Disclaimer – I do not own Final Fantasy VII or any of the dozen spin-off creations it spawned. Thank Square-Enix for its existence, though if they wanted to give it to me, I certainly wouldn't complain.

Title: Plumage

Rating: T

Summary: Cloud would have liked to say it was the sword or the eyes, but really, it was the hair. No one had hair like that except his mom, himself, and, well, this guy. So naturally he had to follow him. The trouble didn't start till after that, though.

It was the man's hair.

Cloud would have liked to say that it was the sword – a monstrosity of a blade that was bigger than the man carrying it – or the eyes – because he knew what the glow meant, how could he not? – but really, it was the hair. The stranger came into town wearing a full length cloak with a hood that shadowed his face and only let the glowing blue SOLDIER eyes shine through, but it fell down for a moment when he tilted his head back to drink from the cup that Mrs. Arkengel handed him. And there it was, that chocobo hair that he got teased for on the head of a man he had never seen before.

Except he thought that he had.

The man looked like him. Kind of. Maybe, if Cloud were ten years older, with darker skin and some scars and never smiled.

But the hair? Identical.

The man had come to Nibelheim early in the morning and rented a room at the inn. The whole town had known of his arrival before noon and rumors were multiplying like rabbits as each person added their two cents as to why a SOLDIER was sent to their little town. The last time such a thing had happened was when a hard winter drove two dragons down from the mountain. Nibelheim was evacuated for week until help had arrived. Fortunately the collateral damage was negligible. It was the middle of summer now, though. There had not been any monsters nearby in almost a month.

When the man had emerged in the late afternoon, Mayor Lockhart had asked him what he was doing at Nibelheim, what Shinra had sent him for, whether there was any danger, etc. The man had simply waved him off, saying he was passing through on his way to Rocket Town for some time off. That had killed off most of the rumors, though Jacob Whitely was still insisting the SOLDIER had to be here for some kind of secret mission. Cloud was not inclined to believe him, even if Jacob hadn't pushed him into a fence earlier. If there was something going on in Nibelheim, the Shinra Company would have told the townspeople or evacuated them.

So Cloud had been ready to content himself with just another glimpse of his idols, cherishing the memory as he did the few others, except then Mrs. Arkengel had offered the man a glass of water as he was leaving the item shop with more medicine than anyone Cloud had ever seen and, well, the hair. Cloud's hair.

So, he followed.

It was not a stalker thing. Cloud did not want to steal anything, just to ask a few questions. Maybe not even that, because both his parents were only children, three of his grandparents too, he knew his family tree, it was just a coincidence, but the man was a fast walker and Cloud could not keep up when they started past the old mansion. The road became rough and unreliable at that point, and even a country boy like him had trouble moving fast without falling and breaking something. It was an even harder time trying to go up the road quickly without making any noise.

He really should not have been surprised to see the man waiting for him around the next bend.

(I am officially the worst spy ever.)

"What are you doing up here?" asked the man.

"…Hunting," Cloud said after far too long, and then kicks himself because without any weapons on him? Yeah, no one would buy that. So stupid.

"Mm-hm," the man muttered, looking every bit as convinced as Cloud thought he would. "Well, I don't hear anything but monsters for a mile out, so why don't you try your luck lower down the mountain."

It was not a suggestion.

The man moved away from the mountain side, that massive sword no more bother than a backpack to him. Cloud watched him go, feeling like he had just been weighed, measured and found wanting for something important that he cannot name.

"Wait!"

The man stopped. Cloud was not sure why, but he was taking any chance he could get.

But then what?

"Excuse me, strange man I have never met before. I followed you out into the monster infested wilderness because I've been watching you all day and I saw that hair of yours. Might we be related somehow?"

(Oh God I wouldn't blame him for running away from me.)

"Let me come with you. I know the way through the mountains."

The man started walking again. "No thanks."

(Damn it damn it no think of something.)

"Then take me back to the town, please! I thought I saw a dragon behind me!"

