FFVII Fic: Silver Lining (2. Flight)
Title: Silver Lining (2. Flight)
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Rating: R
Word count: ~3800
Pairing: Eventual Sephiroth/Zack/Cloud
Warnings: Nibelheim AU. Occasional bad language in this chapter. Unbeta'd. WIP.
Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII, nor am I making any profit from this fanfiction.
Summary: Cloud fails to throw a badly injured Sephiroth into the Mako in the Nibelheim reactor, and Hojo finds himself with three test subjects. But after four years Hojo is losing patience - Cloud is succumbing to Mako addiction, Zack shows no progress, and Sephiroth remains mentally imbalanced and unpredictable. When it becomes clear that Hojo intends to terminate them, Zack masterminds a plan for all three of them to go on the run.
2. (Flight)
Previous Chapter (1. Escape)
2.1
The laboratory door led out into a dark, rough-hewn stone-and-earth tunnel. Zack stood there in the doorway for a moment, struck by the sight of it. Intellectually he'd known that they were in the basement of the ShinRa Mansion but it was still strange to finally see it with his own eyes.
The one-room laboratory had been their entire universe for the past four years. In his head it had become a place totally disconnected from the outside; a hundred square-metre world of nightmare. It wasn't until that moment, faced with the brown-stone walls and the distantly illuminated stairs leading up to the surface, that Zack realised how much he'd become convinced that the last four years had been either a concoction of his own mind, or hell.
The way was clear. The tunnel was silent and still as the grave. Where Sephiroth had disappeared to Zack had no clue, but as long as nothing stood in his path between here and freedom, he didn't very much care. He'd save that for later.
He hoisted Cloud's body higher up on his shoulder. The blond let out a miserable groan at his roughness but then fell quiet, and with a fortifying breath Zack stepped out into the tunnel. The stone was cool and damp and solid against his bare feet as he padded across it.
Halfway to the stairs they passed a greyish lump of flesh half-hidden in the shadows. It took Zack a second to work out what it was - an arm, torn straight from the shoulder. Not human, thank Shiva. Too big to be human, and the finger-shaped appendages curling into the palm looked like they'd been crafted by someone who might have seen a man once, a long time ago, and decided to recreate their memory clumsily out of clay. It was spotted and streaked with purple blood.
Zack wondered where the rest of the monster was, and wasn't sure whether he hoped this was Sephiroth's work or not.
At the bottom of the spiral stairs they paused again. Zack strained his ears but he couldn't hear anything, and when he took a quick look he couldn't see anything waiting for them on the way up, either. Either they were very lucky, or Sephiroth was doing as he was told.
With Cloud's weight it took a little longer to climb the stairs, and more than once the combination of damp, chilled wood and bare feet found Zack scrabbling for purchase, but soon enough they made it to the top. The secret entrance had been forced and was stuck half-open. Again he paused behind the door to listen and again there was nothing.
He could see sunlight. A low evening light streamed in through the windows and it was that more than anything that drew Zack out into the mansion. He stood in the middle of the empty room in a patch of it, turning so that it fell across his back and Cloud's cheek.
"Almost there," he whispered, patting the back of Cloud's thigh.
The mansion was pretty much as he remembered it. He was surprised that there'd been no damage from the fire, but four years would have been more than enough time to repair any if there had been. And it remained silent and empty - even the main hall, with its high ceiling and sweeping staircases, yielded no enemies hidden away.
Near the front doors, however, lay the very dead body of one of Hojo's lackeys, their clothes spattered dark with blood. As Zack pushed through the door and into the outside air, he realised it was the woman who'd stood and watched Cloud vomiting into his own lap.
Did she just happen to be there, or did Sephiroth go looking for her? Zack thought, but then the first fresh breeze he'd felt in years brushed against his skin and he turned to look out into the world that had left them behind…
…to a village that looked exactly the same as it did in his memories - just not the memories where it had been on fire.
2.2
Zack snuck toward the entrance to the village through the small dark spaces behind the houses, ducked so low that Cloud's feet kept brushing the ground.
If the underground tunnel had been a splash of reality, then this was like being shoved headfirst back into the dream. It felt like the houses themselves were watching him as he moved. His fingers curled fear-tight into the slick wet fabric of Cloud's trousers.
Nibelheim shouldn't exist anymore. What the hell is going on?!
He'd spotted three people crossing the square as he moved from shadow to shadow and none of them he recognised. Nibelheim was such a tiny place that he'd met the entire population within half an hour of arriving, and he was positive that none of those three had been among them. Nibelheim wasn't exactly the kind of town people were queueing up to move to, either.
