Author: Rydia Highwind chichiri_is_hot@hotmail.com
Title: Return to Me (working)
Summary: A year post-game, Zack returns into Cloud's life. He wants things the way they were before, but Cloud isn't sure. And, just to mess things up, someone else wants revenge.
Warnings: Angst, yaoi, references to non-con.
Disclaimer: The FFVII characters and world and stuff all belongs to Square and yadda yadda yadda. My friend Sam made up the bad guy so worship him. The working title of this fic comes from a song called "Lullaby" by Assemblage 23.
Return to Me
Chapter One
It wasn't really raining, because it never really rained in Kalm in January. It was more like hail or sleet, tiny pellets of snow pattering noisily against the window, and then dissolving into clear droplets of water before trickling down the glass window pane. Sometimes he would reach up and trace the erratic paths they left with his forefinger, imagining they spelled some elusive word or formed a just unseen picture.
He did not like the rain. He did not like the way it felt if he were outside in it, or the way it tapped against the window. He did not like how it reminded him of tears he'd never shed, he'd refused to allow himself to shed. He did not like it, and he did not like this strange combination of snow and rain either. And yet he felt himself drawn to it, he had to watch it. So there he was at the window, his eyes following the beads of water slowly make their way down the glass.
Rain brought back the memories of things he tried to forget, good things and bad things. Times when his hair would stick to his face and no matter how hard he tried to get it out of his eyes, it would continue to fall in his way. Times when he couldn't see ten feet in front of him, but that was okay because he knew what everything looked like anyway. Times when he carried something and he worried so much that it would be ruined by the wetness, even though no one really minded if it was. Times where the air was sharp with the scent of gunpowder and smoke and he wished it would rain more because the air was dirty with it and there was blood on his hands but he did not know why.
Once he had gone to a place that he never remembered being in, yet he knew every step of the place. He felt twinges of emotions he didn't remember feeling and words that he didn't remember saying. Things he had said were voiced by someone else and he was simply remaining silent. Once he had gone there and once he had lost his breath as pieces of memories returned to him. He did not like the feeling and made the mistake of taking a cold shower at the Inn. The shower was like the rain, and there was a choked scream in his throat the same way there had been before.
He had had nightmares since that day. Nightmares in which his hands were sticky and he didn't know why (but he did) and where there were crimson stains on the rocks and he didn't know from what (but he remembered) and where the sword felt heavy and unfamiliar in his grip and that didn't make any sense (but he knew) and where it hurt to breathe and he felt like he had lost something and he didn't know what (but he understood). It was that understanding that made it so unbearable.
Shapes were milling about in the grayness out the window, and he wondered why anyone would ever go out in the rain or the snow or whatever it was. Few people entered the bar on a day like this and Tifa liked to grumble good-naturedly about it while trying to engage in conversation with him. He wasn't being very helpful, this he knew, and she had stopped trying to get him to clear dirty tables a few hours ago. Part of him felt badly, but when reflecting that there were never more than five separate customers inside at one time, he didn't feel so bad.
Turning away from the window, it seemed that Tifa had sensed his darkening mood and was heading over to sit by him. He didn't really feel like talking, but then again, he never really did. She slowly approached him, smiling in a manner that clearly told him she intended to cheer him up, and sat in the chair across the table from him, leaning one arm on the hard wood in front of her. "You look sad," she said simply.
"Nostalgic," he answered simply, and looked out at the almost-rain once more.
"Really?" She crossed her legs and leaned back in the chair, settling her head at a slight, seemingly interested tilt. She was trying hard, too hard to talk to him, distract him. She was eternally trying to help him, he thought. And yet, nothing ever seemed to help. Sometimes her concern just made everything worse. "What about?" Her voice was laced with hopefulness.
"The rain." He did not turn away from the window.
She didn't reply, and from the corner of his eye he saw her bite her lip and look down at her hands nestled in her lap for a moment. Someone walked into the bar and he felt his eyes travel instinctively over to the door. A tall man, probably, but a dark, rain-soaked cloak prevented anything else to be gathered from his appearance.
