We finally made it to Cloud's farm! Things are about to take a nosedive in this chapter as I finally put into place a headcanon I have about Cloud.

My headcanon: this Cloud has depression and a hard time showing emotions even after everything they have gone through, even though everyone thinks he's doing better at showing emotions, though it's only that they have gotten better at reading him. Cloud also is dealing with depression the same way I am, but dealing with his issues himself and not going to anyone for help. Not healthy I know, but its working for me, so I figured it might as well go for Cloud. Only Cloud can't detect that he's falling back down the slope he's fighting to get out of and he keeps falling back into the habits of thinking people only keep him around and talk to him so that they can get things out of him and will throw him away when he isn't useful anymore.

And before anyone says anything, I had to put into the story a quick little bit of this showing through, so he does get lost in his head and starts falling into these thoughts. SO WARNING! DEPRESSION THEMES! Please don't hate, I am kinda putting myself out in the open with this by putting this on Cloud so please if you don't like just leave. If you don't like it because you found it wasn't implemented properly go right on ahead and let me know!

CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM is the lifeblood of authors!

Thank you guys for reading and enjoy!

Chapter 7

"Seph seemed really scared by that man. We need to find a way to stop him from getting closer to him again."

"Can you blame Seph? All that man had to do was just look into Zack's eyes to start taking control over him."

"Geal we can't do anything about who that person was until Seph finally starts telling the truth to us. Putting the mind control aside, that man looked just like Cloud, only in a suit and with unnaturally glowing eyes."

"He radiated evil."

"Mind control pushed aside or not, it felt like bliss falling under his control. It was so easy to forget that he had just hurt you guys. It was frighteningly easy to forget that Seph was fighting to get away from him, to keep me from looking at him… It was so easy for him to break into my head and take control."

"All assholes with the ability to get into your head have an easy time taking over the first time. Just learn the signs and fight back. That's what I learned Jenova decided I would make a fine puppet and sent Sephiroth after me, even though at that point he wasn't even Sephiroth any more, just the body with an outside force pulling the strings."

"You are going to have to tell us more about the history of this world. I don't want to accidentally make someone mad because of something I say while here."

"I don't know about you two, but I like being pampered like this. I don't know if I want to find a way to get my body back. Cloud does wonders with his hands, I might just have to stay a Chocobo forever."

"You're not going to stay a Chocobo forever, Genesis."

"Gen please don't say such things. It's really weird. Cloud is making a really weird face now."

"That, Angeal, is the face of one who has just been told that he gives such good massages that the patron keeps getting turned on and wants you to continue touching him until he reaches his organism, even though you're not into him like that."

"THANK YOU ZACK! BUT PLEASE SHUT UP!"

"You fools are being extremely loud. I'm sure you barbarians have woken our beloved Silver up by now."

Seph stayed curled up, not moving and not opening his eyes to look at the others now staring at him. He knew they were staring, bluntly at that. He could feel his skin crawling with the gazes. It was very uncomfortable, and he didn't know if he could deal with it right now, not with the way his gut was turning and protesting every small movement.

Oh, how he wished the ground would stop moving.

"Seph is still asleep, Gen. He isn't going to wake up for another hour or two. And please refrain from such vulgar talk, Zack. I don't think poor Cloud is going to be able to stand being in the same room as us much longer if you both don't stop."

"I don't think letting Seph sleep through the move onto the Shera was a good idea."

A hand softly started stroking his back, rubbing gently over the spot where his neck connected to his body. He felt slightly better as the gentle motions started to soothe him.

"Hey, Seph," the owner of the hand cooed softly. "The trip is almost over okay? Stay strong for me just a little bit longer alright?"

Seph groaned and opened his eyes to look at Cloud. He felt really bad and he hated feeling this bad.

"It's going to be alright," Cloud cooed softly, one of his hands making the shut up gesture to the ones behind him while his other hand continued to run soothingly across his back. "You're just suffering the effects of motion sickness. It'll pass once we get off the ship, but Cid is doing his best to keep us as stable as he can. It shouldn't get too much worse."

