I do not own Final Fantasy VII or any of the characters.

Survivors

Cody gasped for breath, his lungs burning and his throat closing. His eyes shot wide open and he clutched at his throat, looking around frantically. He couldn't see anything. His throat and lungs throbbed and burned, stabs of pain radiating through them. His tongue felt thick, heavy, and fur-coated. He tried to stand, but he couldn't move. His hands reached down, feeling stone blocking his reach below his waist. He choked out a gagging sound, in place of the scream of fear and desperation he wanted. Needed. His hands scrabbled as the stones around him. feeling cracks and gaps, but inside of each he could only find more stone. He was trapped. Buried. he couldn't see, couldn't breathe, and he was alone. Tears stung at his eyes as he felt his tongue, now thoroughly swollen, fill his throat, pressing into his uvula hard and causing his body to try to vomit, only for his likewise swollen throat and windpipe to barely allow any out, and what did got stuck behind his tongue and began to go down his windpipe, as it couldn't go anywhere else. His chest began to rapidly feel like someone were squeezing his heart in a vice, likely from his lungs themselves beginning to swell from exposure to oxygen.

This was it. This was the worst exposure he'd ever had. This was the end. For him to survive, he'd have to get two milligrams of epinephrine injected into his bloodstream within the next ten seconds. Maybe fifteen. That was seven autoinjectors at once. He didn't even have one on him now. It had been in his apartment, which was now buried in rubble. Even if he had had that one, it wasn't enough. He was finished. He was dead. But he wasn't ready. The tears in his eyes fell from his eyes. He wasn't ready to die. He couldn't He had only just accepted that Jessie was right. And he had promised to be there for her. He needed to make sure she got out safely. He needed to see her again. He couldn't die yet.

Suddenly, there was a grinding sound as the stone on his waist, reaching to his knees, suddenly rose, light spilling in instantly. And then, he was yanked toward his feet, slipping out from under the stones before the massive chunk of rock crashed to the ground again, Jessie instantly beginning chest compressions as someone in a white jacket jabbed three Epinephrine autoinjectors into his right leg and four into his left. Cody allowed his eyes to slip closed. It was too late. His time would be up long before the medicine could help. Suddenly, he felt something flat squish his tongue downward as something round was roughly shoved down his throat. His body reacted instantly, gagging and retching violently, bile being rapidly forced into the new path that had been provided, splattering to the ground off to one side. After a few seconds, his body tried to cough and the tube was removed as he was rolled onto his left side as some kind of mask was put over his face. He coughed and gasped and vomited again and again, finally managing to empty himself of whatever vomit had gone down his windpipe and whatever was left in his throat. Just after he inhaled, the mask was pulled away and a second was placed over his nose and mouth. When he inhaled, he felt a cooling sensation flood his inflamed airways. He gasped in several more breaths, lying motionless and keeping his eyes closed.

He could hear voices, but his brain was still partially nonfunctional, so it couldn't process what he was hearing, or register what voices belonged to who, aside from Jessie's. He still couldn't process her words, but he recognized her voice. He wasn't sure how long he lay there, but he knew that at some point, he passed out. When he stirred, he felt cold, but he also felt calmer, and he was able to breathe normally, still receiving a cool feeling each time. His eyes didn't burn anymore, though his eyelids felt like they weighed a million pounds, his entire body feeling like it was made out of lead. He could hear voices still, though they were a ways away, and his brain was actually able to process them this time.

"...longer he's going to be asleep," a voice he didn't know was saying. "It could be days. I've never seen someone with an allergic reaction as severe as that survive, and I've never even heard of someone with an allergy to oxygen live to be this old."

"But he will wake up, right?" Jessie's voice asked.

"Now that the reaction's under control, and he's got that breathing mask on, yes," the first voice said. "He should wake up. Eventually."

"That's good to hear," Biggs's voice said. "It'd be awful if the guy who saved so many of us didn't make it."

Cody frowned, left hand twitching. He needed to move. He wanted to show them he was okay. But the most he could do was twitch his left hand. And then, another hand slipped into his, lacing its fingers with his as the person's left hair began to gently comb through his hair. He instantly knew it was Jessie, and his mouth curled into a relieved smile, despite him being too exhausted to force it to do so if he had needed to.

"You scared me," Jessie said. "Even a second longer and I'd have lost you. You jerk."

Cody managed to gently squeeze her hand, and she squeezed back. He squeezed again, and she bent down, gently kissing his right temple.

"After everything collapsed, I managed to find your legs sticking out of the rubble, and your broken mask," Jessie explained. "Your feet were moving, so I went looking for someone to help. I found Biggs and a doctor who was tending to him. When I did, I got a phone call from some girl named Aeris, or something. She told me to have the doctor grab his medical bag and as much Epinephrine as he had, then get a bunch of people to get you out from under the rubble within the next minute. She told me to start chest compressions as soon as you were out, and to tell the doctor to give you seven injections of Epinephrine, and to let you drain the bile that would be suffocating you."

