All his life, Cloud had wanted to join Shinra and become a hero, like the general. When he was little, he had assumed being a hero meant fighting in a war or something, but in that moment, he decided fighting a maniac in his own head was probably heroic enough.
A crippling headache rushed through Avalanche's former leader suddenly, as if cold steel had been lodged in his brain. A loud voice reverberated through his mind, "GET OUT!" it shouted. Cloud fell to his knees on the metal of the reactor floor, clutching his head in agony. He caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye and lashed out instinctively. Too late, he realized the only other person in the room was Vincent. In shock, he watched his friend fall the the ground beside him. An irrational rage washed over him as his mind swirled.
Cloud made to stand up, but before he had so much as gotten off his knees, a calm presence washed over him like a sudden rainstorm in the summer. "It's okay," a voice whispered in his mind, "I've got this one." His feet came up under him and he rose to his feet shakily. It was odd, he decided, to feel your body move without you.
The hands that dragged Vincent outside appeared to be weaker than his own hands should have been, but he supposed that could just be a physiological thing. He was used to his full mako-infused strength and he knew exactly how to access it. This other person, he assumed it must be his younger self, was used to having much less strength, so he just couldn't get past the mental barrier of 'I shouldn't be able to do this'.
Cloud watched passively as Vincent was left propped up against a rock a good distance from the reactor. His feet turned back around and walked slowly towards the large metal building. It was the sort of slow pace used by someone who is trying to be cautious, but doesn't know how. Cloud wasn't exactly sure why his younger self was bothering. The only real monster that Vincent and Cloud hadn't cleared out was Jenova and Jenova was still mostly sealed.
It wasn't like Jenova could attack anyone, although he supposed she could probably still affect the minds of Soldiers with her cells, judging by Sephiroth's insanity back in- oh. Oh. He still had Jenova cells. Aside from when Sephiroth was manipulating him, he could never actually hear Jenova, but then, she had always been too weak and too focused on Sephiroth.
His heart constricted painfully as panic set it. "How could I be such a fool?" he thought bitterly to himself. Of course Jenova could manipulate him, he didn't know why he didn't see it earlier. Vincent didn't have any of Jenova's cells, but now he was unconscious at best.
"You've got me, haven't you?" the sigh came out of his mouth, slightly high pitched, but his voice nonetheless. The former leader of Avalanche wasn't sure if that was supposed to make him feel better. If the voice was truly his younger self, than the person controlling their body was little more than a child.
"I'm not a child, I'm 15! Besides, even if I am younger, I'm still you!" the voice in his mind huffed indignantly. Cloud felt bad for a minute, but then the guilt melted away and his thoughts strayed to Shinra again as the door to the reactor opened and the experiments came into view. Instead of stopping to examine the pods where the experiments were kept, Cloud's younger self went straight for Jenova's shrine.
"Wait, we can't destroy Jenova here," Cloud thought frantically.
Cloud felt his face draw together in a frown, "Why not?" his younger self asked, walking slowly towards the door.
"She'll bleed into the Lifestream if we do it this close to a source of mako," Cloud explained mentally.
There was a long pause, Cloud's body even stopped walking, staring up at the shrine in thought. Then a long, annoyed sigh spilled out of his mouth and he was walking again, muttering aloud, "Oh you'd say anything to save yourself, wouldn't you?" he huffed angrily.
It took Cloud a long moment to realize that his younger self was addressing Jenova herself.
"We could be destroying the planet! Don't you care?" Cloud thought sharply. There was no answer, aside from heavy silence. A sharp panic was crawling up his throat, choking him with desperation. If the younger man felt it, he gave no sign. Instead, he slammed the butt of his sword into the lock mechanism of the door hard enough to dent the metal and release the latch.
The panic only rose as Jenova finally came into view. His younger self seemed calm enough, striding forward with little hesitation is his walk.
"But why would he be flustered? He never had to watch his hometown burn to the ground!" his thoughts muttered treacherously, "He didn't have to watch as his best friend was killed in front of his eyes! He is not as strong as he pretends to be; he is merely a child. He does not yet understand the duty of adults," the voice in his mind scorned. Thoughts were burning through his mind like wildfire now. A million times over, he watched his life flash before his eyes, the memories gradually changing. At last, he could see what he'd always felt.
