There are times when you just can't keep going anymore.

It's not a matter of strength, or resolve. There are simply times when something strikes a little too hard, a little too close to your heart, and you...give up. You stop caring. Not forever, maybe. But for a moment.

For Cloud, that moment came when he looked into wine-red eyes he knew and loved, and saw a bleed of mako green surrounding the sharp line of a slit pupil.

Tsurugi fell from his numb hand. It would come when he called, later, but he couldn't raise it against her. Not even for the sake of ending a Calamity. He'd overestimated his own strength, thinking that he could. He followed his sword to the ground a moment later.

Tifa looked at him with such distant eyes, somehow cold and warm at the same time. It cut him like nothing he'd ever felt before. His breath caught in his throat from the sudden anguish of seeing it.

"...Cloud," she said, slow and ponderous, like a goddess dragged from her lofty thoughts to the mundane matters of the earth below.

He couldn't bring himself to speak her name in turn.

The cold distance of her thawed as she came closer, stepping lightly through the ashes of Nibelheim and the little greed buds of new growth that had just begun to sprout. She reached out to cradle his face like it was made of the most delicate porcelain. When his eyes welled over, she tenderly brushed her thumbs across his cheeks.

"Shhh," she said, leaning down to press their foreheads together in a gesture so familiar he gasped from the pain of it. "It'll be alright, Cloud." It felt like there was a vise crushing his diaphragm. His eyes shut against his will and he trembled, at once divorced from and intimately aware of the anguish building in his veins.

"You didn't keep your promise," she said, breath warm across his face. "You weren't my hero. But don't be afraid." Her fingers tightened. His eyes burned. She brushed her lips lightly across his forehead.

"I'll be yours."

When she snapped his neck, he barely felt it.

Cloud sucked in a shuddering, gasping breath, coming awake on ground dusted with frost. Sheer reflex had him pushing up on his palms as he tried to rise. Pain lanced through his chest and he gasped, arms buckling beneath him. He didn't understand why it was so hard to breathe. The process of changing dimensions after dying always healed him completely.

He rolled onto his back, choking on each shallow breath he managed to drag in. The sky was blue, blurred dramatically by a film over his eyes. He blinked, sending hot tears streaming down his temples and into his hair. He ran a shaking hand over his chest, just to make sure there wasn't really a band of metal crushing his lungs and heart. All he felt was the stiff, bloodstained material of his jacket.

A little face appeared over him suddenly, blocking out the sky. Wide, cat-slit green eyes looked down at him. Silver hair whipped around in the wind. Then the face disappeared, and Cloud heard a high-pitched holler of "MOTHER!" as little feet pounded across a gravelly path. The cry repeated, getting further and further away.

Mother…? Silver hair —Sephiroth?

With a truly herculean effort, Cloud rolled back over and got his hands beneath him. The film over his eyes refused to go away. Droplets speckled the dark material of his gloves as he braced above them, trying to compel his shaking legs to cooperate. Up. Up. Get up. You have to get up.

The band around his chest seemed to crack, just a little. A single, choked sob tore at his throat, and one arm gave out.

He fought with himself. For how long, he didn't know, but eventually he heard people hurrying down the path toward him. Three people: two children and one adult, light on her feet. He blinked hard as he lifted his head, still panting for breath. His vision cleared just enough for him to make them out.

It was…his Ma? She looked a little strange, wearing a dress he didn't recognize, her hair tamed and pulled up into a braided crown. She ran with her skirts held in one arm, two little silver-haired boys following at her side. They weren't Sephiroth—must have been two of the Remnants.

The band around his chest tightened again, cracked again, and another painful sob ripped from his lungs.

"Cloud?" she asked, disbelieving and horrified. And her voice…resonated, like it was layered.

And her eyes glowed a bright, purplish-pink color.

His chest squeezed so tight he thought it might really kill him. Something like rage flooded his veins as he sobbed, unable to stop. He found the strength to get to his feet and take up Tsurugi, even if he wobbled like he was drunk doing it.

"Haven't you taken ENOUGH?" he yelled, slashing Tsurugi through the air in front of him. He didn't have the control to counterbalance. The momentum of the swing nearly sent him toppling over again, and he staggered.

His Ma—no, Jenova, took a startled step back and herded the little silver-haired boys behind her. "…Cloud?"

Hearing her speak in his mother's voice just made him so much angrier. "Don't call me that!" He screamed, the words broken up by awful, heaving sobs. "You don't get to call me that, you take everything from me! Haven't you taken enough! Why can't you just stop!"

