[fic] Harrow Children: Part the Second [6/7]
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Even by the time they got back to 7th Heaven, Cloud was still passed out in what wasn't exactly a natural sleep, but was a lot better than whatever weird thing had happened before, and Zack did his best not to think about how much Cloud had been like that before, once, for a day or so after Aerith died--that one time, it had been as if as soon as they got somewhere safe, Cloud had completely zonked out for a day, but when he woke up...well, he'd woken up and stayed up and had been walking and talking and not mako-poisoned. And this--well, it wasn't quite the same. Cloud had woken up some, and the last time, once he found a place to hole up, he just wouldn't. So it wasn't the same.
Zack told himself that, until he could believe it.
Zack also did his best not to think about the fact that Cloud's eyes had changed colors, because while they were green, at least they weren't like Sephiroth's because Cloud had fought that off, like he always did, and Zack was counting whatever blessings he could.
...He was going to kill those three.
Provided whatever had happened to Cloud hadn't knocked out the shrimpy one. Zack hadn't really been all that focused on anything but Cloud, but it looked like both of them had been down for the count.
Good, Zack thought. You raised Leviathan's own storm on them for whatever they did, kid.
"He's asleep. And let him; I can't even imagine what those three put him through," Zack said, frowning and looking down at Cloud's face, and his grip on Cloud tightened unconsciously.
Tifa got a strange look on her face that only lasted an instant, something dark flashing across her eyes before it was gone.
"Where's Vin?" Zack asked as soon as he got down the stairs.
"Vincent? He left, right after he dropped off Denzel and told me about what happened," Tifa said, sighing. "He said he was going to go talk to Shinra."
"Oh, that's gonna be awkward," Zack said, making a face.
"We need all the allies we can get right now," she said, looking about as thrilled with things as Zack did.
"Yeah, yeah, we do," Zack said, feeling tired.
"How is he?" Tifa said softly, nodding over towards the stairs.
"Out like a light," Zack said with a faint shake of his head, his shoulders slumping as he dropped into a chair and scrubbed at his face with his hands. "I'm pretty sure they ran him through the ringer, but he apparently gave as good as he got."
"'Apparently'? What happened? And here, you look like you need this," she ended, passing him a bottle of Banora apple ale. "The gods know I do," she muttered under her breath. The argument from before had been dropped for now, even though things hung unsaid in the air, sharp and vibrating, now that Cloud had been taken care of. Tifa was pretty sure it was going to come back, but right now, it wasn't the time and they had bigger, more pressing concerns. It'd all be for moot, after all, if Cloud woke up someone else this time, and that fear was so strong she could barely feel anything else at all, other than a sickening kind of numb.
"Sweet Shiva, do I need alcohol, and I don't know what happened to him," Zack said, and Tifa sat down across from him. "Everything happened before I got there, but I kinda think the little shrimp is the dangerous one because he was the one with Cloud and they were both KO'd, and the other two clones were freaking out," he said, a self-depreciating smile twisting one corner of his lips. The mini-Masamune he'd seen before had been a big clue, and this just kind of affirmed that yes, the shrimpy Sephiroth clone was the dangerous one. "It's always the one with the sword."
"You don't say," Tifa said somewhat dryly as she opened her bottle.
He gave a self-depreciating shrug and scratched the back of his head. "I'm slow sometimes, you know that."
He grew serious suddenly. "He woke up a little bit, on the way before he really woke up. Cloud, I mean. He didn't say much, so it was almost like old times," he said bitterly, his hand tightening around the bottle as he remembered all too well what Cloud had been like for so long, mako-poisoned and almost comatose from it, with only moments of lucidity before slipping back into whatever mind-obliterating haze the mako had put him in. Cloud hadn't fully come out of the mako poisoning until Aerith's death; it had been like her dying had been the trigger to pull him out. "He knew who I was before he slipped out again. And when he came out of it and woke up, he seemed all right, wanting to know about Denzel and the kids. He fell asleep before I could talk to him much, and I figured I should let him, at least until we got to a place with elixirs or something. He's wiped out on both fronts, from the look of things."
Tifa wasn't looking at him, just staring off into space. "Sleep, huh?" She looked down at the bottle in her hands. "I'm not sure it really says much if he knew who you were, though." She let out a snort of laughter under her breath that seemed more sad than anything else, and downed half of her bottle of ale at once. "I think he'll always know who you are," Tifa said, staring at her thumb tracing the label on her bottle and still not looking at him, and Zack wanted to kick himself very, very hard--Cloud had remembered him--sort of, and maybe only because of the way he had fragments of Aerith's memory--after the mako poisoning, but he hadn't really remembered Tifa at all.
Tifa swallowed thickly, closing her eyes and heaving a sigh. She bit her lip, looking as though she was debating something in her mind, when she suddenly seemed to just decide, and Zack began to seriously pray she wasn't going to rehash their argument from before, because he wasn't in any kind of shape to deal with it right then--the only thing he felt like he was in any shape to do was pull a Cloud and pass out asleep, because putting his head on the table and sleeping was starting to look like a more than doable option.
"You...you know he's...he's got this weird mix of hero worship of his own and...and love from Aerith," Tifa said, just biting the bullet and saying it.
Zack sighed and took a long swig of the ale before answering, feeling like he needed something a lot stronger than this. He needed shots of Gongagan moonshine or Costan tequila if this going the way it was looking. "Yeah. Yeah, I know."
Tifa's next words were mild. "And what are you going to do about it?"
Zack nearly dropped his bottle because this conversation--one he didn't even understand why they were having right now--had just taken a decided ninety-degree turn from anything he had been expecting. If nothing else, it was a lot more civil than he had feared it might be. "'Do'? What do you mean 'what am I going to do about it'?" he said, staring out her slightly open-mouthed and feeling perplexed.
Tifa stared at him. "I mean exactly what I said, Zack." She sighed. "This just keeps dragging out on and on and on and on. Someone's got to do something."
"Why me?!" Zack said, hearing the desperate whine in his voice. "Why can't you...talk to him or something?!"
"I have," she said softly. "But...but he doesn't remember me, Zack. Oh, he remembers feelings, he's said as much, but...all he really knows of me are what happened last year. Nibelheim is completely gone. Any memories he has are as fake as what ShinRa made Nibelheim into," she said, and something in her voice cracked. "Just itty bitty pieces that almost look like what once was there."
Zack faltered. "Tifa..." he started, putting the bottle down and reaching out without thinking about it to cover her hand with his own.
She didn't shrug him off, and he took that as a good sign.
"I...I don't want to press things, y'know?" He didn't know how to put into words anything else, how he was sure the two of them just being around giving a shit about the kid was in a way a kind of torment, keeping him pulled in two radically different directions that Cloud couldn't even understand himself or know what to do with. Sometimes Zack thought about just getting on his bike and leaving, but he just couldn't do that--he couldn't do it to Cloud, couldn't do it to Tifa, couldn't do it to himself.
"There's not pressing and then there's running away," she said, turning her hand so it held his as well, her hand warm and the touch a comfort despite everything. "And the Zack I know is a lot of things, but someone who runs away isn't one of them."
Zack groaned and thudded his head against the table. "Aww, c'mon, do you HAVE to put it that way? That's not fair!"
Tifa laughed. "Fair is your last name, not mine," she said.
"Well, you know, you could just marry me, and--yeowch!" he yelped. He'd forgotten how hard Tifa could kick.
"Stop that," she said, her voice full of a faint laughter.
