Disclaimer: I don't own, not making any money, you won't get much if you
sue me. Nothing actually, so don't bother.
/.../ - italics //...// - thoughts *...* - mind speech/telepathy "..." - speech (duh) ----------------- - Scene change, flashback, dreaming (it's a multi- purpose stream of dashes)
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Xehorista Tora
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"And today is tomorrow, and tomorrow today, and yesterday is weaving in and out."
- Cake, "Comfort Eagle"
------------------
"It's complicated."
That, Sephiroth decided, had to be one of the understatements of the year. The other Zack seemed ill at ease; however, and unlikely to disclose anything more specific unless it was dragged out of him.
"No, really?"
Glancing back, Sephiroth saw that Zackery - his Zack - was leaning against the wall of the cell, glaring at his double. Suspicion and distrust marked his face. Sephiroth wasn't sure if he believed this other, but somehow he didn't think so.
But there was always the possibility: a situation so bizarre that it couldn't be anything but real. This Zackery was indistinguishable from his Zack and yet wasn't. There were little clues, soft movements and shifts of weight that spoke of greater training and hardship. Hardship that came from age.
And his eyes were the same dark, dark gray, but cloudy, as the sky before a storm. Sephiroth did not recognize them.
The other ran his hand through his hair, and the movement, so familiar, resounded through Sephiroth. It was adding up, it was all adding up.
//And where am I? /If/ this /is/ the future and Zack is here, then where am I? Am I still here.did I.?//
Sephiroth refused to finish that thought. There was a logical reason, one that was solid and true and real, and he would find it.
"Things are.different.now..Things have happened.lots of things."
Hesitant, Zack had never been hesitant, never lingered so long in speech, never spoken words with such pain behind them, pain so badly hidden. The feelings in his voice brought both men up short, cut off any reply they might have had.
Zack sighed, a sound far longer and wearier than it should have been.
"Look, there are things I can't fully explain.things.that may not be safe for you to hear.because, well, because I'm afraid of what would happen if you did."
They words came out in a rush and Sephiroth knew that they were directed at him. Opening his mouth to comment, he shut it again when the cell door opened and the blond man entered.
There were other people who entered the cell with the blond man, two Turks, who he immediately realized with more than a little dread, were Rude and Reno, older but still the same - Reno would never dress properly, no matter how old he became. Their being here did nothing but validate the other Zack's explanation. He thought he saw a hint of color and shape, but whoever that was was waiting outside.
Sephiroth remembered the blond at once - the short stance but tall nature, the almost swagger that came from a great deal of authority and responsibility. He wore the same uniform, although a clean one. The uniform itself was a puzzle, like the SOLDIER uniform but altered so only a ghost of the original remained. The blond hair was out of the ponytail now, rising into its natural state.
.of spikes?
Small pieces were fitting together, and he didn't want them to fit. Distantly, somewhere, he knew that if the information that was collecting in his mind coalesced, it would make everything that the other Zack said true, beyond any doubt. This would be the logical situation, this would be real.
And then.then he really would be eons away from home in a harsh reality that might become his own.
But how could he say no to the grace in the way the blond walked, the potential they had always known was there given flesh? How could he deny the blue eyes - so bright, so different but still the same?
He couldn't deny or accept it. Standing there, he could only stare in mute and absolute shock as the blue eyes, burning from mako and harsh memories, watched him with understanding.
"I think Sephiroth's figured it out, Zack." When he wasn't commanding anyone, the man's voice was surprising soft and low, a gentle register somewhere around bass.
Both Zacks stared at the man, but the other, the older Zack with the tired eyes, answered.
"I guess he has. Thought he would."
Reno and Rude, perpetually wary as all Turks, although since it was directed at him, it was all the more pronounced, shifted slightly. Looking over the group, Reno sighed, his manner now as it was then: brash and without care, although not careless.
"Well, it's less to explain, anyway. I don't think you'll need us anymore, now that they know.but we'll be around anyway, in case...well, you know. Just in case of situations that may require our attention."
No one commented on the lack of tact and the man - /Cloud? / - waved to them slightly, a motion of dismissal -
//Dismissal? Because if he's dismissing them and they're listening to him and what has happened here? How has /everything/ changed? //
- and the Turks left, as he /ordered/, an order so simple, so natural to the man that he thought nothing of it. His attention never shifted from Sephiroth.
The Cloud that he remembered was a shadow in a crowd, quiet and timid. It had taken the Cloud he knew months before he opened up to Zack and him. There was none of the Cloud he knew in the strong and silent man before him, and he wondered what could have happened to change the boy from before so much: there was more than the passage of years at work here.
It took something hard and harsh to leave an edge that raw in someone's eyes, and there was one way to find out what it was.
"So you're Cloud." It was not a question, and Zackery jerked his head up to have his own thoughts confirmed.
The man shrugged once, a movement that echoed something Zack often did.
"Yes."
His voice was cold and controlled, without anything that resembled emotion, save those that slunk along the edges of everyone's thoughts and words, the darker feelings no one could completely suppress.
Fear was one. Shame was another. Sephiroth wondered how Cloud could be ashamed of his name. His name was everything that he was, and the Cloud he knew wouldn't be ashamed of it.
And then Sephiroth stopped wondering.
//His eyes glow. So he's a SOLDIER - that can change someone. You're more than a SOLDIER, and look how it changed you. Didn't you hate yourself, sometimes? Didn't you utter your name to yourself in the dark corners of a room when no one would hear? There was more than shame when you spoke it. //
There'd been self-hate and terror in his voice, in those words he'd spoken in the dark, when he was younger, before he learned to hold it in. Before he'd learned to hold everything in.
"So you did get into SOLDIER, after all." At least there was some happiness to be had at that thought.
"No." It was barely audible, a single word that tried its best to slip undetected past everyone's hearing.
"No.I never made it into SOLDIER." The bright eyes closed once, briefly, as if afraid of being accused of lying when telling the truth.
"Then how is what you did possible? How is any of this possible then? If you weren't in SOLDIER, then nothing you did was possible and don't think that we can't see the glow in your eyes, Spi-Cloud." Near hysteria in Zackery's voice, the situation telling on him, one who usually kept his emotions controlled.
