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"I caught Cloud talking to his mother," I told Ruby one day while Cloud was at work and the kids were all down for naps.
"Oh… um… did he say anything interesting?" Ruby wondered.
"He said she plays mind games and he has to engage her. I'd really rather he not talk to her at all but it sounds like something he can't really help."
"Otherwise or by now…" Ruby trailed.
"Otherwise by now he would have stopped. Pretty much. Yes. Because I asked him to."
"So if it's too much to ask him for that then don't ask him for that. Right?" Ruby affirmed.
"But I want him to stop. I don't think it's good for him to engage her in any meaningful fashion. There was once a point where looking at her wrong made him have seizures."
"But he's stronger than that now," Ruby protested. "If it's just talk then there's nothing wrong with that and it sounds like he can't really shut it off. I mean… he would if he could."
"You don't think that's concerning?" I wondered. "That he can't shut it off?"
"Well, of course I do. But there was a lot that was concerning about him when we married him and there's less now. I think that's progress."
"I suppose…"
"What?" Ruby wondered. She must not have been able to get a bead on my thinking with her aura.
"Well- if it were my parents rooting around in my head I wouldn't want to talk to them. He almost seems to want to talk to her."
"And that's bad? It's bad if he does want to talk to her?" Ruby affirmed.
"Well after the shit she made him do, a little bit. Right? Am I crazy?" I demanded.
"No. You're not crazy. You're making a lot of sense." Ruby hummed. "But what can he do about it? It sounds like he has to talk to her."
"Well I'm just concerned that he likes it," I let my arms droop.
"Yeah. I'm not sure. We could ask him. I hope he doesn't like it. I hope it's something he's just resigned to," Ruby agreed. "I mean… she did some awful stuff to him. She made him kill Ren and Nora. She made him doubt reality. She's done some pretty horrible stuff so I hope he doesn't like talking to her."
"He told me he just slips up and starts talking to her. It sounds… I don't know- almost cordial. He was courteous and polite and honest with her from what I heard. Just like he might be with one of us," I explained.
"Okay. This sounds bad. But does it have to be? Maybe that door swings both ways somehow," Ruby carried on.
"He told me that she promised to surrender to him when he comes for her. He told me he thinks it's just mind games but he wouldn't be opposed if that was the truth. The kids heard him talking to himself. They don't need that," I took a drink of water holding the glass with both hands.
"It would be nice if she surrendered to him…" Ruby trailed off.
"He doubts it," I reaffirmed.
"Still it would be nice. So I can see why he's talking to her. He would certainly like it if she gave up without much of a fight. Mentally or physically. Either one," Ruby carried on.
"But once again, he doubts it. He thinks she'll fight back. Mentally or physically. One or the other if not both. And I just don't think it's healthy for him to be talking to someone who abused him in a cordial fashion. He should be talking with venom and hatred."
"But that's exhausting," Ruby protested. "Maintaining vitriol and hatred is exhausting. He's trying to relax into his life with us. He's trying to be less angry. I think that that is promising. Even if the rest isn't."
"But the rest is totally concerning! It totally is! How can he just talk to her so easily after what she did to him?"
"The same way he talks to us, I guess. I mean-he's afraid of us sometimes. He's afraid of what he would do if we asked him to. I think it isn't an exaggeration to say he would kill and die for us. And that's pretty scary. In a lot of ways… in a lot of ways we are what his mother wishes she was. We hold him and guide him by the nose. If Salem could do that to him then she would. We have that. So I think it makes a lot of sense for him to be afraid of us for the same reasons he's afraid of Salem and the things he could do if she told him to."
"I don't like that. I don't like the comparison at all. We are not like Salem," I refuted.
"I only meant in terms of the power we hold over him. If, one night, I whispered in his ear to kill someone for me, do you think he'd ask me any questions? Or do you think he'd just do it?"
"I don't like this," I protested. "I think he should ask questions. I think he's earned that much."
"Yeah but does he see it that way? I think he sees himself as our squire. If not that then he sees us like he's a dog. Like Red."