"Yes'm," he said, looking up and giving her his best kicked-puppy look. She just raised her eyebrow at him, not buying it, and he thudded his head against the table again.
Things lapsed back into silence, and Zack sighed and bit the bullet. "Tifa..." Zack started, not knowing where to go with it, but knowing, like she said, that there was a difference between not pressing and running away, and he'd been doing a lot of running away. If they were putting everything out there, then it was time to really put everything out there, especially now. That argument from before had made it way too clear that they weren't all on the same page, or even using the same book, and they needed to be. He sat up. "Sometimes...sometimes Cloud remembers...well, things. Things he, kinda, y'know, shouldn't," he said awkwardly, stumbling over how to approach this whole mess, about the times Cloud wasn't Cloud and he wasn't Aerith either.
Tifa stared at him, blinking for a minute, then turned bright red, her eyes wide, and she finished off the rest of her bottle even faster than she'd drunk the first half before she started babbling. Zack stared back, completely confused before Tifa's sudden embarrassed babbling--about how that must be awkward and, well, and how had that even come up and never mind she didn't want to know and um--sunk in.
"Not THAT kind of thing!" he yelped, feeling his own face growing hot. "C'mon, Tifa!" He banged his head against the table again, this time wishing for a giant hole to open up under his feet, and then buried his face in his arms. "You big pervert! Get your brain out of the sewers, will you?!"
"Sh-shut up! It was your fault, saying it like that! Wh-what else could I think?" she said, her voice full of embarrassment.
He gave her a betrayed look and buried his face back in his arms, groaning. This was not the way to be starting this conversation...or any conversation, for that matter.
"So...um...what does he, um, remember, then?" she said, Tifa's face still Ifrit's-flame red.
He didn't even want to look up from his arms because he knew he still had to be as red-faced as Tifa, and because it would be easier to not have to look at her when he said this. She had lost so much to Sephiroth; this would just kill her. "He...OK...Ifrit in a rainstorm, I don't even know how to start this. He...I don't think it's just him and Aerith in there," he finally said, tilting his head just enough so he could look up and see her.
"...what do you mean?" Tifa said, the blush fading as the blood seemed to drain out of her face.
"I think...I think he's got some of Sephiroth in him."
She frowned, hugging herself slightly for a moment. "Sephiroth? From...from the times Sephiroth took him over?"
He really wished he could have just said yes.As terrifying as that would have been, it would have been easy and it would have been something she would have understood, but...but it would have been running away.
He shook his head, sitting up and taking both her hands in his. "Yes. Well...no, but yes. Not exactly. Not just that Sephiroth."
Tifa sat very still before her eyes got very, very wide, her slim fingers trembling under his, and he hated that it was his words that had caused this.
"Sometimes he...remembers things he shouldn't know, Tifa. Like...like he remembered that Angeal, the SOLDIER who trained me, used to call me 'Zack the Puppy'. Tifa, Cloud never met Angeal," he said, something in his voice sounding desperate. "Yeah, OK, he sort of met a guy who had turned into an Angeal clone, but that was like for almost no time and oh, gods, I'm babbling and my train of thought's derailing." He stopped and took a deep breath and made himself concentrate. "Angeal was one of Sephiroth's best friends, and...and he...I...he...he died before Nibelheim happened," Zack said, tightening his grip on Tifa's hands, because it never got easier.
Tifa was tough. She didn't flinch or wince, just squeezed back lightly, not questioning.
"There's no way Cloud could have known that. But Sephiroth did."
"What do you think this all means? Especially since those three, Vincent said they were 'fragments'."
"I think," Zack said slowly, "that Cloud got the parts Sephiroth didn't want any more. Bits of who he was before Jenova and Nibelheim. But...but I haven't pushed it, Tifa," he said, hands tightening again. "I mean...what if he's got more, but doesn't remember it yet? What if he tries to see what he remembers and what drove Sephiroth batshit comes out and gets Cloud? You know he can't tell what's what--or who is what--from any of that, and it doesn't fucking matter who anything happened to because in his head it's all him."
Tifa's hands were shaking again, her hands so small in his own, all the strength in them gone.
"And now, with all this..." Zack said, letting go of her hands and waving a hand in the air, as if to indicate all the madness going on now, "I'm scared, I'll admit it. I don't know what that little mini-Sephiroth did to him, or what it was he had to do to counter it, but it can't be good."
A shuffling sound startled them both, and they looked to see Cloud, looking exhausted, start to come into the room, his gait unsteady.
"Cloud!" both of them yelled at the same time, jumping to their feet. Cloud ignored the both of them fussing at him and trying to get him to go back to bed, instead making his unsteady way to a chair and sitting down.
"I'm not a kid and I don't want to go back to bed," he finally said grumpily, batting away at both of them. "I need to be awake. So can I get some coffee?" he said, blinking and sounding vaguely hopeful, as if the coffee would just appear in front of him.
"I'll make you a cup," Tifa said, her hands on his shoulders.
"Thanks," he said, managing to give her a wan smile. Tifa smiled back, then the smile fell of her face before she managed to cover it, and she squeezed his shoulders once before heading back behind the bar to set the coffee going, looking shaken.
Zack grabbed the chair across from Cloud, flipping it around and then dropping down in it in a straddle, his arms crossing over the back. He rested his chin on his forearms and stared at Cloud.
This close, he could see why Tifa had reacted the way she had.
Cloud's pupils, thank the gods above and below, were normal--round and dark. But his irises were still green. Still a bright, familiar green.
Zack took a deep breath before speaking and hoped the words would come out normal.
"So what happened back there? With the shrimpy one?" he said, deciding to go for that first.
"Kadaj," Cloud said, absentmindedly.
"...Bless you," Zack said, blinking.
"Kadaj. That's his name, idiot," Cloud said, giving Zack another of his "..." looks, looking like he'd love to throw something at Zack's head, but doing so would be more effort than it was worth. "The other ones are Loz and Yazoo. Loz was the one that got me in the church. The big one."
"What in Hel's name happened there?" Zack said, his hands digging into his arms so hard it hurt. He had the feeling he didn't want to see what the church looked like, not if it had been that big, crazy, fight-happy bruiser that had gone there. Just thinking about how that fight must have gone made Zack want to find that Loz guy and either rip his head off or give it the old SOLDIER try. ...Which would mean ripping his head off and then beating the corpse with it, because SOLDIERs never did anything by halves.
"Did you see the church?" Cloud said flatly. "He beat the shit out of me is what happened. I was doing almost OK until he fucking electrocuted me. Then, things didn't go so well. You saw that weapon of his," Cloud said tiredly. "I got it point blank and full blast."
"He what?" Zack said, slamming both hands onto the table so hard it splintered. "Hoshit. Sorry, Tifa!" he yelled, wincing, but on one level kind of hoping she took the bait; that she would jokingly snap back at him about his breaking things the way she did when things were OK.
"You're paying for a new one!" she yelled from the back, having not seen what happened but having heard the cracking sound. "Along with fixing my wall!"
"Yes, ma'am," he said, outwardly deflating but on the inside something that had knotted up letting go with a sense of relief, then he went back to Cloud because the mess with Tifa and everything she had said honestly could wait.
"Wall?" Cloud asked. "What did you do to the wall?"
Zack winced and changed the subject. "So...uh...anyway, what happened at the City of the Ancients?"
Cloud shut his eyes and rubbed tiredly at his temples with the thumb and middle finger of one hand, looking, for that moment, so terribly fragile, so pale Zack could see the blue of veins running under his skin.
...He really was going to rip that big guy's head off for this. And that little shrimp's, too.