Her eyes never left him. "Go get your brother," she breathed to the boys peering out from behind her, pushing them down the path away from Cloud.

"But mother—"

"Quickly."

Good. They were going. Then he could kill—

He—

Cloud had no control over the scream of raw, primal anguish that tore from his mouth. He tasted blood on the back of his tongue. His vision was so blurred that it was useless, but that didn't matter. He could feel her. He knew exactly where his wild swing needed to go as he lurched forward. "I HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO TAKE!"

Jenova's hands flashed and Tsurugi hit a Barrier hard enough to rattle Cloud's teeth. He screamed again, wordless, and tasted salt and copper on his lips. "WHY CAN'T YOU STOP!" He swung again, uncaring of the way his muscles and tendons strained under the force of his reckless strength. "WHY CAN'T YOU MAKE IT STOP!"

Again, and again, and again, he struck at the Barrier. Maybe he kept screaming. He lost track of his body at some point, consumed by the frenzied need to stop existing. Everything came in fragments: his mother's eyes, the wrong color, glistening wetly; blood pooling inside his gloves; blood on his tongue; the searing pain of something torn in his back; Tsurugi, thudding to the ground.

The world went colorless.

The world went black.

Everything…stopped.

White noise filled Cloud's ears as he became aware again. It felt like he was floating above his body, every sensation abstracted out by two degrees. There was a hand on his chest. Uncontrollable sobs shook him. His back burned where he'd torn a muscle.

"Shh…"

He realized, suddenly, that he was crumpled on the ground, leaning into his mother's chest. His arms hung limp at his sides. When he forced his eyes open, wondering vaguely at the pathetic noises he was making, Ma shushed him again. Her hand moved from his chest to his face, stroking his hair back behind his ear before she pressed her palm over his heart again.

He thought he should probably care. The pain was distant, and nothing quite seemed real anymore, but he knew it was Jenova possessing his mother's body. He knew. But she was warm and familiar and he was just…so tired. So wrung out and demolished.

He'd told Zack—a very kind Zack, sheltered from the worst of what a person could endure without being destroyed—that he knew he wasn't alright, but just didn't have the leeway to deal with it. He'd told Zack to pretend. He promised he would hold out until he returned home to his family, where it would be safe to finally shatter into a million pieces.

He'd been hopelessly optimistic. The universe wasn't going to hold off and wait until he was safe at home before it broke him. He certainly wasn't strong enough to bear up under an infinity of horror. The breaking point had finally come, as inevitable as death itself.

He didn't think anything would be able to put him back together again.

So Cloud didn't care anymore as he turned his face into his mother's chest and cried like a child. He didn't care that she was playing host to a Calamity. He didn't care that he was going to die again. He didn't care that his family was going to reel him back in one day, only to find a shattered husk where he'd once stood as friend, husband, and father. He didn't care that the pain was consuming him like fire consumes wood.

He let it.

Time passed. He didn't keep track of it. He didn't keep track of his mother, either, except in fits and starts—Her hand moving to cradle the side of his head. Her chest vibrating as she talked. The solidity of her arms as she shifted him so he could breathe through a coughing fit.

He ran out of energy before he ran out of tears, despite the fact that he felt like a desiccated corpse. His mother ran her fingers through his hair, and he took vague notice of the fact that she'd removed his hair tie at some point.

"There we go. Help me lift him," she whispered to someone who he didn't care to identify.

Another set of hands —broad, strong, familiar in a strange way —joined hers, and Cloud was lifted. Everything was still too distant and unimportant for him to care. He let them do what they wanted.

"Mother, where did he come from?" a young voice asked.

"I don't know, baby."

"Why did he try to fight you?"

"I don't know that either. But he's hurt, and he's confused, so we're going to help him."

The rest of their conversation flowed over him like water. He would have despaired if he'd had even a shred of emotional capacity left. He'd wanted, on some level, for them to kill him. And then for the next world to do the same, and the next, and the next, and the next. He didn't want to think.

He especially didn't want to feel.

Cloud's breath hitched. His body somehow found the energy to summon up a few more tears. They slid from beneath his eyelids and down his cheeks, wetting the shoulder of whoever was carrying him. His mother hummed, tracing the line of his cheekbone with her knuckles.

"You're so tired," she said. "Go to sleep, baby. It will all be better when you wake up."

Then she pulled, her power seeping into him all the way down to his cells. He had barely a second to feel terror at the sensation, so close to Reunion, before the velvet nothingness of unconsciousness took even that from him.

He slept.

