Hey readers, sorry for the wait. I get basically no time to write now so I do it when I'm not supposed to (semi-joking). I wanted to have more for you with this update but three chapters is all I got for now. Stay well.

General Content Warning: Chapters in this story may contain upsetting or triggering content including but possibly not limited to violence, consensual and non-consensual sexual references and descriptions, drug and alcohol use and abuse, references to or descriptions of mental illness, self-harm or self-injurious behaviour, and references to or discussions of suicide.

~Thirty~

P-l-a-

Nope. Backspace.

P-l-e-s-

Damn. His fingers weren't working for him. Or his brain wasn't. He was starting to feel pretty drunk after a few shots of liquor and a little beer but he was forcing himself to keep it together. He shook his head a little as he looked down at the screen of his phone. Zack was never going to get an answer from him if he didn't concentrate. All Zack had asked was what hotel or motel he'd decided to stop at for the night. He'd thought up a generic name. Pleasant Stay was the first thing he thought of. Spelling it though in the state he was in was proving difficult.

He backspaced once more before typing, 'Nice Stay or somthing. Dont worry it just a night. Checking out first thing,'

He hoped the autocorrect on the phone made what he typed looked coherent to Zack. He was lying to his friend like he so often did but if he told him he'd returned to Junon that night obviously he was going to want to know why and it was the last thing he wanted to talk about or even think about.

'Text me when you're leaving in the morning' was Zack's response.

Success.

Cloud opened the closed door to the bathroom then and made his way back out to Rand's living room, his right shoulder hitting the wall corner as he exited the hallway. He dropped heavily onto the couch when he reached it. The smell of cardboard and pizza was in the air. Rand was in the kitchen area nearby with the box that had just moments earlier been delivered to his apartment.

"You need to eat something," Rand told him and then quickly corrected himself. "Or rather you should," he said, trying hard not to use that 'need' word Cloud had made clear he didn't want to hear from him.

"Not hungry," Cloud told him. He'd told him once already when the man told him he was going to order something but it hadn't made a difference.

"You think you aren't," was all Rand said back to him before placing a paper plate into his lap with a slice of pizza on it.

"I'd know if I was. It's not a hard thing to figure out," Cloud said back sharply, picking the plate up from his lap and leaning forward a little, he dropped it to the coffee table surface before slumping back again.

"But then just maybe the medication you've been taking and your general state of mind make it difficult to tell," Rand argued as he sat himself down in the armchair next to the couch. It looked like he was also feeling disinterested in food as he sat down without any.

"My general state of mind?" Cloud echoed. He reached next to him for the beer bottle that was on the side table. He'd moved on to beer since Rand's liquor had run out. The man hadn't had much he was able to share to begin with. "What state's that?"

"You don't need me to spell it out for you," Rand replied simply.

"Yeah right," he said with irritation. "You know everything."

"Hardly so," the man argued.

"Even if you do know shit, doesn't mean you need to throw it in people's faces," Cloud pointed out.

"That's not what I was trying to do," Rand replied. "I just care about what happens to you. I know it's not what you want to hear, but that's the truth."

Cloud rolled his eyes to himself. It definitely wasn't what he wanted to hear.

"What about your son?" he asked back. "Don't you care about him?" When Rand didn't answer he asked, "Where is he anyway?"

He'd seen most of the man's apartment by that point and there wasn't any sign of him, not one picture he could see. Even though he'd seen a wallet photo of him back in Gongaga, he was starting to truly wonder if the kid even existed.

"With his mother," Rand said.

"Where?" Cloud repeated.

"They aren't in Junon," the man told him before taking a drink from his own beer.

Still doubtful, Cloud asked, "What's his name?"

"Alistair," Rand answered with next to no thought.

Cloud watched him as he moved some bottle caps around on the coffee table, arranging them into different patterns. "When'd you last see him?" he asked.

Rand shrugged a little. "It's been a few years."

"Years?" Cloud spoke in surprise. "Why? Don't you want to see him?"

Rand gave a short nod. "It's complicated."

"What happened?" Cloud inquired and got another shrug before the man's verbal response.

"I lost certain privileges because I ruined their lives. That's what my ex-wife would say," he looked up and met Cloud's eyes. "You should think it believable, no doubt," he added.

