Cloud swings on a hammock of stars and whispers, hovering in the middle space between thinking and being.
The climb began at the first light of dawn with Zack and Gloria—the guide—strapping him down to some kind of a stretcher board. He left his body before the ropes got tight, driven away by sense memories of different straps and different boards.
The mind cottage rises from a field of wheat beneath him, exactly as he and Zack left it when Roche pulled them unceremoniously from the stasis tank.
He thought of going back, maybe curling up in the double bed and searching for a trace of Zack in the sheets, but he wouldn't hear the outside world from down there.
If Zack runs into trouble on the mountain he wants to know right away, and so he settled up here in the starscape.
As a reflection of his own soul and mind, he's in complete control of this world. Aside from small shifts—a wrinkle in the rug when he's feeling uneasy, a new photograph on the mantle to immortalize a new memory—nothing changes, and he likes it that way. Likes it better than reality, if he's being honest with himself.
Even now, when he knows his body is in peril, he finds himself detached from it. They'll make it safely, or they won't. The Turks will catch them or they'll get away. There's nothing he can do about it, and so no point in worrying.
Glancing up from his perch, he studies the bright, expansive sky and upside-down mountains. For whatever reason, the outside world is always mirrored here.
A gray outline of his body floats just above him, stiff and straight as a corpse. A tether of blue energy connects him to it like a lifeline. If he touches it, he'll feel a faint vibration of cold, hungry, shivering, tired, and so he keeps his hands away. It's better here, insulated. Floating.
Zack's voice echoes like an intercom system, warped and coming from all directions.
He chatters constantly; about the climb, the view, how beautiful everything is. Cloud doesn't disagree, he's just... uncertain. Their destination weighs heavily.
His partner could talk to a brick wall for hours. He doesn't need a response to keep going, so Cloud spends most of the journey with his eyes shut, listening to Zack's happy nonsense shower over him.
It's while he's in just such a reverie that something altogether unprecedented occurs, startling him almost out of a dead sleep. He sits up so quickly that he forgets to suspend gravity and begins falling fast and disorienting towards the wheat.
At the last minute he catches himself, but only barely, only a handful of meters above the imaginary ground.
High up, its claws clamped around a particularly bright star, a crow sits, regally regarding him. He stares at it, scared and confused. It flicks its head back and forth in the way of birds, angling so its beady black eye centers on him.
Flicking his wrist, Cloud materializes a Shinra pistol in his right hand. He points it, clenching around the grip.
"Who are you?" he demands.
The crow shifts on its perch, tail twitching.
Cloud puts his finger on the trigger, and stabilizes with his other hand. "Whatever you are, you aren't welcome here. Leave."
"Is that any way to greet an old friend?" Sephiroth asks.
If he were in his body he'd have shivered. Zack must feel it, because his aimless stream of observations stops. The rocking of the inverted sky stills.
"Cloud?" he says. "What's wrong?"
Cloud doesn't have the wherewithal to answer him, his mind halting and lurching around the linchpin of Sephiroth's voice.
"We were never friends, you monster," he says.
Rumbling, disembodied laughter echoes all around.
"Gloria, I think we need to stop for a bit," Zack shouts. His worry jolts Cloud like electricity.
The crow lets out a sudden, piercing caw. "Do you even remember why you hate me? Your rage puppets you more than She."
"Shut up." Cloud fires.
No warning, no need to load it in this unreal place. He just pulls the trigger in three rapid blasts. The body falls, its body twisting and changing trajectory with each of the two subsequent hits.
Black feathers fall like snow. The body hits the ground. Inky blackness spreads from it.
It spreads like oil, like Nothing, and rapidly consumes the ground. One by one the stars wink out. Soon, only his suspended body and the glittering soul tether remain. He grabs and pulls it, scrambling up in a frenzy.
By the time he reaches the top, there's only a sliver of blue sky left, slitted and narrowing like a blinking eye.
"I'm getting faint, Cloud. Find me in the Crater tonight. Don't delay."
"Why me?" he demands, but it's too late. He's on the other side. His vision sharpens on the dual searchlights of Zack's eyes.
"Cloud—"
It's everything he can do just to breathe. Harried hands rip at the straps holding him down. Blue sky and gray rocks surround them. The guide stands a respectful distance away, watching with concern.
"What do you mean?" Zack lowers his voice, noticing her too. "What happened?"
"I'm... not sure," Cloud rasps. His throat is so dry it hurts. He coughs, and Zack helps him sit.