And yes, that was the best he can come up with.

The stranger stopped again, but Cloud saw his face and it was not irritated. Instead, the man was half amused, half pitying. It was almost worse like that.

"There aren't any dragons this low. Nice try. Go home."

And crash went Cloud's hopes.

…No, there was one way left.

"So, did you ever live in Nibelheim?" Cloud asked.

The man blinked. He had not been expecting that.

"Why do you ask?"

"You know where everything is. You never asked for directions, whether in town or through the mountains. I don't think I've ever seen you passing through before, and neither does anyone else. So, did you maybe live here a really long time ago and no one remembers?"

(Mom said she only came back home after everyone died and left the house to her but maybe someone just left.)

The man was staring at him differently. His face was almost impressed.

"You got that from a question I didn't ask? Smart," the man almost whispered the last part. It sounded almost sad.

"Did you?" Cloud asked, almost breathless. His heart was pounding. This whole situation is stupid, more than likely just something he is blowing out of proportion, but if he is right….

"C… uh, kid, why do you want to know? Is this why you followed me? Just to ask a question?"

"Well… it's important," Cloud said slowly. "Nibelheim's small. We don't have a lot to brag about. If someone from our town got into SOLDIER, then it would be pretty neat."

And that was not a lie. In the whole world, from Third-Class to Sephiroth, the SOLDIER program never had more than two thousand individuals at a time. Many of them were city boys, being picked from the military academies at Junon and Midgar. Those who volunteered to enter the SOLDIER program more than often failed, and of those volunteers who managed to pass, only about 12% were from country towns like Nibelheim. They tended to be heroes in their neighborhoods.

If someone from Nibelheim had gotten into SOLDIER, even after moving away, it would be big news.

The man looked uncomfortable. Cloud wondered why.

"I… used to live here, yeah. Kind of. It was a long time ago, though. Now will you go back?"

"What's your name? Tell me that and I'll leave," Cloud promised.

He could ask his mom with a name. If he has a name, there was no way she would hold back if she knew anything. And she had been thorough about checking out her family when she got the notice. She would know, right?

"Why are you asking me this? Nobody is going to remember me, I guarantee it," the man said.

Well, he had been gone a long time if he thought small town memories died so easily. Mr. Frey and Mr. Haugendorf had been arguing over the size of a Marlboro they killed for the past sixty years.

"Maybe someone will," Cloud said. "And, hey, I got to talk to a SOLDIER from my town. That's not a bad thing. I'd like your name so I don't forget."

"I doubt you'd forget anyway," the man said. He turned and resumed walking down the road.

Cloud tried not to let the bitter, familiar feeling of failure and disappointment swallow him whole. He had gotten something out of the exchange, had he not?

(But you couldn't just ask him straight out if he was family could you baby wimp loser.)

"Lightning."

It was so soft Cloud almost did not catch it. Then his brain caught up with his ears and he smiled.

Lightning Strife.

Very awesome, if he was right.

So he did go home, because he was not a liar, whatever else those idiots Tifa hung out with said. It was getting close to his lunch time anyway.

His mother asked him where he had been to come home so torn up and filthy. He was in too good a mood to act ashamed that he went up the mountain trail. He told her everything, including the reason he felt compelled to follow after the mystery man. She was angry, then almost pitying, then intrigued when he told her the man's words.

"So, is it possible?" Cloud asked.

"Perhaps," Sky Strife answered, and Cloud's heart leapt. It did not matter that he would probably never see the man again unless he came back the same way from Rocket Town. He might a SOLDIER cousin. Or uncle. Relative. "I'll dig out the papers after dinner tonight and we can look through them."

Cloud had never hated his chores as much as he did then. Every dust bunny he had to sweep up, every crack in the fence that he had to fill in, seemed to be laughing at him. 'Ha ha ha! You'll never get us all finished!' This was not the truth of course, but he was thirteen and impatient. When those two things are together, a summer day can seem like a lifetime.