"I don't like being sick," Seph mumbled, pushing his head under his wings. "They always hurt me when I fall sick. Especially him…"

"He's not here to hurt you anymore," Cloud cooed softly, shifting to sit closer to Seph. Seph sighed as both of those soft and talented hands ran through his feathers and started the pleasant motions having his feathers groomed. "Just relax and try not to move too much while we're still in the air."

Seph hummed in understanding and shifted so Cloud could reach more spots easier, closed his eyes, and let himself be lulled into that blissful state Genesis must have been talking about when saying he could stay a Chocobo forever if Cloud continued to groom and care for them like this.

Maybe being a Chocobo for the rest of his life wasn't such a bad idea.

Cloud chuckled. "Don't worry Seph. When you guys find a way to get your human bodies back, I'll continue to care for you. You'll just have to learn to be more independent and learn how to do hair care yourself for when I'm not around."

"See, Geal! Even Sephiroth wants to stay a Chocobo! Cloud has magic fingers! I'm sure of it!"

Seph fell back asleep to the sounds of the others laughing and Cloud's whines of embarrassment.

FINAL FANTASY VII

Cloud grunted as he lifted up Sephiroth and carried him off the ship. The poor boy/bird was suffering from motion sickness almost to the extent he himself did before he got used to the rolling and shifting of the airships Cid flew them around in. Thankfully this was the only time he would have to move them on an airship for the foreseeable future, so Seph wouldn't have to suffer again.

He followed the three other SOLDIERs turned Chocobos to the pasture he owned. It was a nice gift from Rufus and the Turks, to give him a place that made him feel at home, probably to keep an eye on him, but also to thank him for saving them multiple times already. Though at this point, it's more of a 'they come running into town being chased by a nest of pissed off monsters that Cloud and Tifa have to deal with because someone made a bet the other couldn't do something and then it resulted in Cloud and Tifa covered in monster guts' sort of situations, but the large area Cloud now legally owned was wonderful.

He still made sure the Turks understood that monster attacks were okay for him in Edge, but bring a monster nest near his pasture and Chocobos and the Turks would be returning on the brink of death with a bloody note reading to fuck off and leave his babies alone.

And now, Cloud had four new additions to his family of Chocobos, and even to AVALANCHE now with Genesis, Angeal, Sephiroth, and Zack. Well, that's a lie, Zack had been adopted into AVALANCHE the second everyone found out that Zack was the entire reason Cloud was still alive, and to see how he still worshiped Zack as a hero, one that should have taken the mantle of planets savior and left Cloud to die instead of trying to save him.

Cloud dropped Sephiroth, his eyes going wide. "Shit! They are going to kill me!"

Genesis, Angeal, and Zack all swung around and looked at Cloud in shock. Sephiroth blinked up from where he had crumbled ungracefully to the ground when Cloud dropped him. Cid and Vincent, who had walked off the Shera in time to hear Cloud's worried shout, each blinked and then burst into laughter. Of course, they would understand the sudden panic.

Cloud had promised to send each of them a daily update text after the events of Geostigma were solved after all. Cloud had gotten better at sending them all a text, even if it ended up in a group chat and it was just an 'On delivery. Sleeping under the stars on the side of the road.'

And Cloud hadn't texted a single one of them since he had gotten that call from Bill and then called up Tifa. Tifa might be lenient because she understood the situation, having been with them for it, but the others not so much. Especially not Yuffie.

"What do I even say about this? How do I tell Yuffie about this without making her curious enough to come over and visit before I have an actual plan for this?!"

Zack, having met the infamous 'Treasure Princess' himself, burst into laughter and collapsed on the ground next to Seph, checking him over as he laughed until he couldn't breathe. Angeal and Genesis were too confused by what was happening and why Cloud was suddenly having a very visible panic attack to actually do anything to help. Cid was still laughing his ass off, but Vincent had pulled out his phone and had started doing something on it.

Cloud turned around to look at his friends for help, only to see Vincent hold his phone up for Cid to see, causing Cid to break out into hysterics again, Vincent gaining that smirk that spelled Cloud's doom, and after a moment, Cloud's phone dinged with the ringing bells notification sound for the AVALANCHE group chat.

