"People will die no matter what you do," Cloud agrees. There doesn't seem to be any way to escape that. "That's why you have to make sure they don't die for the wrong thing."

He hasn't got Tseng's faith in a better future if Sephiroth does break from Shinra before he flips his lid. There's been a lot of pain and a lot of sacrifices to get to where Cloud's world currently is but it's finally healing. It's working on getting better. He worries that Sephiroth could change all that if the present, Cloud's present, is more fluid than he'd like to believe. His present isn't perfect - far from it - but it's his. It's all of theirs. Everyone that's alive and working toward a better tomorrow. If he's learned anything in the past few weeks, it's that you can't look back at the past and live there. You have to protect the present. He's still working on that, on thinking that way. But he's trying. They're all trying.

If the Sephiroth from their shared dreams leaves Shinra - will it change everything in their present? Or nothing at all as dream Sephiroth's world diverges from theirs? Cloud wishes he knew what he was gambling when he helped the silver haired boy focus on leaving. He can't not try to help though. No one should be a puppet though - not even a corporation's puppet.

"Zack. He dies if you don't stop him."