Cloud just scoffed at what seemed like a quick check for some kind of reassurance in the face of the man's barely discernible self-loathing. It was true that he could believe the man capable of ruining the lives of his family but he doubted it had been under circumstances like what Cloud had gone through with him. As he watched the man though, he thought back on some of the hours they'd spent together in their shared apartment. Rand had shared with him some things from his life, most of which he didn't really remember the details of. There were a few things though. Things he had questions about.

"Those, uh, things you talked about in Midgar, about when you were growing up, was that stuff really true?" he found himself asking after a long moment of quiet between them. Rand stopped moving the bottle caps around and looked up at him.

"Which things?"

"I dunno, the boarding school stuff?" Cloud replied a little awkwardly. He thought he could remember Rand talking about how much of his childhood he spent away from his family that he barely knew.

Rand just nodded a little to that in confirmation.

"And the whole…camp thing?" Cloud asked next.

Everything I am is because of that place. Those were Rand's exact words. He could still hear them in his head. That was all though. He couldn't remember anything else about the 'camp' but knew it had seemed significant. The man seemed to stiffen a little at the mention of it, looking suddenly uncomfortable.

"You said it helped make you who you are, or something," Cloud added. "What'd you mean by that?"

"Um…" Rand uttered barely audibly while looking down. It seemed like he was trying to think up the best way to not actually answer.

"Forget it," Cloud said, shaking his head at himself, not knowing why he was even asking if he wasn't sure he even cared.

"No, it's fine. Yes, I believe what I told you is true," the man confirmed.

Cloud waited a little for him to continue but he didn't seem to be rushing to get there.

"So then what the hell did you mean?" Cloud found himself blurting out then impatiently. "The place helped you really find yourself," he suggested sarcastically.

Rand shrugged and smiled a little without looking at him. "Find," he echoed. "Lose," he then added.

He looked up finally and Cloud sighed a little, accepting that he really was kind of curious.

"So what? It was some kind of summer camp, or what?" he inquired and Rand nodded slightly.

"Sort of, but more for reform than leisure," the man said.

It took Cloud a second in his mental haze to decode the response to understand he was saying it wasn't some kind of vacation camp he spent time in while not in school. He was talking about a place you get sent when you've done something you weren't supposed to…

"What'd you do?" he asked then.

"Got too close to the wrong person," Rand told him vaguely.

"Who?" Cloud prodded.

"A boy I knew at school," was the admission that came finally. "It was innocent but not everyone saw it that way."

It wasn't what Cloud had been expecting. He could have asked Rand to explain but it seemed pretty clear what he was insinuating.

"You went to a reform camp for that?" he found himself asking instead. He knew there was another more obvious name for a place like that.

"At the school's strong advisement to my parents," Rand confirmed.

"How old were you?" Cloud questioned a little softer, a little less like he was trying to interrogate the man.

"Thirteen," was his short but surprising reply.

"Seriously?" Cloud found himself responding with some of that surprise evident. He thought about what that would be like, being sent off somewhere alone that young just to be punished for something that didn't require punishment. He sort of forgot to think of himself in the moment and how he'd been not much older when his nightmare with Shinra began.

"How long was that for?" he asked.

"A few months," Rand told him.

There was silence between them for a moment before Cloud was shaking his head and feeling himself getting suddenly more heated.

"And it made you who you are?" he asked.

"I believe that to be mostly true, yes," Rand reaffirmed. "At the very least the experience showed me how effective certain conditioning treatments can be and that a person can truly change under the right pressure and in a short amount of time."

Cloud didn't have to think long on that to get annoyed. He was sure he was probably supposed to feel some sort of sympathy for Rand but knowing what he was probably supposed to feel didn't make him actually feel it. It really just made him angry. Made him sick even. If Rand knew firsthand what it was like to go through something that any normal person would consider traumatic, how could he later do to another person something like what he'd experienced? It wasn't right.

"So, what? Because you went through some shit when you were growing up, because there was a system that terrorized and broke you down, you think it's alright to do that to other people?" he questioned critically. "What is that, like your way of getting back at the world or some messed up way of making yourself feel better?"

Rand shook his head at his words. "It's not all as it seems," he argued gently, staying flat in his emotions. "I didn't choose my path out of bitterness or resentment. It's true I feel that camp led me to where I am, but it isn't my hurt and anger over what I experienced that inspired me to do what I do professionally."

