[Voice]

[herobydefault]

Tifa's gone home. Sorry to her friends here.


Filtered to KH!Cloud/50% Unhackable]

[A muffled attempt to start a sentence, and then he just forgets it and there's a dull sound as he switches to Private instead.]


[Private/50% Unhackable]

Can't even give us a minute to say goodbye, can you.

Comments

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

[Yeah, nothing special about his childhood.

He seems to be done, though. Gives a little half-shrug here.] ...anyway. She's better off home. It's safe for a year, at least...if time passes there at all.

[compos-mentis.livejournal.com]

That's an adorable tale there, Mr. Strife.

[...That's got to be weird to hear coming out in his voice]

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

No it's not. It's stupid.

...but thanks for listening to it anyway, hag.

[compos-mentis.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say stupid, but I would say mundane.

[Still, she'll snort there, as him]

Still, it's probably better you had some mundane in your life to fall back on.

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

Speaking from experience?

[compos-mentis.livejournal.com]

[A pause, and then a light laugh]

There's a distinct difference between becoming special and being born special. The later has some consequences which aren't pleasant to most people's ears.

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

...hm. [Cloud faces the sky again.] Yeah. I guess it does make sense that you and Sephiroth got along.

[compos-mentis.livejournal.com]

[...Snort there, and then she's going to chuckle before she goes back to her "normal" form] Yeah, we bonded over our uniqueness.

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

You don't have to understand to listen. [Shifts his weight again.]

[compos-mentis.livejournal.com]

What, and I'm to tell the tragic tale of my family being killed so I could be kidnapped into House Jin when I was a toddler?

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

I didn't say you had to tell me anything.

[compos-mentis.livejournal.com]

[Chuckle]

Well that's the start of it, anyway. I wasn't from a big House; Sji was really small, and it was going to be slaughtered eventually. Dear Lord Sor'jin [...She fumbles on that name, briefly] saw a reason in that there was rumors I could ignore mass when I morphed.

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

[Cloud head fell to the side and he watched her, listening.]

[compos-mentis.livejournal.com]

I was taken in as the personal... I guess a good word you'd understand would be "handmaiden." Slave is what most people tell it as but that's not quite right. In either case, I was inducted into House Jin under the direct service of Lord Sor'jin, one of the younger nobles in it.

[There's a cruel, bitter, insane laugh there]

Those were simpler times.

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

[The laugh makes Cloud frown a little bit, but he doesn't speak otherwise. It should be pretty obvious that he's still paying attention, though.]

[compos-mentis.livejournal.com]

I was trained. I mean, there were a lot of us; but the only constant was Lord Sor'jin. I killed most of the others myself in various matches or tests or if he told me too.

Well, I was trained and I was broken in, I suppose is a better way to put it.

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

[Cloud's honestly surprised she's offering up so much information, but thankfully the alcohol is just present enough for him to not really care of the circumstances, and he instead just hums a "keep going" sound.]

[compos-mentis.livejournal.com]

[Heh. She's going to snort there and then...] Of course, where there's one special person, there's a more special one.

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

[Cloud can see where this is going, unfortunately. He purses his lips.]

[compos-mentis.livejournal.com]

Telepaths among my people are really rare. Sin'rei was one of them; and her story is probably really similar to mine, all things considered. She became Sor'jin's new favorite pet.

[...A pause]

You know, you probably don't know what it is to love someone because it's all you have.

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

...probably not.

[compos-mentis.livejournal.com]

In retrospect, your people would call what I was raised with abuse, probably. Rape too. [And that same laugh there, but she just seems to do a laying down shrug]

Anyway, there's more to that tale, but that's for another time.

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

[Cloud has no idea what to say to that. "I'm sorry," and "oh my God" and "holy fucking shit" and everything else just seems really shallow in the face of that. He's not even sure if he should try offering comfort of any kind; would she snap at it, hate him for it? Think he's looking down on her?

Is he pitying her?

He watches her face, torn, and- no. She's older, she knows better, and just like with Jenova he's very, very small in comparison. But she's not like Jenova, and...

He reaches over and...has no idea what he's doing. Rests the backs of his fingers against her cheek. As if his hand happened to be there and her cheek happened to be there and it really was only coincidence.]

[compos-mentis.livejournal.com]

[She pauses there. It's such an expected movement, really. It's a movement that Fergan would do; all of his horrendous timing and thinking she needed support. All of his thoughts about her own fragility. It's not like she would cry: Nina can't cry. What is there even left for her to cry for?

...But this is also welcome, in a way. This makes her smile, just a little bit. In a way not entirely unlike that smile she gave when she was pretending to be his mate.

She reaches out the arm she has left there, and she's going to lightly take his hand and peel it from her cheek though, after a little bit of that. But there... there she's hesitant to release that hand. She hates talking about Sor'jin, after all]

[herobydefault.livejournal.com]

[If she'd brushed him off, Cloud probably would have just headed right inside to avoid the inevitably uncomfortable atmosphere soon to follow. He may not be as hopeless as he was before, but intense and intimate social situations were still a world of unknown interaction for him and he just wasn't sure sometimes.

So when she tugged his hand away, he was ready to go. But when she didn't let go...he stayed. He doesn't trust his dumb, stupid brain to come up with anything profound though, so he just looks back to the sky for a minute before closing his eyes and maybe holding her hand a little bit, too.]