Cody's mouth curled into a frown. Aerith shouldn't have known all of that, let alone been able to call Jessie. Let alone had the phone number. In fact, only one person should have known how much Epinephrine he'd need. Cissnei. Aside from the one he was recovering from, he'd only had one major attack since getting an altitude mask, which he still didn't actually remember how exactly someone found out that would work. The other major attach had been during training. Cissnei had accidentally broken his mask and had taken him to the infirmary after two and a half minutes. However, there had been no time to find anyone, so she had injected Epinephrine in sets of two until he stopped dying. Then they'd figured out how much had been too much based off of how bad his headache was after, versus once he'd recovered and injected himself with Epinephrine as a late baseline. No one else had ever known it would take about two milligrams. So then, how did Aerith know the exact odd number of autoinjectors needed to be used?

"The doctor says you'll be fine," Jessie said. "I was going to use one of your Healing materia, or maybe a Prayer or Chakra materia to heal you, but he said it should be allowed to run its course."

Cody managed a small nod, realizing he was slowly getting functionality back in his body.

"Oh, and you're wearing your new mask already," Jessie said. "There was some kid there when we saved you named Chadley, apparently he's an intern in Shinra's Research and Development Division but hates Shinra, and he had some experimental mask that he said would help you. Is it working okay?"

Cody managed a small nod again. Jessie remained silent, sitting with him and gently combing her fingers through his hair for what was likely several hours before he finally opened his eyes, staring at a giant chunk of stone with rebar rods sticking out of the top sitting in front of him, dried vomit covering it, though it hadn't reached him. He slowly pushed himself up, Jessie helping him, and he looked around. It was night, but they were under a tarp with four metal poles on the corners to hold it up, likely to keep him in the shade. He looked around slowly, his body and mind both still sluggish, and saw Biggs sitting against a chunk of stone off to the side, bandages peeking out of his shirt, a young boy probably in his mid-teens with pale, almost white-blonde hair, a magnifier monocle on his left eye, bright orange bow with black, purple, and yellow in an intricate design of strips of squares and triangles, a white school uniform top with a blue collar and blue flaps on the breast pockets, dark blue shorts, knee-high black stockings, brown boots, and a huge brown backpack, and a huge crowd of people covered in dust, dirt, and soot standing and sitting around the playground they were in.

"You okay?" Jessie asked.

"I need to rinse my mouth and brush my teeth," Cody said, looking down at his ripped, filthy, and ruined suit. "And I need a new suit."

Jessie laughed. "Let's start with hygiene." She held out a toothbrush in a plastic wrapper, a bottle of water, and a small travel-size tube of toothbrush. "The doctor said you'd probably want them when you woke up."

Cody nodded, thanking her and putting the toothpaste on the toothbrush before taking a deep breath before taking off the mask, quickly rinsing his mouth several times before taking a breath into his mask before brushing his teeth as thoroughly as he could, paused to take a breath through his nose into the mask, then continued, spitting it out and rinsing his mouth before taking a few breaths through the mask before taking one deep one and pulling it away to inspect it. It was black with the front of it flat and there were no actual openings. Instead, there was a glowing green Wind materia. He frowned, putting the mask back on and inhaling, the same cooling sensation as he had been experiencing filling his lungs like a breath of the most refreshing, pure, fresh air he'd ever taken. He pushed himself up slowly, Jessie ready to catch him if he needed it, then walked over to the boy that he assumed was Chadley.

"Chadley?" Cody asked, voice hoarse but as audible as if he'd had his last mask on with is mic, despite him not having seen one on this one.

"Ah, you're awake!" Chadley smiled. "How are you finding the mask?"

"It works, and breathing feels so much easier with it," Cody said. "It's feel kind of cool, temperature wise, when I inhale. But how can I breath just from a Wind materia?"

"The mask is made from a light-weight type of material that has mako stone infused into it, allowing it to generate its own endless supply of magic to power the materia, but only in small enough amounts to act as a respiration device, one that can be used in any environment including underwater, without ever running out of air. However, the only problem I had with it is that the air it creates contains very little oxygen, barely two fifths of the amount of oxygen of the normal air. For anyone else, that would be insufficient to survive, and someone would die. However, due to your allergy, your body has actually adapted to require the oxygen content of the air to be lower. Your altitude mask worked by restricting the actual air flow, though the root problem was still there. With this mask, and the lower amount of oxygen in the air you are now breathing, you should be able to breathe easier than you were able to either with or without your mask before, and your body should function more easily due to not being suffering from what was, in essence, oxygen toxicity."

"I see," Cody nodded. "Thank you, then."

