Cloud is nine when the recruiter comes to town. He's a portly man with a bushy red beard and a uniform so full of medals that the shine hurts Cloud's eyes twenty meters back.

A crowd gathers around the water tower—loyalists and naysayers, farmers and factory workers, everyone who could spare the time—all to hear what the big man has to say.

Cloud rises on his toes, trying to see around bigger shoulders and taller heads. He climbs up on a crate near Ms. Markel's bakery, and gawks at the line of infantrymen on either side of the recruiter. They look like statues with their perfect posture and unmoving limbs. Like men transformed into gods.

"Good people," the recruiter says. The megaphone makes his voice tinny and sharp. "We are losing the war with Wutai."

Whispers break out.

"We already gave them soldiers," old man Jenkins says.

"Losing? To savages with pointy sticks?" Mrs. White scoffs.

"They built the reactor, surely they can build long range weapons," the carpenter's apprentice mutters to the delivery boy.

Cloud frowns, gripping the cuffs of his sleeves. His father is on the front. Lots of people from the town are. The recruiter walks to the edge of the water tower platform, and the speakers crackle with static.

"The forests of the region protect insurgents from gunfire, and the tunnels block our bombs. They move closer every day, stealing our technology and burning our reactors down. They seek to end the era of prosperity that we've all toiled to create."

Cloud's heart races, horrified by the news. He loves Nibelheim. He's always lived here, with his Mom and his neighbors and his friends at school. He can't imagine living anywhere else.

The whispers of the crowd turn into shouts and heckling. Malcolm's delivery boys try to climb the ladder to the water tower while a cluster of guards pull them down.

Cowards, he thinks, surveying the sea of people. All of you, filthy cowards. His father wasn't a coward. His father volunteered after the very first attack. He went off to fight and die, and they won't even listen to a speech.

"I hear your protests, and I understand your concerns," the recruiter continues. If he's nervous of the unrest building below, he doesn't show it. He paces across the platform in long strides. "But what was this town before the Shinra reactor? What heated your homes and cooled your water? By what light did you see in the dark? Candles. Wood fires."

His voice takes on an edge, his words stabbing the microphone and pricking Cloud's ears. "It is by the will of Shinra that you have all been elevated, and it is to Shinra that each of you owes a debt. Will you shirk that duty, and allow these savages to destroy our way of life?"

The fighting near the ladder intensifies, and one of the guards knocks both boys out cold. A larger fight breaks out around the base.

Cloud watches, and grits his teeth. There's a fire in his belly like he's never felt before. Purpose, or something like it. He loves Nibelheim. He loves his mother and his father. He won't sit back and let invaders burn their village to the ground.

He raises his hand into the air, and clenches his fingers into a fist.

"I will fight," he shouts. The recruiter lowers his microphone in surprise. A hundred faces turn to him. The attention intimidates him, but he doesn't back down. He stiffens his lip and shouts even as his shrill voice cracks. "Take me to the front, and I will fight!"

There's a moment of quiet, and then the recruiter laughs, barking and wild like a dog. "Now that's what SOLDIERs are made of. Do you hear that men? This snot-nosed brat has more honor than the lot of you. Are you going to be shown up by a child barely old enough to tie his own shoes?"

Cloud recoils, his arm falling slowly to his side as rejection stabs into his gut. Something shifts in the atmosphere. The fighting stops.

"Where is your courage?" The recruiter demands, jutting a pointed finger into the air. "Where is your patriotism? Will you sleep in your warm homes while children fight for your freedom?"

A different sort of murmur ripples through the crowd. One hand raises up, then another. Men and women make their way to the tower, and volunteer themselves to the army. Cloud shrinks into the shadow of the bakery sign, stung and confused.

The faces of his neighbors are burning holes in him, and he doesn't understand what he did wrong. He runs home, rubbing tears from his eyes.

Mom is in the kitchen when he bursts through the door. She looks surprised, and then concerned.

"Cloud? What's wrong, baby?"

She always hugs him when he's upset. He wants her to hug him now, but the pet name rips open his fresh wound. Baby. Snot-nosed brat. Barely knows how to tie his shoes.

Mom walks towards him with her arms outstretched, but he squeezes his eyes shut and runs up the stairs.

"I'm not a baby," he yells.

"I didn't—what in heaven's name happened?" She follows him. He slams his bedroom door in her face and slides to the floor.

The door blocks out whatever she says, though he makes out his name and the sound of panic. He doesn't care. He's too upset.

Hours later, she forces him out.

