[5]

[illusoryblue.livejournal.com]

[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.

Comments

[illusoryblue.livejournal.com]

[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.]

[godforsakenly.livejournal.com]

[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.

[illusoryblue.livejournal.com]

[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--

[godforsakenly.livejournal.com]

She instructed me, and I obeyed.

[the least he can offer is honesty.]

[illusoryblue.livejournal.com]

[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?

[godforsakenly.livejournal.com]

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.]

[illusoryblue.livejournal.com]

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.]

[godforsakenly.livejournal.com]

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.]

[illusoryblue.livejournal.com]

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.]

[godforsakenly.livejournal.com]

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... ]

[illusoryblue.livejournal.com]

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

[godforsakenly.livejournal.com]

[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.]

[illusoryblue.livejournal.com]

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.]

[godforsakenly.livejournal.com]

....

[what he had done was terrible enough, but now the abandonment is infinitely more painful. jenova had used him. he had destroyed everything. zack was dead, and cloud was the broken remnant of a man before him, and all of it was - for what? for jenova, for the acceptance that he had always yearned for--]