"Oh boy, you're cold. Let's get you up, get that blood moving. Why didn't you say anything?" The wobbly horizon rights itself, and his feet press hard into the ground. He slips, and strong hands tighten around his waist. "I've got you, that's it. One foot in front of the other..."
Cloud slumps low and winces as various parts of his body complain. His head is the worst by far, splitting open like he'd had needles stuck into his skull. It hadn't been this bad earlier in the day, hadn't been this bad since the lab.
"If we're done with verticals, I think I'll carry him from here," Zack calls. Gravel crackles and slides as the guide takes several steps closer.
"Is he alright?" She covers her eyes with a gloved hand and leans forward. Cloud winces as Zack hikes him higher in his arms.
"Just needs to stretch his legs. Nothing a little walk won't fix." Without looking, Cloud knows he's plastering a smile on his face.
Guilt stabs him, almost as hard as the headache. He hates making Zack lie. Gritting his teeth, he tries to bear his own weight.
"There's a campsite up ahead. Good place to stop for the day." Gloria points, and Cloud manages to look.
They're in a wide open space, a snow-covered bowl between three misty peaks. Behind is a forest that reminds him of Nibelhiem, a nest of pointed evergreens amid grey, craggy outcroppings. Ahead is a featureless, snow-covered flat.
If he squints, he can make out dark shapes in the distance.
"Two o'clock," he says silently. Zack immediately turns his head.
"That one up there?" He nods. "Looks kinda crowded for an off-the-record expedition, don't you think?"
Gloria laughs, a short but heartfelt guffaw. Sniffing loudly, she shakes her head. "No, that's for tourists. If we want loot, we go to the glacier."
"And that ridge up there, that's the Crater?"
"Yep, that's her." Gloria nods without looking, pulling absently on her backpack straps and kicking the snow with one boot. "But most groups can't do the whole mountain in one day. I recommend camping here and scaling the Crater in the morning. Rappelling down is easier, so we can slide back into Icicle by dinnertime tomorrow."
"Hell yeah, works for us." Zack pumps his fist. "Right, Cloud?"
He doesn't have it in him to answer vocally, but he gathers his wits enough to nod.
Wetness pools at the corners of his eyes. His vision goes strangely blurry until he blinks it away.
"It's a little risky with the monsters, but if you're half as good as your sword arm we'll be fine," Gloria says.
"Count on it! Our wallets will be overflowing in no time," Zack says, although inside he's not as confident as he sounds. The climb must have been tough, because his face is flushed and he's breathing hard. He drags the stretcher behind him by a knotted rope.
Once Gloria turns and starts walking, the pressure of Zack's attention snaps back to him. An unnerving, if familiar, sensation.
"Was is him?" Zack asks, but in his gut he already knows. Cloud answers by opening his end of the connection, exposing his memories for his partner to see. Zack lets out a frustrated noise and pulls Cloud's arm over his shoulder. "Great, awesome. And you feel him up there, in the Crater?"
"At the moment I just feel sick." Cloud pants as his heart rate picks up. Speaking with his mind whites out his vision with pain, and he resolves not to do it again for a while.
"We're okay, we're okay," Zack says, like he always does when things are rough.
A strange whirring rises behind one of the mountains. A rhythmic, echoing, whop whop whop .
They pause, and Cloud sees the color drain from Zack's face.
"That sounds like—" A Shinra chopper crests the shortest of the three summits, its blades whipping and cutting through the crystal clear sky.
They track it, heads pivoting at the same time.
Thankfully, Gloria looks similarly concerned. "Damn, what are they thinking, flying that noisy thing up here? They'll cause an avalanche."
"Pretty sure they already did." Zack quips. Cloud groans.
"There's no way they don't see us."
"Then let's pick up the pace. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not be here when half the mountain comes down." Zack lifts the majority of Cloud's weight easily, and it's all he can do not to just drag his feet. They go from a slow walk to just under a run.
The chopper swoops, arcing in a slow circuit of the back bowl.
"We can't outrun a chopper," he says, voice quiet and rough with disuse.
"Don't remind me," Zack sighs.
For once luck is on their side. Given the choice between the cluster of tents in the distance and the three of them shambling toward a massive glacier, the helicopter chooses the flats.
Snow clouds and protests rise from the valley as the chopper makes a fast descent and touches down. Zack drags Cloud into a tight copse of trees, and he loses sight of them quickly. Soon the sky disappears as well, lost amid the green reaches of the trees.
