Cloud Strife, alone

Even the lung-burning cold feels good, because it's his cold, and his alone. He doesn't have to share it. True that there are other people on the mountain, feeling it along with him, but the dry air that is freezing his throat, the crunch of packed powder snow under his boots, the tickle of the wool hat on his head, these things belong to him. There is no judgment of those feelings, and even if there is the lingering fear that it would all be turned to pain - or worse, swept away to unnatural numbness - that fear he knows to be unfounded.

He is free of his end of the rope.

Cloud trudges painfully back to the starting point. Walking through the snow uses up so much of his energy that there's hardly any leftover for the actual ride down the mountain on the snowboard. The thin legs, underdeveloped muscles, and worse, the heart and lungs, are all so unused to this activity that he can only do it for a few minutes at a time. He can remember a time, not more than a month ago, when he would do this from dawn till dark.

That was, of course, if she (not "She" anymore but "she"; she no longer warrants capitalization in his mind,) was quiet, of course. If she wasn't, why then he could still do it all he wanted, but occasionally without one or more of his senses. Sometimes she would black him out halfway down, which, if he remembered correctly, (and that was never a guarantee,) was how he had broken his arm.

Cloud reaches the summit, where other snowboarders are getting ready to push off, and has to lean down with his hands on his knees to try to regain his breath.

Your body believes everything you tell it.

The power to manifest physical strength...

Sephiroth's words. And if he believes Sephiroth, then it ought not to take him too long to regain his former abilities. But as he gasps for breath and tries to slow his pounding heart, he wonders if it will come soon enough. This will have to be his last ride down the mountain for today. After this, he'll go back to the lodge, have dinner, and spend the rest of the night in his hotel room. Maybe there would be something to watch on TV. And then, the next day, he'll go home to Cosmo Canyon and actually put his arms around Tifa, and tell her what a wonderful time he'd had. This time he wouldn't have to lie to her, either. And that was almost worth the shuddering muscles, aching bones and painfully heaving lungs.

Almost.

Jenova had made him strong beyond human strength, and damned if he didn't miss that, just a bit.

(Stop it. That's not true.)

But it is true, at least partly, and there is some guilt in that, and some shame. He knows fully what he was capable of doing with Jenova inside of him, and he knows what it nearly drove him to. To think, even for a moment, that it would be worth it to have some of her power back is an abomination. She's gone, and Cloud is glad, and there's nothing more to it. And if the physical strength and stamina of the old, poisoned body are the sacrifice, then it's a worthy one and he's glad to give it.

"Hey, Spike, you okay?"

A fellow snowboarder hovers about him, seems about to put his hand on Cloud's shoulder, then decides not to. Those who have seen him around know that he doesn't like to be touched. He's too unpredictable.

Didn't like to be touchedwastoo unpredictable, he amends.

"Yeah," Cloud says on a harsh exhale. He straightens up and looks at the guy next to him, a hearty, strong fellow with wind-chapped cheeks and a weathered face. Cloud's own skin is so sensitive now that he has to cover as much of his face as possible out in the cold air. These things, he realizes in moments and small revelations, are going to take a long time to get used to. And it will be long before his new body even resembles the old one, even if his features are exactly the same.

"Hey, man, you look like you've been sick. You lost a lot of weight."

It's a personal observation that maybe this guy shouldn't have brought up socially, but Cloud supposes that he looks so different than he used to that people can't help mentioning it.

"Yeah, I was laid up for a while, uhh, in the hospital, but I'm okay now." Cloud smiles, though he knows me must look disconcerting. "Just have to get my strength back."

"Damn, man, your eyes really glow."

"I had Mako poisoning," Cloud says, noting that it's not exactly a lie.

"But weren't you in SOLDIER, like, years before Meteor?"

God, can this guy possibly want to get into this conversation right now? Sure and Cloud has all his excuses straightened out and ready to serve up, but he doesn't think he can lay them on one right after the other on the top of a mountain in the freezing weather to someone who barely knows him.

"Yeah, I was, but I had bad reactions to the Mako, so, you know, once in a while it flares up really bad."

"Sucks, dude."

"You bet." Cloud has to smile again. That story wasn't so bad, wasn't exactly a lie, and had rolled right off his tongue easily.

"Right, well, take it easy, man."

"Yeah, I will. Going to go down one last time then call it a day."

"You do that. Good to see you back, dude."

"Thanks."

As the guy walks past him to gear up, he casually slaps Cloud on the shoulder. And then doesn't cringe or apologize. In fact, probably hadn't even realized he'd done it. This also makes Cloud smile.

I really must seem different, he thinks, and he will be glad if people simply stop tiptoeing around him, if they can just forget that they ever had to.

The guy in front of him takes off without ceremony, and then it's Cloud's turn to go.

With a whoosh, he is lost in a world of white, powdery crystals, and to hell with it all, this is fun. This is living

Stinging cold rushes past him and into him and through him. Wind as sharp as ice itself rips through any opening in his old, battered coat and leggings, and the world is nothing more than the wind and the white of the snow and the slate of the sky. His thigh muscles are screaming at him to stop, because they've had enough, but now he's quite sure that he will go one more time, just one more time after this and then call it quits. What's the worst that can happen? His body might be stupid, but his brain remembers how to balance and shift, so he'll compensate.