He turned back to Tifa and laid his hands on the table, feeling the cool wood pressed against his sword-calloused fingertips. "You have a customer," he said plainly, and nodded to the man.
The man had seated himself at the bar, removing the hood of his cloak as he did so. A pile of hair was freed from the hood and cascaded down to his shoulder blades, black as the cloak itself. He leaned forward in a familiar position and looked around for the bartender, revealing a set of softly glowing blue eyes.
A knot was growing in Cloud's stomach and he suddenly felt like he couldn't breathe. Tifa had stood up, a frown etched on her countenance, as she brushed off an imaginary speck of dust from the table. He reached over and grabbed her hand, unsure if he was dreaming or simply imagining the figure he saw. "Tifa..." His voice was dry in his throat. "That's...."
She turned her head to look at the mysterious man and from her lips came a startled gasp. Then, without a moment's hesitation she was looking back down at the table, where his hand was now trying to wriggle free of her grasp. The man was turning, looking confused at most, still unable to find the bartender, while everyone else had drinks.
There was a moment of complete silence in the bar as their eyes met, and Cloud suddenly did not really believe he'd ever be able to move again.
-------
His hair had been longer in the dreams, all the way down so that covered up most of his behind when he was standing and he hadn't had it pulled back for a practice session or the like. His skin had been darker, bronze as a god, and tighter over his muscles that now seemed to have shrunk, though it might have been the lighting. Scars lined his skin where they had not before and eyes that once always smiled now spoke of too much pain to smile again.
His voice was the same, though he was not saying the same things he had in the dreams. He was laughing as he had in the dreams. His gait was the same, his posture unchanged, though it seemed to carry more weight than it had in the memories.
"Cloud...you okay, Cloud? Cloud...."
No, he was not okay. He was dying inside, dying all over again. He wanted to scream it, to yell, to breathe, to.. something. Instead, he just remained perfectly still, eyes locked inside the other pair so very much like his own. "Fine." He wasn't talking. His lips were moving and his throat choking out his voice, but he wasn't telling it to do so.
He let himself lean forward on the table, arms heavily setting on the hardwood. "You were dead," he said simply. "I saw you die. I.. felt you die."
He had. It was the reason he did not like the rain. The reason his hands were sticky and bloody. The reason he did not sleep on rainy nights, where the gently falling rain would keep him awake, swimming in memory. The reason the sword did not feel right between his palm and his fingers anymore, though it never truly had.
Zack.
-------
"No, no, it's okay, kid." Zack was laughing, just a little, as he sat down across the table. His mouth was twisted into an impish half grin that he had always loved so long ago. A lifetime ago. How long...? Everything was jumbled inside his mind.
"I...I thought..." His voice was unsteady.
"Don't think." Zack was shaking his head, but he was still laughing. "I don't understand either... I thought you were dead too." He leaned back in his chair, slowly crossing his legs, as though the motion was uncomfortable. His eyes closed, then opened, slowly, deliberately, and his mouth remained pulled in the crooked grin. "Man.. it's good to see you, Cloud."
Tifa had gone to the bar for something, it seemed, because she was no longer there. She was returning, though, a bottle and two glasses accompanying her. Once she reached them and they both had a drink poured, she looked at his face and clucked quietly under her breath. "You're sure you're all right, Cloud? You look like you're about to pass out."
He managed a bit of a smile when he looked back up at her, picking up his glass and taking a small sip. "I'm fine, Tifa. Thanks."
She made it quite obvious that she didn't believe him, but left the table to take care of other aspects of business. There were other customers and, as always, dishes to be done. He had watched her go over to the bar, her deep mahogany eyes darting back to him and his companion every so often. "She took care of me when I got to Midgar," he said quietly, turning his eyes back towards Zack. "Probably saved my life. Took me in and all."
The taller man nodded, his blue eyes misting slightly in contemplation. "They didn't take you back? I figured they would have brought you back after.." He trailed off into silence and shrugged, taking a drink from his glass.
