Cloud can tell she's not a fan, but he's not sure why and she doesn't press him on it, so he lets it drop, too.
Her comment about Zack marks the closest Cloud has come to smiling all day, even if he's still not quite there. "Mm. Zack's the best." Then his face falls back into pensive anticipation, knowing what's coming next in the file. Zack's the best, and Cloud's the reason he died.
When he sees the tears start to well up in her eyes, that's when he starts thinking maybe he should leave after all. She doesn't strictly need him here to read this, right? He got this kind of reaction once already when he told Aerith the truth of what happened, and he really doesn't want to endure it again. By the time she looks up, his gaze is firmly elsewhere.
"Should's got nothin' to do with it," he mutters. "It happened, it was a long time ago, it's over and done."
But he sticks around for now, at least, as she keeps reading.
The file explains events in such clear and chronological terms that it sounds bizarre to Cloud. His memories of childhood may be vague and distant, but his memories of this portion are nearly incomprehensible - nothing but brief, foggy snippets of pain and confusion and fear drenched in green, bracketing huge gaps of absolutely nothing. And he didn't learn what really happened or why until much, much later.
What Fred reads is that Hojo was testing what he called the Jenova Reunion Theory. Jenova was a mimetic, psychic predator with the ability to absorb the memories and forms of its prey, as well as merge its own genes with other life forms, mutating them to be more like it. Sephiroth was the perfect hybrid Hojo wanted, so he moved on to a different hypothesis: that bits of Jenova's genetic material separated from the source would act to rejoin that source, influencing their hosts' minds and bodies to reunite with the whole. To test this, Hojo used Sephiroth's cells and infusions of mako - the lifeblood of the world, the material element of the Lifestream, which contains the memories and knowledge of every soul to ever have lived on the Planet and then died to return to it - to create so-called 'Sephiroth clones' and spread them out across the world.
Zack already having been a SOLDIER with a First's level of mako infusion made him immune to the experiments, so Hojo declared him a failure. Cloud, on the other hand, was found to be so susceptible to the deleterious effects of mako on the human brain that he suffered severe brain damage from mako poisoning over time and, eventually, fell into an amnesiac and catatonic state that really should have been permanent, medically speaking. Hojo declared him a failure, too.
But after four years of captivity, Zack broke them both out. He found a spare SOLDIER's uniform to replace Cloud's mako-soaked clothes and then escaped, taking the catatonic Cloud with him. For another year, Zack kept Cloud safe and alive as he avoided Shinra's forces, traveling across two continents to get back to Midgar and bringing Cloud along every step of the way, taking care of him and talking to him as if he could respond.
Meanwhile, Sephiroth's body had returned to the Planet as usual when he died, but his mind was so alien to the Lifestream and his will to maintain his memories and identity so powerful that eventually, after five years, his consciousness awoke from inside the Lifestream. Cloud's genetic and psychic connection to him plus his natural tenacity and survival instinct combined to allow him to slowly claw back to consciousness as Sephiroth did; and since the mako had scoured away so many of his memories, drowning them out with its billions of identities and lifetimes of knowledge, that connection took hold strongly.
Cloud gradually became more aware of his surroundings until he could almost respond...just as Shinra caught up to them with an army. And then this happened.
no subject
Her comment about Zack marks the closest Cloud has come to smiling all day, even if he's still not quite there. "Mm. Zack's the best." Then his face falls back into pensive anticipation, knowing what's coming next in the file. Zack's the best, and Cloud's the reason he died.
When he sees the tears start to well up in her eyes, that's when he starts thinking maybe he should leave after all. She doesn't strictly need him here to read this, right? He got this kind of reaction once already when he told Aerith the truth of what happened, and he really doesn't want to endure it again. By the time she looks up, his gaze is firmly elsewhere.
"Should's got nothin' to do with it," he mutters. "It happened, it was a long time ago, it's over and done."
But he sticks around for now, at least, as she keeps reading.
The file explains events in such clear and chronological terms that it sounds bizarre to Cloud. His memories of childhood may be vague and distant, but his memories of this portion are nearly incomprehensible - nothing but brief, foggy snippets of pain and confusion and fear drenched in green, bracketing huge gaps of absolutely nothing. And he didn't learn what really happened or why until much, much later.
What Fred reads is that Hojo was testing what he called the Jenova Reunion Theory. Jenova was a mimetic, psychic predator with the ability to absorb the memories and forms of its prey, as well as merge its own genes with other life forms, mutating them to be more like it. Sephiroth was the perfect hybrid Hojo wanted, so he moved on to a different hypothesis: that bits of Jenova's genetic material separated from the source would act to rejoin that source, influencing their hosts' minds and bodies to reunite with the whole. To test this, Hojo used Sephiroth's cells and infusions of mako - the lifeblood of the world, the material element of the Lifestream, which contains the memories and knowledge of every soul to ever have lived on the Planet and then died to return to it - to create so-called 'Sephiroth clones' and spread them out across the world.
Zack already having been a SOLDIER with a First's level of mako infusion made him immune to the experiments, so Hojo declared him a failure. Cloud, on the other hand, was found to be so susceptible to the deleterious effects of mako on the human brain that he suffered severe brain damage from mako poisoning over time and, eventually, fell into an amnesiac and catatonic state that really should have been permanent, medically speaking. Hojo declared him a failure, too.
But after four years of captivity, Zack broke them both out. He found a spare SOLDIER's uniform to replace Cloud's mako-soaked clothes and then escaped, taking the catatonic Cloud with him. For another year, Zack kept Cloud safe and alive as he avoided Shinra's forces, traveling across two continents to get back to Midgar and bringing Cloud along every step of the way, taking care of him and talking to him as if he could respond.
Meanwhile, Sephiroth's body had returned to the Planet as usual when he died, but his mind was so alien to the Lifestream and his will to maintain his memories and identity so powerful that eventually, after five years, his consciousness awoke from inside the Lifestream. Cloud's genetic and psychic connection to him plus his natural tenacity and survival instinct combined to allow him to slowly claw back to consciousness as Sephiroth did; and since the mako had scoured away so many of his memories, drowning them out with its billions of identities and lifetimes of knowledge, that connection took hold strongly.
Cloud gradually became more aware of his surroundings until he could almost respond...just as Shinra caught up to them with an army. And then this happened.