Chapter One: The Letter

Dear General Sephiroth,

My name is Cloud Strife and I am fourteen years old. I live in Nibelheim on the Western Continent. It is cold here and lonely, probably not like warm and busy Midgar where you are at.

I wish I could join Soldier and become like you! But I was told that I can't because I can't hear. I have never heard a sound in my entire life. My ears do not work and no matter how many time the doctors try Cure on my ears, I still can't hear. My mom says I am just different. I use sign language to communicate with my mom and Tifa, my best friend. It does sometimes get lonely because they're the only one I can really talk to.

I wanted to ask you directly if it is possible for me to join Soldier? Or do I have to have hearing ability to join? I wonder this because when I read about Soldiers and sometime they would be in the noisy environment and they obviously can't hear. Or what about top-secret recon mission where you have to be absolutely silent and have to rely on gesture to communicate? I want to know more.

I look up to you because you are my hero. You are brave and strong, and at the same time, you are different from everyone else. I am different too.

I hope to learn more about Soldier someday. I know you are busy and probably don't have time to write but I hope you do.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Cloud Strife

Sephiroth read the letter again with a tiny smirk on his lips. He wasn't sure how this little fan letter ended up in his mailbox because he had a strict order for fan letters to be filtered out of his mails and that he wad not to see one of them cross his desk at all. However, this one somehow snuck in and ended up in his hands. He picked up the envelope and a silver eyebrow rose, the envelope looked like a business return mail and figured the kid didn't have a spare envelope and used a bill envelope. That was probably why he ended up reading the letter.

However, it was unique. It piqued his interest.

"Zack," He said to the raven-haired lieutenant commander that was sitting across from him, his feet resting on his desk much to his annoyance. He looked at the man who looked up from his laptop. "What do you know about deaf people in general?"

Zack shrugged. "Not much. There's not many of them because they get cured if there's a problem." He clicked on his laptop, "let me check something." He hummed as he kept typing on his laptop. "Interesting. There are actually some people that are born deaf and they could not be cured because it was like there's nothing wrong with them." He looked up, "Like trying to cure a natural amputee to have an arm."

"That's the case with this kid," Sephiroth replied, waving the letter. "I just got a fan mail but it's unique because this kid's deaf and he could not be cured. He asked if it was possible to join Soldier, per to his dream."

Zack reached out and plucked the letter out of the general's hands and read it. "Huh, this kid is ambitious! He even wrote directly to you!" He looked up, "How did you get this mail mixed in your regular mail?"

Sephiroth handed the envelope to Zack, "Business envelope."

"Genius! He might have known your mail gets filtered and found a way around it."

"Or he just didn't have a regular envelope."

Zack handed the paper and envelope back and asked, "You're going to reply?"

Sephiroth shrugged and placed it in his drawer. "I don't know. Is it possible to be in the military without being able to hear?"

"I don't think so. You would have to pass the physical exam." Zack replied and closed his laptop, dropping his feet to the floor. "He would have to be extraordinary to make it in without his hearing ability."

Sephiroth stood up and moved around his desk. "It's something I've never really thought about." He took Masamune from the stand near the wall next to his desk and strapped it to his back. "Training time."

Zack stood up and placed the laptop on the desk and grabbed his Buster sword from where it stood against the wall near the door. "Right." He replied and followed the general.

Okay, I've always wanted to write a story with a character that is Deaf. I am Deaf myself and often when I find stories that have a character that is deaf and the person writing it has no idea or any clue about the culture and what it is like to be a deaf person makes me cringe. I just came up with this idea while driving my usual route to my son's school to drop him off and onto to work and university (it's often a bit of a long drive) and my mind wanders. I have always wanted to write one, any fan fiction with a deaf character and wasn't sure which one to approach until this one hit me right in the head and I thought, why not?

I want this story to be an approach of how Cloud became a Soldier while being a profound Deaf person and develop a relationship with Sephiroth too, all while dealing with the crisis their planet is going through. All of this from a writer that lived and know deafness and the stigma upon it. I am going to simply have fun with this story and do my best to compress what I know into what I hope to be a short story.