"So what did?" Cloud questioned skeptically.

Rand looked away from him, down towards the floor a moment. He closed his eyes as he spoke then. "You can see how a belief system or an internalized set of principles can destroy lives," he started to explain in an almost puzzling way.

"What?" Cloud asked but the man went on.

"How it can hurt a person more than help them," he said. His eyes were open again but he wasn't looking at any one thing in particular, just staring ahead of himself. "It can hold them back or even destroy them and it isn't fair."

"What are you talking about?" Cloud asked, not understanding or following the man's explanation. He rubbed his face with his one hand, suddenly feeling like he was having a hard time staying awake and it wasn't because he was bored with the conversation.

"My father's youngest brother…" Rand went on slowly. "My uncle, he was close in age to me and if there was one family member I had I was close to, it was him," he said, finally seeming to have some emotion in his voice. "He was in the armed forces and he was deployed to active duty in Wutai. When he came back he wasn't the same. When he left he was full of life, he had goals, ambitions, dreams. When he was gone he saw things, did things, things that he couldn't forgive himself for and that he couldn't forget or put behind him. The memories and the emotional turmoil ruined him. He couldn't function. He was tortured by what he'd been through, every day. He tried his best to hold it together but eventually…he gave up. He took his own life."

Cloud lowered his head a little at the revelation, looking at the carpeted floor at his feet.

"And I thought," Rand continued slowly, "there has to be a different way to treat people with trauma. To make memories bearable. To save the ones like him. I'd seen in my own past how certain methods of behavioural and cognitive conditioning could be effective in…I don't know, resetting part of someone's life, or reshaping their identity, how they see themselves and the world. Those methods, paired with new novel treatments and technology like emotional pathway intervention—"

Cloud looked up at him again fast and quickly cut him off. "Like a brain implant, you mean?" he asked sharply. "That's where your motivation came from?" he questioned through a dry laugh, though he didn't find it funny in the least. "So, instead of having a bunch of emotionally screwed up people you have a bunch of brain damaged people who need someone to take care of them? Sounds so much better."

Rand smiled a little at his response, suspecting rightly that he was referring to himself as an example.

"You were the first real trial," he said, "and you were evolving. Who knows what you would have become, how independent you could have been one day?"

Cloud scoffed to that. He finished the beer left in the bottle he'd been holding onto and set it down loudly on the coffee table. "You're messed up," he told Rand without looking at him.

"Whatever I am, there was reasoning behind my actions," the man defended himself. "My intentions were—"

Shifting himself to the edge of the seat cushion under him, Cloud turned himself to face Rand more straight on.

"Are you really going to try to say you had good intentions in accepting contracts with companies that want you to force people—prisoners—to become like slaves? To become property? You tried to force me to believe I belonged to a company and that I owe my life to Hojo because without him I would have been dead," he pointed out plainly. He went on, not giving Rand a chance to reply.

"Even if you really believe your intentions are good, you think it makes it okay that I was used like some animal for an experimental surgery?" he questioned loudly.

He could see it seemed the man was sinking a little in defeat at his words, sitting himself back in his chair and using the one armrest to prop his elbow on while he rested his head in his hand.

"You know, you mentioned multiple times about other contracts you had before our contract," Cloud reminded him. "How many other people did you fuck up before me?" He wasn't really looking for an answer to that question and certainly didn't expect an actual number from Rand.

"I'm not trying to defend what I did," Rand said. "I just thought you should know that—"

"Just shut the hell up!" Cloud replied loudly, cutting him off once more. "I don't care. And…"

He paused a second and when he continued it was in a calmer tone again.

"I don't believe you," he said, shaking his head a little. "You were proud. You were proud of yourself, of your methods. Of your job. And you really loved that control you had, I know you did. I think that's everything for you. When you don't have that, there's another side of you that comes out, you know it." He wanted Rand to look at him then but he wouldn't.

"You don't want to find a way to save people, just manipulate and operate them," he went on anyway. "Your job that you chose was to force people to be something they don't want to be. You don't give hope, you take it away. Do you honestly think you actually helped me at all? You helped Hojo. Helped Shinra. Helped yourself to whatever you wanted."