They follow the guide through deep snow banks and up a rocky ridge. Little by little, the towering wall of a glacier comes into view. A frozen tunnel opens up before them, like a portal to another world; dark, quiet, unknowable.
Scalloped hollows etch the interior like ripples on a frozen lake. Water drips steadily from the pointed meetings of hollows, trickling to the stone floor like natural fountains and gathering into a lazy stream. Even in their rush, they can't help but stop and admire it.
"This is the largest continuous ice formation on the planet," Gloria says. "The Ancients called it Gaia's Shoulder. Normally it wouldn't be safe to camp inside a glacier, but this beauty has been here, unchanged, for over two thousand years."
Darkness shrouds everything past the first ten meters or so, and the silence within is only broken by ominous ice cracks and ghostly groans.
Cloud doesn't want to enter but he feels drawn in, like he's standing on a cliff edge and feeling that strange impulse to jump.
In the end, Zack makes the decision for him, his grip tightening on the stretcher and shattering the atmosphere with the scraping and clattering it makes against the rocks.
"Is that mako?" he asks, eyeing the vivid blue-green of the ice.
Gloria sets down her pack with a sigh, and pulls her gloves off with her teeth. Due to his willful absence earlier, it's the first time Cloud gets a clear look at her.
From her brusque words and tough exterior, he thought she would be a hard ass, but when she takes off her hat and shakes out her braided black hair, her smile is wide and carefree.
Even in the dim light, a rosy tone warms her brown skin and her eyes shine with exhilaration, an effect amplified by the laugh lines around her mouth and the winking, fine lines of her crow's feet.
"Just water," she says, reaching for a flashlight clipped to her climbing belt and shining it up into the glacier. The blue-green becomes white, brilliant and refracting in a hundred directions. Zack's face slacks in wonder.
"The glacier formed over a long period of time, compacted tighter and tighter by the Planet's gravity as each layer froze on top of the last. It's so dense that it absorbs most spectrums of light. That blue is what's left after it passes through billions and billions of ice molecules. It's a color you won't find in nature anywhere else."
"Wow…" Cloud says, without meaning to. He doesn't understand, not really. He's never heard of a light spectrum, or of colors passing through objects, but he finds himself entranced by the idea of it—of gravity and time slowly stripping all the color away.
He looks at the prism of white above her flashlight and thinks of the mindscape.
That's what the Void is, he realizes. The material world, but brighter. A perspective of reality with ten billion more colors introduced, such that his mind can only perceive it as white.
Zack looks at him, grinning. Cloud can't help but smile back.
"Although, I should say that there are high levels of Planet energy in it," Gloria adds after a moment, turning off the light with a click. "Only trace amounts. Too small to see with the naked eye, but enough for us to measure with instruments. It's the reason we have the Northern Lights—moonlight reflecting off of gaseous mako in the air."
"Wait, really? I thought it was all the ice."
"Nope! We're still studying that phenomenon though," she laughs, returning the flashlight to her belt and starting down the tunnel. "Down here we just collect some ice melt and slap it under a microscope. But an airborne gas, that's way harder to document."
"Wow, you sure know a lot about this." Zack follows, dragging Cloud along. "Wait, why is it giving off mako in the first place?"
"Planet energy," Gloria corrects briskly. "There's a big difference between Lifestream and mako. But anyway, it's because of the meteor. About fifty years ago, a big expedition was launched to discover the origins of the Crater.
It took eight years, but eventually they found evidence that a massive meteor struck the Planet, creating a hole deep enough for the Lifestream to reach the surface. To this day, energy pours out of the wound, weaving together to try and close it."
"Like a scab?" Zack frowns. "And the excess energy is like the blood that gets out while the scab is forming?"
"Yes, exactly like that."
They follow a curve in the path, and then the cave opens up, all the way up. A shaft like a massive chimney cuts through the ice above, hundreds of meters into the clear sky. A cool draft kisses Cloud's cheek when he looks up.
With an authoritative nod, Gloria inspects the alcove and wipes at her nose with her sleeve. "Everything looks good here, should be safe for the night. Take a breather, you two, we can set the tents in a minute."
Zack's eyes scan Cloud nervously, like he's just remembered that he was worried about him. Cloud elbows him in the side.
"Don't look at me like that, you're the one who's swaying."
"True, true," he nods. They don't sit so much as they fall in a controlled fashion. Zack leans him against a boulder and starts mother-henning, poking at his feelings through their bond and touching his face.
