[it doesn't rattle his bones into losing his grip exactly, but it does cause whatever confidence he may have had to flounder. his heart wasn't set on fighting sephiroth like this, born out of pity, of wanting to stop seeing the details of a fractured humanity leaking through instead of the usual unreadable smugness cloud almost expects to find every time he turns to look at the man.]
[right now? it's clear that sephiroth's devoid of all these things cloud was hoping to see, to just have an excuse to strike.]
[the tremors of his earlier push towards the limits of how ascertained he is to his own self still crash and ebb within him, making him deliberately sluggish. exhaustion hardly keeps him upright, and he turns to sephiroth, trying to catch his breath.]
—when you held my hand...
[a solid press of his boot forward, the buster sword far away from any form of antagonism.]
That isn't how it works.
[he had held hands with sasuke before, in some kind of handshake, and the reaction had not been strong like that.]
no subject
[right now? it's clear that sephiroth's devoid of all these things cloud was hoping to see, to just have an excuse to strike.]
[the tremors of his earlier push towards the limits of how ascertained he is to his own self still crash and ebb within him, making him deliberately sluggish. exhaustion hardly keeps him upright, and he turns to sephiroth, trying to catch his breath.]
—when you held my hand...
[a solid press of his boot forward, the buster sword far away from any form of antagonism.]
That isn't how it works.
[he had held hands with sasuke before, in some kind of handshake, and the reaction had not been strong like that.]