Chapter 21—In This Hollow Valley
For the first time in recent memory, Zack wasn't awoken by survival instinct, or the heavy sound of boots breaking into their sanctuary to rip away what little solstice they had. Instead, he was awakened by a deep, strong voice calling his name, not incessantly or worriedly, but just once. Sephiroth had never been one to do anything in excess, including call for his friends. Zack didn't need it to be repeated anyway. The moment he heard the first syllable of his name, he was awake as thoroughly as if he had never slept, and bolted to his feet. Sephiroth gave him a slightly confused look at the reaction, but for a moment, Zack couldn't respond to the silent inquiry. He wasn't about to tell the other man his dreams had been of Nibelheim and murder. Seph was already torn up enough. When he finally managed to stop feeling like a harassed rabbit, heart thrumming in a too-small chest, he forced a grin for the man frowning quizzically at him.
"Sorry, Seph!" he chirped, "Just bad dreams! Wow, I feel different today..." He did. He felt lighter, and he didn't know why. Unless he was lightheaded from the bad dream, but that didn't seem right, somehow.
"There is something you should see," Sephiroth's voice purred. There was a hint of strain beneath the smooth, blank voice, and Zack knew they were far from out of the woods, but he tilted his head to the side and smiled anyway, and this time he meant it. Sephiroth had, for that moment, sounded like himself. Like the man Zack had known at Shinra, both well-meaning and awkward. It was endearing, and any remaining sourness the dark-haired ex-soldier might have been feeling towards Sephiroth's reaction over Genesis's sword bled away. When the silver-haired man turned and walked towards the mouth of the cave, Zack didn't even have to consider whether to follow. It was an instinct as ingrained as breathing. Zack belonged at Sephiroth's side, and that was all there was to it. With a nod to himself, he carefully tried adding a bounce to his step. It felt unnatural after years of stumbling and shuffling his feet, but he liked it. It felt like freedom, even if it wasn't perfect.
The dim light from the exit to the cave managed to hurt Zack's eyes a little, but Sephiroth walked on unhindered, so Zack followed. He was starting to feel a little better with the bounce in his stride. A little more like he needed to eat an entire Nibel wolf, but other than that, there was a vast improvement. For a heart-rending moment, he suddenly feared it wasn't real, then forced the thought away. The fear was still thrumming through his veins. They weren't far enough away. The mansion was still behind them.
The fear halted when Sephiroth did, and was replaced by an intense curiosity that Zack hadn't felt in a very long time. There had been so little new, and so little of it pleasant, that he'd thought his instinctive inquisitive nature had died out with the half of him that had yet to respond to freedom. It was as much an old friend as the Buster sword, and he welcomed it with open arms, scampering up beside Sephiroth. Scampering had the same odd feeling to it that bouncing did, but Zack didn't feel like striding or slumping, and there was nothing quite like a good scamper, especially when Sephiroth was involved.
"Wow," he commented happily, "I think I'm a little delirious. Be glad you're not in my head right now, Seph, you'd be really confused!"
"Hush," Sephiroth said calmly, but not cruelly. "Look." Zack looked, and the breath stilled in his lungs for a moment. What had only yesterday been the pure torture of white-on-white was transformed before him, and before he could think he was stepping forward. The snow was still ice cold, but the golden hue that lit it as though it were ablaze was instantly recognizable. Zack traced the gleam across the rolling hills his eyes could barely distinguish to the brightest point, and couldn't stop staring. Blanketing the sky in colors, the sun was rising.
He didn't realize he was on his knees until Sephiroth sank to one of his own at his side. He didn't notice he was crying until a leather-clad thumb wiped over his cheekbone to capture a tear, and most of all he didn't care that he was cold. If the sunrise never ended, it would be too soon. His eyes had forgotten what color was—how bright the world could become in an instant. He had forgotten that light could be warm on your skin, and as the sun fell in with a dusky, affectionate heat on his cheeks, Zack closed his eyes for just a moment, and fixed it in his memory. This one perfect moment of freedom, when it didn't matter that Sephiroth was overtaxing himself, or that he himself was feeling emptier on the inside than a Wutaian vase. None of that mattered, and neither did the four years of torment and pain, because there was the sun, and while Zack had been locked away, she had been rising and falling. Strangely, it didn't make him feel left out in the slightest. He found himself considering the sun like a second Buster, because the warmth on his face was too familiar and loving to have come from a stranger. The sun had waited for them, and when they were out, there she was to extend her greeting.
"I love you too," Zack told the universe at large. Sephiroth's low, rumbling chuckle was his only answer, but Zack pretended that was only because the sun had difficulties communicating verbally, much like a certain Silver General was prone to do. As the sun climbed up far enough to escape the bright colors caused by its arrival, Zack turned to his general with a faint smile.
"Everything's going to be different again, huh?" he asked softly, and Gaia he hadn't meant that to come out sounding so broken. Sephiroth only looked at him out of changed eyes for a long moment, the blisters on his neck and the faint bruised color lingering on his face no longer so out of place on him as Zack wished they were.