He had always been alone. The others all pretended to care, sure, but no one was truly as selfless as they claimed. In their quest to save the planet, he was the only one whose motives were not clouded. He was the righteous one. And why, when he had sacrificed so much, lost so much, why should he let them order him about? Why should liars and thieves rule over his precious Gaia? No. He would create a better world. And sometimes, it becomes necessary to destroy in order to create. Yes, he would destroy it all. Bring the world crashing to its knees. Then, only then, would the planet be saved. Free of the curse of humanity.
The former cadet was indeed panicking, but not for the same reason his older self seemed to be having trouble with. In fact, his older self was the one causing Cloud's sudden bout of nervousness. As had become somewhat normal in the last few weeks, he was in over his head. This time though, he felt as if he were drowning miles and miles from shore. One mistake, just one moment of weakness and Jenova would be in his head. After that, nothing short of a miracle could save the planet.
Of course, aside from the planet's safety, there was the matter of his own notably damaged mind. Would his older self ever recover, or would he have to live with the broken, dangerous fragment of his personality for the rest of his life? Granted, his life may not be too long if that was the case. He wasn't honestly sure how long he could keep fighting himself.
Cloud avidly ignored another poisonous thought as it tried to worm its way into his mind. Instead, he concentrated on pawing through his bag, looking for the dynamite he remembered his older self buying back in North Coral. Eventually, shaking hands closed around the explosives, but he didn't dare breathe a sigh of relief just yet. It was far from over.
After a few moment's effort, the dynamite was placed clumsily around the tank Jenova was kept in. Cloud didn't know what he was doing, but he figured that, with this amount of gunpowder, it wouldn't matter too much where he placed it. Luckily, it didn't seem like Jenova had caught onto what he was doing, because the thoughts relayed to him through his older self were disturbing, but nothing he would immediately have to deal with.
When he was finished with the dynamite, he stood back up and made for the door. His movement had slowed considerably since he had reentered the reactor, probably the result of Jenova fighting for control of his body. Jenova's constant stream of insidious comments faltered slightly as he slowly retreated, as if she was momentarily distracted. "Oh Gaia, please tell me she didn't catch on!" he thought desperately.
So far, she hadn't tried to get Cloud's older self to convince him to stop again. It almost seemed like she was curious as to what the blond teenager was doing. Cloud tentatively guessed that either Jenova didn't know what explosives were, or she simply didn't know there were there. Her body was suspended in a tank full of gelatinous fluid, eyes closed, so Cloud figured she probably couldn't actually see. Why would she need to? She could apparently read minds. Well, the minds of those enhanced with her cells. And Gaia, Cloud did not want to think about that one.
He didn't dare close the doors on the way out, so Cloud ended up lying prone on the ground a good distance away, where he had an almost clear shot to Jenova's shrine. The angle of the stairs meant he couldn't actually see all the way into the reactor, but he figured he didn't need to. After all, he didn't actually have to hit Jenova, he just had to get close enough to trigger the dynamite.
Heart beating erratically and hands shaking with desperation, Cloud slipped his most powerful fire materia into one of the empty slots on his right glove. Both Jenova's and his older self's thoughts abruptly stopped. Jenova undoubtedly knew what materia were, probably knew even without the wealth of knowledge that was stored in the former rebel leader's mind. Cloud knew he only had moments until Jenova figured out how to use his older self to communicate with him, or, worse, figured out how to take back control of his body.
There was no time to think about what he was doing; he raised a trembling arm and carefully pushed power into the stone on his wrist. He knew he couldn't afford another slip-up, didn't have time to deal with a shattered materia, so he stopped before the stone felt full. One more deep breath, inflating his lungs until the adrenaline and suspense made him feel sick, then he released the power in the materia.