"You are very welcome," Chadley said. "Your actions in delaying the fall of the plate allowed me to evacuate as well. Providing you with a proper breathing apparatus is the least I could to as repayment. Should you ever have problems with the mask, or there comes a time when you require more oxygen to breathe than that mask provides, feel free to contact me."

"I will," Cody said. "Thank you."

Chadley nodded, and Cody walked over to Biggs, sitting heavily beside him, Jessie sitting beside Cody and leaning on his shoulder.

"Good to see you up and about again," Biggs said.

"Good to see you alive," Cody said.

Biggs chuckled. "Only thanks to you. There were almost forty of us you saved. We lost about seventy, but you saved forty. And that's not including all the women and children you bought time for."

Cody hummed, nodding, eyes starting to drift closed again.

"Rest," Jessie said. "We'll be here when you wake up."

Cody mumbled something unintelligible and rested his head against Jessie's, slipping into a dreamless sleep instantly.

Something touched Cody's leg before something small, wet, and rough dragged against his nose. He scrunched his face up, blowing out a short breath only for it to start again. He reached up to wipe his nose and felt something soft and furry press into his hand.

Meerew!

He sighed quietly. Cat. His hand absently stroked the cat, scratching behind its ear before dropping to the ground again. One of the cat's paws pressed into his chest and it licked him again Finally he lifted his head, wiping his nose and yawning, blinking several times and looking down at the cat, which was predominantly white with black and brown spots.

"What?" he asked, Jessie stirring on his shoulder before reaching out to pet the cat, which pressed its head into her hand, meowing again.

"Hey, this is Wedge's cat!" Jessie gasped. "Have yo seen Wedge?"

The cat meowed loudly and turned, walking away quickly. Cody sighed, pushing himself up once Jessie was standing, then followed the cat with her, stretching and working his muscles as they worked, getting his body mostly functioning properly again within a couple seconds. As they worked their way through the debris, Jessie hummed thoughtfully.

"What's up?" Cody asked.

"I think we're near Wedge's house," Jessie said. "It's hard to tell, obviously but..."

"Oh God," Cody said. "Don't tell me that dumbass went to rescue his cats when the plate fell!"

Jessie sighed. "That is something he would do."

"We should hurry," Cody said.

They jogged after the cat as quickly as they could, the cat making sure to stay slow enough that they could keep up. Finally, they scrambled over a massive pile of debris and slid down a flat piece into what Jessie said had once been Wedge's yard just as a metal plate with cement stuck to it swung sideways like a door off to the left, Barret, Cloud, and Tifa walking through.

"You're awake!" Tifa smiled. "We were all worried about you! Even Cloud!"

"Yeah, I'm not sure how but Aerith managed to get her hands on a phone and called Jessie to tell her how to save me," Cody said. "I'm going to need to talk to her about that."

"The Turks have her," Cloud said.

"At the Shinra Headquarters," Cody said. "I remember. "

"Her mother doesn't want us to get involved," Tifa said. "She thinks we'll make it worse. Maybe they'll let her go if we just leave it alone."

"No," Cody said. "Aerith is the last living Ancient on the planet. Hojo will never let her escape again. He'll find ways to force her to stay. He'll break her spirit, or her mind. He may even force her to reproduce."

Tifa and Jessie gasped.

"He can't!" Barret said. "Right? I mean, that's basically rape!"

"He knows full well what it is, and he most certainly can," Cloud said.

"Shinra doesn't give a shit about something as insignificant to them as a rape no one knows about," Cody said. "Especially if it's Hojo. That man would burn children to death just to hear them scream, if it suited an experiment. And Aerith is his most beloved test subject."

"That's just wrong!" Barret snarled.

"That's the true face of Shinra," Cody said. "Draining the planet is only the surface-level sin."

Just then, a pair of cats meowed loudly and they turned, seeing two identical cats sitting at the edge of a hole nearby, only for both to drop into it the moment they looked over.

"Let's find Wedge first," Cloud said. "Then we'll worry about Aerith."

"Right," Cody said.

They all walked over to the hole, dropping into it and following the tunnel of broken ground, finding themselves in a man-made facility at the bottom. Cody dropped out of the tunnel first, landing on a catwalk and turning back to the hole to help Jessie down before they moved out of the others' way. On the wall across from the hole was a gigantic Shinra logo. Cody rolled his eyes.

"I don't know why they always put the logo out," Cody said. "It'd be better if they just didn't tell anyone who they were."

"Agreed," Jessie said.

"This place reeks of Shinra," Barret grumbled as he dropped onto the catwalk.

They walked down a set of stairs to the grated floor, then walked around a corner, seeing a long hallway and Wedge lying on the ground in an open room to the left about a hundred feet away.

"Wedge!" Barret called out.

"How the hell did he all the way over there?" Cody asked.

"We'll figure that out later," Jessie said.

