A/N Wheee.... Fanfics are easier with more characters. Please enjoy the Zangst, and drop me a line on what you think! Feedback feeds the plot bunny machine.

Oh, and Zack's still not mine.

Chapter 2—Gesture Without Motion

Zack woke up confused. This was not an unusual occurrence, but it always meant the day to follow would not be a good one. With a little moan, Zack moved. That certainly served to wake him up the rest of the way.

"Ow" he groaned into the silence. His mind silently cursed Angeal's training. Right up until he remembered that Angeal was no longer there to curse. He himself had made sure of that. Suddenly, his body didn't seem to hurt as much.

He slanted his eyes open, swallowing down the tightness in his throat and attempting with limited success to concentrate on the present. His gaze was greeted with blinding whiteness. He tried to recall exactly where he was, but his brain was responding about as fast as a Shinra politician. It took him almost a minute to realize that whatever he was lying on was very hard and quite uncomfortable. It took him another thirty seconds to decide to fix that. With a world-weary groan, Zack levered himself up to his elbows and took a proper look around. There was not much to see. Blank walls and glaringly bright fluorescent light framed a room empty save for a toilet in one corner and the heavy metal cot on which he was reclining. There was one door, without a handle, across the room from him. There was something off about the door, but Zack had to close his eyes again before he could figure out what it was. He felt strangely weak, and everything felt too vivid. He realized suddenly that it was exactly the way he felt after a Mako treatment. Even normal lights were too much for him after an injection. The fluorescents were giving him a spiking migraine and making his stomach turn.

His mind chose that moment to remind him that Sephiroth, his idol, was a murderer. Zack slumped back and let his head bang into the hard bed beneath him.

Sephiroth was a murderer, and Cloud was… was what? He couldn't for the life of him remember whether Spiky had been breathing, lying there on that platform. All he recalled was red on blonde, tarnished silver, and falling.

A shuddering breath forced its way past his lips. Everyone was gone. He lifted a shaking hand to cover his eyes, and did not attempt to stop the tears streaming into his hair. This time, not even Aerith was there to offer him any comfort. He lay alone, choking back sobs into the unforgiving silence and glaring light for what felt like years.

-- -- --

Once he grew tired of misery, Zack became intimately acquainted with the room. The lights were an unchanging intensity, and there was no light switch. Being who he was, that did not deter him from attempting to take them out bare handed, but the bed was bolted to the floor, so he could not stand high enough to see what he was doing. He attempted to shut them off by force, and was rewarded with a set of bruised knuckles. The glass didn't even crack. With a pouting scowl, he accepted that the light probably would not yield to puppy eyes and moved over to inspect the door.

There was a miniscule window carved in the solid white frame, right at Zack's eye level. There was nothing to see through it but another door across from him and a short, gray hall to either side. The window in the opposing door was empty, and showed only more blinding white within the next room. Zack leaned his forehead against the chilly pane and drew in a long, calming breath, placing a shaking hand where the doorknob ought to have been, and where there was nothing. But something did smell like new paint.

Zack furrowed his brow and peeked into the whiteness once more to find its source. There were small imperfections on the door, where the white was a slightly different shade and texture. Zack scraped lightly at it with a fingernail (which, he noted, had grown long enough that Angeal would have scolded him). A sliver of the paint came away under his nail, and a glint of metal shone through. Zack cocked his head slightly at the imperfection and muttered a soft, "huh." Curiosity piqued, and not too excited about examining the room's only other feature (a toilet as white as everything else,) Zack scraped more vigorously at the door. The newer paint came away like snow under his fingers, but the older was much tougher, and was quite capable of breaking his nails painfully if he didn't watch himself. As he scraped, he noticed a pattern. All of the marks on the door were long scratches, which came in sets of three large and two small.

He held up his hand to the deepest of the marks he had uncovered, and felt his gut twist as he realized what had made the mark. Someone had been trying to claw their way out. Zack blinked slowly, sat down beside the door, and tried to imagine how desperate he would have to be.

-- --

He found that the toilet flushed with a boring, mechanical rushing sound. Zack had been hoping for something more amusing, like the sort that blubbered or hiccupped before getting on with their jobs. He only flushed it ten times before growing bored of that and moving on to look for other entertainment.

-- --

The cot he had woken up on was built low to the ground, without enough room for a grown man to fit underneath. Zack discovered this only after attempting to fit underneath, and briefly missed his days of being a lanky teenager rather than a filled-out soldier. Nevertheless, before attempting to wrench his shoulders free from the rather tight metal-to-floor grip they were caught in, he reveled in the shade and breathed more easily despite being stuck. He also took the opportunity to inspect the bolts holding the bed down. They were sturdy, and shone dull silver in the light (he did not allow that silver to remind him of anyone, though as boredom overwhelmed him, it seemed inevitable.) He moved his fingers slowly over the solid, concrete floor he was pressed against, noting its smoothness and strength, and wondered again where exactly he had ended up.

