Disclaimer: I do not now or before and most likely not in the future, own Final Fantasy, Square Enix or any of the characters.

Date of chapter idea conception (written out rough draft ideas on paper): December 17, 2013
Date of chapter creation (written out on my computer): June 3, 2014
Date I sent chapter to my beta: June 16, 2014
Date I got it back from my beta and began fixing the edits: June 17, 2014
Date finished with edits and review replies: June 20, 2014

A/N: I will warn you that this chapter is weird, it is supposed to be weird, and the timeline is a secret so just go with the flow.

To the guest reviewers: I'm not sure if you are the same person, so I will just address all the inquiries separately-

1.) Zack can kill Hojo, but Hojo is a master manipulator. With Sephiroth, he had numerous opportunities, we assume, during the time of his birth until his death, but Seph never did kill him, why? I chalk it up to his way of a master manipulator and the phenomena of the "Stockholm Syndrome." I do have ideas for later on in the story, but if I were to implement them now, the story would be over and I would have a lot of people wanting back stories.

2.) I have played CC at least 6 times from start to finish and I love that Zack is able to fight so many. In my eyes, he was a better Soldier than even Seph, but that is subjective.

3.) About chapter 28, I do have a warning at the beginning of the chapter in the author's note:

A/N: This is a chapter with a dark flashback and I want to remind you to that this story is rated M. I tried to make the scene as gentle as I could, but if you don't like, then you don't have to read it, it is your choice. I debated on whether or not to have this in the story, but I felt in necessary for some of Zack's choices later in the story and I hinted at it when Zack first woke up in the Cosmo Canyon.

4.) About a graphic sex scene(s), I mention somewhere that the scenes that are in here already are about as graphic as I can or will get. If you want a smutty story, this isn't one, I can't write smut, I'm just not good at sex scenes and with children running around my house, it is damn near impossible to do so. Also, yes it would be complicated if Tifa were also pregnant, but I'm not sure how that could work in to the story as I have it planned out, but thanks for that suggestion.

5.) If I add a flashback with Zack and Tifa having sex, it will be a little bit down the line, but like I said, it won't be smut, sorry.

6.) I'm not exactly sure what you were getting at with this review about Aerith, her father, mother and Sephiroth, but that isn't in this story. I may address some of these issues later in the story, there may even be an appearance by Vincent. I agree with you about Vincent killing Hojo for good, and about how Hojo is really the original evil in FFVII, along with Jenova. Thanks!

Reviews, critiques, and flames are welcome. I absolutely love all reviews about the story as it gives me motivation, I utilize good constructive criticism to help my writing improve and I feed the flames to the fires of my imagination!

Great news! My beta is back from vacation! Here is a special welcome back thank you to my beta SubZeroChimera!


"Every man has in himself a continent of undiscovered character. Happy is he who acts as the Columbus to his own soul." –Sir J. Stephen

To You I Give My Heart

Chapter 34

~What I Used To Be~

With a yawn, Zack stretched his arms up as his muscles quivered and reveled in the freedom from their previous sleeping position. A chill brought goose bumps across his flesh, making him curl into himself and reach for the blanket that fell off during the night, but he couldn't find it. Opening his eyes to locate the elusive bed covering, the darkened room revealed he wasn't in his childhood home, he wasn't even in his apartment in the Shinra tower, he was still in the basement labs.

Sitting up, he immediately moved over to the corner, on the floor where it was the safest for the time being. Wrapping his arms around his bare knees, he looked around at the mess in the room from days ago. Raising his hand to his neck, he wrapped his fingers around the long black hair that covered almost half of his back now, it tickled him if it got stuck between his legs and chest when he sat squatted down like this. Getting his hair behind him, he missed his dream and wanted to get back to it, but the noise that now came from the other side of the door would keep him from any kind of sleep.

Reaching out, he took a hold of the remains of rope that he used as a weapon, the same rope that once tied him to the bars across the room from him. Tilting his head, he stared, marveling at how the bars could look like trees, trees that he used to climb when he was small.

For safety from the noises getting louder outside his door, he jumped up, wrapped the rope in a loop and put it over his right shoulder, leapt over the remains of the dead Kalm Fang and took a hold of the tree trunk. Placing his bare feet on either side of the far left tree, he jumped up, grabbing the trunk higher up with his hands and pushed up with his feet off the wall and got as high as the tree would allow. Hitting his head on the familiar spot, on the underside of the largest tree limb, which made a ceiling above him that didn't allow him to climb any farther.

