Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Cloud spent his last day alive out on the ocean.

He’d chosen a cottage on a private beach and he’d blown the very last of his meager savings renting it for just one day and night. He had no money, no return ticket home. The house he'd inherited from his mother would go to charity since he had no close family left. Everything was taken care of.

He spent his hours floating out in the water, letting the sun soak into his skin and talking to the sky—talking to his Ma, really. He was sorry but he was going to see her, even if it was sooner than she might want. He floated until the stars came out and maybe he cried a little bit because it was so beautiful to see the galaxy clearly for the last time. The lack of light pollution this far from civilization was incredible.

He swam to shore and hiked up the tall cliffs, taking his time to savor the view. The moon was high that night, casting a bright silver light on the trail. It was easy to follow. His feet hurt without shoes, but that was fine. It wouldn't last. He stopped on the edge of the highest cliff, looking out into the infinite expanse of pitch-black sea. He would rest there soon. His toes gripped the edge of the rock.

"Sorry Mama, but I'm coming to join you," he told the stars, watching them smear together through the film over his eyes. With a final breath, he tipped forward and let the void claim him.

Unseen, a curious merman who had been observing the strange visitor all day now watched as a pale body plummeted to the sea below.

"So that's what he meant," the mer realized, his heart clenching. It was too late to do anything but watch and wait. The sea could be cruel, and it could be kind. He didn't know what it would choose today.

Golden light illuminated the water as a transformation took place in the narrow gap between life and death. He swam hard toward the light, intending to intercept its source before it sank all the way to the sea bed.

He had his answer.

It took Cloud a moment to remember what had happened when he woke up. He still felt… bad, which was disappointing. He’d hoped dying would mean he felt good again. Maybe he just had to find his Ma first.

He opened his eyes to a dimly lit room and multicolored stars winking above him. No—those weren’t stars. They were materia shards and orbs, embedded in the ceiling of a cave. The air felt strange, cool and almost thick. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever experienced, which added a point in the ‘dead’ category at least. His head felt impossibly heavy.

“You’re awake.”

If he’d been expecting his Ma, he was sorely disappointed when the face of a man appeared over him. He looked stern, with dark hair and bright blue eyes and well-maintained facial hair. Cloud wasn’t sure who he was, but with eyes like that he supposed it wasn’t impossible that this could be some ancestor of his.

“‘S kinda…expecting Ma,” Cloud slurred, frowning a little at how unfamiliar the shape of his face felt. “‘re you…grandad? Great uncle?”

The man snorted. “You’re not dead, kid.”

Cloud processed the statement, turning it over in his mind and contemplating it from every angle. Not dead? Well, that just wasn’t possible. He’d tossed himself off a cliff. In fact, he’d chosen it specifically because he knew no human would survive. If hitting the water hadn’t killed him immediately, he’d definitely drowned. He’d even made extra sure that no one would be around to rescue him.

“Yes I am,” Cloud said confidently. “So where’s Ma?”

The man looked sad. “Is that why you jumped?”

“Yeah.” Geez, did his arms really have to feel this heavy? They shook as he raised them to rub his eyes. For a dead man, he felt awfully tired. “Is she mad at me? Is that why she’s not here?”

“I told you, kid, you’re not dead.” A hand settled on top of his head, startling him a little. He lowered his hands and frowned at…whoever this was. Maybe he wasn’t even one of Cloud’s ancestors. Maybe he was a guiding spirit? Or an angel?

“I already know I am,” Cloud assured him. “I made extra sure, you don’t have to lie or anything. It’s what I wanted!”

The sad look got even sadder. “I think you’re still tired, kid. Why don’t you close your eyes for a bit?”

He was tired. It seemed weird to still feel tired and bad when he was dead. “Can dead people sleep?” he asked curiously, letting his hands fall. His eyelids started to slide shut, half against his will.

“Just…go to sleep, kid.”

“How old are you?” 

“Uh...” Where was he? Oh, right. He’d died. “Seventeen.”  His arms felt a little less heavy than before, but he was starting to realize his legs felt really weird. He could feel sun on his skin, too, instead of cool darkness. When he looked up he realized he must have been a couple dozen feet under the ocean’s surface.

“Seventeen, huh? That’s awful young to be making such big choices.”

Cloud looked over to see the man from before, this time tending to what seemed to be an underwater garden. He also realized the man had a long, elaborate tail where his legs should have been, which was…weird, but okay. Maybe this made sense, since Cloud had died in the ocean?

“Can I see my mom now?” he asked hopefully.

The man paused. Then, very deliberately, he set down the tool in his hand and turned to Cloud. “Kid,” he said gently, “you’re not dead.”

“Yes I am.” He was getting deja vu from repeating the argument again. “We’re underwater. Humans can’t breathe under water. None of this makes sense unless I’m dead.”

The man sighed. “You’re not dead, but you’re not human anymore either. How about you do me a favor and look down, huh?”

Look down? Cloud looked down the length of his body on reflex and found, to his great surprise, that he had no legs anymore either. Instead, they’d been replaced with a long tail that was just as elaborate as the dark-haired man’s. “Oh.” He tried to move the tail, but it didn’t really work. All of the muscles he was used to seemed to have shifted. “So…we really do turn into other types of spirits when we die?” 

“Honestly kid. You are not dead. The ocean had mercy. Or maybe from your perspective it’s just being cruel, I don’t know. Either way, you never died in the first place. You just…transformed into one of us.”

Huh? Cloud considered this for a long minute, poking at his new tail. If he hadn’t really died, then… “Ma really isn’t here?”

The man patted his head again. “No. I’m sorry.”

No wonder he still felt so awful, then. He wasn’t dead at all. He couldn’t see his Ma. Not without some extra effort, at least. “Oh. Okay.”

The man looked a little incredulous. “Okay?”

Cloud looked back at him hopefully. “Do you think you could…help me out, maybe?” When the man’s expression went from confused to thunderous, he quickly backtracked. “I mean—n-never mind, I’ll just be out of your hair—” Cloud tried to get up and swim away, but it didn’t quite work. He just sort of flailed in place a little bit. 

“I’m not going to kill you or help you kill yourself,” the man snapped. He sighed through his nose and pinched the space between his eyes. “Look, first off, I’m not going to kill a kid. Ever. For any reason. But second off, if I helped you that would be a huge insult to the ocean, considering one of its primal spirits directly intervened for you. I don’t know which one, but I have a guess and I’m not about to deal with him when he’s feeling insulted.”

“Someone…directly decided not to let me die?” Cloud asked.

“Correct.”

“...can I yell at them and make them undo it?”

The man snorted. “I mean, you could definitely try yelling. Wouldn’t work out the way you want, but you could try.”

“Oh.” Cloud stopped trying to move and just stared up at the oceanic ceiling above him. “Are you sure?”

“Very sure. But I guess you can wait to find out.” His voice dropped to a mutter. “One of them will come visit eventually.”

Oh. Cloud didn’t comment any further and he eventually heard the man go back to his gardening. Despair slowly pulled at him, dragging him away from the very brief high note where he’d been convinced he would get to see his mother. Even the sunlight streaming through the water seemed to dim as he sank back down into it.

“What’s your name, kid?” the man asked after an indeterminate amount of time had passed.

“...I don’t…really want to tell you,” he responded dully.

“Yes, you do,” the man said. “I don’t know how it is up on the surface anymore, but here the act of naming a new child is very powerful, and you were just reborn. If you don’t want us to be inextricably linked, then it's in your best interest to tell me what your name is.”

“I’m not a child.”

He sighed. “Sure kid. Just tell me what your name is. Mine is Angeal.”

