Tifa was on her feet again as soon as the healing magic of a Phoenix Down worked its way through her veins. She saw Vincent working on reviving the others, and gave him a short nod before heading back out into the storm. Cloud needed help, and he needed it soon if she'd been out for very long.
She followed the sounds of battle towards the cliff where Cloud used to keep the Buster Sword, and a sudden squall nearly knocked her flat. There was a sudden flash of lightning, and Tifa could just barely make out the silhouettes of the two men about a hundred yards away. Redoubling her efforts, she kept going. The absolute insanity of the storm kept her visibility low, and Cloud reached her before she got to the cliff.
He was carrying the other man, bridal-style, and the look on his face was so anguished that Tifa was all too reminded of a different loss, in another place a thousand miles away. Her eyes traveled down, and—
"Oh Gaia," she breathed. "Cloud…is he…?"
"I think so," he answered, obviously making a valiant effort not to break down. "We need to get him out of the storm."
They redistributed Zack's weight over both of their shoulders, and struggled back towards the airship.
Tifa didn't ask as they backtracked, but…she wasn't a fool. Considering everything they already knew, it was a sure bet that Zack had an unheard-of amount of mako poisoning. She just hoped they'd be able to make it through this time, too.
When the Highwind came into sight, she saw that the others had gathered around the door, obviously waiting for their return. They must have heard the fighting stop.
Yuffie gasped and put her hands to her mouth when she saw who was with them, and Barret helped them set Zack down near one of the walls, while the confusion on the others' faces grew—the expression on Cloud's was probably more telling than anything they could have said.
"…Cloud, did you know him?" Nanaki asked after a moment.
"Yeah…" the blond said, closing his eyes and averting his face. "Guys…this is Zack."
The shock on the others' faces would have been humorous if the situation wasn't so gaiadamn heartbreaking.
After a tense silence that spoke volumes about the others' disbelief, Cait Sith spoke up and voiced was everyone was probably thinking. "…How can you be sure?" the cat asked. "That it's really him? That he's not…a copy of some sort?"
Tifa saw anger flash in Cloud's eyes and immediately resolved to call Reeve later and tell him to program some more tactfulness into that robot. The blond wordlessly moved to Zack's side and undid the zippers and buckles on the other man's shirt to reveal a set of scars that could only belong to him. "There's your proof," he growled. "I give you my word that they're all in the right places."
Cait Sith seemed to understand he'd gone over the line, and didn't say anything more, giving Tifa a chance to take some semblance of control over the situation before Cloud could get more upset. "Cid, get us back to the bar. We'll talk there."
The short flight passed without any more conversation. The group comforted Cloud in the small ways they could—Barret's hand on his shoulder, Tifa's arm around his waist. Rubbing small circles.
Once the ship landed again, the friends shuffled into the bar as if they'd never seen the place before. Cloud immediately carried Zack upstairs, and Tifa was left to set things in order.
"Yuffie, can you go upstairs and help him set up a cot in the office? I know he can do it on his own, just…make sure he comes back down," she said, watching the younger woman go upstairs. "Barret, can you grab a blanket from the laundry room for when he gets back? Cid, get some tea going. Vincent, pull out some chairs." We need to work together if there's any chance of getting through this.
Yuffie led Cloud back downstairs a few minutes later, and Tifa got him situated with the warm blanket and a cup of tea while everyone else sat down, the awkwardness thick enough to cut with a knife.
"So…" Barret said slowly, taking great care with his choice of words, "What exactly happened out there, Spiky?"
Cloud looked at his tea like he didn't remember how to drink it, and then looked up with glassy eyes. "Well…we…"
"He doesn't have to talk about it if he doesn't want to," Yuffie interrupted.
"Yes he does. None of us have a damn clue what's going on," Cid shot back. "I don't understand—"
Did everyone's bedside manners jump out the window? "Stop it," Tifa said forcefully. "There's no point in us fighting. Let Cloud talk."
He took a few shaky breaths and a sip of the tea before continuing. "We were fighting, and…the lightning struck, all at once, and his mask came off. I…I couldn't…I could never hurt him…"
Cid opened his mouth to interrupt again, but Tifa shot him a glare so full of venom that he held up his hands in a gesture of surrender before looking away.
"I…what was I supposed to do? I put down my sword, I said his name, and…he didn't recognize it."
