Chapter Text
Cloud didn’t remember much about the first few weeks. He remembered the fight, of course. The news, gloating about their deaths. The swords thrown at his feet as proof. He remembered killing Sephiroth. He remembered screaming in agony as it felt like grief and guilt would make his heart burst in his chest. After that he remembered… walking. Snow. Blissful, excruciating numbness. A road, and a car, and a man.
“Oh my god!” the man had said, and the hand on Cloud’s frozen arm had burned. “Are you okay?”
No. His lips had formed the word. He remembered that. But no noise had left his mouth. I’m never going to be okay again.
Then his memory skipped again, like a film reel hiccuping over a poor splice. He remembered being carried into a warm house, his blood- and snow-damp uniform sticking to his skin. He remembered the taste of chamomile tea. And he remembered an argument over his head as he’d dozed on a couch.
“He needs to be in a hospital, Ethan!”
“You didn’t see his face when I said the same thing. Besides, I checked when I was getting all that blood off of him. He’s not seriously injured.”
“He should be dead.”
Cloud remembered agreeing with that.
“Something is weird about him, Ethan. Maybe not exactly like she was, but… I know you feel bad for almost running him over, but we have to think of the baby first.”
“Mia… he was terrified. And he’s not aggressive. He tried to make sure I was okay. I already sent a message to Chris. If he came from somewhere bad, then fine. But if he didn’t… I may trust Chris, but I don’t trust the people he’d hand the kid to.”
“He was covered in blood and dragging around swords bigger than he is.”
“They clearly aren’t his weapons. I think someone tried to kill him and dumped him out here. Maybe they thought he was a failure at… whatever. But he’s just a kid.”
“...fine. But he sleeps on the couch. And I lock the bedroom door at night.”
Cloud’s memory slowly became clearer after that. The man was Ethan. The woman was his wife, Mia, who was pregnant with their first child. At some point there was another man—Chris, obvious military—who tried to talk to him about who he was and where he’d been before. Cloud didn’t remember many of the questions, but he did remember his eyes burning and his chest squeezing painfully with grief. Ethan sent Chris away and let him go back to sleep after that.
He did a lot of sleeping. He also did a lot of pretending to sleep, and even more laying down and staring vacantly at nothing. Sometimes he was just numb. Sometimes he rehearsed his failures, over and over and over again.
Sometimes he thought about getting up and leaving, but the impulse was never quite strong enough. His presence could only bring misfortune, but… these people were so normal. A little weird-feeling, maybe, but normal. And he didn’t even know what the world he’d accidentally stranded himself in was like. Sure, Ethan and Mia were clearly under some kind of protection, but without the immediate threat of violence he just… couldn’t bring himself to run. He only laid there and rotted.
Or tried to rot. Ethan was kind of annoying about getting him up, and walking, and outside, and ‘taking care of himself.’ Mia was a little too wary of him to more than suggest from a distance, which was smart, but Ethan would actually drag him up and out into the fresh air. Sometimes Cloud felt bad enough about letting a civilian drag him around to actually walk on his own two feet, but sometimes he was annoyed enough to be a deadweight.
“My god,” Ethan would grunt, struggling to lift hyper-dense enhanced physiology packed into a deceptively small frame, “you are so heavy for a freaking beanpole!”
It was satisfying, when he had the energy for pettiness.
Cloud remembered waking up—really waking up—only once before the point where he fully snapped out of it. In the middle of an unremarkable night, his eyes had flown open as a surge of adrenaline brought his body to life. He sat up and listened closely. It was quiet, with snow falling outside and the civilians peacefully asleep in their room. Still, something was wrong. He could feel it.
Silent as a coeurl, he slipped off the couch and padded to the window that faced the front yard. Without disturbing the curtains, he angled himself to peer out through a gap and into the darkness. For a while there was nothing, but his sense of unease only grew stronger. Then, a soft tapping, and a crow hopped into his line of sight.
He narrowed his eyes at it, fingers flexing with the sudden urge to go get the swords from the shed. Something was off. Something was wrong.
The bird did very little other than peck at the ice and shake the snow from its feathers. Cloud stood utterly still and watched it until it finally flew away. After a few more seconds, the sense of unease dissipated. He backed up and then prowled in a circuit around the first floor, checking all of the doors and windows to be sure. He would have taken up a kitchen knife, but that would have made Mia nervous. Anything that threatened the Winters would just have to die by his fists.
