Fanfic / Beloved (FFVII)

The lovers share an oath. Though their hearts are filled with doubt^note Fanart Scene of Ch. 27 by Eun

Beloved is the Dawn

The bell of broken slumber

To a healed world, a new oath

A promise carried past the end

— Beloved, First Act

From the author that brought you The Fifth Act, comes another Final Fantasy VII fic, called Beloved.

Ever since the Omega Incident, Cloud tried his best to live a normal life. That’s when Tifa decided that the two of them should go see Loveless, which still didn’t help. As Cloud tried to leave before the show could continue, one of the audience in the back stops him, forcing Cloud to stay and watch the performance until it was finished. As the play finally ended, Cloud finally got a clear look on this mystery stranger…

… and neither of them had expected to be greeted with mako eyes. Before Cloud gets a chance to question him, who somehow looked familiar to him, the man quickly vanished within the crowds.

After that encounter, a clone was sighted somewhere in the Midgar ruins. During his investigation, Cloud got ambushed by the very same man he met at the theatre, who revealed himself to be Genesis Rhapsodos, SOLDIER First Class.

And things just get a little more complicated after that…

My Friend, your dream. Heralds the return of the Goddess. Restless wandering without respite. History’s search has no conclusion.

---

In mistrust, joy. In faith, despair. Cruel are the trials of the Goddess

• Anyone Can Die: Aside some civilians, there’s Elena and Weiss.
• Back from the Dead: Sephiroth (using the catatonic Weiss as his temporary host).
• Big Damn Heroes: Genesis in most moments. Whether it’s searching for Cloud and helping him escape from the WRO, or the time when he was half-injured, he still manage to find where Sephiroth is in order to save Cloud.
• Big Damn Kiss: Genesis deliver this to Cloud in the Epilogue as his response to Cloud's question of their relationship. A sign of a fresh start.
• Bittersweet Ending: Sephiroth is finally gone for good, but Weiss was killed in the result. Soon, the Planet can start to heal. However, Cloud has to leave the Edge for a while, until the situation dies down. But, all that mattered to Cloud the most is that he still has Genesis by his side.
• Breaking Speech: Sephiroth really loves to give this one to both Cloud and Genesis.
• But Now I Must Go: Cloud, along with Genesis, in the Epilogue. With SOLDIER-related situation going on since the detainment order, it's gonna take a while for both WRO and ShinRa (Mostly Neo-ShinRa) to clean up their act and for all civilians of the Edge to move on. Even after Sephiroth's defeat, Cloud can't stay in the Edge anymore. So, he has to leave his friends and family behind, but still promise to come back and see them again when it's finally safe for both Cloud and Genesis to return one day.
  • Vincent was last seen at the end of Chapter 14, after warning Cloud, he already disappears in the next chapter to meet up with Shelke so she can go into hiding from the WRO, as she, the last living member of Tsviets, will be given a similar offer like Cloud.
• Call-Back:
  • Cloud's response to Genesis of memorizing one of the acts from Loveless is a parallel to Sephiroth's from Crisis Core
  • Weiss's death is almost similar to Kadaj's end from Advent Children
• Comically Missing the Point: Cloud was lost when this invitation to Genesis’s sleeping quarter was Genesis’s way of trying to get into Cloud’s pants, especially how Genesis thought he made his intentions clear through poetry and giving flowers.
  Genesis was always quoting poetry. How was he supposed to tell serenading from the usual impromptu recitals? And he thought the flowers were a joke!
• Continuity Nod:
  • Cid remembers Genesis as the same man who woke him up at the Loveless performance.
  • In the Epilogue, Cloud still owns the Villa in Costa Del Sol
• Demonic Possession: the catatonic Weiss and then later Cloud, both under Sephiroth’s possession.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Cloud’s “Quest for Understanding”
  • According to Genesis, Cloud is looking for a Future. A future in which Cloud found true satisfaction after defeating Sephiroth. And no, having a Delivery Service does not count.
  • In the end, it took Cloud to finally realize that it’s not just he wants to understand, but he wants to be understood. And now, he has Genesis, someone who understood Cloud, just as Genesis has Cloud, a companion who understands Genesis.
• Fate Worse than Death: Cloud finally realizes that Sephiroth doesn’t want to kill him, he want to take over Cloud, the greatest carrier of S-Cells, as his vessel.
• First Kiss: Cloud gets the unexpected first kiss from Genesis in Chapter 11. Much to his own surprise, Cloud actually enjoyed it in a brief moment.
• Forceful Kiss: As Sephiroth successfully gets Cloud to drop his guard, he seized the chance to give this to Cloud in order to fully awaken Cloud’s S-Cells and transfer himself in order to take over his body.
• Foreshadowing: The Fifth Act of Beloved, the unofficial sequel to Loveless:
  Even if the morrow should not forgive me
  I shall carry no regrets
  Legend shall speak of my sacrifice
  Of the story past the World’s End
  • Genesis has to sacrifice Weiss’s life in order to eliminate Sephiroth once and for all.
• Full-Name Basis: Genesis really loves to call Cloud by his full name. Though, there are some rare times Genesis would call him by his first name.
