Nibelheim, Gaia, Sunday Fandom Time
You call yourself SOLDIER?
Everything was dark and pain. It always was. But there was that voice, Angeal's voice, cutting into the darkness, and Zack found himself opening his eyes to see him there, white-winged and disappointed, looking at him from the other side of the thick glass that had been his only barrier to freedom for years.
You tarnish the SOLDIER name.
It couldn't possibly be real. Angeal was dead. And the way that Angeal turned and flew away, in spite of the fact that they were somewhere underground, ignoring the way Zack pounded his hand feebly against the glass, just cemented it.
Zack's world went blindingly white for a moment. And then everything was sky. Another dream. It was always a dream. But he flinched away from the glare as though it hurt his eyes all the same, and then looked up to see a single white feather drifting down toward him. He watched in confusion as it floated down past him, to settle at his feet on a liquid sky, sending out ripples as though from water. And then he looked up again, in the direction that Angeal had flown.
"Those wings," he murmured. "I want them too."
The world shattered.
And what had to be hours later, as he dragged himself back to consciousness, he realized that he was sprawled out on the floor of the laboratory that had been his prison, surrounded by broken glass. The sound of footsteps prompted him to pull himself to his feet, and he didn't remember ever feeling so heavy in his life, but he stumbled forward and took a swing at the lab assistant who had rolled up his sleeve, who was going to... it didn't matter. Not really. The man had been party to his own personal hell for so long now, he was lucky that the worst he had to deal with was a suckerpunch from a man who was still glowing with the green poison of the mako radiation that he'd been doused in for years.
It had hurt his hand to throw that punch. His hand hurt. From a punch. But he shook it out as he walked across the glass toward the other containment device, peering through the thick glass to see another man suspended within it. He pulled a lever on the side and the radioactive fluid within it drained before the door opened and Zack staggered under the weight of the man falling into his arms.
He staggered.
"Cloud..."
Unresponsive. Completely unresponsive. Of course he was. The mako radiation that they were doused with for ages now was toxic, after all. Cloud was lucky to simply be catatonic. Any living thing that was exposed to too much of the stuff could be killed, or worse, mutated into a monster.
Zack huffed out a bitter, exhausted laugh at the thought as he maneuvered Cloud's arm over his shoulder so that he could try to drag him out of there. SOLDIER were already monsters. They just wore it better than most.
~~~~~
They hadn't gotten far. The lab was in the basement of the otherwise abandoned mansion, and they weren't going anywhere until Zack had collected his sword - the weight of it was almost unbearably heavy on his back - and he figured out what to do about Cloud. A first attempt at leaving the building, dragging Cloud over his shoulder, had ended with a run-in with the infantry outside. He'd barely been able to fight them off, and Cloud's dead weight meant that he'd been forced to backtrack. Back into there. Back into the mansion. He'd managed to get him up the stairs and into an empty room, dropping him onto a bed while he thought.
Nibelheim had been whole. Had been in one piece. It had burned to the ground, but what he'd seen of it in his brief foray outside had looked no different to the way it had looked before Sephiroth...
Before Sephiroth had...
"Hey, Cloud. Since it's still daylight, do you think we should rest until the evening?"
It would be easier to escape in the dark, after all. Unseen. Zack frowned, though, as the only reply Cloud gave him was a weak gasp of breath, barely a moan.
"Mako addiction... Hey, Angeal? Is there nobody I can save!?"
It was cruel. The whole world was cruel. Angeal, Genesis, Sephiroth, Cloud. Everybody he tried to help always wound up hurt. Or worse. And there wasn't anything Zack could do to cure Cloud. The effects of mako poisoning weren't curable. They were just something that you either survived, or you didn't.
The first step, then, was to get Cloud out of those mako-soaked clothes. The mansion was big, and had apparently been put to some use by ShinRa over the years. Even if the village outside made no sense, Zack wasn't even all that surprised to find the uniform of a SOLDIER, 1st Class, in a drawer in one of the rooms.
