Umbrella Against Fate

.:Chapter 1:.

The heirs of the throne to The Above hold The Taint. The Taint is the sins of the angels held in a concentrated form. It is symbolic that the rulers of the land hold the burdens of the people. If the person is to overcome The Taint and be able to rule the demonic voice in their minds, they could become the leader. It is part of the markings, the things a higher being angel must deal with in order to rule.

Cloud Strife was the sole heir to the throne. No matter what happens, he would have to take over from his mother. He was a broken angel and he was tormented by The Taint. Over the years of war and killing before he was born, the accumulation of the power of The Taint had been reserved for his mind only. How powerful it has become! Voices raging inside of his mind, threatening to claw him hollow of himself and take over.

He was bloodthirsty in a way no angel should be. He enjoyed a fight and the only thing that stopped him from killing his opponent was the strict rules of where he was. Angels shouldn't kill after all, unless it was their demonic enemy. He loses himself in the throes of a fight. The acceleration and the strains of muscle, the clangs of weapons clashing, the resonation of magic across the field…it is a siren call to him in which he answers each time.

His blood thirst comes from the desire to finish a fight, so total and so thorough. In a moment of a fight, he can not tell the difference between an angel opponent and that of a demon opponent. It is not because he wants to lash out and kill anything and everything in sight. Cloud wants to fight an enemy once and only once.

However bloodthirsty he was, he has never taken a life. Cloud's mother doesn't trust it, holding her firm belief that if he was to kill, The Taint will succeed in taking away her son's mind. He has directed soldiers to take lives but he has never stained his hands in such things. He has seen blood and been soaked in blood from his battles, but it has never seeped into his skin. Yet the sins of his people have burnt him.

Cloud has always had to deal with the stares of his people, looking at him as if he was a monster. They look at him as if he is going to kill someone any moment. They look at him as if he is the only warrior of their land, the only one who has killed thousands and thousands.

'I have not killed! I haven't killed anyone!' Cloud shouts.

He carries The Taint and yet he is the most pure of heart. Still Cloud is the monster.

'You must overcome! You must overcome your burden as the heir! You must show the people!' His mother and her councilors tell him.

The pressure only makes him want to erupt. It only makes the voice of the Taint stronger, beckoning to release the walls of his mind. It beckons him to relieve his strains and only rest in the comfort of his mind so that it can take over. False security.

This strain makes him the outcast of The Above. They must respect him for the power he holds but they hate him for who he is.

His jaw is strong and his cheekbones are high. His hair is boyishly long. His body is taunt, full of muscles that are sleek and powerful. He is every bit of a man in his prime yet his eyes are hooded in a way that makes him seem much older than he truly is.

Despite all his efforts, Cloud remains to be one thing. He is a misfit, simply an image of an angel while being a broken person. And although he pretends not hear it, the whispers of his people echo in his ears: 'He should've been a demon!'

.:Underworld:.

The pulse of the man beneath her thumps pleasantly against the curve of her palm. Her mind is screaming at her and she tries to ignore it. She feels the stare of her two brothers at her back, a constant pressure to what she must do.

The next heartbeat of the man's life is his last. Her mind didn't silence instead it hurled and screamed, it almost made her dizzy. But she tosses her long black hair over her shoulder and she mentally pulls on the stoic face. Tifa turns around and her ruby red eyes glance over to Vincent, her older brother and her closest friend in this wretched place. Finally, Tifa's eyes settle on her eldest brother.

Vincent looks the most like her. They were both made of porcelain skin and black hair with red eyes. Vincent's eyes were darker though. Her eldest brother looked nothing like her and Vincent. He had long silver hair with striking blue green eyes. Sephiroth's mouth curls into a smirk and his hands come together in a short clap. Vincent remains stoic.

"Good job sister. In no time, you will rid yourself of your pathetic soul." Her eldest brother, as well as The Demon King, says.

Tifa nods once to her brother and watches him take his leave. Mentally, her fists are clenching in anger. But despite her anger, his words ring true because the voice has stopped if only momentarily. Vincent approaches her a bit hesitantly. He stops to stand in front of her and asks if she is okay.

"I'm fine." Tifa grinds out but then softens her eyes slightly for a brief moment. Vincent nods in response and brushes his knuckles against her cheek in brotherly affection before taking his leave.

Two princes and one princess are the children of a Demon King and his half human and half demon wife. The eldest son, Sephiroth, was the most demonic. Sephiroth took in the Seven Sins at birth, marking him to become the next Demon King and telling his fate of killing his father to take the role. Vincent, the second son, was born mostly demonic with a torn up shred of a soul. His demonic self had basically eaten his soul and spat out the remnants of it. Still…a soul is a soul no matter how torn up it was. Lastly came the daughter, Tifa. She was as divided as her mother, half demon and the other half an intact soul.

To quell the voice of her soul, Tifa has been tormented to kill. As a child, she remembered being held closely by Vincent as she watched demons and men being slain. She remembered crying afterwards for many years because she couldn't stand the torment of her mind until she had been punished enough times to shut up.

Her mind constantly whispered: 'You could've done something! A life is gone because you didn't do anything!'

Finally, as Tifa aged, she was forced to kill. The stain of blood would be the strength of her demonic self, to kill the soul. Her parents had hoped that she would end up with something like what Vincent had, a torn up shredded soul in which the demonic state had almost all control of. Still, the throbbing of her soul only grew. She stopped crying and refusing. She had learned long ago to simply pretend that her soul had been eaten up and spat out. And finally, she was relieved of killing and watching death in its work.

That was until her eldest brother became the Demon King. He was reluctant to believe and often times sent her in the place of another demon to kill. He wanted to ensure that she was demon; he wanted to show the people that his sister was truly the Rose of the Black Moon. Tifa's fought and killed; and still her soul relents, pushing away the darker nature of her birth. Finally, Tifa has simply learned to bury her soul, to ignore it. She hoped that if it remained buried, it would rot inside of her.

If it would only rot inside of her, she would be free of the horrid chains that tied her. She was the Demon Princess, sister to the Demon King. Despite the fact that Sephiroth and Vincent was cold and would kill without much of a thought, they loved her. Being the Demon Princess and the loved sister of both the king and the prince, forced all beings of the Underworld to respect her. They had to bow to her and fulfill any orders she gave out. Still, they whispered against her and more than once had she been plotted against.

Still, her mind shouts inside of her.. 'Just let me be. Let me see who I am and not what you force me to be.'

Tormented was the story of Tifa. A tormented demon with a soul, without the desire to kill. And no matter how many souls of humans she takes and how many demons she's slain, the people whisper against her. She's held life in her hands and crushed in between her fingers. She's thrown people in the pits of fires that lead them to Oblivion. She's fought her opponents and those who have tried to hurt her.

'Fight and kill! It will be the only way to kill your soul!' The voices of her parents scolding her from memories belonging to her childhood.

And still, no matter what she does and what lengths of protection Vincent and Sephiroth offer, the people whisper against her. She was supposed to be Rose of the Black Moon as the princess of the Underworld. Yet no one addresses her so despite the fact that she has earned the title with her conquests.

'She should've been an angel!'

Author's Notes: I had a tough time writing this story since I didn't feel like I managed to capture the characters and stay true to it, so let me know! I'd like constructive criticism about how I went about portraying the characters and anything else you can think of. So please review!