Dinner finally rolled around at six p.m. and Cloud inhaled his mother's cooking without tasting it. A shame, since she usually made very tasty fare. Still, it was not like he would never get another chance to eat it. And anyway, mysterious-maybe-relative! That beat stew and biscuits.

He helped her clear the table and then they opened the old chest that Sky kept their important papers in. Birth certificates, land deeds, death notifications, wills, diaries, the family tree – every bit of Strife family paperwork for the past six generations. The possibility that the stranger is from the other half of his family is raised and then dismissed. The hair that had drawn Cloud in was strictly a Strife trait.

The older stuff got put back in almost immediately. There was no mention of the black-sheep moving away to start a brothel or anything interesting like that. Every member of the family was accounted for from their birth until their death. Only two had ever left Nibelheim and they, like Sky, had returned to stay when it came time to settle down. The same went with their children and their children, too. That just left his grandparents' generation and his mother's.

He had known, objectively, that he had once had a large family. It was something else to see his grandfather and his six grand-aunts and grand-uncles spread out on paper. Aunt Zephyr Strife was the eldest, then his own grandfather Cyclone, younger brother Gust, sister Sunny, brother Hale, brother Sleet and finally littlest sister Cloud, who he had been named after (a fact that his tormentors took every opportunity to remind him of).

Seven people in all and a whopping twenty-two children between them, with five more grandchildren besides himself. All dead and gone now, save himself and his mother and maybe the SOLDIER. He had not fully appreciated that until just then.

"Amazing, isn't it? So many people, so many lives, and only us to show for it today," Sky whispered sadly.

That brought Cloud even further down.

He had never known any of the people on the paper in front of him, but his mother had. They had been her father and mother, her aunts and uncles, her cousins and nephews and nieces. The people that had raised, taught her to be who she was, and ultimately cast her out for it.

Cloud knew the story behind his birth, the version his mother told him and the version he put together from gossip and insults. Nibelheim had been bigger fourteen years ago than it was today. The mining industry was still big and no one had to leave for new jobs. People passed by all the time, either to try and settle down or just to stop by on their way. His father had been one of the former.

According to his mother, Virgil Eirhart was a kind, loving man who swept her off her feet and would have married her had that cave in not cut things short. According to Mrs. Whitley at the grocery store as she retold the story to young Ms. Kaust (and Cloud was almost sure she knew he had been listening in), Virgil Eirhart was a lying swindler who had taken his fool mother in for her family name and money, and was going to leave her at the alter once he learned that Cyclone was disinheriting his tramp of a daughter. Either way, with no home willing to take her in and no husband able to build her a new one, a newly pregnant Sky Strife had taken off for the city and found it to be less forgiving than she thought to a young woman with no connections. When the death notice came five months later, it was almost a relief.

The main house had been buried in the avalanche, along with everyone who had bothered to show up for Zephyr's birthday, which was everyone. As the sole remaining relative (and as Cyclone had been the only one to specifically write Sky out of his own will), Cloud's mother had found herself with quite a bit of property and money. Most of it was lost to pay off the family's various debts, but what was left was enough for her and a new baby to live off of. A good thing too, as most of the townspeople saw her even today as a woman who had ruined her good name and come back to live on the graves of her family.

Sky had always told Cloud of the importance of family, but looking back, Cloud could not think of more than a few instances where Sky had ever offered him any stories. None of them had featured her father.

Suddenly, looking through the family papers did not appeal to him.

"Um, mom, if you want to stop, I can – "

Sky cut him off. "No, it's all right. Really, I've been so depressed about all this for so long. It's nice to have a happy reason to look at these things again. Now, what about my cousin Typhoon here?"

She was forcing the cheer into her voice, Cloud was sure. Still, there was interest in her eyes, so….

"Don't think so. See here? He divorced his wife because she was barren."