Vincent turned his phone around to show Cloud what was just sent into the group chat, and Cloud felt himself pale. As Cloud heard his phone start ringing over and over and over again with the notifications of the group chat, he slid to his knees in the huddle of birds at his feet and wished the world would swallow him up. Cid's laughter as he was dragged back onto the Shera by Vincent to leave was loud and overwhelming.

Cloud stayed hidden in the feathers and fuzz of the four SOLDIER Chocobos until he couldn't hear the Shera anymore. He only left the bundle and led them all to a house after they had started to shiver from the cold air. Cloud didn't say anything while they walked, not even Zack could get him out of his head and his racing thoughts.

They had all seen the picture, they would all draw their own conclusions, they would all realize just how worthless he was. Why had they stayed in touch with him over the years? Other than for his brute strength because of his enhancements, he wasn't even really human anymore. They had no reason to seek him out, to try to keep in touch with him. He hadn't been human when he met them, and he had lost any traces of humanity with each dip into the lifestream, even Sephiroth had taken his humanity slowly each time he had taken over Cloud's mind.

Why would they want to stay close to him? Why would these four who could find someone much better than him to help them, stay close to him? Why would they curl around him and comfort him? Why aren't they afraid of the monster walking around with them? Why-

The angry screech was all the warning Cloud got as he was dragged out of his thoughts, and then the feeling of four becks digging into his body and a pair of claws scratching at his shins.

As soon as they came they left, and Cloud fell to the ground holding his heavily bleeding leg.

"Do I have your attention now?" Zack, standing tall above Cloud, was glaring down at him, his eyes glowing a violent green. "Don't make me repeat myself."

"Yes," Cloud managed to say through the lump in his throat. He couldn't pull his eyes away from Zack's. They looked so wrong on his face. But at the same time, so right.

"Good," Was all Zack said before he closed his eyes and visibly tried to calm himself as he moved away. Angeal following after glancing Cloud over once.

"You caused Zack to go green, Cloud," Came the soft whisper to his left, then a red head was nudging his hands aside and looking at his leg. "You really made him mad."

"You started to radiate something dark," the even softer voice said softly. "Zack tried to get your attention in every way he knew, and when nothing worked, he got all of us to attack you."

Radiate something dark? Cloud blinked and looked over at the silver chocobo currently trying to squash himself into the ground.

"You had quite the dark aura if even I could see it around you," came the voice from his other side, Genesis apparently happy with how Cloud was healing from their attack. "You really had him scared, Cloud. I've only felt an aura as dark as yours from someone convinced they mean nothing to the world other than one thing they think they are good at because people praised them for it."

Cloud lowered his head and said nothing. He wasn't healed enough to walk away from this encounter unlike when the others had tried to talk emotions with him.

"Cloud?" Soft silver feathers filled his vision as a wing curled against his chest. "Do you want to die?"

"No," Cloud blinked. He didn't recognize the voice that answered, that broken sob. "I'm not suicidal. Monsters aren't suicidal."

"You think you're a monster?" He could feel Genesis watching him, laying his red wing over his still kneeling form.

"I know I'm a monster," Came the broken voice. The voice so broken Cloud didn't recognize it as his own until both wings tightened around him.

"I thought when I grew a wing and learned what Shinra had done to me that I was a monster," Genesis began, starting to groom Cloud's hair. "I thought I was a monster that they had created, and I convinced my best friend to leave Shinra with me when I found out what they had done to him as well. Neither of us thought to look for Sephiroth's records. The boy who was thrown onto the battlefield and forced into the position of General, the one who was so perfect and flawless he had to have been raised in a lab to be just what they wanted. We left him behind, I called myself a monster and started causing havoc in towns and in the tower itself. Angeal considered himself a monster as well, but he was called an angel by someone or he started looking at his wings differently than I did and called himself an angel, but the result was the same."

"Angeal didn't consider himself human, he didn't consider himself a monster either, but he still made the puppy kill him."