Was it a trick of the light, or did Zack move nearer to Cloud as he spoke in response? Sephiroth almost smiled at an act so familiar.
//Protective, even now.//
"There are other ways to receive the.modifications.that a member of the SOLDIER program would have." The words were ground out, like rock crashing onto rock.
"Other ways...?"
"Hojo." Cloud flinched at the name, and Sephiroth barely suppressed one. If that was true, then.
//Hojo always hated them. Always hated Zack and always hated Cloud, although he thought him below his notice. But if he got a hold of either of them.//
If he ever did, the result would be the thing of nightmares.
"How did he manage to do that? I doubt Shinra would authorize it, even considering the idiocy of the upper levels of management as a whole."
"Oh you'd be surprised what idiocy can fail to notice." Zack was calm, but there was something under his voice, a tension that suggested that the memory was anything but. "Especially considering the state of things at that point in time."
The other Zackery, his Zack, pushed himself off from the wall he had been leaning against. " 'The state of things at that point in time?' You'll want to explain that little comment. About now."
"Yeah, Zack, and thank you for being an idiot."
"Anytim - wait a minute, Spike. How am I an idiot? You were going to tell them anyway. You had to."
Cloud sighed again, as if the entire situation was taxing beyond belief. "Yes, but I intended to do it with a bit more tact than a Turk, Zack."
"I am ashamed and affronted that you would compare me to a Turk. I mean, SOLDIER, first class, right here. Where in that package do you see Turk?"
"Zack." Obviously on the verge of attempting to strangle Zack, his name was all that Cloud was able to get out.
"Yes, Spike?"
"Just.nevermind...just forget it."
"You honestly think this is fooling us?" Zackery was staring at them with no small amount of exasperation. "Even if you're not me and all the evidence is false, you're still a damn good fake and /I/ pull this shit far too much to be fooled by it. I think you should stop this and just tell us."
Something dark flitted in and out of Zack's eyes, as all humor disappeared from them as if it had never been. "You don't know what you're asking."
"Yes, I do. I'm asking for the truth without all this bullshit." Zackery gestured slightly with an open hand before running it through his bangs. "I'm asking for you to tell us exactly what happened to put the glow in Cloud's eyes and the pain if the both of yours."
"It's been almost ten years since then. Ten years can do that."
"So can two days, if enough happens. I went through the - /we/ went through the Wutai War, or don't you remember? Have you forgotten what two days can do?"
There were memories there, black and twisted. They were the memories that Zack had woken up to screaming, during the long dark nights in Hojo's keeping. "No. I haven't forgotten that."
"Enough of this." Cloud lifted his head to stare down Sephiroth. "I'll tell you what happened then, if you really want to know." If Zack's small movement was one intended to stop him, he did not pay attention.
"Here's the short edition. You went mad, burned down Nibelheim, and tried to kill the both of us. You failed, and I managed to kill you. Hojo.Hojo took us both 'under his wing' after that."
The words hit Sephiroth with great force, a feeling that lodged in the pit of his stomach. He could call it kin to something he'd felt the first time he'd killed: saw the blood on the Masamune blade and felt that icy denial settle, as slow and irrevocable as the decay of a corpse, into his young body.
That same denial rang through him now: this words, this future, everything that Cloud was telling him - it couldn't be true. He wouldn't have done that, he wouldn't have betrayed the only people who ever truly cared about him - the only people he'd ever truly cared about.
But the memory of the whispers in his mind in the quiet hours of the night called him a liar. The feelings of shame and pain, because he was different and there was nothing good about it.
Being unique, being "special," was a fate worse than anything else he could imagine.
"I wouldn't do that." Self-preservation insisted he say nothing less.
"Would you like to see the scar?" Strife's eyes held his and behind the blue roared the echoes of a distant flame. "I still have mine, although Zack's probably lost his. It doesn't fade, you know, despite everything else. I always wondered if it was a quality of the Masamune, to leave wounds that deep."
At this Sephiroth could summon no answer and slipped free of Strife's cold and clear blue gaze. He'd always admired Cloud's eyes, so clam and soulful, untainted by the dirt and dust Midgar left on someone's soul. He wasn't sure if it was the memories or the mako that lent Strife's eyes their hardness - a beauty still present, but akin to a forged sword in that it could cut with the lightest touch.
Looking at the man before him again, Sephiroth wondered if a rough decade would change the Cloud he knew so much.
"So you hate me then." The words surprised him, for he did not intend for them to come out.
There must have been something terribly interesting on the floor, for Cloud refused to lift his gaze from it.
"Of course not. /You/ haven't done anything."
It had been easy to forget, amidst the shock and semblances of self- loathing, that this was future and the events had not yet transpired.
"You.you're the same person from before.before you changed. You haven't done anything."
And in the slight and stuttering words Sephiroth saw the boy he had known, yesterday and all those years ago.
"I didn't want to tell you at all.but we can hardly keep you two a secret. And the others won't be as.considerate. It's better.that you hear it from us, than from them."
Reading Cloud was like reading a mix of Zack and himself with shadows of the boy he had known. He figured that he could replace "considerate" with "suppressing their undying hatred" and be closer to the truth.
//All those years.and that still hasn't changed. Still that fear, the wary whites of their eyes as they keep you in sight.This time though, you deserve it, don't you?//
Cloud swallowed once, and continued. "After that.Zack and I were taken by Hojo, which is where I got the SOLDIER.enhancements.We broke out, Zack broke us out and he.he died."
----
It's begun to rain.
It happened so quickly, everything coming together and falling apart. Zack had seen them first, although the young man wasn't in much of a position to see anything then. Everything was white noise, and it took the bullet shots and the faint whispers of pain to penetrate that noise.
The blood touched his side as he lay on the ground and the first thought he had was that the ground must be raining too. It seemed unfair that the water hit him from both sides like that, but the young man had long since stopped believing in the fairness of the world.
"Spike."
