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ff7 OT5 fixit fic... Chapter 1.2
... This is the one with Denzel and Zack in the churck. I finally finished the meeting scene, whew. x___x
Not sure I like the beginning, might just cut it out until Cloud's at the church, I dunno.
Chapter Archive.
Paranoid. He really was paranoid. Getting ready for war just because one strange, but apparently harmless man had mentioned that he knew Cloud...
(They were at the church.)
... True, he didn't have a great track record with strange people who had some mysterious past connection to Cloud. Enemies didn't need to be at SOLDIER-level to be dangerous -- Cloud wasn't stupid, but he would need to be psychic to make sure no ambush would ever work on him.
(Why were they at the church?)
As the latest enemy had proved, SOLDIER vulnerabilities weren't secret enough that no one could find out, with enough digging around. There were disgruntled ex-Shinra troopers. Unemployed scientists. Fanatical Sephiroth-worshippers.
(Black-haired guy. Same size.)
Gangs with designs on Edge, even -- he'd humiliated quite a few, and they tended to have more pride and vindictiveness than common sense.
(But they wouldn't bring their naked girlfriend.)
(He'd jumped to stupid conclusions before, but this was a jump that could have cleared Bahamut.)
He stared up at the church's huge wooden doors, gave a cursory look at the rubble all around. His spine prickled, as if someone were watching him back. If there was, even his mako-enhanced eyesight couldn't pick them up.
The inside of the church was even darker, though the missing portion of the roof let in the faint glow of Edge's streetlamps. Enough for him to know that there wasn't anyone sitting in the pews, or by the pool, or anywhere on the ground floor.
He placed a hand on the hilt of his sword, slid a few inches of steel out of the scabbard. Planks creaked overhead, and Cloud moved lightly along the wall, avoiding the holes in the roof. He could hear someone moving along with him -- their steps were light, controlled, even though they weren't making an effort to hide them. They would be arriving to the staircase at the same time.
And then there was a loud crack of breaking wood, and a body jumped at him feet first, and he didn't think, just reacted. The sword was in his hand before he could think about it, and swinging just as he realized, from the lack of follow-up, that this might not have been an attack at all.
Even sprawled awkwardly on the steps, the man managed to kick up into the flat of Cloud's blade, deviating its course. Cloud had been ready to still it at the man's throat, but the counterattack startled him. A gust of cold air blasted the staircase as the Materia on his armband flashed green.
The ice spell never materialized.
The green light gave Zack's skin a sickly tint, and carved strange shadows on his face, but the wild black spikes and the glowing purple-gray eyes were unmistakable. And the line of the jaw, and the high cheekbones, and the quirk of his eyebrows.
Cloud stared down at his dead best friend, and cursed at himself for being unable to take the safest course of action -- bring down the sword and end it before his memories were raped once again.
There was a chance, he wanted to think. There was a chance. But he'd barely survived through enough precedents to know that there wasn't.
"Hey, Spike. Mind not freezing my balls off? I'm kinda attached..."
He'd been expecting casual friendliness -- that was Zack's default mode. He'd been expecting teasing. He'd been expecting smugness. They would have sounded true enough.
The quiet, almost gentle awkwardness felt truer.
"... Cloud?"
Slowly, Cloud lifted his sword, took a step back, then another. The man-who-might-be-Zack waited, wincing, only sat up gingerly when Cloud was out of reach of a surprise kick.
"Well."
Cloud waited, the tip of his sword brushing the floor at his side as he held the hilt in a two-handed grip.
Zack -- or the creature who looked like Zack -- laughed dryly. "I must say, it went better than I feared."
"You assumed it would go worse?" Cloud asked. His voice was wiped clean of all emotion. It was easier than dealing with any of the myriads of them trying to get through together.
"Eh, I had a couple scenarios. One of them had a dozen summons or so flattening the church from afar and Shinra ready to move in and pick up the pieces... It would have kinda sucked. I knew not to count too much on the tearful flying tackle of love." Zack grinned. "You're a bit of a paranoid bastard, you know."