"Why are you-"

"Hush," Genesis sighed. "I found out after Angeal had died just what kind of childhood Sephiroth had, just what was done to him, but I was far too gone to actually think about how Sephiroth would deal with losing two of the people who actually loved him, Zack being the third and last person. I drove him to go searching more on who his mother was, on his background, because I was hurting, he had refused to help me, he had thrown me aside. But it was only after I had been cured by the goddess herself, that I realized that Sephiroth had every right to hate me, to throw me away, to not want to help me. I had thrown him away first. I had taken the only tight bonds of friendship away from him, and didn't even stop to consider that he was like me and Angeal. The Golden Trio was a name I had heard before, along with many others, but I think the Golden Trio was the best way to describe us."

"Gold is beautiful and strong," Seph said, curling closer to Cloud. "But it is also brittle and quick to break if strained enough. A beautiful and strong friendship that lasted years, before the knowledge of just how much of your life was controlled and how little wasn't, of how you weren't seen as human by those around you that you once trusted, of how one decision from one person shattered that friendship forever."

"The Golden Trio were born and raised to be monsters in human skin," Genesis continued. "We had been hurt and shattered, beaten and bruised until we couldn't move anymore, and the only ones who cared were the other two. Sephiroth was raised to be a monster in an environment that was cold and unforgiving, Angeal and I were raised as normal kids with normal childhoods who were manipulated into wanting to become SOLDIERs by our doctor, Hollander. We had nothing on Sephiroth's broken mind and stunted social skills. But we still cut him out and didn't bring him with us, even though we knew he was treated worse than we were by the very company we were going to start trying to destroy. We were real monsters for seeing how Sephiroth was treated and leaving him there. We were monsters for not finding a way to get him out of Shinra's hold. We were the true monsters for only thinking of ourselves. I was willing to burn the world to get my cure, Angeal wouldn't listen to anything I said about there being a cure. No, Angeal only saw his wings and his want to be human, but knowing he will never be fully human, he threw aside all his beliefs and made Zack kill him."

"You are not a monster," Seph said, standing up. "I don't associate with them on principle. One monster in my life is enough. And trust me when I tell you, if you were a monster then I would have tried to kill you or run away several times by now, not curl up and sleep peacefully in your lap."

"Speaking of monsters," Genesis cooed, his tone light and soothing. "We really should move into someplace warmer than out in the cold night air and talk about the one that looked like Cloud and was willing to kill us to make sure you never left him."

"That is the only monster I have to allow into my life," Seph bit out, moving to tug on Cloud's shirt until he stood up. "And I am not going back to him again. Not after everything they sacrificed to get me away from him."

FINAL FANTASY VII

It had taken Seph some time to find where Angeal and Zack had wandered off to, and in that time, Genesis had found out some very interesting things. Like how Cloud only had barns built onto his land, had stalls built for his Chocobos, had organization problems so bad he was either freakishly organized like Sephiroth, or a walking disaster zone like Zack depending on where you went.

His stalls and the straw/hay barn were cleaned and organized daily, all the bad strawn and hay being thrown into a compost bin out of enhanced range, except for the days the wind blew it towards them. His barn/shed where he kept his bike and Tifa's truck was an organized disaster that he was advised to never enter without very thick boots or nails and other sharp objects would pierce the flesh and be a bitch to remove, but Cloud could find everything he needed when he needed to do repairs, change the oil, do check-ups, etc. Then you got to his workplace where he had filing cabinets and a wooden desk, but the papers were everywhere, and while Cloud claimed he could find what he needed, it would take him a few hours without help to organize and put everything into the filing cabinets and desk drawers.

Apparently, Cloud also had a small spot in the hay barn where he slept when he was on his land, as he had led them there when Seph insisted on staying with Cloud tonight, for everyone's peace of mind.

"We can fit into houses you know," Genesis remarked after Cloud had finally finished telling him about the places on his land. "You don't have to keep us in a barn with you."

"Well, we're not traveling into Edge just to bunk down in the living room of the upstairs living area," Cloud shot back. "Tifa would kill me for bringing you guys into the bar."

"What about your house?" Genesis asked, shifting so Cloud could be more comfortable laying against him. "Surely on a plot of land this big, you should have a house to call your own."