• The Hermit: Genesis, after his reawakening, he went into hiding from ShinRa by living in the abandoned theatre of Midgar ruins. Cloud started to become this after the motorcycle crash.
• "I Know You Are in There Somewhere" Fight: Genesis tried this against Cloud (who is used as Sephiroth’s vessel) and the mind controlled Weiss.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Tifa in the Epilogue, after Cloud finally admits his relationship with Genesis.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Tifa stated that even though Genesis has been a First-Class Jerk when they first met, which she later find it reasonable when Genesis has been aware of Tifa’s agreement of letting WRO take custody of Cloud, he never hesitate to heal her and Red XIII.
• Killed Off for Real: Elena, killed off-screen by Weiss!Sephiroth. Later near the end, Weiss, but at least Sephiroth is finally gone for good.
• Lonely Together: Both Cloud and Genesis.
• Making a Splash: Cloud and the newly-discovered Water Materia he found after the Meteor Incident. After seeing Genesis’s usage and manipulation with the Fire Materia, Cloud decided to test it out with his Water Materia.
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Genesis attempted this with Cloud in the dressing room (his “Room”) of the abandoned theatre in Chapter 11, but decided to give the confused Cloud more time to think about it. In Chapter 16, they finally did it, but this time, on the stage.
• Mirror Character: Cloud and Genesis. They both understand what it’s like to face the slow march of death (Geostigma and Degradation, respectively), lose years of their life of being experimented and also betrayed by ShinRa. Throughout the story, it focus on Cloud and Genesis finding understanding in each other that they couldn't find anywhere else in the world.
  They should have been a bad match, personality-wise. But it didn't seem to matter.
  Because for all the ways they differed, there were just as many where they were the same.
• Official Couple: Cloud and Genesis
• Playing with Fire: Genesis and his Fire Materia. When it doesn’t involve with battle, he use his Fire Materia to light the candles and heat the water.
• Replacement Goldfish: Sephiroth proclaims to Cloud that he shouldn't get his hopes up because the reason Genesis formed this relationship with Cloud is to serve as a substitution to Genesis' previous relationship with Sephiroth. However, in the Epilogue, Genesis denied this because he found Cloud a far more worthy and satisfying rival than he ever found in Sephiroth.
• Sadistic Choice:
  • In Chapter 23, Cloud either has a choice to surrender himself to Sephiroth in exchange to sparing Tifa’s life or refuse and let Tifa die.
  • In Chapter 26, Genesis is given a choice by Sephiroth (with Cloud as his new vessel) to leave and roam the Planet in peace with the catatonic Weiss until the end of its days. Genesis refused and fights Sephiroth to free Cloud.
    • Also, since the past chapters, having save up the Water from the Church for Weiss in order to free him from Sephiroth and hopefully to cure his Geostigma, Genesis ultimately used up all the Water on Cloud in order to save him from Sephiroth's possession at the end of the chapter.
• Scars Are Forever: Cloud still bears the scar on his chest he got from Sephiroth back in Nibelheim. And even though Genesis was cured from Degradation, the scar on his shoulder from the training accident still remains as disgusting mass of scarred and miscoloured flesh.
• Sunglasses at Night: Cloud would always wear his shades, even at night, just to hid his mako eyes, which made him felt discriminated and feared by the civilians.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Reno, after Elena’s death. Following the deaths of more civilians that Cloud stumbled on made Reno even more suspicious of him that he’s later became responsible of the Cloud’s motorcycle crash by sabotaging Fenrir’s brake line.
• Trauma Conga Line: Cloud. All of his trust and willpower starts to chip away when he felt discriminated by the civilians for his mako eyes, betrayed when Tifa and his friends (excluding Red XIII and Vincent) agreed on WRO’s detainment order on the remaining SOLDIERs (including Cloud). Then another stab in the back when Cloud found out that Genesis has been secretly taking care of Weiss, which broke his trust to him the same way he lost trust to Tifa. Sephiroth even stated that these results is what left Cloud to slowly lose his trust and will, and even hope for the future, which made it easy for Sephiroth to finally possess him.
• Verbed Title
• Wham Episode: Oh boy, where to start...
  • Remember the "Sephiroth clone" our main characters (plus WRO and Neo-ShinRa) been trying to track down throughout the story? Well, not only this "clone" is taken over by Sephiroth, but this unfortunate vessel is also revealed to be not a clone at all. What's even more shocking? It's Weiss the Immaculate.
  • Let's not forget the Destruction of the Church.
• Wham Line:
  • In Chapter 5, "You didn’t hear? Elena's dead."
  • In Chapter 18, "That wasn’t a clone. That was Weiss."

The morrow is robbed of hope

Yet still, you are beloved

Rising to the heavens on broken wings

So let it be my fate

Even if the morrow should not forgive me

I shall carry no regrets

Legend shall speak of my sacrifice

Of the story past the World’s End

— Beloved, Fifth Act