The master bedroom lock clicked when he was standing guard by the back door, and he realized time had escaped him. Ethan came shambling downstairs, hair mussed with sleep. He blinked in shock when he realized Cloud was up.
“‘S wrong?” he asked, voice rough. “You okay?”
Cloud nodded and peered out through a back window one more time. The sun was starting to rise. He hadn’t felt uneasy in hours.
“Um. Bad dream?” Ethan guessed, cautiously inching closer, like he was afraid he’d scare Cloud off.
Cloud shook his head, then hesitated. He didn’t think he had it in him to explain aloud. The numbness was already starting to creep back in. His eyes landed on a scrap of paper and a pen, left on the kitchen table. He took them and wrote out a note.
I thought I heard something.
Ethan’s expression became very soft after he read it. “Hey,” he said gently, telegraphing his motions as he reached out and pulled Cloud into a side-hug. “It’s okay. You don’t have to be worried. Chris and his guys look out for us, and they’ll take care of any scary noises. Plus they trained me a bit, so if something ever happens, just run to me, okay?”
It took a considerable amount of self-control not to give Ethan a look of intense skepticism, but Cloud ended up nodding anyway. If something happened, he would run to Ethan and Mia—to protect them. Civilians with some training would never beat the skill of a SOLDIER.
Not long after that, though, Cloud finally snapped out of his stupor for one simple reason: Rosemary was born.
He’d forgotten. It had been so long since he’d seen a baby, and he’d forgotten how small and fragile they were. How pure. How innocent. Ethan ‘showed’ him how to hold a baby, surprised when Cloud automatically shifted his arms to support her correctly. Mia was resting, and the house was quiet. Rose grunted, wiggling a little, then settled down.
I’m going to protect you, he thought, and that was that. Maybe he’d gotten two worlds killed, but he could protect one family. He just had to wake up and do it.
Mia warmed to him once she realized just how protective he was of Rose. He could tell because she didn’t hover when he was holding the baby, or tell him to go somewhere else when he was sitting and keeping watch. She also brought him back some small things from the store, which previously only Ethan had done—a hoodie, a notebook, pens, colored pencils. He started using the notebook and pen to communicate, not quite up to speaking yet.
“So,” said Ethan after the first—well, second, technically—time Cloud used pen and paper to actually tell them things, “I know it’s a little late, but now that you’re, uh, ‘talking’ to us… what’s your name?”
After a moment of hesitation, he wrote out Cloud and turned the notebook around.
Both of the adults looked a little surprised. Maybe it was a strange name for the area. “Cloud, huh?” said Ethan. “Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better, Cloud. Could you tell us where you were before I found you?”
He was sure they’d tried to look into his history. Their contacts with the soldiers who guarded them had probably searched too, but of course they wouldn’t have found anything. After another moment of hesitation, he slowly wrote out It doesn’t matter. Everyone is gone.
Ethan frowned. Mia looked both worried and nervous. “What does that mean?” she asked, bouncing Rose in her arms.
It took even longer to write out his answer this time, as he at least tried to be tactful. It would be hard to protect the Winters if they asked him to leave. Everyone is dead. An evil man killed them. I had to kill him. I’m sorry if it scares you, but you’re not in danger from them or me. I want to protect you.
This time, they exchanged a glance. Cloud looked away, arms wrapped around himself, foot tapping in agitation. He waited for them to tell him to leave, or maybe even attack him. He would retreat if they did, then figure out how to keep watch from a distance.
“Cloud,” Mia asked in a strained voice, “were you an—were you experimented on?”
He flinched. Then, reluctantly, he nodded.
“Do you remember what they used? Was it called mold, or anything like that?”
Surprised by how specific the question was, he looked over and made eye contact. Ethan looked nauseous. Mia looked terrified. They relaxed a little when he shook his head firmly.
“Did they have a logo or symbol? Do you remember what it looked like?” she asked with only a little less urgency.
Clearly, these two had a history with experiments of some kind, which explained why they were being guarded. He considered his options, then nodded slowly and took the notebook back. With a few efficient slashes, he drew the SOLDIER emblem and presented it to Mia.
This time, she looked truly relieved. “You only saw this one?” she checked, and he nodded.
“Was it called something?” asked Ethan, fingers tapping anxiously against the couch arm.
SOLDIER, Cloud responded honestly.
