Marlene: “I don’t care about you anymore, Cloud! Why don’t you listen to what we’re saying?!”
This feeling isn’t just with Marlene either. Tifa shows feelings of being fed up with Cloud not listening to them either. He has shut off everyone for so long that they cannot take it anymore. But this is where we begin to see that Cloud is starting to have a breakthrough in his character. He tells Marlene to wait just a little longer, that the fight will be beginning soon. Vincent then questions Cloud, asking him whether or not it is about the fight. Cloud begins to think back to just a few hours back when he had the conversation with Tifa.
Tifa: “Don’t run! I know you are! Even if you find the children, you might not be able to do anything. They might be somewhere that we can’t them back. You’re scared of that, aren’t you? But you have to react now, to more of this! A burden? Well, there’s no helping that, it’s a heavy burden! Unless you want to live all alone, you have to deal with that! You don’t want to be alone, do you? Even though you never answer, you always have your phone with you.”
I felt that was one of the best lines in the entire movie. Tifa really brought up everything that had been going on. She knew Cloud, what he was thinking and how he was feeling. But she couldn’t just stand by and let him act this way, she knew that he really didn’t feel this way truthfully and that deep down he wanted to help the children, he wanted to help everyone, but he was afraid of failing them. His constant fears of failure lead him to not want to try anything. Tifa, I feel, is one of the biggest characters in bringing forth Cloud’s character. She’s always there for him, caring for him and reassuring him—even when he doesn’t ask for it—that he must at least try to accomplish these things, because she’s knows he is capable of completing them. After this scene, we see Cloud back with Aerith in what would appear to be the Promised Land, or an environment of heavenly nature.
Cloud: “But… we just let her die.”
Aerith: “Really, always drifting… Hey, why don’t you forgive yourself?”
We are now back at the Forgotten Capital, where Cloud questions whether or not a sin can be forgiven. Vincent tells him that he’s never tried. At this point, Cloud has clearly changed in his attitude. He’s different from before, he’s willing to try, and he’s willing to put himself out on the line again to try to help people. He tells Marlene that they’re going home and also says to Vincent that he’ll try it and get back to him with the answer. This next scene just furthers to reinforce the change in Cloud. We see his cellphone that had fallen out of his pocket earlier slowly falling in water. We hear all sorts of different unanswered messages from Reeve, Barret, Cid, Yuffie, Tifa, Reno, etc. All of his friends had tried to contact him, but he never answered. He preferred to live in by himself… alone. But now anymore, Cloud had changed. To signify this we see Cloud’s phone hit the bottom of the lake and die—the death of his “lonely” attitude and the beginning of the Cloud that was going to move on, going to move past his fear of failure and overcome his “sin.” There are also some very useful words from Aerith…