[He stoops low to catch him at an angle, bracing Cloud from a crumpling fall with one arm and loosing his grip on Masamune to free the other. The weapon falls softly into the grass by their feet.
He’s dead weight, completely lost to the pain — Sephiroth has seen it before, Cloud caging himself in his own mind, the iron bars made of broken and disjointed memory. And though the contact of keeping the man upright teases their connection into reawakening again, he cuts away the distraction, making room for concern. How many times must this happen before Cloud admits to something wrong? How much denial is his mind steeped in, and why?
And what does any of it have to do with the utterance of her? A faceless figure he only ever could imagine in the days of his childhood, representing a family-shaped void. So very few, even in the halls of Shinra’s science department, knew her name. Why does Cloud speak it like it means something, like a longing too reflective of what remains nestled inside himself?
But he’s in no state to answer questions. Even in South Sister, he’s never had the other lose himself like this, fall limply into him as if he’d ceded all control. Sephiroth folds into a slow crouch, allowing gravity to bend Cloud’s own knees for him. He shifts his weight onto the ground, hoping for an eventual recovery. And eyes upon him, a hand still foisting him upright by the shoulder, he speaks as though commanding—]
no subject
He’s dead weight, completely lost to the pain — Sephiroth has seen it before, Cloud caging himself in his own mind, the iron bars made of broken and disjointed memory. And though the contact of keeping the man upright teases their connection into reawakening again, he cuts away the distraction, making room for concern. How many times must this happen before Cloud admits to something wrong? How much denial is his mind steeped in, and why?
And what does any of it have to do with the utterance of her? A faceless figure he only ever could imagine in the days of his childhood, representing a family-shaped void. So very few, even in the halls of Shinra’s science department, knew her name. Why does Cloud speak it like it means something, like a longing too reflective of what remains nestled inside himself?
But he’s in no state to answer questions. Even in South Sister, he’s never had the other lose himself like this, fall limply into him as if he’d ceded all control. Sephiroth folds into a slow crouch, allowing gravity to bend Cloud’s own knees for him. He shifts his weight onto the ground, hoping for an eventual recovery. And eyes upon him, a hand still foisting him upright by the shoulder, he speaks as though commanding—]
At attention, SOLDIER.
[If the lie feeds consciousness, then so be it.]