Ah, Cloud. It's so much simpler than that. It's not about his ability to fight at all, or courage or bravery or anything else.

It's sheer, practical sense.

"Your purpose here wasn't to fight," Mercury says simply. "It was to reach higher still." She, meanwhile, foreign to this world and this dream, has no purpose within it, and so has the luxury to keep the way open for him.

"So do it. If this is for nothing, I won't forgive you."