Disclaimer: All Final Fantasy Seven characters, places and situations are the property of Square Soft/Square Enix and are used without permission and without intent of plagiarism or profit. Copyright for all original stories, characters, and situations is with the author, and may not be published, copied, distributed or archived without the author's prior written consent.
I wanted to get this chapter posted last weekend but I've been pretty sick. I'm feeling better and I'm hoping to get chapter 3 up faster than this one. I'm still not entirely happy with how this turned out but if I stare at this chapter much longer I may go insane. I dithered for a while on the spelling options for SOLDIER and Shin-Ra. I finally decided to go with the all capitals and the hyphenated version, I like them better than "Soldier" and "Shinra".
Open question: Should I capitalize "president" when refering to president Shin-Ra? Is it like Mom and Dad where you only capitalize it if it's being used in place of their name?
Crown Lance look like Jellyfish so I assume that they are/can be venomous. Now, onto the story.
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Cloud discreetly pinched his thigh; he couldn't believe he was actually standing in his hero's apartment. General Sephiroth moved quietly around his home, stuffing dirty clothes and trash into a laundry hamper and hiding personal items he didn't want on display for his new room-mate inside his coat. He even picked up a couch one handed and scooped out a stack of mail, then sat the piece of furniture in a different place that opened up the living room a little.
"Is there anything I can do, sir?" Cloud asked.
"I've prepared a room for you, the door is open, on the left." Sephiroth motioned down the hall. "Feel free to settle in, I'll be finished in a moment."
Cloud walked towards the indicated room, stopping when Sephiroth called his name suddenly. "And Cloud? My name is Sephiroth, when I'm off duty I prefer to be called by name."
"Of course, Sephiroth." Cloud said, the name feeling unnatural in his mouth.
The room Sephiroth was referring to was plain but there was a complete bed-set and it was clean. Cloud sat his bags on the bed and began finding places for everything. The day before he'd been in Shin-Ra's medical bay, and the day before that he'd been in bunk A3 of a leaky dorm-building, his head was spinning from how fast things were moving.
Cloud took his underwear to the dresser beside the bed and froze when he saw the equipment in the top-drawer. It was a compact version of the monitors he'd been attached to in the medical bay. He looked around and slowly realized that the entire room was set up to double as a medical facility—Sephiroth had just done a very good job of hiding it. Cloud took a deep breath and closed the drawer, opening the one beneath it for his clothes to go in.
He'd almost forgotten about the high-probability that he'd experience similar attacks to the one he'd had on the obstacle course. Between that and the frequent doses of Mako he had to be rooming with a SOLDIER. He wasn't Sephiroth's room-mate, he was Sephiroth's burden. Cloud sat down on the bed as that realization hit him. He found the framed photo of his mother and stared down at it. Maybe he should have gone home.
There was a sound in the doorway and Cloud looked up to see Sephiroth standing there.
"Are you regretting your decision?" Sephiroth asked.
"No!" Cloud sighed. "Yes…I never wanted to burden anyone."
"You think that you're burdening me?" Sephiroth raised an eyebrow.
"I am." Cloud said. "I'm in your spare room, it's been outfitted with medical equipment, you're my keeper…" Cloud looked down at the photo.
"You're not the first kid that's sat in that bed and let me take care of them." Sephiroth said in a professional tone. "It's more common than people think. If a SOLDIER misses their yearly shower then in a matter of days they're in withdrawal." He sighed and put on a friendlier expression as he walked into the room and sat down on the bed beside Cloud. "Is that your mother?"
"Yes…I joined up because of her." Cloud smiled as he became lost in a memory.
Sephiroth stared down at the picture for a moment before his professional demeanor returned and he stood. "You shouldn't display anything on the drawers, if I have to get in it quickly anything on top could fall and break."
"Ah…I didn't think about that." Cloud said, glancing at the drawer beside his bed.
"I've ordered dinner. Finish settling in and we can talk while we eat." Sephiroth said as he strode out of the room.
There wasn't much left for Cloud to do, but he set about doing it all the same. He hung his civvies and his uniforms in the closet and finally folded his empty bags and found a place to sit them in the bottom of his closet. He didn't have many personal items: the photo of his mother, several books, and a good-luck stone he'd found in the mountains were piled in the bottom drawer of his dresser before he sat back down on the bed.
Cloud looked around the room once again, still in shock at the arrangements. He wanted to go for a walk but he had already received his first mako shower. Dr. Nomura had informed him that he would be toxic to non-mako enhanced people for at least twenty-four hours. Apparently people that had bad reactions to mako could be hospitalized just from walking beside him.
"Cloud?" Sephiroths' voice drifted down the hall as the front door closed.
