Strifehart

Strifehart is the slash ship between Squall Leonhart and Cloud Strife from the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts fandoms.

Canon
As Squall and Cloud are from different Final Fantasy series, they have never met in canon. Since Squall is from Final Fantasy VIII, while Cloud's is Final Fantasy VII.

They do, however, meet in the Dissidia series, where they both appear as allies and warriors of Cosmos/Materia in Dissidia Final Fantasy, Dissidia Final Fantasy NT and Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia. While Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy has them on opposite sides, even though Cloud has fought against his allies and had stood up to Chaos. They are also included in the other official Final Fantasy crossover games, like Final Fantasy World Wide Words, World of Final Fantasy and more.

The two are also two of the few Final Fantasy characters to be included in the Kingdom Hearts series, as they both appear in the first game of the series and Kingdom Hearts II. While Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories has memory versions of them. The KH universe has them haling from the FF world Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden, where it was one of the many worlds to fall into darkness when it was attacked by Maleficent, which is how Squall, who has changed his name to Leon in an attempt to amend for his mistakes of out being able to save his loved ones, had ended up on Traverse Town, with Yuffie, Aerith and Cid, while Cloud started anew on Olympus Coliseum. They had remained separate for many years until Sora undid the darkness inflected damages to the worlds, in which had gotten Cloud to rejoin Leon and the others on Hollow Bastion. A year later, in the event of Kingdom Hearts II, Cloud helps Leon and his resident allies in their battle with the Heartless invasion, where they stand back-to-back while exchanging a few supporting words with each other, as to why they choose to fight, and hours later when Leon saw the three beaming lights of Sora, Donald, and Goofy and became worried of them, Cloud reassures him that they'll be alight since Sora is the one chosen by the Keyblade, in which gave Leon confect for their safety. While Cloud had kept his distance from everyone during the Heartless attacks from Space Paranoids, he knew that Leon and the other would be able to handle it without his help, Cloud does regroup with Leon after the MCP's defeat as Tron shows everyone a pleasing sight of when their city was first built; in which reminds them of its true name. Radiant Garden.

In and after the Final Fantasy VII film, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, a Final Fantasy wolf known as a Fenrir became Cloud's character trade mark. From a silver plated Fenrir's head being attached to his Cloudy Wolf attire, that became his main clothing, calls his motorcycle Fenrir and a Fenrir wolf appearing in the film a few times beside Cloud or in the places that he has been to in the film. While part of Squall's surname, a silver Griever lion's head being apart of his signer gunblade's design, having it as the charm on his necklace, admires lions for their strength and pride, and his KH counterpart changing his name to Leon, has a lion, that is known as Griever, as Squall's animal trade mark. Just as the Revolver is Squall's main signature weapon, the Buster Sword is Cloud's; which is why they are featured in many of the other Final Fantasy games and medias. Like Kingdom Hearts, that have featured the weapons themselves in the hands of their wielder's KH counterparts and have two Keyblade versions and design bases of them. The two FF characters also wear a pair of earrings.

Fanon
Strifehart is one of the most well liked Final Fantasy crossover slash ships, as both Cloud and Squall are trained sword wielding soldiers, even though Cloud is a former one, who have animal head shape marks. A wolf (Fenrir) and lion (Griever).

Some fans prefer to focus on their Kingdom Hearts counterparts in the KH series, under their KH ship title CLeon, since they are two of the first Final Fantasy characters to in included in the series, along with a few other FFVII/FFVIII characters, where they are shown to be allies and possibly friends in KHII. The same with their Dissidia counterparts, where the shared scenes of them have gotten a few fans to see Strifehart as a canon-fanon ship.

On AO3, the ship has 490 in its Final Fantasy category and 339 in its Kingdom Hearts category.

Fandom
FAN FICTION
 * Cloud/Squall on FanFiction.Net
 * Cloud/Squall (Dissidia) on FanFiction.Net
 * Cloud/Leon (KH) on FanFiction.Net
 * Cloud/Squall (Dissidia) on FanFiction.Net
 * Cloud/Leon (KH) on FanFiction.Net

DEVIANTART

TUMBLR

Trivia

 * The two are seen standing back-to-back in one of Dissidia Final Fantasy NT's promotionals of its main hero characters. Along with their KH1 appearances being included in the Dissidia Final Fantasy series as DLC packs.
 * The summon monsters featured in both of their FF games are Odin, Shiva, Alexander, Bahamut, Ifrit, Cactuar and Leviathan.
 * The summon monsters in Squall's home FF world are known as the Guardian Force.
 * The ship title of their KH counterparts is also the name of the het ship between Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield from Resident Evil.