Cloud stood still, watching the man who sat there on the old wooden steps, with his ankles crossed casually and his arms loosely draped on his lap, and the pained, rueful hints that colored the easy smile.
"... So, that ice spell..."
The greenish Materia light winked off. The dark blinded Cloud; he closed his eyes since he wouldn't be seeing anything anyway. He closed his eyes and told himself he was getting played. Zack was dead. Dead and gone and that was it.
"You know," he commented quietly, eyes open once again, "I could expect Sephiroth. I could expect his clones. I could even expect Aeris. Even discounting Jenova's influence, their bodies at least were in the Lifestream. Yours went to feed the worms."
Zack's voice tightened briefly. "Yeah. It did."
Cloud had to pause at that. That was it? "No convenient 'Hojo did it'?" he asked. He might even have believed that, however interestingly coincidental it sounded. It was likely enough, anyway -- the creep always turned up in strange places, and liked to recycle his playthings.
There was a short, frustrated sigh. "No. No convenient 'Hojo did it'. Went through the whole crows, vultures, foxes, worms, and assorted putrefaction and decay."
Cloud gritted his teeth. The flippant reluctance to answer was getting annoying. "So explain how you can come back from that."
"Do you remember Aaron Bergsten?"
The new voice from the top of the staircase was light, musical, undeniably feminine.
Cloud's body went utterly rigid once again.
"He was in SOLDIER," the voice continued. "Commandant First Class, I think he was. He was one of the clones that reached the Northern Crater before you did."
Small, white feet first, and frail ankles, and long white legs, like a ghost in the dark -- except that the planks creaked under her weight.
His Materia lit up again. And there she was, standing a few steps over Zack with a hand against the wall, with her summer-green eyes and warm smile and long hair twisting into unruly coils, the ends tickling her thighs.
"Aeris..."
"Hello, Cloud."
Another tidal wave of feelings rose in his throat -- longing and loss and mourning and betrayal -- and hope. Surely Jenova could not touch her. Not her. She had never been infected with Jenova's cells. And Hojo hadn't kept her long enough to do much...
"This is Aaron Bergsten's body," she continued softly, glancing at Zack, who grimaced an unconvincing smile in answer. "His soul joined with the Lifestream, some time ago. And I didn't want to go without Zack. So... there you have it."
Cloud shook his head, more in bewilderment than denial. The body looked like Zack's, exactly like Zack's -- and Kadaj had looked like Sephiroth, too, down to the width of his shoulder and the shape of his hands. Surely there was a way to make a body look like anyone -- even look like Zack when it wasn't him at all possessing that corpse. But Aeris... He couldn't accept that someone had stolen her likeness. She was above that. Surely she would have known, she would have warned him. She would have done something.
He couldn't believe it. He just couldn't. They hadn't given him any proof, and he was tired of the knife being twisted in the wound every time he thought he was finally healed.
"You..."
She smiled, hands joined over her stomach, just the barest hint of impishness behind the warm compassion. "I'm naked, yes."
"--That wasn't what I meant."
Zack chortled; Cloud glared briefly at him, disguising his relief at having a good reason to stop staring. Because of course, now that Aeris had pointed out how nude she was, he could see nothing else.
She wasn't making any effort to cover herself. He could see goosebumps in an interesting variety of places. ... If it was intended as a distraction, it was ridiculous. He wasn't that stupid.
His gut was still twisting and twisting around with 'they're real' and 'they can't be' and all assorted feelings -- loss and grief and astonishment and desperate denial. Because if he accepted it, and then it turned out to be a trap...
... If it was a trap...
He didn't know. He just... Didn't know.
"... You... Wouldn't go? I thought." He frowned, tried to steel himself. Emotions could wait. She'd been gone a while. He'd mourned and moved on. "I assumed you were dead."
"Well, yes."
"You could have come back from that anytime," he continued softly. The bile rising in his throat tasted like betrayal.
"Oh, Cloud --"
He took a step back when she stepped forward, and she halted. "No."
