Day 52: Game Room

[full_score]

Lunch had taken his mind from his worries, if only for a few minutes. But after the intercom sounded and the nurses began leading patients onto the next activity, one look at the bulletin board brought everything back in full force. No replies from Ashton, Dias or Dad. By now Claude felt like he was practically counting down until the end of the

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[notthistrain]

Cloud held back a sigh. Yeah, this was... this was going to be tough. Did he just dump it all out at once, or did he try to just reveal little pieces at a time? He needed to tell him all of it, but he had to take it at a decent pace, right? Otherwise it was just going to be one big confusing mess.

Though, to be fair, it was going to be one big confusing mess no matter how he explained it.

"I told you about how Tifa helped me, right?" He really wasn't interested in the cards, and he set his hand aside face down. "She found me and recognized me, and I recognized her. She was already a member of that resistance group. Thing is... I didn't really recognize myself."

That sounded silly after he said it, and Cloud rubbed at the back of his head. "I mean, I was pretty messed up. I'm surprised I could even recall which way was up and which way was down. I knew my own name at least, but aside from that..." and here went nothing... "I thought I was you, Zack. Or rather, my past history became a mix of yours and mine. For a while, I didn't even remember you existed. Tifa did, of course, and you could tell I was confusing the hell out of her whenever I talked about the past, but she just went along with it because she didn't want to confuse me even more."

[zack_fair]

At first, it was easy enough to follow what Cloud was saying. Tifa had decided to join that AVALANCHE group after her Shin-Ra had basically marched right into her hometown and ruined her life, and when Cloud had reconnected with her he had obviously been beyond out of it. Seeing how Zack hadn't even gotten a word out of him during their trek across a continent and a half, it was shocking that Tifa had managed to talk to him at all.

But then, as Cloud went on to explain, Zack paused and stared at him, also forgetting the cards as he set them down. He didn't know if it was due to what Hojo had put Cloud through, or if his own shattered mind had just tried to pick up the pieces and had gotten confused, but...

What really hit the hardest was that Cloud apparently hadn't even remembered him, the one who had gotten him out of that basement and back to people who could care for him. While Zack knew that Cloud was grateful now, it was still hard to hear that after everything he'd done. He was relieved it had worked out in the end, of course, but it was a hard thing to be blindsided with all of a sudden.

Couldn't Cloud have mentioned it earlier? Zack realized it had to be hard to break that kind of news, but now he felt like he'd been lied to for the past few days.

After a long stretch of time, Zack finally looked up again, his bright eyes meeting Cloud's. "When did you realize? How did you snap out of it?" He could have asked more clarifying questions, or blamed Cloud for it, or done a number of other things, but there wouldn't be any point to it. Cloud had worked past all of that and had recovered, and so Zack was going to focus on that.

Besides, he really didn't even know how to respond to or cope with the rest of it. His own living legacy. He remembered the words, but hearing about the result filled him with too many conflicting emotions than he could handle.

[notthistrain]

"It was... Sephiroth, actually. And Tifa. Mostly Tifa." The blond ran a hand through his hair, spikes sticking out every which way. He should have said all this sooner, that much was clear, but no time had just seemed right for it! And at least he wasn't waiting any longer than this, right? At least he was telling him now.

He shook his head. Relating this all was a bit painful. "Sephiroth took advantage of the holes in my memory for a while, made me believe I was something I wasn't - a clone of him, genetically created in a lab without even a number like all the others. It didn't help that Hojo kept referring to me as a failed experiment. Tifa helped me realize that we both shared memories of our childhood, and that I couldn't have just been created. She helped me piece together all the missing pieces. You, me, Sephiroth, everything."

Cloud looked up, eyes somewhat wet. "I'm really sorry, Zack. I should have told you some of this sooner. I just... didn't know where to start." And there was still so much else he could tell him, but what he'd shared just then might be hard enough to take in as it was.

[zack_fair]

Just hearing Sephiroth's name once again was almost enough to make Zack toss his cards to the side and slam his fist down on the table. It wouldn't have bothered him so much if he hadn't once looked up to the man with such admiration, only to have that trust ripped into shreds and then tossed in his face. He hadn't wanted to turn his sword on the general; he hadn't wanted to turn his sword on Angeal or Genesis, either. But things had always gone from bad to worse, and it seemed like that pattern had only continued after his death.

Considering how bad Cloud's mako poisoning had been, Zack could believe that he'd been able to be convinced that he was a creation rather than a real person with real memories. And with Shin-Ra's track record, it wasn't that impossible, either. Zack felt terrible that Cloud had been forced to work through all of that uncertainty, but he was extremely grateful to Tifa for helping him out of it.

"I'm going to have to thank her personally for that," he said with a small smile, quickly regathering his composure as he always did. And yet Zack didn't keep things lighthearted for too long. This wasn't really a situation where he could constantly play it cool. So when Cloud apologized, he only shook his head. "It's fine. I'm sorry. That I couldn't be there to help you through that. That I... left you to try and work through it on your own." Cloud had obviously gotten himself together in the end, but it had probably cost him a lot of strife. His last name was about as apt as it could be.

[notthistrain]

Cloud could tell Zack was taking all of this in and wasn't too happy about it. He couldn't blame him, after the incident with Sephiroth. Hearing that the man had continued to mess with his friends after his death couldn't sit right with him. But he shook his head at that apology.

"Don't. You couldn't have known. I wouldn't be alive right now if it wasn't for you." Would he have preferred that Zack hadn't died then? Of course. But it was hard to look back on everything that had happened and not see it as inevitable, painful as the thought was. It was enough to have him back now. That was more than he'd ever dreamt of.

He couldn't say he was too comfortable with the idea of Zack talking to Tifa about this, but he knew it would happen sooner or later. She'd probably handle the even more embarrassing aspects of it.

[zack_fair]

Even though Zack knew that Cloud's words were completely sincere, it was hard for him to take them to heart in light of everything he'd just learned. He did nod, to show that he'd heard and processed what Cloud had said, but in the end all he could do was move onto the next question.

"So, you thought you were me... sort of," he said. "Is that how you ended up running into Aerith? And Yuffie?" Cloud hadn't met any of them back when Zack had been alive, so this was all starting to feel like some weird coincidence. Some might have called it fate, even. Zack tried to remember if he'd ever told Cloud about the snotty "treasure hunter" who spammed his mail, but he couldn't be sure either way.

"And why were you wearing a SOLDIER uniform when we were back on Gaia?" he went on to ask. It was weird to even be phrasing a question that way, but he didn't know how else to say it. "You didn't go back to them, did you?" If Cloud had been confused and thought he was him, maybe he'd tried. But Zack sincerely hoped not.