"I don't understand it myself," Cloud finally said. "There was...the water, there was something about the water. Kadaj stepped into it, and it turned black. All of the children went into it, and when they drank it..." Cloud trailed off, looking disturbed. "Their eyes all changed, to look like Sephiroth's."
That...was not good, Zack thought--even if it had been temporary, since all of the kids had looked normal when he got there, the fact that they had managed to change kids, not Sephiroth clones but kids, was not good. "How so?" Zack said, the words sounding strange to his own ears.
"Like Sephiroth's," Cloud said again, blinking at Zack and frowning. "Green and with cat's-eye pupils."
"Then what?" Tifa asked softly from behind the bar, pouring coffee into a mug and her words careful.
"Kadaj," Cloud said, pressing on, "pulled me into the water, and then, well, I'm not sure if he was trying to make me drink it or drown me in it or what, but..." Cloud's words faltered, trailed off. "I think I hit a Limit Break, but don't remember what happened there after that," he finally said, his lips pressed tight.
Tifa put a cup of coffee in front of him and Cloud clutched at it like a lifeline. His words fell off again and he stared off, frowning, and Zack could see about a bajillion wheels spinning in Cloud's head, and none of them, from the looks of them, any good.
Head-ripping off. It was definitely looking like a good hobby to pick up.
Whatever had happened, it explained, sort of, why Cloud's own eyes had changed and maybe why the kids had changed back...but not why they were like they were now.
It was Tifa who spoke next, and Zack never in a million years would have expected what came out of her mouth.
But then, it seemed to be a day for that.
Tifa sat down next to Cloud, steepled her fingers together, leveled a hard look at him, and very flatly said, "Try."
Both of them looked at her, Zack with his jaw hanging open and Cloud seeming so surprised he couldn't manage to blink. Cloud frowned and clutched even tighter at his mug of coffee, and Zack wondered what in Hel's name it was that Tifa was trying to do.
"I said I don't remember," he finally said, staring at his coffee.
Her voice was the same, conversational and yet implacable. "Because you're not trying to."
"Tifa!" Zack said, glaring at her.
She just raised an eyebrow at him, and there was something in that look that let him know that while she was letting everything from before go for now, it was only for now and it was still there and she still stood behind every word, and went back to staring at Cloud. Then she stood up and walked out of the room, with both Cloud and Zack staring at her, and she returned a few minutes later with a small hand mirror, which she held out in front of Cloud. "Explain this, Cloud, because 'I don't remember' isn't enough!"
Cloud stared at his own reflection in confusion for a moment before he noticed his eyes, and the blood drained out of his face.
"Well?" Tifa said, her voice wavering for a moment before going firm and implacable.
"I can't," he said hoarsely, staring at the mirror, staring at his green eyes and swallowing. "I can't explain it."
Zack had no idea how someone as broad-shouldered as Cloud was managed to hunch in on themselves so much, but right then Cloud was pretty good at it, and that was about the point when Zack started seeing red and realized that Tifa wasn't the only one still somewhat pissed off.
"Tifa, can I talk to you upstairs?" Zack said, using every ounce of self control he had not to start yelling at her right then and there.
"I'm not five years old, guys," Cloud said flatly, eying the two of them and something about him looking like it was relaxing and on firmer ground, as if the distraction had helped. "I won't burst into tears if Mommy and Daddy start fighting in front of me."
The both of them flinched and Cloud eyed them again. "You two need serious help," he said, shaking his head as if he could guess why that line had made the two of them look guilty. "My head hurts. I'm going back to bed. Feel free to talk about me behind my back while I'm gone," he said, his words dry as he pulled himself to his feet. He made his way back towards to stairs, gait a bit more steady than it had been, but not by much, and Zack didn't miss the faint way Cloud was shaking.
Cloud turned to stare at the both of them at the foot of the stairs. "And aside from needing help, at least one of you two really needs to teach me how to beat the crap out of things so next time I don't end up electrocuted and carted off again. Geostigma hitting me or not, that was fucking embarrassing."
Zack gave Tifa a tight smile. "I'll leave that to you, then, since you made it pretty clear you think I suck at teaching him," he said, all of the anger from the argument that they had started beginning to swirl around inside him like a Bomb.
Cloud snorted. "After the way my ass got handed to me in the church," he said, and that look on his face now freaked Zack out because it was another of those not-Cloud looks, but it wasn't an Aerith look either; there was something about that green-eyed look and the angle of Cloud's eyebrow that made fear explode in the bottom of Zack's stomach, "I don't blame her."
Cloud gave him a little smirk, and at that moment, the last thing Zack wanted was for Cloud to have a sword in his hands.
Ever.
Tifa nodded. "We'll start tomorrow, then," she said, and Zack didn't miss the self-satisfied look on her face, and that was when Zack's temper-Bomb went from just swirling around to twitching and swelling.
When Cloud finally made it up the stairs, the temper-Bomb exploded.
"What the fuck is wrong with you today, Tifa? If Cloud of all people says he doesn't remember something, then he doesn't remember!"
"And it's because it's Cloud that he needs to try! Did you see his eyes?! Do you think that's normal and we shouldn't try to figure out what happened? We can't afford not to know, and here you are, babying him again, Zack!"
The argument from before flared back, sharper and brighter and more dangerous than before.
"Babying him? What in Shiva's name does that even mean, huh? How am I 'babying' him when all I'm doing is listening to him?"
"You're not listening to anyone, let alone Cloud!"
"What?! Have you gotten us confused or something? Cloud says he doesn't remember, so I listened to him! You're the one ignoring him and trying to force him to do something he can't!"
"How do you know he can't?" Tifa said, her hands on her hips. "You're letting him get away without trying!"
"Maybe because if anyone knows what he can and can't remember, it's Cloud?"
"Something that's pretty convenient for you, eh?" Tifa said, narrowing her eyes.
"And what is that supposed to mean?" Zack said warily. "What do you mean by 'convenient for me'? Because this is pretty inconvenient, if you ask me!"
"Why didn't you ever tell him how Aerith died?" Tifa hissed in a low whisper, narrow-eyed.
Zack's eyes flew open and his jaw dropped. His mouth moved uselessly a few times before he managed to get words out. "Where--what the--where did that even--what, you think he needs to know that?" Zack finally managed to hiss back, his voice lower than Tifa's and his eyes darting to the doorway.
"He doesn't need to know, or you need to rewrite the past? It's a lot easier on you, isn't it, if you can pretend what happened didn't," Tifa said with a sickeningly sweet smile, her voice still held to a low whisper. "If Cloud doesn't remember, you can forget. Makes things with him a lot easier, doesn't it?"
Zack was so angry that he was shaking. "Tifa, when in Hel's name did you turn into such a bitch?"
"Probably about the same time you turned into such a coward," Tifa shot back, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow.
There was a long, tense silence before Zack drew a long, slow breath; every muscle tight and hands clenched into fists. "I know what it's like to live with something like that, Tifa," Zack hissed back angrily, his voice pitched to not carry out of the room. "It is not something I would wish on anyone, let alone Cloud. So trust me, it is a blessing he doesn't remember and his memory from those few days he was snapping out of the mako poisoning are still scrambled up," he snapped, making a wild, spinning gesture with his hand at his head.
"He knows all he needs to know, which is that Sephiroth killed her," Zack said, putting his hands on his hips. Something seemed to occur to him suddenly, and he stared her straight in the eyes. "And, huh, you're getting on my case for not saying anything to him, but I don't see you rushing all up to tell him, either. You obviously have a mouth and no problems voicing your opinions. But funny how you're bitching at me when you've kept your mouth shut about it, too. Why is that?" he said, giving her that same, sickly-sweet smile Tifa had been giving him. "'Cause it seems like I'm not the only one whispering," he finished.
