Fearing the 1st
And.. here... we... go! My first fic!
Hi guys, Womble here, twenty-two year old guy from England and longterm die hard final fantasy fan :D. I have been dying to do my own fic for ages now, then one day I got replaying my 6th round of FF7 (with Tifa's bootleg graphics upgrade mod don't you know) and a random thought popped in my head. How exactly did Cloud do the impossible and lift Sephiroth off the floor by his own sword without mako enhancements? And surely if he could do that then it's not impossible that he could have been the one to battle the Shinra troops outside of Midgar instead of Zack? Wow… how would things have turned out if that had happened?
And so my idea for a fic was born!
The core concept is to explore how Zack would have handled the events of the FFVII timeline, how Cloud could have pulled of such a feat of strength and how if Zack had not been the one who died could have changed the game's outcome. (If at all- *Cue mysterious music*). This won't however be your basic 'Zack lives fic' and the longer you keep reading the more you will discover that far more is at play here and that not everything is as it seems. *Cue greater mysterious music*
Well I hope you enjoy and please review. I know some of you only like to review once you have read the entire thing, but I do enjoy reading reviews just as much on the older chapters as I do the new. So give a bro some warm fuzzy feels and drop me a line.
Rated T but later contains scenes of a mild but not too graphic sexual nature and mild to light violence. (Nothing a normal fifteen/sixteen year old can't handle ;D)
I am naught but a lowly peasant and do not own or claim to own any FF7 material belonging to Square Enix.
On with the fic!
Chapter 1 Part 1- A different legacy
A dull bleary crack of thunder echoed its way into Zack's consciousness, followed by the faint patter of rain across the thin surface of his eyelids. The sensation caused them to flutter and slowly for the first time in what felt like an eternity, he regained a feeble hold of control back over a small part of his being.
The action should have stirred hope within him, hope and joy that at long last the prison of nightmares that had caged his mind for…
For how long?
...was beginning to lift.
But he only felt a rising panic, the same strong terror that had seized him and wrenched his mind out from those murky depths.
Green murky depths, swimming and bubbling before his vision, choking him, invading him.
Slowly a view of dark thunderous grey crept into his watery vision and it was then that Zack realised life did still exist beyond the stinging acidic green that had become his very existence. The rest of his body quickly responded to this revelation, feeling and sensation rushed back into his limbs coerced by the rushing sense of dread that had possessed him. He moved his head but a mere few inches to the side, causing his brain to swim and scream in protest. Yet it was just enough for his eyes to meet the thick river of lifeless brown mud laced with crimson.
Blood?
His vision levelled and focused, slower than what could even be considered unnaturally, probably because he could not remember the last time he had glanced beyond the blank swirl of liquid pain right before his nose. His glowing cerulean orbs focused on scattered figures that lay twisted and motionless in the dark, his mind quickly identifying the dark blue uniforms as those of Shrina SOLDIER and infantryman.
It was a scene similar to those from the Wutai War. Not that he ever saw the war himself, as to his disappointment at becoming a hero it had ended by the time he had joined SOLDIER. However Shinra propaganda had made a point to have images like these shown to them as to stir hatred and apathy for the "enemy".
Except it never rained in Wutai.
Amongst the soaked and unmoving figures lay a scattering of discarded blades, guns and bloodied fragments of armour and helmets.
His breath hitched.
Breath!
Slowly rising to his knees every inch of his body cried out with groggy pain but he disregarded it as his mind soaked in the death around him. Countless lifeless bodies submerged in the rising inches of mahogany sludge as heavy rain spat from the rumbling dark ominous heavens.
His eyes traced over them all. SOLDIERS. Men.
… Boys.
The grim scene seemingly never-ending until his gaze reached the cliffs edge on the horizon where he caught a dirtied blaze of blond spikes.
A lump formed in his throat.
The constant thrum of rain became a distant unfeeling blur as time slowed and warped while his unsteady feet carried themselves across the void.
Drawing alongside his destination, his eyes fell upon a familiar face and his legs sank Zack to his knees. Glowing blue orbs locked with his, a glow that had not been there before but within them lay a dear friend.