Cloud hurried out into the living area where Sephiroth was already setting their meal out on the small dining table that separated his kitchen from the living room. He glanced around the apartment again, he'd had always thought that the great General Sephiroth would live in a big apartment with expensive trappings and an understated color scheme. Instead he lived in a standard-size apartment and the colors were like a box of crayons had exploded.
"I thought you'd like something a little milder." Sephiroth said as he laid out silverware and yellow cloth napkins. "Mako treatments are known to upset stomachs."
"I feel fine." Cloud said. "Maybe I won't have as many side-effects with the smaller doses?" He sat in the chair that Sephiroth had indicated.
"That is something to be hoped." Sephiroth sat down himself, and then suddenly rose again. "I didn't get drinks. What would you like? Tea, water, I don't approve of soda and I can't drink dairy but I do have Kool-Aid."
"Tea, please." Cloud said, beginning to add that he could get it himself, but Sephiroth was already taking down two mismatched glasses from the cupboard and pouring drinks. He returned to the table with a glass of tea for Cloud and a glass of bright orange Kool-Aid for himself.
Cloud quietly served himself a plate out of the containers and began to eat, the silence between them dragging into the uncomfortable area. Cloud watched Sephiroth as slyly as he could, trying to think of a way to start a conversation. He wasn't great at conversing with people that he didn't idolize. He was pretty sure it would have been less intimidating to have dinner with president Shin-Ra himself. Cloud was about to resort to talking about the weather when Sephiroth discreetly spit cauliflower into his napkin.
"Don't like cauliflower?" Cloud asked.
"No." Sephiroth looked like a child who'd been caught hiding his vegetables. "I've never had it before…I don't normally order this kind of food for myself."
"If you don't like it then we could have ordered something else." Cloud felt guilty that Sephiroth had bought something he didn't like because of him. "What do you prefer?"
"I eat a lot of Wutainese." Sephiroth said. "I got used to it during the war." He shrugged, "Up until then I was raised on Shin-Ra cafeteria food and MRE's. I guess you could say that Wutainese was the first real food I ever had. Hojo was always more concerned with nutrient percentages and calorie counts of food than the taste and everyone else was happy to leave my health in his hands. Now and then I had dinner with the president and his business associates or the occasional lunch out with a lab technician but those were rare."
Cloud nodded, he'd followed Sephiroths' exploits closely in the news and he remembered reading in one of the articles that the man had been raised inside Shin-Ra by various scientists and executives. The silence began again and Cloud felt uncomfortable. The general seemed to be offering private information freely so Cloud decided that it would be rude of him not to do the same.
"It was just me and mom. She had a job at the local inn but it didn't pay so good. Sometimes she'd get to bring home leftovers at the end of the night but most of the time we'd eat whatever we could find, catch, or grow. I can remember the two of us setting traps and mom stewing whatever was in it: Bahba Velamyu, Battery Caps, even Crown Lance. When we were lucky there were Nibel wolves—they actually tasted good—but they were harder to catch."
Sephiroth frowned. "Cloud, none of those are considered edible. Crown Lance can actually be venomous and I'm not sure Bahba Velamyu are natural creatures."
"When you're dirt poor you'll try to cook just about anything." Cloud didn't look up when he spoke, it was embarrassing for him to talk about the way he and his mother lived. When he'd arrived in Midgar he'd learned that the people of Nibelheim were considered to be below the average poverty line, and his family had been poor by Nibelheim standards.
"I…didn't know that…" Sephiroths' brow knitted together as he thought, and examined Cloud's expression. "Perhaps a change in subject?"
"I wouldn't mind one." Cloud replied.
"How was school?" Sephiroth asked. "I never attended a school. I sat in a room with one of the technicians and read books instructing me in what was believed important." He looked cross as he added, "They were never anything I actually wanted to read…but sometimes people would sneak in story books for me. Danny used to bring me in this series that put out a new book every month." He smiled. "She still works down there, and she still brings them in for me."
"I didn't go to school." Cloud said. "Everything I learned was from my mother…"
Cloud considered stopping there but the curiosity in the General's eyes made him want to keep talking. It was a completely foreign sensation for Cloud; he couldn't recall ever feeling a desire to reveal himself to someone. He didn't even reveal unnecessary details to his mother and he was closer to her than anyone else in the world.
"A lot of times…" Cloud hesitated a moment, before he hurried on. "I'd take my camping gear and stay out for days... If I could live off the land it was one less mouth for mom to feed, and it was less time I had to spend around people I didn't like. I figured out pretty fast that the Materia caves stayed at a more comfortable temperature so I'd camp in them."
"Alone?" Sephiroth frowned.
"Always alone." Cloud shrugged. "No one really liked us. Mom had me out of wedlock and kids have a way of picking up on their parents' bigotries."
