Heyheyhey two things; Seer!Cloud Strife, who wakes Vincent up like, when he's six/five because of what he /saw./ or sky!Cloud that happens to awaken Vincent from his sleep 'cuz sky attraction. (Sephs mum was a sky?? Vincent was 'flame courting' her??) (I JUST WANT PROTECTIVE VINCENT, OKAY? I LOVE HIM.)
Oooooo hmmm tricky. Gonna focus on Seer!Cloud because that’s real interesting-.
Real quick on Sky!Cloud tho: that would be such a chaotic combo. Sky!Cloud in all his feral glory and wild instincts (because Flames are forgotten, secret things in most “civilized” places but Nibelheim is not what one would really call “civilized” in that way so Flames are still a thing) senses a powerful Flame in the mansion and is curious. And he doesn’t want to court the kids his age who have flickers of fire, because they are too weak still and he will smother them on accident (like he nearly did with Tifa, but it’s not her fault, her Flame is young and not Blessed like Cloud’s with Destiny, so it does not roar like a bonfire yet even though it will in time). So he gathers himself and marches to the mansion to find this big Flame, and Vincent is yanked out of sleep when his own Cloud Flames howl at the feel of a young, powerful Sky fighting and fearing the mansion’s monsters above his head. Vincent is moving before he is aware of it, rushing up the stairs on pure, feral instinct that he has tried to hard to bury since losing Lucrecia at the cusp of finalizing their bond, and he-
Arrives. Snatches up the child in one arm while the other fires his gun and obliterates any monster nearby. The child latches on, scared and desperate and longing-
There is a click and a jolt and Vincent keens in a heady mix of guilt-relief-shock-pain at the sudden snap bond. Because he promised he would only love one Sky and she turned her back on him, yet now there is another, younger Sky would understands his soul and bonds with it instantly, before they even know each other’s names, and it HURTS but it is also a RELIEF.
And that is how bby Sky Cloud got the most monstrously protective Turk Cloud Vincent ever. XD
Canon goes yeet. There’s no way Vincent is letting Cloud anywhere near Shinra unprepared, and no WAY he’s letting Cloud get pumped full of drugs in this “Soldier” program led by Hojo. Vincent’s just: welp time to kill the mad scientist that hurt me. And then he finds Sephiroth and he’s like !!!!!!! because he can feel Lucrecia’s Flame signature in Sephiroth’s and Cloud blinks a few times and then is like: oh. Friend? Son of Friend? Okay. My Mist now.
Everything gets more chaotic from there with Cloud casually picking up Soldier and Turk Flames left and right without anyone able to stop him because his Cloud is Vincent and his Mist is SEPHIROTH.
...
Cloud is a not a strong baby when he is born. He is not a healthy one. He is small and fragile and Nibelheim is not kind.
But Cloud’s mother remembers the Old Things and she is desperate and stubborn. So when other mothers would have just accepted the doctor’s grim declaration that Cloud would likely not last to his third month of life, Claudia wrapped him up in every warm layer she could and sets off up the mountain.
She finds the mako spring up there and kneels before it and begs. Begs any who would listen to please, save her child, lend him strength.
The Lifestream hears the cries of a mother, the thready life of a soul that could-be-has-been-one-was their champion in a hundred-thousand other timelines and takes pity. Light reaches up and curls around the whimpering child and a hundred-thousand voices sing softly of healing and Blessing. But such things are not free, and since Claudia is not the one to receive the healing, she is not the one who pays the price (and it is not fair, to make a child pay for the plea of the parent, but the Lifestream is not fair, it just Is, and this is how it has always claimed its dues). Cloud takes a breath and wails, strong and loud in a way he has never been before and Claudia weeps with relief.
She weeps again, later, when she realizes her son’s eyes do not track her movement. When she realizes that he is blind.
(He is not really blind, they learn later, he just sees too much. His gaze is always locked on the future, and every time he opens his eyes he sees a thousand pathways to what-might-be-what-could-be-what-needs-be. He sees people and places, tragedies and joys, laughter and tears and fates not yet woven into place. With all that to look at, is it any wonder he cannot process the present that is right in front of him? It is already a wonder he does not go mad in his first years of life).
