Cloud watches Sephiroth prepare to move, and braces, his vision swimming more and more, the sharp pain and ringing that follows when his memories fail to work growing in intensity. One hand grabs at his forehead, anything to make it stop.
It does not stop, of course. Flashbacks bleed into reality- the entire town around them is suddenly ablaze, then reduced to ash, then reappears as it presently is in the span of a few seconds. Sounds of Sephiroth's low voice urging him to embrace his hate, then talking about the JENOVA project, then his voice, broken and manic, speaking to JENOVA and calling it Mother. The line between reality, illusion, memory, past, present, and truth completely blur, and Cloud is set adrift and floundering.
Sephiroth is going to strike, inevitably. That's how it is going to work, right? Just like when he skewered him. Cloud prepares, uses every drop of will he has left to pull himself back to the apparent reality before him...
...And then the man steps back. He speaks in a voice that is hauntingly familiar, from a time that is near impossible for Cloud to recall fully without problems, but he recognizes it nonetheless. The voice of the Sephiroth he knew and fought alongside so many years before. Masamune is gone.
"What...What is this? A trick to lure me in? Do you think I'm an idiot? Your little toy?"
Cloud's voice is straining with pain, confusion, flat anger, but an undercurrent of something new. Uncertainty. Why would Sephiroth go with this angle, if he knows how scrambled his memories are in the first place? What the hell is the plan?
no subject
It does not stop, of course. Flashbacks bleed into reality- the entire town around them is suddenly ablaze, then reduced to ash, then reappears as it presently is in the span of a few seconds. Sounds of Sephiroth's low voice urging him to embrace his hate, then talking about the JENOVA project, then his voice, broken and manic, speaking to JENOVA and calling it Mother. The line between reality, illusion, memory, past, present, and truth completely blur, and Cloud is set adrift and floundering.
Sephiroth is going to strike, inevitably. That's how it is going to work, right? Just like when he skewered him. Cloud prepares, uses every drop of will he has left to pull himself back to the apparent reality before him...
...And then the man steps back. He speaks in a voice that is hauntingly familiar, from a time that is near impossible for Cloud to recall fully without problems, but he recognizes it nonetheless. The voice of the Sephiroth he knew and fought alongside so many years before. Masamune is gone.
"What...What is this? A trick to lure me in? Do you think I'm an idiot? Your little toy?"
Cloud's voice is straining with pain, confusion, flat anger, but an undercurrent of something new. Uncertainty. Why would Sephiroth go with this angle, if he knows how scrambled his memories are in the first place? What the hell is the plan?