Chapter Text
Cloud met a lot of different iterations of his greatest enemy. Most of them insane. Most of them monstrous. Most tried to kill him. The worst ones tried to keep him. But the ones he really, really hated meeting weren't the monstrous ones, or the cunning ones, or the godlike ones, or even the ones who tried to trap him forever by their sides.
He hated meeting the innocent ones.
The silver-haired child whimpered, pain cutting through his forced sleep. An IV line fed bright green fluid into his tiny arm. He looked sickly pale against the sheets, awash in the harsh fluorescent lighting of the room. Sticky dried tear tracks ran down his face.
Cloud undid the restraints one by one, methodical and efficient, intimately familiar with their weight and design. He climbed onto the table and slid in behind the child, carefully arranging him in his lap. For as long as Cloud could give it, this little one would know a touch that didn't hurt. That didn’t take, chipping away at his humanity bit by bit.
Cloud hated seeing these innocent, tormented children, because he couldn't do a goddamn thing to save them. If he killed Hojo in the brief time he had to act, someone else would take his place. Someone else would continue the experiments. If he stole the child, he would never get far enough to find him a safe home. Sometimes Cloud wondered if the kindest act would be to kill them, these innocents. Gently. Painlessly. It wouldn't be hard. It might even be a mercy.
He never did.
The child whimpered, curling into his warmth, little fingers grasping the fabric of his worn shirt. “Shh…” he soothed, wrapping the boy in his arms. He hummed, an old lullaby that his mother used to sing to him. A mountain lullaby, fostered in the high snowy peaks of Nibelheim. His voice wasn’t particularly good—his Ma would have called it a hunter’s voice, made for singing ‘round a campfire and in front of a tanning rack. Rough-hewn, like the mountains that sustained them.
The boy relaxed as the song wound on, burrowing into his warmth—likely the first and last warmth he would ever experience. Bright green pulsed through his veins like a curse. Cloud hummed on, ignoring the familiar pain that crept up his legs and threatened to send him hurtling into yet another world. Every second was precious. Every second was hated.
He thought of his own children, who he hadn’t seen in so very long. He missed them so much it felt like a physical wound. But they were safe. They were safe at home, with AVALANCHE and everyone who loved them. He would have endured this curse for an eternity to make sure of that. He would have endured even more to get just one last moment to hold them, like he was holding this nascent shadow of his enemy.
He really hoped that the next Sephiroth he met tried to kill him.