A/N: I've been playing with this idea for many times. Originally this story started out WAY differently, so I suggest you reread this. This first chapter is a prologue that I added AFTER I'd written the real first chapter of the story. You see "Not a Dream" was the first chapter and I wrote it with a completely different idea in mind. Then I began writing the second chapter and thinking about what I'd do for the third and fourth and I realized that maybe, just maybe I should give y'all a prologue that explains why Cloud suddenly remembers everything that happened in FVII the original game and FVII Advent Children. Just maybe that would be a good idea.

Anyways, I hope no one who read the original first chapter (Which I've edited a lot. I cannot believe some of the mistakes that were in it when I originally published it!)is annoyed with the changes. If ya are, tough luck, because I was going to turn this into a second chance story in the first place. Either that or a dark and dreary unrequited love involving a severely fucked up Zack (slightly sociopathic) that doesn't realize that it would be a bad idea to beat the shit out of and torture the people who love you. I realized that I kind of wanted a story that was just a bit happier than that, one that had a Zack Fair that was happy and bright, instead of, well, evil. (Don't ask me how I manage to make Zack evil every time I have no idea how I do it) Just a bit happier, by the way, because my writing always turns depressing or angry at one point or another, I don't know why I can never imagine happy things happening to Cloud and Zack.

Disclaimer: Square Enix didn't make Tifa preggers at any point in time. I did. They also didn't make Aerith a bigoted bitch. I did. I'm obviously not making any money off of making myself look like a Aerith/Tifa hater when I so totally am not. It's just turning out that way in this story.

Prologue: To Live Again

"We will go back in time. To the times of our births. We won't even realize who we are until mako enters our veins. This is a chance to change everything for the better. We can make it so that none of this ever happened! One mako injection, one, and our bodies will return to the way they are now, and our memories will come back. I can stop my son from burning your home and stop Hojo from doing every evil thing he did after he killed me. Give that ass-hat Rupert what he had coming. Teach Rufus the things he should have learned. I'll have so many opportunities to make the right decisions I didn't make before."

"But they won't let just me go back! They need you! The planet's hero! Please? I need this, you need this. And if we don't we'll just die, and the planet will be overrun by monsters. We will die anyways, eventually, but don't you want the opportunity to live again and save all the lives we couldn't save this time?"

Cloud had never heard Vincent so excited, so earnest. It was almost as if Cloud was looking at a different man. Vincent never spoke with such emotion, he rarely spoke at all. Taciturn, laconic, terse, and brusque were words that normally described his speech. Stoic, apathetic, aloof, and dispassionate normally described his personality.

Truly, the opportunity was too good to be true.

Cloud looked at the people who stood behind Vincent. Hundreds and millions of green shadows stood there. Some of the shadows had faces, but many of them were just blobs of color, wisps of green.

What those people were offering was insane. It had to be a trick. It couldn't be real. But Aerith stood there smiling at him, and beside her stood Zack, and those two had never lied to him about the mystical ways of the Lifestream. Zack had never given him a promise he couldn't or didn't keep. And he'd sworn they were speaking truth and that what they had suggested could really been done.

He didn't know what to do. It made sense. Vincent's sins would be atoned for. The economic failure that had placed the entire world in poverty would never occur. Time would be reversed over a hundred years and things would play themselves out in a different way. Could two people really change the course of history?

Theoretically, everything could be stopped. Midgar would stay whole, Shinra would stay whole, and perhaps, everything could be set right gradually. A lot of people wouldn't have to die, and things could be changed.

Or everything could remain the same as it was before Meteor. The corruption of Shinra, the reign of terror that had seized the continent, would only last longer before meeting an end even more disastrous than Meteor, without anyone to stop it. The planet could turn against the people, the Lifestream could be tainted. Events could unfold themselves and lead to an end result that was much, much, worse than the one Cloud faced at the moment.