"Not everything," he was answered eventually. When Sephiroth stood and offered him a hand up, Zack accepted and rose carefully. It was true, he supposed, as Sephiroth let go of his hand a little faster than any normal person would have done—frankly a little faster than was polite, but it was Sephiroth. Apparently the man was absolutely right. Not everything was going to change. Just most things. Most and a half.
"Let's find something to eat and be on our way," Sephiroth suggested. "I don't count on their fear of the bridge keeping them away long."
"Uhh," said Zack with a grin, "how about the lack of a bridge, because I don't think they'll be crossing the way we did Seph." Sephiroth looked back at him as he headed back into the cave, and for just a moment the sun struck him in that way it did sometimes, where it framed his delicate features in gold and caught lovingly in his hair. Sephiroth looked like a god. Then the moment had passed, and Zack could see the shadows around his eyes and the pain in them, and knew it wasn't fair of him to consider Sephiroth godly.
"I do not wish to know," Sephiroth informed him blithely before walking back to their packs and kneeling easily before one, opening it to not so much rummage as carefully sort through the contents. Sephiroth had difficulties managing to do anything so complicatedly messy as rummage.
As ever, the nutritional bars they had been sent on with tasted like cardboard, but Zack found his eyes watering at the nostalgic taste. He even whined to Sephiroth briefly that he was going to cry at everything and Seph would tease him about being a little girl before Sephiroth had calmly replied that even little girls knew to eat what they were given without complaint. Zack had laughed so hard at the pale attempt at a joke he had forgotten what he was grousing about and had finished the sandpaper bar without thought, and found himself starting in on another. With the option there, Zack's body was reminding him that, while it could now technically survive quite a few days at a time without food, it didn't want to. Zack was more than happy to oblige, though he wished his stomach would have a long talk with his offended taste buds about beggars not being choosers.
They didn't talk about where they were going to go, or what they were going to do. In fact, they didn't talk at all. for a long while, they simply sat there together, and Zack basked in the way he could actually feel his limbs this morning. His eyes kept sneaking over to check Sephiroth, but the man's face was too closed off even for Zack to get a feel for what he was thinking. He at least didn't look like he was suffering particularly, but Zack knew from experience that Sephiroth's pain tolerance was unbelievably high. He'd seen the man skewered straight through, and had watched him blink down at the offending limb of the monster before ripping it off without a sound. He'd also heard him beg for someone to end it—end him—but Zack tried not to remember that. It was just wrong. Like, murdering puppies wrong. Four years of torture hadn't changed that.
"Alright Seph," he said cheerfully as he cracked his neck, stretching out now that he was starting to feel his energy build up once more, his limbs stiff from the heavy exercise and fierce cold, "time to strip." The stunned, horrified look on Sephiroth's face almost sent Zack into gales of laughter, but he couldn't afford for the guy to close off right now.
"Excuse me?" Sephiroth said dryly, his eyes narrowed dangerously. Zack didn't heed the unspoken warning. As far as he was concerned, the murderous look on Seph's face no longer applied to him. Best friends were exempt from death threats. He just rolled his eyes and shifted, straddling Sephiroth's legs without putting weight on them, remembering vividly the lumpy look of his skin with tubes forced into his veins. Sephiroth only stared at him coolly out of faintly confused green eyes as Zack went to work on the buckles, his fingers a little clumsy, having not quite recovered from the severe cold, but sure enough.
"Zackary," Sephiroth warned in a low voice, "I am unharmed."
"Sorry, Seph, but I don't believe you," Zack replied easily, not bothering to hide the fact. "The last time you told me that, Hojo'd tried to cut your wing off. Ooh, and the time before that, you'd been poisoned, and before that-"
"Yes," snapped Sephiroth, interrupting with a flare of green in his gaze, "I believe you have made your point." Zack grinned at him.
"Aww, Seph, you act like I've never seen you naked before."
"Just get it over with, Zackary," Sephiroth snapped, and Zack froze for a moment as he realized that Seph really didn't want this, then he sighed softly and removed his hands to stroke them through the fall of silvery hair behind his best friend.
"I'm worried, Seph," he said softly. "I thought I was gunna loose you, and I'm still fucking terrified I will." Sephiroth leaned into his hands, his eyes falling to half mast, and the anger draining from him. "Don't be mad at me for that. Please. I can't help it."
"I know," Sephiroth replied, his voice abnormally flat. Zack wondered again what Hojo had done to Sephiroth in those last ten days to make him so damaged. Up close, in the dim light, his eyes could still pick out the minuscule, healing scars where needle and thread had pierced the general's eyelids. It made the recently devoured nutrition bars threaten to re-acquaint themselves with Zack, and he turned grimly back to his task, pulling the clasps on the general's coat carefully apart. Sephiroth didn't hinder the motions, but he didn't move either, his gaze fixed on the far wall and a faint, uncomfortable scowl on his face.
