[And like that, he is torn in too many directions at once.
There is the stark shard of denial that juts up, of course, and digs its heels in — that Cloud has it wrong, and his mother’s name is Jenova. And there are the questions that choke him from all sides, of how Cloud knows, in what context, and why he’s privy to that information when Sephiroth remained only in the darkest kind of ignorance. And then there is the doubt inlaid in it all; whose account is true? Cloud, with a broken mind and memory? Or Hojo, whose own mind and morality has long twisted into obsession and ego?
And then there is the word that jostles his core, lengthening those hairline cracks already quietly spiderwebbing across the surface of his psyche for years.
Monster.
Inhuman, other. Unbelonging and terrible; his mother? A lie? Which part is real? The fraction of what he once thought was the truth—Jenova, his mother’s name—is suddenly losing its anchoring gravity, trying to wrench itself free in the moments that may follow.
There is something sharper in his eyes. A cold fire, an almost-obsession often kept tucked neatly away.]
No. It’s what Hojo had always told me over the years — my mother’s name was Jenova. Lost to me shortly after I was born.
[And that alone tastes like bile on his tongue, leaning into that man’s words.]
Everything is surely fine
There is the stark shard of denial that juts up, of course, and digs its heels in — that Cloud has it wrong, and his mother’s name is Jenova. And there are the questions that choke him from all sides, of how Cloud knows, in what context, and why he’s privy to that information when Sephiroth remained only in the darkest kind of ignorance. And then there is the doubt inlaid in it all; whose account is true? Cloud, with a broken mind and memory? Or Hojo, whose own mind and morality has long twisted into obsession and ego?
And then there is the word that jostles his core, lengthening those hairline cracks already quietly spiderwebbing across the surface of his psyche for years.
Monster.
Inhuman, other. Unbelonging and terrible; his mother? A lie? Which part is real? The fraction of what he once thought was the truth—Jenova, his mother’s name—is suddenly losing its anchoring gravity, trying to wrench itself free in the moments that may follow.
There is something sharper in his eyes. A cold fire, an almost-obsession often kept tucked neatly away.]
No. It’s what Hojo had always told me over the years — my mother’s name was Jenova. Lost to me shortly after I was born.
[And that alone tastes like bile on his tongue, leaning into that man’s words.]
Explain. What thing?