Chapter Text
Fenrir’s rumble got louder as Cloud pulled into the garage, echoing off the walls, then went silent when he shut the engine off. He paused to listen for a moment but couldn’t hear anything suspicious. With a huff, he swung his leg over the seat and stood. There were packages to bring in, but he’d wait until he was sure he didn’t need to bolt first.
“Cloud!” Tifa said as soon as she’d caught his scent, hurrying around the table in their tiny private kitchen. “I didn’t think you’d be back so soon.”
“Me neither,” he said, voice rough from the road. They hugged and pressed the edges of their jaws together, nuzzling briefly. They weren’t packmates, but they might as well have been. Cloud relaxed when Tifa’s sweet beta scent was safely entwined with his. She didn’t smell of any omega other than him. Not a fresh scent, anyway.
“That jerk isn’t here, right?” he asked, just to be sure.
Tifa pulled back to roll her eyes at him. “No, Genesis hasn’t been by since the day after you left. He did leave a—“
“Burn it,” Cloud interrupted.
Tifa was unimpressed. “—a bouquet of roses. Which I’ve claimed, by the way. Burn them and you’ll regret it.”
Cloud huffed, turning around to go get his packages now that he knew the coast was clear. Tifa followed.
“He’s not going to give up, Cloud,” she said, apparently tired enough of playing mediator to say something. Again. “Can’t you at least talk to him? He told me you won’t even let him get a word out before you shred the Dreamscape.”
“I know he won’t give up,” said Cloud, disgruntled. “I won’t either. I hate him.”
“You don’t really—“
“I do,” he interrupted again. “Tifa… you patched things up with Tseng, which is great, but I just… I didn’t even want my pack before I knew who they were. And if Genesis hadn’t been such a massive dick then maybe Zack—“
His throat closed. He couldn’t finish his sentence.
“Cloud…” She touched his arm, comforting.
“Besides,” he said roughly, turning around and determinedly heading back inside with his cargo, “he wants romance. Maybe if he just wanted a packmate we could work something out, but a pairbond is… I can’t. Not with him.”
Tifa sighed and started helping him sort. “You’re not going to convince him that romance really isn’t on the table if you don’t talk to him. He thinks he can woo you. And honestly, you’re not doing much to convince me that he can’t.”
Cloud whirled on her, shock bright in his scent and plain on his face. “What?”
“I know you,” she said, staring him down. “We might as well be packmates ourselves for how deep our bond is. And you definitely hate him, but that’s not all you feel is it?”
They say that the opposite of love isn’t hate, but apathy. If there was one thing Cloud didn’t feel about his packmates, alive and dead, it was apathy. He gritted his teeth. “I don’t love him,” he ground out.
“I know,” said Tifa, standing her ground in the face of his anger. “But you could. And that potential is never going to die as long as you keep playing cat-and-mouse with him. If you really want to get over it, stop avoiding the issue and talk to him.”
A growl built in Cloud’s chest, but he ruthlessly suppressed it. He was never going to growl at Tifa again. He’d sworn that to himself a long time ago. “The family I have now is more than enough for me. I’m not interested in a pack, and I’m not interested in talking to him.”
Tifa had no hangups about growling at Cloud, though. “Do you really want to end up like our parents did?” He flinched as if struck, but she pressed him. “We should have been raised together, properly, but instead our parents refused to talk to each other and work things out. Just because we’ll never know the full story doesn’t mean that’s not enough for me, at least, to know that talking is a way better alternative to being alone.”
“I’m not alone! I have you and AVALANCHE. Hell, your bond with Tseng even got the Turks circling me like we’re family,” he snapped back, but it was weak.
“But you could have Genesis too! And you could give the kids the uncle they deserve to know!”
“He’s the reason Zack is dead!”
Cloud’s eyes were burning. He hated it. Tifa didn’t say anything as he breathed unsteadily.
“He could have helped us!” Cloud’s voice broke. “Zack was his packmate first! But instead of helping, he hunted us like animals! He tried to kill Zack and slowed us down! Without him, we would have made it to Midgar before Shinra found us.” He swiped angrily at his eyes. “I don’t want him around the kids. I don’t even want him around you, but you’re an adult. I don’t care what he does to try and fix things, Tifa, because it’s too late for that. I just… want him to leave me alone. I don’t care if maybe I would have loved him if things hadn’t gone so badly.”