Even stranger had been the glimpse he'd got of a black-cloaked figure collapsed beside the well. They were in an obviously bad way, visibly shaking. A man had hurried past them without stopping, eyes barely more than flickering in its direction.
He didn't have time to stop and investigate. He moved on, but just as they were about to pass behind another house, he thought he saw the figure's head lift in their direction out of the corner of his eye.
He didn't look back to check. Heart pounding against his ribs, mind whirring - Was it a ShinRa spy? A monster? Some kind of guard? - he made it quickly to the last building before the town entrance. He hesitated there behind the inn, fear tight in his chest and stomach. There was nothing between them and the gate, but the thing by the well might see them, and what if it was something of ShinRa's?
He remembered the jerk of its head from the corner of his vision. If it was ShinRa, then it had probably already seen them.
He took one last fortifying breath, gripped the back of Cloud's legs, and ran - out past the gate, past the rusting old truck, beyond where the stone path ended and the grass began, out into the green open plain with the wide sky burning yellow and gold above them.
2.3
Zack jogged for some time. He jogged until it was dark and only the moon lit their way, not really sure where he was going but feeling better for every metre he put between them and that godforsaken village.
He only slowed when Cloud began to moan miserably in pain over his shoulder. Zack could feel the blond's stomach muscles start to contract spasmodically so he stopped, managing to get Cloud on his knees and his head lowered just as he began to retch.
"Sorry," Zack murmured, rubbing up and down Cloud's back as he vomited thin, stringy green bile onto the ground. "Can't be comfortable up there for you while I'm running, can it. I promise it won't be for long. I just want to get a bit further and then we can stop."
Cloud continued to look pale and unwell even after he finished being sick, so Zack was forced to walk after that, trying to keep the blond as steady as possible. He trudged through the dark for Shiva-knew-how-long, until his eyelids were beginning to slip shut of their own accord, exhaustion creeping up on him in a dense fog.
He kept going for another half-hour or so even after that, afraid of being followed even though there'd been no sign of search parties at all since they'd escaped. Even the wild animals one would normally see roaming the fields were curiously absent.
Sephiroth, too, was nowhere to be seen.
Eventually, however, they hit gold - a river, hidden from view by a sharp drop in the ground. Nearby stood some rocks and trees, enough to hide them well enough for a few hours while they rested. Zack sank down by the water and lay Cloud on the soft mud beside him.
The water was cool and fresh. He drank and washed his face and then gently ran wet palms over Cloud's face to get some Mako off of him. He hoped it felt good for Cloud, if he could feel what Zack was doing at all. He smoothed blond hair going stiff with Mako back from Cloud's face and lifted his head to trickle water into his mouth. Encouragingly, the blond swallowed it down without too much trouble. He probably had less trouble than Zack, whose throat felt scratchy and swollen where Sephiroth had gone for him in the lab. When he ran his fingers lightly under his chin it hurt like fire.
It was too dark to check now, but Zack had no doubt he was one huge bruise from chin to clavicle. It took a lot to do that to a SOLDIER. If it had been Cloud the man had gone for…
It didn't bear thinking about. Zack grit his teeth and continued to rub the drying Mako from Cloud's skin wherever it was exposed. They had no clean outfits so they'd have to sleep in their stiff-drying lab clothes - a full bath would have to wait until tomorrow.
When they were both as clean as possible, Zack picked his companion up in his arms and carried him a little distance to where there was a space hidden away between rocks, trees and the high rise of earth. He lay them down on the grass with Cloud wedged between his body and some rocks. Anyone who found them would spot Zack before anything else, if they saw Cloud at all.
He lay on his back and listened to the silence, staring up at the stars. He supposed he was supposed to feel happy, relieved, anything - and he did feel something, but it felt like whatever it was was so big that it had overloaded his nerves and he couldn't make sense of it. Every time he breathed in he could feel it pressing up hard against his sternum, barely contained behind his ribs, on the verge of cracking his chest right open.
I need to rest, Zack thought, but it was a long time before his heart calmed enough to let him sleep.
2.4
Zack dreamt that he was back in the laboratory. He knew it was a dream because he could see himself, on his back on the examination table in the centre of the room. He'd been sliced and laid open like in an autopsy, but he was still awake. He could see his own heart beating wet and frantic where it was exposed to the open air.
Cloud lay in a heap on the floor next to the table. A pool of blood - mixed red and green - was slowly spreading around him. It had already spread far enough to reach Sephiroth's knees where he was kneeling next to the body.
"No," Sephiroth said. His head was bowed, the ends of his hair dyed red where they trailed against the floor. "No, he's dead, he's dead." His voice was like gravel, sounded like it physically hurt to talk. As Zack watched detachedly, the older man reached out and ran gentle fingertips down Cloud's still face. A moan choked out from his lips.
