This is my first fanfiction and first completed "story". I've always wanted to write about Zack- he's one of my favorite characters! Sorry for any inconsistencies, ahead of time.
The first sprays of bullets are nothing, just bursts of incandescent pain he can almost ignore. It's the second, and the third, and somewhere between the thousandth, that wear him down, rapid fire rat-a-tat-tat bursts that go too fast for his freakish body to handle, bullets that tear and rip through skin and muscle and sinew and leave sluggishly healing holes in his body.
Zack stumbles, curses, his sword just a deadly silver arc slashing ceaselessly through the air. No matter how many men he cuts down another pops up to take their place. He forces himself to keep moving against hot air and gritty desert sand.
He's faster than any human alive, yes, but one man can only do so much against an army and Zack isn't sure what's possessing him to keep moving, to keep swinging that sword. He hasn't even got the energy for a basic Bolt spell anymore, lost it long ago; he's only running on adrenaline now, his heart pounding and the blood roaring in his veins.
But he's a SOLDIER, First Class, can take the beating they give and give it back a hundredfold, and they're just infantrymen, scared and fresh out of the barracks. Zack bares his teeth in a grotesque caricature of a grin as he continues to swing the Buster Sword around, too far gone to really care and too desperate to not do anything.
There was a time where they would hastily snap to attention and he would only smile widely, clap them on the back, greet them all by name, you guys wanna get a drink after this?
But that Zack was long ago, before the needles and the blinding lights and the one betrayal too many. He has suffered too much, seen too much, lost too much, and Zack's not sure he's really ever going to be the same. That is, he thinks grimly, if he'll ever see another day.
He's using Angeal's precious sword as a shield, lips quirked as he recalls his mentor's motto. If Angeal could see him now, Zack thinks grimly, I wonder what he would say?
Someone is shouting at him, but Zack can't hear, can't understand, his sweat dripping down his nose under the relentless heat of the sun. The bullets still ricochet off the hardened metal blade, a deadly symphony of sound and vibration. Zack can't look, not now, because if he looks and sees the endless rows of shiny Shinra troops he knows he might not be able to fight back anymore.
(He is a dead man. He knows he will die. He's accepted it, already, accepted it in his heart when he saw the distant far off plumes of Midgar haze and realized that there is no way in hell he'll make it over there. It's a pipe dream, but a lovely one. )
Zack thinks of Aerith, and a part of him is sad that he'll never see her again, never, ever see her sweet face and sing song voice, the cool softness of her hand and the radiant kindness that so encompasses her being. Selfishly, Zack hopes she hasn't found someone else already, and that Aerith will always be his, pure and untouched and so achingly beautiful it hurts.
He won't blame her if she has, though. Zack's left her for five years now, dammit; she doesn't deserve him, who can't even protect his closest friends, his mentor, his dreams. She deserves happiness, someone who can love her and keep her safe, not years of wondering and doubt and broken promises.
It's so surreal, so unfair, Zack thinks, that this is the end of the line for him. He's so young, only 23; he's barely aged a day since they put him and Cloud into the tanks. He will never have a family, a home, a chance to see his parents again, never be able to introduce them to Aerith, never be able to see his friends again. He will never see Cloud heal.
(Cloud won't live, a traitorous voice in the back of his head whispers, he's too far gone, even if he's talking again, the mako is too much for him)
A gasp of pain escapes his lips as a bullet imbeds itself in his arm and the wound doesn't begin to heal. He's lost too much blood, then; his body can't take anymore. Not after a year of running and hiding and scraping by with his comatose friend, eating what he can find and only sleeping in short, fitful bursts of nightmare-laden sleep, filled with sharp knives and a hazy green burn. Not after this, hundreds of troops lined up to take him down, to shoot him like a rabid dog in the dry dead wastes surrounding Midgar.
Not now, his mind screams, as his body whispers to just give up, give in, it's too much—
Zack screams, a raw sound, and gets up from where he's crouched, ignoring the protests of his abused muscles, and the shooting all but stops for just a moment. He must make a terrifying image, bleeding and battered with an unholy grin, a gigantic sword gripped too tight in his hand, eyes burning so bright that the world is tinted light blue.
No more healing. The wounds are too much. Zack's just a man, again, a man with exceptional strength and a sword that's not really his, fighting to protect something he's not sure he really can.
He charges with a yell, one final desperate time, and as his muscles quiver and his vision dims, the battle begins anew.
He is a dead man, but he has never felt more alive.