Chapter Text
Elysium
Just as the sun finally sank below the horizon and shrouded the sky in thick darkness not yet quilted with bright clusters of stars, but fog and mist, the last of gulls, crows, and exotic birds zipped through the canopy of trees. Quiet winds and grey skies always signified something sinister and ominous underway. This wasn’t common, written knowledge and fact, but more of a superstitious thought always preserved.
Born and raised in a small village just East of Nibelheim, Cloud Strife was graced with a simplistic lifestyle not known to many until he learned that his village was targeted for an invasion and chaotic war.
No one even knew how their mundane lives had been disrupted. Their village was so quaint and cozy, mostly made up of loving families and aging grandparents. Markets bustled with the grandest of provisions, with travelers from afar crossing the distance in order to promote the novelties, and tranquil tradition had been established and obeyed for many decades so pleasantly.
That didn’t matter in the end, however.
Most men were called to defend the village, and even boys as young as thirteen were forced out of their homes and the comforts of their mother’s arms to fight.
He wasn’t ever fit to become a warrior, unfortunately.
Born a few weeks too early and supposedly giving his mother and the physicians a difficult time, the scrawny, thin boy wouldn’t ever last in the time of war. Even at the age of twelve, he could hardly carry haystacks into the barns, leaving his mother and father with no other options available.
To spare him from the bloodshed and carnage, his mother had one night bustled into his room, gathering Cloud out of his bed and into a large, thick robe. Draping the hood over his head, as he stood there still trapped between slumber, she embraced him tightly and deeply.
Groggy and miserable at once, although he was still much too young for the cruelty and injustice in the world, he learned on that specific night just how much his mother loved and cared for him.
She’d arranged to have him sent away to Nibelheim. A convent was the destination, as the holy men and women of the abbey never were expected to go to battle. That ensured his safety, and without any other explanations and time running short, Cloud was ushered onto the back of a large carriage.
Hiding in steep mountains of haystacks, as he poked his head out and gaped ahead past the ravenous fires and smoke, he only then understood that his village, his home, all of it was falling apart. Committing the melancholy to mind, the final memory of his parents he could fasten onto were their blotchy, sorrowful faces while they held each other and wept brokenly as they saw him off.
Tears were all he had to shed for days and nights. Feeling his parents’ haunting guilt as his own, he prayed for them until the journey was over.
Nibelheim was a much more affluent and safer village. Larger than his own, the stretch of land had been sealed off by many gates. The church especially was a sacred, protected place, just as his mother stated it would be. Most who happened upon it would find salvation, be granted mercy, shelter, food, water, and a chance to make peace with the Lord.
His goal was different, however. At twelve, he suddenly realized why there weren’t many grievances and issues with his acceptance into the convent for young girls.
Only one priest lived in the building, but all the others were women and girls.
The church was organized and run by Father Barret Wallace and Mother Marle. Already at an age way past their prime, the elderly man and woman accepted Cloud immediately, smuggling him inside on a stormy, rainy night without asking too many questions.
Set to stay with the girls, on that bleary, cold, dark night, as much as Cloud worried he would be regarded as an outcast, that turned out to be a case of misguided worries rather than reality.
He fit in just fine enough and things were rather copacetic from the very beginning. Though he was the youngest of all the youth, he developed friendships and created wonderful bonds with all the spritely girls in less than a few days.
They were all too precious and dear to him. Lightning, Lulu, and Yuna were the eldest at the time, nearly seventeen years of age. They were the most organized and intelligent, often acting like big sisters everyone else could rely on. As they showed Cloud around and helped him make his bed, Cloud was swiftly introduced to the others.
Serah was only two years younger than Yuna, Lightning, and Lulu, and not too shockingly, she was Lightning’s biological, younger sister. Equally as kind and loving, she was much too fond of Cloud in a heartbeat.
Bright, cheerful faces greeted him, and Cloud valued them all, but the tightest, closest friendships he formed and sustained were with three girls slightly older than he was.
Yuffie Kisaragi was almost a year older than him and extremely effervescent. She often made him laugh long into the days and nights, a most gentle companion. Mischievous as she was however, her spirits were always tamed when Aerith Gainsborough and Tifa Lockhart were around.
Just shy of two years older than Cloud, Tifa and Aerith were generous, giving, compassionate, yet extremely different in their personalities. Quiddities and idiosyncrasies aside, Tifa was always more forgiving and open-minded, whereas Aerith seemed quite diligent, uptight, and much too hard even on herself. She took her education and training at the convent too seriously, rather disciplined and authoritative for someone so young.
Despite their striking differences at times, they all got on well, and without any knowledge of Cloud’s illustrious past, he was thrown into a routine and education for all the other girls.
The only people who knew of his real background were Mother Marle and Father Barret. Right until his sixteenth birthday, Cloud always relied on and went to Mother Marle for anything he was having issues with. Once he started finding that his body began developing slightly more into that of a man, with the guidance and support from Father Barret, his transition into his twentieth birthday was made much easier.
Perhaps nature and the gods had thought of mocking him by granting him such a thin, frail, and lanky body, but Cloud chose to be grateful and look at it as a gift. News flew through the abbey walls constantly regarding many men losing their lives, young sons, new husbands, and even more seasoned fighters robbed of their right and will to live. It would be a true dishonor and disgrace to the Lord to abandon his blessings.