Well. There wasn’t really any reason not to, except spite, and that required more energy than Cloud had at the moment. He’d already settled back into the familiar feeling of being unfathomably exhausted. “It’s…Cloud.”

“Cloud. Well, thank you.” The sounds of his gardening continued, a vaguely pleasant backdrop. “How about you go back to sleep for a little while, huh?”

Okay.

The next time Cloud woke up, he couldn’t hear much of anything besides soft breathing and the rush of distant currents. He opened his eyes to the same materia-speckled roof he’d seen before and when he turned his head slightly, he could see the man—Angeal—asleep in what looked like a finely-woven hammock. When Cloud looked back down at himself, he realized he’d been sleeping in one too.

Despair threatened to keep him weighed down like a bar of lead, but it suddenly dawned on him that if Angeal was asleep, there was no one to stop him from swimming away and finding a new way to die. What did Cloud care if he insulted the spirits of the ocean? He hadn’t wanted their help in the first place.

It took some doing, but eventually Cloud managed to work out which muscles in his tail did what. He snuck out (for a given value of sneak) , moving slowly to make sure the currents he generated with his tail didn’t wake Angeal up. The cave was a lot longer and more elaborate than he expected it to be. He even thought he spotted a few places that emerged into open air caverns, but he swam past them, intent on leaving.

Then he was out in open waters, hovering just above an expansive and well-tended garden. The ocean stretched out in front of him, so vast he didn’t know which way to go. What was the best option to die out here? What was the fastest way to see his Ma?

“Hello, precious.”

Cloud startled violently at the voice, spinning around (flailing ungracefully around, really) until he found its source. It was awe-inspiring: something like flowing, shifting magma in the form of an enormous aquatic dragon. As he gaped, the form shifted, growing smaller, until he was looking at a man with reddish hair and the tail of that same magma dragon.

The man smiled at him—dangerously, charmingly, knowingly. “What are you doing out here, little storm-singer? You should be resting with Angeal.”

Cloud’s eyebrows drew together. “Who are you?”

The man preened at his simple question. “I am Genesis, the Beginning. Who is it that you think you are?”

“I’m Cloud. I’m supposed to be dead.” A suspicion was forming in his head. “You…you’re one of the primal ocean spirits, aren’t you?”

“Did Angeal mention me?” He preened even more. “How unusually flattering of him! Yes, I am the spirit of the new, Cloud. I am new islands rising from molten rock, and the foundation of new growth. I am the warmth of geothermal springs and the destruction that feeds new life. I am Genesis.” His head tilted. “As for you…no, you are not supposed to be dead. You are as you should be— new.”

Rage burned hot in Cloud’s chest as his suspicion was confirmed. “You did this to me!” he spat at Genesis, bristling. “Well—well, I don’t fucking want to be new! Undo it right now!”

“Un do it?” Genesis echoed, tossing his head in offense. “Undo my gift? Squander yours? I will do no such thing!”

“I don’t care what you think!” Cloud screamed back, eyes prickling like he was about to cry. “I just wanted to see my mom! You don’t get to take that from me! I won’t let you!” He turned to swim ungracefully away, upset enough that it was a struggle to remember which muscles did what. 

He didn’t get very far. Genesis just appeared in front of him with a burst of hot water, sweeping Cloud up in a spiraling current with a flick of his hand. “I saved your life, little one,” he said. “You should be thanking me, but instead here you are, tantruming like a child.”

“I’m not a fucking child!” Cloud said, voice breaking. He struggled against the current encircling him to no avail. “I’m an adult! Fuck you, I get to decide if I want to live or not!”

Genesis just laughed. “Little boy, when has that ever been true?”

Cloud’s response was strangled into an enraged sob. He stopped trying to fight. It wasn’t working, and he was tired again anyway. He heard a sigh, but it wasn’t from Genesis.

“Gen, what are you doing?” Angeal asked.

“Stopping your gift from running off and doing something foolish, of course.”

“Oh don’t give me that ‘gift’ bullshit. First off I refuse, but second off I know that save was impulsive.”

“Can a man not offer gifts of impulse as well?”

Angeal sighed again, closer this time.  His hand touched Cloud’s heaving shoulder, also breaking the current Genesis had used to trap him. Cloud tried to push him away but quickly gave up. Crying underwater was very different from crying on land. His eyes were covered in such a thick film he could barely see.

“Stop antagonizing the kid. You’re going to get people killed if he gets more upset.”

That pulled Cloud up short after a delay. “What?” He wouldn’t kill anyone! Except maybe Genesis, if he could manage it. Genesis deserved it though.

“Well, you have set quite a lovely storm brewing above us,” Genesis said. “If you don’t calm down, it could become an equally lovely hurricane.” He sounded delighted by the prospect.

Angeal sighed again, this time with much less patience. “Long story short, your magic is storm magic, kid. It’s gonna take practice to get control, but Genesis doesn’t mind riling you up to see a typhoon. I, however, do, and I know you do too since you just came from land. So…deep breath. Come on.”

None of this was making Cloud calm down. If anything, he just started to sob harder, pressing his hands into his face. “I didn’t ask for any of this!” He’d never had magic before, but he swore he could feel the storm raging far above, now that it had been pointed out to him. He could feel the lightning and thunder in his lungs as he wailed. “I just want to be with my mom!”

Angeal muttered a curse. Genesis started to say something but Angeal cut him off. “Gen, shut up. In fact, go away. You’re making it worse.”  The man’s other hand went to Cloud’s opposite shoulder. He pulled, gently, and Cloud was distantly shocked to feel himself being drawn into a hug. No one had…no one had hugged him in a long, long time. Not even Ma, towards the end. She’d just been too weak to manage it.

It hurt. Everything hurt. This was why he’d wanted to end it all and go join Ma, but now he couldn’t. He collapsed in on himself, hands falling away from his face. The storm changed in tenor above, less crackling lightning and more howling, desolate winds. Angeal—this stranger that he didn’t even know— squeezed tightly in response.

“I know, kid. You’re gonna be okay. Just breathe”

“Why are—” he hiccuped, the words barely intelligible, “—why are you doing this to me?”

Angeal sighed. “I know it’s what you want, kid, but I’m not going to let you kill yourself. You deserve to live through this and come out the other side.”

“No!”

“Yeah, I know, Cloud. I know.”

Chapter Text

It rained without stopping over Angeal’s home for nearly two weeks. The skies boiled with gray clouds, sometimes dark as pitch but mostly just a morose, unending sort of light gray. Most of Angeal’s garden weathered it just fine, but he frowned at how some of the more delicate, shallow-water species had begun to decline without sunlight. He sighed and glanced at the poor kid he was still stuck babysitting, who was presently an unmoving lump on a soft mat next to him.

Because all this was, of course, Cloud’s doing. The rain and the sky were a reflection of his state: deeply sad and borderline comatose with it. As soon as he’d run out of steam on his Genesis-induced tantrum, he’d simply collapsed into himself and stayed that way. Angeal dragged him around throughout the day (both to keep an eye on him and because it wasn’t healthy to stay in one place for so long), but no matter where he put the kid, he never moved.

Occasionally, he thought he caught Cloud glaring at him from the corner of his eye, but he never quite turned around fast enough to catch him directly. Cloud didn’t seem like the type to try and fight him, but…well, he’d get quite a surprise if he tried. The kid was a malnourished twig and Angeal was a lot stronger than he looked. Angeal hoped he never tried.

So. The kid was sad. The skies were gray. Angeal’s plants were starting to suffer, even with his magic. Two long weeks had passed and Cloud was proving to be unrelentingly determined to stay miserable.