“Cloud…”
He busied himself with the items on the table again. “Can we stop arguing about it? Please? I… our parents didn’t have anyone else, but we’re not like them. The family I have now is more than enough. You are more than enough.”
Tifa sighed, closing the distance again and pressing tight against him. She purred quietly, wrapping her arms around his waist. After a moment, he relaxed into her and quietly purred back.
“I don’t mean to push,” she whispered into his neck. “I love you too, Cloud. I just don’t want you to have any regrets.”
“I know,” he whispered back, and took a deep breath. “But believe me, I’m not going to regret this. He can chase me all he wants, but it won’t change my mind. There’s nothing he could ever do to fix what he ruined.”
Cloud and Tifa shared a bed for their own comfort (and sanity), but no amount of closeness let them share dreams. Instead, he was forced into a near-nightly ritual of fending off Genesis. As omegas they had equal power in the Dreamscape, but Cloud was at a clear advantage being the one who wanted to end his half of the dream. It was a lot easier to tear something delicate apart than it was to keep it together.
It always took a moment to realize where he was. Tonight it took even longer, because he was… confused. He could feel more than just Genesis’s passionate emotions. The air was muddy with feeling and scent. He blinked, reeling backward into Zack’s sword. The pool in the church melded into Tifa’s bar under his feet. He looked across its sparking water to find Genesis’s familiar ruined theater.
Hope and confusion and joy sat cloying on his tongue, but didn’t belong to him. He locked eyes with Zack, who was young and fresh-faced and staring at him with growing delight and bewilderment. Cloud’s mind became stuck at the sight, unable to process what was in front of him. Zack…?
Genesis took a step forward. It was his hope and joy that made everything too bright and sweet to bear. “Cloud—“ he said.
Sephiroth was standing just behind him, face a mask of polite confusion. Angeal was at his side.
Cloud didn’t think, because it didn’t matter what he was seeing—if it was real or not. It couldn’t be real, and it was a horrible joke to play. A cruel joke. His hurt and betrayal flooded everything as he reached out and violently ended the dream. It wasn’t funny.
Zack’s wide, alarmed eyes were the last thing he saw before he woke up with a gasp and a violent lurch. His breath caught in his throat, choking him. His hands shook. For as low as his opinion of Genesis was, he truly hadn’t believed the man was capable of such a cruel, pointed joke.
It wasn’t funny.
It wasn’t funny… and… why couldn’t he smell Tifa?
“Cloud?”
In the darkness, a hand touched his shoulder. Someone clicked on a low, dingy light that was attached to his… bunk? He was sitting in a bunk. Two young men were kneeling on the floor beside it, but he didn’t recognize… them…
“…Salim?” he whispered, hoarse and disbelieving.
His old, dead squadmate squeezed his shoulder. Cloud would never have remembered his name or face unless he’d seen it. Most of his infantry years had been erased by mako poisoning. “Are you okay?” the specter asked.
Cloud’s throat clicked when he swallowed. He looked at the other young man and remembered Devon James, one of his alpha squadmates. In fact, as he looked around in the dim light, he recognized all of the faces of the young men sitting up and looking at him with concern. Only two hadn’t woken up.
“I think he’s still out of it,” said Dev. He snapped his fingers under Cloud’s nose, which successfully startled him out of his growing panic. “Hey! Strife! What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I—“ He remembered that Salim hadn’t been interested in joining SOLDIER. Dev had. He and Cloud had tried out together, but only Dev had made it in. He’d died on a mission not long after, when AVALANCHE turned him into a Raven.
“Do you remember collapsing in the middle of sparring?” Salim asked. Cloud must have been projecting his distress pretty hard through his scent, because his fellow omega got up and squeezed into the bunk with him. The warmth and calming pheromones were a lot more grounding than Cloud wanted to admit.
“No,” he whispered. His mouth felt numb. A faint ringing sound started up in his ears as it began to dawn on him exactly where he was. Where he had to be. This wasn’t a dream or a hallucination. It was too… real. “I don’t remember anything.”