There it is, then. Mako poisoning. Everyone exchanged meaningful looks. They knew what they were dealing with now.
"What will you do, Cloud?" Nanaki asked.
The blond looked more clear-headed now than he had at any point since leaving the wastelands. "I'm going to stay by his side until he wakes up. I'd be a traitor to do anything else after everything he's done for me."
Gaia save us now. It was a painful road to take, but Tifa couldn't begrudge him for it. She'd made the same decision years ago, after all. And she would do it again—take care of him and Zack both while they fought to get him back.
"Why you apologizin'?" Barret asked, the same way he did back in Mideel so long ago. "We'll…hell, we'll do what we did last time. We'll head out, do whatever we can to help, and then come back and check on y'all."
"I'm staying too," Yuffie said after a moment. "I want to help…here."
Tifa was surprised by the younger woman's decision, but appreciated it all the same. Gaia knew she could use some help going through this again, and Yuffie's presence was usually uplifting (if obnoxious) in a way that her own probably wouldn't be if this went on for very long.
Vincent gave a thoughtful sigh. "I know this is...taking precedence over other matters, but I'm still concerned as to why this has happened in the first place. I'll help Reeve in decrypting the lab files, and in finding out whatever we can…maybe we'll find something to help Zack."
Cloud and Tifa both gave approving nods, although the chances of that helping heal mako poisoning were pretty much zero. Yeah, we probably shouldn't forget about that list, she thought. It was meant to do something, even if Zack won't follow through on it now.
"And I'll look through my grandfather's journals again," Nanaki added. "He had many theories about these sorts of situations, and although they were all purely hypothetical…there might be something we can try."
"What about you and me, Barret?" Cid asked over his own cup of tea.
"You had that project you were workin' on, yeah?" the older man responded. "Maybe we can get that up and runnin' before too long."
"What project?" Tifa asked, glad for a natural change in topic.
"Oh, it's nothin' yet," Cid answered. "Jus' a little experiment I was doin' with some of Reeve's ideas."
"Well," Yuffie said, yawning, "I don't know about you guys, but I'm bushed. It's really late…"
Cid gave her a pat on the back and stood up. "Back in the airship if you wanna get out of here," he said, motioning for everyone else to leave. "You hang in there, guys. Take care of Zack."
Yuffie waited until Tifa had finally turned in for the night (after scolding Reeve on the phone for about ten minutes) before calling home.
"Hey, pumpkin!" Godo answered. "How are you doing over there? Isn't it late?"
"Dad, I'm an adult, you don't have to call me pumpkin," she said with exasperation. "So…here's the thing…you remember that SOLDIER I used to send emails to?"
"Of course! How could I forget? You practically spammed him with challenges to hunt treasure!" She cringed a bit at the memory of her primitive materia-stealing techniques as her dad chuckled. "What about him?"
"Well, he's kind of…reappeared. We were chasing down that guy who tried to take Mom's ashes, and it ended up being him. And it turns out Cloud knew him, too."
"Really? Hmm…I take it you're not coming back to visit anytime soon?"
Yuffie gave a guilty sigh before answering. "I'm sorry, Dad…he's got mako poisoning. I just…I feel like I need to stay. Cloud's really down about it, and Tifa's done enough to keep him sane already."
"Don't feel bad about it, pumpkin. They need you right now more than Wutai or the WRO does…you told them, right?"
"Yeah, it's fine," she answered. "Or it better be, because I'm not leaving for a while."
"Alright…I can hear you yawning all the way from here. Goodnight, Yuffie. Love you."
"Love you too, Dad."
Morning came around faster than she would have liked, and she woke up in Marlene's bed to the sound of Tifa and Cloud arguing about something.
"He's my friend, Tifa, I can give him a bath," she heard him say through the wall.
"What, and your friends can't be my friends, too? He's gonna be everyone's friend as soon as he wakes up, goofball. And you're just going to blush the whole time."
Wait, what? …Cloud swings that way? He swings any way?
"Okay, okay. We'll do it together."
After she heard their footsteps retreat into the bathroom, Yuffie climbed out of bed and stretched, going downstairs to make some food. What time is it…noon? Gaia, I need to work on waking up at normal times.