That name.that name belonged somewhere other than here, to someone else a boy with a shy smile that walked sunlight hallways that are nothing but ashes now.
But the man moans again, and the pain in the voice is impossible to deny. It's something so familiar, and not just the pain, but the voice itself. He knows this voice. He knows he knows this voice, or he did, as well as he knows his own.
//Za.ck..Zack.Zack.//
Strong arms, strong voice, black hair and kind eyes.
//Zackery. Zack. I remember you. Zack. Remember you, Zack. Remember.//
Rain isn't red. So, the liquid touching him can't be rain, and its volume increases as he crawls towards the person.
//Zack? Are you there Zack, I'm scared, I'm so scared, Zack.//
The man is still alive, despite the numerous shot wounds. Still alive, though barely breathing, suffocating in the rain. He looks like he's drowning. Even dying, he clutches a sword; a massive strip of metal that the rain hits and runs down, washing it clean of the same red water that came from the man.
//The Buster sword. And you're bleeding Zack.you're bleeding so much.//
The sword is familiar somehow.it's a weapon that strikes something in his memory, some distant echo. He looks, and sees the city stretched below him, a city with a name: Midgar. A tower, stretching into the sky in the middle of the city.
And below him, on the earth, the man is dying, the water winning the battle as he stops struggling for breath, using his last moment to stare at him, unable to speak. There's emotion in his eyes, so much and so familiar and so sad.
//Zack.no, Zack, don't go, don't go, don't go! Zack. Zack! ZACK!//
Suddenly he felt seized by a strange and terrible grief, something so strong that it made tears spring to his eyes as he raised his hands to the pouring sky and screamed in pure disbelief. There was no logic behind it, no reason behind the ache in his heart and the raw burning in his eyes.
It was raining when it begun, and it's still raining when it ends, the feeling disappearing as if it never had been. He can remember now, some things, not the name of the man before him, although he feels that he should -
//Zackery! Zack, first class SOLDIER, your friend! Remember him! Why won't you remember?!//
But the uniform, the uniform looks familiar, as does the sword. It's the uniform of a first class SOLDIER, and he's wearing the same one. He remembers SOLDIER, remembers training, remembers words of praise.was he good?
He must have been good, to be alive when this person isn't, to survive when others died.
//Zack saved you! Don't forget him, please! //
There's a name that goes with all this, a name that belongs to him and belongs to the clouds in the sky.
"Cloud."
But the city below is calling him, and it's stronger than the call of the sky. Hoisting the sword onto his back, he answers it.
"I am Cloud."
----
"After that.you came back once, with Jenova and still mad and I.defeated you."
Defeated is a peculiar word. The sound of it invokes the memory of old, dusty books that he would read when no one was watching. Enemies rose up in those books, great and terrible, and heroes defeated them, and the masses rejoiced and all was well.
When he was younger, he'd wondered what it would be like to be a hero in those books. He'd never imagined he'd end up being the villain.
----
The Omnislash is a complicated series of movements pulled off in quick succession, to leave the opponent no chance to defend themselves between movements. It requires great strength to manipulate the sword that way, to keep the strikes small enough so that the appropriate speed can be maintained. Without that vital speed, the entire attack would fall apart.
Cloud remembers Zack telling him those words, remembers the way the light shone on the wood of the training hall, polished after so many years and so many careful footsteps. Zack tells him speed is essential, but the movements he makes are slow, and he makes Cloud follow them, his arms trembling slightly with the weight of the practice sword as he holds one long, horizontal strike.
And then Zack performs the movement, swifter than before but still not fast enough, not fast enough for the movements to blur and the sword to leave a glowing trail of blood and silver in its wake.
The memory is bright in his mind, and despite the fact that Cloud knows that the Omnislash is blindingly fast, the strikes echo out into eternity and each moment takes a lifetime.
And he's not holding the strikes out, not supporting the weight like that one time before when everything was so much younger, but his arms tremble all the same. It's not from fatigue, but from the weariness that comes before grief.
The lifestream here looks like the stars in the sky of Nibelheim, where there were no lights and no fire to obscure there glow over the mountains. It's more beautiful than he can find the words to describe, if such words even exist, and it's fitting that it's this beautiful.
It's fitting that Sephiroth die in a place as beautiful as he is.
And he is beautiful, so gorgeous it hurts to look, even with the lines of blood growing against that once perfect skin, every mark a blasphemy, a darkness against Cloud and he knows that after this, he can never go home.
With each strike things are changing and twisting, and when it's over even the stars will have shifted and he won't be able to find his way.
Zack.and Seph.they were guiding points, his own compass, and soon they'll both be gone.
It is over then, so suddenly that Cloud cannot remember when it begun as the cold certainty settles on his mind. The Ultima Weapon is returned to his back, reflex saving him as the blood begins to collect and Sephiroth looks at him, shock widening emerald eyes.
He's not sane, and he's still not himself, but there's the faintest shimmer of what was and even that's still enough to make the tears come.
And the stars are falling into Sephiroth, and Sephiroth's falling into the stars and the lifestream is coming to claim them both. It's so beautiful and despite the fact that now they're both dead now and /everything/ is dead now, Cloud knows he's crying from the beauty of it as much as from the sorrow.
Because he's alone and the memory of someone who was to the last moment so beautiful is as much a burden as a blessing.
----
"There wasn't much, for a few months. Then, Shinra, while researching.something, new methods of power refinement, I think, uncovered something in the Lifestream that was.unnatural. Hojo and Jenova struck soon after."
The next words exist in that realm of voice that is above a whisper but not true speech.
"And they.the scientists at Shinra.they brought both of you back."
----
Cloud had asked to be present when they were revived.
Asked was a polite way of saying he demanded to be present, and even that was a polite way of saying that he nearly threatened bodily harm if he was not allowed to be present.
The lab here was far too much like other labs, in other places that sprang to life when he closed his eyes. He knew that Zack would remember them too, and he didn't want Zack to be afraid. That was the reason he gave them, even though they feared what the reaction from the newly resurrected would be.
And the reason he gave them was true, even if it wasn't all the truth. He wanted to be there because he wanted to see Zack open his eyes. He wanted to see Zack alive.wanted to see them both alive.
