I think it makes sense to read geostigma as something that represents despair and depression.
Consider how Kadaj offers a "cure" - functionally, it's a new purpose. Think of it like how people suffering from depression can be susceptible to radicalization because it gives them a sense of direction and hope.
Meanwhile, what ultimately enables Cloud to get out of his own depression, and eventually find a real cure, is reconnecting with his friends - including those he lost.
Where Kadaj would have everyone come under Jenova's influence, Cloud's actions ultimately foster connection and community without a higher power dictating the group will.
This also fits with my idea that what Sephiroth actually represents in this story is Cloud's own trauma and pain. Before Cloud can help others get better, he has to confront his own problems. (When Sephiroth says things like "let me give you despair" and "tell me what you cherish most so I can take it from you," he is effectively embodying the voice of depression.)
I’m thinking of liverpepper… and it’s making me sad.
So here, have a AU brain dump over cloud and his Geostigma:
I know we’ve seen Mako drawn as tablets, but I kind of imagine Clouds Mako days as being either injections like steroids or him having to go to the hospital for specific mako treatment, like chemotherapy.
Cloud was off school a lot. As a result he had to work twice as hard as everyone else just to keep up and graduate. His friends always brought him his homework, but there were some teachers (you know the ones) who made him feel guilty about how often he got laid up.
Like it got bad enough that now Cloud kind of has a complex about it as an adult, and Leon has to keep reminding him that he’s not weak for letting his body heal.
We know (from sora) that Mako used to affect his memory, make him pretty much a zombie. But I imagine that it’s worse straight after treatment. Like he’ll be in bed for two or three days but then for the next week -maybe two if it’s bad- Cloud kind of used to walk around in a haze. Squall, Zack, Tifa and Aerith used to tag team on who would guide him from lesson to lesson.
Squall used to act as a bit of a body guard with Zack. If anyone dared gossip about Cloud or try to make his day more difficult while he was vulnerable, they’d end up having the terrible twosome descend on then. Turns out there a lot of ways you can threaten someone without getting caught.
Cloud didn’t stop taking Mako until age 18. And he absolutely has been hospitalised by it.
He’s had Mako poisoning twice, and each time people truly thought he would die.
He was part of a clinical trial for materia to begin with, and it meant he had to forgo Mako treatments for 4 months (to get it out of his system) before they could start him on Materia.
Those four months were probably the most fraught and painful of his life. He spent most of it asleep and in agony, while Squall refused to leave him ‘just incase’. The entire friend group rallied to try and make it easier.
The first month on Materia was also not fun. Lot of knew side effects while his body got used to it. Some got easier, some he still has. He doesn’t suffer from tinnitus or depth perception issues anymore, but he still has periodic bouts of insomnia. He also deals with almost chronic heart burn.
Materia doesn’t effect his memory like the Mako, but it doesn’t help either. The Mako did a serious number on his brain tissue, and while doctors are sure his brain will recover, it seems to be a long arduous process.
Sometimes Cloud requires a mobility aid. Sometimes a cane, sometimes crutches, sometimes -if it’s bad- he needs a wheelchair to get round a supermarket or mall. It depends on the day, the spoons and the sores.
The first thing Cloud demanded be done when they adopted Sora and Roxas, was that they get them checked for the Geostigma Gene. He knows they are not - biologically speaking -able to get it from him, but Leon agrees just to settle Clouds anxieties about it.
Nowerdays his Geostigma is the most manageable it’s ever been, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
Lockdown was scary In their house. It’s no exaggeration to say Squall whipped down every surface, sanitised every piece of food packaging, made sure anybody with even a sniffle quarantined as soon as it happened. And Cloud -for all his griping that it was fine appreciated it.
after lockdown rules started easing Sora and Roxas started feeling super anxious about going out incase the brought something back. Because it wasn’t a joke to them.
Cloud himself dealt with a sudden surge of powerful anxiety even going out the front door.
Squall got him one of those sunflower lanyards, that lets people know you are immunocompromised, and it helps a little, but they all felt different about going outside.
Summary: Cloud Strife, after finally winning the war against Sephiroth, is torn back in time by the Calamity, damaging his brain and body permanently. Through tainted evolution, he becomes a squid like creature, constantly spewing the very disease he put his life on the line to prevent. The Calamity uses Cloud as a proxy to bring this world’s Sephiroth to her for the first time. Cloud fights with everything he has, trying to pull Sephiroth away in any way he can. Can he protect his fallen hero this time? Or will he fall to the clutches of the Calamity once again?
Inspired by this prompt by @im-totally-not-an-alien . A rewrite/remake of Ink Clouds.
