"I know what happened to that Cloud. He was killed when he was sixteen. The scientists used his body to grow Jenova virus and S-cells, in a tank. That's how I started to exist."

[Cloud isn't really that mopey right now. More hollow, matter-of-fact. He accepts the physical touch with no objection, but isn't returning it.]

There's no Cloud Strife but me, now. It's not like a dead guy cares if someone else is using his name... But everyone thinks I'm still that original Cloud, deep down inside. Tifa even rebuilt my identity to make it work, trying to fit the pieces together and filling in the gaps with her own imagination. ...My Jenova infection was going haywire at the time and dragged her into my head. She told me it was really weird in there, all sorts of fragments just floating around.

[Now he was just rambling. Cloud shrugged again.]

Nobody wants to believe it and so nobody does. I pretend to be what they want me to be, and everyone's happy.