After all he had done, for everyone; he thought he deserved at least that.
Even so, it was hard to be in the lab, hard to stand the memories it brought. He had never been happier for Doctor Tabitha's presence and the fact that it was so atypical of Shinra. Her movements - brash and loud by her very presence - were as far removed as Hojo than should be possible.
Not to mention the fact that she was a walking color landmine.
But she was good at what she did; even Hojo wouldn't have been able to deny that. There had been no mistakes or irregularities in what was an extraordinarily difficult procedure to start with, and for that Cloud was glad. It had taken all his courage to know that this was going to occur. He didn't know if he had the strength now for its failure.
They were both there, in the mako; complete, whole. The scientists worked under the somewhat acid direction of Doc -
//She should meet Cid, they'd get along well.//
- as she called them all incompetents incapable of draining two mako tubes without fumbling it. And the scientists, mostly young and skilled, hung off her every word and performed flawlessly.
The guards that he hadn't been able to get rid of raised their weapons as the tubes drained, the figures in them slumping to the floor, coughing to remove the mako in their lungs that Cloud knew burned and choked them.
Stepping forward as the figure on the left raised his head, he met his eyes. Dark gray eyes, cloudy with confusion and pain, clearing as both left.
"Zack."
An incredulous voice answered him. "Spike? Cloud?"
And Cloud smiled at him, motioned the scientists to carry his clothes over to him as he met the eyes of someone who he remembered all to well, a man climbing to his feet and as wary of the lab as of the firearms trained on him.
Eyes that were green and clear and blessedly sane.
"Sephiroth."
----
"For a while, then, things were.well, they were better." Cloud twists his mouth into something that approximates a smile and Sephiroth fills in the pause in his sentence with 'perfect.'
After all, to Cloud, alone for so long, to have the three of them together again, it must have been perfect. Despite the war, despite everything.
"But Jenova wouldn't risk losing, wouldn't even contemplate the possibility. So she waited, until we were out, and closer to where she could strike.and she.she /took/ you."
----
They were high in the mountains when it happened.
It had been a simple objective: destroy Jenova's footholds in the area around Nibelheim. They wouldn't be going near the town, but rather approaching the mountains and the long dormant reactor from the other side, from the base at Rocket Town. It may have seemed longer, but they had needed to clean out that area anyway.
It was strange, how something so simple could go so wrong.
They had broken off from the main army, just the two of them, because Zack could handle the army fine on his own, and it would be easier to get this job done, menial monsters in the caves at the base of Mount Nibel, working alone.
And true to what they'd thought, they'd encountered nothing but minor, mindless nightmares in the caves, and even as they went up in the caves, climbing ever upward, the caves winding up the mountain.
They'd felt secure enough to enter one of the caves fairly high up on the mountain - a little closer to the no longer operational reactor then Cloud would have liked, actually.
The cave was striking, a crystal creation of mako that shone from within scaling the walls. It seemed to hum, to pulse in tune with some distant melody that Cloud could remember hearing once.
//The voice of the planet? //
In a grove it had worn in the floor, startlingly considering how high up they were, ran a stream of what looked like mako but might as well have been lifestream.
They'd forgotten that she could move through lifestream. Cloud never forgave himself for that mental omission, and what came next.
Moving off to examine the crystalline mako on the wall, in the hope, probably in vain, that some of it might be extractable materia, Cloud wasn't watching when the mako stream began to bubble, the smell of rotting sulfur sharp and sudden in the air. It smelled like something dying, like the corpses rotting on the battlefield before they were taken care of.
And turning, Cloud saw the mako stream in its black horror and saw that Sephiroth was too close and knew what she had planned and knew that he wouldn't be able to stop it.
"Seph! Get out of there!"
But he couldn't move quickly enough, as the raw Jenova substance rose up and struck. It was the Jenova in their veins that gave them their speed; how could they hope to compete with the original?
Then the Jenova struck and went into Sephiroth, leaving nothing, no wound, no scar. And Sephiroth screamed once, a sound that Cloud had never heard from him, a sound so despairing and distraught, filled with the knowledge that it was happening again, and he wouldn't be able to stop it.
And then, it was over, and Sephiroth straightened as if he had tripped and caught himself before he fell. Cloud knew that he had fallen.
Sephiroth turned and looked at him and there was nothing in his eyes, no insanity, no flicker of being, nothing. Jenova stared out at him through dull green glass, and he couldn't see Sephiroth anywhere.
She smirked once with Sephiroth's lips, and Cloud shuddered because it could have been him if everything in him wasn't screaming out that this was wrong, wrong, so wrong he couldn't see how anything could ever be all right again.
He looked the same, but his eyes were dull and vacant and he felt like acid, black and viscous, to every sense that Cloud possessed. He felt like poison in the lifestream, streaming to the surface.
Sephiroth kept that smirk as he turned and walked away. Cloud watched him go and felt the world break apart into shards of colored glass.
----
"So, no, you're not dead. You didn't ask but I could tell the question's been on your mind. And I know you have more questions, and we'll try to answer them." Cloud's blue eyes, mako bright and burning, coupled with the shock that Sephiroth felt at the words, bore into his mind.
"But you're not dead. But there's nothing of you in the puppet she controls. It's worse than before, when you were insane but you were /there/. Now.now, if you're in there at all, then it so deep it doesn't matter anymore."
A living puppet, his strings pulled by the lies that lay in tatters around him.
"You're not dead. But maybe.maybe it would be better if you were."
---- Author's Notes ----
For future reference, past Zack is Zackery and future Zack is Zack. Except in dialogue, where they may both be Zack..bah. Just pick a Zack and go with it.
It should be noted that parts of that conversation were about as easy to write as pulling teeth, so excuse the awkwardness. However, Seph does a better whining job then I can, just look.
Seph: One long conversation and then the plot exposition from hell. Real stellar chapter there.
Me: Watch me care.
Seph: But, come on, what were you thinking? Jenova's not going to be evil with style, honestly.