"It suits you," he teased, once he had gotten Cloud out of that sodden, toxic infantry gear that he'd been wearing since... since as long as they'd been trapped. "And if it doesn't fit, well, beggars can't be choosers."
And then he settled back to think. In his pocket, his hand closed around something, and he almost jumped at the sudden memory. A small box. He pulled it out and opened it to look at the ring that was still, somehow, inside. Of course it was. Hojo wasn't interested in swords or trinkets. His tastes ran a little more nightmarish than money. Zack pulled in a shaking breath as he stared at the ring, and then shook his head and put it back into his pocket.
It had been a wish. A dream. And he hadn't given it to her when he'd had the chance.
"Hey... Cloud." His back was to the other man, who had been robbed of his last few years of boyhood in this hell. He didn't think Cloud would mind. "I... I have to go to Midgar. You wanna come with me?"
There was no reply. That was fine. Zack wouldn't hold it against him.
~~~~~
The next attempt at an escape, once night had finally fallen, went... a little more smoothly.
Not much. But what could you really do? The infantry had been ready for them this time, but Zack had taken a day to rest, and was at least capable of raising his sword without buckling under the weight of it. He wasn't at peak form. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But he was more than enough to handle the waves of men that had rushed at him.
The exit to the town had consisted of ShinRa's robots, patrolling the trail that would have led to an open escape. Zack dealt with them, too. Easier said than done, but he'd made it, dragging Cloud along the path and out toward the seashore. He set Cloud down against some rocks on the shore, and then sighed as he scouted around, trying to figure out where to go from there. On one side, there was the ocean. Midgar was well across that, and he wasn't exactly going to be able to swim that distance. On the other side, a sheer cliff wall, a lighthouse, the path he had taken. Nibelheim.
And, to top it all off, they'd been followed.
He'd known it, of course. He just didn't want to believe it. Wasn't sure he could handle it if it was true. But there he was with his hands on his hips looking out at the full moon over the water, and he most certainly wasn't alone.
"Hey, Cissnei." He smiled, though there wasn't enough enthusiasm in it to even count as 'strained.' "Been a while."
"Zack..." Her voice sounded... desperate. Worried. Of course it was. Of course she knew. She was a Turk. Of course she was here for him. His throat tightened as he remembered the glimpses of the black suits he had seen as Hojo had carted them into the basement, half dead. "The fugitive sample... is it you?"
"It would appear so."
That was what they were, now. Just samples. For all that he'd done for ShinRa. For all the hell he had been through.
That was all they were.
"What did they do to you in that place?"
She was still talking to his back. He turned around, just slightly, and raised a hand.
"Well... this and that." He was quiet for a few seconds, and then turned to face her fully, sad resignation creeping into his voice. "So, Cissnei. You're here to take us back, right?"
She was silent. After all of this, silence and a bowed head were the only reply he warranted.
"Please." The threat of tears choked him and he stepped forward, that resignation breaking into something desperate. "Just walk away! I thought we could outrun the army, but the Turks are a different story."
"Zack," Cissnei's head bowed as she reached for her shuriken. "I'm sorry. This is my job. If you want to escape, you'll have to--"
She raised her weapon, and Zack half, stepped back, his heart lurching up into his throat as she threw it at him. He barely managed to draw his sword to deflect it in time, and it almost killed him to have to point it at her afterwards as the shuriken lodged itself harmlessly in the sand at her feet.
She walked toward him, and he thrust the sword toward her menacingly.
"Step back." She paused, and he hoped so damn hard that she wouldn't notice just how difficult it was to keep emotion from choking his voice as he spoke. "Next time, I'll really have to..."
She didn't reply. She just looked... heartbroken, maybe. But she'd attacked him, and he didn't dare lower his sword as he backed away, leaving her standing on the beach, alone.
~~~~~
"The Turks are here, too," Zack said, standing in front of Cloud, trying not to think about who else might show up to collect them. Tseng? Or maybe...
He swallowed.