Zack pulled the coat off his shoulders slowly and carefully, then tugged lightly at the turtleneck, drawing it upwards and hissing slightly in sympathy as it stuck on the points where the black leads had pumped inhuman gunk inside him. Sephiroth didn't make a sound, but his eyes tightened ever so slightly at the corners. Zack managed to get the thing off, muttering an apology as he pulled it rather unceremoniously over Sephiroth's head. The man still didn't complain, but Zack knew how much it took to make Sephiroth complain, and he'd have killed himself before hurting him that much. None the less, he winced in sympathy at the sight of the black trails that slid down Sephiroth's sides from the blisters on his chest, and the matching ones on his neck and shoulders. He made a mental note to clean those before going, and wondered if the damned 'fire and potion' trick would even work on such greavous injuries.
"Seph," he said softly, because he needed the man to respond to him, and he had learned the hard way to take what he needed rather than waiting for Sephiroth to offer. Sephiroth wasn't good at offering, but he had never objected to Zack taking a little. In keeping with his character, his eyes slid off the far wall and back to Zack, clever and sharp, but dulled, and with that strange hint of fragility in them. Zack floundered for what to say after that, his hands automatically sliding over Sephiroth's skin, ostensibly checking for wounds, but in reality trying to comfort himself with the returning warmth in the man's skin.
"Zackary," Sephiroth said after a long moment, "it is okay." Zack took a deep breath at the words, then smiled. The expression felt easier than it had in a long time. Sephiroth was no good at lying, as both of them knew, but those words had sounded really really convincing, and Zack couldn't help the feeling of glee that welled up in him. A sunrise, and a statement like that went a long way to staunching the wound in his once unbreakable pool of inner joy. He wished he could have pulled Sephiroth into a hug right then, but strong though he was, he was still fragile, and easily confused, and Zack didn't want to risk it, so he settled for placing his hand flat on Sephiroth's abs, the only place on him he was certain wouldn't hurt, and looking into those strange, cat-like eyes he'd grown so used to and so fond of.
"Right," he said softly in return, feeling the smile on his face color the word with something like his old inflection. Then his brain got away from him again and talked his mouth into adding "so where are we going to go from here?" He flinched the moment the words left his mouth, worrying that the topic might be taboo, or that it might close Sephiroth off again, but instead the slim lips of his companion slowly widened into an honest, half-smug smile.
"Midgar," Sephiroth said calmly before falling silent once more, his eyes lighting from within for just a moment before falling into the dull glaze of captivity once more. Zack gaped at him, then shook his head slowly, and fought off the laugh he felt bubbling in his chest. It would have been a worryingly crazed sound.
"Midgar, huh? Y'know, Seph, I think that sounds pretty damn good." He replied, thinking that even if Sephiroth had suggested the bottom of the sea it would have sounded better, but knowing full well he would follow wherever his general led, come hell, high water or Shinra, though he'd take hell or high water before Shinra any day. Hell, he'd take both before Shinra. He left it at that, though, and fetched the bag of medical supplies and got Sephiroth's upper half clean of stigma, trying to get a hand on how serious Seph's injuries were.
One conclusion was quite easy to draw-Sephiroth was a wreck. He was an utter wreck. His normally perfect skin was a cracked and dry imitation of its usual marble glory. The oozing blisters on his flesh hadn't healed in the slightest since the day before, despite Sephiroth's striking healing powers, and Zack knew that had to be because Sephiroth was pushing himself too hard. And that was truly startling, based on the huge amount that both of them had slept since escaping. If even this was over-taxation for the man, Zack worried about how, exactly, they were going to go on from here. It wasn't worth dwelling on, though. They'd come this far, and so, he reassured himself, there was no possible way they would fall now, when they were so close. Except he knew that wasn't quite true either.
"You are brooding," Sephiroth rumbled. Zack could feel the chest under his hands vibrate with the low voice, and it brought a smile to his face.
"I've got a lot to brood about," He teased back, though he was unsure if Sephiroth had been teasing in the first place. The older man gave a little grunt that might have been agreement, but sounded more like an acknowledgment he'd heard the words coming out of Zack's mouth.
"When you are finished," the general said with a calm, firm note in his voice, "it is time to go. we must not become too complacent." Laughter struck hollowly against the walls of the cave, echoing half-bitter chuckles back into the darkness where they had found Rapier.
"I'm good to go, Seph," Zack said, eager to cover the sound of his own abrupt amusement, disturbed by how false it sounded. "Let's go home." That sounded false too. Shinra wasn't home anymore. Nowhere was, Zack was sure, for the two of them. In the pit of his stomach and the marrow of his bones, he knew that no matter where he tried to come home, all he would remember was a white room.
When they stepped out into the snow again, it was with an added burden for them both, Sephiroth shouldering the supplies Zack had carried for so long the previous day-days?-he had forgotten. Zack, in return, shouldered the burden of his most hated enemy. Rapier lay heavy in the the sling they had fashioned for it at Zack's hip, strapped over one of his shoulders, but carefully restrained. It was as dead as its owner, as far as Zack was concerned. A dead weight he didn't need slowing him down. But it was strapped by the hilt-never meant to be drawn again-and the strap didn't encumber his own sword arm, so when the time had come to leave, he hadn't tried to get Sephiroth to leave it behind. After all, as he trudged his way through the snow, listening to Sephiroth's heavy steps behind him, and squinting against the sun he had only an hour ago found so beautiful, he knew they had both already lost too much.