Me: Three words, Seph - Pink Bunny Suit.
Seph: I hate you.
/.../ - italics //...// - thoughts *...* - mind speech/telepathy "..." - speech (duh) ----------------- - Scene change, flashback, dreaming (it's a multi- purpose stream of dashes)
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Xehorista Tora
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"And today is tomorrow, and tomorrow today, and yesterday is weaving in and out."
- Cake, "Comfort Eagle"
------------------
"It's complicated."
That, Sephiroth decided, had to be one of the understatements of the year. The other Zack seemed ill at ease; however, and unlikely to disclose anything more specific unless it was dragged out of him.
"No, really?"
Glancing back, Sephiroth saw that Zackery - his Zack - was leaning against the wall of the cell, glaring at his double. Suspicion and distrust marked his face. Sephiroth wasn't sure if he believed this other, but somehow he didn't think so.
But there was always the possibility: a situation so bizarre that it couldn't be anything but real. This Zackery was indistinguishable from his Zack and yet wasn't. There were little clues, soft movements and shifts of weight that spoke of greater training and hardship. Hardship that came from age.
And his eyes were the same dark, dark gray, but cloudy, as the sky before a storm. Sephiroth did not recognize them.
The other ran his hand through his hair, and the movement, so familiar, resounded through Sephiroth. It was adding up, it was all adding up.
//And where am I? /If/ this /is/ the future and Zack is here, then where am I? Am I still here.did I.?//
Sephiroth refused to finish that thought. There was a logical reason, one that was solid and true and real, and he would find it.
"Things are.different.now..Things have happened.lots of things."
Hesitant, Zack had never been hesitant, never lingered so long in speech, never spoken words with such pain behind them, pain so badly hidden. The feelings in his voice brought both men up short, cut off any reply they might have had.
Zack sighed, a sound far longer and wearier than it should have been.
"Look, there are things I can't fully explain.things.that may not be safe for you to hear.because, well, because I'm afraid of what would happen if you did."
They words came out in a rush and Sephiroth knew that they were directed at him. Opening his mouth to comment, he shut it again when the cell door opened and the blond man entered.
There were other people who entered the cell with the blond man, two Turks, who he immediately realized with more than a little dread, were Rude and Reno, older but still the same - Reno would never dress properly, no matter how old he became. Their being here did nothing but validate the other Zack's explanation. He thought he saw a hint of color and shape, but whoever that was was waiting outside.
Sephiroth remembered the blond at once - the short stance but tall nature, the almost swagger that came from a great deal of authority and responsibility. He wore the same uniform, although a clean one. The uniform itself was a puzzle, like the SOLDIER uniform but altered so only a ghost of the original remained. The blond hair was out of the ponytail now, rising into its natural state.
.of spikes?
Small pieces were fitting together, and he didn't want them to fit. Distantly, somewhere, he knew that if the information that was collecting in his mind coalesced, it would make everything that the other Zack said true, beyond any doubt. This would be the logical situation, this would be real.
And then.then he really would be eons away from home in a harsh reality that might become his own.
But how could he say no to the grace in the way the blond walked, the potential they had always known was there given flesh? How could he deny the blue eyes - so bright, so different but still the same?
He couldn't deny or accept it. Standing there, he could only stare in mute and absolute shock as the blue eyes, burning from mako and harsh memories, watched him with understanding.
"I think Sephiroth's figured it out, Zack." When he wasn't commanding anyone, the man's voice was surprising soft and low, a gentle register somewhere around bass.
Both Zacks stared at the man, but the other, the older Zack with the tired eyes, answered.
"I guess he has. Thought he would."
Reno and Rude, perpetually wary as all Turks, although since it was directed at him, it was all the more pronounced, shifted slightly. Looking over the group, Reno sighed, his manner now as it was then: brash and without care, although not careless.
"Well, it's less to explain, anyway. I don't think you'll need us anymore, now that they know.but we'll be around anyway, in case...well, you know. Just in case of situations that may require our attention."
No one commented on the lack of tact and the man - /Cloud? / - waved to them slightly, a motion of dismissal -
//Dismissal? Because if he's dismissing them and they're listening to him and what has happened here? How has /everything/ changed? //
- and the Turks left, as he /ordered/, an order so simple, so natural to the man that he thought nothing of it. His attention never shifted from Sephiroth.
The Cloud that he remembered was a shadow in a crowd, quiet and timid. It had taken the Cloud he knew months before he opened up to Zack and him. There was none of the Cloud he knew in the strong and silent man before him, and he wondered what could have happened to change the boy from before so much: there was more than the passage of years at work here.
It took something hard and harsh to leave an edge that raw in someone's eyes, and there was one way to find out what it was.
"So you're Cloud." It was not a question, and Zackery jerked his head up to have his own thoughts confirmed.
The man shrugged once, a movement that echoed something Zack often did.
"Yes."
His voice was cold and controlled, without anything that resembled emotion, save those that slunk along the edges of everyone's thoughts and words, the darker feelings no one could completely suppress.
Fear was one. Shame was another. Sephiroth wondered how Cloud could be ashamed of his name. His name was everything that he was, and the Cloud he knew wouldn't be ashamed of it.
And then Sephiroth stopped wondering.
//His eyes glow. So he's a SOLDIER - that can change someone. You're more than a SOLDIER, and look how it changed you. Didn't you hate yourself, sometimes? Didn't you utter your name to yourself in the dark corners of a room when no one would hear? There was more than shame when you spoke it. //
There'd been self-hate and terror in his voice, in those words he'd spoken in the dark, when he was younger, before he learned to hold it in. Before he'd learned to hold everything in.
"So you did get into SOLDIER, after all." At least there was some happiness to be had at that thought.
"No." It was barely audible, a single word that tried its best to slip undetected past everyone's hearing.
"No.I never made it into SOLDIER." The bright eyes closed once, briefly, as if afraid of being accused of lying when telling the truth.
"Then how is what you did possible? How is any of this possible then? If you weren't in SOLDIER, then nothing you did was possible and don't think that we can't see the glow in your eyes, Spi-Cloud." Near hysteria in Zackery's voice, the situation telling on him, one who usually kept his emotions controlled.
