A/N- I feel myself compelled to write yet another FF7 Cloud/seph oneshot (one-sided love, though... maybe :P) kinda morbid. Hints at Vincent/Cid. Will this one suck as bad as the last? Of this I have no answer. Will this be to-the-letter correct to the game? NO. I'd like to dedicate this one to Chaise as well. For the love of Yaoi, Holy and Bishies, Please people, review!
Cloud.
You were the light, the confused kid with the spiky hair and stubborn never-give-up attitude.
You were a confused boy who had one goal shining through his eyes- join SOLDIER.
Yet you were too weak, too weak. It was almost heartbreaking the way you struggled so.
Even with Zack, your only friend in that drab building and a fellow SOLDIER of mine, you couldn't get in. So where did you pull the strength with which you levered me into that swirling, churning ocean of mako? Was it simply your will, wanting to revenge your murdered mother, the slaughterer that was I, killer of all save three people in that mountaintop village? Yet I fell, and I saw in your eyes... determination. That intrigued me.
I have never had to be determined to do anything, I simply did it. I had my strength.
And it didn't leave you as you and Zack were tortured in Hojo's lab, your will to live, to escape someday.
Yet it wasn't you who attempted the escape, your fragile body battered from Hojo's experiments, passed out on the see-through plastic of your cell. Zack had rescued you, after five years of the two of you being tortured, him only physically- Hojo had no real use for Zack, had he? Yet that insane Scientist felt he should make use of both his ...experiments... so Zack was the one he cut and burned, and you? You, my killer, my rescuer from Jenova's mesmerizing voice? Well, he destroyed you, didn't he? Who are you Cloud, A clone, Zack or the headstrong child determined to get into the elite? None? All? Were you a hybrid of all three, my love? Was the man who killed my last clone in that crater the same as the boy who, after having flung his idol into the green depths of the Nibel reactor that fateful night?
Yet now you are Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER hopeful, Ex-Failed clone, Ex-Puppet, Ex-Savior of Planet. It's a bit sad, Puppet, that I was no less a puppet than you, Jenova using my image. I never fought you, I simply looked on, from within the lifestream, and when I reached there through the lifestream, the northern crater. That was I, where I was while you ran around trying to stop my clones. I was simply an onlooker, watching as Jenova's will moved my hands to encircle that black stone, The Black Materia, and call forth Meteor from the skies.
I did nothing, save brood and wonder.
And of that, I did more than enough.
I brooded over the fact you seemed to be saving me as much as you were saving yourself, Jenova's destruction the destruction of my chains as well. The fact that I could not figure out which of us was worse off, me in my crystalline palace, unable to do anything save watch and think, or you, free to get hurt, indirectly cause mass death, kill innocent ShinRa troops simply because they are in your way and know this, and realize it's your fault they are dead... You were always that type of person, weren't you? You didn't want to kill, yet you didn't want to appear as soft as you were. Not that I will claim to know you, puppet.
Or perhaps I can?
I am, after all, your Master.
Not that that means anything, I was being controlled myself, and couldn't even make my puppet, you, do what I truly wanted it to do.
And that?
That was to hear my name pass through those pale lips. Not, shocked, the first time you saw me, realized it was I, (yet not I at all) who was putting into motion these destructive plans.
Not confused, when I attacked that Turk in the Ancients home or later anguished, as when I killed your pretty Cetra friend.
I want to see if those pretty lips of yours can moan my name.
I am your master. You are my puppet. So why are you not mine, why do you continue to taunt me so, flitting about the earth like a saddened angel, mourning over those you have lost? Why is it the master has suffered and the puppet runs away, dragging his broken strings in the mud to collapse, to not make a true effort to do anything? Do you need me, does the puppet need the master to feel motivated, to feel he has to do anything other than sulk? Do you truly want me to appear again on this cursed ground, destroy your life, leave you as battered and bruised as my clone's corpse after you killed it? Do you want me to lean down and lap up a bit of the blood pooling in your mouth? Perhaps you want me as I want you?
Do you need me, puppet?
Do you?
Do you want me on top of you, do you want to writhe under me, to yield to me? Do you want to let me have my way with you, I, who caused you to witness your hometown's slaughter, the reason you spent five years in a lab, losing your identity, I, who is the reason your best friend died and the one you love died? I, who caused mass chaos on your planet?
Maybe you do. Masters cannot look into the minds of their puppets, they merely influence.
Kadaj stared in confusion at his blue-stained hands. He had woken up in his Costa de Sol hotel room with a shattered pen in his hand, and no recollection of why or when he had broken it. After he shrugged it off as to another odd Jenova-influenced happening, he woke up his brothers and set off to Midgar- time to find big brother!
Vincent stared in horror at the letter in his hand. Three months after Kadaj, Yazoo and Loz had attempted Reunion, Cid had dragged the two of them off to Costa de Sol for apparently no reason (Yet he knew it was because Cid was edgy about sleeping in the Highwind- he swore the crewmates could overhear them). Rifling through the drawers in a desk, he had found something taped to the bottom of a drawer after accidentally pulling it off it's runners and had, naturally, read the letter.
And paled.
And paled a bit more.
Cid had apparently noticed the silence of his companion after returning from a store with his smokes, and leaned over to read the offending text.
A barrage of expletives followed.
"That's some &$$$ up &$#!"
"...should we show Cloud?"
"&$#-&#$!"
"...I'll take that as a ...no."
A/N- Oh no, this one sucked as well, didn't it? If you don't want me to feel depressed, Please R&R!