Then there was the third course, Cloud could be forced to live through it all over again. Everything could play out exactly the same as it had before and Cloud could be helpless to stop it. He could be forced to watch by the sidelines as everything happened exactly the way it already had, the way it was meant to.

He wouldn't survive that. He didn't know if Vincent could live through it, but he certainly wouldn't be the same man he was before he'd made this deal with the Cetra. Cloud would be torn apart the second he fell into Hojo's hands for a second time, if not then, then when he watched Zack die a second time, watched Aerith die a second time. Tifa, Yuffie, Barret….. All of them could meet the same ends a second time, and he could be just as helpless as he was the first.

There were so many ways this could go wrong. They could end up fucking the world up worse than it was now.

Then again, it seemed nearly impossible for things to get any worse than they already had.

What would Cloud do if he ended up in a completely different world and suddenly gained all the memories from this life? He'd probably think himself crazy. It would be like a whole new life suddenly merging with an alien alternate reality. It would be like being invaded by another personality, someone who'd suffered through things he couldn't imagine ever being true.

Was there any way to make sure he knew that the memories really happened? Any at all? It was madness.

Things like this couldn't be done.

But what if it did happen?

What could Cloud do, then? Once his memories returned to him? He'd be stuck in the same rut he'd been in before Geostigma. He'd feel lost, like there was no reason for his existence. He'd done what he'd needed to do. There was nothing for him in the world.

What if he never remembered this life?

He'd follow the same path. He'd become a grunt for the infantry. He'd fight in Wutai as cannon fodder. He'd return home and fail the Soldier examinations. He'd go to Modeoheim, and he'd go to Niebelheim. If the Nibelhem crisis was averted….he might never end up having a mako injection. He might never remember everything he'd accomplished. He might end up a broken down infantryman who'd died for Shinra. He might be one of those fools who stood by Shinra and refused to see the obvious evil of their way sand the damage it did to the planet. He'd loathed those people. He might never know how evil that company was, how bad the people in it were, how horrible things truly were throughout the world. Was that ignorance something he truly wanted to suffer through? Did he want to be one of those men he'd found himself pitying as he'd killed them?

He'd be giving everything up. He wouldn't remember meeting Aerith, he might never meet Zack. He'd never marry Tifa, or adopt Denzel. Never meet Barret or Cid or Yuffie. Hell, he might never meet Vincent.

Who would he be if he never met any of the people who shaped him? Who would he be if none of these awful things happened to him?

He'd been a hero. As painful as everything had been, he'd been successful at something. He'd saved the world three times, although he couldn't save it the fourth. It was a selfish thought. The desire to die the hero, the soldier, the warrior he'd become. So many people would be saved if this worked out, what would it matter if the person he was now would disappear? Never to exist?

In the first place, what really did he have to give up? Tifa was dead, everybody was dead.

His child was dead. His friends were dead and there was nothing left for him to live for.

He was broken. He'd been broken for such a long time. Watching Tifa die, knowing that his child was inside her, watching Aerith die, watching Sephiroth die at the end of his sword, everybody died. Almost all of them died because of him.

He couldn't stop the planet from destroying everything they'd rebuilt. Reeve died, and the WRO was destroyed. Neo-Shinra was destroyed. Neo-Midgar, and Edge, and Rocket Town were all gone. Every government and every city was turned to rubble. And there is no way to fight the planet. He couldn't stop tornados, tsunamis, and earthquakes. He couldn't fight millions of monsters single handedly, not that he hadn't tried. He could now fight off a thousand at a time. But what good did that do if everyone died anyways?

Everything had gone to shit and he couldn't do anything about it.

Now, he was trapped. He and Vincent were trapped in a cave and on the other side of the wall they'd built there was an army of monsters stretching as far as the eye could see. Ravenous, hungry, heartless monsters made from the bones of the dead, and the evil that had tainted the lifestream.

