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Wind-up Boy
Sometimes, he would stare at his hands.
He'd heard once that the history of a person could be seen in their hands, so maybe if he looked hard enough, he'd see his life.
His life.
Because it was his, right? He was real.
That scar in the web of his thumb was from when he tried to split logs for his mum and missed the wood. The axe split his skin instead and he was lucky he didn't sever the tendon.
He could remember the pain and the blood and his mum's screaming.
That meant it was real, right?
But what if the Real Cloud had a scar there and Hojo had replicated it? How would he know?
There was a split down his nail from when he left his thumb in a door jamb at his Shinra dorm and someone smacked it shut as they ran past.
But what if someone had crushed his finger at some point and he was just associating that memory with it?
All the tiny criss-crossing scars on his knuckles from too many fights over too many days. Symbols of physical and emotional trauma.
Surely they couldn't be faked. But..
He twisted his lips in frustration. There was no way to know. He flipped his hands over.
He knew the calluses were his, from wielding swords and working and existing.
But that was recent. Things he remembered. Did Real Cloud have them too? From using guns and training and a youth spent in the wild?
They probably would've melted away in those four and something years of his green life anyway.
Or… maybe that was his birth?
Real people gestated in a womb, there was liquid and a gasping entry into the world. Was that tube his mother? Was he put together there? Did his limbs sew themselves together there?
He'd checked for stitches at his shoulders and hips, but either they were well healed or they were never there to start with.
That was the problem really. Everything was an "or", or, "maybe", or "but". Toss of a coin. Heads your real, tails you're a copy; a toy; a sad replica of a real boy with feelings and a life and a tragic death.
He knew he wasn't right sometimes. He could feel it. Sometimes the human element seemed far away. Too far away.
He could hear too much and see too much and smell too much. He'd ripped monsters in half with his bare hands and carried objects that he shouldn't even be able to budge, nevermind lift.
He knew SOLDIERs were enhanced but he felt… more. Extra. Sometimes it was frightening. The feeling inside. The burn of power.
He hid it from the others. Nothing to see here, guys. He was normal. Very average. SOLDIER, yes, but just like the rest.
He hadn't found any feathers… yet. At least he had that going for him.
He'd gone through the Lifestream with Tifa and found himself. She had pieced him together, bit by bit, until the screaming in his head stopped and his shattered pieces formed a whole.
A whole that revolved around her.
But, Jenova was meant to be powerful. She defeated the Ancients with her chameleon-like powers. Maybe he'd touched Real Cloud at some point and absorbed his memories. His life. But then, how would he ever know?
How would anyone know?
He'd be a perfect, horrible, copy.
Tifa believed in him, that he was her Cloud, the boy she knew.
What if he wasn't? What if he was just spare parts? Tacked together in some sort of macabre imitation of a human? Would she still love him? Would she want this broken shade?
Panic started to build in his chest and he fisted his treacherous hands in the bed sheets. He couldn't … if she left him… he didn't know how he'd survive.
Even if he wasn't real, even if he wasn't her Cloud, Real Cloud—the bastard—he loved her dearly. He wanted her more than anything. More than his sad little fake heart could take.
Shit. Shit.
What if she found out he was fake? She would hate him. They all would. He couldn't let her find out. He'd take it to his grave.
His hyperventilating must've woken her up, because he felt a hand on his arm and a drowsy voice murmured his name.
"Cloud?"
He hummed in response. If he opened his mouth, he would vomit.
"What's wrong? You were breathing really fast."
He didn't answer.
Tifa brought an elbow underneath herself to sit up and look down at him. He tried to school his features into something that wasn't blind panic and terror.
"...did you have a nightmare?" She asked quietly.
Ha, his whole fake life was a nightmare.
Still, he shook his head. She didn't need to worry about his bullshit and like hell was he going to tell her what had been going on in his head.
Tifa shot him a skeptical look, but didn't press him. With a sigh, she lay down with her head on his chest, right above his aching, little counterfeit heart—stolen from an authentic boy, a flesh and blood boy—and wrapped her arms around him.
God, he loved this woman. Maybe… maybe she would stay, even if he wasn't her Cloud. Maybe he had endeared himself to her enough that she wouldn't mind that he wasn't the same boy she knew. Maybe she'd just let him hang around, even if she couldn't stand to touch him. It would hurt, he'd want to break, but as long as she was near…
"Tifa…"
"Hmm?"
"Would you still love me if…" he began in a whisper. The words caught in his throat. If he said them out loud they would be real and he couldn't eat them back in. "Would you still love me if I wasn't real?"
Tifa shot up again, her face perplexed and concerned—he'd dubbed it her conplexed face—and stared intently at him, her eyes searching his face.
"What are you talking about?"
He frowned.
"I mean, if Hojo had made me. If I wasn't… wasn't your Cloud, Real Cloud."
It hurt to say that more than he thought it would.
"But Cloud, we know—"
"I know. I just—if I wasn't. Would you still love me?"
Tifa hesitated, her face twisting into a frown. His heart felt like it was shattering with every second she didn't answer. No one could love a wind-up boy with a sham heart. Of course they couldn't. What a fool he was.
Tifa's hand came up and her fingers stroked across his cheekbone. He closed his eyes. Fuck, he loved that, and he was going to savour it if this was the last time he got it feel it—
"Were you looking at your hands again?"
What?
"What?"
His confusion must've shown on his face, because Tifa gave him a tiny amused smile, and leaned in to kiss his forehead.
"Every time you stare at your hands, you end up panicking afterwards. You don't think I notice but I do. You're not as good at hiding your emotions as you think, chocobo-head."
Did he look at his hands a lot? He knew he did it sometimes, but enough for anyone to notice?
