Chapter Text
The first sight Cloud saw was the steel ceiling; the second was the ugly gray floor as he emptied his stomach. Nausea rolled around in his stomach like he was on a boat during a hurricane. A heavy migraine settled over him as his mind slowly pieced itself together again. The fact it was ‘again’ made him want to laugh. Still, at least he wasn’t stabbed through Sephiroth’s blade back in Nibelheim. Small mercies, he supposed.
Nonetheless, this wasn’t how he expected this to go. Then again, dying hadn’t been expected either. Cloud shook his head as he steeled himself. He made a promise to Gaia. Time travel, save the world, yadda, yadda, yadda. Something about Sephiroth’s screwing with the past, somehow erasing his existence. Was her sending Cloud back going to correct that? Admittedly, he zoned out after the first ten minutes of her and Aerith’s Lifestream Seminar. In short, kill the bad guys, destroy the reactors, and stop Shinra, he mentally listed.
No biggie, right? He rubbed his aching temples. The pain behind them lessened, allowing him to look around. It wasn’t his hometown of Nibelheim, that was for sure. He studied the other side of the room, realization dawning as he took in the colorful mural behind him: Aerith’s childhood room. He touched the artwork gently. A familiar sadness flooded through him. She was still alive in this timeline. His hand clenched into a fist. He could save her. He could save them all, even if they no longer remembered who he was.
His gaze traveled to the furniture, pausing as he took in their size. His brows furrowed. He hadn’t remembered the room being quite so big. He shook his head, dispersing the thought. He needed to focus on the bigger picture. Gaia sent him back in time to stop Sephiroth. Where that was in time was still undetermined. Considering his location inside Shinra’s home base, the best thing to do would be to get rid of Hojo first. He headed toward the door, pausing as he noticed the knob’s much higher placement. How had—He looked down and cursed.
Instead of an adult's battle-hardened hands, he discovered a child's soft, chubby digits. Further down, he saw significantly shorter legs than he remembered. His hands grabbed his cheeks, feeling the baby fat. He scowled.
“Really? Oh, come on,” he grumbled, internally kicking himself for not noticing sooner.
His pants and shoes hadn’t made the trip through time (why hadn’t he noticed that?), leaving him in his sleeveless turtleneck that hung more like a dress. It made his headache all the worse. Frustration boiled underneath his skin.
“Damn it. Just…Damn it.”
He clenched his hands into fists. Tears pricked at the edges of his eyes. He wiped them away, surprised at how easily they came out. Anger, fear, sadness—they rested under his skin, threatening to spill over at a moment’s notice. Cold fear swept through him. Was this what it was like to be a child? He couldn’t remember, which made his headache even worse. Suddenly, he empathized with Marlene and Denzel so much more. This was hard. He mentally pushed back the tide of feelings until his heart beat normally once again. His shoulders relaxed. He knew it wouldn’t fix the issue, but it was better than doing nothing and letting it all spill forth.
He looked for First Tsuragi in every corner of the room. Unfortunately, he found it just as missing as the rest of his clothes. He let out an annoyed huff. Well, this was just peachy. His eyes traveled through the area for possible weapons before settling on a small wood pile. He smiled at the little stick figures young Aerith had crafted. There were only a few that were completed. The remainder was unfinished, likely due to her and her mother’s escape, he reasoned. Taking out the largest, he fashioned the stick into a makeshift spear until he could find something metal and hopefully pointy.
Cloud soon discovered his emotions weren’t the only thing enhanced as he swung at the door. The loud screech and bending metal quickly informed him that, age aside, he at least retained his mako enhancements. The stick though…He returned to the pile and pulled out a few more, just in case.
A sigh escaped his lips, the voice too high for his liking. One good thing in this dumpster fire of a situation, Cloud mentally reasoned, was that he hadn’t lost everything.
“Let’s mosey, I guess,” he mumbled as he opened the door to face the world.
Turns out, the world sucked. Hard.
An alarm blared against his eardrums as he took in his handiwork.
“Emergency: Evacuate immediately. All Shinra Personnel, please proceed to the nearest fire exit. I repeat, all Shinra Personnel, proceed to the nearest fire exit,” a robotic voice instructed above the screaming researchers and burning machinery.
Although the disadvantages weighed heavier, being fun-sized did have some advantages, Cloud thought. On one hand, the cameras were too high to pick up on his movements as he dismantled Hojo’s lab. Being low to the ground also allowed him to take out numerous monsters and kneecaps, including Hojo’s. On the other hand, being so tiny meant everything took twice as long as it would have otherwise, and his stamina was worse than if he had just run up Shinra’s sixty flights of stairs. Cloud wiped the sweat from his brow as he took in the damage, breathing heavily. He was down to one stick, too.
Hojo’s laboratory was up in flames, much to his great pleasure. Even better was that breaking Hojo’s kneecaps had come with the unintended side-effect of him falling down the stairs onto his escaped creations. While Cloud didn’t like to see others get hurt, it felt like karma for the man to get his comeuppance in such a way. The cherry on top of his time-traveling sundae would have been killing Jenova, too, but apparently, the timeline was too early for her to be here. Ah well. She was likely still in Nibelheim, he reasoned. Maybe he could take down the reactor and Jenova in one fell swoop? It would take him a long while to get to his hometown, though, especially on such little legs, which were already burning with exhaustion. He resisted the urge to yawn. Cloud would never admit it, but he would love a catnap right now.
