#chosenrule

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@chosenrule​ says: bandage: patch them up when they get hurt.

(  Prompts featuring nonverbal scenarios. )

☆ ━━━ Cloud has begun to hate flowers now, because every time he sees them he thinks of loss, tender and aching and overwhelming inside his heart. These emotions roil inside him and he tries so hard to mask this pain, even now as he stands among a field of those damned flowers. They are just as he remembers them too, yellow and shining, drooping open to the gauzy white backdrop of his hell. 

He’s keenly aware that he is dreaming. But even as his body lays leaden outside his head, he knows he can’t move. The terror is far too deep, rooted inside his soul so that he has no control. His mind runs free, tormenting him throughout the dark hours. 

Cloud looks to his hands, seeing that they are young and free of his usual scars. He wears a t-shirt too big for him, his hair knotted in a ponytail. He’s young here, but his heart still carries the heavy weight he gained from when he was an adult. All that sorrow makes his shoulders hunch, his feet feel heavy.

But then, there on the horizon, he sees another boy just a little taller than himself, hovering among all those flowers and looking lost.

Cloud doesn’t move to him, a fear filling his belly at the sight of the boy’s shimmering silver hair that gleams despite the lack of sun. The intensity of Cloud’s blue, unblemished stare makes the strange boy turn, his head cocked to the side in question.

The boy’s eyes are teal-blue, bright and wild, yet unwillingly tamed. 

Sephiroth.

Yet Cloud doesn’t feel that overwhelming panic unraveling inside him, no doubt because now Sephiroth is almost as small as him. Or maybe its the pungent aroma of all the flowers sprawled beneath their sneakers, calming despite how loathed they are.

Sephiroth crosses the space between them. He crunches the flowers beneath his shoes without care, his gaze pointed and blank. As he strolls closer, Cloud can see that Sephiroth isn’t quite like other children. He’s quiet, his eyes questioning and cunning, as if he’s riddling out every secret Cloud has ever held. 

Once Sephiroth is before Cloud, he nods to him professionally. 

“You’re bleeding,” the silver-haired child says briskly, pointing to Cloud’s knee.

And there on his smooth skin is a deep cut right on his knee, a trail of blood sliding down his leg and spattering upon his sneaker and the petals of the nearby flowers, coloring them gruesomely in crimson.

“Let me help you,” Sephiroth says, reaching in his pockets for a bandage he carries with him. Sephiroth is always prepared, seemingly.

“No!” Cloud shouts loudly, painfully. “You’ll only hurt me!”

Sephiroth tilts his head again, pursing his lips in question. 

“But--why?” Sephiroth cradles the bandage in his hands. “I don’t think--I was meant for that. The superiors say... I will do great things.”

Cloud knows well this is a lie. But Sephiroth, regardless of his long hair and inquisitive gaze, is still a child--young and lost and ever seeking in a world that fed him pretty lies. He knows this child will become a monster and will kill everyone he has ever loved, Sephiroth will mortally wound the Planet and he will divine a plan for its very destruction. But here Sephiroth could have been any young boy. He should have been playing out in the sunshine as Cloud did, but ShinRa crafted him into the perfect weapon instead. 

Everyone is dealt a set of cards when they are born, Cloud. His mother would often tell him, especially after the bullies would punch him in his hometown. She would touch his cheek and shake her head sadly. Then she would murmur, We all have things this game of life gave of us that we can’t change--a set of cards in our opening hand, picked at random. But what you do with those cards, all the choices you make in the game, are up to you--you can quit and lose the game right at beginning if you want to, just because the cards you got were pretty bad ones. But Cloud, I think we can all win if we just use our head and the cards we have to our advantage. It’s never hopeless--unless you make it so.

She would sigh, stroke his hair lovingly despite all the distance between them.

You have to remember though, everyone has terrible things they would love to change. Maybe they wanted a better card in their hand or maybe something happens in the game where their best piece is stolen. Just like you would do when playing any game, you don’t gloat about their loss. You don’t whine about your own. You take what happens and you do the best with it that you can.

Never give up, okay?

Cloud hesitates. The flowers glitter and shine in this gloomy world, pressing on without the sun or a maiden to watch over them.

His knee is throbbing and Sephiroth comes nearer. Cloud sits down and Sephiroth kneels beside him. Cloud wants to hit him and cry and scream, but Sephiroth merely places a bandage right on his bleeding knee, unaware then of what he will become. 

And Cloud doesn’t have the heart to tell him. 

“I wanted to join SOLDIER because of you,” Cloud tells Sephiroth quietly, his voice ragged with emotion. 

Sephiroth looks up at him, openly curious and bright. 

“Oh? Did you make it?” Sephiroth asks, pressing onto the bandage once more and then settling into the flowers more comfortably, leaning back on his hands and looking up into the empty sky.

“No, I didn’t.”

Sephiroth looks back at Cloud then, eyes wide. He manages the tiniest smile. 

“Don’t give up, okay?” Sephiroth says back to him.

                                                            ★

Finally, Cloud is released from his dream. He lies there in the darkness of his room, feeling the cool night air on his sweating face. 

Here in the Seventh Heaven with Tifa nearby and two sleeping children tucked warmly in their beds, would this be considered a win?

Why is he shivering from a dream he can’t place and still reeling from memories then?

Say it with Symbols

      Well that is lovely to hear, especially since you did not know a thing about Ku until we had a Discord chat haha. Thus, as far as you are concerned, I am the pinnacle of accuracy. The most faithful Kuja impersonator on the internet that you know.  #1 thongman

|| HEROES & VILLAINS || - accepting @chosenrule​- "I’m just…tired. I’m tired of everyone’s lives lying on my shoulders."

|| ||                        Kuja wasn’t certain he liked being able to sympathize with that sentiment. The swordsman had almost certainly spoken his thoughts out aloud without intent. That he could relate at all to something this monstrous, tatterdemalion soul felt was... Troubling.

      But the revival of the red planet in all its glory had once been Kuja’s raison d’etre. He was the synthetic Angel tasked with feeding souls to the beautiful, lifegiving crystal. Breathing existence back into the lost civilization of Terra. Garland had depended on him for that.

     Even having escaped his role as Terra’s savior, the rejection and the sickening sense of failure he’d faced from that world he’d once loved still haunted him. Persisting as a stubborn bitterness on the back of the tongue. Distantly foul, yet so familiar he couldn’t remember a time where he didn’t taste it.

        A burden ever carried.

angst starters | @chosenrule​​ asked | "Stay... Please?" |

How vulnerable the great hero was without his friends beside him... Still, it had taken a considerable amount of subtle effort to wear down Sephiroth’s will - so he hadn’t been entirely defenceless. 

He gave Sephiroth a sad smile and a nod. “I’m here. I’ll stay.”

He pitied him but it didn’t change his duties. Perhaps he could offer the man some real comfort, but whether he did or not mattered little.