Becoming Cloud Strife (FFVII)

Becoming Cloud Strife

Becoming Cloud Strife

Soft blue eyes carefully scanned over the wild crowd of children, watching the odd creatures people had called his 'friends' at some points in his life. These 'friends' had always run off to play their own games and start their own mock wars. It wasn't that they purposely left him out. No, the children weren't that mean- not yet, anyway. He just preferred to be on his own.

Their squeals and giggles sharply contrasted his insightful nature like a black dot on a pure white sheet of paper. He liked watching and they liked playing. It wasn't a problem, really. That's just the way it always was. Occasionally, at the very beginning, they would offer him a chance to join a conversation. He always gave them that slight shake of the head that made his golden spikes bounce in unison. They would shrug it off and pretend he didn't exist just like he wanted them to.

But, like any introvert, there were times when he wished he could just forget his personality and say yes. Not nod, but actually use his soft, young voice. He wished that they would force him to join, push him into it, mock him, anything to at least make him feel more important than the nudge in those children's minds that made them feel guilty if they didn't at least ask him. They always knew the answer, and so they had stopped asking. They had rejected the guilty feeling altogether and forgotten during their childish games. They had forgotten him.

He didn't care, really. Every once in a while, one of them would look at him wistfully from afar, wondering innocently why he wouldn't leave that bench. And if the teacher was on the bench, he would sit on the wooden border to the old playground outside of the rotting schoolhouse. She worried too much about him, and it made the young boy feel smothered. And so he would watch, not feeling anything as they shot each other down in their little games.

By the time he was out of third grade, he knew he wanted to have a friend. He'd seen that large group of kids split into their own little cliques and grow to have rivalries between each other. Still trivial fights, but fights nevertheless. He was an outsider, but even at the age of eight, he was used to that. He was used to seeing their wars get harder fought and more strategized than before, though they really weren't really being all that organized compared to the tidbits of information that his dad had given on his brief breaks back to the small community of Nibelheim.

The kids had learned by then that they had power over their smaller classmate. They'd make fun of how his hair stood up no matter what he did, they mocked his height, and they snickered at how he was the slowest runner in gym. Even the rather plump boy named Tommy Barnes could outrun him without breaking a sweat. But he wasn't bothered. He was being forced into that attention that he'd wanted two years ago. He'd wished for it, and that meant he'd done something to earn it, right? Isn't that what the girls had said when he heard them whispering in the back of the room.

It was in fourth grade that the beautiful girl named Tifa Lockhart had joined their little class. She had shuffled into the room quietly, sliding into the only empty desk in the back of room. Her name was scribbled onto a piece of dirty masking tape and stuck to the top right corner where the wood had split and chipped and a rusty screw was poking out just the slightest bit. Her seat was right between his and one of the more (if kids were even considered this that early on) popular girls in the class named Claire.

Miss Turner had stopped writing on the chalkboard to get a look at her new student, a half written cursive 'G' scrawled in a sickly shade of yellow behind her. She smiled sweetly and brushed the chalk dust off her fingertips before clasping her hands together and explaining that Tifa had been homeschooled all the way until now. She told them that they needed to welcome her and help her catch up if she didn't understand something from last year. Tifa had blossomed into the class's most popular member. Not only was her family's fortune enticing with the companion of her overly generous nature, but with those burgundy eyes and shining dark hair, many students caught themselves staring a little longer than necessary.