Dreamer

A/N: Holy smokes, the fic lives. I always feel guilty leaving old fics unfinished, so I felt obligated to continue. Not to say that I didn't enjoy writing it. (For anyone that reads my other stuff, I plan to work on Ambition as well!) I have to thank my friend Katie for being my beta. The length got cut a little shorter than the second chapter, but it had to end at the proper part. Anyways, other than that, just enjoy!

3: Discovery

It had been two weeks since he had left. Zack figured the best way to go about locating his old friend was to go everywhere—and he meant everywhere. His journey proved to be slow and boring as he visited every town he could think of (even the smaller ones that didn't even merit a dot and label on a regular map).

He started at Kalm, moved to the Chocobo ranch, across the marsh and through the cave, investigating every part of every town, looking for hidden, secret areas that a person could go and stay without being bothered. Those are the types of places Cloud would be. Every last person was questioned as well, but not a single one had seen Cloud Strife.

"Are you okay?"

The jarring voice caused him to jump up slightly from the wooden table he was seated at before he settled back down, rubbing at his mug of Coke and regarding the man who had questioned him carefully. The man in question looked old and withered, weighed down by the burdens the world had laid upon him.

Zack had heard some news about Fort Condor, their constant struggles against Shin-Ra—and I used to worship the company as if it could do no wrong, when it seems that was the only thing it was actually capable of—and felt a bit of pity for the man.

"Yeah, I'm all right," he mumbled in something that was almost monotone as he scratched the back of his neck and then took a few sips of his drink.

"You said you were his friend, right?" the old man wheezed, settling himself across from Zack and regarding him with wrinkled eyes surrounded by crow's feet.

Zack gave a slight nod, lowering his head to examine the pattern on the table. "Yeah, from a long time ago, before… all of this happened." He still wasn't quite over the fact that Cloud, the scared little Private, was now savior of the entire Planet. He'd definitely have to tease him about that once he found him. (And he would find him.)

"Well, son, I think I speak on behalf of everyone when I say that I hope you find him. We were never able to give him proper thanks for all he did for us." The man almost looked guilty, eyes somewhat far-off, and Zack knew he was remembering the little time he had spent with Cloud Strife.

He seems to do that to people… when they start thinking of him, they get this look in their eyes…

"Nah, don't say that," he said with a small smirk. "The last thing Cloud wants is a ton of people thanking him. He'd just think he didn't deserve it." He stood up, downing the last bits of the glass and then setting it down. "Well, I hope I find him, too. I really do." He walked off before the other could answer, intending to make good use of the bed they were providing him (for free, no less!).

The next morning set him on the road again, blazing across grassy fields on his motorcycle and avoiding whatever random monster might decide it was a good idea to try and pick on him. Luckily, it seemed the semi-reformed Shin-Ra government ('semi-reformed' because Zack knew better than anyone that Shin-Ra couldn't exist without some level of corruption) was doing something constructive with its military by having them keep the monster level under control.

After working his way through Junon, which involved glares from the under townsfolk who thought he looked too much like a SOLDIER for this own good (which he did) and some higher Shin-Ra class giving him a rough time, he managed to scour the entire place, knowing it well enough from his own Shin-Ra days, and determined that Cloud was most certainly absent from the entire city.

His doctrine in this little expedition of his was to keep moving forward until he found or heard something, so the logical next step was to take a ship ride to the western continent and Costa Del Sol. It seemed like a good deal to him—he was a fan of that sunny paradise and the beautiful people it seemed to have an abundance of. Luckily, he did not get motion sickness as his friend did, so the ride over wouldn't be a nightmare, either.

After paying his fare and getting situated on the ship (getting them to get his motorcycle on board was a bit of a drama), he killed time by wandering around for some time, conversing with the other passengers, and then catching up on sleep. Long distance traveling would tire out just about anyone and he wanted to be well-rested so he wouldn't have to make too many long stops at towns along the way. A loud whistle bellowing from the ship was the only thing to wake him up as they docked.

Rolling out of the hammock he'd chosen for a bed, he yawned, gathered his things (stuffed into a small shoulder-bag for the tits and tats he'd deemed necessary for the journey), went through a similar drama to get his motorcycle off the damn ship, and then found himself in the infamous vacation city.