Bracing himself, with his right foot on the next trunk to the right, he wrapped his left arm around the top most part of the trunk he was on. With a deft and practiced movement, he flipped around and got his left foot around to where his right one was and put his right foot on the wall, keeping himself high up on the side of the wall, above the carnage of the dead creature he'd slain and eaten. With his free hand, he moved the black spikes that had fallen forward into his eyes.

Watching closely, he waited for the door to open, waited to see if it was his only friend in this place. Sometimes they would fight, sometimes they would play, but most of the time they spent a lot of time alone or with Hojo, the bane of their existence, but undoubtedly, he owed his life to Hojo.

Every time he and his friend fought, it was always about one thing and the larger of the two brunettes very nearly won most of the time, so his friend would cry out and beat his fists on him until Zack was able to subdue him. It was always the same, and Hojo would take notes and ask questions before his friend was taken away, sometimes on a stretcher. The brunette wasn't proud of the fact that he hurt his friend, but Hojo said it was their nature, it was what he'd made them for.

Hojo always asked the same questions about clouds and young specimens at first, but then he stopped and wanted other things from him, like blood and violence. He liked clouds, he remembered watching them as a child, laying out in the dirt, the warm sun shining above and he would count them, the wind would blow the blond hair, getting it in the smiling face and the captivating blue eyes that matched the dark blue of the sky. He remembered how clouds were soft and gentle and how much he enjoyed just being around them, but the scientist didn't ask about them anymore, so he let himself forget, to keep his secret fascination of the fluffy white things away from the scientist.

With a metallic screech, the door finally opened, letting light flood into the darkened room and his friend was there, being led by the large metal loop that Zack hated. The times that the heavy metal loop was forced around his own neck, he fought it and always was electrocuted for it, but it hurt when the large man in the white button-up shirt would make his head jerk to the side with a flick of his wrist.

With his free hand, Zack moved to hold up the waistband of his tattered pants-turned-shorts so that they didn't fall further down his hips. His friend asked him why he kept them and Zack couldn't really answer, he just felt better with them than without. They were comforting for some reason, like a favorite toy, or an old baby blanket.

"Ahhh! Miii-ne!" His friend yelled.

With a twitching blink, Zack made himself remember his friend's name, "Ha-Harding." Waiting until the man with the sleep gun and the other with the metal pole to leave, Zack jumped down to the floor, dodging the bones of the animal; he greeted his friend and waited for their instructions on what they were to do today, he hoped that it didn't include them being taken to the labs because that was where Hojo hurt them.

It was so easy to forget things here. There were new drugs and tests that Hojo gave them, or did to them, that he had to make himself remember, but it was getting harder and harder to fight the darkness that prompted him to want to forget the important things, like names. Names was what defined an individual, and he kept reminding himself that his name was Z, Specimen Z … no … Zack.

It was time he got to see the clouds he missed watching, seeing the blond hair, that he dreamed of but couldn't remember who or what it meant.

Looking around, he wondered where his mind went. Trees? The bars stood in place where he'd once seen trees, now he thought of the times he'd fought Harding. The Kalm Fangs he'd killed, the one carcass that lay next to his foot, and eaten in his starvation, he wondered what happened to his mind. Eating raw animals that he'd killed with his bare hands, climbing trees that didn't exist?

With the flash of the light coming on, it was their instructions, they were to fight for eating rights. Which one of them would get to eat this week? Days? Weeks? Months? How much time had really passed? He wanted to go to his parent's house, become a farmer since being a Soldier didn't work out so well.

Hearing a growl next to him, he glanced at Harding, the creature who used to be a man and he saw himself and what he was becoming. Harding's naked form, crouched and circled in a predatory dance. Tapping his bare foot on a loose femur bone of the wolf like creature, Zack slowly wiggled his toes underneath it, keeping eye contact with the man across from him.

Balancing the bone on the top of his right foot, he raised his left hand in a fist and Harding followed it with his eyes. It was a long enough distraction that gave Zack the time to kick up, letting the bone fly upward, grabbing it with is right hand, he swung hard, across the man's face, breaking open an old injury on his cheek. Blood splattered on the wall, fresh over the old dried splatter from the fights before with both Harding and the Kalm Fangs that Hojo released.

Zack thought that if he could subdue his friend quickly, when they came in, he could give them a surprise of his own, a strength that the thoughts of wispy, free, wheat colored clouds gave him, but Harding wouldn't give up easily, so it came down to brute strength and small amounts of restraint.