However, just as they stepped into the hallway, something shifted above them, causing the ground to shake like an earthquake.

"Of all times!" Barret grumbled.

Then, there was a screeching sound and a loud snap before the floor dropped out from under them. Cody grabbed Jessie by the hand, pulling her to him and wrapping his arms around her as they fell into the darkness of the facility. He squeezed his eyes closed, and after a few seconds, he grunted in pain as he hit something solid, bouncing and dropping again before again hitting something solid, rolling along it for a moment before stopping, Jessie still securely held in his arms.

"Are we dead?" Jessie asked.

"If we were, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be wearing my mask," Cody said. "And my back wouldn't hurt."

"I suppose that's something," Jessie said, pushing herself up and pulling Cody to his feet.

They looked around at the room they were in. There were huge crates spread around the room, one of which they had bounced off of, and a set of stairs leading to a maze of catwalks, then another door leading out on the far side of the room. There were cages spread around the room, all of them empty, and the monsters missing.

"I don't like this place," Cody said, summoning his gunblade from its materia. "Stay close to me."

"Right," Jessie nodded.

They started down the stairs, following the catwalk left to start with, winding their way around and around the room, weaving between cages and containers constantly. After about five minutes, a swarm of fist-sized insect monsters appeared from below the catwalk, only for Cody to hold his gunblade out in front of himself, bracing himself and squeezing the trigger, the blast killing them all.

"That's so awesome!" Jessie said as they continued walking. "Isn't it tiring?"

"Not really," Cody said. "Remember how Chadley explained there was mako stone in my mask?"

"Yeah," Jessie said.

"Well, my gunblade's similar," Cody said. "It's an alloy forged from mako stones, mythril, and titanium. It generates its own magic supply to power this." He swung the cylinder out to show her the Fire materia. "I used to a have a basic Fire materia. Since the entire explosion is directed and only reaches to mid range at best, it had all the force of the entire blast focused in one place, strengthening it to about a Fira. But Cissnei knew I wanted a stronger one, so she levelled this one up fully and gave it to me along with my watch. This one focuses the power of a Firaga into a single point, so it's got about five times the normal power at close range."

"Allowing you to take out helicopters in one hit, or fly," Jessie smirked. "Nice. I'm jealous."

Cody chuckled.

"Did you make it yourself, aside from the materia?" Jessie asked.

"No," Cody said. "I designed it, but Research and Development rejected my idea and told me to use a normal SOLDIER sword, if I really wanted a sword. So instead, Cissnei took my designs to a weapon maker outside of Midgar, then brought back my sword, minus the materia to go with it."

Jessie smiled. "She sounds amazing."

"She was," Cody said. "So are you. You remind me of her."

"Really?" Jessie asked. "Do I look like her?"

"No," Cody said. "But you're playful like her, sort of. She was really serious around everyone else, but as her partner I got to see her private side. She didn't flirt like you, but she was playful. Pranks, jokes, blonde moments. She once said I was the only person who ever got to see her be human, and everyone else only saw a machine in a suit."

"I'm sorry," Jessie said. "I can't imagine how it must feel to lose someone so important to you."

"I hope you never can," Cody said. "And I won't let you ever know that pain."

Jessie smiled, nodding, and slipped her hand into his free hand just as they climbed a staircase on the far side of the room, finally, and found a long, curved hallway leading away from it. They walked through it silently, both looking around at the tunnel, the pipes and power cables running along the roof of it, and the metal struts and reinforcements that had been set up to try and prevent a collapse if the stone of the tunnel was damaged. After about five minutes, they stepped out of the tunnel into a room with several platforms, on the highest of which, Barret was shooting a swarm of insects, Tifa smashing a few of them on the other side. Cody and Jessie jogged quickly along the path after them, catching up a just as they reached a locker room with a blue bench and a vending machine off to the right.

"There you are!" Barret said. "Where the hell you been!?"

"Following you, apparently," Cody said, walking over to the vending machine and pulling a few coins out of his pocket, getting two bottles of soda, handing one to Jessie. "We should be back at the entrance now, right?"

"Just about," Tifa nodded. "Have you two seen Cloud?"

"No," Jessie said, Cody shaking his head, in the middle of taking a drink.

"Oh," Tifa said, gaze falling to the ground as she clasped her hands tightly.

"He'll be fine," Cody said, seeing the hope in Tifa's eyes instantly. "And once you do, you should tell him how you feel. You don't need to explain who he is, or what's happened to him, but you should tell him how you feel."

"W-What!?" Tifa asked. "N-No! I don't...I don't know what you're talking about!"

"Oh come on, Tifa," Jessie says. "Everyone can see it. But, wait, what do you mean by 'explain who he is?'"

"Is he not really Cloud?" Barret asked.

"It's a long story," Tifa sighed. "Come on. We should keep moving."

The others nodded and followed her through the door.

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