"Ah, right. That was a nasty time, I recall. He was always snapping at everyone and I don't think we ever proved that it was Marian who was barren. Okay, cross him off. Now, what about cousin Thunder…."

It was almost midnight when they finally put everything back. Cloud figured they had narrowed it down to two possibilities. The first was his mother's cousin Snow, who had married a girl in Nibelheim, gone off to Kalm and only returned on the day of his death. He had never mentioned a child, but then he had hardly ever written home and only when he needed to. Supposedly business had kept him busy, but Cloud thought he just enjoyed being on his own for once. The second was his uncle Terran, who had gotten into a massive fight with Cyclone at the age of sixteen, left and never come back. No one had ever learned what happened to him. For a moment Cloud thought that maybe the man had been Terran and simply given a different name, but that could not be it. He was too young looking to be older than Sky.

Both disappointed that he had not gotten a definite answer and elated that there was hope, Cloud crawled into bed wondering how he could send a letter to Kalm asking after his aunt by marriage and track down an uncle no one had heard from in almost twenty years.

He dreamed of faceless people with bright yellow hair milling all around him, but no one ever answered when he spoke. His hands passed through them when he tried to make contact. Then someone tapped his shoulder and said, "Why are you asking such stupid questions?" Cloud turned around and woke up.

He stared. The light from his window was strange. Red. And his nose itched when he breathed. Come to think of it, so did his lungs.

…Was that screaming outside?

…Yes it was.

Only half convinced he was awake, Cloud sat up and looked out of his window.

He was still asleep, as it turned out.

Nibelheim was a bonfire, every building he could see spewing orange-red flames out of their windows and doors. The well at the center of town was blazing away merrily as well. The updraft was carrying the smoke up and away, little cinders and sparks following it to glow hellishly in the air towards their unknown destination.

He looked away.

Mrs. Whitely was standing in front of her store and home, screaming high pitched, incomprehensible words and reaching toward the doorway she dared not enter. Mr. Whitely and Jacob were nowhere to be seen, so Cloud had a pretty good idea of why she was screaming.

He looked away.

The schoolteacher, Mr. Einzbern, was dragging himself away from the schoolhouse. He had no clothes on, but Cloud could see something falling off of him and being left behind on the paving stone as he crawled down the walkway leading to the town square.

He looked away.

The Welch family dog was laying still in the front yard of the Welch house. It had half collapsed from the flames, but Cloud could still see the open window where a blackened arm was hanging out. Sparks flew from the house and rained down on the dog. After a few moments, bright flares begin to puff up from its lank fur.

He looked away.

Mayor Lockhart was pinned to his fence by a massive sword. He kept trying to push it out of himself, but he was not strong enough. Tifa was crying and yanking the blade along with him. It had no effect. After a few moments, Mayor Lockhart coughed up a massive amount of dark blood, staining the blade, his daughter and his nightshirt red. His arms fell down and Cloud could Tifa begin to scream.

So he was sleeping.

Because none of that was real.

Obvious, really. What a stupid nightmare.

Cloud lay back down and pulled the covers over his head to muffle the noise.

It would be better when he woke up.

"Cloud?"

His mother?

She was in his dream too?

That hardly ever happened. Still, if he was lucid, maybe he could skip the waking up part and just make this into a happy dream.

CRASH!

Mayor Lockhart's body came in through the window. Glass showered over Cloud and gave him a dozen stinging cuts. Without the glass to block out the worst of it, sound and heat came through the window with a vengeance. Cloud was sweating immediately and the screaming was ten times worse with no filter.

"Oh, God!"

But his mother's was the worst of all.

Sky Strife was kneeling by Mayor Lockhart's body, feeling frantically for a pulse at his neck even though Cloud could tell he was very dead. The gaping, bloody hole in his torso was a big hint. And it was not only Lockhart who was bloody. Cloud's cuts were staining his nightclothes and blanket red in places. Carefully, Cloud raised his hands to his eyes and flexed them, feeling the pain of cut skin as he did.

(Not a dream.)

