Tingling sparks pull Cloud back from the beyond. He's grateful. The void was noxious with Sephiroth's presence, but he hadn't known the way out. Zack's voice overrides the whispers, and suddenly the path becomes clear.

He wakes to a brilliant smile and wild, black hair—the most beautiful sight he can remember. He wraps his hands around the forearms barring his face, and wants to crawl inside his friend's shirt pocket and live there forever.

"Morning, sleepy." His deep, rich voice shakes the nightmares from Cloud's psyche. "Feel better?"

"Yeah." He conceives the answer in his mind and feels his lips moving to speak, but the connection between them is like a rope bridge over a valley. He's not passing it himself, just sending messages. Little envelopes entrusted to strangers who might wander off and keep the postage.

"How long was I asleep?" becomes, "Head… hurts."

"Oh." Zack's eyes widen a bit. His hands retreat from their perfect spot on Cloud's head before he can find words to tell him to stay. "Don't freak out, but I think they're gonna take you. Bennet wants a psych eval, as if you didn't need one yesterday, or two days before that. I'm gettin' real tired of her shit."

Cloud swallows around a dry mouth and manages to sit up. It's like manipulating a doll. He sees the room and moves his limbs, but he's outside of it all.

Water runs in the sink and then Zack's patting at Cloud's face, wiping away dried tears and stale skin. Tremors of affection shake through him, and he hugs the other man around the waist. He couldn't do this without him.

Zack chuckles softly, rubbing at Cloud's shoulders and the back of his head. Each touch tugs him closer to his body, until he's almost back to normal.

The blue barrier rises from the floor. His companion regretfully steps back.

No, please.

"We're okay," Zack whispers. "Stay put. Everything's gonna be fine."

Neither of them really believes it. Riot troopers snap out orders for Zack to walk backwards with his hands crossed behind him. They lower the barrier, and cuff him, and then he's gone like a phantom.

He leaves Cloud bereft, breathtakingly alone. He curls in on himself and retreats until his back hits the wall behind the bed.

The barrier rises again, and Doctor Bennet slips through the crowd outside the door. She carries a food tray on her clipboard, like she used to in the upstairs room. They stare at each other, Cloud's head emptied by the horror of Zack's disappearance.

"Mr. Strife," she says. "I'd like to speak with you, just the two of us. Will you come closer?"

Cloud furrows his brows. She isn't supposed to call him that. He bares his teeth, like the dog they think he is.

Bennet sighs, and opens a slot in the barrier to send the tray clattering through. She gathers her skirt and sits daintily on the floor. His eyes rest on the clipboard in her lap, the proof that he can't trust her no matter how harmless she tries to appear.

"Please, come eat. The barrier will stay up for the entirety of this visit. We're both completely safe."

There's a lily on the breakfast tray. Cloud frowns at it, his fists balling into his hospital gown.

"What's… that?"

"A metaphor." Bennet laces her fingers loosely. She rests her weight on her knees and watches him expectantly.

The air vents rattle in the ceiling.

Cautiously, he climbs out of bed and walks to the tray.

The pain in his head throbs in time with his rising pulse. His joints ache from inactivity, but it feels good to be up and moving. Solid food is probably a good idea.

He sits in front of the tray, mirroring her. The flower's stem is prickly and strange under his thumb. It bends and sways as he lifts it, the smell both foreign and alluring, like freedom and forgotten dreams.

He frowns, staring at the flared petals and wide, green leaves.

The corners of Bennet's lip lift slightly, as close to a warm expression as she comes. "A flower reproduces when genetic material is moved from the stamen to the stigma. This requires the flower to bloom, allowing wind and insects to pollinate it."

"What's that got to do with me?"

"We did not spend six figures injecting you with S Cells so you could sit in a cell and piss yourself," she says with dry humor. "Your body holds the key to a great wonder of science, but your mind is holding it back. You must open yourself up—must bloom, like the flower—for our experiment to proceed."

"Proceed," he shivers, "to... pollination."

"Metaphorically speaking."

"And after?" he says under his breath.

Her brows lift over the rims of her spectacles. "Excuse me?"

After pollination, what happens to the flower? That's what he meant to say.

Maybe it's better that he didn't. He already knows the answer.

Winter comes and it dies. The bee flies back to its hive. New flowers grow from the pollination, but the old flower… is used up.

Cloud sets the lily back on the tray, and tears a slice of stale bread to pieces.

"It's good to see you back on your feet," she says.

He stares at the diamond pattern on his smock until she leaves.

They bring Zack back with a collar around his neck. He also has a bloody nose, but it doesn't seem to bother him. He wipes it on the back of his hand and sticks his head in the sink until it stops.

Cloud spins the flower between his fingers.

He should be scared by Bennet's demands, or perhaps worried for Zack's face, but he just feels numb. Sephiroth's dark whispers lick at the edge of his perception.

