Weak
Disclaimer: Guess what, its not mine! Want a cookie?
A/N: No! Don't bring Angst in here! She reeks of self-pity and nothing gets the stains out! AHHH!! -runs away and hides- Leave me Constructive Criticism, she's nice.
Weak. The word has many facets and connotations, but few of them are ever positive. Never when connected to a person. Animals can sense weakness in a group, creating a system of hierarchy.
People sense weakness in other people. The weak are used, abused, and discarded. Broken. They follow orders and then disclaim responsibility for their crimes. A strange dichotomy appears when the weak are crueler to each other than the strong.
Perhaps they do it to prove they can. Perhaps because the taste of such power is a heady thing they have never had and do not understand. Perhaps they do it to prove to themselves others are weaker than they are.
But whatever the reason, one thing remains: the weak do not lead.
In animal or human society the weak never truly lead. A figurehead may be weak but the ones pulling the strings never are.
Any member of AVALANCHE would say Cloud Strife was not weak. Many would say he was the strongest man they knew.
Some found this funny – a broken man, who had definitely suffered from bouts of insanity, who had failed at critical points, taken another man's identity, surely he could not be called strong.
But strength is defined as the capacity for exertion or endurance. No man has never failed, never fallen down. Strength lay in the ability to get back up and keep going.
To endure.
How many would have kept going after seeing his home town slaughtered, seen his world turned upside down, stayed even partially intact after Hojo's meddling? Survived losing one's last living protector? Held together in any way after Sephiroth's mind games? The complete loss of identity? Knowing one's failures have cost loved ones their lives, and maybe the entire planet?
Many would have simply given up and died. Died in the flames that consumed Nibelheim, at Sephiroth's hand in the reactor, lost the will to live in the labs, given in to despair later.
The mere task of survival in such circumstances takes an incredible will to live, to stay at least partially out of despair. The loss of that will kills as surely as any bullet.
It is not to say Cloud came through unscathed. He lost a great deal – his home, job, dreams, his family, his sanity, his memories. Years off his life. Things none will willingly pay. He would never be the same, never able to look at the world without knowing the horrors man is capable of inflicting.
Some would say he emerged a broken man. But broken men do not save others, do not help piece themselves back together. Broken men die. A broken object can be fixed, a broken man cannot.
Cloud Strife had bent, in some ways warped irrevocably. But he had not broken. He had lost battles – given the Black Materia to Sephiroth, almost killed Aeris, lost himself in the lifestream – but he never lost the war.
AVALANCHE doubted any other would have survived all Cloud had and still lead them to victory. None of them would ever envy him, all knowing in his place they wouldn't have survived. Vincent could sympathize, but even he had never lost everything, despite his monsters Vincent had never lost himself.
They found it ironic how Sephiroth, strongest of the strong, had broken after losing his identity, becoming an inhuman experiment. Had been weak, and displayed the cruelty of the truly weak. The all-powerful had no need of cruelty, being secure enough to be merciful. To be kind. Sephiroth had proved himself none of those things.
So even if Cloud himself would shrug and smile sheepishly as they told him he was strong, embarrassedly brushing the comments aside, they would keep telling him.
And woe to any who called Cloud Strife weak in their hearing.
The End