Trigger warning: Body Horror
Chapter 1: I Will Not End
Wind swept through the air, wisping grains of sand and the parched soil of the Midgar planes with it. Land devoid of life due to Midgar's reactors spread for miles beyond the city, only the bravest and most persistent plants taking root in the sediment. Not long ago, a cliff overlooking the city proudly held the blade that protected him all those years ago.
A last stand. Dreams. Honor. Living legacy.
Cloud never forgot. They moved the rusting Buster Sword to the church in Sector Five after the Geostigma eradication. Yes, it still hurt to see that sword or step inside that church, but they belonged together. Knowing they were in the Lifestream together as always turned a soft smile on his face.
But today wasn’t a day of mourning or a day of joy. He stepped off his motorcycle and locked it in place, looking at the view of the city. He stepped closer to where the blade laid for the longest time, no indent remaining in the useless soil. This was a day of thanks. He kneeled down and placed a hand where his friend, his protector, took his final breath. Silently, he closed his eyes and ran every memory of his friend through his mind. The visions flooded his emotions, and he took a strangled breath against them before steeling himself.
Thank you for saving me.
Thank you for your sacrifice.
Thank you for your aid.
I know you’d laugh at me for doing something this sappy, but…
All I can say is thank you.
He inhaled to regulate his breath before patting the soil down. Through all their pain, through all their suffering and experiments and otherworldly monsters, Cloud was happy. He was finally happy with the life he created. The life he was given. The life he would never throw away-
Suddenly bright blue orbs flashed through his sight, claiming his strength, and he fell to the ground instantly, hissing and scratching in his mind, his eyes squeezed with an invisible force. It clutched his heart, pulling him down by…
By a string.
No.
His sight kept shifting between the struggling city and the blue orbs rushing through some invisible liquid. Flashes of white and dark. Flashes of mako. Flashes of Lifestream.
Flashes of a single pink glowing eye, glaring, searing, corroding his mind.
No!
High pitched scratching and ringing, like nails on a chalkboard but softer, soft enough to fake a promise of a dream that was not his clawed through his mind. He tried to force himself up, yet his body remained glued as if in the midst of a gravity spell. He tried to grab his phone, but his unstable and disoriented sight made it impossible to use. His useless ears were trapped in the realm of the ringing screeches, ruining the option completely.
Through the ringing came laughter. A cosmic, galactic, transient voice echoed in his mind, eternally growing and blooming until it drowned all else. His hearing, his sight, his touch and taste and smell all failed him to that singular being. That calamity. That plague. That monster. That parasite that spread its virus through this world enough times-
All at once, the ringing and laughter silenced. His senses returned just in time to find falling through the air, completely out of control as his body flipped and twisted against his will, whipping wind scratching past him. Light blue, dark blue, light blue, dark blue. The pattern repeated in a blur across his sight through his spinning body, before he crashed into a deep mass of water. The force of the impact broke his body, his legs and ribs snapping like he slammed onto concrete.
His lungs seared as his panicked breaths forced the liquid through them, unable to stop himself, to hold, to force his body to obey. He pushed the water with his arms and tried to break the surface, but his sandy sight was only getting darker as he sank further and further into the abyss. He was going to pass out if he didn’t make it out. If he was lucky, he'd survive at all. He needed to get out. He had to-
But no. He wasn’t going to pass out. He wasn’t going to die. He was going to suffer for what he did. For his betrayal. For halting their plans. He would suffer every moment through a cursed new existence.
The bones of his legs snapped into three perfectly split rods, shooting up from his feet through his hips, and he screamed with all the air his body retained through the bubbles trapping him below. Every crack and readjustment kept his mind perfectly lucid as he tried, gods he tried, to end it in any way he could, trying to claw his way to what remained of his own legs. Trying to stop this ungodly attack. But nothing attacked him. Every tear came from the inside, stretching, and ripping, and twisting what remained of his legs, coiling them like steel cables and he couldn’t break free.
As the last of the air in his body was claimed by the unforgiving sea, the twisted pieces rolled over like dominos, crackling and flipping his skin to a smooth, purple rubber, before stretching. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as he released what he thought was his last breath. But he was graced- cursed- by another through the same salty liquid, with absolutely no stinging pain to his lungs as it entered as smooth as silk. The odd chittering and shifting of what used to be his legs left him cringing and tensing before it, too, finally stopped at the very tip of the remaining limb.
He dared open his eyes, ignoring the futility of the dark water that blocked his sight, but the darkness began to fade. Mako glowed from both his eyes and a faint dome in the distance, and soon he could see the crisp white floor of sand, the various swaying plants moving with the tide, and a dozen schools of fish. His instincts told him to look around, to search the area, but he forced his eyes to focus down, to see if his legs were….
His legs were gone, replaced by long purple tentacles anchored to a new wrapping of lavender around his waist. Six tentacles moved in perfect symmetry to keep him afloat, their circulating pattern suddenly calling memories of swirling pink clouds, a blue sky, and a heartless angel.
