[it's only when they're outside that cloud lets go, filling his lungs with air, still feeling terrified by all the thoughts and emotions that are cropping up with just sephiroth being here. it's tumultuous; painful. he takes several steps away, only to settle by a nearby pillar, setting his back to it.]

[no, sephiroth shouldn't be allowed the benefit of speaking first—but that's always how he's been. hilariously detached, in some ways, from what was right, always following some clinical and "logical" order for things.]

I knew you'd be here.

[he says lightly, much more easier than what he had expected.]

Rufus said you were back on the payroll. A good omen for the start of his presidency.

[the attention was not, of course, on the returning star employee of shinra though. it was on rufus, the new president. he who stirs a merry conversation inside, with laughter and champagne that never ceases. cloud can see it from where he stands, the man dressed in white, like he's free of any sins inherited from his father.]

[crossing his arms, he looks up at sephiroth instead.]

Five years is a long time to be a ghost.