Trapdoor (Part 30)

by anza (05.1.06)

"Then, you really don't know anything about Item 523."

It seemed they were going to get to the point faster this time. It wasn't Zack himself who conducted his interrogations; they were all done by minor lackeys. Cloud had yet to see the same face twice. He hoped Zack was firing them as quick as they came. This one was a piebald man with a beard who looked more like someone's drunk uncle than an interrogator. Cloud was certainly sure he'd never seen anyone with a beer nose as bad in his life.

Like the questions before this one, he had answered this question before too. "No, I don't know anything about Item 523."

The interrogator leaned forward with a conspiratorial gleam. "What if someone broke into this place to get you out?"

"Then I'd get out."

"What if we used you as bait to lure out Kadaj?" Those glittering rat eyes couldn't be remotely sane.

Like all the others, Cloud had answered this already. "I've told you already, Kadaj won't fall for it. He is a desperate man too, like I am."

Abruptly the chamber door opened. With a dead, very unamused look, Zack strode in alone. The interrogator immediately began sweating, but the Godfather simply uttered a curt, "OUT," and the man scurried out. "And shut the fucking door behind you. Reno, if I've found you've recorded this later, you'll get a death so drawn out you'll be crippled in your old age before I'm done." Sighing, he took the chair the interrogator had taken, grimacing slightly at its too-cushy seat. "How the hell can anyone concentrate when they're sitting in something that could pass for a bed," he grumbled.

Cloud recognized he was trying to get him to open up, but decided returning a jest like that wouldn't hurt. "Maybe that's why you haven't beaten any answers out of me yet," he answered. For a moment they shared wary but real smiles. The blond saw his own tiredness was apparently shared. "Been up reviewing tapes of my pretty face as I answer the same questions?"

To his credit, Zack still had enough energy to shoot him a fully disgrunted look. "You have no idea."

The ex-Sales Manager of two companies dredged up a half-grin from somewhere inside of him. "Oh, I can imagine. I mean, I can imagine you didn't entirely not enjoy it."

The dark-haired man gave him a long look at THAT suggestive remark, and then looked up at the knock at the door. Being the only one of the two of them not strapped to a chair, he opened the door and accepted the two black guitar cases from the nameless legion who bowed and scraped before Zack disgustedly waved him away. Cloud's jaw tightened: they were his guitar cases, his Valentines. The cases Vincent had given him.

Tersely he ground out, "Those had better not be damaged."

Zack spared him a brief, undiscernable look, but instead of answering verbally he swung one of them onto the table and opened it. First to be dumped on the table was a pair of boxers along with a photo album (remarkably undamaged, considering in whose hands it'd been lounging in), followed by a science fiction paperback he'd been in the middle of reading, and then the CDs he'd bought for Kadaj. With a controlled spin, Zack turned the guitar case towards him. Cloud hadn't left anything of importance in the cases; they'd all be in the briefcase, which had a much lower probability of being returned or reexamined in front of his eyes.

Equally tersely, Zack said, "Your tastes run young."

Cloud blinked at the non sequitur. "I have three younger brothers, they provide the music I listen to."

Zack's eyes were carefully blank as he countered, "I was speaking of one particular brother. The youngest one, in fact." Cloud could feel those bright eyes on his face, observing for any reaction, but inside of him there was only a growing coldness, as if ice water had began to fill up the hold of his emotional vessel. "The one you would leave yourself behind to be bait for the mafia for."

He shouldn't have been surprised. Zack wasn't stupid, after all. And as the Godfather...he'd have to have some wits about him. But exposed...it wasn't the same as it had been with Yazoo. Yazoo had been his brother, one he expected would know the family's secrets, and Cloud trusted him with that. Now, from the mouth of someone who shouldn't know, who could use it ruthlessly against him, it was a shock. He had predicted it into his worst case scenarios...but a little part of him twisted in hurt and betrayal at Zack and at himself, for being so weak.

His voice was a harsh, hissed whisper: "What do you want from me?"

----------

Abruptly he remembered.

"Get up," the other boy had said. He clutched his belongings and followed, peeking over his shoulder only once to stare at the warm spot he had just abandoned. There had been no looking back when he ran away from home, but for his little corner of the street, he would miss it, his first taste of independence.

He was brought into a barracks of a sort, three-leveled, with bare rooms that were little more than spare timber nailed together. There were no pipes in the walls or the ceiling; nobody in the building could afford them. Even for the cheap price of five dollars a week, nobody could survive in that shack during one of Midgar's bitter winters. In the summer, the smoldering, sweating heat permeated everything and anything. In the winter, its occupants had either invested in a heater and a large heap of blankets, or they had frozen and had to be pried out of corners at the end of each week.