That angel- that madman couldn’t do something like this. He was dead, destroyed and shoved back in the Lifestream multiple times, killed by him again and again. He didn’t have the strength to attack even if he wanted to. It was too soon since his last attempt at claiming the planet. But the calamity, his ‘mother’, the virus, the plague, the alien, was always vengeful, and would do anything for her son. He felt that now, felt it in every remaining bone in his body.
This Reunion was stronger than the one winged angel's, claws and vines rooted even deeper around his strangled heart. Cloud couldn’t help but scan the terrain for any semblance of help or even something he could use, anyone he could talk to or anything to break him free.
A silver school of interwoven fish swam past him in the beauty of the tide, shimmering and glistening in the mako light. His eyes followed as they swam away, a single thought claiming his mind.
Pretty…
Cloud suddenly snapped his gaze up. What was that? Why did that happen? How did that distract him? He needed to focus, to leave the waters and call for help.
Soon red coral claimed his attention as he followed the unnaturally familiar shape it formed on its own: the body of a woman, curving and spreading with large angled masses, almost like wings.
A warning. A mockery. A punishment. An attack. A symbol daring to remind him of It: that which nearly destroyed the planet.
His train of thought vanished again as he analyzed the long stalks of seaweed all over the ground, wave like strands pulling memories of the Lifestream. He forced it back with every shred of his will. Calamity. Its son. The one winged angel.
Loud rumbling from above pulled his mind away once more. His first instinct connected the sound to a possible monster, something primed to attack, and he had nowhere to run. Nowhere to call shelter. Terror claimed his heart, and dark, murky clouds began blooming around him. They entered his sight and he flinched away from them. But they followed, forming even larger, even faster as Cloud’s new breath rapidly increased, his fear, his anxiety flooding his thoughts.
He needed to survive. He needed to run- swim. To escape. To leave. To live. His new tentacles pushed him away before his mind gave the command, moving him gracefully through the ever tainting liquid.
Little did he know that the more he moved in this accursed new body, the faster he spread the deadly virus he spent two years trying to cure. Little did he know that every moment in this world brought upon a new pandemic in the age before the Nibelheim Incident locked fate and the Lifestream on its battling course.
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Thanks for reading!
Chapter 1 - I Will Not End
Chapter 2 - Assignment
Chapter 3 - Research
To be continued...
Author’s note: Ink Cloud’s was the first fanfiction I wrote, but I had so many ideas and so many simple things I wanted to expand and fix. The pacing was a mess before, but I really like the idea. I wanted to do it justice. That prompt stuck with me, but I was a little too excited back then trying to get this posted as quickly as possible.
This rewrite will not be exactly the same. This is a test of my abilities, how far I’ve grown, and just what I could’ve done if I didn’t limit myself 1,500 words per chapter for absolutely no reason (I promise future chapters will be longer but this felt more like a prologue than connected to the coming chapter). Descriptions will change. Scenes will change. New things will happen. Conversations won’t suddenly cut off (because I wanted to go to sleep but I also wanted a chapter a day, which was far too unreasonable for my schedule). I stand by most of my plot based decisions from back then, but I feel I understand these characters better now, and I want to expand this to the fullest.
Happy one year anniversary to my first fic! I posted Ink Clouds on tumblr a few months before I got an ao3 so the dates are a little different. Thank you for reading! I hope you stick around!
Surprise! Muse has struck and delivered a day 8 for whumptober!
This one uses the prompt "exotic illness" and takes place in my Calamity Cloud AU, an AU where Cloud was part of the Jenova project in the womb and becomes Calamity's Son.
<- 7 | 8 | 9 ->
Read on AO3
Word Count: 1,217
Warnings: Illness, implied terminal illness
~~~~~~
It starts with a cough.
SOLDIERS don’t often get sick, the mako and alien cells making quick work of most viruses and bacteria, but occasionally, something will slip through. Zack remembers one such occasion shortly after he made 2nd Class where he’d spent a couple days bunkered down in his apartment and puking his guts up before Angeal had used his mentor privileges and broke in to drag him down to the infirmary. So, when he develops a slight cough, Zack just tells himself and others that it’s nothing to worry about and ignores the concerned look Sephiroth gives him. After all, it’s just a cough, right?
But it doesn’t go away.
It gets worse, a tightness in his chest that sends him into fits of wracking coughs that can last for minutes and causes his ribs to ache. He’s able to hide it, for a while, by keeping his breathing shallow and avoiding extended contact with his friends. He cites the increasing work of keeping the orphanage running, of his patrols through the bordering ruins to keep the growing city safe to keep his distance. He briefly considers going to a doctor, memories of the death of his grandfather via bronchitis which turned to pneumonia floating to the surface, but the mere thought of putting himself back in a formal medical setting sends phantom pains skittering across his limbs.