"It's too dangerous to move now." Cloud didn't reply. Zack frowned, but kept talking. He needed something. Needed to hear the sound of a human voice maybe. "We'll rest here until morning. Then we'll leave at dawn." More silence. Zack smiled a little. "Eh. We'll be all right."
The sound of footsteps behind him pulled him out of that moment, and his lip curled in anger as he spun around to face who had followed them.
"Cissnei." His hand reached for his sword again. It felt too damn heavy as he pointed it at her.
"Wait," she murmured, stepping to the side for a better look at Cloud. "He... He's the other sample they collected at Nibelheim."
"Why did you come here?!" Zack sidestepped, putting himself between Cissnei and Cloud again. "I told you to go away."
"He doesn't look well, Zack. Is he all right?"
"Mako addiction." The sword didn't waver. Zack's voice, however, did. "Severe case."
"The experiments, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
Cissnei was silent for a moment, and then she pulled out her phone and opened it, pressing a button and putting it to her ear. That did get Zack to lower his weapon, straightening up with a, "Hey!" of protest. She held up a hand to silence him.
"Tseng." Zack's heart pounded in his chest, but he didn't dare say a word while she was on her phone. Not with him. Not with Tseng. "I've lost the target." The next few seconds were a blur as Zack's world shifted sideways underfoot, and he couldn't for the life of him catch his breath or sort his thoughts out as Cissnei listened to Tseng's reply, and then hung up the phone. "That's how it is. So get away safely."
She walked away a few steps. Zack found his voice again.
"Cissnei... thank you."
"Here's a present." She turned, clutching something to her breast, and then smiled, making her way toward him. She held out her hand, and dropped a set of keys into Zack's open palm. "If you think you can trust me... then use it."
And without another word, she walked away.
Zack let her, and he smiled.
And as it turned out, the bike that Cissnei had given him was awesome.
[OOC: I meant to do this a month ago BUT I DON'T CARE. LOOK AT ME GO. WILD AND FREE. Ahem. This was all adapted from Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII because... Crisis Core. Zack is currently not answering his phone anyway, what with being a fugitive and all, so OOC is welcome if anyone has any, but post is NFI otherwise.]
Everything was dark and pain. It always was. But there was that voice, Angeal's voice, cutting into the darkness, and Zack found himself opening his eyes to see him there, white-winged and disappointed, looking at him from the other side of the thick glass that had been his only barrier to freedom for years.
You tarnish the SOLDIER name.
It couldn't possibly be real. Angeal was dead. And the way that Angeal turned and flew away, in spite of the fact that they were somewhere underground, ignoring the way Zack pounded his hand feebly against the glass, just cemented it.
Zack's world went blindingly white for a moment. And then everything was sky. Another dream. It was always a dream. But he flinched away from the glare as though it hurt his eyes all the same, and then looked up to see a single white feather drifting down toward him. He watched in confusion as it floated down past him, to settle at his feet on a liquid sky, sending out ripples as though from water. And then he looked up again, in the direction that Angeal had flown.
"Those wings," he murmured. "I want them too."
The world shattered.
And what had to be hours later, as he dragged himself back to consciousness, he realized that he was sprawled out on the floor of the laboratory that had been his prison, surrounded by broken glass. The sound of footsteps prompted him to pull himself to his feet, and he didn't remember ever feeling so heavy in his life, but he stumbled forward and took a swing at the lab assistant who had rolled up his sleeve, who was going to... it didn't matter. Not really. The man had been party to his own personal hell for so long now, he was lucky that the worst he had to deal with was a suckerpunch from a man who was still glowing with the green poison of the mako radiation that he'd been doused in for years.
It had hurt his hand to throw that punch. His hand hurt. From a punch. But he shook it out as he walked across the glass toward the other containment device, peering through the thick glass to see another man suspended within it. He pulled a lever on the side and the radioactive fluid within it drained before the door opened and Zack staggered under the weight of the man falling into his arms.
He staggered.
"Cloud..."
Unresponsive. Completely unresponsive. Of course he was. The mako radiation that they were doused with for ages now was toxic, after all. Cloud was lucky to simply be catatonic. Any living thing that was exposed to too much of the stuff could be killed, or worse, mutated into a monster.
