A/N: This is for JackTbug. Enjoy :)

Chapter 1: The Broken Child

The orange light cast across the court yard was enough to make anyone shudder as the huge house was ravaged by even bigger flames. A small child was gripping the bars of the front gate, shaking the gates and screaming. But despite his abusive motions, the gates would not open; they would not grant him access to his burning home.

"WHY?!" Chris Thorndyke screamed through his tears, "WHY NOW?!"

He referred to the rare occasion in which his parents were home, if the house had to burn, why couldn't it have happened while they were away like usual? Why did they have to be in the house when in caught fire? Why did a blue hedgehog have to drag Chris from the hungry flames? And why hadn't that same hedgehog run again from the flames with Chris' parents, safe and sound? This couldn't be coincidence, but what had Chris or his parents ever done to deserve this?

Out of the corner of his eye he saw something spiky, he turned so fast he nearly cracked his neck as he shouted desperately, "SONIC?!" But no, it was not the hedgehog, it was a man who was already half way over the tall fence. He had a scar on his cheek and his hair was sleeked back into spikes.

"Stand back kid!" He shouted as he landed on the other side and ran towards the burning house.

Zack Fair, SOLDIER Class 1, ran as hard as he could towards the burning house, Sephiroth's last attack had started the fire, and Zack considered it his job to save the civilians put in danger by Sephiroth's rampage. He charged into the burning building and the whole place was falling apart. Most of the ceiling had already collapsed, so Zack seriously doubted that anyone upstairs still could be. He ran into the foyer and found a dead animal, but didn't have enough time to stop and examine it much beyond it being too burnt to have possibly survived. A little further and he found the two bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Thorndyke. He hoisted them on his shoulders and carried them out into the yard just in time to see Cloud Strife almost to the house.

"Zack! What happened?!" Cloud asked as he quickly helped his elder lay the civilians in the grass.

"No time, I've got these two, go in and see if there's anyone else," Zack coughed from the smoke in his lungs and it came out in a puff. God, mako was amazing.

As Cloud ran into the house, Zack checked each of the Thorndykes for a pulse, the woman's was weak, but the man was dead. Zack tilted the woman's head to open her airway and then intertwined his fingers, one hand behind the other, and placed them on Mrs. Thorndyke's chest. He then threw his weight into her chest and felt her ribs break. He winced as the terrible feeling but did it again, and again, and again. He counted 30 presses then moved to her mouth, he held her chin to keep her mouth open and her forehead to keep her airway clear as he breathed deeply into her lungs. He kept it up in this pattern for nearly 20 minutes, but she still wasn't breathing and her heart had long since stopped beating under his fingers.

Zack sat back on his heels and hung his head as he caught his breath. "I'm sorry... I'm sorry..." He muttered between breaths. He had been too late, all the heroic strength in the world couldn't revive the dead, and because of his original failure to see the corruption in his elder's heart, he had brought this death down on the Thorndykes and countless others. At least, that's how he felt.

"Cloud," Zack stood, "Come on, it's time we end this." And so Zack, followed by Cloud, went to his death.

A/N: Well there is the start. Hope it peaked your interest, this was all just set up to how Chris has become an orphan and how Cloud becomes the man he does. If you don't know how Zack died, play the game or look it up, it's really not relevant to the story besides placing in the timeline of Final Fantasy, so I didn't feel the need to go into trying to rewrite that scene. But you may watch the cutscene of his death as I do intend to have some dreams and flashbacks to it on Cloud's part. Oh, and the following is not really going to stick to FFVII, it will take it's own path mostly. DISCLAIMER: I do not own Cloud, Zack, or Chris :) Thanks