It’s actually Red that’s the first to know he’s sick.
He had been visiting the newly-built WRO headquarters on the request of Reeve and Zack had volunteered to let him stay the night in his apartment; he’d been doing better recently, hadn’t thought that anything would happen, but, then, he wakes up in the middle of the night with the worst coughing fit he’d had in months. At some point during the fit, Red manages to get Zack’s bedroom door open and come in to check on him.
“Zack, are you okay?” he asks, voice full of genuine concern.
“I’m fine,” Zack responds, still a little breathless. In the aftermath of the fit, there are little pinpricks of pain that shoot through his chest whenever he breathes.
Red hums, but seems to decide not to push the issue at the moment. “Don’t forget, Zack, that you have people who care about you,” he says.
More time passes. The pain doesn’t go away, sparking and stabbing and limiting his motion. He finds himself getting short of breath sooner and trying to push through bringing on another coughing fit.
Then, the black sores appear. Zack thinks they’re bruises at first. Maybe all his coughing has bruised or even broken his ribs? It wouldn’t be unheard of. But, something about the vividness of the color makes dread curl in his gut. It reminds him of something. He struggles to hide his deteriorating health from his friends, their worried gazes following him as he continues to pretend everything is fine.
Things come to a head when Sephiroth finds out.
The strange bruises have turned into oozing sores, the black, oily liquid leaving stains too dark to hide on anything but black fabric. He takes to wrapping bandages around his chest to cover the sores and help prevent them from getting irritated and leaking more vigorously. He’s changing them after a particularly vicious coughing fit had almost brought him to his knees on the stairs leading up to his apartment. He’s too wrapped up in what he’s doing to hear Sephiroth enter, to hear him move through the space and find him in the bathroom until the other man breathes in sharply behind him.
“Sephiroth!” Zack shouts, jerking away from the sink and bringing up his arms in an attempt to hide the black sores on his chest.
The other man just stares at him, eyes scanning up and down his form as he catalogs what he’s seeing. He lingers on the black staining his hands, his chest, and his gaze darts to the stained bandages in the sink before moving back to his face. A pinched expression comes across his face and it takes Zack a second to read it as hurt.
“Zack… when? Why?” Sephiroth asks, a hand jerking up as if to reach out to him before dropping back to his side.
Zack swallows and averts his gaze. Leave it to Sephiroth to hone in on the heart of the issue. As much as the other man doesn’t like seeing his friends sick - especially since it brings back memories of a certain failed relationship - he’s more concerned with what would bring them to hide their sickness from him. Zack knows Sephiroth hates being left out of the loop, hates secrets and all the trouble they bring, and the guilt of his actions begins to rear its head.
“I…” he starts, trying to find the right words to explain his reasoning. “It wasn’t that bad. Just a cough. SOLDIERS have been known to have worse, so I didn’t think anything of it.” He risks a glance back up at his friend. Sephiroth stands there in the doorway, standing straight up and keeping his hands stiffly at his sides with his fists clenched. “Then, well, I just didn’t want anyone to worry. Everyone had so much to worry about, so much to do. I just didn’t want to distract them, distract you, from what really mattered.”
Sephiroth moves into the room. He steps slowly, carefully, and inches his arm up to rest his hand on Zack’s shoulder so the other man has plenty of time to avoid the touch. He doesn’t. Zack stares up at his friend and drops his hands from where they still hide his diseased chest from full-view. Sephiroth’s eyes twitch, the closest he comes to flinching these days.
“Zack…” he says, taking his time as usual when it comes to expressing his emotions. “You matter, to everyone, to me. It… is important to let others know when you are hurting. You are not alone.”
Zack wipes at his suddenly-wet eyes and tries to swallow around the lump in his throat.
“You taught me that, Zack. We both are aware of what happens when someone keeps everything inside and has no one to rely on, the damage they can cause when everything erupts out of them. We can help you. We want to help you, no matter what.”
A moment of silence.
“Seph?” Zack asks softly. The man hums in acknowledgment. “Can I give you a hug?”
Sephiroth nods. Zack encircles him in his arms, holding him tightly. He feels his friend’s arms drape around his back and squeeze him back. He feels hope spring to life in his chest alongside relief.
Zack isn’t the only one who’s sick.
No one really knows when the first cases started, only that bodies riddled with those strange black sores begin popping up. Word begins to spread. It’s mostly children who are sick, though a fair number of adults also turn up at clinics everywhere seeking treatment. Nothing seems to work to treat it, no apparent cause can be found. People start to become afraid, to make assumptions and embrace superstition. People start blaming the Planet, saying that the disease is its punishment for playing a hand in killing it for so many years.