Coming up is the halfpipe, and Cloud knows he can't resist. He shifts his weight and rides toward it, and it's all happening so quickly that he's on it before he's convinced himself that he can do this. In a moment it doesn't matter, because he's catching air, and there it is: freedom in physics.

This, too, is over in a matter of seconds (but so very, very much worth it,) and Cloud has under a second to realize that his legs aren't going to be ready for this kind of impact.

And so when he lands, his legs go out from under him, and the board twists free and he is falling, he's not entirely surprised.

There's a loud SNAP that seems to have come from him, and he wonders if he's broken the snowboard, but before he can remember that the snowboard is probably back a few yards, there's a flare of cold in his arm that is bright and familiar. He knows it's not actually cold; it's his body's way of dealing with pain so fierce that it might put him in danger, and he's still got some problem solving to do.

He throws his arm out - the one he can still use - and braces it against the hard snow, trying to stop himself from rolling onto any injured body parts and injuring them worse. He does stop, and then he's on his back, staring dazedly at the slate sky and the few snowflakes falling onto his goggles.

And then, with further danger unlikely, his body allows him to feel the actual pain, and it is brilliant, almost blinding.

"Oh, shit," Cloud mutters, though just then he lacks the ambition or strength to get up and do something about it. Anyway, getting up would probably be a bad idea, since there's nothing he can do at the moment.

He knows his arm is broken. The bone has splintered awkwardly into two pieces, exactly along the old faultline that -

All of Cloud's thoughts stop then, and for a moment there's nothing in his head but silence. And then, a jumble of thoughts all tumble into his mind at once, like marbles out of a jar.

There was no old faultline...

...new body, no break in this bone...

this arm has never been broken...

...believes everything you tell it, Soldier...

...and it doesn't matter if you've spent weeks in a hospital bed, the power to manifest physical strength has little to do with it...

Cloud knows that there can't possibly be an old breakline in this arm. But he can feel it, bones crunching and grinding against each other in the exact same place he had once broken them. He can't deny what he feels, and neither can any other entity.

"Holy shit, Spike! You okay?"

The sky is eclipsed by someone's head, and Cloud sees the guy who had spoken to him at the top of the mountain peering down at him.

"You break your arm again? Looks like you did! Damn, that must suck."

"Um," Cloud says, "yes. It sucks."

"Hang on, man, let me ditch my stuff and I'll help you back up. Wow, that sucks."

Then the face is gone, and Cloud hears boots crunching in the snow and scuffling and other voices.

But it doesn't suck. That's the hell of it.

Sephiroth had told him that the body believes everything you tell it. And the body may be new, but it belongs to Cloud Strife. It belongs to Cloud Strife so absolutely that he has put a faultline in his arm just by remembering it. His body has remembered to break where it was weak.

And if that's the case, then soon it will remember to mend where it is strong.

He can't wait to tell his friends. Tifa will just love this.

Imagine being happy to have broken your arm!

By and by, Cloud realizes that he doesn't have to imagine being happy. Lying in a bank of snow with a compound fracture, looking up at the slate sky, Cloud is completely happy.

Before anyone can come back to help him and decide that he's really crazy, Cloud laughs. He laughs loud and long, from a place in him that he hasn't known since he was a boy, before Soldier, before ShinRa, before Sephiroth, and well before Jenova. This place in him, he thinks, this feeling, this is Cloud Strife from Nibelheim; this is who he is supposed to be.

And for the first time, completely free.



Self-indulgent author's notes: I can't write another line without thanking everyone who's read this story, even if you haven't commented. To those of you who did comment, I can't thank you enough; your feedback has been both lovely and extremely helpful.

I could never presume to do justice to Final Fantasy VII, but I hope I've at least honored it a bit, because I got months of enjoyment out of the story and the characters, and, while I've played tons of video games that I've enjoyed, FFVII is one of the few that stands out in the group. I'll probably be 99 years old in some senior community one day and still be able to recall how I enjoyed this game. (By then, there will have been thirty more sequels, a remake, a live action movie - god forbid! - an animated series, and a theme park.)

As I said in the beginning, I started Cities of Poison four or maybe five years ago. About halfway through, I put it down and forgot about it for a few years, only to pick it up again and complete it between last summer and fall. I'm a little freaked out that it's over, because it's been with me for so long. I hope that some people out there will possibly get something out of it, even if it's a few hours of enjoyment.

Originally, I toyed with the idea of having Cloud die, or not get better. In the end, obviously, I opted not to. I think that Cloud Strife is an incredibly constructed canon character (I hope that, while taking his characterization to its angsty limits, I've still remained faithful to the canon characterization,) and I've always had a soft spot for him. I wanted him to make it. I wanted Cloud to find strength and survive.

This story is dedicated to two boys who did not.