InsaneJournal

Current mood:	accomplished
Current music:	Apocalyptica - Master of Puppets
Entry tags:	*final fantasy vii, author: stopthatgirl7

Fragments, Final Fantasy VII (Cloud, Kadaj)
Title: Fragments
Author: joudama
Fandom: Final Fantasy 7 (Advent Children)
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Word count: 317
Summary: They are more alike than he had known, until that moment.
A/N: Sorry this is late! It was for the 11th, but out of nowhere I grew a social life, and my choice was stay home and finish the fic or go out clubbing and boozing, and, um, yeah, clubbing kind of won. And most of the weekend was spent passed out asleep because of said clubbing and boozing. On the plus side, I learned that flirting with the cute Australian bartender+Mozart=Free booze. So I have no regrets.
Prompt: Cloud/Kadaj: Reunion – Death is the starlit strip between the companionship of yesterday and the reunion of tomorrow.


--

And in that moment, he knew--he knew that they were far, far more alike than he had known until that moment.

Kadaj was slight in his arms, breathing tortured and his body wracked with pain, all that was left was for him to die, after he had been taken over and used.

Cloud wondered, sometimes, if it would ever truly end. It seemed like it wouldn't--there never seemed to be closure. Even now, he doubted.

He wished that he could point to the moment when everything first went wrong, but even though he knew what moment it was, even though he remembered it...the memories weren't his. They were someone else's.

And now he held this boy, a slip of a boy smaller than Cloud could remember being but seeming the same age as Cloud had been when all of it went wrong for him, a boy whose life had never been his own, who had spent all of it, short as it was, chasing after another man's dream. And when the moment came, that man had taken him over, scrubbed out all that Kadaj was, and when he left, left the boy, who had never felt whole, to die, and in that moment, Cloud knew.

It hadn't been Zack's fault, but...but how much were him and how much was Zack, a person he knew only from Zack's own memories the same as Kadaj knew Sephiroth only from the voice in his head, he could never know.

The rain was falling, and Kadaj raised his hand, stretching it out to touch, the Mother always just out of reach, but smiling now, as if for once he was finally going to have what he wanted, as the rain began to wash him away.

And Cloud held him as he died, and the tears he shed were not for Kadaj alone, but for everything they had both never had.