After locking up his bike somewhere safe, he took to exploring the city and made sure to reserve a room at the inn since he knew it would be idealistic to think he'd be done searching quickly enough that he could leave the town the same day. (He also figured if there was any good place to hang around in, this was the one.)

His searching took him to the deepest crevices of every town he passed through and this one was no exception. He looked through back alleys and asked around the town about any hideaways in the area that wouldn't be obvious to someone not familiar with the city. This, of course, meant he ended up in the shadiest parts and underbellies of every town he visited, which was bound to get him into trouble at some point. It just happened that this was his first encounter with such trouble.

While working his way down one of the grittiest back alleys in the place, with all of its questionable substances littering the ground that had long ago lost the yellow sun-kissed color that most of the other roads in Costa del Sol sported, he was jumped.

'Jumped' meaning that someone snuck up on him from behind and pounced at him in order to do what he would assume could be a multitude of things. Going by the most probable reasons, it was either some desperate slime of a person that hadn't gotten sex in far too long or someone hoping to filch some Gil or valuables. If he was lucky, it would be the latter. Life certainly wasn't good when one had to pick between being sexually assaulted and being robbed.

Luckily for him, he had some ingrained SOLDIER instincts that had been rammed into his head far too often by his old combat instructor years ago, meaning that he knew how to react to something like this. The first thing he did was grab the closest body part of the perpetrator, which happened to be his or her shoulder (he wasn't aware of their gender yet). Using his good grip on said shoulder, he wrenched his arm forward to swing the stranger around and to the floor in front of him before any harm could be done to him.

Praising himself for not getting rusty and clapping his hands together to clean them off of whatever scum had tried to get the best of him, he eventually took a look at the person he had thrown onto the dirty ground.

A girl. Interesting. She was short, too. Not really his type (nor did she look very scummy), but he had to feel sort of egotistical about the fact that he had been jumped by a female. He couldn't help the smirk that took over his facial features. He scratched his chin as he watched her angrily yank herself to her feet.

"Dammit! I always have to pick the ones that fight back," she complained.

He raised an eyebrow. "Um…"

"Do you even have any Materia?" Without warning, she paced over to him and began searching him rather shamelessly.

He gently pushed her away. "I appreciate the invasion of privacy, but I can't say I have any Materia on me. Sorry to disappoint you." He winked.

She responded with an exaggerated huff, crossing her arms over a green sleeveless top. She looked like she was about to say something insulting, until she took a closer look and leaned forward and stood on her tip-toes, squinting to get a proper look at his face.

"What is it?" he asked.

"You—who are you?"

He raised an eyebrow. He wasn't quite sure why she was suddenly interested in him, but he didn't see her as any sort of threat and therefore had no qualms about answering her question. "Name's Zack, though I don't think that's telling you much."

She startled. "I thought so!"

He canted his head to the side, not sure what to say.

The girl deflated a little after that. "But you're supposed to be dead."

His eyes widened. This wasn't just some random stranger. He took a step towards her, grabbing her wrist firmly but not painfully. He jerked her forward slightly, staring into her eyes seriously. "Who are you?" he barked, almost sounding accusatory.

She wrenched her wrist away and brushed herself off. "Yuffie Kisaragi," she boasted.

"A member of AVALANCHE," he stated. "You traveled with Cloud."

She pressed hard into his chest with one knowing finger. "And you're his best friend who he was nuts enough to think he was."

"But I'm supposed to be dead," he mimicked with a small smirk. "Well, I'm not."

Yuffie grumbled. He was being vague and she didn't have the patience for it. "How about an explanation? Otherwise I might have to dub you a ghost and practice some ancient Wutaian magic to send you to the other plain," she warned him.

"To be brief, I didn't die. I was found by some people, but I was in a coma. I just recently snapped out of it and now I'm searching for—guess who?" He smirked. Guessing games were always fun and he was enjoying lightly annoying her.

"Cloud." It wasn't like that was hard to figure out. She took a quick look around. "Well, let's get out of this alley and find somewhere else to talk, okay?" Without waiting for his affirmative, she started off into the expanse of the town and headed for the bar.

Zack had no choice but to follow, though he wasn't sure what the girl was thinking going into a bar. He didn't think she could have been over the legal drinking age and he vaguely remembered Tifa telling him that she had been the youngest of the group when she had been telling him about all of AVALANCHE. It didn't matter too much where they spoke, though, so long as they had at least a short discussion. It was true that he was short on time, but he had been lucky enough to run into her (or almost get mugged by her, same difference) and he was going to milk the opportunity.