Hojo stepped out of the shadows. "You know who killed him, don't you?" he said, and Sephiroth shook his head. "Fair did."
Several things happened at once. Sephiroth leapt to his feet like he'd been shocked with lightning, and suddenly Zack was no longer an observer but he was the body on the table - there was barely enough time to register the indescribable agony before Sephiroth was there, reaching between his lungs, face twisted like a wild animal -
Above the din he heard Hojo say, "Your mother would be proud."
He jerked awake just as Sephiroth wrenched his heart right out, panting. For a few seconds he lay unseeing, body clenched tight as his brain began to remember that he wasn't actually missing anything vital.
Cloud made a soft noise. Zack started, coming back to himself, and realised that he was wrapped tight around the blond, squeezing the younger man in his arms. He'd rolled them in the night until Cloud's face was almost mashed up against the sheltering rocks.
The fact that they were still where they'd gone to sleep was heartening. With a sigh Zack eased away onto his back, squinting up at the bright sky. From the sun he'd guess it was late morning at the very earliest. They'd slept for hours.
"Time to rise and shine, I guess," he said to Cloud as he sat up. He squeezed the other man's shoulder gently, but got no response. He wasn't sure that he'd been expecting anything anyway, but that didn't stop the bitter swell of disappointment that welled up in his belly. "Nah," he murmured, mouth twisting, "I don't blame you. I wouldn't wanna get up, either."
It was only then, when he turned his head away, that he noticed the clean clothes sitting in a neat pile next to them. Next to that lay his Buster Sword.
After a second of blank surprise, Zack quickly got to his feet and peered around. Everything was quiet except for the soft background noise of the river and a few birds chirping in the trees nearby. There was no sign of movement, nor any signs to say anyone had been there except for the fact that someone obviously had.
It could only have been Sephiroth, who had come and then gone again for whatever reason. Zack stared at the pile for another second. He hadn't even been aware that the other man had been tracking them.
Well, he mused after a moment, at least he didn't murder us all horribly while we were asleep. That's always a plus.
Warily, Zack picked Cloud up and took him and their new supplies down to the river. Keeping an eye on the Buster Sword nearby, Zack quickly stripped both himself and Cloud naked.
In the daylight and out of the Mako, the damage done to the blond's body was starkly visible. Zack sucked in a breath and did his best to ignore the extensive bruising mottling Cloud's white skin, the wiry Mako-born muscle the only thing stopping him looking like an emaciated doll - but even through that, it was still possible to pick out individual ribs beneath the skin. His body was littered with scars, some almost invisible at first glance but others ugly and angry-looking. The most obvious was a long, red mass of tissue along the blond's sternum that would likely never fade.
Zack hadn't seen himself in a mirror for years, but he supposed he didn't look much better.
He sat them both down in a shallow part of the river, hissing. Cloud jerked against his chest, but it seemed to be no more than an automatic muscle response to the sudden cold. "Sssssh, it's okay, we won't even feel it in a minute," Zack murmured. Then, shivering, he set about washing them both off.
It became impossible to ignore the injuries when he was running his hands over them. Pouring water over Cloud's head, picking apart dried-together strands of hair with his fingers, he found a shaved patch of scalp littered with surgical stitches half-hidden amongst the unruly blond spikes. Cloud's entire body shuddered when he gently touched the area.
The helpless anger and sorrow that had lain low in his belly seem to surge again until it filled his throat. Zack had to close his eyes, biting his lip as he held Cloud close. He buried his face in the blond's hair and struggled to breathe.
How the hell was he going to fix this? What on Gaia were they meant to do now?
He looked up, meaning to blink his eyes clear - and spotted Sephiroth standing on the rise nearby, three dead rabbits held in one hand.
2.5
By the time Zack had both himself and Cloud dried and dressed, Sephiroth had already started a small fire and was cooking the rabbits. He was clad in his old black coat and Masamune lay at his side, gleaming in the grass.
"So they kept all your stuff, too?" Zack asked as he stepped closer, Cloud held over his shoulder. His free hand kept twitching, eager to feel the weight of the Buster Weapon currently strapped out of the way on his back. He paused just out of the Masamune's considerable reach.
Sephiroth turned cool, feline eyes toward them, gaze flicking over the both of them briefly - pausing on Zack's throat. "So it seems. I had no idea if anything important of Clo- Strife's was there. I hoped the clothes would be enough."
He was looking at the face Sephiroth had presented them just before he'd left the lab - closed, expressionless. Distant. Not crazy, thank Shiva, but sometimes it felt like this wasn't a huge improvement.