Cloud shoves him mentally, scowling. "Stop fussing. Go lay down."
"Your eyes were bleeding," Zack says. He rubs a thumb under one side and it comes away dusted with burgundy flakes. Mindful of Gloria, he slaps his hands away.
"I'm fine, bro ," he says with a meaningful glare. "Get some rest. You'll need it to fight the monsters."
Remembering himself, Zack scoots away and flops on his back. His aura turns prickly and annoyed, and Cloud rolls his eyes. Serves him right for always saying they're brothers, as if it's any less weird for brothers to touch each other's faces than friends.
Clumsily, he works his gloves off with stiff fingers and pinches the webbing of his thumb. It helps, a little. To his deep vindication, Zack falls asleep in a matter of minutes. He really should worry about himself more. All Cloud does these days is rest.
"It's a pretty romantic place," Gloria says. "You seem like a good match. I'm glad you two will get to see it together."
Cloud lifts his head, surprised. The guide smiles wryly and shrugs. "A lot of lovers come through these caves. You get a sixth sense for these things as a guide."
"We're not—" he stutters. Truthfully, he doesn't like to hide it, but it feels wrong to blow their cover without Zack awake to give his permission.
"Hey, it's none of my business." Gloria stretches and stands, letting out a big sigh. "I'm just saying, don't feel like you have to act a certain way on account of little old me. I'm here to show you around, that's all."
She shuffles, kicking rocks to clear a spot for the tents and then unloading them from the stretcher board. Apparently Cloud wasn't the only luggage strapped down for transport.
He watches her unpack, recalling a full day's worth of Zack looking at him, Zack touching him, Zack's steadfast preoccupation with his comfort and wellness.
The whole concept of flying under the radar seems ridiculous in retrospect. People remember strangers with mako eyes. They remember when a guy walks into town with an unconscious body on his back. Compared to that, the relation they have to each other must seem inconsequential.
He wants to go back and tell her the truth, but by that point it's too late. The opportunity has passed, and now Gloria's busy hammering stakes around the corners of the tents.
She's really good at it, her movements practiced and efficient. Within the time it normally takes Zack to pitch their one, she's assembled two and stretched tarps over them for the dripping water.
Rummaging in a bag, she pulls out some kind of tent liner and her sleeping bag. She meets Cloud's stare as she stands.
"Your illness… It's mako poisoning, isn't it?"
"Uh—" Once more he's wrong-footed, unsure what to say. Gloria shoots him a reassuring look.
"Don't worry, you hide it well. I just happen to know the signs. That expedition I mentioned, my father was the lead scientist on it. He fell in one day, and he was never really the same after."
"Oh." He looks at his hands, and wishes Zack were awake. He's the one who knows how to set people at ease. When Cloud tries, it feels stilted and awkward. "I'm… sorry that happened."
"Don't be. I was so young when it happened that I barely remember him any other way."
"Did he get better?" Cloud finds himself asking.
"Hmm, now that's a tricky question." Gloria purses her lips, her eyes wandering up the ice shaft to the far-away light. She deposits her burdens into her tent and sets about arranging her bedding. "He did get back to walking on his own, and he lived a good long time. But was he ever quite the same man who fell into that hole? No, I don't think he was."
"I see." Cloud hunches forward, uncomfortable. He should have kept his mouth shut. If he wasn't ready to hear the answer, then he really shouldn't have asked.
Gloria seems to notice his shift in mood, but it doesn't deter her from talking. As soon as she has her tent arranged, she plops down and crosses her arms over her knees like she's settling in for a good, long chat.
"That's not to say that it was all bad," she says softly, threading her fingers together between her legs. "People hear about accidents and they picture broken men. But he wasn't broken, he was just different. He saw the world differently."
For a moment, Cloud expects her to ask something awful. How did it happen? What's it like? What do you see when you close your eyes? He remembers the focused, hungry looks that the lab doctors gave him, how they wanted to slice his brain into cross-sections and sandwich it between microscope slides.
Gloria doesn't look like that. She looks wind-chapped and sentimental. He realizes two beats too late that this conversation isn't about him. It's about her father, and the things she couldn't tell anyone about him.
Mako poisoning isn't that common, even with Shinra pumping it into millions of households. Most guys with mako eyes are addicts, not veterans. Not many people know what it's like, and even fewer would listen to her talk about it without judgment.
Realizing this, he clears his throat and ignores the nervous energy coiling in his belly.
"Different… how?"
"Oh, it was lots of little things," she says. "The sort of things that surprise you in the moment, but that you can't quite recall later."