He had a hard time keep his emotions back then. Surprisingly it seemed like Rand was struggling the same way when he finally did meet his eyes. When he spoke, the emotion was audible in his voice.

"I did but I also—"

He was quick to cut himself off that time and he cleared his throat instead of finishing.

"What?" Cloud asked.

"Was it so bad do you think?" the man asked him in return.

"What?" Cloud repeated.

"Living with the implant?"

Cloud exhaled in a huff at the question. He was immediately about to reply with an insult but instead he actually considered the inquiry seriously and said, "I'd rather have my mind in my control."

Rand nodded, seeming to accept his response and feelings about it but then he asked, "Do you? Have control of it?"

The question left Cloud at a loss for what to say. He could have said 'yes.' Obviously, he did have control of his own mind. On one level. But on another…did he actually? It didn't really feel like that.

Rand sighed softly and sat himself up a little straighter. He wiped at his eyes and it had Cloud questioning if there had been tears in them. It was hard for him to tell. Everything seemed blurred to a degree.

"Whether my fault or not I don't like seeing you suffering," Rand said.

Cloud found himself shrugging to that, looking down again. "It's not only your fault. A lot came before you," he said. That was true. He cleared his own throat then. He didn't want to talk about the implant anymore or what Rand had done to him. He felt emotionally burnt out.

"What happened to the other boy?" he asked. "Your friend from school. Did he get sent to that camp too?"

Rand shook his head. "No. I don't know. His parents pulled him out of school. I never saw him again," he said and he almost looked like he was looking off into a point on the floor that was thousands of miles away. He turned his attention back Cloud's way then and reached for his nearby beer bottle to get a drink.

"I've been curious, did you really only come out this way for the shares?" he inquired.

Cloud exhaled forcefully before answering. He didn't really want to talk about it, but not talking about it seemed like it took more energy than just telling the truth.

"No. I needed to get out of that city. It felt like I was being suffocated. And I can't stop thinking about something that happened when the implant was still in. Something I did," he explained.

"Which was what?" Rand asked. He stood himself up and headed to the kitchen area to finally get some food.

Cloud thought about how he wanted to explain and rubbed at his tired heavy eyes again. "You showed me that room in Gongaga, the one with Angeal Hewley's body in it. I didn't imagine that, did I?" he found himself asking.

"You didn't imagine it," Rand said from the kitchen with his back turned.

"After the parade, you were gone," he began to explain. "I decided…" He looked up at the ceiling and shook his head. "I don't know. Genesis and I…we took a helicopter out to Gongaga."

"I know," Rand told him, still with his back turned as he was eating a few bites from a slice of pizza.

"You do?" Cloud said back in question, not knowing how or when the man learned about what had happened. He could have asked but he didn't. "Then did you also know I woke Angeal up?"

Rand looked back at him over his shoulder. "Woke him up?"

Cloud nodded. "Yeah, 'cause apparently I could do that. Make people who are technically dead not dead anymore," he stated.

There was a questioning expression on the man's face before he responded with a quiet, "Huh." His tone was almost…intrigued. That's what Cloud thought anyway.

"Don't say it like it's something you need to investigate with a lab kit of tools," he replied sharply.

"I wasn't meaning it that way," Rand told him.

"Anyway," Cloud went on, "that's what I did. And he was awake sort of. I'm sure of it. I got him out to the helicopter, but then…"

"The explosion happened," Rand finished for him as he returned to sit near him. "Why weren't you on the helicopter when it happened?"

"Sephiroth," Cloud answered softly. He thought back on that day, on the event. Thought about that confrontation with Sephiroth. "He…whatever," he said, deciding he didn't want to go into detail about it. "I wasn't on it but there were never any bodies found and I just feel like maybe Angeal could still be out there somewhere. I feel, I don't know, like it's my responsibility to find him if he is. I'm the one who pulled him out of the lifestream."

"So you're…searching for Angeal?"

Cloud shrugged. "I thought I could go to different major city hospitals and clinics and show his picture around in case they had some kind of John Doe in there for treatment."

"You decided to do this alone?" Rand asked.

With a bit of a glare, Cloud said, "Yeah, I'm a big boy, I can do that."

"Does anyone else know that you're looking for him?" was the man's following question and Cloud shook his head. "Why?" Rand asked.

"Because they don't believe that I saw Angeal at all," he said back simply.