It was time to call in some backup.

Cloud was back in the same state he’d lived in for the few months after his mom’s death. It felt deeper this time, he thought, considering the way his hopes of seeing her had been dashed. Deeper, darker, and with no way out at all.

Well. No way out on this side of life. But even planning a way to leave and (somehow) get around both Angeal and That Fire Dragon Asshole was just too much effort. His anger would surge for a scant few minutes at a time before he just didn’t have the energy to sustain it anymore. He was tired.

Angeal dragged him around all day every day—inside, outside, in the smaller caves, even up very close to the edge of the island Cloud had taken his last mortal breaths on. The man was obsessed with plants. Almost as obsessed as he was with silently making sure Cloud ate and didn’t run off and do what he wanted. Jerk.

It was too much effort to be irritated. He let his eyes shut and drifted into a numb doze.

“Hey! Woah, yeah that’s some potent magic, huh?”

Cloud started at the new voice. It was close, and it was loud. His eyes opened to find a young man with dark hair and a beaming smile hovering a foot or two away. Even at a distance, he felt warm, and Cloud was further startled when he realized the guy’s skin was emitting a very soft glow. The smile widened in response to his startled look.

“Hi! I’m Zack. You’re Cloud, right?”

Cloud glared and flipped over onto his other side, turning his back on the new guy. Zack. He had no interest in dealing with another person determined to make his life miserable by extending it.

Zack just laughed. “Aww. Yeah, I get it, bud. Listen, I’ll be back after I go give some of ‘Geals plants the sunshine they’re missing, kay?”

That was almost— almost —enough of a threat to motivate Cloud to get up and leave. He opened his eyes to glare at the colorful plant a few inches from his nose. He could hear Angeal and Zack talking a few dozen yards away. Unfortunately, the…fields (Cloud had no other way to describe it) were so open, and Angeal knew them so well, that even if Cloud was a fast swimmer he couldn’t possibly have outpaced them. With his luck, Genesis would choose to show up again at that exact moment too. He settled for burying his face in his arms and tried to go back to sleep.

“You know what you need?” Zack asked him some torturous, indeterminate amount of time later, at his side again. Cloud growled and buried his head even deeper under his arms. “Some sunshine! Lucky for you, that’s my locus.”

A hand touched just below his neck, feeling startlingly like a ray of weighted sunlight. Cloud jerked away, ungracefully getting up and putting distance between himself and Zack. “Don’t fucking touch me!” he snapped, voice breaking halfway through the sentence. The hand had felt nice, disarming even, and he didn’t want to like these people. If Angeal had bothered to hug him a second time, it would have gotten Cloud’s hackles up in just the same way.

Zack tilted his head a little, his smile unaffected by the snapping. “Are you sure? Sunshine is the best way to soothe all that sadness. You’ll feel better, I promise!”

“I don’t want to feel better!” He discovered the slightly distracting fact that his fins swished on their own when he was angry, but doggedly kept his focus on driving Zack off. “I want to go be with my mom, so fuck off and leave me alone!” Shit, his eyes were burning again. He could feel the lightning start to crackle in the sky miles above, too, and wind buffet the ocean into angry waves.

Only now did Zack’s smile fade away into something soft and sad. “I know bud. But you can’t right now, so why not let me make it hurt a little less?”

The tears started to come in earnest again. When he wiped furiously at his face, the unnaturally thick fluid clung to his hands just like it had before. “Why do you care if I live!” he snarled. “Just let me die already! I don’t want to be here!”

The grief was excruciating. He could feel on his skin as the lightning above dispersed, replaced by quiet, heavy rain. Why, why, did these strangers have to pretend to care about him? Why!  

“I care,” Zack said quietly, a little closer. “I don’t like seeing people hurt, and I want to be your friend.”

“Liar!” Liar, liar, who would want to be friends with Cloud the depressing weirdo, Cloud the outcast who just didn’t turn out right because he spent all his time taking care of mom, Cloud the freak who could apparently call deadly storms just by being upset?

“I’m not lying.” Two hands very gently grabbed his shoulders, radiating warmth. He couldn’t see straight enough through the tears to swat them away. “Hey, you’re alright. Just…ease up on your mana a little bit, okay? You’re gonna make yourself pass out.”

“What the fuck are you even talking about?” Cloud hiccuped. “Go away!”

“Bad time for a lesson, I know, but your mana is what fuels your magic. I bet you’re really feeling the storm up there, right? Distance yourself from it. Focus on me. I’ll give you a little sunshine, try to really feel it.”

And then he didn’t just hug Cloud—he practically wrapped himself around Cloud, radiating warmth. He was sunlight but more, and Cloud found himself focusing on the sensation despite his wild grief. The storm inside him quieted, even though the pain didn’t stop.

“Yeah, there you go bud,” Zack said, apparently not at all bothered by how Cloud was snotting up his chest. “It’s okay, I’ve gotcha.”

“You don’t understand,” Cloud pleaded, muffled, “I can’t live without my Ma. I can’t do it.”

“Why’s that?” Zack asked softly, patting his head.

“I love her so much, everything I did was for her for—forever! Just let me go be with her, please!”   Despair set in. High above, he felt the sky darken to a roiling black, even as the rain petered off. “I don’t know how to do anything else!”

“Is that what she would want?” Zack asked like he already knew the answer.

Cloud keened. “That’s not fair!”

“I know. I’m sorry. Hey, focus on me. You’re using up too much mana again.” Zack squeezed a little tighter, radiating more warmth.

Angeal spoke. Cloud didn’t know how long he’d been there. “Take him inside, Zack. The barrier will block out a lot of his connection.”

“No!” said Cloud, briefly motivated enough to try to squirm free and run off, but Zack was just so much stronger than him. He didn’t get much of anywhere before he collapsed back in on himself.

“You got it, Geal.” Zack had to unwrap himself and change his grip to swim from the fields and back to Angeal’s home. The storm above seared itself into Cloud’s skin as he cried and pleaded (without any energy for shame) to be sent to his mother. Zack didn’t bother to respond to that.  Maybe he just didn’t have a response at all.

He certainly didn’t have one that Cloud would have listened to.

“Hey…Cloud, did you ever properly mourn your mom?”

Cloud, feeling wrung out from his earlier mental breakdown, was too tired to ignore Zack. The guy was annoyingly persistent. He was also still hugging him, probably because the radiant energy from his skin was doing something to Cloud. He felt…maybe a little less bleak than before, which was the opposite of what he wanted.

“What?” he said, the word heavy on his tongue as he stared blankly upward.

“You know, did you ever like, grieve her? Let yourself cry and stuff?”

“...no.” He’d been too busy planning his demise, tying up loose ends, and staring vacantly at the bed where his mom used to lay. Crying had felt…unnecessary when he’d been on a straightforward path to go join her.

“Okay. Yeah, I guess that does explain some things. You want to maybe, um, try?”

“I want to go be with her,” Cloud snapped.

“I guess I should have seen that answer coming, huh.” Zack lifted one arm and scratched the back of his head. “Well. I guess we can at least make sure you’ve got a handle on your magic? You can’t keep storming all the time, Cloudy, Angeal’s plants need sunshine and so do you!”

“Fuck off,” Cloud muttered. Zack just laughed.

“Nah. So, the main thing you need to understand is that your locus is fueled by your mana, since you’re not a primal spirit. They’re a little different since they draw power right from the sea, but you and I are limited by what’s inside us. Mostly.”

“Genesis,” Cloud muttered like a curse, glaring at the ceiling and its materia. They twinkled brightly in response to Zack’s light.

“Oh. You’ve met him, huh?” Zack asked, sounding sheepish.