He opened his mouth. Closed it again. Frowned.
"You didn't answer the question," he eventually said. If he looked at his hands a lot, it was just because he was unsure, because he wanted desperately to be real. He wanted to be her Cloud. He wanted more than anything to have Cloud Strife's fucked up life. He didn't want to be no one. He didn't want to just be flesh with a pulse.
"Cloud," Tifa said in her stern voice, "you are real. But since you are so adamant, then yes. I would love you. You are my Cloud."
He wanted to believe her. God, did he want to believe her.
"It wouldn't freak you out? That I might be made of a dead boy?" He was freaking himself out, but he needed to know. More than anything, he needed to know. He could live with it if she would love him.
She wrinkled her nose a bit.
"Well, that was a horrible way to say it, but yes."
She paused for a minute.
"I think…"She bit her lip and hesitated, "I think I would grieve."
Oh. So she did want the Real Cloud. He was a substitute.
He must be truly terrible at hiding his emotions—he bet Real Cloud would be good at it, what an assho—because she sat up quickly onto her knees and took his face in both hands.
"No, no, I don't mean like that!" She rushed out. "I mean, I would grieve for both of you. I loved that boy, but I love you even more, and the thought of you… in that lab…"
She turned her face away and squeezed her eyes shut, then took a deep breath and looked at him again. There were tears rimming her eyes.
"I'd be grieving that two people I loved were tortured in that awful place. But I got one back and I can never, will never, be sorry for that. Okay?"
His little sham heart was elated. She would love him anyway.
She would love him anyway.
He didn't want to make her cry, he hated it, but he felt overjoyed. But before he could let the smile fully grow on his face, Tifa grabbed his chin and forced him to look right into her eyes, the red in them simmering with a look he knew all too well.
"But this is all a moot point, because you. Are. Real."
She punctuated each word with a yank on his chin and a glare.
Then her eyes softened and a gentle, slightly sad, smile slid onto her lips
"Remember what we talked about in the Lifestream? It's memories locked in your heart. So," she lay back down so they were shoulder to shoulder and took his hand in her own. She entwined their fingers and let them rest between them. If the ceiling wasn't in the way, it would almost feel like stargazing.
Maybe he should install a big skylight so they could see the sky. Or, maybe just stick some of those glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceiling. Close enough.
"Tell me about a memory to do with me, something that stuck with you."
A memory to do with Tifa? There were so many. Lots of them were just watching her and longing to kiss her, hug her, hell, even stand next to her. But, she wasn't aware of them and some of them were from after his possible birth, so they wouldn't work.
But one suddenly came to mind.
"When we used to play together when we were really young, you ignored me for a week, and I cried every day, because I thought you wouldn't talk to me ever again."
Tifa swiveled her head towards him with a bemused expression.
"Why did I do that?" She asked, her face tight as she tried to hold in laughter.
"I don't know," he shrugged, "we were having fun and then you suddenly freaked out and wouldn't talk to me."
Tifa frowned, slowly looking away from him and blinking rapidly as she tried to recall the memory. Then her eyes widened and her nostrils flared, and she pinned him with her crimson stare.
"That's because you—" she began too loudly, and he gestured to the door where the kids were just down the hall, and she turned it into an intense whisper, "that's because you put a worm in my hair!"
Oh yeah, so he had. Still…
"We were having fun. I was really hurt," he said.
He could hear himself pouting, but his four-year-old self had been heartbroken. He had been inconsolable. His mother thought he'd gone mad.
Tifa was unswayed.
"It was gross and I hated worms for years. Your fault," she huffed, and turned away from him sharply.
Her lower lip was pushed out into a pout and her eyebrows were drawn together, but she was still holding his hand, so she couldn't be too annoyed with him. With his younger self. Whatever.
There was quiet for a few seconds where he tried to decide if he should apologise for putting a worm in her hair all those years ago, until Tifa took a deep breath and squeezed his fingers, maybe just a tad too tightly.
"...that's a memory we share though. Even if you were mean to me."
"I wasn't mean to—"
She gave him a look and he let out a long–suffering sigh.
She was right. They both had this memory. That meant it was a real thing that happened. But there was still the other, more gruesome possibility.
"But, Jenova could take memories from people, what if I touched the Real Cloud in the lab and—"
"Cloud," she leveled him with a serious stare, "I don't think Jenova can take memories from the dead and if there was a Cloud there while you were there… he wouldn't have been alive."
She looked uncomfortable saying it, and that in itself said a lot. She was willing to disturb herself to calm his, probably irrational, fears.
"Okay," he said and it would be. She was Tifa, she always knew him, inside and out. If she said he was real, then he was. Even in his darkest moments, she was his guiding light, his north star. Her belief in him and her love was all he needed.
"Yeah?" She gave him a hopeful smile that he couldn't help but return.
"Yeah."
"Good," she said, and the relief was evident in her face.
Tifa lifted his hand and kissed the back of it, and then settled onto his chest again. He, Cloud Strife with the fucked up life and the beautiful woman in his arms and wonderful kids down the hall, cuddled her close and kissed her hair.
"Tifa?"
"Mmhhmm?"
"Do you ever get tired of reassuring me?"
She nuzzled into his chest some more.
"No," she sighed, sleepily.
Cloud wanted to ask more. He wanted to know how she could be so patient with him; how she could say the same things to him over and over again and not get snappy; how she could bear to look at him when he was so full of self-doubt and anxiety.
But that was for another night.
"I love you, Cloud. Good night…" she mumbled into his chest.
He closed his eyes and nestled her in closer, wrapping himself around her and pushing his face into her hair. Nothing would get between him and his Tifa.
"I adore you, Tifa. Sleep tight…"