Author's Notes: I know what you are thinking, an angsty Zack? Not possible? Ah, but I am here to prove you wrong peoples. Zack can be serious and sad just like everyone else. In fact, Zack does it better than most people.
Theme: Yellow
Watching
All he could ever do was watch. Watch and wait and hope for the best. Sometimes that drove him crazy, it really did. He knew he should have been there to help the kid out, but the choice had been taken out of his hands. He'd been forced to watch his friend, his love, break down into a million little pieces of memory and thought and confusion. Sat back and watched helplessly as a girl he thought Cloud should spend his life with died at the hands of a man many once revered as a hero. A man Zack had once thought of as a friend. There was nothing he could do to ease the pain of the little blonde. Nothing at all as he watched Cloud try his hardest to live Zack's life for him…
Even two years after his death the planet forced him to stand by and watch. While his energy had been used for another life, Zack's mind, Zack's heart had been left behind. And all he could do again was watch. Watch as Aeris got to touch his love, watch as Aeris got to speak to him, watch as Aeris got to help him. Watch his best friend mourn for a life that wasn't over just yet.
He thought for a while that he would finally get to see Cloud again when the blonde returned to the lifestream. Contrary to what he'd told the swordsman about not being welcome, Zack waited for that day for so long. So very very long. Turned out that once you got past the Geostigma thing the Jenova and Mako in Cloud's body made him rather long lived. But, when the day finally came that Cloud was back with him, it was not what Zack expected. Within moments of his death the lifestream gave Cloud a wondrous gift… it let him be reborn. And so it was, again and again for so very many years.
All he could ever do was watch at that point. Watch and wait and hope for the best. Sometimes it drove him crazy, it really did. He watched Cloud go through so many lives, always somehow dragged into being a hero yet again. Wars and chaos and death and despair, over and over and over. All Zack could do was watch as, with each life, Cloud seemed to grow emptier and emptier. He watched the joy of life, the purpose fade out of those beautiful blue eyes time and time again. And worst of all, Zack watched as, time and time again, he would hold Cloud in his arms the moment he returned to the lifestream only to have him ripped away moments later.
But now, right now that didn't matter. What mattered was the fact that he was alive, with the most beautiful blonde in this world and the next pressed up against him. What mattered was the second chance that had taken a thousand years for him to finally see. What mattered was that the hero was allowed to rest, and to do so in the arms of the only person who could ever, truly love him. Right now all that mattered was Cloud, laying in Zack's arms between the covers of their bed in their apartment. Memories of past lives be damned.