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[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.]

[And like that, the spark of fire behind the fight—already a waning thing—flickers and finds itself extinguishing beneath Cloud’s exhaustion. Sephiroth only stands with Masamune gripped, seeing little point in continuing like this; he will raise his blade of Cloud swings at him again, ringing steel between them like clockwork, but there’s so little antagonism in his frame that he thinks it’s unnecessary.

What he says, after all, is something more worthy of his attentions than this fight.]

What do you mean?

[Given that Cloud was Sephiroth’s first, he has no frame of reference to compare.]

It wasn't as intense.

[for once, at least, cloud manages to explain without hiding behind half-truth or offering an unreliable report of things. still, one could say that his lack of understanding could also be seen as unreliable.]

I did the same with someone else. [hold hands. he swallows, hard, and stands upright.] It felt warm, but it didn't...

[cause him to black out momentarily. neither did it feel like there was a pull between them.]

[thought they are kept feet apart, cloud is keen to want to understand.]

D'you feel that?

[the kind of energy, physically, between them, feeling as if it's curling inwards and making cloud incredibly aware of where sephiroth stands, no matter that cloud can see him with his own eyes.]

[Of course he feels it, but it was always so easy to blame it on something else. In South Sister, the town’s propensity for mind games. Here, the ease of syncing causing connections to bloom, maybe some of them more lasting than others.

But Cloud says none of his previous were as intense, didn’t achieve that same level of fulfillment and completion (words unspoken, but he knows what he feels; he feels it too) and for the first time for either of them, they are forced to face a reality they had ignored before.

Just why do they feel this way?]

It’s been like that from the start.

[He says, finally, as though it should have been obvious; revealing that he had felt something keenly like it before, but it was simply never brought up in their passing conversations.]

A knowing; where you are, when you approach. It’s been that way since you met [attacked] me in that other world. Haven’t you realized it before?

No.

[admitting to something that he wasn't able to make sense of and landing himself underneath sephiroth is not what cloud would rather do, but it seems important to make a point of it—to show that this is something that bothers him enough to allow himself in that position.]

[for cloud, it's never worked with the same clarity as sephiroth. sure—he knew where the man was at any given time, but he had figured it was because cloud just happened to know where to look for.]

[he doesn't realize, either, that it pulls him to want to be close to sephiroth.]

What the hell is it?

I don’t know.

[Blunt, clear. He doesn’t. How would he?

He can only compare how he feels now, versus how he felt around Cloud when he was nothing more than a cadet; no attachment, no connection. Barely an awareness of his existence, a Shinra army grunt who wouldn’t take off his helmet.]

But it wasn’t there in Nibelheim. Whatever the change is, it has to do with you.

[And perhaps something also with that broken memory of his.]

...whatever happened after Nibelheim—

[he stops, pulling away from that train of thought before he can even bring himself to consider that he brought it up at all.]

[this is another reason why cloud loathes the fact that it's sephiroth from before nibelheim burnt who stands before him; that it's not sephiroth, seemingly all-knowing and confident of something cloud wasn't even aware of even surmounted to anything.]

[it is why he mutters—] Useless. [—an echo of a statement in another world, how sephiroth is nothing but useless to him in this state, devoid of answers and insight, in a similar quest as him to figure things out.]

[with a huff and exhaustion clear in his movements, cloud steadies himself and places the sword onto his back again.]

Now you know how it works. [synchronicity.] Don't go dying just 'cause you're too embarrassed can't ask someone else to hold your hand for a minute.

[all this barking, cloud,]

[All bark, no bite. Always on the precipice of an answer, it seems, before Cloud’s own stubbornness—or the state of his mind—seems to steal it away from them both. Sephiroth’s brows twitch in response to that uttered word (useless), but the fire between them has already flared in the clashing of steel, and he cannot bring himself to light it a second time.

If this is Cloud’s way of being helpful, he’s not quite sure it’s succeeded, now in the wake of their conversation. But Sephiroth accedes the point, brief and without any real motivation to argue.]

And you?

[As in, you don’t seem to be the hand-holding type, either, Cloud.]

I have friends.

[it's perhaps unfair, what he says, but should cloud not be able to strike sephiroth significantly with his blade—he can at least do so with his words, a pettiness that will always remain there, a hatred that will never die no matter if the man before him may not deserve it as far as committed actions go.]

[and while sephiroth may very well be capable of making his own friends, cloud digs into the sore sport revealed from this conversation—this lack of belonging sephiroth seems to bothered with.]

But you're my responsibility. I'll check up on you again.

[his boots feel like they're filled with rocks as he forces himself to make his exit now, towards the back door, his attempt to sound cool only able of being matched by his actions and allowing no further room for discussion, after all.]

Edited 2021-02-28 15:21 (UTC)

[He had friends once, too, Cloud. They simply died, or turned traitor against him.

If the words cut, dig into revealed insecurity, he doesn't let it show. He watches as Cloud disappears past the back gate, leaving him behind. Alone with his blade, back to whatever task he conjures up for himself.

His focus will suffer in the wake of their discussion, so many things left unanswered. But he forcibly sews it back together all the same, and spends the rest of the day training with no one in the yard of an empty townhouse.]

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