"I'm sure he'd thank you if he could," Zack replied. His stomach rumbled audibly at the smell of the meat beginning to cook.
Sephiroth lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug, said nothing. He turned back to the fire but, to Zack at least, it seemed that his gaze lingered for a second on Cloud before he did so.
Zack felt his fingers tighten around Cloud's thigh. "No," he could hear Sephiroth's broken moan in his head, grieving over Cloud's broken body, "No, he's dead, he's dead." He had to shake his head before it would stop. Taking a breath, he stepped closer to the fire and sat down.
Though he didn't show it, Zack had no doubt that Sephiroth noted the way he kept the fire between them, settling on the opposite side of it to the older man, and that he sat Cloud down so close he was almost in Zack's lap. Cloud slumped with his shoulder pressed to his, head lolling forward. Zack found the warmth of the other man down his side comforting.
Sephiroth simply watched them over the fire. Over the flames his face seemed very thin and angular - had he always been quite so slim? Zack couldn't even remember anymore - his jawline and his cheekbones clearly defined. His lips were rough and cracked. He had dark hollows around his eyes that matched the bruises smudged beneath Cloud and Zack's.
He looked haggard, and yet he'd spent the night clearing their way out, getting them clean clothes, and hunting down food. Zack wished that was enough to chase away the doubt lingering in his mind. As it was, all it did was make his heart twist in his chest.
It was Sephiroth who broke the silence. "So," he said, leather creaking as he sat back slightly, "what exactly are we going to do next?"
If only Zack knew. The problem was, really, that they had so many problems that it was impossible to know where to start.
2.6
In the short term, at least, they had no real choice other than to head south. Traversing the mountains to the east was impossible, and taking the dangerous northern pass would mean having to go back through Nibelheim. To the west lay the sea, and Wutai, and Zack wasn't in the mood for a swim.
So they walked. They walked until the green plains faded into red rocks and dust, Cloud draped over Zack's back piggy-back-style. Sephiroth followed, but he always kept himself at a conspicuous distance, trailing after them like some great shadow. It felt like having a wary panther padding behind him the whole time.
It wasn't long before Sephiroth announced, "I'm going to go and scout around," and disappeared off again.
Zack sighed, rubbing his cheek against Cloud's temple where the blond's head was resting on his shoulder. "Oh, boy," he said. "What are we going to do about him, hey?"
Cloud didn't reply. His eyes were closed, mouth slack.
"I don't know, either," Zack said. He squinted up at the sky - it was beginning to grow dark. If they were lucky they'd reach Cosmo Canyon around nightfall. "I bet you'd be better with him than me, though, you being sweet on him an' all." He grunted and hefted the other man higher up on his back. "And to be honest," he went on, "I think he's gone a bit sweet on you, too. Just don't tell him I said that, okay?"
If the last four years hadn't happened - if Sephiroth hadn't been pushed to breaking point, if they hadn't been locked in the laboratory beneath Nibelheim, if, if, if - then he knew that little bit of information might have been something to celebrate. The thawing of their stoic commander, Cloud's joy - he could imagine it all.
But the last four years had happened. Now Cloud was almost half-dead, and Sephiroth was so fucked up in the head Zack still wasn't sure he'd made the right decision letting him out.
Having Sephiroth with them complicated everything. If it had just been himself and Cloud he would have known what to do - head straight for Midgar, where they had allies and a whole city to hide themselves away in. But Sephiroth was too recognisable, especially in Midgar, and if he did lose it completely, then…well, Zack didn't even want to imagine the destruction he could wreak on an entire city.
"I should have left him behind," Zack murmured. "It's what any sane man would have done."
He felt Cloud's head move against his shoulder, forehead rubbing lethargically against rough cloth. It could have been any random movement - it wasn't necessarily a response to Zack's words, because only Shiva knew if the blond could even hear what he said, let alone understand any of it - but it made his throat grow thick anyway.
"I know," he said, "you wouldn't have let me leave him anyway. You're too nice. But you know what, Spike? You're not the only one of us who's ever been sweet on the General. Don't tell him I said that, either."
There was no response to that. He jostled Cloud gently on his back. "What, you're not gonna say anything to that? I just confessed my big secret," he said, keeping his voice bright. "No? Well, how 'bout this - did I ever tell you about this one mission I fucked up so badly they had to send Sephiroth out to clear up my mess? I haven't? You'll love this story…"
He managed to fill the silence through the twilight, until it grew dark and the lights of Cosmo Canyon came into view -
- where a Turk was waiting for them.
<><><>
End 2.
A/N:
1. Thank you for reading! All comments and crit appreciated.
.