“Asshole. Hate him.”

“Yeah…he’s uh…hard to get along with, sometimes. Not quite the oldest, but one of them. His locus is huge too.”

Cloud’s desire to understand what the hell Zack was saying finally overcame his grumpiness. He turned his head just enough to see the dark-haired young man’s face. “The hell is a locus?”

Zack blinked at him. “Oh! Right, sorry, a locus is a center or a focus of magic. Yours is storms, I think. Mine is the sun. Angeal’s is growth. Gen’s is the new. Get it?”

A vague kind of notion formed in Cloud’s mind. Powerful, ancient spirits…if there was a spirit of new, was there a spirit of end? “What are…the other primal spirits?”

“Hmm. Well, Grimoire is the spirit of the deep dark. He lives way, way down deep, the places it would be dangerous for us, you know? Vincent is the spirit of unmaking. He might come visit sometime, he likes to piss off Genesis by existing around ‘Geal.” He laughed a little before continuing.

“Sephiroth is the spirit of still waters. I think he’s somewhere out in one of the gyres, he probably won’t come visit. No offense but he’d probably hate you because of…you know, wind and waves? Moving water. Lucretia is the spirit of the tides. Or maybe the moon? Or…cycles? I’ve never understood her locus. Jenova is the spirit of unchanging ice. She’s…bad. But she’s imprisoned up north, so it’s okay.”

A beaming smile crossed his face, gleaming brightly in Cloud’s peripheral vision. “And Aerith’s the seventh! She’s the spirit of playfulness, she’s wonderful. I just know she’ll come by, especially after I tell her about you. She’s really good with—”

Zack rambled on and on about Aerith’s virtues. Cloud tuned him out, feeling a little bit steadier with his newfound knowledge. Deep, dark, dangerous waters. Unmaking. Unchanging ice. Still waters that would hate him just for existing. All those sounded like they could easily take care of his problems, one way or another.

All he had to do was find them.

Chapter Text

Zack stayed until Angeal was satisfied that his plants were no longer suffering, both because of the sunshine Zack naturally radiated and because Zack’s presence gradually helped Cloud get a handle on his own locus. The storms inside him created the storms above, but once he started to connect the two feelings it became easier to turn unconscious magic into conscious control.

He hated it. He didn’t want to have to learn to control this power inside him that he’d never asked for. It wasn’t fair that he had to put so much effort into learning control when he didn’t want to be alive at all. It made him angry that he had to suffer even more just because That Fire Dragon Asshole had decided he wanted a new toy.

But he mostly kept his feelings to himself, because he was sure if Angeal knew how furious he was, he would keep an even closer eye on him. Cloud was biding his time, waiting patiently (sort of) for the moment he could bolt and find someone who was willing to help him.

“What does Genesis do all day?” he asked Zack the day before he left. “What do you do all day, even?”

Zack was so openly friendly that it was hard to dislike him. He slung a sun-warm arm around Cloud’s shoulders. “Oh, me? Lots of stuff! I hunt, I make deliveries, and I bring the sunshine where it’s needed! And Genesis does… uh…” He scratched his jaw. “I’m pretty sure he just does whatever he wants.”

That wasn’t helpful for planning an escape. “Do the primal spirits not have… I dunno, tasks or something?”

“It’s not like they’re primal because they did something. It’s more like they exist because they’re primal. Like… they have to. You know?”

Cloud did not know, but he let the matter go. Zack bid him a cheery goodbye the next day and promised to visit soon. Angeal kept a hand on his shoulder as they watched him swim away.

“I think,” said Angeal, “it will help you to keep your hands busy.”

That was the start of Cloud being assigned chores, which he really should have hated, but he… didn’t. He told himself that was because it got him one step closer to escaping and the fact that he was fascinated by the spells Angeal taught him wasn’t relevant.

“How come you can do that,” he asked as Angeal demonstrated a spell to clean a room by settling kicked-up silt, “if your locus is growth?”

“Good question,” he hummed. He seemed to think every question Cloud asked was good. “Your locus is a capacity, not a restriction. It doesn’t prevent you from learning small magic like this. Actually, this spell is part of Sephiroth’s primal locus.”

“Still Waters,” Cloud murmured, which earned him an approving nod.

“That’s right. So we can do small bits of it, but we could never hope to, say, apply it over a miles-wide expanse.” He looked thoughtful. “Your locus is pretty unique, I have to say. I don’t know any storm spells. The only person I can think of who does is Jenova, but even at full power… no, I suppose that’s not true anyway. She only controlled the ice, not the storm itself.”

For some reason, the thought that he had a special locus made Cloud deeply uncomfortable. He changed the subject and eventually Angeal left him to his chores.

Cloud got better at swimming too, as the days accumulated. He learned how to move slowly and silently by making small, controlled movements down the length of his tail. He learned how to race around at full speed, playing with the dolphins that visited until Angeal arrived to chase them off, grumbling about disturbing his gardens.

He learned that he wasn’t faster than Angeal.

“Yeah, nice try kid,” Angeal said, hauling him back tucked up under his arm with both of Cloud’s wrists held in one of his hands.

“Nice try what?” Cloud snapped, squirming to get free. He learned he also wasn’t stronger than Angeal. “They were racing me!” That was mostly true. By the end, they were racing him to get the hell out of here.

“You’re still not allowed to go kill yourself.”

Cloud had to bite his tongue and resist the urge to snap that Angeal had no right to keep him from his mother. That would just prove him correct. Not that it ever fooled Angeal, of course, since he seemed to know exactly what Cloud wasn’t saying whenever this sort of thing happened.

Sometimes Cloud had bad days, when he couldn’t be bothered to keep the skies clear or get up out of his hammock. Angeal never let him stay there, although he couldn’t force him to do anything. He just hauled Cloud around like he had those first two weeks and let him be miserable on a soft mat next to wherever he was working.

Then Cloud had a very, very bad day—even worse than the first day when he’d realized he wasn’t dead after all. It was a day when the sky roiled black with clouds that spat hail and lightning and the wind howled the way he couldn’t as he struggled to breathe through the feeling of glass shards in his lungs. Angeal didn’t go out to work on his gardens that morning. He sat next to Cloud for a little while, a hand on top of his head.

“You poor kid,” he murmured when Cloud hadn’t gotten any better after almost two hours. “Just for today… I think you should go back to sleep.”

Cloud felt Angeal’s mana shift the same way it did when he was casting any other spell, and suddenly the pain eased as his eyelids turned heavy and the world became distant. He slept, free of dreams, and when he woke up Angeal wasn’t there. He felt stiff in a way that told him he hadn’t moved for a long time.

And that gave him an idea.

He patiently waited for an opportunity, stealing little snatches of time to try and reverse-engineer that spell. He couldn’t ask outright, of course. That would be too obvious. But there were various creatures he could practice on, especially the families of sea otters that Angeal maintained in his kelp forest. After a few days of determined effort, Cloud figured out how to put them to sleep and how to wake them up. He still had no way to know if Angeal had some sort of defense against that kind of spell, but it was worth a try. He just needed an opportunity.

Finally, there came a day when even Angeal seemed exhausted from his work. He was preparing some kind of delivery that he refused to elaborate on, which meant he and Cloud had been harvesting all day to be ready for some unknown person to come pick it up the next morning. Cloud was tired too—but not so tired that he couldn’t stay awake in his hammock and wait patiently until he heard Angeal’s breath slow down and even out into sleep.

He got up, slow and quiet, and crept over to Angeal. He didn’t dare to touch, but he put both hands close to the man’s head and held his breath, focusing. Please work, he thought, and cast the sleep spell. Nothing dramatic happened, although Angeal seemed to be a little more relaxed than before. Cloud would only find out if it worked if he managed to get away before Angeal woke up.