Tifa's flinched, and a moment of weakness and uncertainly seemed to flash through her before her resolve strengthened and she changed direction. "Wh-what if it's Sephiroth again?" Tifa yelled, pushing away what Zack said and raising her voice. "Around those three...things, in that weird water than made the kids turn into...whatever it made them, and they put Cloud in it, and now his eyes are...what if it's Sephiroth?!" she yelled, not backing down. She shook her head, jaw set stubbornly and eyes narrowed into slits. "I'm not risking it, Zack. I'm not risking it and I'm not risking him! I'm not losing anyone else!"
It hit Zack like a slap to the face and anger flared up even more. "You're not the only one who lost everything, Tifa! Did you forget what happened to my hometown, too?"
"At least you still have a mother to call you," Tifa shot back bitterly.
"Only because of Cissnei," he said tightly. "And you remember what happened to her, right? Right? Or my friend Kunsel, hey, remember him? High enough class SOLDIER to turn right into a Sephiroth clone. Do you have any idea how many people I worked with and was friends with that I had to kill? So if we're playing 'Who Lost More,' just stop it right now."
"Why, because you think you'll win?" she said sharply.
"No," Zack said softly, his shoulders slumping suddenly. He didn't want to be doing this; didn't want to fight anymore, and he felt as tired as Cloud had looked. "Because Cloud does."
"...That was a low blow, Zack," Tifa said, as breathless as if she had been punched in the stomach. She pulled out a chair and sat down, still looking like she had been hit. She looked away, frowning to herself. "And it all comes back to Cloud in the end, doesn't it?" she said bitterly, halfway under her breath, shaking her head.
"What in Shiva's name does that mean?" Zack said, suddenly feeling very confused and very, very tired. He had no idea where this conversation--if it was even a conversation--was going anymore.
Tifa startled, as if she hadn't expected him to hear her, then snapped, "You know full well what I mean," angrily.
"No, I don't!" Zack yelled, throwing his hands in the air before he pulled a chair out viciously and dropped into it. He scrubbed his face with his hand. "I don't know what in Hel's realm you're talking about, Tifa!"
"You're not very honest, are you, Zack?" she said, narrowing her eyes. "Did you even think about the way you were carrying him this time?"
He dug his fingers into his hair then looked up at her, elbows on the table and hair clutched in his hands. "Tifa, I really don't know what you're talking about," Zack said plaintively. "I really, really don't. I was carrying like that because that was how I brought him back on the bike with one seat and because I've had so many Geostigma attacks today that I honestly don't even know if I could lift my sword up again, much less try to hoist Cloud over my shoulder. I'm wiped out, I feel like shit and am in no shape to do anything, but only the gods know what those three are planning, plus I have no idea why you're this mad or why you're dredging all this up now. My brain is too fried for me to even try to figure it out and...and...can we just drop it? For now? Please?" he asked pleadingly. "I'm tired of fighting, and there's enough happening without...without whatever this is. Can it wait? Until we don't have Seph clones putting Cloud in a makoless mako-coma any more? Please?"
Tifa let out a sharp, disbelieving laugh, then looked away, shaking her head. "And you just--fine. Whatever. I...just...whatever. Later," she said, suddenly sounding as tired as Zack felt, and she was blinking quickly. "Just tell me what happened out there tonight, then. When you got there. Vincent told me what he knew, but I want to hear your side of--"
There was the sound of motorcycle turning on in the background, then the sound of tires squealing, and Tifa sighed. "And there he goes."
"Dumbass," Zack said, staring at his hands. "He knows it's not safe." He sighed. "But I don't really blame him for not wanting to be here right now."
"Just let him go," Tifa said, not looking up from her hands folded together on the table. There were bags under her eyes, and Zack wondered, for a moment, why it always had to be them and why it never seemed to stop--first ShinRa, then Sephiroth, then the Geostigma, and now this.
"We're fucking everything up, aren't we?" he said softly.
Tifa smiled, faintly, but the only humor there was gallows humor. "Probably."
"I don't know what to do."
"Neither do I," Tifa said, her voice a whisper. "But I wish to the Heavens I did."
They sat there in silence for a long while, Zack staring at Tifa and Tifa staring at her hands, and Zack reached across the table and put his hand over hers.
Tifa's face crumpled slightly, looking as if she was about to burst into tears. "You're a cruel man, Zack," she said softly, closing her eyes and bowing her head, but she didn't pull her hands away.
"I...I'm sorry," he said, not sure what he was doing wrong, what he could say to make things better, or even why everything was getting as fucked up as it was in the first place. "I just...I don't know what I'm doing. I'm trying, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong or how to fix anything and everything is going wrong and no matter how hard I try, I just can't make it go right. I'm always one step behind everything. I just...I just don't want to lose anyone else. You, Cloud, the kids...you're all I've got," he said honestly. "And I don't want to hurt any of you. But...I just don't want to lose anyone else again," he said, repeating what he'd said before helplessly and feeling stupid, that he didn't know how to put anything into words. He was out of his depth and he knew it, and all his trying just seemed to mess everything up, and he couldn't understand why.
Tifa didn't say anything, but she put her thumb lightly over Zack's fingers so he couldn't pull his hand away, and he figured that at least he'd maybe done something right.
"So you want to know what happened after I got to the Forgotten City?" he said, because there was really nowhere else to go, not that was safe.
And it was pretty fucked up, he thought, that talking about Sephiroth-larvae-clone-fragment-things was the safer conversation.
Tifa nodded quickly, not raising her bowed head. "Yeah. What happened?"
He shut his eyes and took a deep breath before he sat back in his chair, pulling his hand away and trying to get back to solid ground. Tifa wiped at her eyes quickly, and that made Zack feel worse than he had, something he hadn't thought possible until then. But he didn't say anything, since Tifa seemed to want to move away from the conversation as much as he did.
"Well. After you called, I headed out to the Forgotten City. It took me longer than I should have," he said, frowning.
"Why?" Tifa asked, frowning herself.
"Geostigma attacks," Zack said, a faint trace of bitterness in his voice. "One hit me right before I could get to them--hit me just when someone over there started screaming."
"Wait...wait...you had a flare of Geostigma right before you got there, right when you heard screaming...so maybe right when everything happened, when Cloud's eyes...when his eyes got like Sephiroth's, maybe?" Tifa said. Her eyes focused inwards when Zack nodded, darting around with her quick thoughts. "The same time...Zack, you don't think they're related, do you?" she said quickly. "Cloud said he had a flare-up when he was fighting Loz, you had one when Cloud was...when they were doing whatever they did to Cloud."
"I also had a really nasty one on the way there," Zack said. "Before that one. Getting two of them in a row like that was just...ugh. And it was probably the third one today," he said, trying to keep his worry out his his voice--attacks becoming more frequent was a bad sign.
"So maybe around the time they first changed the kids?" Tifa asked, "And Cloud said he had one at the church, and you had one earlier, too, and..." Her voice trailed off as her eyes went round and the blood started draining out of her face. "Zack...you don't think they're controlling the Geostigma, somehow?"
There was a long silence where they just stared wide-eyed at each other before Zack grinned broadly, let out a cheerful, "Great, we're screwed!" then thudded his head against the table.
--
Next section: It was a bad sign, when it hurt more all the time and wept in more than one place.