He stepped into the bar that she had entered quite a while before him, overwhelmed by the sudden shift of temperature, from a sizzling heat to an air conditioned room. However, there was also the heavy set scent of too much alcohol, tinged with a bit of vomit that he suspected was coming from one of the corners, and the placed radiated with the aura of bad feelings. He glanced around, caught a few probing mean glances by accident, and kept his face to the floor after that. It wasn't like he hadn't been in places like this before—after all, this was where you went when you wanted a good lay (though there weren't too many attractive people in this particular place, other than the serving girl)—but that didn't mean that he didn't get jittery when in some of the grittier places.

Eventually he got to the table where the ninja girl had situated herself. She was sprawled in her chair comfortably, but her shuriken was resting right next to her—this place didn't have any rules against weapon possession; after all, a person needed some form of self defense—and her eyes darted across the room from time to time, searching for trouble. Despite her age (which Zack had been spending some time trying to guess), she was experienced—he supposed that was understandable, considering she had been one of the few that had assisted in the world's rescue mission.

Stretching and taking one last look over his shoulder, he sat down across from her, doing his best to be at ease. He leaned forward a little, speaking in the low tone everyone used in a place like this. No one wanted to be overheard, even though most of the customers were too shit-faced to take any notice. "Why here?" he hissed.

She shrugged. "Where else? We'd have to pay for a room at the inn, and the beach is too out in the open for this kind of talk."

Oh, that explained it. She didn't want to spend any money. What a classic thief. He rolled his eyes, but let it go. It was a moot point since he'd bought out a room already, but he let it slide because she was right about one thing—they didn't want anyone in the surrounding area knowing about their topic of discussion, and this was the best place to be discreet, even with its inhospitable nature. "All right, all right," he grumbled, waving her off. He wanted the information, and she was the one with the answers, so it had to be under her terms.

"Do you know where he might be?"

She smiled a little, but it was a cynical one—almost a smirk. "Are you serious? No one has a clue where that nutcase went off to, not even Tifa."

"I ran into Tifa, actually." It was about time he mentioned that. "She was the first person I met after… waking up." It was still weird to talk about that; all of this was still weird, for that matter.

She placed one elbow on the table, arched her palm flat up, and rested her chin on it. "I see. Did she send you on this wild goose chase, then?"

He shook his head. "No, actually. I did this because I wanted to. She tried to stop me at first, saying there was no chance I'd find him."

She nodded and then shifted to lean back in her chair. The girl obviously couldn't sit still. Zack was just glad he hadn't known her when she was younger; she probably would have been even more fidgety and hyper then. The way Tifa had mentioned her, he got the feeling that was pretty accurate. "She's probably right, you know."

"I don't think so." He didn't entirely appreciate every single person giving him such a pessimistic response. He realized that these people had been searching for him for far too long without coming up with anything, but the fact was…

"I think I'll be the one person that can figure out where he went."

Yuffie looked rather skeptical. "And why's that?"

He smiled calmly. "I'm his best friend. I know things about him that no one else knows."

She twisted her mouth childishly. "How about Tifa? She was his childhood friend."

It was mean, but he said it anyway: "She doesn't know him as well as she thinks she does."

She looked a little bristled, as if she had personally been offended by the comment. "Are you sure you have the authority to say something like that? They were always close, in a strange sort of way, and it's so obvious how much she cares…"

"I'm his best friend," he reiterated. "She didn't care about him when they were younger. Hell, they barely knew each other. I supported that kid from the first time I met him—and if it wasn't for me…" He stopped himself. He was getting carried away and the girl hadn't meant any harm. She only spoke from what she had seen and observed, which wasn't the whole picture. He sighed deeply. "Look, it's just…" He paused, staring off for a second. "Is there any way you could help me out?"

A little shocked by his mild outburst, Yuffie did her best to recover. The only reason she didn't snap back at him was because she realized his sincerity. "I don't think there's much I can do, but…" She trailed off, wracking her brain. "Well, the only think I might be able to do is let you know where the rest of the living"—she paused with a wince after that word—"AVALANCHE members are. That way you can find them and see if they have anything to say."

It seemed to be an interesting proposal. "Hmm," he mused. "Is there any chance they might know more than you?"

