[Day 3 Opplot Ends]

[1st_zack]

He was spiraling out of control. He had been for the past two days, but the spiral had started going faster and faster downward. He felt himself being pulled in all directions. One moment, he wanted to show Zell who was the better of the two. A final showdown and this time he wouldn't hold back. In the next moment, he was stung by her words.

Comments

[1st_zack]

'Great!' he thought. He'd had an audience to the terrible spectacle that was Zack Fair, the complete and utter failure. He didn't even want to look at the kid. He wanted to curl up and die. And since that obviously wasn't going to happen, he just wanted to cry.

"I'm a monster, Roxas. It's for the best." His voice was shaky and threatened to break.

[1st_zack]

Zack had loosened the noose, but not removed it. When he heard Roxas move closer, he wanted to recoil further. Retreat or run away, but curiosity compelled him to look.

'It's yours now,' his words echoed back to him.

"Cloud?" He was stunned to silence for a moment as his eyes tried to focus in the quickly failing light. "No, you're not... I have to..."

He fumbled with the noose and tried to sit up or scoot away, but his body had taken enough punishment for the day and gave out, forcing him to the slump to the ground.

[1st_zack]

That was right. This was Roxas. Cloud was gone.

'You are just a shallow illusion,' Aeris had told him. Maybe it was true. Roxas looked like an illusion of Cloud and Zack was the illusion of Sephiroth and Angeal. He closed his eyes. Angeal's voice demanded action. His failure was so fresh. There was perhaps one other option.

He'd need a moment to recover. His head was pounding even worse than it had been.

"Yeah," he said in response to Roxas, sounding more hopeful than seemed appropriate for someone in his current position.

[1st_zack]

Strife. Why had he named the dog that? At least 'puppy' hadn't been another reminder of his failures.

He sighed and willed his body to get up. His neck was sore. He would probably have a rope burn or a bruise or both for several days. Of course, he wasn't thinking that far into the future. He had another mission to complete. The only mission SOLDIER were qualified to do.

It was obvious that Roxas was going to bare his path. Perhaps he was reminding Zack of Cloud now so Zack could try to correct the mistake he'd made in the past. He would make sure Roxas didn't live out both their lives, make sure Roxas didn't want to remember anything about Zack except that he was monster.

"I can't go back to the hut," he said quietly, opening his eyes again. He wasn't sure he could get up, much less walk to the hut, but he needed to get up and walk much further than the hut.

[1st_zack]

"No." He didn't want to move, but that didn't matter to him or to Roxas. He stood up to stop the tugging at his hand and immediately knew it had been a bad decision. He braced himself against a tree. The same tree that had betrayed him by being decayed and rotten. He didn't want Roxas' help, but he was in no position to object.

He'd allow himself just one more moment to rest. He was upright now so that was a start in the right direction.

[1st_zack]

"You can go home," he said flatly. "I can't go back there. I can't just go back to sleep."

That was all the rest he was going to get. He pushed himself away from the tree and started trudging in the opposite direction of the hut. One of the benefits of being a backwater native was that he could navigate the island even in the dark.

[1st_zack]

Zack knew exactly where he needed to go. If he was completely incapable of doing the deed himself, he knew where he could find creatures that weren't so incompetent. He walked slowly for a bit and soon found his strength returning. He wasn't back to one hundred percent, but he could manage a jog. It was still a long ways before he'd reached a part of dinosaur territory that didn't put him a little too close to someone else's hut or treehouse.

He knew Roxas was following him, but he didn't care. The kid wouldn't be able to stop a hungry dinosaur.

[1st_zack]

Zack looked over his shoulder. They'd been walking and jogging through the jungle for a while. Hours. Normally he would have shushed anyone who spoke where they were now. Talking in dinosaur territory only drew them out, but tonight drawing them out was the idea.

"I'M ENDING THIS!" he yelled back as he pressed forward. This was a good place for his last stand.

"I couldn't do it on my own, but --" he was interrupted by the sound of something approaching from behind. On impulse, he shouted.

"RUN!"