The light from his Materia wavered. Maintaining it at the very edge of a spell was getting difficult.
"... No. You could have come back any time. You didn't."
Zack growled, tensing as if he wanted to get up and get in his face. "Do you think she liked being there?"
"Why not? It's her Promised Land."
He'd gone too far, he realized that a fraction of second before hurt flashed in Aeris's eyes.
"It was nice, being with my mother and all the other Cetras," she acknowledged quietly. "But it's nothing like this world. I stayed because Jenova wasn't entirely dead, and then I stayed because someone had to guide the Planet when it healed itself. The other Cetras wouldn't, and they were the only one who would have known how to."
"... Why wouldn't they?" he asked when she fell silent. He tried not to sound apologetic; he failed, and then she smiled at him and he failed to regret it.
And it was stupid of him to believe she was real, that Zack was real. It was really, really stupid. He believed anyway.
"They're one with the Planet now. It's hard to still care about the details when you're part of an all-encompassing whole," she added with a smile and a little shrug.
Zack mock-shuddered. "Yeah, it was like 'What's the problem with killing a few hundred people ahead of their time? They would die eventually. Sooner is better. Why wouldn't you want to come back to the Planet? You get to meld with the Collective, blahblahblah' ... Urgh."
Cloud stared at Zack, and then back up at Aeris. "Killing?"
She moved down a few steps, arms wrapped around her middle. "The Planet had to redirect the Lifestream. Sometimes that meant it had to take away the life force in some other places, causing droughts, or the crops to die, or people wasting away for no reason... And are those clothes I see?"
He leaned down and picked up the bundle of clothes he'd dropped when Zack fell, offered them without a word. The teasing lilt in her voice, the crooked smirk on Zack's face, they rang too true and if it was a lie, if it was a trap, it was too late; he'd swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
And then Aeris bypassed the clothes entirely and moved into his arms. He stood there like a statue as she hugged him, her arms around his neck, her chin tilted up to rest on his shoulder. From the staircase, Zack watched, serious and soft and tender.
Cloud did something stupid, once again. He closed his eyes, let go of his sword and hugged her back.
He might have held on a little too tight; she didn't say anything.
The staircase creaked a bit, and then Zack's bare feet brushed against the floor. Cloud wasn't surprised to feel a hand on his shoulder. If they wanted to kill him, it would be now or never.
He shuddered, once, when instead Zack flung his arms around them both and ruffled Cloud's hair teasingly.
"Mm, toasty warm."
"Idiot," Cloud managed to croak out. "You haven't grown up any."
It was just like Zack to break the mood. At least now Cloud wasn't crying. That would have been embarrassing.
The wetness Aeris kissed off his cheek was only rain.
They stood together in silence for a while, and would have stood longer, but even with his body warmth to share, he could still feel Aeris shivering. The reminder that they were both nude made him feel a little bad. It would be pretty ridiculous if they got sick now. He loosened his hold, stepped back, exchanged an embarrassed half-smirk with Zack.
"Get dressed... I'll bring you home." He managed a smile. "Tifa will be..." Astonished. Awed. Deeply moved. "Surprised."
Aeris smiled, letting go. "I've missed her too. Is she well?"
Cloud nodded, and averted his eyes politely as she accepted the shirt from Zack's hands and pulled it over her head.
When he saw Zack shimmy into Tifa's sweatpants and Aeris wind the shawl around her hips like a sarong, though, he blinked. "There's another pair of pants right here, Zack. I'm pretty sure it would fit you better than Tifa's."
"Whatever do you mean? This is so much more fashionable." Zack grinned at him, tugging on the sweatpants to show off how much of his calves stuck out from the pants legs.
He didn't look Cloud in the eye right away.
"And 'sides, I doubt he'd fit into her pants half as well as I do."
Zack grimaced, though it had probably been intended as a smile.
"Even if it would probably make his ass look fabulous."
Cloud dashed past them both, snatched up his sword and climbed the stairs four by four, with a Fire spell only awaiting a target.