Ethan’s expression crumpled. “Oh, kid… was that what they tried to make you?”
It was less ‘try’ and more ‘succeed,’ but he just nodded. I have a question for you, he wrote, unable to completely quell his growing suspicion.
“Okay,” said Ethan. “Shoot.”
Were you scientists?
He knew immediately that Ethan was not, but Mia’s subtle discomfort made him sit up and take notice. She didn’t say anything, though. Instead, Ethan firmly said, “No, Cloud. We’re not. And we would never hurt you. The truth is… we’re out here because we were hurt by… a bad group of people who experimented on kids. So we would never do that. Okay?”
Cloud drummed his fingers on his notebook, eyes on Mia, then on Rose. Decisively, he wrote out, The evil man who killed everyone was experimented on by his mother and father before he was even born. I don’t like people who experiment on babies. It ends badly.
It was Mia’s turn to look nauseous. Ethan glanced between Cloud and Rose, wide-eyed. “You think we’d—no! No, we would never have done anything to Rosemary. Or let anyone else do anything. I promise.”
“Never,” Mia echoed with enough conviction that Cloud believed her. Whatever she’d done before, she wasn’t doing it now. He would reserve judgement until he knew more details—and stay close enough to make sure nothing happened to baby Rose.
Cloud never pressed the issue, mostly for Ethan’s sake. Mia began to eye him uneasily again, just like he eyed her, and they did a strange, protective dance around Rose. It was pretty clear they both wanted to be able to trust each other with the baby, but didn’t. As a result, Ethan was often used as a silent compromise.
He seemed vaguely confused about what was happening, but happy enough to hold Rose and not rock the boat.
Six months passed like that. Then, one day, Mia went out to run a few errands and left Rose with Ethan and Cloud. When she came back, though… well, she didn’t. Because what walked through the door may have looked like Mia, but Cloud could tell instantly that it wasn’t.
“Hey—“ Ethan started, rising from the couch to greet his wife, but Cloud interrupted him.
“That’s not Mia.”
Not-Mia looked at him curiously. Ethan turned a shocked and delighted look on him. “You talked!” The delight quickly turned to confusion. “And—wait, what?”
“That’s not Mia.” Without taking his eyes off her, he picked up Ethan’s phone and tossed it to him. The man managed to catch it with the hand that wasn’t holding Rose. “Call your soldier friends and stay behind me.”
Not-Mia smiled like she was playing along with a game. “Cloud, what are you talking about? How could I be anyone but me?”
He summoned Rapier to his hand—a recent skill, but useful, especially now. “I’m not easy to kill. If you’re smart you’ll leave now and give Mia back,” he warned quietly.
He didn't think she would be smart.
The fake raised her hands as if she was afraid and turned her attention to Ethan. “Honey, tell him to put down the sword. You know it’s me, you know I would never hurt him.”
Ethan hesitated. “Cloud…”
He didn’t budge or shift his attention. “Give. Mia. Back.”
His intense surety seemed to tilt the situation in his favor, at least in Ethan’s eyes. “I—Okay, Mia, stay there. I’m calling Chris.”
“This is absurd,” she protested, though Cloud could see impatience begin to break her act. “All I did was go out to run a few errands!”
“Yeah, well,” said Ethan, hitting speed-dial without taking his eyes from them, “with Rose here, I’d rather be safe than sorry. A fake Mia wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to us.”
Not-Mia’s expression finally dropped into a dark scowl, and that millisecond was all the warning Cloud got. Black tendrils of something wrong burst out toward Ethan and Rose, but he intercepted them with SOLDIER speed. An arc of Fire from Rapier burned them away. Not-Mia screamed, Ethan yelled in alarm, and Cloud didn’t hold back. He rammed straight into the impostor, using his shoulder to send her flying back through the front door.
“What are you!” she howled, forced to drop her disguise as Cloud attacked mercilessly. He didn’t bother to answer.
The fight was vicious, with the strange monster-woman possessing abilities that reminded him of Jenova. Fortunately, she wasn’t prepared for him at all, and he was winning handily within minutes. He also didn’t care about minor injuries, which helped considerably. Beneath and behind him, he caught the snatches of Ethan yelling into his phone.
“Am I sure? Of fucking course I’m sure, I’m watching him fight the fake Mia RIGHT NOW! Get over here and find my fucking wife!”
Cloud would have smiled if he hadn’t been focused on beating not-Mia.