She'd just fixed up an egg sandwich when both of her friends walked downstairs. "Oh, morning Yuffie," Cloud said, the slight blush on his cheeks not going unnoticed. Nope, she would make sure to remember that for future technically-not-blackmailing purposes. "Uh, when'd you wake up?"
"Just a few minutes ago," she answered. "What's the plan today?"
"Well," Tifa said, as Yuffie took an enthusiastic bite out of her sandwich, "we just got Zack cleaned up, and set up a second cot in the office…I'll wash all the sheets while you guys go pick up the kids, and then we can decide where everyone's sleeping."
Yuffie gave a cheerful thumbs-up in response, since her mouth was full of egg.
A few minutes later, she and Cloud walked outside. The weather was warm and sunny, and the wind felt good in her hair.
"How are we gonna fit all four of us on that bike of yours?" she asked, eyeing Fenrir with suspicion.
"We're not taking the bike," he said in response. "There's an old truck that we use sometimes."
Sure enough, down the street was an old blue truck with "Midgar's Motor Gals" painted on the side. Yuffie climbed in the passenger seat while Cloud lit the ignition.
For someone who was so graceful on a motorcycle, Cloud was a surprisingly shitty driver. She spent most of the ride to Kalm trying to keep her sandwich from making a reappearance. "Can—you—maybe—swerve—less?" she asked as they veered off the road for about the hundredth time.
"Sorry, Yuffie," he said, eyes narrowed in concentration. "I don't know if you'd believe this…but I never actually learned how to drive."
"Gee—I never—would have guessed!" Her sarcasm would have been evident to a chipmunk. "I'm driving back—okay?"
They pulled into Kalm in what seemed like no time at all (probably due to Cloud's reckless driving), and Yuffie walked up to Elmyra's door, giving a few knocks.
A moment later, the kind woman opened the door, gesturing for them to come inside.
"I wasn't expecting you all back so soon," she said. "Did it go well?"
Oh, shit. Yuffie had totally forgotten…Elmyra had known Zack, too. She gave Cloud a questioning look. What do we say?
He must've figured Mrs. Gainsborough had gotten enough surprises in her life to deal with one more, because he barely hesitated before telling the truth. "We found Vincent and Rufus without any trouble," he said. "The other guy showed up…and it turns out he's Zack."
Sure enough, Elmyra took the news like it was nothing. Her jaw clenched, but her eyes softened. "So he's alive after all?"
"It seems like it, yeah," Cloud answered, looking despondent. "But he's got mako poisoning…he didn't even know who he was."
Elmyra pulled Cloud in for a brief hug before responding. "Well, I hope you can get him back," she said decisively. "Gaia knows you all deserve some good cheer in your life, and that boy was nothing if not cheerful."
"Who?" a different voice asked, peeping out from behind the stairs. Marlene saw Cloud and ran to hug him around the waist. So many hugs. Good, he needs them.
"I'll show you and Denzel once we get back, okay?" he said. "He's a friend of mine."
"You have friends we haven't met?" the boy in question asked sarcastically, making an appearance.
"That's not very nice of you," Yuffie said, putting her hands on her hips. Denzel just shrugged. It's like he's absorbing all of the snarky parts of Cloud's personality.
Elmyra waved them all out, and the kids seemed exceptionally relieved to find out that Yuffie was driving them back, which she thought was hilarious. They peppered Cloud with stories of what they'd done during their two days in Kalm, and Yuffie smiled to herself. It was really sweet to see him have a family like this.
They walked back into the bar to find Zack conked out on one of the barstools, and Tifa standing nearby with a pair of scissors in hand and a puzzled expression on her face.
"What're you doing, Teef?"
Their arrival startled her out of her thoughts. "Oh, um, I was going to…give him a haircut," she admitted. "He really needs it…"
Cloud gave them all an I've-got-this smirk and took the scissors from Tifa, getting to work on Zack's tangled mane of hair.
"Who is he, Cloud?" Marlene asked, staring intently at Zack's peaceful face.
"Did I ever tell you guys about my best friend from while I was in the army?" the blond gave as an answer, trimming the black spikes down to their usual length.
"You mean this is Zack?" Denzel looked incredulous. "You told us he'd…"
"I know, Denz," Tifa interrupted. "We found him last night. You know how Cloud was sick a few years ago and couldn't remember a lot of things, and was asleep for a while?"
The kids nodded, having heard that story before.