She rubs her hands together for warmth, and smiles a many-layered smile. "There was one time, though, one time when I was in my twenties. I had spent the summer in La Costa, trying to soak up some warmth before the winter came and froze my bones again.
I met a girl. Lovely, vibrant thing. I told her I wasn't long for the beaches, and she said that was alright. We shacked up for the season and I went a little crazy for her. Playing house, you know?
I think everybody should do that at least once in their lives—just pick a person and give themselves over body and soul." She gives him a look that makes him nervous, only to banish it with a laugh and a dismissive wave of her hand.
"But a season is just a season, and by the end I was ready to get back to work. It was… maybe two or three days after I got back in Icicle that I found the time to come and visit Dad, and when I walked through that door, I tell you, he jumped right up and grabbed me, just like this—"
Gloria stands, growing animated with her story. She walks several steps closer, holding her arms out in front of her.
"And he said to me—all stern and huffy like—he said, ' Gloria , that Maria's a nice girl. A real nice girl. I like her a lot. Why the hell would you let a girl like that get away?'"
Cloud furrows his brows, and Gloria grins.
"Now mind you, we didn't have PHS technology in those days. I hadn't sent a letter or spoken a word to him in three months. But I walked through that door and Daddy knew. He just knew I'd made a huge mistake, and he was damn mad about it," she says proudly, dropping her hands and setting them on her hips. "But that wasn't too shocking, to be honest with you. He was always talking crazy—said it was the Planet whispering to him, telling him stuff it thought he ought to know."
"W-whispering…" Cloud's mouth goes slack. Gloria nods, a gesture full of understanding.
"Used to bleed out his eyes too, come to think of it. Only sometimes, when the Planet was whispering too loud."
They share a long glance. Long enough that Cloud knows he's meant to say something, but he's not a talker like her. He doesn't have words to express the great, big balloon of conflicted feelings that her story has filled up in his chest.
He nods back, eventually, and Gloria stands. Brushing her many braids from her forehead, she retrieves her hat from her coat pocket and pulls it back on.
"They say the air up here can cure any illness. Some native legend or something. Can't say I've ever seen it happen, but I think you're damn brave for coming all this way to give it a try."
"Thanks." He hugs himself to ward off the cold that's creeping in.
After half an hour or so, Zack stirs and groans. With a hiss of pain, he pulls one arm across his chest to stretch it, and then the other.
He has to tell him—about the crow, the darkness, Sephiroth—but Gloria's prying interest presents a problem.
She seems like a good person. He didn't want her to get drawn into their shit, but his head still pulses at the slightest use of his powers. It will have to wait until they can talk privately.
Zack draws his knees to his chest and springs up, landing neatly on his feet. Cloud feels the stab of sore muscles in his legs as he pushes up to stabbing. He would tell him to take it easy, but then Zack meets his eye with that signature over-bright smile.
"Well, that fixed me right up! How 'bout you? Any better?"
"A snack wouldn't hurt," he says, more because Zack's hungry than out of a genuine desire for food. His partner's attention pivots like a bloodhound.
"Oh my god, you're right. Food sounds amazing."
"There's some self-heating rations in the overnight bag," Gloria says. "Though we shouldn't open them unless we're ready for a fight. Food will attract monsters quicker than anything."
"Good, that's what we're here for, right? I call that a bonus." Zack rolls his arms in big circles and twists his back. "Dinner and a show."
"You would," Cloud says.
His partner looks over his shoulder and wiggles his eyebrows. "You say that as if you won't enjoy the view."
Cloud rolls his eyes. It's going to be a long night.
Dinner did attract monsters, and Zack did look good killing them. No surprises there.
What did surprise Cloud was the quality of Gloria's materia, and just how useful she was in dispatching the bats and predatory cats of the area.
Zack probably could have handled them, but with the help of their guide he was able to scrape by without exerting himself too much. Cloud was glad for it, since they weren't likely to get any sleep tonight.
Once the monsters stopped coming, they'd gone out in search of bigger game. Cloud left them to it. After a long period of echoed noises, they returned with their arms covered in dragon armlets and their pockets full of ice rings. He decided not to ask.
Now, finally, Zack unlaces his boots and crawls into the tent, his spirit light but movements sluggish with fatigue. He shoves his cold feet into the sleeping back alongside Cloud's, followed shortly by the rest of him. Cloud grumbles and makes room.