--
Even by the time they got back to 7th Heaven, Cloud was still passed out in what wasn't exactly a natural sleep, but was a lot better than whatever weird thing had happened before, and Zack did his best not to think about how much Cloud had been like that before, once, for a day or so after Aerith died--that one time, it had been as if as soon as they got somewhere safe, Cloud had completely zonked out for a day, but when he woke up...well, he'd woken up and stayed up and had been walking and talking and not mako-poisoned. And this--well, it wasn't quite the same. Cloud had woken up some, and the last time, once he found a place to hole up, he just wouldn't. So it wasn't the same.
Zack told himself that, until he could believe it.
Zack also did his best not to think about the fact that Cloud's eyes had changed colors, because while they were green, at least they weren't like Sephiroth's because Cloud had fought that off, like he always did, and Zack was counting whatever blessings he could.
...He was going to kill those three.
Provided whatever had happened to Cloud hadn't knocked out the shrimpy one. Zack hadn't really been all that focused on anything but Cloud, but it looked like both of them had been down for the count.
Good, Zack thought. You raised Leviathan's own storm on them for whatever they did, kid.
"He's asleep. And let him; I can't even imagine what those three put him through," Zack said, frowning and looking down at Cloud's face, and his grip on Cloud tightened unconsciously.
Tifa got a strange look on her face that only lasted an instant, something dark flashing across her eyes before it was gone.
"Where's Vin?" Zack asked as soon as he got down the stairs.
"Vincent? He left, right after he dropped off Denzel and told me about what happened," Tifa said, sighing. "He said he was going to go talk to Shinra."
"Oh, that's gonna be awkward," Zack said, making a face.
"We need all the allies we can get right now," she said, looking about as thrilled with things as Zack did.
"Yeah, yeah, we do," Zack said, feeling tired.
"How is he?" Tifa said softly, nodding over towards the stairs.
"Out like a light," Zack said with a faint shake of his head, his shoulders slumping as he dropped into a chair and scrubbed at his face with his hands. "I'm pretty sure they ran him through the ringer, but he apparently gave as good as he got."
"'Apparently'? What happened? And here, you look like you need this," she ended, passing him a bottle of Banora apple ale. "The gods know I do," she muttered under her breath. The argument from before had been dropped for now, even though things hung unsaid in the air, sharp and vibrating, now that Cloud had been taken care of. Tifa was pretty sure it was going to come back, but right now, it wasn't the time and they had bigger, more pressing concerns. It'd all be for moot, after all, if Cloud woke up someone else this time, and that fear was so strong she could barely feel anything else at all, other than a sickening kind of numb.
"Sweet Shiva, do I need alcohol, and I don't know what happened to him," Zack said, and Tifa sat down across from him. "Everything happened before I got there, but I kinda think the little shrimp is the dangerous one because he was the one with Cloud and they were both KO'd, and the other two clones were freaking out," he said, a self-depreciating smile twisting one corner of his lips. The mini-Masamune he'd seen before had been a big clue, and this just kind of affirmed that yes, the shrimpy Sephiroth clone was the dangerous one. "It's always the one with the sword."
"You don't say," Tifa said somewhat dryly as she opened her bottle.
He gave a self-depreciating shrug and scratched the back of his head. "I'm slow sometimes, you know that."
He grew serious suddenly. "He woke up a little bit, on the way before he really woke up. Cloud, I mean. He didn't say much, so it was almost like old times," he said bitterly, his hand tightening around the bottle as he remembered all too well what Cloud had been like for so long, mako-poisoned and almost comatose from it, with only moments of lucidity before slipping back into whatever mind-obliterating haze the mako had put him in. Cloud hadn't fully come out of the mako poisoning until Aerith's death; it had been like her dying had been the trigger to pull him out. "He knew who I was before he slipped out again. And when he came out of it and woke up, he seemed all right, wanting to know about Denzel and the kids. He fell asleep before I could talk to him much, and I figured I should let him, at least until we got to a place with elixirs or something. He's wiped out on both fronts, from the look of things."
Tifa wasn't looking at him, just staring off into space. "Sleep, huh?" She looked down at the bottle in her hands. "I'm not sure it really says much if he knew who you were, though." She let out a snort of laughter under her breath that seemed more sad than anything else, and downed half of her bottle of ale at once. "I think he'll always know who you are," Tifa said, staring at her thumb tracing the label on her bottle and still not looking at him, and Zack wanted to kick himself very, very hard--Cloud had remembered him--sort of, and maybe only because of the way he had fragments of Aerith's memory--after the mako poisoning, but he hadn't really remembered Tifa at all.
Tifa swallowed thickly, closing her eyes and heaving a sigh. She bit her lip, looking as though she was debating something in her mind, when she suddenly seemed to just decide, and Zack began to seriously pray she wasn't going to rehash their argument from before, because he wasn't in any kind of shape to deal with it right then--the only thing he felt like he was in any shape to do was pull a Cloud and pass out asleep, because putting his head on the table and sleeping was starting to look like a more than doable option.
"You...you know he's...he's got this weird mix of hero worship of his own and...and love from Aerith," Tifa said, just biting the bullet and saying it.
Zack sighed and took a long swig of the ale before answering, feeling like he needed something a lot stronger than this. He needed shots of Gongagan moonshine or Costan tequila if this going the way it was looking. "Yeah. Yeah, I know."
Tifa's next words were mild. "And what are you going to do about it?"
Zack nearly dropped his bottle because this conversation--one he didn't even understand why they were having right now--had just taken a decided ninety-degree turn from anything he had been expecting. If nothing else, it was a lot more civil than he had feared it might be. "'Do'? What do you mean 'what am I going to do about it'?" he said, staring out her slightly open-mouthed and feeling perplexed.
Tifa stared at him. "I mean exactly what I said, Zack." She sighed. "This just keeps dragging out on and on and on and on. Someone's got to do something."
"Why me?!" Zack said, hearing the desperate whine in his voice. "Why can't you...talk to him or something?!"
"I have," she said softly. "But...but he doesn't remember me, Zack. Oh, he remembers feelings, he's said as much, but...all he really knows of me are what happened last year. Nibelheim is completely gone. Any memories he has are as fake as what ShinRa made Nibelheim into," she said, and something in her voice cracked. "Just itty bitty pieces that almost look like what once was there."
Zack faltered. "Tifa..." he started, putting the bottle down and reaching out without thinking about it to cover her hand with his own.
She didn't shrug him off, and he took that as a good sign.
"I...I don't want to press things, y'know?" He didn't know how to put into words anything else, how he was sure the two of them just being around giving a shit about the kid was in a way a kind of torment, keeping him pulled in two radically different directions that Cloud couldn't even understand himself or know what to do with. Sometimes Zack thought about just getting on his bike and leaving, but he just couldn't do that--he couldn't do it to Cloud, couldn't do it to Tifa, couldn't do it to himself.
"There's not pressing and then there's running away," she said, turning her hand so it held his as well, her hand warm and the touch a comfort despite everything. "And the Zack I know is a lot of things, but someone who runs away isn't one of them."
Zack groaned and thudded his head against the table. "Aww, c'mon, do you HAVE to put it that way? That's not fair!"
Tifa laughed. "Fair is your last name, not mine," she said.
"Well, you know, you could just marry me, and--yeowch!" he yelped. He'd forgotten how hard Tifa could kick.
"Stop that," she said, her voice full of a faint laughter.
"Yes'm," he said, looking up and giving her his best kicked-puppy look. She just raised her eyebrow at him, not buying it, and he thudded his head against the table again.