"… Spike?"
"… h-hey.. Zack"
Zack grimaced as the pain in that voice attacked his heart. Cloud was spattered in the same mahogany that covered the floor, slowly fading crimson gently pouring from an innumerable number of cuts, slashes and bullet holes that cloaked his body.
Pulling it together Zack's mind frenzied as his head snapped in every direction, scrambling desperately for a plan of action.
"No Zack" Cloud breathed, reading his actions. "You can't run me to the infirmary this time".
His words brought back the memories of the times he had watched his young friend in weapons and combat training. He had been wracked with nerves watching the 16-year-old boy, smaller than all the rest, sparring with the other SOLDIER wannabe cadets.
Cloud had, like most of his training, completely miss timed blocking a simple swing and had taken a hefty wooden sword to the side of the face. With a small yelp of surprise more so than pain, Cloud was sent tumbling face first to the ground. Zack watching from the balcony above misread the yelp and had hurled himself off the thirty foot drop, thrown two other cadets out the way (accidentally spraining ones wrist and the others ankle) and with Mako enhanced speed and strength hoisted cloud overhead to crash down the busy hallways of the Shinra barracks like a crazed Elfadunk
"get ou'tha way! MOVE!"
"Zack put me down i'm not even..."
"It's alright spikey I got you buddy, just stay with me, nurse! NURSE!"
"Shiva Zack… this is the third time this week…"
Cloud weakly smiled and Zack released a small sorrowful laugh as two tears raced one another down his cheeks.
Then Cloud's head lolled back and his eyes began to roll making Zack quickly grab the back of his head.
"Hey! HEY! You get back here buddy!" Zack whimpered, "I'm the one who makes the wise cracks around here, don't go thinking you're getting the last laugh in pal" his voice was fractured, unable to maintain his usually optimistic and cheery tone.
"Let me have this one" Cloud heaved as his eyes began to wilt deeper.
Grabbing both sides of Clouds pale face he jolted him too once more.
"No chance! I haven't found another friend to make chocobo jokes at yet and I've still got to teach you how t.."
Zack paused, finally noticing from the corner of his vision, the Buster sword laying bloodied and blunted in the mud.
".. my sword.. how?"
Looking around at the field of lifeless bodies, the sword, Cloud, realisation dawned on what had to have occurred here but it left Zack no less confused. This was Cloud, the small boy from Nibelheim who had failed graduating into SOLDIER, Cloud who had struggled to even lift the standard issue three-foot narrow Shinra blade or execute a simple block and thrust manoeuvre in training.
Not that he ever doubted Cloud or ever saw him as any less a person for it, in fact it was quite the opposite. Zack admired Cloud, admired his relentless determination, related to his dreams, respected his honour, even looked to him for guidance at times.
A brother.
"Yeah sorry about your sword, I..."
Zack could hear every word from Clouds mouth was causing inhumane amounts of pain and if it was even possible for Zack's heart to sink even lower at that point it did.
"Shhhh don't sweat it buddy, you're a little more important than my sword."
"But just a little" they said in unison, sharing a small smile of recognition for an old tale.
Cloud winced in pain and his head dropped back once more. This time Zack stopped himself from grabbing him back, knowing with the pain Cloud was in it was not fair to do.
Damn it! Nothing was ever fair! If it were he would be the one laying there…. Zack grit his teeth
Coming back too with one last effort. Clouds eyes fixed absently on the grey abyss above.
"Ti.. Ti."
"What is it spike? Come on pal, tell me" Zack's voice shook with desperation.
"Tifa…" jagged breathing shuddered. "Tell Tifa that I.. let her know that.." Clouds voice had become so faint that Zack had pressed his forehead to Clouds, enhanced hearing clawing for every word.
Zack knew about Tifa. Hell how could he forget? He had spent countless joyful hours teasing Cloud about his 'imaginary girlfriend' back home in the mountains. Zack knew not a day had gone by Cloud did not think about his childhood sweetheart and he knew it had been the reason Cloud had never so much as looked at another woman despite his occasional mischievous efforts.