It was the end of winter. The other boy threw a pink-and-blue quilt at him, which Cloud caught with a squeak. With a rasp of the match, the heater crackled ablaze. The shivering blond inched closer to it, eyes trained on his savior as if he knew he was prey already. The other boy had dark hair and brilliant, almost gold eyes. They alarmed him - they reminded him of a rabid dog on the street that had stolen his bread away from him. Its eyes had been gold too.

Slowly he pulled the quilt over his shoulders and snuggled deeper into the niche between the heater and the wall. Though he could feel the icy wind slithering through the quilt, he rearranged it so there were two layers against the cold, and the heater on the other side. He jumped when a hunk of bread was shoved into his face. Even when the other boy motioned a second time for him to take it, he backed away, until he was flat against the wall, hands scrabbling with the quilt to cover him, to hide him, all the while his little back pushing and pushing back -

- with a crack, he broke a hole through the wall. The room was on the third floor.

The other boy retrieved him with grumbling good grace (and much fear on Cloud's part), scolding him as they trooped back up the stairs. The quilt that had sheltered Cloud before was half-hanging out of the hole he'd made, and he stuttered to a halt at the mess he'd made. The other boy gave him a look before starting to pick up the splinters and throwing them into the heater. With a few nails from the broken-off boards, Cloud managed to block up the hole with the quilt.

They worked silently next to each other, not like young boys at all. After they were done, they spread a quilt in front of the heater, wrapped more quilts around themselves, and ate bread toasted on the top of the heater. It was crunchy and more than a little burnt, but it felt delicious to Cloud.

Shyly he turned to the other boy, eyes searching for some way to convey his gratitude. The other boy just snorted, bright eyes finding their way back to Cloud's blue ones after a minute. Even from their scant interaction, Cloud recognized the glint of kindness under the layers of hardship the other boy hid.

The first thing the other boy really said to him was, "Don't be afraid."

The second thing the other boy told said to him was, "Zack Darklighter." When Cloud blinked in confusion, he clarified with a hesitant grin that spread all over his face as the blond looked on, "That's my name."

----------

"I didn't mean it."

Cloud looked up at the admission with dead eyes. "Mean what?"

"I didn't mean to deceive you."

The blond blinked, and then snorted. "You didn't deceive anyone. I was suspicious of you the entire time. I only believed you halfway. I don't know what you're apologizing for."

Zack sighed. "Lemme rephrase that. I did mean it. The friendship, I mean."

The ex-Sales Manager let that sink in, before meeting the dark-haired man's eyes with a sigh. What could he say to that that hadn't been implied already? "I meant it too. I had fun. So did Kadaj. But in the end, you're still someone I wouldn't want to be friends with." Zack opened his mouth to say something, but Cloud cut him off, "It's alright. I know it wasn't wasted. I know you were judging whether or not I was Turk material."

Zack's mouth shut with a click. Wryly, Cloud smiled. His salvation had always taken second place to Kadaj's safety. How messed up this was, all the players in a game as Cloud stood up against a person he would have given anything to if only he could trust him and continue their little game of make-believe...

"I knew, the moment I took the job offer, that you'd already snared me. But I staged this so Kadaj escape. I never trusted, not even for a moment, that I would be able to do the same."

The line of Zack's mouth was rather strange, Cloud observed. A twist of hesitation, regret, and guilt, perhaps? And then the Godfather stood, rounded the table, and unlocked his handcuffs. Cloud massaged his wrists, knowing what was coming next.

Still, when Zack cut open his hand, it hurt. As in, more than physically. The blood that spilled into his palm was half his mother's, his mother who had died tell him to run away, because the Turks would kill him too if he stayed.

All his running had been for naught. He was still caught. He had been born into this world, a world where needy people were shot in front of children, where screams rang deep into the night, where mothers prostituted themselves to bald, sick old men who yearned for their lost youth. Cloud had been born into this dirty world.

Zack cut open his own palm and slapped them together in a mess of blood and slit tissue. "Don't be afraid," the dark-haired man, a stunning fast-forward of Cloud's earlier memories.

Kadaj had escaped in a momentarily lapse of Zack's suspicion.

Now all that remained was for Cloud to escape. A daunting idea, since the people who were born into the mafia never grew out of it. That was one particular rule he knew, and had tried, and had never overcome.

"You're a Turk now, Cloud. No one can hurt you."

Escape. That was Cloud's goal now.

The coldest smile glittered on his lips like the worthless kindness buried beneath layers of Zack's criminal mind.