Umbrella Against Fate
Disclaimer: The characters belong to Square Cinx. The story itself is mine.
Full Summary: They were both misfits belonging on polar opposite worlds. When they meet in the middle, they decide to do the ultimate act of defiance…they decided to switch themselves. By doing so they entered a bond stronger than any magic that would lead the world as they know it to end. But this is a story about their love and the powerful bond that lead one demon to be turned into an angel and an angel to demon.
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For such a large expanse of a room, Cloud felt suffocated. In a room with such bright lights, lights he was supposed to be used to living in The Above, blinded him. He could feel the anger radiating around him, burning him. He could hear whispers all around him, wrapping him in a cloak without being able to make out what the words had formed. For once, he wish for the comfort of the voice in his mind. On the inside, Cloud was very much of a mess but on the outside, he seemed like a very well done statue, frozen in time with the most beautiful features.
The councilors on the side of his mother stopped whispering to God, ruler of The Above. They took a step back from the large throne and glared at him briefly before disappearing in a dim flash of light. Left alone with what seemed like miles between them; mother and son stared at each other.
Elizabeth, Ruler of all Angels and The Above, stared at her son with such sorrow in her eyes. She could remember the nine months she carried him. She could remember the happy young child she carried in her arms as she tickled him. And all too quickly, it seemed, her son had grown up when he met his "imaginary friend". At first, Elizabeth had thought all children would have such things called imaginary friends and she had allowed it.
Without knowing it, she had allowed him to be faced with a demon. She had allowed him to befriend The Taint. Imaginary friends were just that, imaginary. But her son's imaginary friend was very real. Although it didn't have a solid form, it resided in his mind and what he said was real. And Elizabeth wept with the knowledge. The years before his birth, war had plagued the world between angel and demon. Each death of human, angel, and demon alike had been packed away for the heir of The Above. She had known that The Taint this time around would be much stronger but she had idly believed that her child would be able to overcome it.
The Taint had grown and transformed into a way that was dangerous. It showed up in childhood, rather than adulthood. It curled itself around her baby boy in the mask of a fun friend. After all, royalty never really had too many friends their age due to their status. So the Taint had taken on the mask of a friend, his age and so very like him. Elizabeth wondered if Cloud had even seen The Taint in a young child's form in his mind's eye.
Afterwards, Cloud changed. Her laughing baby boy had grown stoic, waking up with nightmares and stifling screams into the pillow. So she took him to her councilors, hoping to find the problem like any concerned parent. That's when she found out that her allowed tolerance for his imaginary friend was The Taint. She had allowed her precious son face the worst enemy of her kind. And at that moment, she desperately had wished she more children, so the voice of The Taint could be split. She believed it would've made it easier. But of course, she could only be married once and her husband had died in the war before Cloud's birth. Cloud became the sole heir and the only person who bore The Taint in all its strength.
Elizabeth had been lucky, being the third child out of five. The Taint had been split up between five children. Sadly, she had been the only sole daughter of her parents and her brothers had all been sent to the war where they died. Thus she was left to be the only heir to the throne. But her baby boy, Cloud, was alone.
After finding out her mistake, she had been determined to fix it. She had to force herself to be cruel to her son. Elizabeth took measures to make it seem that Cloud's imaginary friend was a figment of his imagination. She was cruel in her measures, ignoring him until he convinced her that he would stop talking to his imaginary friend.
Unfortunately, her cruelty only resulted in him turning to his friend more often to comfort him. She pleaded and begged, she wept with the sorrow of the burden she had given her son. And at the age six, Elizabeth had to tell her son the truth in all its unbounded glory. It was a story full of bloodshed, monstrous images, and oceans of pain. And it wasn't a story told from her mouth. Rather it was story hidden in a box, a box full of magic, and she opened it and exposed him to it so he could see the truth.
So since age six, Cloud has been burdened. After that, he stopped and he fought against his demon in his mind. And since age six, he finally noticed all the people treating him with barely contained resentment.
Elizabeth shook herself mentally from the memories. She looked at her son. She could feel hatred stirring in her heart against herself, for allowing him to be so troubled. And in some way, she could feel love and pity for her son because she knows that the burden he carries in larger than this world.
"You shouldn't have fought him." Elizabeth whispered to her son. Cloud only stared back at her, his hands behind his back with his stance of that that reminded her of a soldier listening to his orders.
She waved her hand and the other angel that Cloud had fought came in. "You'll be punished by being sent to the Middle Ground stripped of all your magic."
The other angel screamed and glared at Cloud.
"It is your entire fault, you low life angel!" The other angel screamed. Cloud merely looked on without emotion. With a wave of her hand, Elizabeth sent the other angel away. She stood from her throne and walked down the many steps to be level with her son.
She affectionately touched his cheek with her cool hand. Her heart clenched painfully when she saw him flinch.
"You're getting to that point, Cloud, where you must get over your demonic mind. You must take over! You must keep fighting, you have to show the people you're worthy of being God." She told him.
"It is my birth right, Mother. No one can take that away from me." His simple reply was.
"I will give you the throne when I believe you can take it without going mad and destroying the place!" Elizabeth shouted. She turned her back on him and started walking back to her throne, ashamed at having raised her voice to him. "You're dismissed."
When she thought he was past ear shot, she whispered "You should've been born a demon."
But of course in the large expanse of the room, whispers are like shouts. And Cloud picked up the cruel broken words, sadly spoken.
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"I'm sending you on an errand." Sephiroth told his little sister.
Tifa resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Another? "What is this time?" She asked.
"I need you to meet God." He told her simple. Tifa's eyes snapped to his with shock.