She seemed to realize the degree of danger she was in far too late, shrieking about destiny and her daughter and those who were ‘beneath’ her and her ‘dark god.’ Cloud fought even harder, disgusted by the growing similarities to Sephiroth and Jenova. Around then the cavalry finally arrived, announced by the crack of a sniper rifle and a bullet that tore into the monster woman’s skull. Even that wasn’t enough to kill her.
Cloud took advantage of her disorientation to bury Rapier in her stomach and unleash a fatal barrage of magic. That, evidently, was.
“NO!” she screamed, staggering. “My daughter! My—EVA!”
Her entire mutated body seemed to petrify, along with the writhing black tentacles she’d been using to attack him. He prodded her warily with Rapier and part of her body crumbled like ash.
Gross. He enveloped the corpse in fire one more time just to be safe.
“Cloud!” Ethan shouted, audibly desperate, so he turned and jogged away. The monster-woman didn’t feel alive in that vaguely J-cell-like way anymore, so he was confident it was fine. A bunch of agents swarmed the yard—he was farther from the house than he’d thought—but he ignored all of them.
Ethan, holding Rose, looked profoundly relieved when Cloud reached him. “Are you okay?” he demanded, grabbing his torn and bloodied hoodie as he looked him over. Cloud looked him over in return, but he and the baby were fine, so Cloud relaxed.
Ethan did not relax, especially once he found a bunch of parallel tears in the hoodie that the woman’s claws had torn across his chest. “Shit, you’re injured! Where’s the medic—MEDIC!”
Cloud caught his free hand and shook his head.
The man understood him immediately. Sort of. His expression became tight. “Look I know you don’t like doctors, but you can trust this one,” he said, agitated. “You’re bleeding and burned!”
Cloud shook his head harder and held up a finger. He used the cleaner sleeve of his hoodie to clear away the blood and show the intact skin beneath. Hopefully Ethan wouldn’t think too hard about the fading pink scar there.
“What?” Ethan leaned in close, frowning. “Oh… was it not yours? That’s… insane, kid.”
He shrugged. Yeah.
Chris spoke up behind them. “You should still get checked out.”
Cloud turned and leveled his sword at the soldier, glaring. The other soldiers who were paying close attention tensed up and subtly moved their hands toward their weapons.
Immediately, Chris raised his hands. His expression barely changed. “Hey, calm down. I’m not a threat to you.”
Threat? Cloud glared harder and drove Rapier into the ground for quick access without giving away any of his secrets, then took his notebook from his pocket with as much sarcasm as body language could convey. In a furious scribble, he wrote out a message to correct the sorry excuse for a security captain’s assumptions.
You couldn’t kill me if you tried, just like you couldn’t protect Mia. You knew she was a target. How hard is it to keep eyes on a protectee for ONE afternoon? Now what the fuck are you going to do about it, dipshit?
Ethan, reading over Cloud’s shoulder as he wrote, drew in a breath. “Kid—”
Disdainful, Cloud tore the page out and presented it to its intended recipient. He crossed his arms and glared as it was read. His fury climbed when Chris’s eyebrows rose with nothing more than mild surprise. One of the soldiers moved close enough to read the paper and quickly turned away, hand over their mouth. He was pretty sure someone abused their rifle scope to do the same from a much greater distance, because he heard a loud, delighted laugh blare from the comm unit in the captain’s ear.
Ethan put a hand on Cloud’s shoulder. “Look, don’t be mad. We don’t know—”
Fury gave him a voice again, but only for Ethan. “Don’t defend him,” Cloud hissed. “He’s bad at his fucking job.”
Chris folded up the paper and tucked it into an inner pocket of his long coat. “We’re going to find Mia,” he said, apparently trying to be reassuring. “I promise. But it’s going to take a little while, so you have to be patient. This is a lot bigger than you know. Than even we knew until recently.”
Cloud’s already low opinion of the Idiot plummeted even further. He growled in the back of his throat and turned halfway toward Ethan, keeping most of the agents in his periphery. Fuck this guy and his horrible C2, I’ll find her myself, he wrote furiously.
“What? No!” Ethan immediately protested. Rose burbled, as if in agreement. “You’re not even wearing shoes!”
Cloud rolled his eyes. “I’ll put shoes on first.”
“No way, kid. Chris is a professional, he and his team are going to handle it. They have more info than you do.”