The second floor of the old church had worsened since Cloud had lived there two years ago. The wood was swelled with humidity, and the repairs he'd made to the roof weren't holding up too well anymore. Most of the blinds had been nailed shut to prevent the few intact windows from getting broken, though a few slats were missing, slashing the darkness with lines of faraway streetlamp lights. There were bricks and mortar strewn around the place, and a few abandoned beer bottles caught the green glow of his Materia.
None of them gleamed as green as the eyes of the ghostly-pale man standing against the wall, watching him.
Chapter 2.1
Not sure I like the beginning, might just cut it out until Cloud's at the church, I dunno.
Chapter Archive.
Paranoid. He really was paranoid. Getting ready for war just because one strange, but apparently harmless man had mentioned that he knew Cloud...
(They were at the church.)
... True, he didn't have a great track record with strange people who had some mysterious past connection to Cloud. Enemies didn't need to be at SOLDIER-level to be dangerous -- Cloud wasn't stupid, but he would need to be psychic to make sure no ambush would ever work on him.
(Why were they at the church?)
As the latest enemy had proved, SOLDIER vulnerabilities weren't secret enough that no one could find out, with enough digging around. There were disgruntled ex-Shinra troopers. Unemployed scientists. Fanatical Sephiroth-worshippers.
(Black-haired guy. Same size.)
Gangs with designs on Edge, even -- he'd humiliated quite a few, and they tended to have more pride and vindictiveness than common sense.
(But they wouldn't bring their naked girlfriend.)
(He'd jumped to stupid conclusions before, but this was a jump that could have cleared Bahamut.)
He stared up at the church's huge wooden doors, gave a cursory look at the rubble all around. His spine prickled, as if someone were watching him back. If there was, even his mako-enhanced eyesight couldn't pick them up.
The inside of the church was even darker, though the missing portion of the roof let in the faint glow of Edge's streetlamps. Enough for him to know that there wasn't anyone sitting in the pews, or by the pool, or anywhere on the ground floor.
He placed a hand on the hilt of his sword, slid a few inches of steel out of the scabbard. Planks creaked overhead, and Cloud moved lightly along the wall, avoiding the holes in the roof. He could hear someone moving along with him -- their steps were light, controlled, even though they weren't making an effort to hide them. They would be arriving to the staircase at the same time.
And then there was a loud crack of breaking wood, and a body jumped at him feet first, and he didn't think, just reacted. The sword was in his hand before he could think about it, and swinging just as he realized, from the lack of follow-up, that this might not have been an attack at all.
Even sprawled awkwardly on the steps, the man managed to kick up into the flat of Cloud's blade, deviating its course. Cloud had been ready to still it at the man's throat, but the counterattack startled him. A gust of cold air blasted the staircase as the Materia on his armband flashed green.
The ice spell never materialized.
The green light gave Zack's skin a sickly tint, and carved strange shadows on his face, but the wild black spikes and the glowing purple-gray eyes were unmistakable. And the line of the jaw, and the high cheekbones, and the quirk of his eyebrows.
Cloud stared down at his dead best friend, and cursed at himself for being unable to take the safest course of action -- bring down the sword and end it before his memories were raped once again.
There was a chance, he wanted to think. There was a chance. But he'd barely survived through enough precedents to know that there wasn't.
"Hey, Spike. Mind not freezing my balls off? I'm kinda attached..."
He'd been expecting casual friendliness -- that was Zack's default mode. He'd been expecting teasing. He'd been expecting smugness. They would have sounded true enough.
The quiet, almost gentle awkwardness felt truer.
"... Cloud?"
Slowly, Cloud lifted his sword, took a step back, then another. The man-who-might-be-Zack waited, wincing, only sat up gingerly when Cloud was out of reach of a surprise kick.
"Well."
Cloud waited, the tip of his sword brushing the floor at his side as he held the hilt in a two-handed grip.
Zack -- or the creature who looked like Zack -- laughed dryly. "I must say, it went better than I feared."