Zack huffed out a bitter, exhausted laugh at the thought as he maneuvered Cloud's arm over his shoulder so that he could try to drag him out of there. SOLDIER were already monsters. They just wore it better than most.
~~~~~
They hadn't gotten far. The lab was in the basement of the otherwise abandoned mansion, and they weren't going anywhere until Zack had collected his sword - the weight of it was almost unbearably heavy on his back - and he figured out what to do about Cloud. A first attempt at leaving the building, dragging Cloud over his shoulder, had ended with a run-in with the infantry outside. He'd barely been able to fight them off, and Cloud's dead weight meant that he'd been forced to backtrack. Back into there. Back into the mansion. He'd managed to get him up the stairs and into an empty room, dropping him onto a bed while he thought.
Nibelheim had been whole. Had been in one piece. It had burned to the ground, but what he'd seen of it in his brief foray outside had looked no different to the way it had looked before Sephiroth...
Before Sephiroth had...
"Hey, Cloud. Since it's still daylight, do you think we should rest until the evening?"
It would be easier to escape in the dark, after all. Unseen. Zack frowned, though, as the only reply Cloud gave him was a weak gasp of breath, barely a moan.
"Mako addiction... Hey, Angeal? Is there nobody I can save!?"
It was cruel. The whole world was cruel. Angeal, Genesis, Sephiroth, Cloud. Everybody he tried to help always wound up hurt. Or worse. And there wasn't anything Zack could do to cure Cloud. The effects of mako poisoning weren't curable. They were just something that you either survived, or you didn't.
The first step, then, was to get Cloud out of those mako-soaked clothes. The mansion was big, and had apparently been put to some use by ShinRa over the years. Even if the village outside made no sense, Zack wasn't even all that surprised to find the uniform of a SOLDIER, 1st Class, in a drawer in one of the rooms.
"It suits you," he teased, once he had gotten Cloud out of that sodden, toxic infantry gear that he'd been wearing since... since as long as they'd been trapped. "And if it doesn't fit, well, beggars can't be choosers."
And then he settled back to think. In his pocket, his hand closed around something, and he almost jumped at the sudden memory. A small box. He pulled it out and opened it to look at the ring that was still, somehow, inside. Of course it was. Hojo wasn't interested in swords or trinkets. His tastes ran a little more nightmarish than money. Zack pulled in a shaking breath as he stared at the ring, and then shook his head and put it back into his pocket.
It had been a wish. A dream. And he hadn't given it to her when he'd had the chance.
"Hey... Cloud." His back was to the other man, who had been robbed of his last few years of boyhood in this hell. He didn't think Cloud would mind. "I... I have to go to Midgar. You wanna come with me?"
There was no reply. That was fine. Zack wouldn't hold it against him.
~~~~~
The next attempt at an escape, once night had finally fallen, went... a little more smoothly.
Not much. But what could you really do? The infantry had been ready for them this time, but Zack had taken a day to rest, and was at least capable of raising his sword without buckling under the weight of it. He wasn't at peak form. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But he was more than enough to handle the waves of men that had rushed at him.
The exit to the town had consisted of ShinRa's robots, patrolling the trail that would have led to an open escape. Zack dealt with them, too. Easier said than done, but he'd made it, dragging Cloud along the path and out toward the seashore. He set Cloud down against some rocks on the shore, and then sighed as he scouted around, trying to figure out where to go from there. On one side, there was the ocean. Midgar was well across that, and he wasn't exactly going to be able to swim that distance. On the other side, a sheer cliff wall, a lighthouse, the path he had taken. Nibelheim.
And, to top it all off, they'd been followed.
He'd known it, of course. He just didn't want to believe it. Wasn't sure he could handle it if it was true. But there he was with his hands on his hips looking out at the full moon over the water, and he most certainly wasn't alone.
"Hey, Cissnei." He smiled, though there wasn't enough enthusiasm in it to even count as 'strained.' "Been a while."