How long he slept, he didn't know. What he did know was that when he opened his eyes, it was to a dimly-lit cabin ceiling. The air smelled like firewood and drying herbs. Someone was sponging at his shoulder with a damp cloth. He didn't turn his eyes in their direction —didn't have the energy —but they paused and leaned into his line of sight.

His own face, still soft with the last traces of adolescence, looked down at him with cat-slit green eyes framed by wild silver spikes. He leaned away again after a few seconds of mutual staring.

"Ma, he's awake."

Cloth rustled, and a moment later his mother appeared, sitting down on the edge of the bed and leaning into his line of sight. She didn't speak immediately. They just looked at each other —she, sad in a soft way, and he, tiredly waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Finally, she reached out and cupped the side of his face. Her hand was warm, and soft. "My baby," she crooned. "My poor boy."

He should have…contradicted her. He wasn't her baby. She was Jenova, or adjacent. Corrupted. A Calamity. Like Tifa. Like thousands of other men and women in worlds he'd walked. He should have dug deep into the core of his being and found the strength to get up and fight her.

Instead, his breath hitched, and his eyes burned.

"I'm sorry, Cloud," she said, stroking a thumb beneath his eye. "I looked deeper into you than you might have wanted. You don't need to be afraid of me. I am just as much Claudia as I am the being you call Jenova, and I am wholly your mother."

That was really no worse than anything else that had happened to him. It wasn't the first time someone had tried, succeeded, in plumbing the depths of his memories. But it was still one more thing piled on top of the others, weighing down his already fragile equilibrium. He giggled hysterically. His eyes shut, sending burning tears leaking out from beneath his sticky eyelashes.

"My baby," she whispered again. "Life has not been kind to you."

This, somehow, broke him. It was just a statement of fact. A joke, all things considered. But his breath dissolved into hyperventilation and tears leaked out from his tightly-shut eyelids faster and faster. He curled up onto his side, away from Jenova, and tried to relieve the searing pain in his chest by squeezing as hard as he could.

No. Life certainly had never been kind to him.

The bed dipped as Jenova moved, settling right next to him. She put a hand on his shoulder, slid it down until it was pressed over his heart. Again, she pulled, but this time it was soft. Gentle. Like an injection of lidocaine, a cool numbness spread from where her palm rested, easing the pain. His breath calmed, but the tears didn't stop.

"You're not broken, my baby," she said, nudging him insistently until he finally gave in and shifted, allowing her to pull him over with unnatural strength. He ended up laying with his head on her chest again. The steady thrum of her heart sounded human, at least. "Rest. You don't have to hide. I already know how much it hurts."

I want to go home, he thought suddenly, wildly. He never let himself think about it, except in passing. It was just too much. Too painful and impossible. If he thought about it for too long, it would destroy him. He was sure of it.

But he couldn't stop it anymore. He didn't have any strength left.

I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go HOME. I want to GO HOME.

I WANT TO GO HOME!

It didn't exactly hurt anymore, with Jenova holding back the sting of his anguish. But it still…felt. There was still intensity. He still wept like a broken man, cradled in his mother's arms.

He wanted to kiss his wife, and hug his friends. He wanted to put his children to bed and hold them in his arms as they slept. He wanted his days to be long and boring. He wanted to put down his sword and never pick it up again.

He just wanted to go home.

The breakdown just went on and on, his mother whispering to him and holding tight all the while. Some part of him was afraid it would never end —that the grief and the pain were just too deep and too dark —but…it did. Slowly, the tide ebbed. The sobs quieted. The shaking eased.

His head hurt like a bitch when Jenova finally pulled her hand away and stopped…doing whatever she'd been doing to numb him. His chest hurt, but less than before, and the rest of his body ached. He sniffled as she kissed the top of his head.

Her torso shifted as she reached for something. "Get some —ah, thank you," she murmured, presumably to her actual son. "Go make sure the triplets aren't terrorizing your father too much."

"Yes, Ma." He got up and left.

Cloud cleared his throat. "You know 'm not really him, right?" he asked in a snotty, scratchy voice.

"Drink," she said, shifting him a little. He was amused to find her holding a children's juice pouch to his mouth, but he drank anyway. He knew a dehydration headache when he felt it. When he drank, she seemed satisfied enough to answer. "You are certainly not the same Cloud, no. But you are still Cloud, and you are still mine."

"If you saw my memories, then you know that's not really true," he said in a much less wrecked-sounding voice. His eyes were still closed. They ached too much to open, and he didn't want to look at the Jenova-Ma fusion anyway. It might set him off again.

"That's how I know you're my baby," she countered. "It took both parts of me —Claudia, and what you call Jenova —to keep you alive. I only wish your version of Jenova had seen the world a little different."