So he snuck out of the cave and bolted, heading toward where he knew the continental shelf dropped off sharply.

Swimming down was pretty straightforward, even if it wasn’t easy. Zack had said that the spirit of the Deep Dark would be dangerous to reach, so even if Cloud didn’t manage to find him it would work out. All he had to do was go looking and he’d surely encounter something dangerous that would pick him off. Hopefully quickly, but as long as it did the job that was fine.

Cloud swam as fast as he could for as long as he could, following the drop of the sea floor. The light quickly faded away, but he was surprised to find that his eyes adjusted far better than any human’s. He could see fine—there just wasn’t much to see. When he got too tired to keep going, he found a reasonably sheltered nook between some rocks and hid there to sleep.

Waking to darkness was disorienting, and so was the realization that he could still feel the state of the sky far above him just as clearly as when he was in Angeal’s shallowest garden. Thinking about it made him uncomfortable, so he resumed swimming at the equivalent of a steady jog and didn’t.

Traveling like this was strangely monotonous. Cloud had never stopped to think about how big the ocean actually was, especially when you weren’t in a boat. Following directly along the seafloor didn’t break up that monotony much, since it wasn’t populated the way land was with colorful biomes filled with animals. He’d left the densely-populated life behind near the shore. In fact, he might very well starve to death before he found ‘Grimoire.’

That was what he thought until he found a steep drop-off and started descending sharply into even deeper waters. The rapid change in depth made him realize just how much pressure was being put on his body. He felt heavy and tired. It was getting harder to breathe. Swimming up would have been an impossibly exhausting task. After another few hours of traveling into the depths, his head started to throb.

Maybe, Cloud realized, the danger wasn’t from some creature or hazardous element of the monotonous landscape. Maybe it was just the sheer pressure of the depths—immutably physical law at its finest.

The thought scared him as much as it excited him. What if it got to the point where he was incapacitated but not dead? How long would he lay there, suffering, before he finally died? How much would it hurt? He’d chosen to jump in his first attempt specifically to make it a near-instant death and avoid pain.

But at least he’d finally be with Ma. Wasn’t that worth it?

So Cloud pressed on, determined. The deeper he went, the more it hurt. He’d long-since stopped moving at a jog, but he still crawled doggedly on, barely able to kick his flukes. When the sea bed started to rise like an underwater mountain, he went around until he found another slope. Finally, he reached another sharp drop in the underwater canyon he was traversing that went so far down he couldn’t see the bottom. Looking over the edge made his stomach flip.

This was it. He was sure he wouldn’t be able to drag himself on any further once he hit the bottom of that. It might not kill him instantly, but it would kill him. There was something funny about the thought that jumping a second time from a cliff would finally let him go to her. The first jump hadn’t worked. This one would.

“I’m… coming… Ma,” he whispered, each breath an enormous effort, and pulled himself over the edge.

Everything hurt.

There was silt under his cheek. He would have been breathing it in, had he been able to take deep breaths. Time had blurred into an endless gray static, filled with nothing but the all-consuming pain of pressure grinding him into the silt.

“Child.”

Just like that, the pressure was gone. The pain wasn’t; he could taste blood in the back of his throat, and his body was still screaming at him like it was one giant bruise. He couldn’t have moved even if he’d wanted to.

“No—newborn.”

Someone was talking. He was sure of it, even through the ringing in his ears. And there was a bluish light reflecting off of the silt, far brighter than anything he’d seen in the depths. An enormous hand turned his face up. He found himself looking at a merman, or the shadow of one. It was like a pale face with red eyes emerged from a form made of liquid darkness, speckled with lights.

Stars, Cloud thought dazedly, too out of it to think anything else. Someone had taken the void of space and made it into a person.

“Didn’t anyone teach you it was not safe to come this deep?” the stranger scolded. “Why did you not stop when it began to hurt? You are very close to death, little one.”

Death. Yes. That was what Cloud wanted. He was chasing death. If this stranger said he was almost there, that was good enough for him. He was tired and it hurt, though not as much as before. Surely if he closed his eyes and went to sleep, he would finally get what he wanted?

The stranger sighed as his eyelids slid shut and he teetered on the edge of unconsciousness. “You are a mystery. Very well. I suppose it’s been long enough since I’ve ventured into shallower waters.”

Cloud was gone before he even felt himself be lifted out of the silt and start to ascend, back toward the light.

He was seeing stars again. Even though he could tell he was still in pain, Cloud was sure he was dead because his face was pressed up against the vault of the sky, stars twinkling just past his nose. Mermen couldn’t fly. Ergo, he was finally dead.

Ma? he thought, but attempting to speak resulted in him coughing blood onto the sky. It swirled through the atmosphere as if he was still underwater.

“Peace, child. We are almost there.”

That wasn’t Ma. Actually… that sounded a lot like the merman who he’d seen the last time he was awake, right before he’d died.

…wait a minute—

Cloud’s neck hurt tremendously when he turned it enough to realize that he was being carried by that same merman… who was also a hell of a lot bigger than Cloud had thought, easily twice the size of Angeal. The 'stars' were glowing marks on his void-like skin. He reminded Cloud a lot more of Genesis than he did of Angeal or Zack.

Cloud’s heart skipped a beat. Had he actually managed to find the primal spirit of the Deep Dark?

The mer glanced down and met his eyes. Cloud tried to ask, but it made his chest spasm again and he coughed up more blood.

"Ah, don’t try to speak. Your body was damaged by the pressure of the deep, since you took no precautions with your wardwork. I’m taking you to a healer, but I’m afraid we must go slowly, or your condition will worsen. Even my locus can only do so much.”

Cloud’s eyes widened. Healer? No! That was the opposite of what he wanted! He tried to shake his head emphatically, but that just made his skull, neck, and shoulders scream with pain at the movement. More blood swirled away from his mouth. He couldn’t even raise a hand to protest.

Still, the mer seemed to realize something was wrong. “Peace, little one. You’re in no condition to move. Whatever is troubling you, I promise you’re safe and you will be fine.”

No! No! Cloud didn’t want to be safe and fine! It wasn’t fair! He’d been right there, right on the verge of getting what he wanted!

His vision blurred. It didn’t matter how much it hurt, he had to tell the spirit. His lips could move at least, even if he couldn’t put sound into the words without making his chest spasm. He was so desperate that he actually managed to curl his fingers and grasp the inky, semi-solid darkness of the mer’s form. Let me die, let me die, let me die—

Grimoire, primal spirit of the Deep Dark, stared down at him until something approaching disbelief grew on his face.

Let me die, let me die, let me die—

“Perhaps,” the spirit said, then stopped. “No. Nevermind.”

His mana felt very different from Angeal’s, but the effect was the same as it blanketed Cloud’s mind and sent him back into the velvet embrace of sleep.

Chapter Text

Something felt… off. Angeal shifted in his hammock, rubbing the film from his eyes, and checked the position of the sun using a spell. It was… several hours past when he usually woke up, and he frowned. Strange, but it was probably fine. Elmyra would have come and woken him up if she’d arrived before now to pick everything up.

He glanced over at Cloud’s hammock, expecting to find the kid asleep still. Cloud wasn’t in it, though. It was empty, despite the fact that he always woke up well before Cloud did.

It took a second of confused staring before panic seized him.

Angeal scrambled up, casting another spell that would locate the kid if he was in range. “Cloud!” It turned up nothing. His panic deepened. “Cloud!”