Was it a trick of the light, or did Zack move nearer to Cloud as he spoke in response? Sephiroth almost smiled at an act so familiar.
//Protective, even now.//
"There are other ways to receive the.modifications.that a member of the SOLDIER program would have." The words were ground out, like rock crashing onto rock.
"Other ways...?"
"Hojo." Cloud flinched at the name, and Sephiroth barely suppressed one. If that was true, then.
//Hojo always hated them. Always hated Zack and always hated Cloud, although he thought him below his notice. But if he got a hold of either of them.//
If he ever did, the result would be the thing of nightmares.
"How did he manage to do that? I doubt Shinra would authorize it, even considering the idiocy of the upper levels of management as a whole."
"Oh you'd be surprised what idiocy can fail to notice." Zack was calm, but there was something under his voice, a tension that suggested that the memory was anything but. "Especially considering the state of things at that point in time."
The other Zackery, his Zack, pushed himself off from the wall he had been leaning against. " 'The state of things at that point in time?' You'll want to explain that little comment. About now."
"Yeah, Zack, and thank you for being an idiot."
"Anytim - wait a minute, Spike. How am I an idiot? You were going to tell them anyway. You had to."
Cloud sighed again, as if the entire situation was taxing beyond belief. "Yes, but I intended to do it with a bit more tact than a Turk, Zack."
"I am ashamed and affronted that you would compare me to a Turk. I mean, SOLDIER, first class, right here. Where in that package do you see Turk?"
"Zack." Obviously on the verge of attempting to strangle Zack, his name was all that Cloud was able to get out.
"Yes, Spike?"
"Just.nevermind...just forget it."
"You honestly think this is fooling us?" Zackery was staring at them with no small amount of exasperation. "Even if you're not me and all the evidence is false, you're still a damn good fake and /I/ pull this shit far too much to be fooled by it. I think you should stop this and just tell us."
Something dark flitted in and out of Zack's eyes, as all humor disappeared from them as if it had never been. "You don't know what you're asking."
"Yes, I do. I'm asking for the truth without all this bullshit." Zackery gestured slightly with an open hand before running it through his bangs. "I'm asking for you to tell us exactly what happened to put the glow in Cloud's eyes and the pain if the both of yours."
"It's been almost ten years since then. Ten years can do that."
"So can two days, if enough happens. I went through the - /we/ went through the Wutai War, or don't you remember? Have you forgotten what two days can do?"
There were memories there, black and twisted. They were the memories that Zack had woken up to screaming, during the long dark nights in Hojo's keeping. "No. I haven't forgotten that."
"Enough of this." Cloud lifted his head to stare down Sephiroth. "I'll tell you what happened then, if you really want to know." If Zack's small movement was one intended to stop him, he did not pay attention.
"Here's the short edition. You went mad, burned down Nibelheim, and tried to kill the both of us. You failed, and I managed to kill you. Hojo.Hojo took us both 'under his wing' after that."
The words hit Sephiroth with great force, a feeling that lodged in the pit of his stomach. He could call it kin to something he'd felt the first time he'd killed: saw the blood on the Masamune blade and felt that icy denial settle, as slow and irrevocable as the decay of a corpse, into his young body.
That same denial rang through him now: this words, this future, everything that Cloud was telling him - it couldn't be true. He wouldn't have done that, he wouldn't have betrayed the only people who ever truly cared about him - the only people he'd ever truly cared about.
But the memory of the whispers in his mind in the quiet hours of the night called him a liar. The feelings of shame and pain, because he was different and there was nothing good about it.
Being unique, being "special," was a fate worse than anything else he could imagine.
"I wouldn't do that." Self-preservation insisted he say nothing less.
"Would you like to see the scar?" Strife's eyes held his and behind the blue roared the echoes of a distant flame. "I still have mine, although Zack's probably lost his. It doesn't fade, you know, despite everything else. I always wondered if it was a quality of the Masamune, to leave wounds that deep."
At this Sephiroth could summon no answer and slipped free of Strife's cold and clear blue gaze. He'd always admired Cloud's eyes, so clam and soulful, untainted by the dirt and dust Midgar left on someone's soul. He wasn't sure if it was the memories or the mako that lent Strife's eyes their hardness - a beauty still present, but akin to a forged sword in that it could cut with the lightest touch.
Looking at the man before him again, Sephiroth wondered if a rough decade would change the Cloud he knew so much.
"So you hate me then." The words surprised him, for he did not intend for them to come out.
There must have been something terribly interesting on the floor, for Cloud refused to lift his gaze from it.
"Of course not. /You/ haven't done anything."
It had been easy to forget, amidst the shock and semblances of self- loathing, that this was future and the events had not yet transpired.
"You.you're the same person from before.before you changed. You haven't done anything."
And in the slight and stuttering words Sephiroth saw the boy he had known, yesterday and all those years ago.
"I didn't want to tell you at all.but we can hardly keep you two a secret. And the others won't be as.considerate. It's better.that you hear it from us, than from them."
Reading Cloud was like reading a mix of Zack and himself with shadows of the boy he had known. He figured that he could replace "considerate" with "suppressing their undying hatred" and be closer to the truth.
//All those years.and that still hasn't changed. Still that fear, the wary whites of their eyes as they keep you in sight.This time though, you deserve it, don't you?//
Cloud swallowed once, and continued. "After that.Zack and I were taken by Hojo, which is where I got the SOLDIER.enhancements.We broke out, Zack broke us out and he.he died."
----
It's begun to rain.
It happened so quickly, everything coming together and falling apart. Zack had seen them first, although the young man wasn't in much of a position to see anything then. Everything was white noise, and it took the bullet shots and the faint whispers of pain to penetrate that noise.
The blood touched his side as he lay on the ground and the first thought he had was that the ground must be raining too. It seemed unfair that the water hit him from both sides like that, but the young man had long since stopped believing in the fairness of the world.
"Spike."
That name.that name belonged somewhere other than here, to someone else a boy with a shy smile that walked sunlight hallways that are nothing but ashes now.