"It's possible. We don't see each other too often anymore, so one of them might have caught wind of something I didn't. It's worth a try, right? It's not like you have any other leads…"

"No, I really don't. All right then, that sounds like a plan." He gave her a genuine smile. "Thanks for your help."

"Just promise me one thing," she said with her token devious grin.

"What's that?"

"If you do find that idiot Chocobo-head, drag him my way so I can slap some sense into him." Her grin grew wider.

He barked laughter. "All right, that's fair."

"Just disappearing on us like that…" She heaved a sigh. "Honestly."

"Sometimes, I think he doesn't realize how much people worry about him. He has no sense of what other people think of him." He glanced over, dragged away from the reality of a conversation as he thought over his conjecture.

"Anyways," Yuffie concluded, suddenly standing from her seat and grabbing hold of her shuriken. "This is going to require a pen and paper. There are a lot of people you have to know about and a lot of towns they might be in, and I doubt you'll remember them all."

"I wouldn't trust my memory, either." Not with something this important, anyways. "To the inn, then?"

She growled. "Unfortunately." She trudged away from the table on her way to the door.

He gave her a friendly pat on the back. "No worries, I already have a room."

She shot daggers at him. "Why didn't you say that before?"

He shrugged and she refrained from hitting him.

A few minutes later found the strange pair in the empty room. Zack was taking the chance to lay on the bed, arms resting behind his head. Yuffie was situated at the table, where she had discovered a convenient pad of paper and a pen. She was busy scrawling on it and the SOLDIER started to rest his eyes.

"Don't fall asleep," she ordered without even looking up.

He blinked, creaking one eye open. She had good senses, though he supposed he should have expected that, since she claimed to be some sort of ninja. Those Wutaians had strange customs—that was for sure. He was suddenly reminded of how he had murdered quite a few of them in the Great War and quickly made sure not to mention it. He felt sort of guilty, but he didn't want her to hate him for doing something he'd been mostly forced into. All the SOLDIERs had been drafted to go, so he hadn't had much choice. It was better left unmentioned.

"There!" she announced, seeming rather proud of herself as she stood. She extended the paper away from her at arm's length and examined it for any possible mistakes, and once she deemed it acceptable, walked over to the bed and flung it at him.

He picked it up from where it had landed on the bed sheets and glanced it over carefully.

"Barret Wallace, Cid Highwind, Red XIII… hmm…" Now these names were starting to sound familiar. He attempted to equate Tifa's brief descriptions with the names, but not all of them were fitting together properly. It didn't matter too much, since he'd eventually be meeting all of them, anyways, and he knew all of the towns that they were apparently residing in.

"That's us, a group of ragtag heroes," she said with a sigh. "Some of them are pretty annoying, so be prepared."

He smiled knowingly. "Isn't that a somewhat biased opinion?"

She returned the smile. "Maybe."

"In any case, thanks a lot." He scratched the back of his head.

"No problem. I've gotta run now, though. I've got people to take advantage of." She winked, earned a laugh from Zack, and then skipped out of the room.

The next day brought about a sun that was far too bright (penetrating the window of Zack's temporary room and waking him up far too early) and far too hot, which was something he realized once he dragged himself out of bed, got dressed and washed up, and headed outside.

It couldn't be too far into the day and yet the ground was already hot enough that an egg could be boiled on his surface. Costa del Sol may have been a great place to find someone cute to fancy, but the weather got a little too extreme for him at times. It got hot in Gongaga sometimes, but not this hot.

After relocating his motorcycle and achieving his bearings, he mounted the vehicle (refraining from putting on the helmet in a streak of rebellious action) and dragged the note out of his pocket.

All right, where to first? His mind quickly calculated the closest location—after traveling the world while in SOLDIER, it wasn't that hard for him to figure out. Looks like its Corel, where I'll run into some Barret Wallace.

He knew that this was something of a hopeless mission in many aspects; he knew that there was a good chance that he might come back empty-handed, as much as he tried to reject the idea; he knew that walking around talking to Cloud's old buddies might get him nowhere.

Still, he had to try, didn't he?

He was alive, he existed, and what else could he spend his time doing?

It was something necessary somehow. He didn't feel like he had to explain it to himself or anyone else.

He freed the bike's kickstand and started it up. Regardless of any discouraging thoughts, a nice long ride would be more than enough to cheer him up.

Grinning, he drove off into more green plain.