He knew the kid still wanted to die. It was impossible not to know. Cloud had no poker face, and every time Angeal stopped him from hurting himself, his anger at the perceived injustice was clear. Angeal had been banking on the fact that Cloud couldn’t sneak away from, outrun, or outfight him, so they’d have all the time in the world for him to calm down.

“Shit!” He raced into the armory and grabbed his spear and harness, strapping it around his torso. He had no idea where he’d find Cloud, but chances were good it would be dangerous. The petulant little brat was seeking death. Considering how smart and stubborn he was, there was every chance he’d get himself into a very bad situation… and not cooperate in being rescued from it.

Assuming Angeal didn’t find him too late.

“I’m going to kill Genesis with my bare hands,” Angeal promised himself, and raced off to save the kid.

“Wake up sleepyhead!”

Cloud shifted in place at the sing-song command. His head felt so heavy. Actually, everything felt heavy. He felt numb too. Where… was he?

Greenish light seeped in past his closed eyelids. Someone brushed soft, slender fingers through his hair. “Come on, silly boy, wake up! I know you can.”

“He nearly died, Aerith,” said a different voice. “Let him rest.”

“That’s exactly why I want him to wake up and tell us what happened!”

… nearly died. He remembered now. The primal spirit of the Deep Dark had saved him from certain death. He’d been so close to finally seeing his Ma again, but all that pain had been for nothing. He was still alive.

“Aww,” ‘Aerith’ cooed, swiping her thumbs beneath his eyes as a sticky film gathered there again. “Don’t cry, it’s alright. You’re going to be just fine. Mom’s healing spring is fixing you right up!”

“You don’t have to wake up right now,” the other voice said gently. “You can go back to sleep, little one.”

He wanted to know who was tormenting him by keeping him alive, so he forced his eyelids up. They felt sticky, both from tears and from being closed for a long time. He had to blink a lot before the haze cleared and he could see two brown-haired mermaids hovering over him.

“Where…” he croaked, “where am I?”

“You’re in my home,” said the woman with the dark red tail. “I am Ifalna, the healer. This is Aerith. Grimoire brought you here on the verge of death. Do you remember that?”

So he really had found the Deep Dark. Wordless, he shook his head. He remembered being found, but not being brought to wherever he was. “Where’d… he go?”

“Grim?” Aerith asked, head tilting curiously. “He left to go find your family.”

Cloud’s breath hitched. “My family is dead,” he snapped, though it was weak. He was weak. He tried to get up, but his tail dragged through some dense fluid and he realized that he was laying in a glowing pool or spring. The strangeness of it made him pause in confusion.

“Easy,” said Ifalna, keeping him down with a hand on his chest. “You’re not well.”

Aerith said, “I’m sorry you lost your old family, but I meant your new one.”

“I don’t have one!” he snapped again, already exhausted by that tiny bit of effort.

“Okay,” Ifalna said. “It’s alright. You need to stay in the spring a little bit longer, don’t try to get up. What’s your name?”

He was already falling back asleep. “I…” Did he really want to tell them? Aerith knew Zack, didn’t she? The last thing he wanted was for someone to tell Angeal where he was. Or to call Zack here to make him feel better. It would probably work. “No…”

“So new and so stubborn,” said Aerith with a strange amount of fondness. “Rest. We can talk later.”

He didn’t have enough energy to say anything else. A sense of dread followed him as he fell asleep.

This time Cloud woke up alone—sort of. Something was ruffling his hair, and when he blearily shifted his head he realized that it was a giant fish. They stared at each other for a few confusing seconds. The fish went back to nibbling his hair.

Okay, he thought, weakly shooing it away. It turned and swam out of the little room with a strange degree of huffiness. Cloud was alone (except for the fish), which meant he could get up and go. The spirit of the Deep Dark had done the opposite of what he wanted, and he was pretty confident that Aerith, spirit of Playfulness, wasn’t going to be any better. He still had options, though. The spirits of Unmaking and Still Waters had sounded promising.

Whatever he was soaking in was thicker and denser than seawater. It clung to his skin and scales as he hauled himself out of the half-submerged hammock, glowing a luminescent blue-green. The glow remained even when he tried to brush it off, so he gave up.

Slowly, he managed to swim out of the little cave the spring was in, one hand on the materia-speckled wall to help him along. His lungs felt particularly weak, but that made sense since he’d almost managed to pressurize himself to death. He had to stop and catch his breath after just a minute or so of swimming.

“Cloud you silly!”

He jolted, startled by how close and loud Aerith’s exclamation was. He hadn’t heard her approaching, but when he looked up she was only an arm’s length away and had her hands on her hips. “What are you doing swimming around?” she asked in a scolding tone. The fish from earlier was at her side.

“Did… did the fish snitch on me?” he asked in disbelief.

“Of course,” said Aerith, petting it affectionately, “we left Lola to watch you. She’s a great nurse.”

Cloud shook off his disbelief. “Right… I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll uh, get out of your hair.”

“Hmm.” Aerith gave him a knowing look. “Well I don’t know about that, but you can come meet everyone if you’re feeling better.” She grabbed his hand and started to drag him along before he could really protest. Since he was probably getting closer to the exit this way, he didn’t even bother trying.

Cloud still felt pretty disoriented. That was why, when he heard voices echoing down the rocky tunnel they were swimming through, it took him just a split second too long to realize he recognized more than one of them. It was also at that moment that he very belatedly realized that Aerith shouldn’t have known his name, considering he hadn’t told her.

“Wait—” he said, but when he tried to pull back Aerith just dragged him out of the tunnel and into the open, where two women and two men were speaking with each other. They all looked at him, but only Angeal’s expression was full of wrath.

“What the hell do you think you were doing!” he snarled, swimming rapidly toward them. Cloud shrank back, but Angeal was having none of it. He grasped Cloud’s elbow tightly and started looking him over. “Do you have any idea how worried I was? I thought I was going to find your corpse! Elmyra was just supposed to come pick up the order but I had to drag her into searching for you! Then Grimoire comes and tells me he found you dying at the bottom of a trench?! You—I—!” He was too angry to finish his rant.

Cloud’s own anger returned in a snap. “You have no right to stop me!” he yelled back, trying and failing to pull his arm free. “Fuck you! If I want to go be with my Ma, that’s my choice! What the fuck do you care anyway! As far as you’re concerned I’m just an annoying kid Genesis dumped on you!”

Angeal shook him a little bit. “I don’t care how annoying you are, I’m not going to stand by and let you kill yourself!”

Cloud gritted his teeth against a sob and blinked hard. “Fuck you! Fuck you so much I hate you! Just let me die already!”

A soft oh from one of the other people in the room distracted him. Ifalna had a hand over her mouth and her eyes were sad. “You truly were trying to die?” she asked softly. “Little one…”

“I’m not a kid!” His voice cracked badly, and he had to stop and choke his way through a sob. “I’m an adult! I buried my mother and handled her estate and if I want to die I get to make that decision! Fuck all of you! I didn’t ask to get reborn like this!”

He collapsed in on himself a little, trying not to prove his own words wrong and cry like a child, but it was hard. He’d been so close to seeing his Ma, but he’d failed and now he felt so sick and awful and weak. It wasn’t fair. They didn’t even know him, so why did they care if he lived or died? Why did anyone care?

Why couldn’t someone have cared when it actually would have helped?

He heard Angeal take a deep breath. The grip on his arm loosened, and then he was pulled into a hug. “I’m sorry it hurts, kid. I really am. But you still deserve to live even if you don’t want to right now.”

“No!” Cloud raised a fist to beat against Angeal’s arm. For some reason, he ended up holding on to it instead. “I should get to decide! I—” It was unfair. It was all unfair and he hated it.