"Zack doesn't believe you?" was what the man asked next and it had Cloud immediately irritated.

"There's really no reason he should," he spoke defensively. "I don't even really believe what I'm sure I saw and did either."

"I just thought, being your best friend like you said—" Rand tried to argue but at Cloud's warning expression telling him to back off he did. "Okay, so…what would you do if you find him?"

"Hadn't really thought through that," Cloud admitted. "Guess it would be nice if he could be reunited with the people who care about him."

"So I assume you've checked in Junon while you've been here," Rand said and he gave him a short nod in confirmation. "Where next?"

"South, down Gongaga way. Then north again. Probably end up in Nibelheim at some point," he muttered. He lay his head back against the cushion behind him and shut his eyes a moment. He was starting to get that feeling like he was sinking or the air in the room was pushing on him somehow.

"And then what? Back to Midgar?" he heard the man say and he just shrugged a little.

"I guess," he mumbled vaguely. His eyes were still closed as he put his hands inside the pocket of his sweater. "Maybe I'll just stay in Nibelheim when I get there," he said through a yawn.

"Nibelheim? There's nothing there anymore," Rand pointed out.

"If you say so," he said as he nodded a little. He laughed a little though he didn't know why. He actually didn't even know what he was talking about. Why would he stay in Nibelheim?

"You've never been back since the fire, have you?" Rand's voice asked him and he shook his head. Even with his eyes closed it made him feel a little disoriented.

He'd been telling himself he wasn't really feeling all that intoxicated, but once he started to accept he had to be and stopped trying to control his body's reactions to the alcohol, he was really starting to feel it.

"It's only a graveyard now," the man told him.

"Perfect," he replied tiredly.

"Cloud," Rand said his name a moment later and he forced himself to open his eyes and turn his head to look his way. The man tried to say something but he spoke over him.

"You think this could just be an alternate universe?" he asked.

"Uh, why?" the man replied a little uneasily or with some confusion.

"I just think, nothing makes sense or it's not…how it's supposed to be," he tried to reason.

"Well—" Rand started to respond and he interrupted him once more quietly.

"I was never supposed to leave that place," he said like he was realizing and accepting it for the first time, even if he'd thought about it before.

"Nibelheim?" Rand questioned but he barely heard it.

"I wasn't even supposed to be born," he muttered. "It was a mistake," he added.

"That's not true," Rand said and Cloud refocused his eyes on him while nodding. His head almost felt too loose on his body.

"Yeah it is. Even if she never admitted it to me, I know my mom didn't plan to have me. And how that all happened…I know it had to be messed up," he said and he knew that to be true.

His mother had always made him feel loved and wanted when he was growing up and he believed her when she talked about how she looked forward to having him when she knew she was pregnant but he also just knew in his core that whatever the circumstances surrounding his conception and birth, it must have been bad. Bad enough she didn't want to say a thing about it his whole life and bad enough that she'd cry when he asked about his father.

"My whole existence was wrong. It wasn't supposed to happen," he remarked. There was a thick and uncomfortable silence then in the apartment before he concluded, "It should have ended in Nibelheim."

Ended in a cleansing fire…

"What does that mean?" Rand asked him.

Looking straight ahead at the muted television he said simply, "You know what it means."

Rand took in a deep inhale before standing himself up then. "You need to get some sleep—should get some sleep," he said gently while leaning to reach the emptied bottles in front of him on the table.

"Yeah," Cloud agreed barely audibly.

"Will you use the spare room this time?" the man asked.

He just nodded to that. He didn't want to stay and sleep. He'd said he would but he wasn't all that concerned with keeping his word, not with Rand. It was after midnight and there was no way he could drive anywhere for the next several hours. He felt guilty. He couldn't believe he was really going to stay another night there.

After Rand left him in the spare room he did pass out on the bed rather quickly for about an hour. When he woke up he needed to use the bathroom. As he stood up he could feel he was definitely intoxicated though not so much so that he couldn't get himself up and down the hall. He was still dressed in his clothes and his phone was in his one pocket.

While in the bathroom he squinted at the screen on his phone to see the time. It was nearly two in the morning. After the bathroom he made his way to the kitchen, looking to get some water. As he passed Rand's room, he saw the door was closed. He assumed the man would be sleeping, though he didn't hear anything through the door. He did remember him being a relatively quiet sleeper. He also hated that he knew that.