But the man moans again, and the pain in the voice is impossible to deny. It's something so familiar, and not just the pain, but the voice itself. He knows this voice. He knows he knows this voice, or he did, as well as he knows his own.
//Za.ck..Zack.Zack.//
Strong arms, strong voice, black hair and kind eyes.
//Zackery. Zack. I remember you. Zack. Remember you, Zack. Remember.//
Rain isn't red. So, the liquid touching him can't be rain, and its volume increases as he crawls towards the person.
//Zack? Are you there Zack, I'm scared, I'm so scared, Zack.//
The man is still alive, despite the numerous shot wounds. Still alive, though barely breathing, suffocating in the rain. He looks like he's drowning. Even dying, he clutches a sword; a massive strip of metal that the rain hits and runs down, washing it clean of the same red water that came from the man.
//The Buster sword. And you're bleeding Zack.you're bleeding so much.//
The sword is familiar somehow.it's a weapon that strikes something in his memory, some distant echo. He looks, and sees the city stretched below him, a city with a name: Midgar. A tower, stretching into the sky in the middle of the city.
And below him, on the earth, the man is dying, the water winning the battle as he stops struggling for breath, using his last moment to stare at him, unable to speak. There's emotion in his eyes, so much and so familiar and so sad.
//Zack.no, Zack, don't go, don't go, don't go! Zack. Zack! ZACK!//
Suddenly he felt seized by a strange and terrible grief, something so strong that it made tears spring to his eyes as he raised his hands to the pouring sky and screamed in pure disbelief. There was no logic behind it, no reason behind the ache in his heart and the raw burning in his eyes.
It was raining when it begun, and it's still raining when it ends, the feeling disappearing as if it never had been. He can remember now, some things, not the name of the man before him, although he feels that he should -
//Zackery! Zack, first class SOLDIER, your friend! Remember him! Why won't you remember?!//
But the uniform, the uniform looks familiar, as does the sword. It's the uniform of a first class SOLDIER, and he's wearing the same one. He remembers SOLDIER, remembers training, remembers words of praise.was he good?
He must have been good, to be alive when this person isn't, to survive when others died.
//Zack saved you! Don't forget him, please! //
There's a name that goes with all this, a name that belongs to him and belongs to the clouds in the sky.
"Cloud."
But the city below is calling him, and it's stronger than the call of the sky. Hoisting the sword onto his back, he answers it.
"I am Cloud."
----
"After that.you came back once, with Jenova and still mad and I.defeated you."
Defeated is a peculiar word. The sound of it invokes the memory of old, dusty books that he would read when no one was watching. Enemies rose up in those books, great and terrible, and heroes defeated them, and the masses rejoiced and all was well.
When he was younger, he'd wondered what it would be like to be a hero in those books. He'd never imagined he'd end up being the villain.
----
The Omnislash is a complicated series of movements pulled off in quick succession, to leave the opponent no chance to defend themselves between movements. It requires great strength to manipulate the sword that way, to keep the strikes small enough so that the appropriate speed can be maintained. Without that vital speed, the entire attack would fall apart.
Cloud remembers Zack telling him those words, remembers the way the light shone on the wood of the training hall, polished after so many years and so many careful footsteps. Zack tells him speed is essential, but the movements he makes are slow, and he makes Cloud follow them, his arms trembling slightly with the weight of the practice sword as he holds one long, horizontal strike.
And then Zack performs the movement, swifter than before but still not fast enough, not fast enough for the movements to blur and the sword to leave a glowing trail of blood and silver in its wake.
The memory is bright in his mind, and despite the fact that Cloud knows that the Omnislash is blindingly fast, the strikes echo out into eternity and each moment takes a lifetime.
And he's not holding the strikes out, not supporting the weight like that one time before when everything was so much younger, but his arms tremble all the same. It's not from fatigue, but from the weariness that comes before grief.
The lifestream here looks like the stars in the sky of Nibelheim, where there were no lights and no fire to obscure there glow over the mountains. It's more beautiful than he can find the words to describe, if such words even exist, and it's fitting that it's this beautiful.
It's fitting that Sephiroth die in a place as beautiful as he is.
And he is beautiful, so gorgeous it hurts to look, even with the lines of blood growing against that once perfect skin, every mark a blasphemy, a darkness against Cloud and he knows that after this, he can never go home.
With each strike things are changing and twisting, and when it's over even the stars will have shifted and he won't be able to find his way.
Zack.and Seph.they were guiding points, his own compass, and soon they'll both be gone.
It is over then, so suddenly that Cloud cannot remember when it begun as the cold certainty settles on his mind. The Ultima Weapon is returned to his back, reflex saving him as the blood begins to collect and Sephiroth looks at him, shock widening emerald eyes.
He's not sane, and he's still not himself, but there's the faintest shimmer of what was and even that's still enough to make the tears come.
And the stars are falling into Sephiroth, and Sephiroth's falling into the stars and the lifestream is coming to claim them both. It's so beautiful and despite the fact that now they're both dead now and /everything/ is dead now, Cloud knows he's crying from the beauty of it as much as from the sorrow.
Because he's alone and the memory of someone who was to the last moment so beautiful is as much a burden as a blessing.
----
"There wasn't much, for a few months. Then, Shinra, while researching.something, new methods of power refinement, I think, uncovered something in the Lifestream that was.unnatural. Hojo and Jenova struck soon after."
The next words exist in that realm of voice that is above a whisper but not true speech.
"And they.the scientists at Shinra.they brought both of you back."
----
Cloud had asked to be present when they were revived.
Asked was a polite way of saying he demanded to be present, and even that was a polite way of saying that he nearly threatened bodily harm if he was not allowed to be present.
The lab here was far too much like other labs, in other places that sprang to life when he closed his eyes. He knew that Zack would remember them too, and he didn't want Zack to be afraid. That was the reason he gave them, even though they feared what the reaction from the newly resurrected would be.
And the reason he gave them was true, even if it wasn't all the truth. He wanted to be there because he wanted to see Zack open his eyes. He wanted to see Zack alive.wanted to see them both alive.