Never sporting much facial and bodily hair helped him still hide away his scant traces of masculinity. Due to the light work he was always given rather than slaving away in fields and battling, he never developed many bulging muscles. Growing out his golden hair down to sweep nicely just a few inches past his shoulders in time assisted in him looking much too beautiful and on the aesthetic levels Aerith and Tifa reached at twenty-one.
Many were already mildly covetous of his appearance, but Cloud was much too reserved and humble to hold anything against his Sisters. Leading quite the private life, he never bathed around them even in the communal showers and baths, only washing his robes and undergarments among them and whenever they were too chatty and distracted. With the passage of time and age, when he reached twenty, he was moved and given his own private room like all the other girls.
Cloud never longed for and missed the hectic life outside the convent’s safe, thick walls. A few times with Yuffie, he’d gone on brief shopping excursions, and that was where he’d learned of the quiet, quotidian lifestyle many people lived in Nibelheim.
Most of the denizens were church goers and devoted worshippers, but hardly any young men were seen about. No doubt, they too had to fight to preserve the land from being overtaken.
For what reason, though?
Soothly, since he’d been torn out of his own hometown so swiftly, Cloud discovered that he’d never had the chance to learn just what the genesis for the war seriously was. All he knew for a fact was that they’d all been at war for eight tiresome, taxing years, and the bloodshed never seemed to want to cease.
Set off into the expansive meadows and fields with Aerith and Yuffie one bright morning to retrieve berries, Cloud knelt before bushes and a large tree, keeping an eye out on the pastures where large horses grazed silently.
Yuffie nudged their basket close to him, while Aerith leaned her back against the trunk of the tree, a Bible open in her lap as she read it with great fasciation as she normally would.
Hating that he had to break her concentration, Cloud smiled, bowing his head in obeisance to show respect first.
When she glanced up at him from her Bible and returned his friendly smile, Cloud whispered to her in the same tone he’d grown so accustomed to speaking in.
“Sister Aerith, why did the men go off to fight?”
Beaming at him while Yuffie snuck into her mouth a few raspberries, Aerith explained, “Sister Scarlet told me that the Shinra army invaded. The battle is all about their advanced and supposed free world, and they don’t favor God and aim to eradicate all religion from our land, Sister Cloud.”
He’d had a brief overview in education regarding the Shinra regime. Lord Shinra had created his own army made up of Nordic and Celtic warriors, quite impressively so in order to wipe out people he deemed peasants and beneath himself. The rule of the word of God had been the way of life in the lands for centuries until Lord Shinra saw himself above and beyond God, fit to do as he pleased.
Nose wrinkling in distaste for the unsavory tale, Cloud wondered out loud, “So many lives taken…why would he do this when all we want is peace?”
“Because he’s the son of the devil,” Yuffie snapped, playing with her dark veil until Aerith grabbed her hands and stopped her.
Cooing at them both, the eldest of the three calmed their nerves as she held onto her Bible protectively. “Hush and let us not blaspheme right now, for the Lord won’t approve of us wagging our tongues in—”
Instead of finishing her thought, as Aerith looked on behind Yuffie and Cloud, she squeaked, her lips quivering. Throwing her Bible accidentally onto the grass, she speedily clasped her hands together, then slammed one over her mouth before she pointed ahead.
“Sister Aerith?” Bewildered as much as Yuffie, Cloud studied Aerith for a few seconds before spinning around to face where she was pointing.
Soon, when Yuffie also stared in that specific direction, she too began whimpering and creating some horrified noises to go with her pale face.
Cloud understood fully well why his sisters were behaving in such terrified ways. As he squinted out into the open meadow and forest extending and stretching far beyond the enormous abbey, there, amid the fog and sunlight still settling over the horizon, there was no mistaking the wavering figure gradually approaching.
Standing on his feet, Cloud was soon able to gain a better perspective on the figure. Tall, wide, muscular, with long, thick silver hair, his sickly face contorted in pure discomfort and pain. Wobbling over with a thin steed at his side, his dark robes were revealed to be torn, tattered, singed in many areas, and they couldn’t cover the fact that he was badly and profusely bleeding out.
On her feet next to Cloud, a numb Aerith whispered in a rush while she clung to her rosary, “Holy Father, what sight is this?”
Weak and much too drained as his horse, when the tall blades of luscious grass and vegetation ended and the hooves of the steed clipped onto the stony grounds of the yard, that was the moment the mysterious man finally stopped moving.
Now only a few feet away from the three nuns, he didn’t look up only because of the severe bleeding and pain he was in. Releasing the reins of his loyal horse, his arms shook, and he held onto the left one as he quivered violently.
Jaw loosening widely, as his face morphed into a moue of utter agony, his eyes slowly rolled up into his head. Stumbling and fighting to keep his balance while drunkenly swaying on the spot, he clutched at his chest desperately.
“H-hurgh!” Coughing out thick streams of blood and saliva, he couldn’t even maintain eye contact as he slowly fell to his knees. “S-sanctuary…sanctuary…ugh!”
That was all the injured man could muster. Body too wounded and traumatized for anything else, his eyelids shut on their own accord, and his steed whined out and observed as the nuns did while the wounded man collapsed in a dull, silent heap right there.