This entry was originally posted at http://knowing-shadows.dreamwidth.org/2585.html. You can comment there using OpenID, or here on Livejournal.
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Rating: R
Word count: ~3800
Pairing: Eventual Sephiroth/Zack/Cloud
Warnings: Nibelheim AU. Occasional bad language in this chapter. Unbeta'd. WIP.
Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII, nor am I making any profit from this fanfiction.
Summary: Cloud fails to throw a badly injured Sephiroth into the Mako in the Nibelheim reactor, and Hojo finds himself with three test subjects. But after four years Hojo is losing patience - Cloud is succumbing to Mako addiction, Zack shows no progress, and Sephiroth remains mentally imbalanced and unpredictable. When it becomes clear that Hojo intends to terminate them, Zack masterminds a plan for all three of them to go on the run.
2. (Flight)
Previous Chapter (1. Escape)
2.1
The laboratory door led out into a dark, rough-hewn stone-and-earth tunnel. Zack stood there in the doorway for a moment, struck by the sight of it. Intellectually he'd known that they were in the basement of the ShinRa Mansion but it was still strange to finally see it with his own eyes.
The one-room laboratory had been their entire universe for the past four years. In his head it had become a place totally disconnected from the outside; a hundred square-metre world of nightmare. It wasn't until that moment, faced with the brown-stone walls and the distantly illuminated stairs leading up to the surface, that Zack realised how much he'd become convinced that the last four years had been either a concoction of his own mind, or hell.
The way was clear. The tunnel was silent and still as the grave. Where Sephiroth had disappeared to Zack had no clue, but as long as nothing stood in his path between here and freedom, he didn't very much care. He'd save that for later.
He hoisted Cloud's body higher up on his shoulder. The blond let out a miserable groan at his roughness but then fell quiet, and with a fortifying breath Zack stepped out into the tunnel. The stone was cool and damp and solid against his bare feet as he padded across it.
Halfway to the stairs they passed a greyish lump of flesh half-hidden in the shadows. It took Zack a second to work out what it was - an arm, torn straight from the shoulder. Not human, thank Shiva. Too big to be human, and the finger-shaped appendages curling into the palm looked like they'd been crafted by someone who might have seen a man once, a long time ago, and decided to recreate their memory clumsily out of clay. It was spotted and streaked with purple blood.
Zack wondered where the rest of the monster was, and wasn't sure whether he hoped this was Sephiroth's work or not.
At the bottom of the spiral stairs they paused again. Zack strained his ears but he couldn't hear anything, and when he took a quick look he couldn't see anything waiting for them on the way up, either. Either they were very lucky, or Sephiroth was doing as he was told.
With Cloud's weight it took a little longer to climb the stairs, and more than once the combination of damp, chilled wood and bare feet found Zack scrabbling for purchase, but soon enough they made it to the top. The secret entrance had been forced and was stuck half-open. Again he paused behind the door to listen and again there was nothing.
He could see sunlight. A low evening light streamed in through the windows and it was that more than anything that drew Zack out into the mansion. He stood in the middle of the empty room in a patch of it, turning so that it fell across his back and Cloud's cheek.
"Almost there," he whispered, patting the back of Cloud's thigh.
The mansion was pretty much as he remembered it. He was surprised that there'd been no damage from the fire, but four years would have been more than enough time to repair any if there had been. And it remained silent and empty - even the main hall, with its high ceiling and sweeping staircases, yielded no enemies hidden away.
Near the front doors, however, lay the very dead body of one of Hojo's lackeys, their clothes spattered dark with blood. As Zack pushed through the door and into the outside air, he realised it was the woman who'd stood and watched Cloud vomiting into his own lap.
Did she just happen to be there, or did Sephiroth go looking for her? Zack thought, but then the first fresh breeze he'd felt in years brushed against his skin and he turned to look out into the world that had left them behind…
…to a village that looked exactly the same as it did in his memories - just not the memories where it had been on fire.
2.2
Zack snuck toward the entrance to the village through the small dark spaces behind the houses, ducked so low that Cloud's feet kept brushing the ground.
If the underground tunnel had been a splash of reality, then this was like being shoved headfirst back into the dream. It felt like the houses themselves were watching him as he moved. His fingers curled fear-tight into the slick wet fabric of Cloud's trousers.
Nibelheim shouldn't exist anymore. What the hell is going on?!
He'd spotted three people crossing the square as he moved from shadow to shadow and none of them he recognised. Nibelheim was such a tiny place that he'd met the entire population within half an hour of arriving, and he was positive that none of those three had been among them. Nibelheim wasn't exactly the kind of town people were queueing up to move to, either.