And though Cloud had never said it, he also knew that every day since Cloud was a small boy he had wished himself the courage to tell this girl how he felt. Zack in his frustration at not being able to instil the courage in Cloud to take the plunge had nearly picked up the phone and told her himself on a couple of occasions. He likely would have if a profusely sweating and thoroughly panicking Cloud had not clawed him off the speaker each time.
Now here in his last moments laying muddied and broken on a dark rain-soaked battlefield, Zack saw it in his face. A heart breaking regret that he couldn't finally tell her. Fear that she would never know and it made him wish more than anything that he could swap places with his dearest friend so he could give him that time.
Nothing was ever fair!
"I'll tell her, Cloud I promise buddy I'll tell her. Sh-sh-she'll know man."
Rain mixed tears were steadily flowing down Zacks face now.
At his words and with a small nod Cloud's expression of desperate regret softened into a gentle and bright smile…
… and that's how it stayed as he finally stilled.
Zack let out a soul splintering cry of anguish across the muddy barren wastes and in the nearby Shinra capital a flower girl feels her heart despair.
Chapter 1 Part 2- A different legacy
If it hadn't been for the Mako coursing through his veins, Zack knew he would have died out in those wastes. He had already been starving and dehydrated before he set off on the two-day trek and since 'that night' the rains had passed and a blistering heat had nearly run him into the ground. On top of that he'd had to battle the onslaught of creatures that roamed the lifeless expanse. Creatures that were extra aggressive and slightly enhanced from the residual Mako that spilled out from Midgar city. Needless to say even his ability to endure five times longer than the normal man without substance or rest was worn thin.
He had welcomed the suffering as it had kept his mind from focusing too much on 'that night'. The guilt and despair he felt was unbearable and far more likely to be the monster that consumed him then the ones patrolling the dead lands. He had been weak, sleeping comatose while his friend carried his useless body halfway around the world and still found the strength to battle a small army single-handedly.
Too weak to even give Cloud, his own saviour, a proper burial.
Too weak to even dig him the decency of a grave.
You left his body lying there on the cliffs for the animals or worse, for the Shinra parasites to take to poke and probe with more tests.
The thought made him feel sick, bile rising up in his throat.
I'm so sorry I failed you Spike, just like I failed Angeal, sleeping on the job... and I call myself first class. I should be the one dead on those cliffs damn it! that ambush was for me not you!
That battalion Cloud had been mercilessly murdered by had been intended for him. A rogue first class on the loose was something Shinra feared, he had contacts, skills and enough dirty little secrets of theirs that he could cause them some serious pain. Oh and he planned to.
I'm going to make them suffer for what they've done!
They feared a rogue first, not like a rogue cadet with a record of less than impressive skills and a failed entry into SOLDIER, they wouldn't even waste a thought on someone like that let alone the resources hunting him. His fairly security light passage into Midgar confirmed this, they had to have believed he was the one they had executed up on those cliff and that the cadet had been the one who escaped. With the number slain by a giant broadsword that would inevitably be matched as his, who could blame them?
For now it was a blessing but Zack knew it wouldn't be long before they sent more units to retrieve the body for a DNA confirmed ID and then they would realise he was still alive. How long did he have before his status changed from ghost back to fugitive? A few more days was optimistic.
Laid staring up at the ceiling of a far from glamorous room in the sector six Wall Market inn, Zack carefully plotted his next move. Gil gathered from the creatures and bandits that he encountered in the wastes had funded his two days of recovery though after new clothes, the room, nourishment, a lightning one materia and equipment to re-sharpen the buster sword, he was running low on resources again.
It was here in these quiet stretches of silence his mind haunted him and images flashed through his mind in painful confusing sequences.
A town ablaze. The screams of men, women and children shrill in the burning air.
Cloud ascending the iron steps of the Nibelheim reactor.
The bubbling, choking acid green that would remain his eternity.
Cloud's concerned face staring down at him in the back of a moving truck.
Cloud walking away into glaring rays of sunlight with the buster sword firmly on his back.
Among the swirl of memories some stranger images appeared he could not place, ones that caused his head to sear.