Out in the kitchen he opened a few cupboard doors until he found the glasses. He was about to go for the sink tap to fill it but remembered that he'd seen Rand pour water from a jug in the refrigerator before. Wanting the colder water, he opened the door and reached in for the jug, filling the glass with it. When he leaned in to set it back inside he saw something. It looked like a half-full glass bottle of clear liquor. He looked back toward the hall and the bedrooms before reaching in to take it out of the fridge.

Rather than going back to the spare room, he chose to take a walk and get some fresh air, liquor bottle in hand. He slipped on his coat and boots and left Rand's unit. He headed for the stairwell and began a slow decent. He'd only taken a few stairs though when he stopped and looked up instead. He wondered if the apartment had a rooftop patio. As luck would have it, there was one. It also wasn't so cold out, he thought. Then again, he may not have been able to perceive it accurately.

There was no patio furniture up there. He assumed it was because it had probably been put away in storage for the approaching colder season. He leaned his forearms instead on the concrete ledge of the railed barrier that ran along the perimeter and looked out over the city while sipping liquor.

What started out as a harmless trip out for some air and some time alone quickly started to spiral into something else as he began thinking, began questioning what he was doing and why he'd stayed with Rand. Why he'd been talking to him. Why he'd shared feelings about himself. He quickly then began to think again about how screwed up he was both mentally and physically and how somehow he must be to blame for the death of the child he hadn't known he'd had. And he thought about what he'd said to Rand about how his existence felt wrong.

There came a point when he found himself sitting on the ground, his back to the railing, taking larger mouthfuls of the alcohol, forcing it down and feeling like he was punishing himself with it. He couldn't stop until he started to cry and it wasn't long after that he found himself whispering aloud, begging to the sky to know what he should do, to help him stop feeling like there was only one way to escape what he was feeling. He felt hopeless like he had that night in the facility in Gongaga when he'd consumed stolen alcohol and medication from Rand's room. Months and months later he was back in that place, in that suffocating feeling that he just couldn't take it anymore.

He let go of the bottle in his hand to reach across his body and take hold of the one rail behind him. He gripped it hard and started to make himself stand up. His thoughts seemed to dissolve while he was getting himself to his feet and he wasn't thinking of anything. He stopped crying but he felt instead like he needed to breathe more quickly. His heart was pounding in his chest. He gripped the railing in his hands and lifted his one foot up to one of the cross bars near the bottom. The singular thought he had then was that he was going to have to exert himself to actually lift his body if he was going to be able to get himself over that barrier.

Was he really going to do it? He wasn't sure it was what he wanted but he was going through the motions anyway and his body was shaking hard with adrenaline or fear.

He started to pull his body up, lifting his one leg at the same time, ready to try and get his one knee up onto the ledge…

Just then his phone began ringing and it startled him, making him lose his footing and his grip. With his feet both planted again on the patio inside the barrier, he reached for his phone in his pocket and found himself covering his face partially with his one hand while he took some shaky breaths. Finally he looked down at who was calling him. He pressed his back to the barrier and his knees became weak when he realized.

"Hello," he spoke in a voice as week as his legs had become when he answered the phone. He slid himself down to sit again on the concrete.

"Hey," Zack's voice responded in surprise. "You answered." He sounded pretty alert, which Cloud supposed made sense. He would have been leaving Tifa's probably.

"Was I not supposed to?" he asked back softly. He wiped at his wet face with his free hand and tried to pull himself together. He was beyond just a little drunk at that point but at least his adrenaline would help keep him cognizant. He felt sick though as the surge was subsiding.

"No," Zack replied. "I mean yeah, I guess I just didn't think you would," he said. "Thought maybe you'd be asleep or..."

"Yeah," Cloud breathed out. "I wasn't."

"That's good then," Zack said in a soft tone. "Um, actually, truth is, I had this bad feeling in my stomach. I dunno, I didn't feel good and something told me I should call you. I just needed to hear your voice, to make sure you're okay because I dunno...it's weird," he explained with some difficulty. "Are you okay? You sound kind of sad or off…something," he noted.

"Yeah, I'm…" he started to say something, something in the realm of reassuring before he started to cry again. "I'm really drunk right now," he admitted to Zack then. "Sorry," he added.