Even stranger had been the glimpse he'd got of a black-cloaked figure collapsed beside the well. They were in an obviously bad way, visibly shaking. A man had hurried past them without stopping, eyes barely more than flickering in its direction.
He didn't have time to stop and investigate. He moved on, but just as they were about to pass behind another house, he thought he saw the figure's head lift in their direction out of the corner of his eye.
He didn't look back to check. Heart pounding against his ribs, mind whirring - Was it a ShinRa spy? A monster? Some kind of guard? - he made it quickly to the last building before the town entrance. He hesitated there behind the inn, fear tight in his chest and stomach. There was nothing between them and the gate, but the thing by the well might see them, and what if it was something of ShinRa's?
He remembered the jerk of its head from the corner of his vision. If it was ShinRa, then it had probably already seen them.
He took one last fortifying breath, gripped the back of Cloud's legs, and ran - out past the gate, past the rusting old truck, beyond where the stone path ended and the grass began, out into the green open plain with the wide sky burning yellow and gold above them.
2.3
Zack jogged for some time. He jogged until it was dark and only the moon lit their way, not really sure where he was going but feeling better for every metre he put between them and that godforsaken village.
He only slowed when Cloud began to moan miserably in pain over his shoulder. Zack could feel the blond's stomach muscles start to contract spasmodically so he stopped, managing to get Cloud on his knees and his head lowered just as he began to retch.
"Sorry," Zack murmured, rubbing up and down Cloud's back as he vomited thin, stringy green bile onto the ground. "Can't be comfortable up there for you while I'm running, can it. I promise it won't be for long. I just want to get a bit further and then we can stop."
Cloud continued to look pale and unwell even after he finished being sick, so Zack was forced to walk after that, trying to keep the blond as steady as possible. He trudged through the dark for Shiva-knew-how-long, until his eyelids were beginning to slip shut of their own accord, exhaustion creeping up on him in a dense fog.
He kept going for another half-hour or so even after that, afraid of being followed even though there'd been no sign of search parties at all since they'd escaped. Even the wild animals one would normally see roaming the fields were curiously absent.
Sephiroth, too, was nowhere to be seen.
Eventually, however, they hit gold - a river, hidden from view by a sharp drop in the ground. Nearby stood some rocks and trees, enough to hide them well enough for a few hours while they rested. Zack sank down by the water and lay Cloud on the soft mud beside him.
The water was cool and fresh. He drank and washed his face and then gently ran wet palms over Cloud's face to get some Mako off of him. He hoped it felt good for Cloud, if he could feel what Zack was doing at all. He smoothed blond hair going stiff with Mako back from Cloud's face and lifted his head to trickle water into his mouth. Encouragingly, the blond swallowed it down without too much trouble. He probably had less trouble than Zack, whose throat felt scratchy and swollen where Sephiroth had gone for him in the lab. When he ran his fingers lightly under his chin it hurt like fire.
It was too dark to check now, but Zack had no doubt he was one huge bruise from chin to clavicle. It took a lot to do that to a SOLDIER. If it had been Cloud the man had gone for…
It didn't bear thinking about. Zack grit his teeth and continued to rub the drying Mako from Cloud's skin wherever it was exposed. They had no clean outfits so they'd have to sleep in their stiff-drying lab clothes - a full bath would have to wait until tomorrow.
When they were both as clean as possible, Zack picked his companion up in his arms and carried him a little distance to where there was a space hidden away between rocks, trees and the high rise of earth. He lay them down on the grass with Cloud wedged between his body and some rocks. Anyone who found them would spot Zack before anything else, if they saw Cloud at all.
He lay on his back and listened to the silence, staring up at the stars. He supposed he was supposed to feel happy, relieved, anything - and he did feel something, but it felt like whatever it was was so big that it had overloaded his nerves and he couldn't make sense of it. Every time he breathed in he could feel it pressing up hard against his sternum, barely contained behind his ribs, on the verge of cracking his chest right open.
I need to rest, Zack thought, but it was a long time before his heart calmed enough to let him sleep.
2.4
Zack dreamt that he was back in the laboratory. He knew it was a dream because he could see himself, on his back on the examination table in the centre of the room. He'd been sliced and laid open like in an autopsy, but he was still awake. He could see his own heart beating wet and frantic where it was exposed to the open air.
Cloud lay in a heap on the floor next to the table. A pool of blood - mixed red and green - was slowly spreading around him. It had already spread far enough to reach Sephiroth's knees where he was kneeling next to the body.
"No," Sephiroth said. His head was bowed, the ends of his hair dyed red where they trailed against the floor. "No, he's dead, he's dead." His voice was like gravel, sounded like it physically hurt to talk. As Zack watched detachedly, the older man reached out and ran gentle fingertips down Cloud's still face. A moan choked out from his lips.