Things lapsed back into silence, and Zack sighed and bit the bullet. "Tifa..." Zack started, not knowing where to go with it, but knowing, like she said, that there was a difference between not pressing and running away, and he'd been doing a lot of running away. If they were putting everything out there, then it was time to really put everything out there, especially now. That argument from before had made it way too clear that they weren't all on the same page, or even using the same book, and they needed to be. He sat up. "Sometimes...sometimes Cloud remembers...well, things. Things he, kinda, y'know, shouldn't," he said awkwardly, stumbling over how to approach this whole mess, about the times Cloud wasn't Cloud and he wasn't Aerith either.
Tifa stared at him, blinking for a minute, then turned bright red, her eyes wide, and she finished off the rest of her bottle even faster than she'd drunk the first half before she started babbling. Zack stared back, completely confused before Tifa's sudden embarrassed babbling--about how that must be awkward and, well, and how had that even come up and never mind she didn't want to know and um--sunk in.
"Not THAT kind of thing!" he yelped, feeling his own face growing hot. "C'mon, Tifa!" He banged his head against the table again, this time wishing for a giant hole to open up under his feet, and then buried his face in his arms. "You big pervert! Get your brain out of the sewers, will you?!"
"Sh-shut up! It was your fault, saying it like that! Wh-what else could I think?" she said, her voice full of embarrassment.
He gave her a betrayed look and buried his face back in his arms, groaning. This was not the way to be starting this conversation...or any conversation, for that matter.
"So...um...what does he, um, remember, then?" she said, Tifa's face still Ifrit's-flame red.
He didn't even want to look up from his arms because he knew he still had to be as red-faced as Tifa, and because it would be easier to not have to look at her when he said this. She had lost so much to Sephiroth; this would just kill her. "He...OK...Ifrit in a rainstorm, I don't even know how to start this. He...I don't think it's just him and Aerith in there," he finally said, tilting his head just enough so he could look up and see her.
"...what do you mean?" Tifa said, the blush fading as the blood seemed to drain out of her face.
"I think...I think he's got some of Sephiroth in him."
She frowned, hugging herself slightly for a moment. "Sephiroth? From...from the times Sephiroth took him over?"
He really wished he could have just said yes.As terrifying as that would have been, it would have been easy and it would have been something she would have understood, but...but it would have been running away.
He shook his head, sitting up and taking both her hands in his. "Yes. Well...no, but yes. Not exactly. Not just that Sephiroth."
Tifa sat very still before her eyes got very, very wide, her slim fingers trembling under his, and he hated that it was his words that had caused this.
"Sometimes he...remembers things he shouldn't know, Tifa. Like...like he remembered that Angeal, the SOLDIER who trained me, used to call me 'Zack the Puppy'. Tifa, Cloud never met Angeal," he said, something in his voice sounding desperate. "Yeah, OK, he sort of met a guy who had turned into an Angeal clone, but that was like for almost no time and oh, gods, I'm babbling and my train of thought's derailing." He stopped and took a deep breath and made himself concentrate. "Angeal was one of Sephiroth's best friends, and...and he...I...he...he died before Nibelheim happened," Zack said, tightening his grip on Tifa's hands, because it never got easier.
Tifa was tough. She didn't flinch or wince, just squeezed back lightly, not questioning.
"There's no way Cloud could have known that. But Sephiroth did."
"What do you think this all means? Especially since those three, Vincent said they were 'fragments'."
"I think," Zack said slowly, "that Cloud got the parts Sephiroth didn't want any more. Bits of who he was before Jenova and Nibelheim. But...but I haven't pushed it, Tifa," he said, hands tightening again. "I mean...what if he's got more, but doesn't remember it yet? What if he tries to see what he remembers and what drove Sephiroth batshit comes out and gets Cloud? You know he can't tell what's what--or who is what--from any of that, and it doesn't fucking matter who anything happened to because in his head it's all him."
Tifa's hands were shaking again, her hands so small in his own, all the strength in them gone.
"And now, with all this..." Zack said, letting go of her hands and waving a hand in the air, as if to indicate all the madness going on now, "I'm scared, I'll admit it. I don't know what that little mini-Sephiroth did to him, or what it was he had to do to counter it, but it can't be good."
A shuffling sound startled them both, and they looked to see Cloud, looking exhausted, start to come into the room, his gait unsteady.
"Cloud!" both of them yelled at the same time, jumping to their feet. Cloud ignored the both of them fussing at him and trying to get him to go back to bed, instead making his unsteady way to a chair and sitting down.
"I'm not a kid and I don't want to go back to bed," he finally said grumpily, batting away at both of them. "I need to be awake. So can I get some coffee?" he said, blinking and sounding vaguely hopeful, as if the coffee would just appear in front of him.
"I'll make you a cup," Tifa said, her hands on his shoulders.
"Thanks," he said, managing to give her a wan smile. Tifa smiled back, then the smile fell of her face before she managed to cover it, and she squeezed his shoulders once before heading back behind the bar to set the coffee going, looking shaken.
Zack grabbed the chair across from Cloud, flipping it around and then dropping down in it in a straddle, his arms crossing over the back. He rested his chin on his forearms and stared at Cloud.
This close, he could see why Tifa had reacted the way she had.
Cloud's pupils, thank the gods above and below, were normal--round and dark. But his irises were still green. Still a bright, familiar green.
Zack took a deep breath before speaking and hoped the words would come out normal.
"So what happened back there? With the shrimpy one?" he said, deciding to go for that first.
"Kadaj," Cloud said, absentmindedly.
"...Bless you," Zack said, blinking.
"Kadaj. That's his name, idiot," Cloud said, giving Zack another of his "..." looks, looking like he'd love to throw something at Zack's head, but doing so would be more effort than it was worth. "The other ones are Loz and Yazoo. Loz was the one that got me in the church. The big one."
"What in Hel's name happened there?" Zack said, his hands digging into his arms so hard it hurt. He had the feeling he didn't want to see what the church looked like, not if it had been that big, crazy, fight-happy bruiser that had gone there. Just thinking about how that fight must have gone made Zack want to find that Loz guy and either rip his head off or give it the old SOLDIER try. ...Which would mean ripping his head off and then beating the corpse with it, because SOLDIERs never did anything by halves.
"Did you see the church?" Cloud said flatly. "He beat the shit out of me is what happened. I was doing almost OK until he fucking electrocuted me. Then, things didn't go so well. You saw that weapon of his," Cloud said tiredly. "I got it point blank and full blast."
"He what?" Zack said, slamming both hands onto the table so hard it splintered. "Hoshit. Sorry, Tifa!" he yelled, wincing, but on one level kind of hoping she took the bait; that she would jokingly snap back at him about his breaking things the way she did when things were OK.
"You're paying for a new one!" she yelled from the back, having not seen what happened but having heard the cracking sound. "Along with fixing my wall!"
"Yes, ma'am," he said, outwardly deflating but on the inside something that had knotted up letting go with a sense of relief, then he went back to Cloud because the mess with Tifa and everything she had said honestly could wait.
"Wall?" Cloud asked. "What did you do to the wall?"
Zack winced and changed the subject. "So...uh...anyway, what happened at the City of the Ancients?"
Cloud shut his eyes and rubbed tiredly at his temples with the thumb and middle finger of one hand, looking, for that moment, so terribly fragile, so pale Zack could see the blue of veins running under his skin.
...He really was going to rip that big guy's head off for this. And that little shrimp's, too.