He was never going to win the argument, so he abandoned it. "Why did you…?" Fuse with a Calamity, he wanted to say, but he was too tired to find a graceful phrasing for it.

His mother hummed. "She killed the scientists for their hubris. When I was pregnant with you, I dreamed that you would be lost without help. I found her, awake and alone. We bargained: to save you, she would strengthen me, and I would become a vessel for her in turn."

Cloud felt a spark of realization. "That's why your Cloud looks like Sephiroth. Jenova's influence."

"Yes," his mother agreed. "Though seeing your memories, I'm very glad Sephiroth does not exist here. You are a far more worthy legacy."

And that was a sentiment he did not want to consider any further. He segued, latching onto something she'd said earlier. "Is his father…alive?"

"Alive and well," she agreed. Her finger traced the bridge of his nose. "You remind me of him."

"I never met him," Cloud said. He didn't have it in him to feel anything about that comparison.

"He's quiet. Stubborn. Brave. And so very good with the boys." His mother shifted again, reaching for something, and a moment later a damp rag was laid over his eyes. He breathed out a relieved puff of air at the soothing cold against his skin.

"I dunno how you got the Remnants," he murmured. "They weren't exactly normal kids."

"Who knows? Perhaps they are fated to be. But we wouldn't trade them for anything. They're far more well-adjusted than the versions you knew."

Cloud was quiet for a moment, less because he was contemplating that and more because he was thinking of other things he needed to say. "Um…I'm sorry I tried to kill you M—Ma'am."

She gently pinched his cheek. "None of that ma'am-ing, baby," she scolded. "And there's no need to apologize. I understand."

"I think there is a need," he countered with a tinge of incredulity, "Ma, I can kill gods now. Actual gods. And I don't mean just go toe-to-toe with them, but really kill them. I could have—"

She interrupted. "I know exactly what you're capable of. I say it nonetheless."

There really would never be any arguing with his mother, would there? He exhaled through his nose, trying to let the issue go. He didn't know what possessed him to blurt out what he did. "I wish I wasn't."

"Capable?" She paused, and he nodded. "I know. But you are."

He found a lump in his throat again and didn't understand why it was there. "I have…all this skill. It's insane. I would have wanted it so badly when I was younger, but now that I have it I just—I don't want it. I don't want to use it."

"You're much wiser now than you were," she said, tracing fingertips along his hairline. When he scoffed, he could hear the smile in her voice. "You are. Wisdom knows when to pick up a sword, and when to put it down. It knows when to strike, and when to spare."

"Have you already forgotten that I tried to kill you on sight?"

"Extenuating circumstances."

"Ma."

"You were pushed to the breaking point. I would call that extenuating and still be underselling it."

Honestly, his inability to argue here was getting downright frustrating. "I don't feel very wise," he muttered.

She laughed outright, jostling his head where it was resting on her chest. "You earned your wisdom through suffering and foolishness and managed to carry along humility in the process. A tremendous asset, but not one that I'd imagine feels good."

He grumbled wordlessly. She kissed the top of his head. "Precious boy. Are you ready to get up? You need a bath and a meal."

Actually, he wasn't. He wanted to stay right where he was and pretend everything was okay and he wasn't about to get tossed back into a cosmic battle roulette. But he was used to disregarding what he wanted, so he nodded and began to extricate himself from his mother's grip.

He was a little surprised when she clicked her tongue and didn't let him. "Cloud, it's very rude to lie to your mother."

With a huff, he stopped trying to move. "I'm not—"

"I asked if you were ready to get up. You're not."

"I should be."

"Irrelevant. You have more than enough time to take your time, so we're going to stay right here until you're ready."

There really was no resisting his mother, even when she was a Calamity. He gave up, setting his head back down. A few more minutes wouldn't make much difference anyway.

Cloud wasn't sure how long he laid there, listening to the crackle of the fireplace and his mother's heartbeat. There was something about being so close to the…force of Jenova, when she (or Sephiroth) wasn't trying to consume him. It was a pleasant white noise. Warm. Encompassing. Safe, in a paradoxical way. It felt like the vigilance of a protective mother.

She knew the exact moment he was ready to get up, letting go and pulling the now-lukewarm cloth from his eyes. It was incredibly jarring to look up at his mother's face and see purple-pink eyes framed by blonde hair.

"Am I—where're my clothes?" he asked when he sat up and the heavy fur blankets fell around his naked waist.

"Your father and the triplets are washing them," she said, standing. "They're a very nice make, he was quite impressed." She handed him a winter robe.

