[The response is immediate, but then Cloud's quiet for a long moment, just looking closely at all the details in the mural. Many of his memories might be hazy and jumbled, but he remembers this - everyday life in a small mountain village where nothing important ever happened, according to his younger self. And it may look like the same place they visited on their travels to Aerith, but to Cloud they're worlds apart. The little wooden stand where the ladies used to hawk their pork sandwiches. The way the eaves of certain houses drooped under the weight of age. The hunters with their shotguns and rifles stationed around the town's perimeter, keeping a constant vigil against the fiends coming down from the mountains. The beat-up truck that was the town's only motor vehicle, shared among the farmers and construction workers to haul supplies and crops back and forth to wherever they needed to go.
Cloud doesn't think of Nibelheim as 'home' anymore - hasn't for a long time. For a long time, all those feelings had gone up in smoke along with the rest, and Nibelheim was a place of horror and loss instead. It was difficult to see it as it had been before the fire in his mind's eye. But standing here, looking at the village exactly as it used to be, with the scent of his mom's favorite cake filling his nose...it's impossible not to remember it that way. And impossible not to think of Tifa, of how she might feel if she were here looking at this. Of what she and Marlene and Denzel might be doing now. What Denzel might think of Nibelheim, if somehow he were ever to go there. Boring, probably. That's certainly what Cloud used to think when he was Denzel's age...
He realizes he's been quiet too long and tears his eyes away from the mural, shaking his head a little and clearing his throat.]
no subject
[The response is immediate, but then Cloud's quiet for a long moment, just looking closely at all the details in the mural. Many of his memories might be hazy and jumbled, but he remembers this - everyday life in a small mountain village where nothing important ever happened, according to his younger self. And it may look like the same place they visited on their travels to Aerith, but to Cloud they're worlds apart. The little wooden stand where the ladies used to hawk their pork sandwiches. The way the eaves of certain houses drooped under the weight of age. The hunters with their shotguns and rifles stationed around the town's perimeter, keeping a constant vigil against the fiends coming down from the mountains. The beat-up truck that was the town's only motor vehicle, shared among the farmers and construction workers to haul supplies and crops back and forth to wherever they needed to go.
Cloud doesn't think of Nibelheim as 'home' anymore - hasn't for a long time. For a long time, all those feelings had gone up in smoke along with the rest, and Nibelheim was a place of horror and loss instead. It was difficult to see it as it had been before the fire in his mind's eye. But standing here, looking at the village exactly as it used to be, with the scent of his mom's favorite cake filling his nose...it's impossible not to remember it that way. And impossible not to think of Tifa, of how she might feel if she were here looking at this. Of what she and Marlene and Denzel might be doing now. What Denzel might think of Nibelheim, if somehow he were ever to go there. Boring, probably. That's certainly what Cloud used to think when he was Denzel's age...
He realizes he's been quiet too long and tears his eyes away from the mural, shaking his head a little and clearing his throat.]
...sorry. I'll get some dishes.
[And he goes to do that.]