He was in the Tower, back before everything had gone wrong. That was why his dream had been shared with… with…
“Your hands are shaking,” Salim said. “Cloud, what happened?”
If he stayed still, he would fall apart in the face of the impossible. Better to accept things for how they seemed right now. That meant he was in the Tower, and if there was one thing he knew about being in the Tower, it was that he had to get out. Now.
Especially since his… his packmates… had… seen him.
“I have to go,” he said, throwing the sheets off and standing. He stumbled on the very first step, forcing Dev to catch him, because his body felt wrong. He breathed shakily, squeezing his hand to feel his own strength. He shouldn’t have been enhanced right now, but he was.
“I think you need to go back to sleep,” Dev said doubtfully, trying to push him back into his bunk. He seemed startled when Cloud didn’t even budge. “Shit, what happened to your eyes?”
Cloud’s breath got shakier as he slipped a hand under his shirt and felt for the impalement scars that should have been on his chest. They weren’t, though. Most of his scars were gone.
“Cloud, you need to sit,” said Salim. “We should call a medic.”
“No.” The thought of Shinra medics snapped him out of his panic again. “I have to go. Don’t follow me.”
He didn’t even bother pulling his bug-out bag from his locker. There was every chance something in it could be tracked by Shinra, and he couldn’t afford that. His packmates would be hunting for him soon, if they weren’t now. Even his infantry boots were suspect, so he staggered out of the barracks in just his civilian sweats and t-shirt.
Behind him, he heard Salim offer a hasty assurance to the rest of the squad before he and Dev followed.
“Cloud, stop, you’re not even wearing shoes,” Dev said, grabbing his arm. Cloud easily shook him off and sped up. His gait got smoother the more he walked.
“For your own sake, don’t follow me,” he said shortly.
“…what?”
Breaking into a sprint would give away his enhancements. He wasn’t sure if he could afford that yet, so he just jogged lightly. They easily kept up.
“We’re going to get reprimanded if we get caught out this late,” Salim pointed out mildly. His eyes kept darting to Cloud’s face, and there was a furrow between his brows.
“Go back to bed,” said Cloud as he thought about where he could ditch them. So much of his time here was muddy. It was hard to think straight.
“Not without you. You don’t look so—“
Someone was running down the hall at SOLDIER-speed. Cloud reacted without thinking, grabbing his squadmates and dragging them through the nearest unlocked door. It happened to lead into one of the shower rooms. He locked his hands over their mouths, just in case, but they didn’t struggle.
Cloud watched through a crack in the door as a familiar crimson coat went whizzing by. Shit!
“Go back to the barracks!” he hissed at them once he was sure Genesis couldn’t hear, and shoved them toward the door. He went in the opposite direction, some murky half-forgotten memory telling him this shower room had two exits.
His old squadmates did exactly the opposite, and he couldn’t even say he was surprised at this point. “Was that Rhapsodos?” Dev hissed. “Strife, what the fuck did you get into? First you collapse for no reason, then your eyes have mako in them, then fucking Rhapsodos comes sprinting through the barracks at the asscrack of dawn? Are you on drugs? Is this a drug bust?”
Salim smacked Dev, and the alpha bit back a yelp. Cloud ignored their spat. Salim didn’t ignore him, though. “Are you running from the commander? Did he do something to you?” he asked, soft despite the way Cloud picked up speed and forced them to run once he was confident loud footfalls wouldn’t draw Genesis to their location.
“Yeah,” he said. “I am. So go back and tell anyone who asks that you don’t know anything.”
“Okay… So you’re going to get help from Zack, right?”
Bright, excruciating pain throbbed through Cloud’s chest at the reminder, but he shoved it away and buried it under the scent of irritation. He couldn’t afford to think about that right now. “No. I’m leaving Midgar.”
“What?”
It would have been better to lie, but he was a terrible liar. So instead, he gave up on subtlety and looked at his old squadmates. “I want you guys to be safe, and I can’t explain. So please, just trust me and go back to the barracks before you get tangled up in this.”
“Cloud—”
He finally took off at a speed only SOLDIERs could attain, leaving them behind whether they liked it or not.