your abilities it will delay the inevitable outcome that you will return to your own universe?" Celeritas, the Fal'Cie that lived between realities, who claimed to be a guardian of some sorts, had come to Cloud that night as he and Lighting slept in each other's arms. Though instead of her true form, a crystal encased in a beautiful metallic body, the Fal'Cie had the form of Marlene, Barret's adoptive daughter.
They were in Tifa's 7th Heaven bar, not the one in Edge, but the old one under the Plate in Midgar. Cloud was in his SOLDIER uniform sitting at one of the few tables in the place with a glass of alcohol in his hands while Marlene sat across from him. Cloud knew it was a dream since the contents in his glass kept changing from rum, whiskey, beer, cider and so on. Whereas Marlene's appearance wasn't that of the seven year old girl Cloud knew, but rather she was considerably older, somewhere in her early twenties.
"The problem with you mortals is that you are all fundamentally selfish." She began. It struck Cloud as amazing how beautiful 'Marlene' was and how accurate the Fal'Cie was in the adult depiction of the girl. "You are willing to fight for the lives of thousands if you can benefit from the glory afterwards, even if the chances are slim. But stand to lose from those same actions and you gladly let others suffer."
'Marlene' directed Cloud's attention to the window. When he looked he saw not the filthy streets of under the Plate, but the Plate itself, as though the bar was floating up and around the city. She continued, "Once you learned about the Lifestream, you were happy to use its power, basking in the glory that future generations would praise you for your ingenuity. But when you discovered that this was killing the planet, you reasoned that such a catastrophe was far off and that those same later generations that would've praised you now had to find a solution to the disaster you would force unto them."
"But we stopped that." Cloud countered, sipping on his drink. Strange, it tasted like lemonade.
"What about when you left Tifa and Denzel and me to fend for ourselves simply to meet up with a pretty woman to snuggle up to. Was that not selfish of you? At least admit that you weren't very concerned about us at that time." 'Marlene' pointed out, her facial expression not showing any anger.
"I…"
"And then there's not telling Lightning about how you will have to come back to us. You keep telling yourself it's to protect her, or is it because you're afraid she'll shun you for breaking her heart, turning her into a cold machine like one of the Fal'Cie that is manipulating her?"
Cloud gritted his teeth angrily. "You're manipulating me! You're the one who brought us together time and again, then purposefully cut the link knowing I would raise hell trying to find her. Then you tell me I'm going to be torn apart from her again and you're so surprised that I refuse to do what you tell me to. You may have a long life, but you're no god! And stop pretending to be Marlene!"
The image of adult Marlene smiled but remained, her long ponytail hanging over her left shoulder. She cocked her head sideways and stared into Cloud's eyes. "A girl can really lose herself in those, you know. And several have already."
"Stop this!" Cloud hissed. He wanted to get up, but the rest of his body seemed perfectly content to remain sitting.
"Would you rather I take this form?" Marlene disappeared and in her place was fifteen year old Tifa, with her leather vest, hiking boots and cowgirl hat. But what shocked Cloud to see was the long, bloody gash that was across her middle, opening her intestines to the outside. Looking into her eyes Cloud noticed they were glazed over.
"Please, stop." He begged.
"Perhaps this instead?" Aerith replaced Tifa, her skin sheet white, with colorless eyes and a bloodstained dress. Dark spots were forming where she had started to decompose.
"Enough!" Cloud was frozen in place though each muscle was screaming to move.
"I think this would be the most appropriate." Celeritas transformed one last time, into a very dead looking Zack.
Screaming, Cloud finally managed to leap out of his chair and down unto the taunting Fal'Cie, the buster sword that his friend had given to him years earlier in hands, slicing vertically for the head. But Zack's image didn't get cut; instead it exploded into thousands of shards like tempered glass. In fact the whole bar and the world outside did the same, leaving Cloud alone in a void darkness very much similar to the Black Ocean where he met Lightning for the first time.
"Why are you so angry, Cloud?" Celeritas' voice came from everywhere at once, sounding like a melange of the voices of Zack, Aerith, Tifa and Marlene. "I could've shown you anyone else and you wouldn't have behaved so violently. What's the difference with these four?"
"You know why!" Cloud shouted back, blade ready as though something was about to sneak up him.
"Then tell me. Prove to me that you know why."
The angry, rasped breaths soon faded and Cloud's rage cooled. The Buster Sword slipped out of his hand and disappeared into the darkness as it fell at his feet, not even making a sound. When he spoke, he sounded defeated. "Out of everyone I know, those are the four I…I feel most guilty about."
"Then imagine how guilty you will feel in years to come when everyone on you home world will suffer agony and die because of your inaction. I doubt even Lightning will be able to sooth your conscience with her caresses."
And that's where the dream ended.
XXXXX
Someone was knocking at the door. Cloud rose up from his bed and opened it. The light of day was all but gone, fires were lit all throughout New Bodhum, and the leader of NORA was standing right in front of him.
"Hey, brother! Serah was worried that you might've fallen asleep and would miss everything." Snow said brightly, towering a foot above him. Since the young man always called Lightning 'sister', he had no trouble calling Cloud 'brother' once he learned they were engaged. Snow looked at Cloud and blinked. "You don't look so good. You okay?"
"Sorry. Just thinking about…you know…the past." Cloud explained cryptically. Even after Lightning vanished, he still hadn't told anyone about the fact he was a l'Cie.
Snow gave him a punch in the shoulder. "Well tonight's about celebrating the future! Coming?"
Cloud glanced behind him, looking at the inside of his empty, barely furnished house. Stay alone and think of my regrets, or leave and forget about them for a little while? Then Celeritas' words from that night over a year ago sprang into his mind.
"You are all fundamentally selfish."
"Sure." Cloud replied with a faint grin. "I'm coming."
End of Chapter.
A/N: For those of you who noticed, yes the beginning is a rip off the Episode Zero-Encounter when Lightning first met Yuj and Lebreau. Seeing how similar Lightning and Cloud appear, I thought I'd pay tribute to that fact by having Cloud fight the same monsters with the same people in the new seaside town, making similar observations about Lebreau's clothing. Except Cloud actually tells her. Don't criticize a woman's clothes, Cloud! Of course I jazzed up the opening fight a little. Hey, who's to say Alpha Bloodbaths don't exist, right?
Sorry if the dream was a little gruesome, but Celeritas is trying to get her point across and doesn't care how she does it. I'll apologize in her stead.
Thank you for reading as I'm sorry for any mistakes I've made. Please review and tell me what you think of Cloud Strife hanging out in New Bodhum!