confidence
A major portion of Cloud's story in VII is spent accepting himself as he is: Cloud Strife, ex-Shinra trooper. Not the dashing, roguish ex-SOLDIER he wanted so much to be. Why?
Because Cloud has so little confidence in himself. He believed for so long as a child that he had to be a SOLDIER to be somebody. He was completely convinced that glory and power were the only way to make a life for himself. As he states after his trip in the Lifestream with Tifa, it is a combination of Sephiroth, mako treatments, and his own weakness that created the lie he was living.
The facade of frostiness Cloud tried to project in the early portion of the game is not something that just falls apart and goes away with Tifa and Aeris' magical healing love. Because of his lack of confidence, it will always be a part of him in some form or another. He created the facade to give himself a sense of self-worth in the first place.
Advent Children illustrates this. During the movie, he avoids directly facing the problem at hand and shuffles his feet about rescuing the children and taking Kadaj's gang head on. He's afraid he'll fail. He's afraid everything he holds dear will be destroyed because he was too weak to stop it. Thankfully, Tifa and Marlene were there to give him a nice kick in the butt and get him in gear.
The slightly depressing part about this is that Cloud still has confidence issues, despite all that he has accomplished. He's beaten the great Sephiroth more than once, lead a team if mismatched fighters to save the planet, and most importantly, conquered his own inner fears. But he still remains unconvinced of his own worth.
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