Concentrating, he stares at the back of Zack's head and tries to find his mind in the chaos of the void. His reward is a flash of pain behind his eyes and the room succumbing to a toxic green tint.

Zack straightens and wipes his face on his shirt sleeve. Cloud darts across the room and buries his face in his back.

"Ah—" the other man chuckles. "Hey, there. Miss me that bad?"

Cloud nods, but he's only barely listening. His focus is on the spot where his forehead meets Zack's snipe, on compressing his consciousness into a single, pointed pin prick that he imagines sliding into muscle and skin like a syringe. It doesn't seem to work.

"What's with the flower? Did Bennet give you that?"

Cloud sighs, and lets the energy go. He nods. Zack shifts until they're facing each other, his mouth sloped in concern.

"When I said she had a soft spot for you, I didn't mean you should ask her out," he jokes weakly.

Cloud tries to form words to explain the complicated message, but stops at the look on his friend's face. Suddenly, foreign feelings are everywhere—worry, sorrow, grief—and then abruptly nothing, like passing a radio channel with the dial.

He wants to say, "Why are you sad," but in this halfway space his body feels leagues away. The bridge connecting his brain to his mouth flaps uselessly in the gorge. He lays his hand flat against Zack's chest and pulls his face into a look of worry.

The other man smiles and shakes his head. "It's nothing. Just old memories." He hooks the flower over the neck of his shirt. "But what did Bennet mean by it?"

Cloud pinches his eyes shut, and fights the green/white fuzzing around his vision. He walks to the bed and sits cross-legged, nudging Zack to do the same.

Wrapping the flower inside his fingers, he forces the petals to close. Then, slowly, he allows them to open again. He points to the stamen and makes fluttery motions in the air.

Zack squints and shakes his head. "Bees?"

Cloud sighs, repeating the motion and pointing to his head.

"Blooming?"

Cloud nods, pointing more forcefully.

"Your hair is the color of a summer bloom?"

Cloud groans and smacks him, shaping his fingers into round circles over his eyes.

"Bennet?"

He nods. Zack rubs his face. "Bennet told you… that your head… needs to bloom. The heck does that mean?"

"Seph—"

"Sephiroth?" Zack blinks, and then the color drains from his face. "Oh. Shit. The flower is you. Like a visual aid."

Cloud picks at his overgrown fingernails and nods. It's frightening to hear it stated. Like it's inevitable.

"Well that sure as shit isn't happening." Zack crosses his arms petulantly. "We have to give Hojo something, but that's totally off the table."

Cloud grips Zack's wrists tight, as if saying, hey, listen. He lays the flower in Zack's hand and closes his fingers over it. He points to the other man's temple.

"My mind."

Cloud nods, glad that they're on the same track now. He unfurls Zack's fingers so the flower blooms in the shelter of his palm.

"You want to open my mind?"

Cloud huffs and closes Zack's hand again. He takes his own hand away.

Zack waits, confused. Cloud waves his hand in a 'go on' gesture. Zack's mouth forms an inspired 'oh.' He opens on his own, and Cloud nods emphatically.

"You need me to open my mind for you."

Cloud raises his brows, asking permission. It's probably a stupid plan. It's not what Hojo wants, and it probably won't save them. But it's an option. The only option they have that doesn't involve becoming a dead man's clone.

"Can I even do that?" Zack asks. "I've never felt anything in my head that wasn't you."

He averts his gaze. Zack must read his doubt, because he sets the flower on the bedspread and grips Cloud's shoulders in that determined way.

"What am I saying, of course we can. You've been in my head a dozen times without even trying. If I can just figure out how to open the door, it ought to be a cakewalk."

"Cakewalk? " Cloud mouths silently.

"Yeah, you know, they do it at fundraisers and stuff. Everybody in town makes a dessert and donates it, and then they sell tickets for a chance to win one."

Cloud squints, and Zack crosses his arms defensively.

"It's a real thing! Podunk towns do it all the time. There's no way Nibelheim didn't do 'em, your memory's just fucked. Look—" Zack sits up and smooths out the bedsheet and draws a diagram with his finger. "There's always a big table with sweets, a few volunteers watching it, and some kind of music. Used to be live bands, but nowadays it's a radio. There's numbers on the ground in a big circle, and when you buy a ticket you get to stand on one—stop looking at me like that, it's a real thing!"

Rolling his eyes, Cloud huffs and leans back on his hands. Zack waves a 'come off it' hand at him, and leans on his crossed legs.

"Where was I?" he rubs his chin, and then snaps his finger. "Right, so the volunteers have a big bowl with paper scraps in it. They've got the same numbers written on them. Once all the numbers are full, they draw one from the bowl and that person gets a cake or whatever. And then they do it again until all the sweets are gone and they've raised a boatload of cash for whichever charity threw the event."

So it's a trick to get people to spend money on nothing, masked in the façade of a good cause. It's the stupidest thing Cloud's ever heard of, and that makes the nostalgic glimmer in Zack's eyes vicariously embarrassing. He was clearly indoctrinated at an impressionable age.