"Well, now Zack's sick too, and we're gonna take care of him until he gets better."
Cloud gave a frustrated grunt. "Can somebody hold his head up? I don't want to cut his hair too short…"
Yuffie moved in to help, and Tifa swept up the growing pile of black hair while the kids put their things away before returning to watch.
Marlene giggled once Cloud finally put down the scissors. "His hair is as spiky as yours now!"
He snorted, but the look in his eyes was wistful. "It was even worse when we first met…"
He told them all little stories about their new charge while he finished up Zack's haircut, and the next several days passed in a haze of domesticity that Yuffie hadn't experienced in a long time.
Cloud had opted into sleeping on the second cot in the office, to keep an eye on Zack in case anything happened. They all respected that, and Yuffie ended up taking his bed for the time being.
Tifa liked to cope by talking things out, and so they passed many of the nights with pillow talk. The older woman told Yuffie the things she was too kind to tell Cloud. How he didn't know yet just how hard it was to be on the other side, to watch someone you love be in so much pain and be powerless to help. How he seemed hopeful now, but as the time wore on, there would be less and less to distract him from the glaring fact that Zack might never get better.
Yuffie wasn't blind. She knew Cloud, and knew that he was like a sort of emotional sponge, absorbing the moods of the people around him. She knew that Tifa wouldn't be able to keep up her cheerful façade for very long—that's why she had decided to stay in the first place, damn it. And she knew it wouldn't be fair to place the burden of anyone's grief on the kids' shoulders. So Yuffie took it upon herself to distract them all with the sheer force of her personality, and try to keep their hopes up as best as she could.
She ended up handling most of Cloud's deliveries—he might as well have been advertising that he was staying at the bar for the foreseeable future, and she refused to let Tifa talk her out of it. They needed the income, with a few extra people in their home, and she took their old truck to all of Cloud's usual places (since nothing on Gaia could convince her to drive his monster of a motorcycle). His usual clients were understandably concerned, and Yuffie gave the best explanations she could for his absence without divulging too much information, since she didn't know how friendly he was with them.
That is, until her first scheduled delivery to Healin. Reno seemed almost disappointed to see her at the door instead of Cloud, and immediately asked her how he was holding up, expression more concerned than Yuffie had ever seen it.
"All things considered, he's not doing too bad," she answered. Yet.
"Reeve called us a couple days after you got back, yo," he said. "Gaia…if I'd known it was him, I woulda…I dunno. Done some things differently, maybe."
"You knew him too, huh?"
"Are you kidding, yo? Everybody knew him. Zack Fair, ray of fuckin' sunshine, runnin' around ShinRa like everyone's favorite puppy…hell, he was friends with Sephiroth, yo. And some spunky Wutai girl who I heard stole some good materia from him."
Yuffie couldn't suppress a smirk. "You don't know already? That was me," she said.
Reno doubled over in laughter at the coincidence for a moment, before the anxious expression returned to his face. "Well..uh…if Tifa or you or him needs anything, or just want some more company, don't hesitate to give us a call, yo," he said awkwardly.
"I'm sure they'd appreciate it, but…I'll call you when it's a good time, okay? See you later, Reno."
And so the days passed by. Yuffie helped the kids finish their game project for school—they'd eventually decided to draw all of their friends on the cards, and finished by making a bonus one for Zack, with his numbers being a mirror image of Cloud's. When Tifa had seen it, she very quickly went outside to water the flowers, but not before Yuffie saw tears. She kept Strife Delivery Service going during the day, and helped Tifa run the bar at night, since they couldn't afford to close up—not when it was looking more and more like this was a long-term situation.
It turned out that sorting out all of the household arrangements on their first day wasn't such a good idea, because without anything to do, Cloud was very quickly falling back into depression. She could see the hope draining from him, day by day, and Tifa's hope along with it.
After a week and a half, Yuffie found an opportunity to actually tell both of them how she knew Zack, and while Tifa responded with a certain amount of amusement and understanding, Cloud's reaction was just…blank, mostly. Like his reaction to almost everything lately. He spent most of his time in the office, not even looking at Zack most of the time, just lost in thought. Her stories couldn't even distract him anymore.
Yuffie's emotional endurance was up there with the best of them, but her energy wasn't infinite. She was getting tired. And through all of it, Zack remained unresponsive, as if he was thousands of miles away.