"The house that came with this place was old and falling apart," Cloud said, his eyes drifting closed and his body slowly becoming dead weight against Genesis. His voice was coming out slower and softer, exhaustion was grabbing the poor man again. "It caught on fire while I wasn't around because the Turks had decided to come play a prank on me and started my stove before leaving. Fuckers burned it down."

"Turks are pains like that aren't they?" Genesis cooed. Cloud would be asleep very soon, and hopefully with people who cared about him to cuddle and wake up to, he would stop feeling like he was a monster. Monsters didn't have what he had, a family that would love and protect him no matter the rank or gender. His pack was full of warriors who would stand and fight beside each other, this Genesis knew for a fact.

When he got no reply, Genesis laid his head down and watched the door to the barn from his place as Cloud's pillow. He wouldn't let the others wake the poor man and question him at the moment. He hated seeing someone as strong as Cloud crying over something he couldn't control. A savior of the planet, a hero to the people, leader of the most powerful group of people existing in the world, and the one people go to to get a second look at something or fresh eyes on a project, Cloud had a bunch of wonderful titles and traits that kept people coming to him for help, but also let them see that he wasn't all-powerful and he need help himself sometimes.

Tifa was a great gossip and had lots of wonderful and not so wonderful things to say about Cloud, and the hurt him you die talk was also wonderful to hear. People loved him and admitted to needing him for things they couldn't do on their own, but at the same time they also never stopped trying to protect him no matter how powerful he was, because as Tifa had put it, "Cloud was emotionally weak, not that it's a bad thing, but he had a hard time controlling his emotions and tries to cut ties with them. I only noticed he did it after we had been traveling together for a few months. It was why he was never truly happy while having fun around the campfire with us, and why he has never truly been happy since Nibelhiem even though nothing is around to hurt him anymore."

As Genesis watched Seph, Angeal, and Zack enter the barn he made a vow to himself. He would see Cloud smiling and laughing, he would see him happy and stable before the world took him away from the broken but fixable blonde beside him. He would also see Sephiroth happy and safe from the blonde monster chasing him from his world. These two had become his family. He wasn't going to let them be driven into madness or self-isolation because of issues that people could help them with. He wouldn't stop until he was positive that his second chance at making friends and family wouldn't end in disaster as it had before.

No, Cloud and Sephiroth deserved so much more than anything he could ever do for them, but he was going to help them, and no one could stop him when he made up his mind about what he was going to do and who was important to him. Cloud and Sephiroth would be protected and fixed back into humans who could function without the thought of being a monster even crossing their minds once. He also wasn't letting Angeal go crazy again, and Zack wouldn't have to die for anyone again. Shame he couldn't see the puppy get with his girl and have little puppies running around to spoil, but he would work with what he got.

Of course, he wasn't letting anyone out of the nest and jumble of limbs, wings, and feathers until they had heard Seph's story. He hadn't changed after starting to lose his mind from degradation, he was still a bastard who loved flames and stories, only this time, the story would be used to help find a way to fight off the monster that looked like Cloud.

FINAL FANTASY VII

Hey guys! Quick little end note! I want to say thank you to the guest that left the story suggestion in the comments of last chapter about more Shelke and Shalua moments set in DOC or before, even both. I love the idea and once I get one of my stories finished I will definitely start working on it. But I have to warn you that it might take a while to get up, as I haven't actually played DOC or watched anything for it so I only know about them from fanfics I have read with them both in it. I want this to be a wonderful story when I write it, so I am going to either find a way to play it myself, or I am going to have to watch someone play it on youtube. I don't actually have a PS2 that works, so I am going to have to find a way to play it on an emulator on the computer to learn about them that way, or just dedicate three days to none stop DOC playthrough watching and character analysis videos.

That being said! If anyone wants to help by letting me know of videos and YouTubers, or even places to get an emulator that can run DOC I would be really grateful, even for those of you who want to just rant about how amazing one of those two girls are and how excited you are to see what could come to life under my pen when this story gets going.

Thanks once again and have a wonderful day!