Sephiroth frowned again and Cloud felt bad for bringing down the conversation, but the general kept talking about the past and he didn't want to lie. He thought about other things he could shift the conversation to but he just wasn't sure what the two of them might have in common. Sephiroths' voice brought Cloud out of his musings.
"If you had so little tying you to Nibelheim then why not leave?" Sephiroth asked. "Neither of you are happy there…"
"Dad." Cloud said. "He left before I was born, but he promised mom to come back and marry her once he was able to return."
"It's been over fifteen years, though, hasn't it?" Sephiroth asked.
"Nearly sixteen." Cloud stared at the table between them. "Mom says he'll still come back. She was never some giddy schoolgirl, if she says he's the kind of man that would still come back…I believe her." Cloud looked up, concern carved deep into his features. "But I'm beginning to worry that he died."
"That is a very real possibility." Sephiroth said, his frown melting away to reveal an emotion that Cloud couldn't quite place. "Will you tell me about your parents?"
"My mother's name is Claudia Strauss. She was born and raised in Nibelheim; in fact we live in the same house that my great-grandmother was born in. She's always full of energy, and brilliant." He was smiling. "Brave too. Everyone in Nibelheim is scared of the Shin-Ra mansion but when one of the kids threw my toy through a broken window she went in to get it for me."
"She sounds like a handful." Sephiroth said.
"She is a handful." Cloud said. "But I'm pretty quiet so I can use someone to drag me out of my shell…"
Cloud turned back to his meal as he thought about his dad. Sephiroth patiently waited for him to put his thoughts together.
"I don't know a lot about my dad." Cloud began slowly. "His name is Desmond Strife. Mom said that he was really tall and strong. The winter after mom's parents died she found him bleeding in the snow and she took him in. He told stories of far off places and made her very happy, unfortunately, he was on a mission and he had to leave when he got better. He never told mom what the mission was, just that he had to complete it and then he'd come back for her."
Cloud began eating again, waiting to see if Sephiroth would offer any information in return since that seemed to be the pattern, but this time the silver general reminded quiet. Cloud decided that was for the best, from what he'd read about the man he was pretty sure that Sephiroth never met his parents. They didn't talk again while they finished dinner but the atmosphere was relaxed.
Cloud's day was finally catching up with him. He was beginning to feel sore and tired. He finished his dinner and leaned back in the chair to rest a moment. He closed his eyes, vaguely aware that Sephiroth was calling his name
The next time Cloud opened his eyes panic spread through him. He was staring up at the ceiling in his room. He glanced over to see that the top drawer was pulled out and he was hooked to the machines inside. The big post of his bed had been opened to reveal a concealed air-tank and a pole extending from the other held his IV. Sephiroth stood beside him, drawing medicine out of a bottle.
"What happened?" Cloud asked.
"You've had another attack." Sephiroths' voice was calm but his clothes were askew and he was frowning. "I told you they would be sporadic."
"I didn't think they'd hit me like a wrecking ball. I felt bad for days before that attack on the training course." Cloud fought weakly to pull down the air-mask, it made speaking difficult.
Sephiroth held it in place and injected the medicine into his IV. "I admit I didn't expect you to have such a sudden attack." He frowned. "I think I'll be leaving things a bit more open in the future."
Cloud followed the general's eyes to the bedpost with the oxygen tank and saw that the cover had dents in it from the general's fingers. Cloud sighed and looked back at Sephiroth as he pulled the needle out of the IV and dropped it into a canister he'd brought out for medical waste.
"Do I have to go back to the infirmary?" Cloud asked.
"No." Sephiroth said. "I'm qualified to handle this."
Cloud nodded. He didn't care for hospitals, the one in Nibelheim caused more deaths than it prevented. He knew it was because they didn't implement the proper procedures and that hospitals in big cities were different but he couldn't separate them in his mind.
"You need to rest now." Sephiroth said. "I'll keep an eye on you for a while and when things stabilize I'll go to bed myself."
Cloud's head was beginning to go foggy from the medicine. "If you're keeping an eye on me, how are you getting other work done?" He'd wondered it before but it had seemed impolite to ask it at the time.
"I'm on the back rotation." Sephiroth said smiling at the confused look he received. "First classes receive away missions in rotations. When they're on the back rotation they're stationed in Midgar to provide training and care to the cadets and younger SOLDIER's. My only duties just now are administrating your medical care and paperwork."
"Oh…" Cloud frowned. He hadn't considered that the man wasn't always being sent out to deal with life or death emergencies, but it made sense.
"Get some rest." Sephiroth patted the hand without the IV in it and took a seat in the chair he'd moved into the room from the living area to begin filling out paperwork.