"No. They just.. left me there for dead. I laid there for a while in the rain and there were screams and..." He stopped himself before he choked on his own voice. "Anyway, I was confused.. I found your sword and imagined I was you for a while." He found himself staring at his hands, lying palm down crossed over one another. "What.. what happened to you?"
Zack sighed slightly, leaning forward and leaning on the table. "A guy living in the cliffs near where.. where it happened heard the gunfire. He ran out with a mastered restore materia and found me. Said I was as full of holes as a piece of swiss cheese when he found me." The black haired man paused for a long moment, eyes distant and looking out the same window Cloud had been earlier. "Good man.. but he wouldn't come here with me. Said he had some thinking to do yet."
"You were alive...." Cloud suddenly felt as though someone had placed a boulder on his shoulders and back. "And I just.. walked away...."
"Hey." The gleaming sapphires of Zack's eyes were quickly turned back to his companion. "That's not your fault. I saw what they did to you. I'm pretty amazed you could walk away on your own." The glass rose to his lips once more and he then let his glass clank as he landed it on the table. "Anyway.. it seems like I was pretty damn lucky to have made it until he found me. Said he didn't think the restore materia was even helping."
Silence reigned for a long moment, and the smaller man took a sip of his drink. "Doesn't surprise me," he said softly, avoiding eye contact. He remembered the sound of gunfire, unending in the night. That had been the only sound in the silence of his screaming. "I still don't understand..."
"Jenova." Zack's voice was flat. "That...I don't know what it was. But it kept me alive somehow."
"Jenova," Cloud repeated, feeling a bitter taste in the back of his throat. It had never occurred to him that Zack was likely a more complete Sephiroth clone himself. Jenova was the one that had kept him alive. Jenova had kept the both of them alive. "She wanted you at the Reunion, but you weren't there...." He allowed his voice to trail off.
The other man looked at him curiously. "It wasn't her talking.. it was Sephiroth." There was a long pause. "I couldn't move much when he was talking anyway.. had to be strapped down to the bed for however long. I guess I kept trying to get up. I...don't remember much. Just his voice, and a weird need to listen to what he was saying." He shook his head. "There are too many things I don't understand about this. But you heard him too.. didn't you."
"Yeah." Cloud breathed out a small sigh. He had a lot of explaining to do.
-------
The night had long since fallen and the bar closed, so that they were the only ones there, save for Tifa, who would come to check on them every so often. He had finished his story soon after Tifa had murmured something about going to bed, and how there was a room open Zack could use if he wanted, the key of which was now turning over and over between the older man's fingers.
"Man," Zack said quietly, countenance serious and his eyes staring straight into Cloud's through the dim light, "and I thought I had gone through hell."
The other man spun the empty cup in his hand, the droplets in the base trickling to the side and then back again. He said nothing, they had both gone through hell and he was in no position to judge just how much or severe that hell was. He was perfectly content maintaining the silence that grew between them now; he had been talking for so long, it seemed, talking about things he preferred never to think about again. Now, he welcomed that silence.
Zack had watched him for a long moment before leaning forward and shoving his chair back, pushing himself up from the seat. "Time for bed, I guess," he said quietly, a hint of something else laced almost inconspicuously through his voice.
After standing up and turning toward the doorway with an affirmative nod, it would have been more disconcerting if the arms hadn't encircled him from behind. He first allowed himself to melt into it, eyes falling halfway shut as the lips brushed the back of his neck. But something flashed in his mind then, a single white burst in the back of vision and he pulled away from the embrace, shame flooding his being. "Yeah," he said quietly, not turning around to face the other man. "For bed. Your room is that way." He allowed himself to point at a door leading to the inn section of the bar.
There was a long pause between them in which neither of them moved. Finally, Zack broke the silence as a set of footsteps plodded towards the appointed door. "Good night, Cloud," he murmured before letting the door fall shut behind him.
"...good night, Zack," he said to the empty room.