They sit at the table with Dad's empty chair between them. He stares at his bowl and feels like throwing up.

"Ms. Bradley told me about the town meeting," Mom says. He knows she didn't want him to go, but she keeps it out of her voice. "You mustn't take it personally, dear. That man… that's what Shinra dogs do. They'll say whatever it takes to get what the company wants."

Cloud knew she wouldn't understand, but it still hurts to hear her say it. She doesn't understand. She didn't see how the town reacted, how selfish and small-minded they were, how little they appreciated the company that took care of Nibelheim.

He pushes his chair out to run away. She stands, grabbing his hand before he can escape.

"Is it true? You tried to… volunteer?"

She catches his eyes this time and he can't look away, can't run away from the anger and terror he sees. That feeling is back, the one that charged up his spine during the meeting and made him thrust his hand into the air.

He's only nine, but he's not a baby. He knows what's wrong and what's right. He won't let someone else die for him, ever.

"I see," his mother sighs. She looks out the kitchen window.

Cloud stands, and resists the urge to hug her and apologize. That's baby stuff. He has to grow up fast so he can protect Nibelheim. Warriors don't run home crying to mama, they stand bravely and fight. He squares his shoulders, and lifts his jaw to a defiant angle.

"I'm going to be a SOLDIER," he declares. His mother's face falls, but he grits his teeth and doesn't bend. He turns on his heel, and marches up the stairs.

It's only when the sound of her crying follows him to the landing that he feels a twinge of regret.

Cloud is ten when the first death letter arrives. It's hand delivered to Mrs. White next door by a Shinra Elite Officer in a ceremonial uniform. He reads a scripted dedication, and thanks her for her husband's sacrifice.

Cloud's mother bakes her a week's worth of food, and has him carry it over in a wicker basket. Her face contorts when she sees him, her eyes bulging and red from tears.

"You," she hisses. "How dare you show your face to me?"

He stumbles backward, almost tripping down her steps.

"You're the reason he's dead, don't you know? If you hadn't opened your mouth he'd never have enlisted."

Spit flies as she rants at him, driving him out past her garden gate. A terrible, hot hatred burns in her eyes. He drops the basket onto the cobbles and runs all the way to his house.

The letters come steadily after that. To Ms. Bradley and Mr. Harsten and Dr. Mason. One day after school, he and the other boys go to Darek's house to play and his mother refuses to let Cloud inside. She tells him to stay away from her son, and shoos him with a broomstick like a stray cat.

Kids at school stop talking to him. At first it's only Darek and his friends, but the others are quick to imitate. It doesn't take much to brand someone an outcast in a town the size of Nibelheim.

Cloud stops raising his hand in class, and goes straight home when the bell rings. He doesn't go around with the neighborhood boys, spending the time reading or taking notes on news broadcasts instead. The recruiter's pamphlet that he has pinned over his desk says that SOLDIERs should be well-informed on current events.

His mother prods him about the change, but he never tells her the truth. She's tired enough from worrying about Dad, she doesn't need to be worrying about him too.

One day, Tifa knocks on their door. Cloud answers because his mother is elbow deep in dishes.

The girl smiles at him, rocking on her heels. He scowls, suspicious of anything resembling friendliness. Nobody takes to him willingly, not unless they're playing some kind of mind game.

He only opens the door a smidgeon. "What do you want?"

"You're Cloud, right?"

He doesn't answer.

The girl bites her lip, eyes flicking around the porch. "I'm Tifa. I—uh—got these tennis rackets for my birthday, but nobody will play with me because I have black hair. Do you… want to try them out?"

Cloud blinks, his brows furrowing. "What's your hair got to do with anything?"

The light in her eyes dims, but her smile remains stubbornly in place. She laces her hands behind her back and sighs like he's being deliberately dumb.

"Wutaians have black hair," she says. "They call me a spy for the enemy."

"That's stupid," Cloud says without a thought. "Spies are supposed to blend in. They'd never send someone who looks Wutaian."

Tifa frowns at first, but then breaks out into a relieved laugh. "Yeah, yeah exactly! And besides, I'm just a kid."

"There are kid spies," Cloud crosses his arms. "Not anymore, but back during the Steam Age there were. I read a book all about them."

"Really?" Tifa tips her head.

Cloud straightens, his mind clear and focused. No one's ever been interested in his military history facts before.

"Want to see pictures?" He asks.

Tifa smiles, looking at her rackets and then back at him. "Okay… but after, I'm gonna beat you at tennis. Deal?"