"I don't understand it myself," Cloud finally said. "There was...the water, there was something about the water. Kadaj stepped into it, and it turned black. All of the children went into it, and when they drank it..." Cloud trailed off, looking disturbed. "Their eyes all changed, to look like Sephiroth's."
That...was not good, Zack thought--even if it had been temporary, since all of the kids had looked normal when he got there, the fact that they had managed to change kids, not Sephiroth clones but kids, was not good. "How so?" Zack said, the words sounding strange to his own ears.
"Like Sephiroth's," Cloud said again, blinking at Zack and frowning. "Green and with cat's-eye pupils."
"Then what?" Tifa asked softly from behind the bar, pouring coffee into a mug and her words careful.
"Kadaj," Cloud said, pressing on, "pulled me into the water, and then, well, I'm not sure if he was trying to make me drink it or drown me in it or what, but..." Cloud's words faltered, trailed off. "I think I hit a Limit Break, but don't remember what happened there after that," he finally said, his lips pressed tight.
Tifa put a cup of coffee in front of him and Cloud clutched at it like a lifeline. His words fell off again and he stared off, frowning, and Zack could see about a bajillion wheels spinning in Cloud's head, and none of them, from the looks of them, any good.
Head-ripping off. It was definitely looking like a good hobby to pick up.
Whatever had happened, it explained, sort of, why Cloud's own eyes had changed and maybe why the kids had changed back...but not why they were like they were now.
It was Tifa who spoke next, and Zack never in a million years would have expected what came out of her mouth.
But then, it seemed to be a day for that.
Tifa sat down next to Cloud, steepled her fingers together, leveled a hard look at him, and very flatly said, "Try."
Both of them looked at her, Zack with his jaw hanging open and Cloud seeming so surprised he couldn't manage to blink. Cloud frowned and clutched even tighter at his mug of coffee, and Zack wondered what in Hel's name it was that Tifa was trying to do.
"I said I don't remember," he finally said, staring at his coffee.
Her voice was the same, conversational and yet implacable. "Because you're not trying to."
"Tifa!" Zack said, glaring at her.
She just raised an eyebrow at him, and there was something in that look that let him know that while she was letting everything from before go for now, it was only for now and it was still there and she still stood behind every word, and went back to staring at Cloud. Then she stood up and walked out of the room, with both Cloud and Zack staring at her, and she returned a few minutes later with a small hand mirror, which she held out in front of Cloud. "Explain this, Cloud, because 'I don't remember' isn't enough!"
Cloud stared at his own reflection in confusion for a moment before he noticed his eyes, and the blood drained out of his face.
"Well?" Tifa said, her voice wavering for a moment before going firm and implacable.
"I can't," he said hoarsely, staring at the mirror, staring at his green eyes and swallowing. "I can't explain it."
Zack had no idea how someone as broad-shouldered as Cloud was managed to hunch in on themselves so much, but right then Cloud was pretty good at it, and that was about the point when Zack started seeing red and realized that Tifa wasn't the only one still somewhat pissed off.
"Tifa, can I talk to you upstairs?" Zack said, using every ounce of self control he had not to start yelling at her right then and there.
"I'm not five years old, guys," Cloud said flatly, eying the two of them and something about him looking like it was relaxing and on firmer ground, as if the distraction had helped. "I won't burst into tears if Mommy and Daddy start fighting in front of me."
The both of them flinched and Cloud eyed them again. "You two need serious help," he said, shaking his head as if he could guess why that line had made the two of them look guilty. "My head hurts. I'm going back to bed. Feel free to talk about me behind my back while I'm gone," he said, his words dry as he pulled himself to his feet. He made his way back towards to stairs, gait a bit more steady than it had been, but not by much, and Zack didn't miss the faint way Cloud was shaking.
Cloud turned to stare at the both of them at the foot of the stairs. "And aside from needing help, at least one of you two really needs to teach me how to beat the crap out of things so next time I don't end up electrocuted and carted off again. Geostigma hitting me or not, that was fucking embarrassing."
Zack gave Tifa a tight smile. "I'll leave that to you, then, since you made it pretty clear you think I suck at teaching him," he said, all of the anger from the argument that they had started beginning to swirl around inside him like a Bomb.
Cloud snorted. "After the way my ass got handed to me in the church," he said, and that look on his face now freaked Zack out because it was another of those not-Cloud looks, but it wasn't an Aerith look either; there was something about that green-eyed look and the angle of Cloud's eyebrow that made fear explode in the bottom of Zack's stomach, "I don't blame her."
Cloud gave him a little smirk, and at that moment, the last thing Zack wanted was for Cloud to have a sword in his hands.
Ever.
Tifa nodded. "We'll start tomorrow, then," she said, and Zack didn't miss the self-satisfied look on her face, and that was when Zack's temper-Bomb went from just swirling around to twitching and swelling.
When Cloud finally made it up the stairs, the temper-Bomb exploded.
"What the fuck is wrong with you today, Tifa? If Cloud of all people says he doesn't remember something, then he doesn't remember!"
"And it's because it's Cloud that he needs to try! Did you see his eyes?! Do you think that's normal and we shouldn't try to figure out what happened? We can't afford not to know, and here you are, babying him again, Zack!"
The argument from before flared back, sharper and brighter and more dangerous than before.
"Babying him? What in Shiva's name does that even mean, huh? How am I 'babying' him when all I'm doing is listening to him?"
"You're not listening to anyone, let alone Cloud!"
"What?! Have you gotten us confused or something? Cloud says he doesn't remember, so I listened to him! You're the one ignoring him and trying to force him to do something he can't!"
"How do you know he can't?" Tifa said, her hands on her hips. "You're letting him get away without trying!"
"Maybe because if anyone knows what he can and can't remember, it's Cloud?"
"Something that's pretty convenient for you, eh?" Tifa said, narrowing her eyes.
"And what is that supposed to mean?" Zack said warily. "What do you mean by 'convenient for me'? Because this is pretty inconvenient, if you ask me!"
"Why didn't you ever tell him how Aerith died?" Tifa hissed in a low whisper, narrow-eyed.
Zack's eyes flew open and his jaw dropped. His mouth moved uselessly a few times before he managed to get words out. "Where--what the--where did that even--what, you think he needs to know that?" Zack finally managed to hiss back, his voice lower than Tifa's and his eyes darting to the doorway.
"He doesn't need to know, or you need to rewrite the past? It's a lot easier on you, isn't it, if you can pretend what happened didn't," Tifa said with a sickeningly sweet smile, her voice still held to a low whisper. "If Cloud doesn't remember, you can forget. Makes things with him a lot easier, doesn't it?"
Zack was so angry that he was shaking. "Tifa, when in Hel's name did you turn into such a bitch?"
"Probably about the same time you turned into such a coward," Tifa shot back, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow.
There was a long, tense silence before Zack drew a long, slow breath; every muscle tight and hands clenched into fists. "I know what it's like to live with something like that, Tifa," Zack hissed back angrily, his voice pitched to not carry out of the room. "It is not something I would wish on anyone, let alone Cloud. So trust me, it is a blessing he doesn't remember and his memory from those few days he was snapping out of the mako poisoning are still scrambled up," he snapped, making a wild, spinning gesture with his hand at his head.
"He knows all he needs to know, which is that Sephiroth killed her," Zack said, putting his hands on his hips. Something seemed to occur to him suddenly, and he stared her straight in the eyes. "And, huh, you're getting on my case for not saying anything to him, but I don't see you rushing all up to tell him, either. You obviously have a mouth and no problems voicing your opinions. But funny how you're bitching at me when you've kept your mouth shut about it, too. Why is that?" he said, giving her that same, sickly-sweet smile Tifa had been giving him. "'Cause it seems like I'm not the only one whispering," he finished.