"You assumed it would go worse?" Cloud asked. His voice was wiped clean of all emotion. It was easier than dealing with any of the myriads of them trying to get through together.
"Eh, I had a couple scenarios. One of them had a dozen summons or so flattening the church from afar and Shinra ready to move in and pick up the pieces... It would have kinda sucked. I knew not to count too much on the tearful flying tackle of love." Zack grinned. "You're a bit of a paranoid bastard, you know."
Cloud stood still, watching the man who sat there on the old wooden steps, with his ankles crossed casually and his arms loosely draped on his lap, and the pained, rueful hints that colored the easy smile.
"... So, that ice spell..."
The greenish Materia light winked off. The dark blinded Cloud; he closed his eyes since he wouldn't be seeing anything anyway. He closed his eyes and told himself he was getting played. Zack was dead. Dead and gone and that was it.
"You know," he commented quietly, eyes open once again, "I could expect Sephiroth. I could expect his clones. I could even expect Aeris. Even discounting Jenova's influence, their bodies at least were in the Lifestream. Yours went to feed the worms."
Zack's voice tightened briefly. "Yeah. It did."
Cloud had to pause at that. That was it? "No convenient 'Hojo did it'?" he asked. He might even have believed that, however interestingly coincidental it sounded. It was likely enough, anyway -- the creep always turned up in strange places, and liked to recycle his playthings.
There was a short, frustrated sigh. "No. No convenient 'Hojo did it'. Went through the whole crows, vultures, foxes, worms, and assorted putrefaction and decay."
Cloud gritted his teeth. The flippant reluctance to answer was getting annoying. "So explain how you can come back from that."
"Do you remember Aaron Bergsten?"
The new voice from the top of the staircase was light, musical, undeniably feminine.
Cloud's body went utterly rigid once again.
"He was in SOLDIER," the voice continued. "Commandant First Class, I think he was. He was one of the clones that reached the Northern Crater before you did."
Small, white feet first, and frail ankles, and long white legs, like a ghost in the dark -- except that the planks creaked under her weight.
His Materia lit up again. And there she was, standing a few steps over Zack with a hand against the wall, with her summer-green eyes and warm smile and long hair twisting into unruly coils, the ends tickling her thighs.
"Aeris..."
"Hello, Cloud."
Another tidal wave of feelings rose in his throat -- longing and loss and mourning and betrayal -- and hope. Surely Jenova could not touch her. Not her. She had never been infected with Jenova's cells. And Hojo hadn't kept her long enough to do much...
"This is Aaron Bergsten's body," she continued softly, glancing at Zack, who grimaced an unconvincing smile in answer. "His soul joined with the Lifestream, some time ago. And I didn't want to go without Zack. So... there you have it."
Cloud shook his head, more in bewilderment than denial. The body looked like Zack's, exactly like Zack's -- and Kadaj had looked like Sephiroth, too, down to the width of his shoulder and the shape of his hands. Surely there was a way to make a body look like anyone -- even look like Zack when it wasn't him at all possessing that corpse. But Aeris... He couldn't accept that someone had stolen her likeness. She was above that. Surely she would have known, she would have warned him. She would have done something.
He couldn't believe it. He just couldn't. They hadn't given him any proof, and he was tired of the knife being twisted in the wound every time he thought he was finally healed.
"You..."
She smiled, hands joined over her stomach, just the barest hint of impishness behind the warm compassion. "I'm naked, yes."
"--That wasn't what I meant."
Zack chortled; Cloud glared briefly at him, disguising his relief at having a good reason to stop staring. Because of course, now that Aeris had pointed out how nude she was, he could see nothing else.
She wasn't making any effort to cover herself. He could see goosebumps in an interesting variety of places. ... If it was intended as a distraction, it was ridiculous. He wasn't that stupid.
His gut was still twisting and twisting around with 'they're real' and 'they can't be' and all assorted feelings -- loss and grief and astonishment and desperate denial. Because if he accepted it, and then it turned out to be a trap...
... If it was a trap...
He didn't know. He just... Didn't know.