Cloud studies her. It could still be a trick. She could be setting him up for another beating from his bullies, but she doesn't look like she's hiding anything. At school, she never joins in when the other kids call him names.

He opens the door fully and shrugs, trying not to look overeager.

"Deal."

Cloud is twelve when a death letter comes for his father. He doesn't read it, because SOLDIERs don't cry.

His mother can though, and she does. She yells and sobs, and begs him not to enlist, waving the letter around like a weapon.

"Don't you see, Cloud? This is what Shinra does. They take your loved ones and send back corpses. I'll get a letter about you one day. Is that what you want? You want to die so Shinra can make money?"

His body is stiff, his mind fogged by grief and eyes straining with the effort of holding it all in. Dad sacrificed himself for her. He gave his life willingly. It's ugly and disgraceful to demean the cause he died for.

He clings to that anger because it's easier to be angry than sad. It makes his blood roar in his ears and drowns out the cold loss that's hanging in the air like poison gas.

"It would be an honor to die for my country," he says through clenched teeth. "He thought so too. You should be grateful."

She shakes her head and collapses into a chair at the dining table. Tears pour down her cheeks and around her trembling mouth.

"Sometimes I don't recognize you, Cloud. You were so gentle before they got to you. Such a sweet, lovely boy."

He takes it like a punch, like the whole cloth rejection that it is. He stomps up the stairs hard enough to make the whole house shake, and doesn't speak to her until the funeral forces them together.

She apologizes. She says she loves him, that it was grief taking over her.

Cloud listens with a stony face, crossing his arms to guard his heart. It becomes a habit after that—the scowl, the defensive stance. It's a wall he builds around himself, because he knows that cruelty isn't limited to the town elders or his bullies. Everyone can do it, even her, and he won't be caught by it again.

"You won't get a letter for me," he says darkly, walking away from his father's memorial stone. "I'll be so strong nobody will ever beat me. I'll be the greatest SOLDIER there ever was."

When he next meets her eye she doesn't look comforted. She looks fragile, and sad.

Cloud is thirteen when the war with Wutai ends. There's a big party in town.

He would have stayed home, but Tifa and his mother drag him out. They insist that this will make things better, that people won't be so cruel without the war weighing them down. Tifa tells him to smile and be nice, that this is a chance for a fresh start.

"Who knows, you might even get a girlfriend." She winks.

Cloud grimaces. "Not interested."

"Aw, don't be like that. I know there's a gooey center in there. You're always sneaking glances at my girly magazines—"

"There's nothing else to read at your house," he sniffs. Tifa rolls her eyes.

"Fine, but would it kill you not to scare all the guys away from me?"

The band on the water tower starts playing a raucous song with lots of crashing cymbals. Kids run by, pulling kites and streamers.

Cloud rolls his eyes. "None of them are good enough for you anyway. You just focus on your training so you can get out of this shithole and find someone better."

"Oh," Tifa looks at him seriously, and wrinkles her nose. "Is that… why you want to be a SOLDIER so bad? Because nobody here is good enough for you?"

He blinks. It never even occurred to him. "I want to be a SOLDIER because it's the right thing to do. I want to fight for the people who can't. I don't have time for girls and flowers."

"Even now the war's over?"

Fireworks explode, turning Tifa's hair crimson, then gold, then cerulean blue. He looks away, unsure.

"I didn't think it would ever end," he says honestly, then remembers the news reports he listened to this morning. The pundits were arguing about what the future might hold, about the terms of the ceasefire and the ongoing political tension. "It's just a temporary pause. The war will come back, and we should all be ready."

A particularly big flash blinds them both for a second, and the music swells to match.

Tifa frowns, and it reminds him uncomfortably of his mother. "If that's really what you want, Cloud."

"It is."

"...Then I'll cheer you on. Always."

He chews his cheek, and looks up at the flashing sky. For once, he lets himself smile, and grabs her hand to squeeze it.

"Thanks, Tifa."

Distracted by the lights, he doesn't notice the warmth in her eyes, or the longing way she clings to his hand as he starts to pull away.

Cloud is fifteen when the kids at his school go crazy. Hormones, his mother calls it, when she needles him about his friendship with Tifa.

She's absolutely convinced that they're going out, and he has no idea why. He's told her a million times that Tifa's just his training partner, that they're learning how to fight together, but she just smiles in disbelief and tells him it's normal for a boy his age.

He knows that. It's impossible to miss. Last year none of his guy friends wanted anything to do with Tifa, or any girl for that matter.

Now, girls are all they want to talk about; which ones are pretty, which ones are single, which ones might or might not want to go to the lake this weekend.

