Interlude II. Tomorrow (Prodigal)

"Run away, run away, like a prodigal

Don't you wait for me

So ashamed, so ashamed, but I need you so

And you wait for me

And you wait for me."

From Prodigal by OneRepublic

- L.

It was raining. Or so Zack had told him. Cloud told him to stop being ridiculous.

"We're inside a prison, underground, probably. How would you know?"

"I know," Zack said, sagely. "I have this sense… of sensing weather."

"Yeah?" Cloud wanted to roll his eyes. If he wasn't so tired, he would have. "What else can you sense?"

"Freedom." Zack said without hesitation. Cloud really did roll his eyes this time. The bed leg that Zack was cutting out with a butter knife he stole the other day seemed just as intact as when it began.

"I'm glad at least one of us is hopeful," Cloud said. He hadn't really meant to say it out loud, but things tended to slip out of his head lately. The pain was a constant ache in the back of his mind, and it was taking almost everything he had to manage it – not to scream out. It left little energy for things like watching what came out of his mouth, things he'd devoted most of his energy into, back in another lifetime.

"Well," Zack stopped cutting. He looked thoughtfully at Cloud. "Okay. It doesn't matter, 'cause I'm gonna get us out of here. And I have hope, so." He shrugged. "You just worry about staying strong."

"I'll try," it came out more sarcastic than he'd intended. "What with the constant torture, it might be a little challenging."

Zack just grinned. "I'm glad you haven't lost your sarcasm, then."

After a moment of surprised silence, Cloud sputtered out a laughter, too. "Of all the things to be glad about."

"At least we're here together. I don't know what I would've done without your perky sarcasm."

(You know you would've been better off. You would be able to escape more easily. You would have escaped already, if not for…)

Cloud gulped back something hot in his throat, another kind of pain. He knew he wouldn't make it out alive, but Zack might, if he went alone. He wanted to tell him that – to leave him behind. He knew Zack wouldn't even talk about it, but if he told him enough times, or if he died first (which was a challenge too), maybe he'd save himself.

"Zack, when you see a chance to escape, and I'm…" Cloud started.

"Shut up, Cloud. You're gonna hurt your head."

And Zack grinned, like they weren't stuck in a torture chamber underground and they were going to wake up tomorrow, stretch, and just walk out.

That idiot.

- L.

Sometimes he tried to help with the bed leg, even though he saw no point of it. When Zack fell asleep, and he couldn't – because of the pain that muttered in his ears all night long – he dragged himself to where Zack had sat and started cutting. The repetitive labor didn't take his mind off the pain, or make it less; it made it a pattern, something to be expected, something more bearable. If Zack noticed the deeper cut in the morning, he didn't say anything because Cloud liked to pretend that he had fallen asleep, too. He didn't want Zack to know how weak he was. Zack was affected very little, maybe not at all, from the same treatments that Cloud was going through. Cloud knew that Hojo was trying to breed the perfect monster; a copy of Sephiroth – as he now knew – and that it was basically injecting a lot of Mako into his system. How was that different from what SOLDIERS went through? Cloud had heard that not everyone could be in SOLDIER, because their bodies wouldn't stand the Mako. It shamed him that he'd thought he could be one of them, once. Obviously he was weak. Obviously a dream was just that, a dream. Cloud didn't want Zack to know. He battled the pain with all he had, and tried not to show it.

- L.

One day, he overheard a conversation. He was in a state between consciousness and unconsciousness, life and death maybe, and the unguarded words of the lab scientists tickled into his ears. He thought hazily that it was important, and that he should tell Zack… The pain was going away. It was one of those rare moments, when his senses overloaded – that's what Cloud guessed happened, anyway – and his body fell into a blissful coma. They would leave him alone for days when this happened. Cloud tried to remember what he'd heard, but the rumbling inside his body was too strong; too violent. It overtook him too quickly. Cloud supposed that if he never woke up again, Zack might break the bed leg and make it out alive.