"Zack..." Her voice sounded... desperate. Worried. Of course it was. Of course she knew. She was a Turk. Of course she was here for him. His throat tightened as he remembered the glimpses of the black suits he had seen as Hojo had carted them into the basement, half dead. "The fugitive sample... is it you?"
"It would appear so."
That was what they were, now. Just samples. For all that he'd done for ShinRa. For all the hell he had been through.
That was all they were.
"What did they do to you in that place?"
She was still talking to his back. He turned around, just slightly, and raised a hand.
"Well... this and that." He was quiet for a few seconds, and then turned to face her fully, sad resignation creeping into his voice. "So, Cissnei. You're here to take us back, right?"
She was silent. After all of this, silence and a bowed head were the only reply he warranted.
"Please." The threat of tears choked him and he stepped forward, that resignation breaking into something desperate. "Just walk away! I thought we could outrun the army, but the Turks are a different story."
"Zack," Cissnei's head bowed as she reached for her shuriken. "I'm sorry. This is my job. If you want to escape, you'll have to--"
She raised her weapon, and Zack half, stepped back, his heart lurching up into his throat as she threw it at him. He barely managed to draw his sword to deflect it in time, and it almost killed him to have to point it at her afterwards as the shuriken lodged itself harmlessly in the sand at her feet.
She walked toward him, and he thrust the sword toward her menacingly.
"Step back." She paused, and he hoped so damn hard that she wouldn't notice just how difficult it was to keep emotion from choking his voice as he spoke. "Next time, I'll really have to..."
She didn't reply. She just looked... heartbroken, maybe. But she'd attacked him, and he didn't dare lower his sword as he backed away, leaving her standing on the beach, alone.
~~~~~
"The Turks are here, too," Zack said, standing in front of Cloud, trying not to think about who else might show up to collect them. Tseng? Or maybe...
He swallowed.
"It's too dangerous to move now." Cloud didn't reply. Zack frowned, but kept talking. He needed something. Needed to hear the sound of a human voice maybe. "We'll rest here until morning. Then we'll leave at dawn." More silence. Zack smiled a little. "Eh. We'll be all right."
The sound of footsteps behind him pulled him out of that moment, and his lip curled in anger as he spun around to face who had followed them.
"Cissnei." His hand reached for his sword again. It felt too damn heavy as he pointed it at her.
"Wait," she murmured, stepping to the side for a better look at Cloud. "He... He's the other sample they collected at Nibelheim."
"Why did you come here?!" Zack sidestepped, putting himself between Cissnei and Cloud again. "I told you to go away."
"He doesn't look well, Zack. Is he all right?"
"Mako addiction." The sword didn't waver. Zack's voice, however, did. "Severe case."
"The experiments, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
Cissnei was silent for a moment, and then she pulled out her phone and opened it, pressing a button and putting it to her ear. That did get Zack to lower his weapon, straightening up with a, "Hey!" of protest. She held up a hand to silence him.
"Tseng." Zack's heart pounded in his chest, but he didn't dare say a word while she was on her phone. Not with him. Not with Tseng. "I've lost the target." The next few seconds were a blur as Zack's world shifted sideways underfoot, and he couldn't for the life of him catch his breath or sort his thoughts out as Cissnei listened to Tseng's reply, and then hung up the phone. "That's how it is. So get away safely."
She walked away a few steps. Zack found his voice again.
"Cissnei... thank you."
"Here's a present." She turned, clutching something to her breast, and then smiled, making her way toward him. She held out her hand, and dropped a set of keys into Zack's open palm. "If you think you can trust me... then use it."
And without another word, she walked away.
Zack let her, and he smiled.
And as it turned out, the bike that Cissnei had given him was awesome.
[OOC: I meant to do this a month ago BUT I DON'T CARE. LOOK AT ME GO. WILD AND FREE. Ahem. This was all adapted from Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII because... Crisis Core. Zack is currently not answering his phone anyway, what with being a fugitive and all, so OOC is welcome if anyone has any, but post is NFI otherwise.]