Author's Note: This snapshot takes place a handful of years after Advent Children, and I am taking a few liberties. Also, keep in mind this story is from the limited point-of-view of a child - or rather, in this case, a teen boy who was around nine or ten at the time the events took place.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything Final Fantasy related.
He Fought
I don't really remember a lot of what happened then. Everything is hazy, like when the streets are filled people in the smog. Kinda hard to tell one person from the next, you know? But I do remember him.
He came to save us when everyone else had forgotten about us. He was alone, and he had to fight the men who took us. Actually, it is worse than that. We practically volunteered to go. They promised something all the other grown-ups didn't: a cure. They had not forgotten about us. And we all fell for it. The first rule you learn is to never trust anyone, especially when they offer something so good. We all ignored that rule.
We believed in the men he was fighting.
So really, he was saving us from what we did. And maybe to prove to us that there were grown-ups that really did care. Grown-ups are always ready to place the blame on someone else, never to take any. They don't stick up for one another. At least, I never thought they did. And then he came, and he tried, and I could see, even through the fog in my head, that he was hurting from something. That's what kept him from saving us the first time.
The second time, we saved him. There was a great monster, but I don't remember it. I could see others fighting, but I knew they wouldn't win alone. They didn't believe like he did. He was fighting for all of us, everyone who had forgotten about the pain we all shared, forgotten about what it is like to be afraid and alone. He attacked the monster with his friends, and they killed it.
But then he fought those men that we had believed in, and he beat them. He wasn't hurting from that thing anymore, and he won. I remember, then, the world coming clean. There was another grown-up, and she told us to take care of him, that he was special.
We all knew he was special. He cared for us. The first time, he came when no-one else would. I don't know if other grown-ups were afraid to, or if they just didn't want to. But he fought even though he had been hurting. No one has ever done that for us.
The flower lady helped to bring him back to us. We did what she said. We got to take care of our protector, the grown-up that loved us enough to die for us. And because of him, the flower lady is right about something else, too.
Everything is going to be alright.
Author's End Note: There was quite a bit more that I could have done with this, but then the 'snapshot' would have turned into a panorama. Once again, please keep in mind that this is told from a young boy's point-of-view, so he does not have all the information, nor does he recall a majority of what happened to him. I knowCloud did not fight all on his own, but to a child who saw very little of the others in Cloud's group, it would indeed seem as though the yellow-haired one single-handedly defeated all of the bad guys.
And usually, I rather like the idea that Cloud is a bit of a pansy, and someone who shirks responsibility; he seems to fit well into both categories. But I had this in mind and didn't want to go with the conventional.