-------
End of Chapter 1. Please review.
Title: Return to Me (working)
Summary: A year post-game, Zack returns into Cloud's life. He wants things the way they were before, but Cloud isn't sure. And, just to mess things up, someone else wants revenge.
Warnings: Angst, yaoi, references to non-con.
Disclaimer: The FFVII characters and world and stuff all belongs to Square and yadda yadda yadda. My friend Sam made up the bad guy so worship him. The working title of this fic comes from a song called "Lullaby" by Assemblage 23.
Return to Me
Chapter One
It wasn't really raining, because it never really rained in Kalm in January. It was more like hail or sleet, tiny pellets of snow pattering noisily against the window, and then dissolving into clear droplets of water before trickling down the glass window pane. Sometimes he would reach up and trace the erratic paths they left with his forefinger, imagining they spelled some elusive word or formed a just unseen picture.
He did not like the rain. He did not like the way it felt if he were outside in it, or the way it tapped against the window. He did not like how it reminded him of tears he'd never shed, he'd refused to allow himself to shed. He did not like it, and he did not like this strange combination of snow and rain either. And yet he felt himself drawn to it, he had to watch it. So there he was at the window, his eyes following the beads of water slowly make their way down the glass.
Rain brought back the memories of things he tried to forget, good things and bad things. Times when his hair would stick to his face and no matter how hard he tried to get it out of his eyes, it would continue to fall in his way. Times when he couldn't see ten feet in front of him, but that was okay because he knew what everything looked like anyway. Times when he carried something and he worried so much that it would be ruined by the wetness, even though no one really minded if it was. Times where the air was sharp with the scent of gunpowder and smoke and he wished it would rain more because the air was dirty with it and there was blood on his hands but he did not know why.
Once he had gone to a place that he never remembered being in, yet he knew every step of the place. He felt twinges of emotions he didn't remember feeling and words that he didn't remember saying. Things he had said were voiced by someone else and he was simply remaining silent. Once he had gone there and once he had lost his breath as pieces of memories returned to him. He did not like the feeling and made the mistake of taking a cold shower at the Inn. The shower was like the rain, and there was a choked scream in his throat the same way there had been before.
He had had nightmares since that day. Nightmares in which his hands were sticky and he didn't know why (but he did) and where there were crimson stains on the rocks and he didn't know from what (but he remembered) and where the sword felt heavy and unfamiliar in his grip and that didn't make any sense (but he knew) and where it hurt to breathe and he felt like he had lost something and he didn't know what (but he understood). It was that understanding that made it so unbearable.
Shapes were milling about in the grayness out the window, and he wondered why anyone would ever go out in the rain or the snow or whatever it was. Few people entered the bar on a day like this and Tifa liked to grumble good-naturedly about it while trying to engage in conversation with him. He wasn't being very helpful, this he knew, and she had stopped trying to get him to clear dirty tables a few hours ago. Part of him felt badly, but when reflecting that there were never more than five separate customers inside at one time, he didn't feel so bad.
Turning away from the window, it seemed that Tifa had sensed his darkening mood and was heading over to sit by him. He didn't really feel like talking, but then again, he never really did. She slowly approached him, smiling in a manner that clearly told him she intended to cheer him up, and sat in the chair across the table from him, leaning one arm on the hard wood in front of her. "You look sad," she said simply.
"Nostalgic," he answered simply, and looked out at the almost-rain once more.
"Really?" She crossed her legs and leaned back in the chair, settling her head at a slight, seemingly interested tilt. She was trying hard, too hard to talk to him, distract him. She was eternally trying to help him, he thought. And yet, nothing ever seemed to help. Sometimes her concern just made everything worse. "What about?" Her voice was laced with hopefulness.
"The rain." He did not turn away from the window.
She didn't reply, and from the corner of his eye he saw her bite her lip and look down at her hands nestled in her lap for a moment. Someone walked into the bar and he felt his eyes travel instinctively over to the door. A tall man, probably, but a dark, rain-soaked cloak prevented anything else to be gathered from his appearance.