Vincent was standing in front of him, and behind Vincent stood a wall of the lifestream. Ghosts and shadows. Aerith stood there, Zack stood there, and thousands of souls stood there. All the lost souls who had been innocent, good, and hadn't deserved to die stood staring at him. They wanted to know if he was willing to give them all a second chance.

Why on earth was this decision left to him? Why? There was something they weren't telling him, he knew it, but he couldn't help but wonder if he really needed to know. It probably had something to do with him having to go through some heroic journey and save the world again, hell, it probably had something to do with him sacrificing himself to save the world again. Or maybe they wanted to know if he was strong enough to go back in time and remember everything? They were probably afraid he'd get there and break and become a new Sephiroth and try and kill off the entire human race in his stead.

Then their sacrifice would have been for nothing.

The Cetra would sacrifice themselves. Every last one of them would be destroyed so that they might go back in time and stop this all. Aerith would be the only Cetra left, not only on earth, but also in the lifestream. Every single one of his friends would be reborn and given a new chance at life.

What was there to lose?

The only thing left he had to lose….was himself.

Maybe he wouldn't have to live one hundred and ninety years only to watch the world he'd help save, and then rebuild, be destroyed. Maybe things could turn out happily ever after. There could be a see-you-only-needed-a second-chance-to-make-it-all-better ending.

Everything had gone wrong, and there'd been nothing he could do about it.

They could stop it all.

Did Cloud really have a choice?

Vincent could be a hero, and Cloud could be normal. A normal person, a normal human being, he could live a normal life. That was really what Vincent was offering. Wasn't that what he'd always wanted? He'd never really wanted to be a hero. He'd never wanted to have all of that responsibility thrust upon him. He'd never wanted to watch his friends die, or have enough power to destroy the strongest man in the world. He'd never wanted his mind to be torn apart into a million pieces. He'd never wanted to have someone else's memories invade his mind. He'd never wanted to become a puppet or wage war on an endless army of monsters.

He'd never wanted to destroy Sephiroth three times. He'd only ever wanted to return the man to the person he'd been before, because the most gruesome part of the whole crusade was the part where Cloud saw through Zack's memories that Sephiroth had once been a good man, a hero. He'd never wanted to kill him, even after he'd found out that he'd killed his mother, burned down his town, and planned to kill everybody and destroy the world.

He could make it so that he'd never done the things he didn't want to do.

But was he just prolonging the inevitable by doing this? Was he just making it so that he himself didn't have to be there when Gaia died? Was he just making it so that the planet died during the time of the generations that followed him? Was he just shirking his responsibilities and forcing them onto the people who were last in line?

The price was who he was, and everything he'd accomplished.

But these things didn't happen. People didn't get a chance to go back in time, be born again.

There was something wrong with this offer. There was a chance that it could all turn out worse than it had the first time around… but there was the chance that none of his friends would have had to die. All of their families could have lived, and they could have lived happy lives.

It didn't matter if things turned out in a way that made it so that he had never met them, never been their friends, or felt their support. It would be enough to know that they ended up living happy lives. Every horrible thing that had happened to them all would never happen.

Why was he the one forced to make this decision?

Did he really have a choice?

Had he ever had a choice in anything?

Cloud looked around the cave one more time, his decision already made. He looked at the Cetra that stood before him, and glanced over the ghosts of the people he had known. Then his gaze found Vincent's. The man looked as he always had, just a bit shabbier. Cloud had never thought that the red cloak could become more tattered, or the other man's black hair could grow any longer, become any more tangled, but it had. Vincent stood before him, and his face was still that of a young man, but the years still showed in his appearance. Monster blood covered half his face, his golden claw was mangled and misshapen, and the ground below him shook. He was out of bullets. He had no energy left, Chaos had already made an appearance.

Cloud was in no better shape. His MP was zero, his HP was at half throttle and his AP was below zero (he'd never thought he could reach below zero in any of those three categories and still live, but, unfortunately for him, he was still alive and kicking), and he was missing two of the seven pieces of First Tsurugi. One piece was somewhere beyond the wall that protected them from monsters. The other had been shattered a long time ago, on another cliff, in another battle, by another army of monsters.

