Title: Please
Setting: Directly before Advent Children.
Summary: Two years after the death of Sephiroth and having his health fail from Geostigma, Cloud finds himself contemplating his sins...and his future.
Warnings: Slight yaoi (or I could be imagining it), slight het, and angsty insights (I hope). I'm being very liberal with the storyline, so...yeah...
Disclaimer: The day I own this, you'll know. Trust me...
Cloud sighed softly as he lied down among the delicate flowers, breathing deeply even while blinding pain spread through his body. Geostigma. Sephiroth's legacy. How ironic. Even after Sephiroth's death, after he had ran the silver-haired man through with his sword, after the greatest General that Midgar had ever seen had lost his control over a failed experiment...a failed puppet... He still could not get the threat to the planet out of his mind.
Two years.
It had been two years since he heard the General's voice; smooth, deep tone and cynically toying... Ignoring the black fluid seeped through his bandages, Cloud continued to stare up at the decaying roof over his head. Ever since he was young, he wanted to be like Sephiroth. He embodied everything that the blonde could ever look up to. He was a hero and the greatest fighter in the world.
Two years ago, he became a hero for killing the greatest man who had lost his mind. A man who was created and twisted from conception. A man whose very creation shaped the lives of himself and all of the companions-turned-friends that stepped up to stop him.
But they did not kill their idol. No. He did. He murdered his childhood hero. He killed the one man on the planet that wanted to be like. He never knew his father, never knew that he was supposed to have one until the other children in Nibelheim mocked him over not having one. The General never cared, though; he kept promoting that the ShinRa Army wants YOU! To think, he could have become a powerful man like Sephiroth.
...Sephiroth...
It was so bittersweet. Reaching the fame that he no longer wanted by killing the man that he adored and loved like one could love a friend or father. How the fates were so cruel... He had killed many people in his life as a mercenary and never thought about the majority of them. He never considered their families before ending their lives. Sephiroth, though... He knew that Sephiroth had no family except for Hojo and he had turned his back on his comrades to follow the wishes of Jenova.
He had killed Aeris. Not indirectly, of course; that was the General's doing. But, he had killed her indirectly. If he had forced her to stay in her house instead of following him...
If she had not run off to face Sephiroth alone...
If he had a better grasp on who he was...
If all of the gaping holes in his memories and thinking...
All of the inconsistencies...
If he spoke to his comrades about his slipping grasp on reality, he could have spared them all. He could have sent them home and let him face Sephiroth alone. Aeris would be alive. He might have died, yes, but such a risk would have been worth sparing the sweet flower girl from the slums of Midgar.
Now...now he was lying in her small garden of thriving flowers in a forgotten church in the rubble of Midgar, slowly dying from Sephiroth's legacy.
Fate truly was ironic.
Taking a long, slow breath, he closed his eyes. The flowers smelled like her. Cloud winced as an image of Aeris collapsing on the altar resurfaced in his mind. He failed her as a bodyguard. He left her to her fate, left her to die and all he could do was lower her cooling corpse into the chilly water in the dead city.
He liked to think that she knew that she was going to die and did not want him to follow her. He liked to think that she believed that she could defeat Sephiroth and save the planet by herself. He liked to think that she did not die alone. He like to think that she did not hate him.
He wondered what went through their minds as they drew their last breath... Did they beg for life as his sword cut them down? Plead to be spared? Curse his very existence?
Did they watch him from the Lifestream and take glee in everything that he mucked up? Were they waiting for him to fall from the legacy of Sephiroth like so many others had; to devour him for all of eternity, to make him suffer? Would she try to stop them? ...Would she smile sweetly and watch?
Aeris seemed at peace with herself at the time.
Sephiroth acted as though his entire world was unwinding in front of his eyes, like all of his crimes were coming back to haunt him. ...Like he regretted ever meeting the puny blonde that enrolled into the Soldier program.
Sephiroth went through far more mako treatments than he did; his entire life was spent under the exacting eye of Hojo. And although he pitied the powerful General at times, he knew that what he vaguely remembered going through was only a taste of what the silver-haired man went through.
Would he go through the same thing? Jenova cells coursed through his blood as well as Sephiroth's. Would he eventually just lose his mind and decide that he would follow Jenova's every whim and try to get to the Promised Land by any means...taking everyone else on the planet by force? Would a young fan who worshiped him be the one to cut him down when he got too close? ...Would it be Denzel?
It would only be fair and fate sure was not often kind to him.
He often heard stories of people that were facing their death pleading with their mortality. Begging to stay alive and asking for forgiveness of all of their wrongs while not changing their ways if they did live. He could only think of the one time that he had pleaded with the universe; asked them if he could please meet with the great General Sephiroth. ...How that had blown up in his face. He would never ask for anything from the universe again.
Slowly sitting up and making sure he had his keys, Cloud looked around the church once more before beginning to walk towards the door and heading towards Fenrir.
The fates could easily swallow him whole if it wanted to and he would accept whatever was supposed to happen to him.
...Just like Sephiroth did...
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