He turned back to Tifa and laid his hands on the table, feeling the cool wood pressed against his sword-calloused fingertips. "You have a customer," he said plainly, and nodded to the man.
The man had seated himself at the bar, removing the hood of his cloak as he did so. A pile of hair was freed from the hood and cascaded down to his shoulder blades, black as the cloak itself. He leaned forward in a familiar position and looked around for the bartender, revealing a set of softly glowing blue eyes.
A knot was growing in Cloud's stomach and he suddenly felt like he couldn't breathe. Tifa had stood up, a frown etched on her countenance, as she brushed off an imaginary speck of dust from the table. He reached over and grabbed her hand, unsure if he was dreaming or simply imagining the figure he saw. "Tifa..." His voice was dry in his throat. "That's...."
She turned her head to look at the mysterious man and from her lips came a startled gasp. Then, without a moment's hesitation she was looking back down at the table, where his hand was now trying to wriggle free of her grasp. The man was turning, looking confused at most, still unable to find the bartender, while everyone else had drinks.
There was a moment of complete silence in the bar as their eyes met, and Cloud suddenly did not really believe he'd ever be able to move again.
-------
His hair had been longer in the dreams, all the way down so that covered up most of his behind when he was standing and he hadn't had it pulled back for a practice session or the like. His skin had been darker, bronze as a god, and tighter over his muscles that now seemed to have shrunk, though it might have been the lighting. Scars lined his skin where they had not before and eyes that once always smiled now spoke of too much pain to smile again.
His voice was the same, though he was not saying the same things he had in the dreams. He was laughing as he had in the dreams. His gait was the same, his posture unchanged, though it seemed to carry more weight than it had in the memories.
"Cloud...you okay, Cloud? Cloud...."
No, he was not okay. He was dying inside, dying all over again. He wanted to scream it, to yell, to breathe, to.. something. Instead, he just remained perfectly still, eyes locked inside the other pair so very much like his own. "Fine." He wasn't talking. His lips were moving and his throat choking out his voice, but he wasn't telling it to do so.
He let himself lean forward on the table, arms heavily setting on the hardwood. "You were dead," he said simply. "I saw you die. I.. felt you die."
He had. It was the reason he did not like the rain. The reason his hands were sticky and bloody. The reason he did not sleep on rainy nights, where the gently falling rain would keep him awake, swimming in memory. The reason the sword did not feel right between his palm and his fingers anymore, though it never truly had.
Zack.
-------
"No, no, it's okay, kid." Zack was laughing, just a little, as he sat down across the table. His mouth was twisted into an impish half grin that he had always loved so long ago. A lifetime ago. How long...? Everything was jumbled inside his mind.
"I...I thought..." His voice was unsteady.
"Don't think." Zack was shaking his head, but he was still laughing. "I don't understand either... I thought you were dead too." He leaned back in his chair, slowly crossing his legs, as though the motion was uncomfortable. His eyes closed, then opened, slowly, deliberately, and his mouth remained pulled in the crooked grin. "Man.. it's good to see you, Cloud."
Tifa had gone to the bar for something, it seemed, because she was no longer there. She was returning, though, a bottle and two glasses accompanying her. Once she reached them and they both had a drink poured, she looked at his face and clucked quietly under her breath. "You're sure you're all right, Cloud? You look like you're about to pass out."
He managed a bit of a smile when he looked back up at her, picking up his glass and taking a small sip. "I'm fine, Tifa. Thanks."
She made it quite obvious that she didn't believe him, but left the table to take care of other aspects of business. There were other customers and, as always, dishes to be done. He had watched her go over to the bar, her deep mahogany eyes darting back to him and his companion every so often. "She took care of me when I got to Midgar," he said quietly, turning his eyes back towards Zack. "Probably saved my life. Took me in and all."
The taller man nodded, his blue eyes misting slightly in contemplation. "They didn't take you back? I figured they would have brought you back after.." He trailed off into silence and shrugged, taking a drink from his glass.