Hojo stepped out of the shadows. "You know who killed him, don't you?" he said, and Sephiroth shook his head. "Fair did."
Several things happened at once. Sephiroth leapt to his feet like he'd been shocked with lightning, and suddenly Zack was no longer an observer but he was the body on the table - there was barely enough time to register the indescribable agony before Sephiroth was there, reaching between his lungs, face twisted like a wild animal -
Above the din he heard Hojo say, "Your mother would be proud."
He jerked awake just as Sephiroth wrenched his heart right out, panting. For a few seconds he lay unseeing, body clenched tight as his brain began to remember that he wasn't actually missing anything vital.
Cloud made a soft noise. Zack started, coming back to himself, and realised that he was wrapped tight around the blond, squeezing the younger man in his arms. He'd rolled them in the night until Cloud's face was almost mashed up against the sheltering rocks.
The fact that they were still where they'd gone to sleep was heartening. With a sigh Zack eased away onto his back, squinting up at the bright sky. From the sun he'd guess it was late morning at the very earliest. They'd slept for hours.
"Time to rise and shine, I guess," he said to Cloud as he sat up. He squeezed the other man's shoulder gently, but got no response. He wasn't sure that he'd been expecting anything anyway, but that didn't stop the bitter swell of disappointment that welled up in his belly. "Nah," he murmured, mouth twisting, "I don't blame you. I wouldn't wanna get up, either."
It was only then, when he turned his head away, that he noticed the clean clothes sitting in a neat pile next to them. Next to that lay his Buster Sword.
After a second of blank surprise, Zack quickly got to his feet and peered around. Everything was quiet except for the soft background noise of the river and a few birds chirping in the trees nearby. There was no sign of movement, nor any signs to say anyone had been there except for the fact that someone obviously had.
It could only have been Sephiroth, who had come and then gone again for whatever reason. Zack stared at the pile for another second. He hadn't even been aware that the other man had been tracking them.
Well, he mused after a moment, at least he didn't murder us all horribly while we were asleep. That's always a plus.
Warily, Zack picked Cloud up and took him and their new supplies down to the river. Keeping an eye on the Buster Sword nearby, Zack quickly stripped both himself and Cloud naked.
In the daylight and out of the Mako, the damage done to the blond's body was starkly visible. Zack sucked in a breath and did his best to ignore the extensive bruising mottling Cloud's white skin, the wiry Mako-born muscle the only thing stopping him looking like an emaciated doll - but even through that, it was still possible to pick out individual ribs beneath the skin. His body was littered with scars, some almost invisible at first glance but others ugly and angry-looking. The most obvious was a long, red mass of tissue along the blond's sternum that would likely never fade.
Zack hadn't seen himself in a mirror for years, but he supposed he didn't look much better.
He sat them both down in a shallow part of the river, hissing. Cloud jerked against his chest, but it seemed to be no more than an automatic muscle response to the sudden cold. "Sssssh, it's okay, we won't even feel it in a minute," Zack murmured. Then, shivering, he set about washing them both off.
It became impossible to ignore the injuries when he was running his hands over them. Pouring water over Cloud's head, picking apart dried-together strands of hair with his fingers, he found a shaved patch of scalp littered with surgical stitches half-hidden amongst the unruly blond spikes. Cloud's entire body shuddered when he gently touched the area.
The helpless anger and sorrow that had lain low in his belly seem to surge again until it filled his throat. Zack had to close his eyes, biting his lip as he held Cloud close. He buried his face in the blond's hair and struggled to breathe.
How the hell was he going to fix this? What on Gaia were they meant to do now?
He looked up, meaning to blink his eyes clear - and spotted Sephiroth standing on the rise nearby, three dead rabbits held in one hand.
2.5
By the time Zack had both himself and Cloud dried and dressed, Sephiroth had already started a small fire and was cooking the rabbits. He was clad in his old black coat and Masamune lay at his side, gleaming in the grass.
"So they kept all your stuff, too?" Zack asked as he stepped closer, Cloud held over his shoulder. His free hand kept twitching, eager to feel the weight of the Buster Weapon currently strapped out of the way on his back. He paused just out of the Masamune's considerable reach.
Sephiroth turned cool, feline eyes toward them, gaze flicking over the both of them briefly - pausing on Zack's throat. "So it seems. I had no idea if anything important of Clo- Strife's was there. I hoped the clothes would be enough."
He was looking at the face Sephiroth had presented them just before he'd left the lab - closed, expressionless. Distant. Not crazy, thank Shiva, but sometimes it felt like this wasn't a huge improvement.