Tifa was slowly losing her mind.
It had been two weeks since they found Zack, and those two weeks were easily some of the hardest of Cloud's life and hers.
She was very glad Yuffie had stayed to help them, because she wasn't sure if they would have been able to hold it together without her. The younger woman had picked up the slack for both of them, making deliveries and helping to run the bar while Tifa was lost in worry and while Cloud holed up in the office. Yuffie's legendary cheer only went so far, however, and nothing she could do would fix the absolute injustice of what had happened to them.
Tifa prided herself on her ability to stay calm and collected, regardless of what was happening around her. It was a necessary skill for someone who owned a bar, and even more so for someone who was close to Cloud, as trouble followed him like a shadow. Tifa did what needed to be done, put her own feelings aside, and kept it together. Because someone had to.
But Gaia, she was livid now.
It was like a cruel joke from the gods, punishing them for trying to be happy. Nothing Sephiroth had done had unraveled Cloud like this. He'd been through so much—watching his friends die, forgetting so much of his life, and then having to save the world through it all—and seeing one of those friends return, only to be suffering through the same awful things he had—it was unbearable, to say the least.
She was losing him again, losing him to grief and pain and there wasn't a damn thing she could do to stop it. And it had only been two weeks. Tifa had needed to take care of Cloud for longer than that, and it was only by a stroke of luck that she ever got him back. Zack might very well be in a coma for the rest of their lives, and…it was too much, they wouldn't be able to carry on like this indefinitely. Something had to give.
They got a few updates from Vincent and Nanaki, mostly to say that they hadn't found anything new. She wasn't surprised. Mako poisoning wasn't a disease that could be cured, at least not in a normal way.
And so Tifa went through the motions of their day-to-day lives, bottling up her anger. It wouldn't do anyone any good if she fell apart now. She needed to keep it together, because someone had to.
She'd closed up the bar for the night on the sixteenth day, and was retreating upstairs to fall into a merciless sleep. She stopped in her tracks when she heard Cloud sniffling through the door of the office.
"Gaia, Zack…I miss you so much…I can't keep going on without you. What…what if you never recover for the rest of your life?"
It was hearing Cloud repeat her own words, hearing him admit how much pain he was in, that caused her to finally snap.
Tifa practically flew back downstairs and was out the door in no time at all. She got on Fenrir, revved the engine, and drove off.
She'd never taken the motorcycle by herself before, and if the exhilarating feeling was anything like Cloud experienced, she understood why he used to run away so often. Maintaining control over the bike took most of her concentration, especially with how dark the roads were. She drove straight into the remains of Sector 5, to the only place that felt safe enough for her to let it all out.
Tifa opened the doors to the church with force, and instead of seeing the forgotten pews and healing water, she suddenly found herself in…a forest. The sleeping forest, to be precise, which made no sense, because she was definitely not on the northern continent. What…?
"Hey, Tifa," said a familiar voice from somewhere behind her, and she felt most of the tension leave her.
Turning around, she saw the sweet face of one of her best friends. "Aerith? What…how…?"
"I've been trying to reach you for weeks now," she said, with a noticeable amount of sadness in her voice. "I can feel your pain, Tifa. And Cloud's, and Zack's."
"But…how are you here?" Tifa asked, perplexed.
"I used to be able to talk to Cloud like this," Aerith answered. "I could reach into his mind if he was feeling particularly upset…like you are right now."
"Okay…please tell me you're here to say that you know exactly what's going on and how to fix it," Tifa said, although she knew deep down that it would be more complicated than that.
"I might be able to help, but I'm not all-knowing," Aerith said patiently. "I've…known about this for a while now, but time flows differently in the Lifestream, and I can't see everything."
Both women sat down on the forest floor, and Aerith started redoing her braid.
"When I died, Zack was waiting for me," she started. "His spirit was full of love, and he had already started blending with all of the other souls. I spent some time with him, waiting for him to assimilate with the others, but…the Lifestream is different for me, Tifa. I'm not really a part of it yet the way most people are. If I focus, and conditions are right in the living world, I can do things like this. Others can't."
Tifa pursed her lips in thought. "But…Cloud told me that Zack appeared to him once, after the healing rain. Did you have something to do with that?"