If good hearing weren't one of the physical requirements for the SOLDIER program, Cloud would have considered damaging his ear drums just so he wouldn't have to listen to it anymore.

It's not that he dislikes girls. Tifa is great and strong and nice. She's a perfect sparring partner and one of the smartest in their class.

He admires her in a lot of ways, but he doesn't feel lightheaded or nervous around her. He doesn't have dreams about her, or get funny feelings when she touches him.

In fact, he doesn't seem to feel that way about anyone, and he's secretly glad for it. Sephiroth's never had a girlfriend, as far as he knows, and he knows everything about his hero. He didn't get to be the greatest SOLDIER ever by fucking around, he did it by working hard and training every single day.

So while his classmates make fools of themselves in the parks and arcades of Nibelheim, Cloud lifts weights and runs laps. He memorizes military codes and practices marching. And if he sometimes dreams of Sephiroth, tall and strong and bare chested, standing over him, checking his fighting form, whispering his name…

If that ever happens, he tells himself it's hero worship and shoves it down into the depths where the rest of his unexamined thoughts live.

Cloud is freshly sixteen when he enlists in the army. It's the earliest possible age that he could apply and be accepted. He goes on his birthday, first thing in the morning.

Two weeks later, they get a letter.

Turns out, he isn't the greatest SOLDIER ever born. He isn't even a SOLDIER, or a paratrooper, or a Turk in training. He's a foot soldier. A glorified meat shield.

His mother is jubilant. "You can get a nice, safe posting as a guard trooper," she says.

He's moping on his bed, the letter crumpled in his fist. He'll regret that later when he needs to unfurl it and make out the address that he's supposed to report to, but for now it's cathartic.

His mother is bouncing around the kitchen, humming and making a big dinner. "Guards do a lot of good too, you know. They keep buildings secure and solve crimes in the city. And if you're posted in Junon, you'll be close enough to visit on the weekends."

"Yeah," he grunts, maintaining his stoic façade, but underneath he's fuming. His dream is dead. All the work he's done to prepare his mind and body… wasted.

He won't be a hero going down in a blaze of glory. He'll just be another country bumpkin that dies on the clock.

It's not until the water tower, until he can't bring himself to tell Tifa that he failed, that he finds the motivation to pack his bags and set off for Midgar. Almost nobody gets in on a second application, but it happens. There's a small chance that he can be the man he promised Tifa he'd be.

He might as well try. It's the only way to save face in front of his family and the town. He'll do his best, and if he succeeds he'll come back and rub it in all their faces by protecting them from the next Wutai invasion. He just has to try.

And try. And try. And try.

Basic training isn't what he expected.

He knew it would be grueling, he knew he'd be pushed to his absolute limits so his mind would be pliable to the molding of the trainers. He knew he'd get beat to a pulp and kept awake for days.

But there's something else wrong with him, a tension and a restlessness that never seems to go away. Even when he's wrung out and his mind is soup, he feels a tightness in his core.

He thinks relentlessly about the other recruits. How much taller they are, how much stronger, how he'll never be able to match them no matter how many squats he does. His eyes try to wander in the shower room, morbidly curious.

It's stupid, he should have put it together sooner, but there was always some way to deny it. All that cracks apart when he gets up to piss in the middle of the night and hears the unmistakable sound of a recruit jerking it in a stall. It stops the moment his bare feet pat against the tiles.

A taut tension binds them both to silence as he stands in the doorway. He feels just as caught as the other guy. There aren't any other bathrooms in the barracks, and there's no way he can sleep like this. He has to go.

Ears burning, he walks to a urinal and does his thing. Flushes. It's oppressively quiet until he goes to wash his hands. The patter of the water isn't loud enough to cover the skin-slapping sound of the guy starting up again, or his muffled, deep groan.

Cloud should deck him, or lecture him, or just leave. This guy's insane, doing this in the open. He's going to get caught. They'll all be punished for his actions, because all punishments are collective in the corps.

And yet, Cloud can't make himself move. He can't make himself turn off the faucet. His skin is prickling and tight, his mind empty of thoughts. The pent-up energy he's carried in his gut is yawning open and pulling his whole consciousness downward.

The guy must take confidence from Cloud's lack of response, because the next moan is louder, bolder. Cloud grips the edge of the sink, bowled over by a rush of arousal that pours down his chest and back.

[explicit content omitted. See AO3 version for full text.]

"That was—"

"Yeah."