After all he had done, for everyone; he thought he deserved at least that.
Even so, it was hard to be in the lab, hard to stand the memories it brought. He had never been happier for Doctor Tabitha's presence and the fact that it was so atypical of Shinra. Her movements - brash and loud by her very presence - were as far removed as Hojo than should be possible.
Not to mention the fact that she was a walking color landmine.
But she was good at what she did; even Hojo wouldn't have been able to deny that. There had been no mistakes or irregularities in what was an extraordinarily difficult procedure to start with, and for that Cloud was glad. It had taken all his courage to know that this was going to occur. He didn't know if he had the strength now for its failure.
They were both there, in the mako; complete, whole. The scientists worked under the somewhat acid direction of Doc -
//She should meet Cid, they'd get along well.//
- as she called them all incompetents incapable of draining two mako tubes without fumbling it. And the scientists, mostly young and skilled, hung off her every word and performed flawlessly.
The guards that he hadn't been able to get rid of raised their weapons as the tubes drained, the figures in them slumping to the floor, coughing to remove the mako in their lungs that Cloud knew burned and choked them.
Stepping forward as the figure on the left raised his head, he met his eyes. Dark gray eyes, cloudy with confusion and pain, clearing as both left.
"Zack."
An incredulous voice answered him. "Spike? Cloud?"
And Cloud smiled at him, motioned the scientists to carry his clothes over to him as he met the eyes of someone who he remembered all to well, a man climbing to his feet and as wary of the lab as of the firearms trained on him.
Eyes that were green and clear and blessedly sane.
"Sephiroth."
----
"For a while, then, things were.well, they were better." Cloud twists his mouth into something that approximates a smile and Sephiroth fills in the pause in his sentence with 'perfect.'
After all, to Cloud, alone for so long, to have the three of them together again, it must have been perfect. Despite the war, despite everything.
"But Jenova wouldn't risk losing, wouldn't even contemplate the possibility. So she waited, until we were out, and closer to where she could strike.and she.she /took/ you."
----
They were high in the mountains when it happened.
It had been a simple objective: destroy Jenova's footholds in the area around Nibelheim. They wouldn't be going near the town, but rather approaching the mountains and the long dormant reactor from the other side, from the base at Rocket Town. It may have seemed longer, but they had needed to clean out that area anyway.
It was strange, how something so simple could go so wrong.
They had broken off from the main army, just the two of them, because Zack could handle the army fine on his own, and it would be easier to get this job done, menial monsters in the caves at the base of Mount Nibel, working alone.
And true to what they'd thought, they'd encountered nothing but minor, mindless nightmares in the caves, and even as they went up in the caves, climbing ever upward, the caves winding up the mountain.
They'd felt secure enough to enter one of the caves fairly high up on the mountain - a little closer to the no longer operational reactor then Cloud would have liked, actually.
The cave was striking, a crystal creation of mako that shone from within scaling the walls. It seemed to hum, to pulse in tune with some distant melody that Cloud could remember hearing once.
//The voice of the planet? //
In a grove it had worn in the floor, startlingly considering how high up they were, ran a stream of what looked like mako but might as well have been lifestream.
They'd forgotten that she could move through lifestream. Cloud never forgave himself for that mental omission, and what came next.
Moving off to examine the crystalline mako on the wall, in the hope, probably in vain, that some of it might be extractable materia, Cloud wasn't watching when the mako stream began to bubble, the smell of rotting sulfur sharp and sudden in the air. It smelled like something dying, like the corpses rotting on the battlefield before they were taken care of.
And turning, Cloud saw the mako stream in its black horror and saw that Sephiroth was too close and knew what she had planned and knew that he wouldn't be able to stop it.
"Seph! Get out of there!"
But he couldn't move quickly enough, as the raw Jenova substance rose up and struck. It was the Jenova in their veins that gave them their speed; how could they hope to compete with the original?
Then the Jenova struck and went into Sephiroth, leaving nothing, no wound, no scar. And Sephiroth screamed once, a sound that Cloud had never heard from him, a sound so despairing and distraught, filled with the knowledge that it was happening again, and he wouldn't be able to stop it.
And then, it was over, and Sephiroth straightened as if he had tripped and caught himself before he fell. Cloud knew that he had fallen.
Sephiroth turned and looked at him and there was nothing in his eyes, no insanity, no flicker of being, nothing. Jenova stared out at him through dull green glass, and he couldn't see Sephiroth anywhere.
She smirked once with Sephiroth's lips, and Cloud shuddered because it could have been him if everything in him wasn't screaming out that this was wrong, wrong, so wrong he couldn't see how anything could ever be all right again.
He looked the same, but his eyes were dull and vacant and he felt like acid, black and viscous, to every sense that Cloud possessed. He felt like poison in the lifestream, streaming to the surface.
Sephiroth kept that smirk as he turned and walked away. Cloud watched him go and felt the world break apart into shards of colored glass.
----
"So, no, you're not dead. You didn't ask but I could tell the question's been on your mind. And I know you have more questions, and we'll try to answer them." Cloud's blue eyes, mako bright and burning, coupled with the shock that Sephiroth felt at the words, bore into his mind.
"But you're not dead. But there's nothing of you in the puppet she controls. It's worse than before, when you were insane but you were /there/. Now.now, if you're in there at all, then it so deep it doesn't matter anymore."
A living puppet, his strings pulled by the lies that lay in tatters around him.
"You're not dead. But maybe.maybe it would be better if you were."
---- Author's Notes ----
For future reference, past Zack is Zackery and future Zack is Zack. Except in dialogue, where they may both be Zack..bah. Just pick a Zack and go with it.
It should be noted that parts of that conversation were about as easy to write as pulling teeth, so excuse the awkwardness. However, Seph does a better whining job then I can, just look.
Seph: One long conversation and then the plot exposition from hell. Real stellar chapter there.
Me: Watch me care.
Seph: But, come on, what were you thinking? Jenova's not going to be evil with style, honestly.
Me: Three words, Seph - Pink Bunny Suit.
Seph: I hate you.