He woke to the sound of a steady slice and cut. His mind half-swimming in a mist he wondered, for the first time, if they weren't being watched inside their cells. A camera could be hidden anywhere, perhaps even in the bed leg that Zack was cutting now. He vaguely got the sense that there had been something important he had to tell Zack, and wondered if this was it.

"Zack." His voice sounded odd, grating like it was in pain, though he felt no pain. The fire that pulsed in his veins, throbbed constantly, was gone.

"Cloud! Hey, you're awake!" A sound of shuffling, and Zack's head came into view, blocking the grayish white ceiling of their hell. Cell, Cloud corrected himself, though it hardly mattered.

"How long was I…?"

"Almost two whole days. I kept yelling at them but they just said you'd be fine."

"You yelled at them?" Cloud tried to turn his head but realized he couldn't. He hoped it was a temporary thing, out of fatigue and lack of sustenance (although even if it wasn't, he didn't much care).

"Oh yeah. You wouldn't believe…"

"Don't do that, Zack." Cloud remembered something. "They're already thinking you're too… okay."

"Well, I am." Zack looked confused. He narrowed his eyes at Cloud. "Whatever they're doing to us, it's having almost no effect on me."

"You mean you don't know?" Cloud wanted to roll his eyes, if only to see Zack's grin that usually followed Cloud's eye-roll. Only he barely had the energy to blink.

"What?" Zack looked confused. Cloud saw that he was still holding the butter knife in one hand. That reminded him of something else, too. He felt like an old man, his mind wandering, breezing through every memory and never staying enough to taste the colors. The pictures all faded, black-and-white.

"They might have cameras."

"What?"

"In this room. Here. They might be watching us even now."

"Well, I thought they might, when I started." Zack shrugged. "But they let me keep sawing the bed leg off, so I figured they didn't."

Or they do, and they just don't care. Cloud thought, but didn't speak it out loud. He wanted to hope; rather, he wanted to let Zack hope. He nodded.

"What were you going to say?" Zack asked, when a few moments passed without Cloud saying anything.

"Hmm?" His eyelids were getting heavy. He tried to keep them open. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a small voice started to worry that he still wasn't feeling any pain. But his scattered head couldn't think of a reason why that would be a problem.

"Before, you said, you mean you don't know."

"Oh. It's…" Cloud had to pause, to remember. "What they're doing… to us. They're injecting Mako… a lot of it."

"Really? How did you know?" Zack blinked. "And why would they do that?"

"They want… Hojo wants to make us into a perfect monster. I heard them talking."

"What? But they never talk! I yell at them and still they act like they're deaf or something…"

"They do, in front of me. I pretend to be unconscious." Cloud didn't add that he really was unconscious most of the time, or falling fast towards being unconscious, anyway. Which reminded him of what he was going to tell Zack.

"Zack, they might discard you."

"Huh?"

"They know that Mako has no effect on you. So they're gonna… if you keep being unaffected…"

Cloud didn't have to explain what discard meant. Zack would be able to guess.

"You mean I have to act like I'm in pain?" Zack narrowed his eyes. Cloud knew that if they really were being watched, it was useless anyway – but he had to try. "But they have these machines that measure… well, everything! It wouldn't matter –"

"They can't measure pain, though." Cloud reminded him. He knew it was true because it was working the opposite way for him. He knew he should show the pain more, as it was leading them to inject even more Mako, pumping him full with it and setting his entire body on fire. But he couldn't, wouldn't, not with Zack in the next room and even if nobody was watching.

"Well, okay." Zack looked a little doubtful. "But not for long, though. We're gonna make it out of here, Cloud, I promise."

Cloud thought about denying that. Be realistic, Zack. You might, but I – "Okay."

"I promise." Zack repeated. Cloud thought that maybe Zack was trying to convince himself too. He was too tired to protest, anyway.

"Okay, Zack. You get us out."

- L.