The female mountain guide from Nibelheim who Zack knew to be Tifa right in front of him, except even younger and in a blue dress sat on a water tower gazing at the stars.
A woman he had never met with bright blonde hair telling him how much he had grown and how much she wished he would find a 'nice older girlfriend' to take care of him.
His eyes tracking down the length of a bright steel blade, starting from his oozing left shoulder and ending with the cat green eyes of him! The nightmare! The monster he once called friend! Glowing blue orbs widening in panic Zack jolted. The former general's menacing stare contorted into a dark smirk as a lock of silver hair cascaded across one eye. "Hey Zack, it's good to see you again".
Sephiroth's voice caused his mind to erupt in agony as a high-pitched shriek of white noise surged through his head. Pain so sharp his entire body quaked as he cried out and collapsed writhing onto the scuff stained laminate of the inn floor.
His howls ceased as the door of the room he was staying in receiving a string of vicious bangs cut through the pain and brought him back to reality.
"WHAT IN THA' FUCK IS GOIN' ON IN THERE?!"
Sweating and gasping for air Zack steadied himself and after taking time to compose himself, donned his best neutral tone.
"N-n-nothing! Nothing, just some crazy stuff on the telly, I'll errr.. turn it down"
"Telly…? These rooms don't have televisions!" the rough voice of the inn keeper bellowed.
"Well for how much you're charging me don't you damn well think there should be?" Zack retorted, the haunting images pushed to one side for now.
"Hey listen here pal! I don't want no strange shit goin' on ya' hear me?" the innkeepers temper was beginning to rise.
"Dont you think you should've thought about that before you set up an inn in the middle of a red-light district" Zack yelled right back.
There was a silent pause on the other side of the door.
"You've only paid until midday today Smith, so just make sure your gone by then you li'l punk!" the flustered man stormed off down the corridor.
He sighed.
… looks like I have no excuse to delay seeing her anymore.
Zack had been wracked with nerves for the last two days while being in Midgar about this moment. Despite it being the moment that Zack had dreamed about every single day for the last four years.
Four years…
He had despaired after discovering from a discarded Shinra newspaper that today's date was four years since last he truly remembered. Since...
Aerith. Beautiful Aerith. Would she even remember him? had she moved on? of course she has you idiot!
The moment he stepped foot in Midgar he wanted nothing more in this world then to seek Aerith out right then and there. Logic finally took over and told him that arriving out of the blue after four years, close to deaths door and covered from head to toe in dirt, blood and sweat would not make for a great reunion.
Now the longer he had left it the more his anxiety had grown as questions of whether she would remember him or even want to see him cruelly manifested. Worse than all of these doubts was whether he SHOULD go and see her. Even if she did remember him, in a few days from now he was going to be back on Shinra's number one most wanted list and he would be putting Aerith in danger. But considering life without those beautiful big emerald eyes, long soft chestnut curls, glowing delicate skin and a heart that radiated the very meaning of warmth and kindness was too hard to bare.
Mind made up he inspected his appearance in the body length mirror hanging on the wall.
Perhaps I should get her some flowers? turning up empty-handed will be pretty lame, hmm where can I get flowers around here?
He grinned, beneath the plate that blocked out the sun there was only one place you could get flowers in Midgar that didn't look like weeds. His heart warmed at the thought of Aerith's small graceful frame crouched cheerily down amongst the flower bed that bloomed in the sector seven abandoned church.
Overwhelmed with the need to mend his broken soul and witness that scene he so dearly cherished once more he took a deep breath, placed the buster sword on his back and marched out of the room.
"Oi Smith! Don't be lettin' me catch anythin' wrong with that room or I'll be mailing tha' bill straight to ya' address!"
Zack lazily waved the back of his hand at the man as he exited the building, snorting a secret laugh as he heard the innkeeper ask his bored teenage son on reception with him whether he had ever heard of...
"An apartment block in sector two called sixty-nine Lykesiten Erbum? Wait a sec.. HEY YOU GET BACK HERE!"
Zack had already dashed out the door and into the busy crowds of wall market and was gone.