"Thanks," he said, pulling it on and gingerly crawling out of the bed to follow her. He felt like all his joints had ossified. "I got them from a harem."

Ma burst out laughing, and he felt it like sunlight across his skin. "Is that what that was? Oh, baby."

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," he grumbled, walking through a door she held open for him. "It's funny until you're the one they're pouncing on."

"Pouncing," she repeated with great amusement.

"Who's pouncing?" a familiar voice asked. Cloud would have stopped in his tracks if his mother hadn't been ushering him along.

"Oh what?" he said as he finally caught sight of his "father." Definitely couldn't be his father in his universe, but it made a deeply ironic sort of cosmic sense here. Hadn't Cloud seen so many worlds where the man was Sephiroth's father?

Vincent raised his eyebrows, fingers working busily at sewing up a tear in the leather of Cloud's harness. "Hello, Cloud."

"Hi," he said lamely, sitting down at the table when his mother made it clear that's where they were headed. He couldn't help but stare at the man's two very human hands as they worked. The arm that should, in another world, have been encased by a golden gauntlet just had long, pale fingers with neatly trimmed nails.

Children were yelling outside the cabin. He glanced out the window just in time to see the other Cloud run past, carrying a silver-haired boy under one arm and one of Cloud's boots in the other, held aloft like a prize. The other two shrieking children appeared and disappeared a moment later, in hot pursuit.

"Your clothes are drying," Jenova said, as if absolute chaos wasn't taking place outside. "The boys should be working on your boots now."

"Right," said Cloud slowly, turning his attention back to the table. "Where's my sword?"

"In the rack," Vincent said, gesturing with his elbow. Cloud followed the gesture and saw a floor-to-ceiling rack half full of weapons. The ones lowest to the ground were clearly blunted training weapons sized for children, but toward the middle were Tsurugi and a strange…claymore? He wasn't sure how to classify the sword, but he knew instinctively it was his counterpart's weapon of choice.

"Eat," his mother said, setting down a plate heaped with cured meats in front of him. "You're too thin."

Barely, he refrained from rolling his eyes. "Yes, Ma," he said, not about to turn down free food. Free meats that wouldn't poison him were especially hard to come by, and these smelled even more precious than that—fresh-caught hunter's fare from high in the mountains where he was born.

"Are we in Nibelheim?" he asked around a mouthful.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Vincent said immediately, testing the tension of his stitching. "But yes. We're up in the mountains."

This time, Cloud did roll his eyes. He didn't comment though. "You live up here?"

"Ever since before you were born," his mother said, bringing him a glass of some kind of juice he didn't recognize. "Vincent had a falling out with those horrible scientists and barely escaped with his life. Fortunately, they were taken care of not long after. I hid him here and nursed him back to health when I was still just Claudia. After I went to Jenova to save your life, I left the townhome behind and joined him here permanently."

It served 'those scientists' right, Cloud thought privately. "It's nice," he said aloud.

"I certainly wouldn't trade it for anything," Jenova said, sitting down beside Vincent. "Cloud is so restless for adventure, of course, but he always comes back. It's home."

He ignored the twinge in his chest with the ease of long practice. "No contact with the town?"

"There is no town anymore," Vincent said, looking up again. "Once ShinRa realized who and what was missing from the Mansion, they took it out on Nibelheim. We barely managed to get out as many people as we did, and they've scattered to the winds since then."

Cloud exhaled slowly. It wasn't surprising. He'd certainly seen worse. That didn't mean he had to like it though.

Jenova caught his eye and gave him a secretive smile. "Not to worry, baby. ShinRa didn't last long after that. Not without the promise of my existence."

He was surprised for a moment, but that made sense. Without Hojo and Jenova, and certainly without Sephiroth, the fragile balance of power must have crumbled beneath its own weight. President Shinra was shrewd, but he was also blinded by his greed for the Promised Land. It must have been beautiful self-destruction.

Outside, the boys ran screaming past the window again. This time his counterpart was holding two silver-haired children aloft over his head. "Nooooo! Me tooooo!" the little boy Cloud was absolutely cettain was Loz wailed as he streaked after them.

"They're a lot cuter when they're not trying to murder me," Cloud commented, reaching the end of his food.

"Just give it a minute," Vincent sighed, while Jenova said "aren't they?"

Cloud hid a smile behind his cup. The boys ran past again, still screaming. Loz was hanging off of his counterpart's neck. It didn't seem to be slowing him down in the slightest.

There are times when you just can't keep going anymore, Cloud knew.

But he was glad to know, now, that there are also people who will help you up until you find the strength to stand again.