Cloud had never seen so much hope in Vincent's eyes. Cloud was resting against the stone wall, his back to it, his legs stretched in front of him. One arm was wrapped around a wound in his stomach, the other stretched to his side, holding the end of First Tsurugi. The ribbon that honored Aerith, the one that had been wrapped around his bicep for over seventy years, had been wripped off by the monsters that were clawing at the walls of the cave.

He opened his mouth to begin speaking only to hear his voice crack. He'd refrained from speaking for a long time. After a while he and Vincent had taken to not speaking at all as they fought, it only wasted energy, they could communicate just fine through their eyes and hand gestures.

He tried to speak again and winced at the softness of his voice, the emotionless, weak, monotone he'd always been cursed with.

"I'll do it. But you have to promise me something."

Vincent was surprised, but he was filled with hope. His enthusiasm was obvious, and it was so strange to see such an emotion on the normally bleak man's face. It wasn't natural.

Vincent raised one eyebrow before speaking. His deep voice held no emotion despite the emotive nature of the words he spoke. Some things never changed it seemed, Vincent's voice had been emotionless for far too long to be affected by the emotions of the owner.

"What? Simply ask and I'll do it. I'd do anything for this opportunity to make sure none of this ever happened and my sins were never committed."

Cloud slowly, laboriously made his way to standing. He stood up straight, and walked slowly and purposely so that he was standing right in front of Vincent, who stood slightly in front of the lake of mako that lay behind him, where the souls stood and watched. He glared into the other man's golden eyes.

"You had better make sure I end up remembering all this!" Cloud very nearly snarled.

Shock adorned Vincent's face, and Cloud resisted the urge to chuckle at finally seeing such a pitiable emotion on the other man's face. Yuffie would be jumping for joy.

"But, wouldn't you be happier if you didn't?" Vincent asked, and the wonder in his voice was very obvious.

"I need to remember it all, Vincent. I will NOT allow myself to turn into the kid I was before all of this! I will not be helpless, or ignorant, or subject to Shinra in any way, shape, or form. Do this for me! Make sure that before I am nineteen I stand before you the man you see right now. Not some child, some country boy hick with a low self-esteem, little talent, and no lot in life."

Vincent didn't say anything. He didn't understand what Cloud meant. He knew the man had always wished for a normal life, and he didn't understand why he would want to remember the horrible life he'd been forced to live if he didn't absolutely have to. In Vincent's eyes this was a chance for him to make it so that his friend, Cloud Strife, had never been taken and experimented on, never been broken down and robbed of his innocence, never been forced to do what he didn't want to. He wanted his friend to live a long, happy, peaceful life that had nothing to do with Shinra or mako or disaster.

"Swear it!" Cloud snarled when the other man hesitated.

Vincent didn't understand why, it was obvious in his eyes, but he agreed anyways.

"If it kills me, I will make sure that I see you again. I give you my word." And he meant it when he spoke. He would ensure that the Cloud Strife that stood before him now would stand before him again, no matter what. It didn't matter that he thought it would be better for the other man if he never remembered any of this.

Cloud smiled.

Vincent smiled.

The two of them hadn't smiled in a hundred and sixty years.

They didn't feel it as the lake of mako before them rose up around their knees.

They didn't feel it as the monsters broke through the wall that had been protecting them for the last seven hours of their lives.

They didn't feel it as the Lifestream took them.

And they forgot.

They lived again without knowing it, blissful in their ignorance they lived again.

Vincent relived his life without knowing why he felt this unbearable sense of déjà vu or had an intuition, an eerie foresight that set him apart from others, for twenty seven years.

Cloud did the same for eighteen years.

They lived again and it did turn out better.

Thank Gaia it turned out better.