Title: Silver Lining

Author: Sorceress Fantasia

Rating: PG

Warnings: Possible spoilers. Slight angst for some, humour for others.

Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy 7 or any of their characters, as much as I would like to.

Summary: Done for LJ's omni-challenge. Covering his life from his trooper days to the events of Advent Children, 19 drabbles, 11 icons. All done in tribute of Cloud Strife.

In-Game

01. Child

Sometimes he really hated his friends.

They were all so experienced and wise in the way of the world, and yet it was he who always became the leader. Somehow, one way or another, Cloud would end up being the one to take responsibility for anything and everything happening to the world almost like it was a god-given task and he was obliged to bear the burden alone.

Why couldn't someone like Cid take the reins sometimes? Even though the pilot was a chain smoker and had the largest known vocabulary for vulgarity, he was also one of the most experienced fighters on the team, not to mention responsible.

Or maybe even Barret? He had been the leader of AVALANCHE before, hadn't he?

And if he was too hot-headed, Tifa was still around to lend her advice and help out as much as she could.

Surely, anybody but Cloud would be suitable to lead the team to fight Jenova and Sephiroth. But every time he tried to hand the reins over, he would be shot down like a hapless bird and his suggestion brushed off as though it was a mere joke.

Didn't they understand?

Cloud was no adult.

His time had stilled in those five years of experiments under Hojo's careful manipulations, and while he had broken out of the laboratory with the body of a twenty-one-year-old, his mind remained that of a sixteen-year-old teenager's.

He was no adult.

And that was why he hated his friends.

02. Smile

Cloud honestly couldn't remember the last time he had smiled.

It was such a simple thing to do, just a small upturn of one's lips. A curve, a curl, a tug.

Some babies learned to smile before they even learned how to cry. Some people smiled their days away.

Then there were those who never smiled an honest smile in their entire lives.

Sephiroth was one of those. He smirked, he sneered, but he never smiled. It was like he had never learned how to. Or perhaps he was forbidden to smile. Shinra didn't want smiling generals that seemed too human, after all.

Zack came close to a smile, but even he didn't really smile. Zack either grinned or laughed, depending on the situation and how happy he was. But it remained that he never smiled. Smiling, it seemed, wasn't enough to express himself and his occasional bouts of contagious happiness.

Only Aeris did, offering him smiles so sweet and sincere that sometimes he had trouble registering that they were all directed towards him. It made him want to smile too.

But whenever Cloud lounged around in her church for a glimpse of her memory, he found himself unable to.

15. Jenova

If Nibelheim was the beginning of Cloud's nightmares, then Jenova was no doubt the beginning of Sephiroth's.

Cloud supposed he would have gone crazy too, had he found that his mother was such a… such an abomination, such a freak of nature. No wait, Jenova wasn't part of this planet, so she wasn't part of nature. So that made her a huge, mutated alien virus. Joy.

No wonder Sephiroth went insane.

But Jenova wasn't his real mother.

Lucrecia was.

That shell of what Cloud could tell was once a beautiful woman. Kind, sweet, gentle Lucrecia.

If only Sephiroth had met her.

17. AVALANCHE

Cloud honestly thought he could remain unattached to anyone. It was just a job, he told himself. And once he got the money, he would leave and find another job, preferably one that had higher pay and benefits. He was a mercenary, and he wasn't supposed to get emotionally involved with the people he met on the job. They were just his meal tickets.

But Jesse had been a sweet lady, even if she had given him some trouble before.

Wedge was a friendly fellow whose ears perked up at the smell of food.

And Biggs was a gung-ho kind of guy, fighting for what he believed would lead to a better world.

AVALANCHE was true to its name, for with just three simple people, it had completely swept away Cloud's earlier way of life, whether he liked it or not.

19. Meteor

Cloud hates looking up into the sky.

Because every time he does, he doesn't see meteor hanging above them, ready to crash down onto their planet.

Instead, he sees Aeris. He sees Zack. He sees his past self.

And when he closes his eyes to block out the images, his mind continues to feed him with images of his failure, his naivety, his weakness.

He wants out.

But he can't.

21. Reunion

Hatred came a second too late. Shame didn't come until after he had finished. Regret came even before he had gotten there.

As Cloud walked up to the slumbering Sephiroth, the man he had once looked up to with wide, disbelieving and starry eyes, he found his emotions still and nonexistent. Had the revelation of his true identity as a clone –and a failed one at that- robbed him of the ability to feel, and instead, gave him a heart that was like a pool of dead water?

This was the reunion, the one which he had been summoned to.

The black materia slipped away from him.

-tbc-

A/N: More to come soon. And they'll be happier ones, I promise. XD Anyway, someone asked me what the buster sword compensated for (mentionedin a drabble in the previous part), and honestly, if you don't get the erm, joke, please don't ask. It's better that you don't find out so soon if you don't know. XDD