For the soulmate-au prompts: The danger meter one was really interesting, so maybe the members of AVALANCHE are... 95% sure that there's SOME soulmate pair among them, but whenever they try to figure out *who* they accidentally get attacked, or different people's meters went up every time the same two people fight or something. Up to you if the pairing is everyone/everyone, just a few, the concept of AVALANCHE, or none of them are soulmates and the actual soulmates just have *awful* timing.
Not sure this is what you were hoping for but...
PROMPT LIST READ ON AO3
Cloud never gave much of a hoot about soulmates. He'd been born with eight meters. Cloud was what people called a nexus. A person who was the lodestone to a group— someone meant to bring and hold them together. What it was was annoying.
They constantly felt like they were burning, not hot or painful but an awareness that made Cloud itch at them. His Ma had taken to wrapping his arm in bandages when he was small to stop him making himself bleed.Â
Everyone else he knew had one if any at all. Tifa only had one, anyway, and Ma didn't have any. It wasn't uncommon not to have one, in fact it was more rare to have any at all. The folk in Nibelheim whispered alternately that it was a curse or a blessing. Either way, they'd say, it meant you were going to have an interesting life. Cloud just wished they'd make up their minds about which it was.
He first realized that one of them was Tifa when her mom died. One of the little meters on his arm burned more than usual, making little hitches and jumps in growing color. Then there was the bridge, the fall. The mark had been dulled until Tifa's injuries healed.
Her dad still tells him to stay away. Maybe because of it. Cloud's not sure.
But then he's leaving for Midgar and he fails to get into SOLDIER and everything just seems to keep on falling apart until all he knows is mako green and a kind voice. Then there's Tifa again, the green is gone, and he's blowing things up and trying to get out of this nonsense.
Tifa tells him she's one of his soulmates and he believes her, because who else can he trust except Tifa. Putting up with her friends is another matter entirely.
But one of the meters is growing in concert with the ratatatat of Barret's gun arm, and after that they come in constantly. Aerith follows, then Red XIII. There's Yuffie, Vincent and Cid. The strangest one comes in the form of Cait Sithe, which is the first clue Cloud has that there's someone behind the thing. The betrayal is still a surprise, a sting.
Then Aerith dies and Cloud's left wearing a mark that's gone stone cold and dark. Frozen in place and never to inch higher again. But there's little time to grieve when his world is falling to pieces alongside his mind.
They make it out somehow, Cloud pulls himself together, pulls them together. It works.
EXTRA:
"What did you call them?" Tifa asks a little distracted.
Cloud blinks slowly from where he's settled at the bar. "I always thought of them as experience bars."
