Identity Crisis:
Disclaimer: I neither own nor claim to own Final Fantasy 7; Squaresoft/Square Enix do.
Summary: Who is Cloud Strife? The man who isn't an amalgamation of personalities, acting as people perceive him to be… Who is he? A character study.
Author's Note: Not Crisis Core compliant, I'm willing to bet. This is, however, set after Cloud regains his memory – and I'm assuming on a lot of it. Artistic license, you could call it.
Return of my weird fics. I've not yet done an FF7 weird fic, though I have in my other fandoms, so this is clearly deserving. Sorry! Disjointedness ahoy!
Thanks to Pied Flycatcher for catching some mistakes - which have been edited out.
Tifa says, "You look like you're thinking hard."
Cloud looks up, rubs his face. "Sorry," he says, but he doesn't sound apologetic.
Tifa sighs and sits beside him. "You have a lot to think about, huh?"
He nods, distracted. "I've not had much time until now," he says.
He doesn't say: I didn't know I had this to worry about until recently. She doesn't say: You don't have time now, either. It's a conversation without words, hidden behind a farce of Casual Conversation. It's anything but.
For a few moments, they sit in silence, and then Tifa, perhaps uncomfortable with such awkwardness, laughs. "It's nice seeing you so speculative, Cloud." He looks at her, silently communicating that she should carry on. "It just reminds me…" She pauses, looking for the right words. "It just reminds me of when things weren't so complicated."
"Nibelheim," he mumbles, though it's not such a comfort to him. It's a home, twice over, but a place made of nightmares. It's a place that, just by existing, says: I'm the sign that you screwed up.
He doesn't think of himself as infallible, but doesn't want to be spending his life living in his failures.
"Yeah," Tifa responds, and he almost misses it, caught up in his own thoughts. "It's just nice… seeing you like you used to be. Sometimes, some days, you're like a new man."
A careless comment, tossed away into the breeze, but it pierces him. He thinks: This is all wrong.
Cloud, the leader of AVALANCHE. Cloud, the Shinra cadet too weak for SOLDIER. It doesn't quite quantify.
If he'd remembered… maybe he'd have thought of this before. Just maybe.
There are things he can remember.
Zack, boisterous though he was, was charismatic, a real leader. If he gave an order, you not only followed it, but you wanted to follow it. He breathed in oxygen and breathed out a contagious happiness, infecting even those normally resistant to any such charms.
Cloud thinks he was one of such victims, but he soaked up more than just the happiness - which long ago made its escape.
Cloud and AVALANCHE, his murky memory says, has more than a few shades of Zack and Shinra.
Zack was his friend, a man who fought until the end. Cloud thinks of him, dying up at that cliff, giving away his prized sword, and wonders whatever else he inherited.
They sit around a campfire, a moment of respite in their long journey, and Tifa turns to him. He's uncomfortably aware that, here, he is her anchor, a root to her past. Strong as she is, she turns on it when she's worried and clings to it.
Meteor is falling and Sephiroth is near and there's no more of a time to worry than now, so she grabs to the dream of a man who's so far-flung from the boy he used to be.
Tifa isn't blind. She sees the discrepancies, and sometimes she just can't keep the thought in.
She says, "You never used to be so focused. You seemed such a dreamer, back then."
One half of him wonders, isn't dreaming just a different kind of focus? It was there.
That side of him says: You just didn't know me, Tifa. He shies away from the thought – there has to be somebody who can ground him within himself, and the other candidates for that position are all dead.
This flicker of a feeling, this moment of panic, it translates into a full-blown thought: I am… not myself. He's scared of being something he should not be – it's an unnatural personality change. And his personality… there's an aching familiarity in it. He's a remnant of a man, and the thought is creeping up on him unpleasantly.
He is Cloud Strife, he reminds himself. But, sometimes, he wonders if that's only in name, and he is entirely an embodiment of something else.
Or someone else…
He can hear a voice, an echo of Zack, saying to him, "It doesn't matter who you were – it's who you are that counts, right?"
Cloud wonders whether or not he's carrying the man around in his head, stealing more than just his life, or just going crazy.
"I live on." The voice laughs, and Cloud's reminded this wouldn't be the first time he's been proven unstable.
He remembers a time when he was encased in glass, an exhibit in the name of Science. He wonders, sometimes, if'Cloud Strife' was stitched together from other people and there's nothing of the man with that name existing any more.
Tifa had told him how different he was. Had he stolen a name and identity too?
"Don't be stupid." Zack's voice cuts into his sides, the weight of regret upon him.
For a moment, he wonders whether he is stealing another right now.
The Robin Hood of personalities, he thinks, that's him.
"How does that work? Steal from the better off and… put it to good use?"
Cloud doesn't deign to comment, stuck in his own thoughts:
He'd got out of that lab, but he knows how it is: with those cuts and bruises, you're bleeding from the inside out. The cuts are so deep you can't move. You're in a constant state of self repair.