"No. They just.. left me there for dead. I laid there for a while in the rain and there were screams and..." He stopped himself before he choked on his own voice. "Anyway, I was confused.. I found your sword and imagined I was you for a while." He found himself staring at his hands, lying palm down crossed over one another. "What.. what happened to you?"
Zack sighed slightly, leaning forward and leaning on the table. "A guy living in the cliffs near where.. where it happened heard the gunfire. He ran out with a mastered restore materia and found me. Said I was as full of holes as a piece of swiss cheese when he found me." The black haired man paused for a long moment, eyes distant and looking out the same window Cloud had been earlier. "Good man.. but he wouldn't come here with me. Said he had some thinking to do yet."
"You were alive...." Cloud suddenly felt as though someone had placed a boulder on his shoulders and back. "And I just.. walked away...."
"Hey." The gleaming sapphires of Zack's eyes were quickly turned back to his companion. "That's not your fault. I saw what they did to you. I'm pretty amazed you could walk away on your own." The glass rose to his lips once more and he then let his glass clank as he landed it on the table. "Anyway.. it seems like I was pretty damn lucky to have made it until he found me. Said he didn't think the restore materia was even helping."
Silence reigned for a long moment, and the smaller man took a sip of his drink. "Doesn't surprise me," he said softly, avoiding eye contact. He remembered the sound of gunfire, unending in the night. That had been the only sound in the silence of his screaming. "I still don't understand..."
"Jenova." Zack's voice was flat. "That...I don't know what it was. But it kept me alive somehow."
"Jenova," Cloud repeated, feeling a bitter taste in the back of his throat. It had never occurred to him that Zack was likely a more complete Sephiroth clone himself. Jenova was the one that had kept him alive. Jenova had kept the both of them alive. "She wanted you at the Reunion, but you weren't there...." He allowed his voice to trail off.
The other man looked at him curiously. "It wasn't her talking.. it was Sephiroth." There was a long pause. "I couldn't move much when he was talking anyway.. had to be strapped down to the bed for however long. I guess I kept trying to get up. I...don't remember much. Just his voice, and a weird need to listen to what he was saying." He shook his head. "There are too many things I don't understand about this. But you heard him too.. didn't you."
"Yeah." Cloud breathed out a small sigh. He had a lot of explaining to do.
-------
The night had long since fallen and the bar closed, so that they were the only ones there, save for Tifa, who would come to check on them every so often. He had finished his story soon after Tifa had murmured something about going to bed, and how there was a room open Zack could use if he wanted, the key of which was now turning over and over between the older man's fingers.
"Man," Zack said quietly, countenance serious and his eyes staring straight into Cloud's through the dim light, "and I thought I had gone through hell."
The other man spun the empty cup in his hand, the droplets in the base trickling to the side and then back again. He said nothing, they had both gone through hell and he was in no position to judge just how much or severe that hell was. He was perfectly content maintaining the silence that grew between them now; he had been talking for so long, it seemed, talking about things he preferred never to think about again. Now, he welcomed that silence.
Zack had watched him for a long moment before leaning forward and shoving his chair back, pushing himself up from the seat. "Time for bed, I guess," he said quietly, a hint of something else laced almost inconspicuously through his voice.
After standing up and turning toward the doorway with an affirmative nod, it would have been more disconcerting if the arms hadn't encircled him from behind. He first allowed himself to melt into it, eyes falling halfway shut as the lips brushed the back of his neck. But something flashed in his mind then, a single white burst in the back of vision and he pulled away from the embrace, shame flooding his being. "Yeah," he said quietly, not turning around to face the other man. "For bed. Your room is that way." He allowed himself to point at a door leading to the inn section of the bar.
There was a long pause between them in which neither of them moved. Finally, Zack broke the silence as a set of footsteps plodded towards the appointed door. "Good night, Cloud," he murmured before letting the door fall shut behind him.
"...good night, Zack," he said to the empty room.
-------
End of Chapter 1. Please review.