Tifa's flinched, and a moment of weakness and uncertainly seemed to flash through her before her resolve strengthened and she changed direction. "Wh-what if it's Sephiroth again?" Tifa yelled, pushing away what Zack said and raising her voice. "Around those three...things, in that weird water than made the kids turn into...whatever it made them, and they put Cloud in it, and now his eyes are...what if it's Sephiroth?!" she yelled, not backing down. She shook her head, jaw set stubbornly and eyes narrowed into slits. "I'm not risking it, Zack. I'm not risking it and I'm not risking him! I'm not losing anyone else!"
It hit Zack like a slap to the face and anger flared up even more. "You're not the only one who lost everything, Tifa! Did you forget what happened to my hometown, too?"
"At least you still have a mother to call you," Tifa shot back bitterly.
"Only because of Cissnei," he said tightly. "And you remember what happened to her, right? Right? Or my friend Kunsel, hey, remember him? High enough class SOLDIER to turn right into a Sephiroth clone. Do you have any idea how many people I worked with and was friends with that I had to kill? So if we're playing 'Who Lost More,' just stop it right now."
"Why, because you think you'll win?" she said sharply.
"No," Zack said softly, his shoulders slumping suddenly. He didn't want to be doing this; didn't want to fight anymore, and he felt as tired as Cloud had looked. "Because Cloud does."
"...That was a low blow, Zack," Tifa said, as breathless as if she had been punched in the stomach. She pulled out a chair and sat down, still looking like she had been hit. She looked away, frowning to herself. "And it all comes back to Cloud in the end, doesn't it?" she said bitterly, halfway under her breath, shaking her head.
"What in Shiva's name does that mean?" Zack said, suddenly feeling very confused and very, very tired. He had no idea where this conversation--if it was even a conversation--was going anymore.
Tifa startled, as if she hadn't expected him to hear her, then snapped, "You know full well what I mean," angrily.
"No, I don't!" Zack yelled, throwing his hands in the air before he pulled a chair out viciously and dropped into it. He scrubbed his face with his hand. "I don't know what in Hel's realm you're talking about, Tifa!"
"You're not very honest, are you, Zack?" she said, narrowing her eyes. "Did you even think about the way you were carrying him this time?"
He dug his fingers into his hair then looked up at her, elbows on the table and hair clutched in his hands. "Tifa, I really don't know what you're talking about," Zack said plaintively. "I really, really don't. I was carrying like that because that was how I brought him back on the bike with one seat and because I've had so many Geostigma attacks today that I honestly don't even know if I could lift my sword up again, much less try to hoist Cloud over my shoulder. I'm wiped out, I feel like shit and am in no shape to do anything, but only the gods know what those three are planning, plus I have no idea why you're this mad or why you're dredging all this up now. My brain is too fried for me to even try to figure it out and...and...can we just drop it? For now? Please?" he asked pleadingly. "I'm tired of fighting, and there's enough happening without...without whatever this is. Can it wait? Until we don't have Seph clones putting Cloud in a makoless mako-coma any more? Please?"
Tifa let out a sharp, disbelieving laugh, then looked away, shaking her head. "And you just--fine. Whatever. I...just...whatever. Later," she said, suddenly sounding as tired as Zack felt, and she was blinking quickly. "Just tell me what happened out there tonight, then. When you got there. Vincent told me what he knew, but I want to hear your side of--"
There was the sound of motorcycle turning on in the background, then the sound of tires squealing, and Tifa sighed. "And there he goes."
"Dumbass," Zack said, staring at his hands. "He knows it's not safe." He sighed. "But I don't really blame him for not wanting to be here right now."
"Just let him go," Tifa said, not looking up from her hands folded together on the table. There were bags under her eyes, and Zack wondered, for a moment, why it always had to be them and why it never seemed to stop--first ShinRa, then Sephiroth, then the Geostigma, and now this.
"We're fucking everything up, aren't we?" he said softly.
Tifa smiled, faintly, but the only humor there was gallows humor. "Probably."
"I don't know what to do."
"Neither do I," Tifa said, her voice a whisper. "But I wish to the Heavens I did."
They sat there in silence for a long while, Zack staring at Tifa and Tifa staring at her hands, and Zack reached across the table and put his hand over hers.
Tifa's face crumpled slightly, looking as if she was about to burst into tears. "You're a cruel man, Zack," she said softly, closing her eyes and bowing her head, but she didn't pull her hands away.
"I...I'm sorry," he said, not sure what he was doing wrong, what he could say to make things better, or even why everything was getting as fucked up as it was in the first place. "I just...I don't know what I'm doing. I'm trying, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong or how to fix anything and everything is going wrong and no matter how hard I try, I just can't make it go right. I'm always one step behind everything. I just...I just don't want to lose anyone else. You, Cloud, the kids...you're all I've got," he said honestly. "And I don't want to hurt any of you. But...I just don't want to lose anyone else again," he said, repeating what he'd said before helplessly and feeling stupid, that he didn't know how to put anything into words. He was out of his depth and he knew it, and all his trying just seemed to mess everything up, and he couldn't understand why.
Tifa didn't say anything, but she put her thumb lightly over Zack's fingers so he couldn't pull his hand away, and he figured that at least he'd maybe done something right.
"So you want to know what happened after I got to the Forgotten City?" he said, because there was really nowhere else to go, not that was safe.
And it was pretty fucked up, he thought, that talking about Sephiroth-larvae-clone-fragment-things was the safer conversation.
Tifa nodded quickly, not raising her bowed head. "Yeah. What happened?"
He shut his eyes and took a deep breath before he sat back in his chair, pulling his hand away and trying to get back to solid ground. Tifa wiped at her eyes quickly, and that made Zack feel worse than he had, something he hadn't thought possible until then. But he didn't say anything, since Tifa seemed to want to move away from the conversation as much as he did.
"Well. After you called, I headed out to the Forgotten City. It took me longer than I should have," he said, frowning.
"Why?" Tifa asked, frowning herself.
"Geostigma attacks," Zack said, a faint trace of bitterness in his voice. "One hit me right before I could get to them--hit me just when someone over there started screaming."
"Wait...wait...you had a flare of Geostigma right before you got there, right when you heard screaming...so maybe right when everything happened, when Cloud's eyes...when his eyes got like Sephiroth's, maybe?" Tifa said. Her eyes focused inwards when Zack nodded, darting around with her quick thoughts. "The same time...Zack, you don't think they're related, do you?" she said quickly. "Cloud said he had a flare-up when he was fighting Loz, you had one when Cloud was...when they were doing whatever they did to Cloud."
"I also had a really nasty one on the way there," Zack said. "Before that one. Getting two of them in a row like that was just...ugh. And it was probably the third one today," he said, trying to keep his worry out his his voice--attacks becoming more frequent was a bad sign.
"So maybe around the time they first changed the kids?" Tifa asked, "And Cloud said he had one at the church, and you had one earlier, too, and..." Her voice trailed off as her eyes went round and the blood started draining out of her face. "Zack...you don't think they're controlling the Geostigma, somehow?"
There was a long silence where they just stared wide-eyed at each other before Zack grinned broadly, let out a cheerful, "Great, we're screwed!" then thudded his head against the table.
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Next section: It was a bad sign, when it hurt more all the time and wept in more than one place.