"You ever wonder where monsters get all this stuff?" the other man asks, burying his hands under Cloud's shirt and making him flinch.
"Cold," he growls, not that it deters Zack at all. He only scoots closer, until they're chest to chest and their legs are tangled together.
"No, really," he continues, "how does a big old bat end up with gold rings around its feet? It's weird."
"They probably steal them from the people they kill," Cloud huffs. "Move your chin, you're jabbing me."
"Oh, my bad—" More shifting, more shocks of frigid skin. Finally Zack gets comfortable, more on top of Cloud than beside him, and he makes peace with his lot. At least he's contributing something to the treasure hunt, if only body heat.
Zack presses his cold nose to Cloud's chest and exhales. His weight gets heavier as he lets himself relax. "Missed you."
"You barely left me."
"Still," Zack sing-songs. With low-slung eyelids he peeks up. The static of the bag makes his hair stand up, fluffy-looking and pointing in all directions. "You're talking better today. Maybe the mountain really is magic."
"It just hurts too much to think." That dims Zack's mood considerably.
"What happened out there, anyway? You started yelling all of the sudden, and then you started spasming, and then the blood. It freaked me out. Real bad."
"It's not like I can help it." Cloud looks away, guilty. Zack stares at him, doesn't move.
"You, uh, said his name a couple times. Sephiroth."
"I saw him. Inside my head."
"As himself?"
"No, he was a… bird."
Zack's brow quirks and Cloud rolls his eyes. "I know, I know, but—it scared me. He's not supposed to be in there, he's supposed to be outside. He's supposed to be dead."
"Wait, you think he's alive? Like, physically alive."
"Yeah. And he's here, in the Crater," Cloud nods.
"What? But that's—is he a clone?"
The idea hadn't occurred to him, although of course it's the obvious answer. Zack leans up on his elbows, his face tense with scrutiny.
"He said he was… fading. That there wasn't much left of him." Cloud frowns, hoping it means something to Zack, something he might not know, but his partner's face shows no signs of revelation.
"If he weren't Sephiroth, I'd say that sounds like degradation. But even so, what's he doing here? What does he want from you?"
Cloud shakes his head as anxiety bubbles in his gut. "There's really only one way to know."
"Yeah, but I don't like it," Zack nods tiredly, laying back down. "I relived that night in my head so many times, wishing I had done things differently, trying to think of how I might have gotten through to him and stopped him doing… what he did. If there's a chance that I can save him now, maybe it's worth the risk."
"We've come this far," Cloud says, slowly and purposefully lifting his right arm over Zack's back. The other man starts, their bond gushing with surprise and untamed affection.
"You really are doing better." His voice cracks. Cloud swallows, nodding. He curls his fingers into Zack's jacket and lets his eyes slide shut as he breathes in his scent.
"Something changed the other day. Like I hit my limit of feeling sorry for myself and now I just want to… I dunno, move on. Deal with it. Instead of laying around and moping."
Zack shifts. A cool, unfamiliar feeling slips into the bond.
He gets a vision of old pain, of hands wrapping around the hilt of the Buster Sword and pressing the blade to his brow.
"After Angeal… died , I think I had that too," Zack says. "For months it was all I could think about. I felt like I'd never get over it, like I'd always feel that weight holding me down. But then one day I woke up and I looked out the window and I thought, 'This isn't it, man. This isn't how life's supposed to be. I gotta get up and do something before this grief eats me alive.'"
"Yeah—" Cloud clears his throat as Zack's emotions filter through him. He curls his fingers into the fluff of Zack's puffer coat, and nods weakly. "Yeah, that's pretty much it."
Zack hums, sliding off of Cloud's chest and onto his side. When his arm starts to slip off his shoulders, he wraps his fingers around Cloud's wrist and holds him there, squeezing.
"So we leave tonight once Gloria's asleep and… what, climb the Crater? Find Sephiroth?"
"I think the tunnels go through the rock," Cloud says. "I keep feeling tremors. Like a wind, but energy. I think it's coming from the Lifestream."
"That would be a hell of a lot easier than going up and over."
"And it'll keep her out of it. I don't want the Turks thinking she was an accomplice."
"Look at you, talking like a hero," Zack teases.
"Shut up." Cloud wrinkles his nose and shuts his eyes. "Get some sleep while you can. I'll wake you up when it's time."
"Yes sir, Mr. Hero, sir."
Tilting the hand that Zack's holding tight to his neck, he pinches him hard on the cheek.
His partner's panicked yelp gives him the best laugh he's had all week.