"But we love him."
"I think that Salem might love him too. In her own twisted way," Ruby murmured. "I think that she just might."
"Okay. Maybe she does. She still abused him. We never did that. Or at least you never did. For me it's a little wishy washy because of how things were at Beacon but you definitely never abused him."
"What if I did. Just by accident. Like I sometimes step on Red when he's in the kitchen. It's an accident and I tell Red I'm sorry but I'm not sure he understands. I'm not sure that Cloud understands what abuse is. I don't know if I accidentally abused him ever because he doesn't know himself. That's a problem when it comes to recognizing your abusers. And Salem did abuse him. But she also might love him in a weird, godlike, alien way."
"I really don't like this…" I managed.
"Well, think about it from his perspective. He has to talk to her. He might as well enjoy it or get something out of it if he can. I'm just saying we might not be so innocent. We put him through so much fear and terror when we had his babies. And yes, he did agree to it. But he really can't say 'no' to us. And we knew that. So… didn't we mess him up a little?"
"He used to be so scared before Nebel was born. During the whole pregnancy he was terrified," I mumbled. "Did we abuse him? You think so?"
"I don't know. And neither does he. And we just have to live with that because there's no real good way of knowing. We have an awful lot of power over him. Just like his Mother does."
"But he loves us," I protested. "That's not the same as the fear he has for Salem."
"What if he loves her?" Ruby demanded.
I stopped in my tracks cold. What if he did? It wasn't unheard of for victims to love their abusers. And if Salem loved him then it wasn't impossible that he loved her back. In a different and twisted fashion.
"I'm not drunk enough to think about that," I sighed.
"What. If. He. Loves. Her. Back." Ruby bit each word out. "In some weird twisted way. His sisters all love her. What if he does too. Just… it's easy to forget how alien he is. Isn't it?"
It was true. Cloud walked around with a person's face in a person's body but he wasn't really all that Cetra. He was a demigod. He was built differently. His upbringing and how he was made was like from another planet. He was all mangled and twisted at his core. He was traumatized. But he was also just… just a little bit off. Like he was slightly orthogonal to a normal way of thinking. He didn't get things done the same way. He was obsessed and was the type to dive in head first. He challenged anything and everything which got in his way. Most people didn't do that. Most people ran from what terrified them. Cloud didn't. He ran towards the things which scared him. Marrying us. Kids. Salem. He charged in and he counted on being clever and powerful enough to make it through. Most people couldn't do that. Most people would die if they tried.
And it wasn't a bad thing. In a lot of ways I loved him for it. He challenged me to be a better version of myself or he would crush me metaphorically speaking. That was hard but it was also so worth it.
So what if he loved her back? Assuming she really loved him in the first place. Did it really change anything or was it just another odd quirk of the way the light and darkness manifested in him? He still had his heart set on destroying her and leaving us to do it. So did it really matter if he loved her the mean time? My heart told me that it did. It did matter. If he went into that fight with anything less than pure lethal intent he would lose. He couldn't win if he was off balance in any way. So he had to come at her with hatred in his heart. There wasn't room for anything else.
"I think it's bad if he loves her. Whether she loves him or not it would be awful if he held a special place for her in his heart."
"He once held a special place in his heart for Cinder," Ruby pressed on. "I don't know. I don't think it's a bad thing to meet her abuse with love."
"Well I do. I would never want to meet my parents' abuse with love. It deserves to be stepped on. The love she has for him deserves to be stepped on and walked over like dirt. He shouldn't be returning and affection for her. After what she did to him?"
"I think it's strong. To meet that kind of abuse with love."
"Not this kind of abuse. Not this type of love," I disagreed. "The type of love we are talking about him having for her is the sort that allows for long conversations and open dialogues. That kind of love isn't the kind of blind love you give your abuser to show that you're better than them. It's the kind of love you give someone that you genuinely care about. And he cannot genuinely care about her. Not even if she genuinely cares about him. That's not the kind of mindset he can go into that final fight with."