The man sighs and pushes himself up with great effort. He groans in a non-sexual way. "Ugh, I'm sore in places I didn't know I had. Fucking drill sergeants."

Cloud hums in agreement. Feet pad across the floor. Water splashes while the man cleans himself up, and then stops as he finally turners the faucet off.

He's going to leave now. A strange urgency takes over Cloud.

"Hey," he says, still a whisper but pitched to be heard. The footsteps pause.

"Yeah?"

He swallows, still out of breath.

"Thanks. That was... uh, good."

A hissed laugh. The near-silent shifting of fabric over skin. "No problem, bro."

Cloud is eighteen when he makes Elite rank. It's only a year later, and yet it feels like everything has changed. He isn't an insecure kid anymore, not about who he is or what he wants. His goal is clear and he's doing everything he can to meet it.

The military is good for him. It fits like an old shoe. There are no uncertainties for him to worry over. He goes where he's told and does what he's told, and he gives his superior officers the results they want.

When he's between missions there is never much idleness. He has additional training to complete and exercise goals to work towards. If those fail him, then there's always the rec room, or the room of a fellow officer looking to blow off steam.

It's not the sort of life most people would dream of, but it works for him. Brick by brick, he feels the walls of his former life crumbling down. And then he meets Zack.

He's everything Cloud wants in life. Funny, talented, handsome, strong. He lives to help people, to be the hero just like Cloud wants to be, and he's doing a damn good job of it.

They run into each other at dinner time in the mess hall one week after the mission, and end up talking so long that the staff have to chase them out at closing.

He treasures every private truth that Zack confides in him over the next year. He learns that Zack likes motorcycles, just like Cloud. His favorite school subject was literature, because every book was like a portal into a new world. His favorite color is blue, and he likes every flavor of ice cream.

If he ever gets time off, Zack's biggest dream is to see the Northern Crater. He's heard there's a place there where you can overlook the edge and see right to the planet's core. The only reason he hasn't gone is because he wants to see it with someone special, and he just hasn't met the right girl yet.

Zack is maddening because he's everything Cloud didn't know he wanted, and he's also one of the few people on base that he is not allowed, under any circumstances, for any reason, to fall in love with.

Because Zack is a SOLDIER, and men of that rank aren't allowed to have personal lives. They are walking investments, property of Shinra. They live for the company and its mission.

Just like him, Zack has worked his entire life to earn that rank, and Cloud can't be the reason that he loses it. He also can't do anything that might represent a conflict of interests if he ever manages to make SOLDIER himself.

The best they can be is friends, the best of friends, and they are. Such good friends that if one is assigned a mission, then it can be safely assumed that the other will be going too.

Which is how they both end up in a bumpy car ride to Nibelheim with a tense and agitated Sephiroth, even though the mission does not technically require an armed guard. Because Cloud hasn't seen his mother in two years, and Zack thinks it's his job to fix every little problem in both of their lives.

Cloud should have known better. Zack's missions never go how they're supposed to.

When Cloud wakes up, he doesn't know how old he is.

He doesn't know that his name is Cloud.

His torso is encased in layers of gauze and pain bowls him over with every single breath. It's wide and dull like broken ribs, but also acute and deep like a stab wound.

His head is splitting open and when he closes his eyes he sees terrifying things. Meteors falling from the sky. Monsters suspended in mako. An alien woman with perfectly square samples missing from her flesh. A girl kneeling, her hands clasped in prayer, as a blade emerges from her chest.

Wrenching his eyes open, he tries to breath without moving his ribs. Everything is fuzzy, indistinct. A piercing beep drills repeatedly into his ears. It takes a monumental effort to turn his head towards it.

There's a man there, unconscious in the next bed. Emotion sets his heart racing, so much emotion that he can't understand or name. It's terrifying because he doesn't know this man, but his skin longs to touch him, his heart swells with horror at his similarly wrapped chest.

Digging into his mind, he reaches for understanding. A person, a place, a name. He finds nothing. A deep, corrosive nothing that threatens to pull him in.

He pokes at the mental wound, testing the edges, and pain explodes inside his skull.

He screams, louder and louder because the screaming makes his chest burn.

The beeping machine goes haywire, and some kind of alarm echoes from the ceiling. A flurry of motion begins, doors slamming open and people stomping around, but he's already fading away.

His consciousness crawls into the cavity where his memories should be, curling up like a kicked dog and whining. He cries into the void inside his mind, alone and broken and yearning for something to hold him.

A presence answers, like music through a wall or rain against a window pane.

He shudders, and regrets opening himself up to the darkness.