"... You... Wouldn't go? I thought." He frowned, tried to steel himself. Emotions could wait. She'd been gone a while. He'd mourned and moved on. "I assumed you were dead."
"Well, yes."
"You could have come back from that anytime," he continued softly. The bile rising in his throat tasted like betrayal.
"Oh, Cloud --"
He took a step back when she stepped forward, and she halted. "No."
The light from his Materia wavered. Maintaining it at the very edge of a spell was getting difficult.
"... No. You could have come back any time. You didn't."
Zack growled, tensing as if he wanted to get up and get in his face. "Do you think she liked being there?"
"Why not? It's her Promised Land."
He'd gone too far, he realized that a fraction of second before hurt flashed in Aeris's eyes.
"It was nice, being with my mother and all the other Cetras," she acknowledged quietly. "But it's nothing like this world. I stayed because Jenova wasn't entirely dead, and then I stayed because someone had to guide the Planet when it healed itself. The other Cetras wouldn't, and they were the only one who would have known how to."
"... Why wouldn't they?" he asked when she fell silent. He tried not to sound apologetic; he failed, and then she smiled at him and he failed to regret it.
And it was stupid of him to believe she was real, that Zack was real. It was really, really stupid. He believed anyway.
"They're one with the Planet now. It's hard to still care about the details when you're part of an all-encompassing whole," she added with a smile and a little shrug.
Zack mock-shuddered. "Yeah, it was like 'What's the problem with killing a few hundred people ahead of their time? They would die eventually. Sooner is better. Why wouldn't you want to come back to the Planet? You get to meld with the Collective, blahblahblah' ... Urgh."
Cloud stared at Zack, and then back up at Aeris. "Killing?"
She moved down a few steps, arms wrapped around her middle. "The Planet had to redirect the Lifestream. Sometimes that meant it had to take away the life force in some other places, causing droughts, or the crops to die, or people wasting away for no reason... And are those clothes I see?"
He leaned down and picked up the bundle of clothes he'd dropped when Zack fell, offered them without a word. The teasing lilt in her voice, the crooked smirk on Zack's face, they rang too true and if it was a lie, if it was a trap, it was too late; he'd swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
And then Aeris bypassed the clothes entirely and moved into his arms. He stood there like a statue as she hugged him, her arms around his neck, her chin tilted up to rest on his shoulder. From the staircase, Zack watched, serious and soft and tender.
Cloud did something stupid, once again. He closed his eyes, let go of his sword and hugged her back.
He might have held on a little too tight; she didn't say anything.
The staircase creaked a bit, and then Zack's bare feet brushed against the floor. Cloud wasn't surprised to feel a hand on his shoulder. If they wanted to kill him, it would be now or never.
He shuddered, once, when instead Zack flung his arms around them both and ruffled Cloud's hair teasingly.
"Mm, toasty warm."
"Idiot," Cloud managed to croak out. "You haven't grown up any."
It was just like Zack to break the mood. At least now Cloud wasn't crying. That would have been embarrassing.
The wetness Aeris kissed off his cheek was only rain.
They stood together in silence for a while, and would have stood longer, but even with his body warmth to share, he could still feel Aeris shivering. The reminder that they were both nude made him feel a little bad. It would be pretty ridiculous if they got sick now. He loosened his hold, stepped back, exchanged an embarrassed half-smirk with Zack.
"Get dressed... I'll bring you home." He managed a smile. "Tifa will be..." Astonished. Awed. Deeply moved. "Surprised."
Aeris smiled, letting go. "I've missed her too. Is she well?"
Cloud nodded, and averted his eyes politely as she accepted the shirt from Zack's hands and pulled it over her head.
When he saw Zack shimmy into Tifa's sweatpants and Aeris wind the shawl around her hips like a sarong, though, he blinked. "There's another pair of pants right here, Zack. I'm pretty sure it would fit you better than Tifa's."
"Whatever do you mean? This is so much more fashionable." Zack grinned at him, tugging on the sweatpants to show off how much of his calves stuck out from the pants legs.