His lips were set in a grim line. "That damn time has come again. You should know by now that we must complete this to maintain this joke of peace."
Tifa knew her brother hated the idea of peace with their mortal enemy. This was why it was merely a façade of peace. There were ways around the thousand year old rules set in place to keep the world from crumbling.
"What do I wear while in the presence of God?"
Sephiroth laughed. "Hardly matters does it?" And with that, he left. He threw a comment before he was completely out her sights.
"I won't look for your failed attempt to find my prey last time if you do this for me. I rather do other things than be with that pathetic being called God."
Tifa's heart raced in fear. Denzel and Marlene! Her resolve steeled, she must complete these next two weeks flawlessly and quickly. She must keep her eldest brother happy if she wanted to keep the children out of danger. That would mean keeping The Contract terms enough that Sephiroth can go around it without being caught to commit his much beloved sins.
She slipped into a dark wine red dress that came to her thighs. She strapped on a pair of black boots with long silver laces. She turned around to make sure that her tattoo that marked her as the Rose of the Black Moon, Princess of the Underworld, was unobstructed. She had to make sure God knew what power she held, after all. Despite the fact that she hated to show it, formality required it.
Without much thought, Tifa left for the Middle Ground.
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She leaned against the cool metal of the railing. God was late. She stared at the dark sky stretched out above her, seeing the beauty of the stars. Tifa huffed impatiently. Her mind wandered freely here, in the large open space without walls called the Middle Ground. Here was the balance and here, Tifa felt that she had no battles to fight. Her mind wandered to Denzel and Marlene, she wondered if they were safe.
A dim flash of light caught her attention when she spotted it from the corner of her eye. Such lights were unnatural in the Middle Ground, to a being like herself anyways. Out of the light came out a man. The light seemed almost drawn to him even in the middle of the night. He held the appearance of a man she had never seen before in the world. He had unruly golden spiky hair and he was perhaps only one or two shades tanner than she. He wore all white and he was a bit on the thin side but throw the material of his clothing, Tifa could sense all the muscles that rippled as he moved.
What was most startling thing were his bright blue eyes. They were a color she had never seen before and such color sent an excitement through her spine. They were beautiful and captivating. It was exhilarating.
When her elder brother told her she was going to meet God, she had been expecting a much older man. But the man who stopped and stood in front of her, merely looking at her with such an emotionless face of strong jaw and almost feminine cheeks, looked almost her age. However, in the Underworld and Above, looks are always deceiving.
Cloud looked at the woman in front of him. She was thin with the most sinful curves he had ever seen. Her long raven black hair windblown, the smell of the sea clinging to her skin to his sensitive nose, and the bright stunning ruby eyes that stared back at him. He could sense power in her despite the fact that she almost looked fragile. He could tell she tried to hide it in the way she upheld herself with such rigor. He wondered what caused this delicate beauty to be standing in front of him. All the stories of the Demon King, now he supposed it was only proper to call her Demon Queen, of being a cruel hateful creature didn't seem to be able to grasp the creature in front of her.
They were silent for moments. Neither was what they had expected to meet. A Demon Queen and a young God? They looked far too alike, too much seemingly the same age. Unknowingly, they have many more qualities that made them similar, past appearances and deeper to the soul.
"I'm sorry for my tardiness." Cloud spoke first, breaking the pregnant silence of heavy questions.
"I hadn't expected God to be so late."
Cloud was shocked. God? Someone would think he was God already? He felt excited. Someone thought he was God! A feeling of elation came over him. After a brief moment, logic came back to him. This was a demon after all. One who has probably never seen God before, after all this meeting came only every couple of decades. Perhaps this was a new Demon King as they often changed due to power struggles, although Cloud couldn't recall hearing about a new Demon King.
"I'm not God. I am her son, heir to the throne of The Above." Cloud stated, bowing to her slightly, thinking she was the Demon King.
Tifa shook her head and quickly stopped his movements before he could even bend his waist down a little.
"Oh! I'm not the Demon King! I'm the Rose of the Black Moon."
Cloud's eyebrows narrowed in confusion. The princess of the Underworld? What was she doing here?
Before he could say anything further, the beautiful woman with long coal black hair and sad ruby eyes started talking. She was talking a lot for a demon, he had expected someone stoic and cold. But here, the woman in front of him seemed so lively and animated that it seemed like the black wings sprouting from her back were parts of his imagination.
"It's strange that both the heirs to the worlds have come. I was going to be a little afraid that I was going to be meting God. My brother didn't want to go; he doesn't like this whole idea of keeping peace very much. My other older brother, Vincent, doesn't like coming to the Middle Ground much. I guess I was the only one that was left to go."
Tifa looked at the man next to her. He was very stoic and cold and a shiver ran up her spine. She would never be able to understand what that shiver was out of, pleasure or fear. She shrugged her thoughts away ,determined to fulfill her duties here.
"You were late."
"Pardon me…?"
"I'm Tifa." Tifa answered, looking at him with a small tilt of her head. She has retreated back into her demonic shell.
"I'm Cloud. My apologies for being so late."
And that was how it started. Two heirs from different worlds, opposing worlds, met. It was a silver of uncharted chance that was thrown together. Unexpected and unplanned, without any other ulterior motive. And sometimes, a silver of pure chance thrown together was enough to start something that could change the worlds and hearts and minds.
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Author's Notes: Wells I realized I couldn't keep this pivotal moment similar to "I Want To Be You" because their problems are very different than Sakura and Syaoran. As I said before, this story holds the same plot but with very different twists and struggles although you can sometimes clearly see the similarities. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! As always review because I want feedback!