Claudia learns to hide Cloud’s eyes and help with his blindness, and Cloud learns to not open his eyes even while awake if he does not want to lose himself. But even with his eyes shut, things whisper behind his eyelids. Not the far future and all its possibilities, but just the near future, the split second decisions that his mind can see minutes ahead of time and choose between. It makes him light on his feet and strange in his words and deeds. The townspeople think he’s Off and they do not like their children playing with him (though some, like Tifa, play with him anyway).
Cloud warns Tifa not to go up the mountain after her mother dies, but she does not listen. He follows her up and tears slide past his closed eyelids as he runs. He is just in time to banish the paths that end in Tifa sprawled out at the base of the high mountainside with a shattered neck. He grabs her hand and brings her back home, but the townsfolk do not like him. They blame him. They tell him to stay away. And Cloud opens his eyes for just a moment when the voices get too close and sees a rush of near-far-unlikely-likely and he cannot tell which it is when he sees paths that lead to the townsfolk hurting him and so he runs away. He slams his eyes shut because he cannot flee if he is too far in the future to remember how to run, but even so the Lifestream curls and twists around him and for a moment, one unlikely path rises to the surface and Cloud SEES.
A friend.
A father.
He turns and instead of running home, he runs for the old Shinra mansion.
He almost dies to the monsters, but his instincts are sharp even with his eyes shut, and though he has never SEEN the world like regular people do, he knows where he is going as he runs down the stairs and flings himself down into the room of coffins with half a dozen monsters on his heels. He crashes against the side of one and screams, “Vincent, help!” and in his voice the Lifestream echoes and yanks and demands just like it does those rare times he opens his mouth and frightens his mother with the disjointed prophecies of Future that spill out.
Chaos roars in Vincent’s head, driving him up and out of his coffin to protect the Little Seer and when Vincent next blinks, he’s standing for the first time in years, there are monsters dead at his feet, and a child sobbing in terror against his leg.
Vincent is confused.
He looks down at the child sobbing past closed eyes and ... doesn’t know what to do. If it were an adult he wouldn’t care, but this is a little KID. Who somehow knew his name. Vincent crouches and forces his rusty voice to ask, “Who are you? What are you doing down here?”
“I came to f-find you,” sobs the child.
“How did you know I was here?”
The child sniffles, clinging to the fabric of Vincent’s cloak and opens his mouth.
The Lifestream’s prophecy spills out “Mourner in Red with no son of his own. Sleeper in Guilt while the world falls to ruin will always awaken and follow when the Cloud calls covers his coffin.” The boy’s mouth snaps shut a moment later with a strangled sound, like he’s choking on more words, and Vincent is an Alarm.
No child says things like that normally. No child SOUNDS like that. Like he is both normal yet not, like when he speaks the world is whispering alongside and giving it an echo of thunder. Chaos stirs in his head, but instead of trying to take over, it just laughs, dark and old and bloody, “So a new seer has been chosen,” it sneers, “I thought Minerva would cease that practice after the death of the last ones.”
Last ones? Vincent thinks uneasily at the more talkative of the monsters in his head.
“People are fickle creatures. Every seer that has lived is either scorned and disbelieved, or revered and isolated. They are either shams or gods in the eyes of other mortals, and their wisdom is both rejected and clung to. With a connection as strong as his that it takes his normal sight, he will either be forced to speak of the futures people desire and then be killed when a different future comes to pass, or he will be shunned and locked away by ‘wiser’ minds who deem him mad.”
Vincent can feel his insides turn cold. And it shouldn’t matter. He is too broken to help in such things and yet-.
The child knew him.
The child knew his name, trusted whatever he saw in the futures unwritten that he came to Vincent for help.
Just long enough to get him home, Vincent promises himself as he awkwardly picks up the child and carries him out of the mansion and into the town. Then I will return.
Except the boy’s mother finds him and she cries in relief and somehow her tears of thanks lead to dragging him home because the boy refuses to let go of him and the woman (Claudia) is very kind and the boy is clingy and the food is warm and-.
And somehow. Despite all his intentions. Vincent stays.