Midgar High School

It's like it all makes sense now, the pieces fitting together and showing him the whole - himself. A whole. Finally.

He feels fragmented in a way he never did before. Reading these notes has pulled the pieces together, yes, but he never knew there were pieces before. Some things are better unknown. Some equations should not be solved. Cloud knows his math, but he does not like the answer he has found.

Confidence. The word haunts him as it has haunted the seventeen years of his life.

What has been done to the others is more, and he readily admits that -- he makes no claims as Leader-Of-The-Condemned, Leader-Of-The-Experimented-Upon. His was no success, nothing readily noticeable like Shera or Sephiroth. His was no life-stealing drug: Cloud has led a normal life, unlike the others. He did not lose what the others lost.

His was not even like Loz, or Kadaj and Yazoo. He was made to be un-noticeable.

And that's just it, isn't it? Cloud has lacked confidence his whole life and wondered why.

He always wondered why he wasn't outspoken like Shera or Elena, or strong like Sephiroth and the rest of the team. He never had the confidence to tell Tifa he had a crush on her when he was a child. Even now, in high school, it took him weeks to build himself up and ask Yuffie out. He has worked and worked out and worked on homework and tried and it just always felt like something was missing -

But now the last piece is in place, he has solved the equation and it turns out that confidence is a drug, one last piece that was -- it was not missing, he had it all along, it was only lulled to sleep along the nerves of his brain by careful application, his mother's soft voice: Cloud, dear, take your vitamins!, and he always thought that his inherent shyness, his weakness, came from her. Came from not having his dad around. Came from something other than a supressant poorly disguised as Chewy Chocobo Vitamins for Kids.

Confidence, a drug. One piece. His was coated by science, preventing his slightly-augmented genes and nerves and muscles from ever manifesting themselves. The others were works of art: Cloud was a work of potential, of possibility, of waiting.

It is why he is so angry, because he fell for it, the siren song of the damned. His mother fixing new meals, bringing him new vitamins because You're my big boy now, Cloud, and from there it was only a matter of time until his footsteps led to the nurse and all those carefully applied drugs stripped away the blinders of his own heritage, confidence pumping through his veins like the mastermind he was made to be. And the confidence is addicting, a world of worth he has never had before, and he knows that is why he kept going back to her for more and more because he finally was strong like he had always thought he should be. Strong like they made him: the backup plan. The reservoir.

It was like a drug. it was a drug. Cloud was their reservoir of power, and they stripped away his confidence to keep him from realizing it.

Cloud wonders whether he deserves this new strength he has found. He has worked his whole life to be strong and smart, and was stopped by their own barriers, blocking his progess. Perhaps now all that is happening is his past work is coming into bloom: perhaps this new strength in his arms and legs is an age worth of laps run and pushups counted, simply now realizing, having been saved along his bones like a charged capacitor, waiting only for release to sing along his nerves.

And perhaps it is the work of needles and veins. And drugs.

He wonders now, as he never did before -- how much of his life, his ongoing trial to be strong... how much of it was necessary, and how much of it was simply the useless fight of one man against science, one soul against fate.

Cloud dwells on it now. He knows what he is and what he must do. Confidence is his drug now, and he must use it.