When he wriggled out, he felt the slight scrapes on his shoulders healing more slowly than usual, and suddenly remembered that he had been stabbed. He ripped the shirt (which was army issue, but most certainly not his) off his shoulders and lowered fingers to where Masamune had pierced him. There remained only a faint pink scar, and a memory of searing pain. Zack could not help but feel new empathy for the people of Wutai, who stood against that blade and did not cower. He had the feeling that if he ever saw it again, he would run.

-- --

As he felt sleep stealing over him for the first time since arriving in the bizarre room, Zack wondered when someone would come for him, and hoped they would be bringing good news. He also hoped they would be bringing something to eat, because hunger was starting to gnaw at his stomach.

-- --

Zack discovered that the room was not quite a square. It was seven steps long, then six steps wide. If he walked in a full circuit of the room instead of only the two featureless walls, it became seven steps long by six steps wide, by eight steps long, because he had to go around the toilet, by nine steps wide, same problem with the bed. He could technically have still managed the bed's wall in seven steps, but he would have had to step onto the bed itself. Once around was thirty and a half steps, though he was not entirely sure where the half came from. Seven times around was two hundred thirteen and a half steps. Zack did not figure this out with math. He just counted as he paced in circles. Later he discovered that if he imitated Angeal's swagger, he could cut it down to twenty six steps to get around the room. He tried to imitate Sephiroth's gliding gate, but only managed to stub his toes on the damned cot. Then he turned around and repeated the process in the other direction, and tried very hard not to think.

-- --

His second time falling asleep in the room, Zack wondered if screaming for someone would help. He considered that, perhaps, there were other SOLDIERs just outside the grey hall, who did not know where he was. He wouldn't have blamed them, since he didn't know where he was either. His eyes fell shut before he could implement his plan. Even while he slept, the lights never flickered.

-- --

When he woke up again, Zack started making a list of everything he missed while running through his warm ups, hands closed around the hilt of an imaginary Buster Sword. Aerith, Cloud, Sephiroth, Angeal, and an endless list of his friends and family came first, in varying orders, and often repeated as Zack forgot who he had already listed. His much beloved memento and faithful weapon was always near the top of the list as well. So was the overcrowded SOLDIER mess hall, and his own brand new private quarters. He had been planning to get Aerith to come over and help him decorate, but had never gotten the chance.

It was a diverting pastime, trying to remember everyone he had ever cared about, and memories of smiles kept him warm and relaxed during his work out. When he had been listing off the things he missed long enough that he was certain he had repeated everything he loved at least twice, he started counting off the things he didn't miss. Nibelheim got place number one on the list. Place number two went to Shinra, and Genesis had to settle for third. Zack smirked a little at that and nodded in satisfaction. It would defiantly annoy the fiery first to be below a little hic town that was no more than embers. Zack added Professors Hojo and Hollander to the list, then counted it done and tucked it away, turning back to trying to decide whether to put Cisseni ahead of Tseng or behind him in the miss category.

-- --

Zack tried to piece together the lullabies his mother used to sing to him before he decided to be a hero, and could remember every tune but not a single word. So he hummed them to himself as he did squats in a corner of the room. He had started out in the center, but it seemed too exposed to him while in enemy territory, despite the fact that he was obviously already at the mercy of whoever held him. His stomach gave a soft, forlorn growl, then fell silent.

-- --

Zack had never closed his eyes while doing squats before. He always preferred to use it as a time to practice his blank SOLDIER gaze, though it was often broken down into a smile when someone more interesting than exercise interrupted him. He closed his eyes in the room to block out the glare, and found that the insides of his eyelids appeared a strange green-white shade from the after-image.

-- --

On squat number five hundred and twenty seven, Zack's legs gave out from under him, and he sat stunned in silence, because there had never been a time when someone did not stop him before he hurt himself or gave out. Angeal had always been there to warn him, or Sephiroth to distract him, or Cloud to make quiet, sarcastic remarks at his insufferable stamina. More than the solitude and pain, it was that which made Zack realize he was truly alone. He did not cry that time, but sat against the wall in silence, staring intently at the nothing of the room.

-- --

Zack decided that no one was coming the fifth time he faced sleep in the room. His head and eyes hurt constantly, and he was fairly certain his sight was starting to fade. For the first time he could remember, Zack lost hope.

-- --

The door opened without a sound, one week after the awakening of Project ZII, and admitted him to a whole new hell.