He didn't look Cloud in the eye right away.
"And 'sides, I doubt he'd fit into her pants half as well as I do."
Zack grimaced, though it had probably been intended as a smile.
"Even if it would probably make his ass look fabulous."
Cloud dashed past them both, snatched up his sword and climbed the stairs four by four, with a Fire spell only awaiting a target.
The second floor of the old church had worsened since Cloud had lived there two years ago. The wood was swelled with humidity, and the repairs he'd made to the roof weren't holding up too well anymore. Most of the blinds had been nailed shut to prevent the few intact windows from getting broken, though a few slats were missing, slashing the darkness with lines of faraway streetlamp lights. There were bricks and mortar strewn around the place, and a few abandoned beer bottles caught the green glow of his Materia.
None of them gleamed as green as the eyes of the ghostly-pale man standing against the wall, watching him.
Chapter 2.1
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That was...good. I'm only passingly familiar with FF7 (at best), but that imagry was as good as playing in my head.
I liked how Cloud is portrayed as more than slightly paranoid, always having a spell at the ready.
Hojo? Something I missed/haven't got to yet?
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Hojo is the crazy scientist who's Sephiroth's father and experimented on him as a child (he's probably a big factor in why Sephiroth snapped). He used Cloud and Zack as guinea pigs for about five years, and regularly hunted and briefly captured Aeris because she was the last of the Cetras (but Cloud's party managed to free her pretty fast) He's got black hair pulled into a ponytail, glasses I think, and he always wears a labcoat. He's very, very creepy. D:
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*pokes corpse with toe*
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The part where Cloud’s not daring to hope really got me- it was wonderfully executed, especially Cloud’s kind of meandering, drawn out reasoning, debating every thought and feeling to death… it felt like a perfect extension of his attitude in Advent Children.
The beginning was a little confusing, mostly because it took me a while to figure out who the 'they' in the first two thoughts were. I thought Cloud was including himself in that 'they' at first.
Urk. Nice little cliffie at the end, there.
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Yeah, the beginning is... I was trying for a specific style, but I didn't really manage it. The "they" actually refers alternately to Cloud and his posse, and to hypothetical "they" enemies. It's way too confusing, i'll have to edit. x_x
Muahaha.
I have absolutely no idea how THAT meeting is going to go. :Dno subject
MORE
and where is teaaaaaaaaaaamwork? :P
[much <3]
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i'll bring the shovel if you supply the treasure map? X marks the spot and all, yea?
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Do you mean "shimmy"? Because "shimmer" makes it sound like they're magically appearing on him, complete with sparkles. XD I don't know if this is at a point where you'd want edits, but that caught my attention.
And, ZOMG, is that who I think it is at the end? o.O How the hell did he get to Midgar? Or is that other story bit with him not connected to this one?
Is in, like, happy shock* Aeris is so perfect. ^_^
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YOU SAW NOTHING.Weeeell... You'll notice Aeris and Zack were making arrangements to leave the last pair of pants to him... *cough*
Bwee! thank you. Sometimes she's easy to write, when she teases and all that, but when she gets serious I have trouble with her voice. Nnrgh. ~___~
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i liked the way everyone did react. the distance and doubt cloud first had and the little teasing from our former dead ones. - poor Zack hat to deal with the ice spell *grin*
i wonder what tifa will do when she sees them again (hopefully not faint ^^)
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(Zack and the ice spell might become a recurring theme in this fic. >_> *tempted*)
I don't like making character faint from a shock, but I guess she'll probably have to sit down really fast. XD
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but anyway. i love you. yes i am declaring my undying, never-ending love for you. So I hope this love urges you to write more! ♥
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Thank you, lovely~ ♥
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*HEARTBROKEN* ToT
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(Anonymous) 2007-06-28 10:49 pm (UTC)(link)-- Guile
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Not that I blame him, Sephiroth's pretty much ruined Cloud's life. It will be intersting to see what he has to say.
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Lovely reunion scene.
...is that Seph?