“This isn’t a decision anyone gets to make, Cloud. We’re not going to let you kill yourself.”

Fuck you. Cloud couldn’t get any more words out, though. He was too busy trying not to break down and wail his lungs out. Fuck you fuck you fuck you—

Angeal sighed again. “Ifalna, can I take him home?”

“Assuming you’re intending on carrying him, yes. I don’t think he can swim that far right now.”

Cloud’s despair deepened. He hiccuped pathetically. Now he had a long recovery before he could even start over, and this time Angeal would be expecting it.

“Great. And… thank you for saving his life. I don’t think he’ll thank you himself for a while.”

“Of course,” said Ifalna. “Thank you for the delivery, despite the circumstances. Now get your boy back home, Angeal, and send us a message if you need help with him.”

“He’s not my—” Angeal stopped. “Yeah, thanks. Come on, kid.” He shifted, pulling Cloud onto his back and holding his arms over his shoulders.

“No,” Cloud protested, but he was already falling asleep. He didn’t even have the strength to overpower the man on a regular day, much less now. “No, I hate you. Leave me.. alone…”

Angeal didn’t even bother to respond as he swam off toward home.

Cloud felt a sense of deja vu when he woke up in his hammock and turned his aching head to find Angeal sleep in his own hammock. Despite being underwater, his mouth somehow felt dry. He swallowed, slowly getting out. Maybe—

As soon as he wasn’t touching the soft woven material of the hammock, a chime sounded and Angeal snapped awake and lunged at him. Cloud yelped, startled. One of his wrists was snatched up into an iron grip.

“No,” Angeal snapped at him, groggy and slurred. “Absolutely not.”

“Huh?” Cloud said dumbly. 

Angeal rubbed his eyes and shook off his grogginess. “...Cloud. Why are you getting up?”

“I…” He didn’t have a good answer.

“Right.” Angeal looked tired. “I can guess. Go back to sleep. That trick isn’t going to work twice, kid. And anyway, you’re still recovering. You can be stupid when you’re healthy again.”

Cloud’s resulting burst of anger was short-lived. “I—I don’t want to sleep. Fuck you,” he said, but it lacked heat by the end.

“Tough,” said Angeal, and simply dragged him back into the hammock. It wasn’t hard to do when Cloud felt like a soggy noodle. “You’re going to live. Deal with it.”

Cloud glared venomously. “No.”

“Yes.” Angeal ran a hand through his hair. “What were you even trying to do swimming down that deep? Grimoire said you were dying a slow, painful death. Is that really the way you want to go out?”

“I’m not afraid of pain,” Cloud lied, bristling. “Fuck you. It almost worked.”

Only now did Angeal give him a shrewd look. “Were you looking for something specific?”

Cloud glared silently, unwilling to confirm or deny anything. It would probably make it harder to plot later if he did. And it was none of his involuntary minder’s business anyway. He hadn’t asked for anyone to ‘care’ for him.

“Hmm.” Angeal crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes. “...were you looking for Grim?” Something in Cloud’s face must have given him away, because Angeal looked displeased. “What, did you think he would agree to kill you just because? Guess what, kid, we’re not a bunch of psychopaths. No one is going to agree to that, no matter how much of a huge brat you are.”

“Fuck you,” Cloud said again, and rolled over so he didn’t have to look at Angeal’s stupid face. He had to be wrong. One of the spirits would agree to kill him.

He just had to find the right one.

(very old) sad mer boy doodle

Chapter Text

There wasn’t much for Cloud to do besides sulk as he recovered. Angeal dragged him around the gardens as usual, but now that his huge order of food and medicinal plants for the healer had been delivered, there wasn’t quite as much to do. Instead, Angeal spent more time ‘inside’ doing things like weaving new ropes and baskets or tending to his weapons.

“Hey, Angeal?” Cloud asked a few days in, bored even of sulking as he watched the man patiently carve what looked like bone into the shape of a spearhead. “How can a primal spirit have a parent?”

Angeal paused and looked at him. “Hmm? They don’t. I’m not sure how they come to be, exactly, but they’re either born directly from the ocean or made by it the way we were.”

Cloud blinked slowly, turning the words over in his head. “Then… why did Aerith call one of them mom?”

Angeal huffed slightly and picked up his carving again. “Same reason everyone calls you ‘my’ kid. When Aerith first appeared, Ifalna and Gast were the ones who took her in and taught her. I think they named her too. So she’s not really Aerith’s mom, but she is metaphorically.”

“Oh,” said Cloud. “...um, what did you mean by ‘made the way we were?’ I thought you were… I dunno, born here?”

“Did you?” Angeal chuckled. “No, I wasn’t. None of us were. Once upon a time, we were all human.”

He said it so casually, but the revelation sent Cloud reeling. It felt like his whole perception had been flipped. Angeal had been human before? Someone or something had changed him the same way Genesis had changed Cloud?

Had he even been given a choice?

“How did…?” He trailed off, uncertain of how—or even what—to ask.

“How did I become a mer?” Angeal supplied. “Well, I was a soldier on a sailing ship a very long time ago, and one of the primal spirits took a liking to me.”

Cloud’s lip curled. “It was Genesis wasn’t it?”

Angeal sighed. “Yeah, it was Genesis.”

“But what about your family?”

He shook his head. “Didn’t have one. My parents had died of disease not long before. That was why I took the job on the ship, guarding cargo. I can’t say I let it go easy when Genesis dragged me down here, but… this is a better life.”

Cloud chewed the inside of his lip. “...did Genesis become your ‘dad,’ then?”

Angeal snorted. “No! I would never have let him. Actually, he dumped me off with someone else right after I tried to kill him for the first time. Her name was Gillian. She passed away a few decades ago.” A little sliver of his blue iris flashed when he side-eyed Cloud. “She killed herself.”

“Oh.” Cloud squirmed internally and steered away from the topic. “Who is Genesis’s… metaphorical parent?”

“He doesn’t have one. Well—” He backtracked. “It would have been Grimoire, but Genesis charged off to go learn everything by trial and error. As far as I know, he also named himself.” In a mutter, he added, “Explains why he behaves like an overgrown child, doesn’t it.”

Silence fell, except for the soft scrape scrape scrape of Angeal’s tools. Cloud turned everything over in his mind. It… didn’t change things. It couldn’t. He still wanted to go be with his Ma, and it didn’t matter that Angeal hadn’t asked for this either, or that his own mom had…

It didn’t change things.

Cloud curled up in his hammock and went to sleep, fleeing from all the uncomfortable feelings churning in his gut.

When Cloud was well enough to ‘casually’ go for a swim and see how far he could get before Angeal dragged him back (not far at all), he was given a new skill to learn. Angeal pressed the spear he’d carved into his hands and said, “Come on, I’m going to teach you how to fight.”

Cloud bristled just for the hell of it. “What if I don’t want to?”

Angeal rolled his eyes. “You do. Learning to fight means you get to try and hit me repeatedly.”

Oh. Maybe that wasn’t so bad, then. Cloud hefted the spear, testing its weight, and followed Angeal to a room in the caves he’d never entered. It was large and empty, and as soon as he entered he felt a spell close shut behind him. Angeal started explaining before he even had time to be suspicious.

“This room is designed to contain spells—we won’t be using those just yet—and it’s reinforced. As long as we’re in here, it’s safe to go all out in a spar.” He gestured, eyebrows high. He wasn’t even holding a spear of his own. “So… go ahead and try to hit me, kid. Show me what you know.”

“Gladly,” Cloud growled, and darted forward.

