realityshifted

Entry tags:

final fantasy vii (d1) cloud strife

[5]

[Cloud appears, with a suitably Cloud Strife-esque glum look upon his face. He walks a few steps just as glumly before settling down on the not-floor of the plane, legs crossed under him. He seems to be fiddling with his hair. Glumly. Upon closer inspection, the blond spikes are littered with numerous pink and baby blue ribbons. Also, a large, pink flower tucked prettily behind his ear. Despair is written across his face.]

Why.

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[Hears him coming near, chooses not to look up. Suddenly, the ribbons in his hair seem much more interesting than little traces of silken pinkness should.]

Hey.

You look --

...ridiculous.

[Cloud stares at him blankly, big blue eyes utterly still.
staring
staring
and cracks up.]

K-kind of.

[This moment of normalcy is utterly odd, but he takes it in stride.]

A hobby of yours?

[wry smile. doesn't know what's going on. but there's ribbons and a flower in his hair, a sane unsure sephiroth in front of him, and an universe around him.]

Hobby of a little girl I live with. Let's make Cloud pretty time. Whatever.

[gingerly sets the flower beside him]

Finally settled down with that Lockhart girl? Starting a family?

[it's an unbarbed question, he's honestly curious. And somewhat glad that perhaps his insanity hadn't prevented Strife from finding a life teeming with normalcy.]

...No, we're just...[hesistand face, because how do you explain tifa and cloud, her taking care of him with his ghosts and the little children at their feet?]

We take care of orphans. [commences with the unsuccessful ribbon-tugging]

[pfft lies, you rock, forgive any of my errors as this laptop hates letting me type >/]

Ah. That's - good to hear.

[He watches Strife for a few long moments, carefully thoughtful. He can remember hate, more than anything, but now it's hard to understand that overbearing hatred.]

Tugging at them is only going to tighten the knots.

[Cloud doesn't know how to take it. Sephiroth, standing proud and unsure before him as he unsuccessfully yanks at the ribbons. Outwitted by ribbons, go team cloud. So he just accepts it and responds mildly.]

She's be thrilled if I went around like this forever. But...

Why did you allow it?

[It's a legitimate question, in his mind - why allow a mere child to make a fool of you?]

[Stares at him for a fraction at a second, before he realizes it's justified. Sephiroth wouldn't understand children and their ways, never being one himself.]

It made her happy...

[it still doesn't make much sense to him, but he lets it pass, writing it off as another of those social norms that he had never been taught.]

...

[And now - awkward, awkward silence. He didn't know how to carry on a conversation -Zack was the only one who spoke to him casually, and, even then, Zack could fill the silence quite well on his own. ]

Well. Good luck extracting yourself. I'll take my leave. [running away, of course not--]

[Cloud stares at him. Mildly intimidating, glowing blue eyes, when you know you're the one who inadvertently made them that way. He doesn't hold any malice in his gaze, just. Questioning.]

It's okay, you know.

[Stares at knees. He's decided something, hard for a mind so mutable with the wind and currents.]

[again, another drawn out silence as Sephiroth's gaze bores into Cloud's bowed head. He hasn't known what to think - feel - do after the unwanted return to sanity, and this is the worst of it all.]

No. No, it isn't.

[he grips his knees like they're the balance in the world. voice is a little muted. but he's dwelled on this for sleepless nights, staring up at the ceiling while wondering what if's that could drive a man insane]

But...if you're here, now. Sane. Was it her? Was it only her, that I was fighting, all along? Why--

She instructed me, and I obeyed.

[the least he can offer is honesty.]

[and he looks at him. with that look completely of his own - a little lost fifteen year old who's hero sent him to hell for the sake of nothing.]

But. Why?

She is my mother. I was born to obey her.

[his voice is mechanical. he turns away, not being able to handle the look that Cloud is sending his way. He is a monster, and that was all there is to any of this.]

Lucrecia was. Lucrecia was. Vincent said she smiled like the sun and...

[Oh, Cloud feels like a foolish little kid for trying to get him to understand this. It shows.]

I don't know what you're talking about.

[back to the cold front. he doesn't know how else to deal with Cloud when the other man looks so wounded - and god it just reminds him that he should be dead and not alive, not sane.]

Lucrecia, Lucrecia Crescent. Biotechnologist, she was your mother, not JENOVA, you don't know this...

[Cloud knows he looks like an idiot, but he just doesn't care. He's frantic, wants Sephiroth to understand this because. It was wrong, it was so wrong.]

I'm under no obligation to linger here and listen to your lies.

[but he doesn't move to leave, and there is something hesitant in his manner. that can't be true. hojo had -- the records in the mansion... ]

[Cloud laughs, cleanly, tiredly.]
Why would I lie? Why wouldn't Hojo lie?
I-just. Should find you Vincent...

[he's staring down at his hands, expression suspended between anger and disbelief. but no, no, that would make the last long years of his life nothing but one extended lie... hojo had done this, just as hojo had done everything else.]

...how did you procure this information?

[still wary, hoping to the heavens that this was all strife's idea of a cruel joke.]

Vincent. He's...he was her lover. There were more files, you know. More than what was in that library. God, Hojo might have planted those, the fucking...more. You didn't have to..

[well, cloud's going to that spot in his head that's just a little bit shaky and regretful and he wants to find a warm place, with no memory.]

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godforsakenly.livejournal.com - 2008-03-03 07:12 (UTC) - Expand

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