"Is that her angle?" Ruby wondered. She looked a little lost in my discussion of different species of love. I wasn't sure she really understood because she'd never been abused the way I and Cloud had been. I wasn't sure if she understood the type of blind love you had to give your abuser because you pitied them. But the kind of affection I saw between Cloud and Salem when I walked in on him talking to her wasn't that blind almost spiteful love. It was the sort of love that was honest and kind and missed the other person when they weren't around. Cloud talked about his pain like it was an old friend. Had he grown even more acquainted with his mother than that? Because he wasn't giving her that eyeless love that I would give my father or mother. He gave her a visionary love where he truly saw his mother in the place where she was. And maybe there was some pity to it. But there was also mutual admiration. And maybe that was balanced. Maybe that was the sort of attitude he needed to take to her when the time came. I couldn't be sure. I never wanted to face my abusers again. But Cloud wanted to rise above and look down on the person who had hurt him. Maybe that required this kind of sight to make possible. I don't know. I just knew that I didn't like it at all.
"Do we talk to him about it?" I asked Ruby.
"Well of course we do. We just have to be ready for him to not have a good answer for us," Ruby decided. "I doubt he knows if he loves her even if he does. You know how clueless he is. He's… so alien sometimes. I almost don't know what planet he came from. But it was here. He's from here."
I bobbed my head a little. It sounded like a good plan. We'd lose nothing by talking to him about his feelings for Salem. And maybe there were some positive connections there just waiting to be discovered. I mean… she couldn't be all evil. She could be all alien but probably not all evil. "I think that's a good idea. I just don't know what we'll get out of it. Maybe at the end he'll have a better understanding of his relationship to her and that's a positive. I hate to think of him as being all confused but he usually is. Especially when it comes to his emotions and his relationships with women."
"Is Salem a woman?" Ruby wondered at me absently.
"She isn't a man. She has a female form. She calls herself his mother," I quickly listed.
Ruby raised her hands in mock surrender. "Just checking. I mean… she's so different that it hardly makes sense to call her a woman. If we can't call her a person. You know what I mean? How can she be a woman but not a person?"
"Probably with millennia of practice," I shrugged. I was less hung up on the technicalities than Ruby was. "She's been at this 'almost but not quite a person' game for some time now. She's probably pretty good at it. She flirts with being Cetra but she just doesn't quite toe over the line. She acts too monstrous and godlike. That's what Cloud would say, at least."
"If you say so…" Ruby trailed off. "When does Cloud get off from work and home? Not for another hour or so, right?"
"Looks like it…" I checked my dainty wrist watch and gave Ruby a nod. "Yeah that's about right."
Ruby layed down and stretched on the couch like a kitten. "And the babies are all tuckered out and put to bed. It's quiet and peaceful."
"Who would have thought five babies could make so much noise?" I agreed. In my heart I blamed Ruby for the twins. But in my heart of hearts I didn't really blame Ruby. It's not her fault she had twins. But damn it, Ruby. There was supposed to be an order to things. And you went and jumped the shark by having two at once. There were barely enough adults to manage all the infants and toddlers in the house. Especially with Cloud working every day. I mean- what was Ruby thinking? Having twins.
"Literally everyone would think that, Weiss. Babies are adorable but they are loud. Even Nebel isn't so quiet."
"He gets woken up by Cherry, Citrone, and Garnet. It's not his fault," I defended my quiet oldest son.
"But still. He isn't so quiet then is he?"
"No, I suppose not. Do you really think Cloud loves his mother?" I demanded. I couldn't quite process it and get over it myself.
"Well… I don't know. Maybe. Right? She's had a lot of time to work on his subconscious. And they sort of become one at some point. Not quite sure what he means by that."
"Yeah. I'm a little confused too. He says that they flow together. Whatever that means. He makes consciousness sound fluid which maybe it is. It certainly doesn't seem like a solid."
"We'll just have to ask him and be there for him and love on him. That's all. That's all he really wants from us too."
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-WG