The Idiot had moved close enough to read the additional message. “You don’t even know where she might be,” he pointed out with an undercurrent of incredulity. “And you’re ten.”
Cloud rounded on him and jabbed a finger into his sternum with enough force to hurt. To the soldier’s credit, he didn’t react. What are you going to do, stop me? The only leverage you have is Ethan and Rose, and if you threaten them I’ll kill you here and now.
“Cloud, please,“ said Ethan, alarmed enough by the message to yank him back and wrap an arm around his chest. “I know you’re mad, I’m mad too, but you have to calm down. They didn’t lose Mia on purpose and they aren’t going to hurt us. It’s gonna be okay.”
Only then did Cloud realize he was so angry that he was breathing hard and his eyes were definitely slit. He didn’t trust Mia, but apparently he’d gotten attached to her—or maybe to his idea of protecting her like he protected Ethan and Rose. Still, blind fury wasn’t going to help him here. He reached out to grasp Rapier’s hilt and took deep breaths until he felt his eyes go back to normal.
Much more calmly, he wrote I’m not going to lose anyone else, presenting the words to Ethan alone. He carefully broke free of the half-restraint, took up Rapier, and ushered him back into the house. The Idiot followed them, but he ignored that.
Ethan’s voice was sad and soft. “Kid…”
What sidearm were you trained on?
The man blinked, confused by his question. “I—a couple of different kinds, why?”
Cloud took a pilfered G19 from his hoodie and handed it over.
“Where did you get this?” Ethan asked, bewildered. Rose cooed, and Cloud considered that a perfect reminder as to why it was needed. He jerked his head in the direction of the Idiot, who was suddenly patting his mysteriously-empty appendix holster. Ethan gaped. “Cloud!”
“Don’t trust them with Rose’s safety,” he advised, picking up his boots from near the door. “I’ll find you as soon as I rescue Mia.”
A soft displacement of air and sharp whistle was all the warning he had, but it was enough. He jerked Rapier up before fully registering what was happening. Ting! went a dart against the blade. He dropped his boots and snatched it from the air.
Someone was dumb enough to think they could drug him.
A lightning bolt of fury swept over him before his hand had even fully closed around the shaft of the dart. He didn’t think, just reacted, and maybe that was for the best. Instead of killing the dense motherfucker, he angrily flicked his wrist and sent the dart flying back the way it had come. Based on the yelling that erupted, it found its mark.
Now Chris’s expression was actually a little bit shocked as he stood just to the side of the front door. Cloud didn’t even try to restrain the inhumanity of his rage. “I’ve had enough of people drugging me to get what they want,” he snarled. “Try that again and you won’t like what happens.”
He snatched his boots up and stormed past Ethan toward the back door, using a moment of cover to dismiss Rapier and free up his hands without anyone seeing. Let them fucking wonder where it had gone.
The soldiers were now smart enough to leave him alone as he paused to pull on his boots and lace them up. Ethan, however, hadn’t given up on being a responsible adult.
“Cloud,” he said, approaching cautiously.
“I’m going to find Mia,” Cloud said, implacable.
Ethan hesitated, bouncing Rose in his arms. “I… don’t think she’d be happy if you got hurt trying. I wouldn’t either.”
Cloud paused. His fury ebbed. Even now, the man still didn’t fully grasp what he was. “Ethan,” he said quietly, eyes on the floor, “it’s not an exaggeration to say I was made for things like this.”
“…you’re more than a weapon, kid. You’re way more than what anyone tried to make you.”
He grunted noncommittally. “I’ll be fine. You should worry about that idiot and his team.”
“Look, I’m sorry they tried to drug you. That was dumb. But you’re a kid, it shouldn’t be on you to go rescue Mia.”
It was way too late for that. His voice finally failed him again, so he wrote out the last thing he was willing to say on the topic. I choose this. I’ll be back. And if they get you in a stupid situation, I’ll rescue you and Rose too. Try not to let them.
Ethan hesitated. “Are you really that confident you can find her?” he finally asked. Cloud nodded firmly, and he sighed. “Okay. It’s not like I can stop you, just… be careful.”
Again, Cloud nodded. Rose cooed at him, and he smiled at her one more time before slipping out the back door. As soon as he was out of sight, he broke into a sprint and turned in the direction of the vague not-right feeling in the far distance. Hopefully he would beat the Idiot there. The last thing he wanted was to put up with those people slowing him down.