Thundering footsteps broke him out of his musings. Steel boots, by the sound of it. Shinra’s infantry must be coming. It wouldn’t be easy, but Cloud was still enhanced, so as long as he went for the legs, he should be alright. He readied his stick, shoulders pitching forward. Just as he turned the corner to face them, he froze.
No. Not infantry, he realized in growing horror.
SOLDIER.
Even with the two’s backs turned, he recognized them immediately. The first made his heart ache at how young he looked. Zack Fair couldn’t be more than fifteen or sixteen. He was dressed in Third Class SOLDIER garb of the time and lacked his distinctive facial scar. Cloud almost gasped aloud as Zack’s presence answered his earlier question: Cloud was over a decade into the past. No, more than a decade, he thought since he hadn’t met Zack until the man was a First Class. This timeline was way before Nibelheim, before Cloud had even come to Shinra to try out for SOLDIER. Goddess, he looked so innocent, Cloud thought somberly. Untouched by the tragedies that had befallen him.
He pushed down the urge to reach out to his former friend. Cloud Strife didn’t exist in this universe. In essence, they were strangers. It would be better for the other never to get tangled up in Cloud’s situation.
The second person did not invoke such a nostalgic feeling. A surge of rage flooded his body, followed by freezing terror. The word echoed inside his mind: Sephiroth . Flashes of memory overtook him. He hissed. Reunion pulsated in his body, forcing him to step forward before his mind broke free enough to take one back. Cloud mentally berated himself for not being quieter as the two turned around from the noise. He fixed his weapon on the two; his teeth clenched together as he struggled not to see their past selves overlaid by how he remembered them. His headache spiked once more.
A massive staredown ensued. Cloud swallowed, body at the ready. After several seconds of intense silence, Cloud glanced from one to the other at their lack of action. Zack’s face was easy enough to read with the wide eyes and o-shape of his mouth that reminded Cloud of a Cactaur. Sephiroth’s expression was as frozen as a broken computer screen. However, neither had swung their weapons, which Cloud considered a good sign.
He glanced between his stick and their weapons. It might have worked against spongy researcher bodies, but he doubted enhanced SOLDIER ones would meet the same fate. And just his luck that there weren’t any weapons on this floor that he could have used. Thus, hoping to maximize on their shock, he began a cautious retreat backward, like he had made the wrong turn in the hallway and not caused all the damage in the first place.
Please work, he mentally prayed.
Unfortunately, Zack just had to break out of the trance first as he raced up to Cloud, causing the boy to retreat faster. Why wasn’t there an air vent he could fit into somewhere nearby?
“Hey, you!” Zack called as Cloud rounded the turn to the other hallway.
“Stay back. I don’t want to hurt you,” he warned in his lowest voice. The hallway looped around, but there was a chance they didn’t know that and he could seize on that to escape.
“Woah, easy there. I don’t want to hurt you either,” Zack said, hands up with a crooked smile. The sight sent a wave of nostalgia through Cloud. “My name’s Zack. You think you can lower that stick of yours? I promise I won’t hurt you.”
Cloud hated that he believed those words, because he knew Zack wouldn’t, which made it all the worse. “I’m leaving. Don’t follow me.”
The words were brushed aside as Zack blocked his path, bending down as if to make himself smaller. He smiled brightly, eyes wide and kind. It must be his way of seeming more approachable. Cloud hated that his body calmed down without his permission, the adrenaline high he’d been riding on dispersing like a deflating balloon. Hunger and thirst arose in their place, leaving his senses dull and his emotions heightened. Really, why didn’t the Goddess give him an older body? Was this her version of a joke? He reversed course, keeping his front facing Zack’s, lest he get attacked from behind.
Zack tilted his head to the side. “I just got a couple of questions. Oh, Sephiroth, hey—”
Cloud’s eyes widened as he realized who he never should have forgotten was following behind. The man had snuck up on them, his shadow looming over the two. Cloud jumped to the side, stick raised.
“Sephiroth!” His neck ached as he looked up at the man. He had been chest level before. Now, the top of his head didn’t even reach his belt. Not that it mattered; he tried to reason amidst the rising panic in his chest. Cloud had fought WEAPONS and Sephiroth previously. If he just kept his distance, maybe he could run away and face him another day.
It would preferably be when Cloud hit puberty.
The man in question blinked, slit green eyes unperturbed by the anger in the other’s voice. “You know my name.” He put away his sword. “And yet, I don’t know yours.”
It was little relief that this Sephiroth didn’t have his old memories as the man leaned closer to Cloud.
“You don’t deserve it—Put me down!” Cloud yelled shrilly as his nemesis picked him up. Sephiroth took the stick from his hands like it was nothing, repositioning him to his hip like he was a child.