Mako, like so many tiny jolts of electricity, raced up his chest and through his arm. The stone glowed blindingly green for a moment before fire flared into existence on the tips of his fingers. It built into a large, spherical inferno on his palm, the raging heat feeling like nothing more than a pleasant warmth on his arm and face. Another jolt of mako up his arm released the bolt of magic, launching it towards the open door of the reactor. In slow motion, he watched the bright globe sail through the open doors and hit the top of the stairs.
"Come on, come on," he muttered to himself as the explosion mushroomed outwards, desperately hoping it would reach the dynamite. He knew Jenova wouldn't let him cast again, this was his only chance. He held his breath, even as the heat from the blast seared his face and left stinging tracks across his bare arms. For a terrifying moment, he thought that his plan had failed. Then, without warning, a bigger explosion shook the ground under Cloud. He barely had time to duck his head and cover his face with his arms before burning debris was raining down on him. He had a brief, shining moment of clarity in which he regretted not moving back when he'd still had the chance. Then all he could think about was the searing heat and the sharp pain of hot metal shards hitting his arms and back.
When Cloud no longer felt rubble falling around him, he risked raising his head. The explosion had very nearly leveled the reactor, which now stood as a burnt husk. The inner metal support beams were twisted and bent back, as if in a grotesque imitation of a blooming flower. Since the main part of the explosion had come from inside, the skeleton that remained of the building was mostly clear, the rubble blown outwards.
Jenova's shrine was completely obliterated, but as Cloud watched, a ghostly image of Jenova herself rose from the ruins of the reactor. In a panic, he cast another high leveled fire at her. It did absolutely nothing. In fact, he thought he saw it pass through her, as if she were made of smoke.
The truth struck him just as the edges of the figure started glowing green. Lifestream. She was joining the Lifestream. Cloud had assumed his older self was just stalling when he said Jenova would bleed into the Lifestream. As it turned out, there was some truth in the words after all.
Cloud watched helplessly as glowing green tendrils reached up from the ground and wrapped around Jenova. He knew from experience that nothing he did now would make a difference. After all, she was already dead. While Cloud himself wasn't sure that Jenova's death and subsequent absorption into the Lifestream was a bad thing, some part of his mind recalled a voice from what seemed to be a lifetime ago, "...will join the Lifestream and girdle the planet – choking it, corroding it..." That certainly sounded like a bad thing, but what could he do?
A moment later, more green tendrils rose from the ground, like steam from boiling water. Cloud realized that not only had Jenova not dissolved yet, she was struggling against the ropes of energy that were tightly wrapped around her. Cloud had very little experience with the absorptive properties of the Lifestream, but he was fairly certain it wasn't supposed to look like that.
The smoke-like threads of green energy that rose above the reactor started to solidify and fill. Cloud watch in amazement as hundreds of white-robed figures formed out of the ground. The figures appeared blurry, as if a strong wind was whipping the edges of their cloaks and hair into a flurry around them.
For a moment, little more than a second, one of the figures turned and looked right at Cloud. His heart gave a sharp lurch as he caught a glimpse of wavy brown hair and wide blue eyes. Logic told him that he had never seen such a person before, but he knew with every fiber of his being that he knew them... A sudden memory of a girl in a pink dress, surrounded by flowers, blinded him for a moment. When his vision cleared, the blue-eyed girl had turned back to face Jenova and Cloud lost sight of her in the crowd of white robes.
A soft murmur rose up from the crowd, almost like a song. Cloud didn't understand the language, but the words felt somber and deep. The song grew louder and louder until every cell in his body was thrumming with it. More energy seeped to the surface in thin strands, pulsing and dancing with every strange word. As the song rose to a crescendo, the rising threads of Lifestream wrapped around Jenova over and over again, until she was all but invisible under the glowing green stands.
Then, as quickly as it had began, it was over. The white robes faded into coiled green threads of Lifestream, which uncoiled and slipped back into the ground. The tendrils covering Jenova unwound themselves and joined the retreating energy from the surroundings. Only, when the strands had shifted enough to see where Jenova's head should've been, there was nothing there. Jenova was simply gone. The song was the last thing to go; it hung on the air, soft but insistent, until every green thread was back underground.
A/N: Hey guys, we're back to timely updates and look! It's even a decent length this time!