Angeal didn’t move—not until the very last second, when he twisted and sharply kicked his flukes to dodge with just a hair’s breadth of clearance. Cloud, surprised, wasn’t able to stop before the spear was neatly wrenched from his grip. He yelped when Angeal lightly smacked his tail with the haft.

“So you know nothing about fighting, then,” Angeal surmised. He didn’t sound unimpressed as much as matter-of-fact, but Cloud bristled anyway.

“I—I know how to use rifles!” he said hotly. “Ma taught me!”

“That’s good,” said Angeal with a nod. “Not very useful down here, though. Even using a speargun wouldn’t translate very well, but you don’t really need anything more than a good spear and solid spellwork.” He tossed the weapon back. Only now did Cloud notice that it was blunted and would never have done significant damage to Angeal in the first place.

“Do you want to do some drills so you’ll actually know what you’re doing, or are you still mad enough that only pretending to kill me will do?” the older man asked, arms crossed over his chest.

Cloud considered. “…I’m still mad,” he said.

Angeal nodded. He didn’t seem bothered at all. “Alright. Then come at me again and see if you can manage it this time.”

So Cloud did. And he repeated that for the rest of the day, until he was so tired that he barely had enough energy to eat dinner before he passed out. Angeal gave him pointers the whole time, but Cloud never once managed to hit him.

Cloud didn’t know where the primal spirit of Unmaking lived, but in the end that didn’t matter because Zack was right: Vincent did like to show up and hover near Angeal just long enough to make Genesis appear and (metaphorically) piss on his territory.

Learning to fight was making Cloud feel bolder, so on the first day he felt fully recovered, he simply got up and swam away without any pretenses whatsoever. Angeal didn’t notice for a few seconds, since he was focused on the plants and Cloud had been working on a task of his own. When he did notice, he yelled and chased after. Cloud sped up, fully aware he wasn’t actually going to outrun the man but thrilled that he was getting faster.

”CLOUD!” Angeal bellowed behind him, furious. Cloud laughed.

Then he ran face-first into a tangle of currents that sent him spinning ass over teakettle, flailing and unable to escape. His laughter turned to a startled yelp.

“Not so fast, little one,” said a voice, and suddenly there was a pale merman with long dark hair next to him. His hands were black, the darkness bleeding away into bone white up his arms and into his torso, and his tail was deep red with a black pattern. As he looked at Cloud with crimson eyes, he exuded the same air of power that Genesis, Grimoire, and even Aerith had. The currents swept around at the slightest flick of his wrist, stilling Cloud and holding him in place.

“Vincent!” said Angeal, confirming his suspicions. “Thank you. Now go away.”

“It’s good to see you as well, Angeal,” said Vincent.

“We both know you’re just here to annoy Genesis and now really isn’t the time. I already have my hands full.” Angeal grabbed Cloud out of the currents and pulled him to his side.

“Let go of me,” said Cloud just to be contrary.

“No.”

Vincent didn’t smile, but Cloud thought he could see amusement in the lines around his eyes. “I’m not only here for that. My father told me about your newborn.”

Cloud scowled at him. “I’m not a child.”

“Perhaps not. But you are newly born into this life.” He tilted his head slightly. “I’ve heard you would like to speak with me.”

Cloud felt both eagerness and dread at the question. Yes, of course he wanted to, but the fact that the spirit was being so open about it in front of Angeal made him think it would be very hard to actually get what he wanted. “Yeah,” he said, and his voice only trembled a little bit.

Angeal sighed. “Alright, fine. You can talk to him at my place. But you’re dealing with Genesis once he shows up, got it?”

Vincent nodded. “I’ll try to keep the destruction away from your gardens.”

Angeal muttered deprecations about both primal spirits the entire time he hauled Cloud back home. He dumped them both off in the sparring ring. “Try not to teach him any bad habits,” he said to Vincent, and then left.

Cloud’s sense of dread increased.

“You’re the spirit of Unmaking, right?” he asked, fidgeting with his fingers.

Vincent nodded. “I am.”

“Can you… unmake me?” His eyes stung when he asked.

“I could,” said the spirit, making Cloud’s breath catch in his throat. “But why would you ask for such a terrible thing?”

Cloud almost tripped over himself in his haste to explain and make the mer understand. “I—I didn’t want to be turned into this! Genesis just did it to me! I—the only thing I want is to go be with my Ma. That’s it. But everyone keeps stopping me and—it’s not—it’s a decision I should get to make. And I want to go be with my Ma.”

Vincent actually nodded, which made Cloud dizzy with hope. “You want to be with your mother.”

“Yes.”

“And what would I get out of it?”

His question brought Cloud up short. “...what?”

“What would I get out of such a terrible deed, little one? It would be more than just blood on my hands to unmake you. That is mere death. I am Unmaking. I am the dissolution of everything you are, were, and could be, so that new things can be made of your constituent parts. I am forgetting and oblivion. I am he who understands the cruelty and necessity of annihilation best. To unmake you would be a grave sin. Therefore, you must answer me: what would I get out of it to justify that sin?”

Cloud felt cold and sick, but he tried to find an answer anyway. “I… it… it would be… kindness. A good act. I—I wouldn’t be in pain anymore.” He swallowed down a sob. Now wasn’t the time to look like a child. “I’m asking you, of my own free will. That’s not—that makes it not a bad act. It would be good. You wouldn’t have to feel guilty over it.”

Again, Vincent nodded. “You are in pain now. Terrible, all-consuming pain. But it will not always be so. To unmake you would also be to snuff out every worthwhile moment the future promises you.”

The sick and cold feeling intensified. Vincent seemed to stare straight through him, and he didn’t like it.

“Are there not things and people that, even now, offer you glimmers of joy and meaning beyond your suffering?”

Cloud’s thoughts turned involuntarily to Angeal and sparring with him, practicing magic, and learning about the world beneath the ocean’s surface. “No!” he burst out, a tight band of panic around his chest. His hands balled into trembling fists. “No! There’s nothing! Everything is bad and it hurts all the time!”

Vincent looked at him and was silent.

“No! No no no no! Nothing is worth it!” Despite his best efforts, he was crying like a child again. “It’s my decision! All your stupid—stupid future shit isn’t worth it right now! I get to make this decision! I get to trade all of that if I want to, and I want to! I want it to stop right now!”

He thought maybe Vincent nodded one more time, but it was impossible to see as he frantically swiped the heels of his hands over his eyes. “It is your right to desire an end,” he said, “and my right to refuse. I will not kill you, Cloud.”

He wished Vincent had never showed up to give him a moment of hope. Losing it just made everything else hurt so much more. Even with the suppressing power of the magic in Angeal’s home, he could still feel a wild storm raging above as he struggled to breathe.

“Go… a-away,” he managed to get out. There were other primal spirits he could ask, and he clung to that thought. He still had options. He didn’t have to live.

Vincent left without a word. Cloud only realized because suddenly Angeal was there, hands on his shoulders.

“Kid,” he sighed and Cloud couldn’t even summon up the will to hate him. “I wish you wouldn’t keep doing this to yourself.”

He wasn’t. Everyone else was doing this to him. The world was doing it to him. He keened, pressing his fists harder into his eyes as he was wrapped in another tight hug.

“I know it’s not okay, but it will be. I promise, it will be. Breathe with me, you’re going to make yourself pass out again.”

Cloud didn’t listen to him. He didn’t want to. And when he woke up after passing out from mana exhaustion, the spirit of Unmaking was long gone and Cloud’s anguish had cooled again into stubborn determination.

They were all wrong. Nothing would ever be okay until he was with his Ma again. He wouldn't let it be okay. And he wasn’t going to give up.