Cloud squirmed, trying to crawl down, but the man’s hold was iron-clad. It didn’t help that reunion hummed beneath his skin, J-Cells reactivating to the man’s presence. His headache lessened from the physical touch, followed by what Cloud could only describe as his soul being smothered in a warm, fluffy blanket. It was…different than what he was used to, although he didn’t welcome the feeling. His heart rate slowed, body involuntarily relaxing in the man’s embrace as his inner voice cursed up a storm.
Sephiroth must have also noticed the connection from the look on his face, brows drawn together as he looked Cloud over from head to toe. Zack peered over the man’s arm at Cloud.
“He’s so small. How old do you think he is, Sir?”
“I am uncertain,” he answered slowly.
“I’m twenty-six,” Cloud responded. Or, at least, he was before Gaia brought him back through time.
“Twenty-six months?” Sephiroth asked, looking to Zack if that was the correct age, much to Cloud’s rising anger. He wasn’t a toddler!
He resisted the urge to shudder. Goddess, if he had been a toddler, that would have been worse. Well, not that it could get much worse than being held by his greatest enemy.
“Maybe chronologically, but not physically. He looks like a preschooler to me, Sir,” Zack supplied. Cloud almost nodded. He was at least three-and-a-half feet tall. Maybe even more if one counted his hair!
“Professor Hojo’s doing, I presume,” Sephiroth postulated, lips drawn into a tight line. “I take it you are the so-called intruder the Director tasked us to find. We discovered the Professor’s body by the stairwell. Your doing, I presume?” Cloud remained silent, refusing to meet Sephiroth’s eyes. The man seemed to take his silence as an answer; however, a soft hum escaped his mouth as he readjusted his hold on Cloud’s body, bringing him closer to his chest.
“You think a kid could have caused this kind of damage?” Zack said.
Sephiroth’s eyes seemed unfocused momentarily before he responded firmly, “Yes.”
Exhaustion tore at the edges of his mind, threatening a forced sleep if he didn’t cool it. Cloud grumbled in Sephiroth’s hold. As much as he would like to kill the man, this was not the time or place. Cloud let out a slight cough as the smoke grew heavier in this area. Sephiroth’s hold tightened as he turned around, heading for the elevator. “We should leave before the Turks get here. Text the Director to meet us on the next floor. I have a feeling this will involve a lot of paperwork.”
Zack matched the man’s step. “Sir, do you think this kid might be related to you somehow? He’s got your hair color, and your eyes are similar, too,” Zack mentioned.
“What?” Cloud grasped his bangs to get a better look and blanched. Silver hairs gathered in his fingers before he released them in shock. A shudder ran down his spine. He dared not look at the green glass tubes of mako surrounding them, afraid to confirm what he suspected were those snake-like eyes that had haunted him for years. The Goddess’s words echoed through his mind.
You didn’t exist, but I found another way.
She found another way his ass. Cloud punched Sephiroth’s chest in frustration, yet the man’s muscles were like granite. A headache flared up in response, making the boy groan as blood pounded against his temples. Great, so he couldn’t even hurt his nemesis now? Sephiroth ran a hand through his hair as if to soothe him. Cloud wished he could swing at the hand, but it was futile. The rest of Sephiroth’s features might be neutral, but his eyes were searching, analyzing every bit of Cloud with barely concealed curiosity. He only hoped that particular curiosity didn’t include a pointy sword through his chest.
“That he does,” Sephiroth replied “I…I wasn’t expecting this.”
“Release me,” Cloud demanded in his best SOLDIER voice.
The two pointedly ignored him. Cloud inwardly fumed.
“We need to get him to medical. His feet are bleeding from the broken glass,” Sephiroth noted.
Cloud wanted to reply that it was from all the kneecaps he broke but wisely kept quiet, stewing in his anger and ongoing misery of being held like a toddler.
“Who would bring a kid in here in the first place?”
“Perhaps he wasn’t brought in here,” Sephiroth said softly. His grip tightened around Cloud. “Perhaps he was made, like me.”
“Oh shit. So he’s like a tiny version of you, then? A clone?”
“Medical can run a full blood work. We will find out there.” Sephiroth’s footsteps quickened. Cloud’s head bobbed with the movement as he tried to figure out what was happening.
“Woah, what if he’s your kid or something?” Zack laughed. “Wouldn’t that be crazy?”
Sephiroth paused midstep, expression unreadable. Cloud’s eyes widened as his mind returned to what the Goddess said. Oh hell no. She didn’t…He looked back up at the silver locks. Not a sliver of blond in sight. He slumped forward as the shock took hold.
“That is unlikely, but I don’t doubt that there is a connection somewhere,” Sephiroth interrupted, throwing another glance at Cloud. He still hadn’t stopped brushing Cloud’s hair with his fingers. What was he, a damn cat? “Contact the Director while I take the boy to Medical, Third Class Fair.”
“What should I say? I don’t think he’s going to believe a toddler murdered the guy,” Zack said dubiously.
Cloud’s eyes narrowed at the tiny arch in Sephiroth’s lips. Was that a hint of a smile? “An escaped experiment then.”
Comic by the lovely Fruitloopchan. Check them out on Twitter!
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