"…This is where it gets weird. I stayed near him, but I tried to focus on Cloud, to see what was happening. I could just barely make out his presence in Mideel, and I saw…Hojo show up."
Tifa was taken aback. "When? What did he do?"
"It must have been before you found him…Hojo went into the hospital, and came out with a vial. Probably a sample of some sort."
Aerith paused for a moment to retie her ponytail before continuing. "It wasn't long after that when I felt Zack's presence solidify in a way that was different from all the others. One moment he was just another soul in the Lifestream, and the next…he could do some of the things I could. Like see Cloud through the haze of souls and time, and appear to him if he felt a strong enough calling."
"What do you mean, calling?"
"It's like…a call for help. The first time I appeared to Cloud, his soul was crying out for forgiveness. I'm with you now because your soul was begging for clarity, and…the Lifestream is a living thing, Tifa. The Planet knew I could help you, and so here I am."
"So…that must have been when Hojo injected him with Cloud's cells, then," Tifa concluded. "He must have gone in and taken Zack's body after he died, and…done something to preserve it, somehow. That…seems like something he would do."
Aerith gave a sad nod in agreement. "Whatever he did, it didn't change that Zack's soul was in the Lifestream with me. It just made him…stronger, somehow. He stayed with me for a while after that. We watched you save the Planet, and then we watched you all start to heal. Then the Geostigma happened."
"Could you…feel Sephiroth, in the Lifestream?" Tifa asked, wincing when she saw her friend's eyes darken.
"Yes…his soul is more lucid than most, but he can't appear to people like I can," she said. "He hasn't moved on yet, I'm afraid. He's not…mad here, like he was out there, but his soul hasn't accepted that it's fully human, and so he hasn't joined the others yet. There's nothing I can do for him."
"So…you said Zack was with you. What happened to him?"
"I don't know exactly when, but…I think it would have been several months ago for you. We both felt Cloud's spirit call to us, and then release a lot of tension. Zack felt a strong pull, and then he was…gone."
"Gone?"
"Yes…gone. One moment there, and then the next, I couldn't find a trace of him."
That must have been the night Cloud opened up about him to the rest of us.
"You're probably right," was Aerith's response.
"You can hear my thoughts?"
The Cetra giggled. "Of course! This is all in your head, Tifa."
"So…do you think…Cloud set up a Reunion of his own, or something like that? He must have been really missing Zack that night…maybe he somehow called Zack back into his own body."
"That makes as much sense as anything I've come up with, but…we might never know," Aerith said, shaking her head. "What I do know is that I want you all to be happy, and that's not going to happen with Zack being lost in his own head."
"Okay, what do I do?" Tifa would jump straight into the Lifestream a second time if it could fix things.
"It can't be you," the other woman said, clasping their hands together and meeting her gaze. "Cloud managed to find himself because you were there to help, and you were one of his closest friends. But…you didn't know Zack all that well. And I can't help him in that way when I'm already here."
"It has to be Cloud, doesn't it?" She didn't need to say anything for Aerith to understand her worries…he didn't exactly have the best track record of holding himself together when exposed to mako.
"It does, but I said I could still help, right? Cloud needs to be the one to put Zack's mind back together…but I can make sure they both make it back out of the Lifestream."
"Where do they need to go?"
"Hmm…" the other woman looked over Tifa's shoulder at something in the distance and thought for a moment. "…take them to the Forgotten City. The Lifestream isn't so concentrated there, and…yes, that's the best place to go. I'll contact Cloud once they get close, okay?"
Tifa took a deep breath. "Are you sure this will work?"
"Honestly…no. Cloud should be fine, I'll make sure of it…but I have no idea what will happen to Zack. If he wakes up, he might not remember much…or he might remember everything. This is kind of a unique situation."
Tifa pulled the other woman in for a short hug, even though she knew her form wasn't physically there. "I'll do everything I can, Aerith…it can't be easy for you either, seeing them so lost. We'll get through this, okay?"
And with that, the forest suddenly disappeared along with Aerith, and Tifa was left standing alone in the church, everything still and quiet. I hope Cloud's ready to try something drastic, cause it sure looks like that's our only option.
The doors burst open loudly, revealing a very out-of-breath Yuffie. "Tifa…I heard you leave…what…happened?"
"Call Cloud," Tifa said, with newfound determination. "I've got a plan."