Zack was good at a lot of things. He was good at making up stories, and making up hope. He was good at strategizing and fighting. He was good at cutting up a bed leg (he still wouldn't tell Cloud what that was for, all he said was you'll see.) and he was, as it turned out, very good at feigning pain. They didn't discard Zack. The scientists were confused – Cloud knew, because they talked in front of his closed eyelids and shallow breaths – about the discordance between the reading and Zack's apparent suffering. After a while, the readings began to correspond to the visual results, because people saw what things became and things became what people saw. Or so Cloud tried to explain to Zack, but Zack said it was too confusing.

"We know three things for sure, now." Zack said cheerfully, waving Cloud's protests away. "One, is that they definitely don't have any cameras in this room."

"They might have visual without the sounds." Cloud muttered. Zack pretended he hadn't heard that.

"Two – these scientists are idiots. And they don't really know what they're doing."

Cloud snorted a little at that. The pain slipped a little, with the laugh. "What's number three?"

"You tell me." Zack said, grinning crookedly. He took the half-eaten bread on Cloud's tin plate and shoved it into his mouth. Half was all Cloud could stomach without being violently ill. Cloud looked away, feeling his Mako-filled stomach spurt sea-water.

"We're gonna get out?" Cloud guessed.

"You got it." Zack attempted at a wink, and failed. It just looked like there was something in his eyes. Cloud had to laugh although it hurt his bones to do it.

"You'd be a good salesman, you know."

"Because of my charms?"

"Because of your pigheadedness."

"Hey, call it optimism." Zack reached for the crumbs, chuckling a little. "I have a lot of hope for the future."

"Yeah?" Cloud's stomach gave a groan. The spinning green of the Mako had reached his temples – he could feel it. Soon it would invade the veins in his eyes and he'd fall unconscious, desperately, so he doesn't try to pluck his eyeballs out with his fingernails.

"Yeah." Zack's voice sounded softer, or maybe it was the thumping in his ears. "What're you gonna do when we get out of here, Cloud?"

"I don't know." His voice was distant, like it was coming from years ago. He could feel himself slipping. "I don't have any…"

"Well, no worries. If you don't have nowhere to go, I know this place…"

Zack's voice faded into a soft light. Cloud would've said go visit my mom if she wasn't burnt to crisp already. He wished he had called her. He couldn't remember if he had ever said I love you and that made him sad, that he didn't remember and she wouldn't have either. He wished she'd known. He wished…

Was Tifa alive? The last time he'd checked, yes, beneath the heavy smoke of Mako and Sephiroth's eyes – the same color, madness burning the irises bright green and hatred bleeding out like tears. But if no one had survived, if he'd died and

He had died, they both had died. Cloud wanted to tell Zack that it was useless to hope about a future they didn't have

I wish I'd told you. Cloud whispered to the abyss. Nobody answered, not

- L.

Later, he would find that four years had passed in that Hell, but each day felt like a decade and each moment an eternity. Zack never forgot to tell him that they'd make it out, it wasn't far-off now. Cloud didn't believe those words. He endured not because of Zack's promises, but because he was already dead. And because Nibelheim was dead with him. There was no hope, he didn't believe in it. But he held on anyway. When Zack ran out of stories to distract him from pain, he started making up tales about dragons and fish and yellow flowers.

Cloud held on for so long. He didn't get used to the pain, he never would. But the day he didn't wake up was the day Zack finally knocked a guard unconscious with the metal bed leg he'd cut out and made his escape.

Cloud would have yelled at him to leave him here, if only he could speak. He felt and heard everything, but was paralyzed by the Mako that finally poisoned his senses into madness. He slipped in and out of consciousness, and each time he heard the world, it was nothing but Zack's quiet words and his labored breathings as he dragged, carried, helped Cloud all across the land. Sometimes they had to hide, sometimes Zack lit a bonfire and Cloud felt the stiff heat tickle his skin. He didn't need to eat, or drink, the Mako swirled in his body and suspended it from time. Zack talked a lot, just like he'd talked to distract him from the pain – but Cloud felt that he was trying to distract himself now, or maybe he'd always been trying to do that.

- L.

When the truck driver asked him what he was doing with a dead body, in a horrified voice, Zack sounded angry, almost, as rare as that was.