Zack had rescued him, then, through his own feelings, through his own pain, and perhaps that thought had been too sunken into his brain.
And then he'd forgotten.
The intensity of emotions, he thinks he'll never be able to sort them out.
But perhaps they'll catch up to him and eat him, leaving him empty inside.
As they chase Sephiroth, Cloud wonders.
There are people who think he's a traitor. With AVALANCHE's gaze on his back, he thinks about the black materia and how Sephiroth even having it is his fault. Some of the others think this too, it's all in their eyes, so he just doesn't turn to look.
"Or maybe you're feeling your own guilt." It's Zack's voice: a reprimand, a kick to his senses, an astute observation, or all three, he can't decide.
It had been a mistake – but helping Sephiroth obtain a weapon to destroy the world; as far as he's concerned, it's far too costly a mistake.
Tifa's voice breaks into his internal conversation. "You're brooding, Cloud. That's not healthy."
The voice in his head, it echoes the sentiment: "Yeah!"
"There's a lot to think about," he says, and looks away. She touches his arm, and he unwillingly turns back.
"Cloud… are you okay? This Sephiroth thing…"
This Sephiroth thing is killing him.
"…It isn't bringing out the best in you."
Understatement.
He doesn't like to think about Sephiroth. He'd thought he knew him, but that was all Zack. And the way Sephiroth had turned out… perhaps Zack hadn't known him at all.
There is silence in his head, nothing amongst the normal thoughts.
"I suppose," he offers internally, not knowing why he's encouraging the voice, "I never used to be broody either, right?"
He isn't sure what he wants to hear, a confirmation or condemnation of the idea. He is beginning to be unsure whether being so infused with other people's traits is a bad thing, or if he should go back to being who he was. Just Cloud.
"That's not true," Zack's voice says, "In Nibelheim, maybe, but not after that. Not in Shinra." A pause. "That's 'who you were', right? How far back does this go?"
Cloud closes his eyes and wills the voice to go away. He doesn't need any more questions. He just wants to be alone, with only his own thoughts.
He's convinced this is never going to happen.
They talk about Sephiroth a lot. While it is undoubtedly necessary, Cloud becomes more agitated each time he is mentioned. He doesn't think anybody notices, except, perhaps, Vincent, who knows well enough not to confront Cloud about it.
He is grateful.
He isn't even safe in his own head, however, as he is eventually confronted by the voice that part of him is ecstatic at hearing, but the other half wants to vanquish.
"Vanquish, eh?" Zack-voice mutters, then in a louder, increasingly serious voice, "You're going to have to talk about Sephiroth at some point."
Cloud clenches his fist and hopes nobody notices. He says nothing.
"That's incredibly childish," the voice chides. There's a moments pause, then in a much brighter tone, he adds, "Your ability to make me seem reasonably mature is quite worrying, Cloud."
He's growing more convinced that this is Zack, and answering to him seems as natural as it does silly, but his voice is still laced with a desperation: 'go away, you're making me seem increasingly crazy'. Not that he needs any help with that, a cynical part of him says.
"It's just…" he begins, and trails off. His teeth clench.
Something uncoils in the corner of his mind, dark, slimy, unforgiving. It wakes and hisses not-words; my son. Tendrils coil possessively. A statement: I am in control. An amendment: mine.
Cloud hears: You're mine, too.
Zack's voice in his head, saying, "If you're going to exorcise your mind, then you might want to prioritise, eh?"
Cloud breathes. Perhaps he has a realisation, perhaps Sephiroth is a symptom, not the disease. The disease festers away in his head, and in Cloud's.
Zack-voice is right. He has bigger things to worry about.
Jenova's grip is on his head, he's unable to look away, his head pounding, and words that aren't words say: watch.
Not now. Later. Watch everything crumble.
Again, Cloud just breathes. And relishes it.
Sephiroth is not the enemy, Cloud had told AVALANCHE, but it seems they're still lining up to kill him. He is a danger as long as Jenova is around – he is an extension of her, a Very Serious Threat.
She squirms in his head, a reminder that it's likely that Sephiroth's death won't be the end. Cloud says nothing – he has other things to worry about.
Passing him by, Tifa grabs his hand. "It'll be nice to get this over with, finally," she smiles, then clenches her fists and readies a fighting pose. She laughs. He isn't sure why.
Cloud nods to her. He turns to AVALANCHE and looks at them properly, and now that he thinks about it, it is the first time since everything went so wrong.
"Let's mosey," he says, and Zack-voice laughs in his head. Cloud doesn't think about it.
Sephiroth is going to die.
Author's Note: Do you have any thoughts on whether it is 'Zack' or whether Cloud's already messed-up head is just getting more messed up? Curious to what people think on this point – reviews are nice.
I'm not sure if the end seems a bit rushed. Endings have never been my strong point.