"It's not stupid, it's—well, it is kind of stupid, but it's also fun. You're just a stick-in-the-mud." Zack mimes a playful punch at his shoulder. Cloud grabs his wrist to get his attention.

Lifting his brows, he points to his mouth and then Zack's, motioning back and forth.

He hadn't said it was stupid, not out loud. The other man gives him a flat, wide smirk and nods.

"Yeah," Zack shrugs. "You've been doing that for days."

He hadn't realized. Sure, he'd squished his face into comprehensible expressions and tried to project things that he couldn't get out of his mouth, but Zack hadn't seemed to get any of those messages.

Cloud must look disturbed because Zack's expression turns sad and serious. "But that's why I'm sure you can do this. We just have to learn to control it. Together."

Their sink—side promise returns to him—the anger, the fear, and the first press of Zack's body along his back. It felt taboo at the time, but they touch constantly now. He might be addicted. The loss of Zack that morning nearly sent him into a panic, even though he was only one wall away.

If it means they'll never be parted like that again, then maybe accepting this power is something he can live with. Wetting his lip nervously, he cups Zack's face with his hands.

With a deep breath, he closes his eyes.

"Don't leave your body, okay?"

Cloud nods, concentrating. That's why he needs to touch him, to feel his warmth and light so close under his fingertips.

Zack doesn't think he has a power, but that's not how Cloud sees it. To him, Zack has the greatest power of all—the power to pull him back from the place beyond sight and feeling with nothing more than his voice and his heart. Cloud focuses on that, on the deep emotion he feels about it, and brings their foreheads together.

The rat-at-tat of a snare drum catches his ear. He follows it to a full, lively melody. Sticky heat melds sweaty hair to the back of his neck, and the allure of sugar and honey taunts his nose.

"C'mon, Mom, pleeeeease—" He jumps up and down, tugging on his mother's hand.

A rainbow of flags and streamers flutter between swaying gonga trees. His eyes flicker over the line of beautiful cakes on the nearby table, steadily melting under the beaming sun, and his mouth waters.

"What will you even do with a whole cake?" His mother shakes her head. It's a gentle rebuke, her face spread in a smile even as she tells him no.

He—Zack, Cloud reminds himself, this isn't him—sticks out his lip in a practiced pout.

"I would share it!"

"I doubt that," his father snorts.

"I would," Zack sets his hands on his hips, indignant. His eyes rove around looking for an excuse, and find the hand-painted sign hanging from the volunteer's table, dedicating the profits to the Veterans' Fund. "I'd share with my friends, and take what's left to the old-timers at the Vet Clinic."

Zack's mother is charmed but unconvinced. His father knocks shoulders with her, and shoots a handsome grin that looks too much like Zack's.

"Oh, let him have a go. There's no way he wins on the first try anyway." He fishes a 1000 gil note from his money clip and stuffs it into his son's fist with a casual air that takes Cloud aback. He and his mother lived on less than that per week.

Zack cheers and bounces to the table where he gleefully purchases a ticket. He bobs his head and wiggles his body to the music, grinning cheekily when some of the grown-up ladies giggle and applaud him.

Something prickly and dark separates him from Zack's memory as the boy finds his number and waits. Jealousy, or maybe just sheer disbelief.

Everyone's so nice to Zack, like a great big family. It bothers him, for reasons he can't place. It makes him antsy for the day that these people will show their true colors and turn on that innocent boy, like people always do.

Cloud jerks, blinking at the sudden harshness of the cell's blue light.

"You won," he says, voice gravely and hoarse from disuse.

Beside the vibrancy of his memory, Zack's skin looks sallow and sickly. His eyes pierce Cloud like searchlights, unnerving when he'd previously found them enchanting.

Zack's mother and father have brown eyes, deep and rich as forest soil. He had brown eyes once too.

"And I didn't share a bite," Zack winks. Cloud laughs, letting his hands fall down the other man's cheeks and then hugging himself to chase off the chill settling in his bones.

If he's honest with himself, he'd have done the same as a kid. He was a little prick too, just not in the same way.

Zack bats his hand at him, grinning widely. "Oy, oy, what's that smile for—are you teasing me, bro?"

Heat rises on his face and he feels like an idiot. He ducks his chin to put his hair over his eyes.

"You're calling me an 'asshole' in your head now."

Cloud whips up, and Zack laughs hard. "Don't look so surprised. You're not that hard to read, if a guy knows where to look."

He bites the inside of his lip, caught between annoyance and that same breathless charm that made a whole village fall in love with Zack. He wants to hate it, but he can't. It's fundamental to the other guy's personality, like the heat of the sun or the wetness of rain.

"Hey, Cloud—"

Callused fingers touch his cheek. Blue eyes dart to his lips and stare. Static and magnetism erupt under his skin. He opens his mouth, and everything worth saying evaporates into thin air.

Zack kisses him.

He forgets how to breathe.