Jacob recovered quickly and got a foot on the wall and pushed off and wrapped his arms around Zack's waist, pulling them both down to the floor. The femur bone was jarred out of his hand, but the bones that lay under him, which dug painfully in his back, could provide some help, if he could reach them in time. Grabbing the feral man's throat with one hand, he fumbled for another bone to replace the one he'd hit him with before and all he came up with was a small rib bone, still holding a fair amount of meat.

Keeping his sudden growling stomach at bay from the sight of the raw red meat on the bone, he shoved the rib in the snarling man's teeth, holding both ends at his cheeks, keeping him from biting him, Zack held off knocking him out just yet, he had to make a good show for Hojo to believe it.

Flipping over, Zack had the upper hand over the fight. Pulling his rope from the floor, with one hand, he wrapped an end around one of the bars next to him. Letting Harding sit up a little, he wrapped the other around his throat and hoped that he didn't accidentally kill him. Quickly slipping the short end that was around the smaller man's neck, around the long end, he let go of Harding and pulled on the other end, opposite the bar, pulling the former physician assistant's back up against the bars with a hard crack.

Spitting and sputtering, Harding choked on his own saliva, but he still reached for and kicked at Zack. With a fair amount of luck, Jacob landed a kick to the side of his knee, and feeling the rope loosen in his grip, he wrapped the end of the rope he held in his hand around the back of his hand, so he wouldn't drop it, he kept from releasing it in his agony. Falling to his side, the rope momentarily tightened and pulled on Harding's neck, painfully. A loud wheeze from the man against the bars, his fight slowed to a dangerous level, and lack of activity.

Quickly muttering, "Shit," Zack rolled over, closer to the man as he began to lose consciousness, hoping to get the rope loosened as he moved closer, but the rope caught on a hip bone of the carcass and it slammed against the bars, but didn't allow any room for Harding to move, or breathe.

Catching a glimpse of his eyes, the glowing green ring around the brown irises began to fade as they bulged. Frantic fighting and clawing at his throat met with nothing, he couldn't free himself from the rope.

Glimpses of memories flashed in the former Soldier's mind, Harding, talking to him at a table, a smile to someone on his side, sitting next to a thick braid of blond hair, a person with no face. Another memory, the smaller brunette with tears threatening to fall as he stood over a specimen on a table in the lab… But he was wearing a lab coat in that memory. Why was his feral friend in a lab coat?

Trying to clear his thinking, Zack shook his head. Dropping his end of the rope, the former Soldier moved toward his friend, whose feet stopped moving in the dried blood, loose bones and fresher blood, leaving marks that revealed part of the brown tile floor. His dark crimson blood flowed gently over his jaw, soaked through the stiff rope that still wrapped around his neck. Harding's chest heaved in anticipatory breathes, but none came.

With a curious tilt of his head, Zack watched, wondrous if this would be the end of his friend, or would Hojo just bring him back, like he did when he would take him out of the room screaming from the broken bones that Zack had inflicted, or was it the same as when he killed the Kalm Fangs? Would Harding be his food for this week?

A screeching at the door, Hojo entered with his usual number of orderlies, "What have you done?"

Not taking his eyes off the now blank eyes of his friend, Zack asked plainly, "What have you done?" A giggle left his lips as he stayed crouched on the floor, he yelled louder, "What have you done?!" Grinning, Zack rolled over the bones toward his friend, and with a flip of his wrist, the rope dropped from the hip bone and fell slack around Harding's shoulders. Again, he laughed out as he asked, "What. Have. You. Done?!"

With expert ease, he took the rope and pulled it taught and clothes-lined the first orderly. Dropping to a knee, he quickly sneered at the approaching orderly as he snapped the man's neck that lay below him. Jumping to his feet, he quickly grabbed the second white hospital garb clad man and used the rope to wrap around his head and yanked down, snapping it tightly around his neck. Hojo winced at the loud sound of the bone breaking.

Letting the body drop from his grasp, Zack stepped over it, toward Hojo and asked the scientist quietly, "What have you done?"


A/N 2: Thanks to everyone who reads, favorites, subscribes and/or reviews, I appreciate your time and I dedicate all of this to you. To quote another author, "Getting reviews makes me feel all warm and squishy."

Please send me your reviews if you want. It is really easy. Just click your arrow in the little box, write what you thought or felt about the chapter and then click right down there, just below the box. A little lower… a little to the right… yeah, right there! Click it! *grinning*