"I'm sure he'd thank you if he could," Zack replied. His stomach rumbled audibly at the smell of the meat beginning to cook.
Sephiroth lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug, said nothing. He turned back to the fire but, to Zack at least, it seemed that his gaze lingered for a second on Cloud before he did so.
Zack felt his fingers tighten around Cloud's thigh. "No," he could hear Sephiroth's broken moan in his head, grieving over Cloud's broken body, "No, he's dead, he's dead." He had to shake his head before it would stop. Taking a breath, he stepped closer to the fire and sat down.
Though he didn't show it, Zack had no doubt that Sephiroth noted the way he kept the fire between them, settling on the opposite side of it to the older man, and that he sat Cloud down so close he was almost in Zack's lap. Cloud slumped with his shoulder pressed to his, head lolling forward. Zack found the warmth of the other man down his side comforting.
Sephiroth simply watched them over the fire. Over the flames his face seemed very thin and angular - had he always been quite so slim? Zack couldn't even remember anymore - his jawline and his cheekbones clearly defined. His lips were rough and cracked. He had dark hollows around his eyes that matched the bruises smudged beneath Cloud and Zack's.
He looked haggard, and yet he'd spent the night clearing their way out, getting them clean clothes, and hunting down food. Zack wished that was enough to chase away the doubt lingering in his mind. As it was, all it did was make his heart twist in his chest.
It was Sephiroth who broke the silence. "So," he said, leather creaking as he sat back slightly, "what exactly are we going to do next?"
If only Zack knew. The problem was, really, that they had so many problems that it was impossible to know where to start.
2.6
In the short term, at least, they had no real choice other than to head south. Traversing the mountains to the east was impossible, and taking the dangerous northern pass would mean having to go back through Nibelheim. To the west lay the sea, and Wutai, and Zack wasn't in the mood for a swim.
So they walked. They walked until the green plains faded into red rocks and dust, Cloud draped over Zack's back piggy-back-style. Sephiroth followed, but he always kept himself at a conspicuous distance, trailing after them like some great shadow. It felt like having a wary panther padding behind him the whole time.
It wasn't long before Sephiroth announced, "I'm going to go and scout around," and disappeared off again.
Zack sighed, rubbing his cheek against Cloud's temple where the blond's head was resting on his shoulder. "Oh, boy," he said. "What are we going to do about him, hey?"
Cloud didn't reply. His eyes were closed, mouth slack.
"I don't know, either," Zack said. He squinted up at the sky - it was beginning to grow dark. If they were lucky they'd reach Cosmo Canyon around nightfall. "I bet you'd be better with him than me, though, you being sweet on him an' all." He grunted and hefted the other man higher up on his back. "And to be honest," he went on, "I think he's gone a bit sweet on you, too. Just don't tell him I said that, okay?"
If the last four years hadn't happened - if Sephiroth hadn't been pushed to breaking point, if they hadn't been locked in the laboratory beneath Nibelheim, if, if, if - then he knew that little bit of information might have been something to celebrate. The thawing of their stoic commander, Cloud's joy - he could imagine it all.
But the last four years had happened. Now Cloud was almost half-dead, and Sephiroth was so fucked up in the head Zack still wasn't sure he'd made the right decision letting him out.
Having Sephiroth with them complicated everything. If it had just been himself and Cloud he would have known what to do - head straight for Midgar, where they had allies and a whole city to hide themselves away in. But Sephiroth was too recognisable, especially in Midgar, and if he did lose it completely, then…well, Zack didn't even want to imagine the destruction he could wreak on an entire city.
"I should have left him behind," Zack murmured. "It's what any sane man would have done."
He felt Cloud's head move against his shoulder, forehead rubbing lethargically against rough cloth. It could have been any random movement - it wasn't necessarily a response to Zack's words, because only Shiva knew if the blond could even hear what he said, let alone understand any of it - but it made his throat grow thick anyway.
"I know," he said, "you wouldn't have let me leave him anyway. You're too nice. But you know what, Spike? You're not the only one of us who's ever been sweet on the General. Don't tell him I said that, either."
There was no response to that. He jostled Cloud gently on his back. "What, you're not gonna say anything to that? I just confessed my big secret," he said, keeping his voice bright. "No? Well, how 'bout this - did I ever tell you about this one mission I fucked up so badly they had to send Sephiroth out to clear up my mess? I haven't? You'll love this story…"
He managed to fill the silence through the twilight, until it grew dark and the lights of Cosmo Canyon came into view -
- where a Turk was waiting for them.
<><><>
End 2.
A/N:
1. Thank you for reading! All comments and crit appreciated.
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