"He's not dead. He's sick."

"Alright, sorry."

Cloud couldn't see Zack's face but he could imagine how it must have looked; sometimes Zack looked angry even when he was just thinking. He had sharp edges in his eyes, with eyebrows that were dark and startled. In fact, if Zack hadn't been constantly laughing and smiling, Cloud would have been afraid of him in the beginning – he would've thought Zack was angry. It was hard to be afraid of Zack, but sometimes it was harder not to be.

"Sorry." Zack's sigh. Cloud felt his weight shift. Zack adjusted his grip on his shoulder, trying not to drop his limp body onto the dirt – Cloud knew, because he could smell the muggy brown air – and Cloud tried to ease his struggle. If only he could stand up straight. But these days, it was all he could do not to slip into sleep all the time because the pain was returning. Cloud hoped it meant that his senses were coming back.

"It's fine. So you said you needed a lift?" The driver sounded like he was hoping otherwise.

"Yeah. You're heading to Midgar, right?"

"Uh-huh. But I'm not going far into the city."

"That's fine." Zack said quickly. "Just drop us anywhere in the slums."

"But… shouldn't he see a doctor?" The driver said. He wouldn't know that Cloud could hear everything. He wondered if Zack knew. Zack certainly talked to him like Cloud's answers were lost, not absent, but Cloud couldn't be sure if Zack didn't do that just to pretend. Sometimes he wondered what Zack was really thinking. Could it be hope? Really, after all these years?

"I have to drop in on someone first."

"Well… alright, if you insist. Say, though, aren't you a SOLDIER? And is he…?"

"I'm not." Zack lied. Cloud was a little surprised to hear this, but even more by his next sentence. "But he is. First Class. Got wounded in a mission."

"First Class?" The driver sounded awed. "Well, that's something."

"Yeah." Cloud could hear Zack's grin in the dusty wind of the outskirts of Midgar. Why did you say that? Cloud wanted to ask, but couldn't open his mouth.

"Alright. Get in the back."

"Thanks!" Cloud felt himself moved, and then propped up against the truck's sideboard. It reminded him of sitting in a similar position, a long time ago, to the sound of rain and bumpy road home and,

The truck started rolling. Cloud listened to the sound and continued breathing. The silence was heavy like gathered dust, but Zack blew on it. His words tickled into Cloud's ears and Cloud imagined them to be raindrops.

"So what're you gonna do? When we get to Midgar, I mean." Zack's voice grew softer, like he was squinting against the sunlight. "God, I can't believe we actually made it. No, what am I saying? Of course I knew. Didn't I always tell you that I'll get us out?"

He paused as if to listen to an answer that never came. Only the road and the wind answered him.

"Yeah, and I know you didn't believe it. Not really. But still. But…"

But you never gave up.

"But it should've been sooner." Zack's voice was low, now, and Cloud would have liked to hold his breath a while to hear it better. But of course he couldn't do that. The breaths flowed out of him as continuously as night followed day.

"And I'm so sorry." What are you sorry for? He wanted to yell. Or cry, or maybe even roll his eyes. If Zack didn't sound so sad. Lonely. Suddenly Cloud knew that it would be raining soon. The air smelled wet. Zack continued.

"I'm sorry I couldn't get you out sooner. Just a day sooner, and you'd be. You'd still." Zack gulped something down that sounded too stiff to be swallowed. "What if you don't wake up?"

And Cloud realized that Zack didn't know, he had never known. He had just talked and laughed and for all he knew, he could have been talking to the fading autumn sunlight.

"No." Zack said finally, after a pause. "No, you will. I can feel it."

It was the first time Cloud realized that Zack had never known; that when he said he could feel it, it was not hope or even tomorrow but only his fear. Doubt. That it had always been his choice to swallow it down and grin. And Cloud could hear another grin like that in Zack's voice, but it choked up his imaginary breath to hear it so full of other things too.

"What am I saying? I guess I must be tired. We're almost there." His voice changed, slipped on that mask that really wasn't a mask at all.