"Spike," Zack said his name in a tone Cloud wasn't sure he could decipher. "What's going on?" he asked.

Cloud pulled the reins on his emotions once more so he could produce an explanation. "I'm back in Junon. Something happened earlier today," he told Zack.

"What happened?" Zack asked back, sounding clearly concerned.

"Tseng called me while I was on the road. He found out something about Hojo, one of his projects. Something I was involved in I guess, only I didn't know I was."

"What do you mean?" Zack questioned apprehensively.

"In Gongaga he took a sample from me. He sent it to a fertility clinic. He...I—" Cloud struggled to explain clearly but his words were also coming out fast and muffled sounding, even to him.

"Spike, what?"

"There was a baby, Zack. Tseng thinks I was the biological father," he finally revealed.

Zack was stunned into silence for a second or two. "How?" he asked then.

"From the sample Hojo got from me," he replied.

"The…sample," Zack uttered and as he repeated the words the realization came to him. He'd known about the sample previously. It was Reno who had informed him of it and witnessing Rand in the process of attempting to force him to give it up. "Um, wow, um," he struggled with how he should handle the revelation and how to communicate with Cloud about it. "Well where's the baby? Hojo has it?" he asked.

"No, he didn't survive," Cloud told him sadly. "He got sick. He's gone."

"Oh man," Zack said to that at first. Cloud could hear him inhaling and exhaling deeply. "Man, Cloud, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he said.

Cloud shook his head slowly to himself. "I just can't believe Hojo could do something like this," he spoke through his tears. "I just thought he must have some limit, some boundary he wouldn't cross..."

Zack had often thought the same. He used to think it in the mansion too. So much that had been beyond belief or comprehension had happened. There was no bottom in that pit of depravity Hojo had inside him.

"This is my fault," Cloud said then and it hit Zack hard.

"What?" he shot back fast.

"I gave him that sample," Cloud argued. "I made it possible for him to do what he did."

"No," Zack said. "If he wanted it he was going to get it, Spike, you know that."

Cloud didn't try to argue that point. He wouldn't have been able to. Instead, he exhaled in defeat.

"This really hurts, Zack, like nothing I've ever felt before," he confessed. "And I don't know why. I didn't know him."

"Your son?" Zack replied softly. "He was part of you. Of course it hurts," he told Cloud.

Cloud took in his words and accepted them as true but didn't respond.

"Buddy, you know this is really big. I think you need to come home," Zack said to him then. He waited a second before asking, "Don't you think?"

Cloud thought about it. He pressed the back of his head against the barrier behind him. The feeling of nausea in his stomach was getting difficult to ignore. "Maybe," he said finally. "Everything feels different now…" he uttered mostly to himself.

"Yeah you know, I think that's what's best," Zack assured him. "Take some time to sober up and then come home, okay?"

"Okay," Cloud said, though he wasn't really logging the plan into his brain at that point.

He was thinking about how exhausted he felt. He was sinking and sinking and sinking. That's what it felt like being so intoxicated. Like he was moving even if he wasn't. His limbs felt numb. His lips felt numb but his whole body together was just sinking, sinking, sinking…

"I'm sorry," he told Zack again. He couldn't pick just one thing he was sorry for. He felt like a burden. A disaster. He supposed that was ultimately what he was apologising for.

"It's okay," Zack told him. "I love you, buddy, you know that," he added.

"Yeah," Cloud agreed.

"Drink some water and get some sleep and I'll talk to you in a few hours okay?" his friend said he nodded a little.

"Yeah," he repeated.

"It's going to be okay."

That's what Zack told him before telling him goodnight, saying once more they could talk again in a few hours.

He was alone again then outside on the rooftop patio of Rand's building, feeling too drunk to stand himself up at that point. He supposed it was a good thing. If he couldn't stand, he couldn't climb over any barriers.

He really felt bad then about what he'd almost done. He felt bad too because he wasn't sure that he didn't still want to. He loved and cared about Zack. He loved Tifa and Marlene too. There were a lot of people he cared about. Somehow it even felt like he loved that little boy he was never going to have the chance to know. There was enough love to fill his whole heart and yet…all that love he felt only made the guilt and anxiety-fueled thoughts that filled his head more overpowering.