And it was only then that the important things came to his mind.

(Nibelheim is burning people are dead I'm in danger mom's in danger we need to pack the valuables and get out maybe the old mansion wait who threw mayor lockhart who THREW A MAN THROUGH MY WINDOW?!)

Tifa was screaming.

That seemed much more important than it was a few seconds ago.

Cloud looks out of his window.

A man in black, a tall man with long silver hair, was holding the girl Cloud had a crush on since forever in one hand and the monstrous blade that impaled Mayor Lockhart in the other. He was lining up the blade with her body. Cloud knew what would come next.

"No!" Cloud yelled. He threw off the covers and lunged for the window. It did not matter that his mother was screaming behind him. She was safe (for the moment). Tifa was going to die. Tifa, the only kid in town he wanted to be friends with, even if she did not know he existed. Tifa, who he had risked his life for once before, back when he did not even know the value of his own life. He knew it now. He also knew that if he saw her die, he will remember it forever and hate himself for not stopping it.

He was halfway through the window, glass cutting every bit of skin it touched, when the man turned to face him. He could not see the face – the smoke and heat warped everything more than ten feet away into a blur – but he saw the eyes. The green, glowing Mako eyes.

The green eyes.

And the long black coat.

And the long silver sword.

(…No.

No.

Why?

Makes no sense.

Not real.

Not true.

IGNORE IT AND HELP HER!)

Impossibly, incredibly, the man dropped Tifa and came toward the sound of Cloud's yell.

At this point, Cloud realized the flaw in his heroic plan.

(Shit!)

The body went forward when the mind screamed backward and Cloud fell in a heap onto the front porch. In the house behind him, his mother was screaming his name, asking if he was all right.

And the man was coming closer.

The man – terrifyingly tall, terrifyingly strong, terrifyingly near, terrifying.

Sky Strife – why did Cloud jump out the window? Who killed Lockhart? What is happening to the town? Wait, who is the man outside?

Mayor Lockhart – Dead, bleeding red meat on the Strife rug made by Cloud's great-grandmother.

Tifa – thirteen years old, in shock, in denial, insane from the madness of the night, curled up against the fence she had landed by.

Nibelheim – was not going to last the night.

Cloud - thirteen, in nightclothes, bleeding, scared, confused.

(What did we do to deserve this?

Nothing we did deserves this.

Why is he going to kill us?)

And here is the scene:

The man stops in front of Cloud, raises the sword.

Sky throws something at him through the same window he used to deliver Lockhart.

The man returns the favor with a blast of fire from his bracer.

Sky screams and roasts.

And Cloud –

The sword comes down.

- Waits to die too.

(…Someone help….)

"BASTARD!"

The air turned shockingly cold in a single moment as spears of ice, longer than Cloud is tall, rained down where the man was standing just a second ago.

Something landed in front of Cloud with a flash of light and a thump heavy enough to crater the ground. His eyes stinging, Cloud looked through the smoke and the heat. The air was alive and his all his hair was standing on end. He had felt like that before, when the summer nights turned dark and the sky rumbled. It was stupid joke, even in his head, but with Hell on Earth come to Nibelheim, Cloud does not really care when he stares at his savior who fell down from the mountaintop and thinks lightning struck.

Okay, so here's the first chapter. Can't say I'm happy with the title, so expect it to change sooner or later. We've had time travel stories where Cloud goes back in time and lands in a younger version of his own body, usually while he'd in the military academy. I've seen a few where he retains his own body and lives a separate existence from his younger self (Sinnatious' The Fifth Act is a really good one), but I don't think I've ever come across one where Older!Cloud gets heavily involved with Younger!Cloud's life. Like, is-stuck-with-this-kid-for-real involved. This one is going to be along those lines. Little Cloud will be spending the next few years of his life with this mysterious, close-mouthed, often frustrating, sometimes terrifying stranger who looked like his older brother.

Expect confusion. And tantrums. And explosions. And Shinra.