"And don't worry, 'cause even if you don't have anywhere to go, I got some ideas. We could be mercenaries! Wouldn't that be cool? Or be a little bit of everything. You're pretty handy with mechanics, and I could be a salesmen like you said, or something." Zack laughed. "I got a place I can crash for a while, anyway. Remember that girl I told you about, the flower girl, I never told you her name…"

That was when they discovered them. The Shinra had been chasing them, and Zack had been careful and strong enough to avoid being captured so far, but they were so close to Midgar and maybe Zack let his guard down, or maybe it was some other cruel twist of fate, but now Cloud could hear the Shinra helicopters coming to clean up their mess.

Raindrops began to fall.

- L.

We're friends, right?

He was crawling on the dirt. Through the dirt. Pathetic whimpers escaped through his lips. Every twitch was a burning agony. He no longer recognized his body, but he made it move. Fingernails scraped the small rocks and broke off. His bare arms were bleeding, from cuts and bruises. Mako was still in his veins, his body was trying to shut off the pain, but he wanted to feel it because he could move only when he felt it. Felt the sharp edges of the rocks and he made the broken bones move and he willed them to hold on. He was crawling on the dirt. He was crawling toward him, lying there in his own blood, and rain fell and drenched everything. Even the time.

I'm the one who should be sorry, Cloud wanted to say, but all he could get out was his name.

"Zack."

Rain fell over that name, too. Cloud watched it wash away. He thought Zack might be dead already and didn't know what he would become if he was. But after a moment that felt too long, Zack opened his eyes. The color of the sky – bluer than the real sky – they stared at the gray sky above. Rainwater fell into his eyes and mingled with the blood, rolled down his cheeks like tears.

"Cloud. You…" Zack coughed. Blood sputtered out. "You're moving."

"Why did you do it? Why didn't you run away?" Cloud thought maybe he shouldn't cry, but couldn't remember why. The sky was crying for him. He waited for Zack to answer.

"And… and leave, leave you to die?" It looked like he was trying to grin. It came with another cough, another spurt of blood.

"But you thought I was already dead. That I wouldn't wake up." Cloud said softly.

"I was… wrong. Look… look at you."

"But I'm…" Something warm slid from his eyes, slipped down his cheek with the colder raindrops. Zack's eyes were fixed on him, the grin was still hanging from his lips. He was broken and dying, but his hand was still gripping the hilt of the sword. He looked very big, suddenly, compared to Cloud.

"I'm nobody." Cloud shook his head. The words were barely recognizable. His voice was shaking too much, his world was crumbling too much. "Why would you die for me? You're… Zack, you're…" He had to pause, because his breaths were coming in such harsh gasps. The rainwater slipped into his open mouth. There was no sound at all except for rain all around.

"Shh." Zack whispered, like his voice was already broken but strung along just barely with a transparent line. "What're you… going on about?"

"You're the best person I've ever known," Cloud managed to say.

Zack grinned, slowly. "So are you."

He pulled down Cloud's head to his chest, and Zack's blood drenched his hair and eyebrows but he didn't mind. Zack pushed the sword into his hand.

"You'll live… for the both of us. You'll, be my, living legacy." Zack told him. Cloud hardly understood anything at all, but he nodded. Zack smiled.

He died with a smile on his lips still. Cloud realized he was crying, he was holding Zack's sword with both his hands, and now he had to live. Because Zack died for that. He still couldn't understand, but he knew Zack sometimes believed in impossible things and called it tomorrow.

"I won't forget."

Cloud said that over and over again to the rain, because it was the only one left to hear him.

- L.

"I never got to answer the question."

"What question?" Tifa looked curious. She turned her head to face him, and her face was only half-lit from the dim daylight smeared by gray rain. The Highwind was flying smoothly towards the End.

And he had forgotten. Easy to make that promise, Cloud thought.

He hoped Zack hadn't been wrong.

"We're friends, right?"

Tifa looked startled for a moment, but then a smile spread across her face like gentle ripples on a lake.

"Of course." She said. Cloud smiled.