It's morning. There are guards posted outside the door. Cloud lays on his back listening.
Tension rolls off of the men in waves. They whisper and gossip, wondering what could have wrecked the Cradle like that, taking turns to peek at the camera feed and watch the clean-up crew corral the beasts.
The chatter fills his head like static and calms his nerves. He's a raft on the surface, watching fish swim. It's only after many minutes that he realizes he isn't listening with his ears. He sits up.
Zack is asleep next to him, head pillowed on his crossed arms. The tragedy of their failed escape returns to him in pieces, like arrows plunging into his back.
He could have gotten away, but he came back for Cloud. If only he'd been stronger, if he'd fought off the dogs faster…
The bolt turns in the door and Cloud lurches onto his knees, crouching protectively over him. He feels dizzy, pain and fatigue attacking him on all fronts. He doesn't show it, clenching his jaw and blinking fast until his vision stops doubling.
The guards aren't messing around. They've brought a whole squad, five in riot gear and five with combat rifles. Roche stands in the middle, looking as worn as Zack but with wet hair and a clean uniform. He has heavy-duty manacles in his hand—five centimeters of solid steel on all sides.
Cloud wobbles to his feet. The rifles rise with him. Time to face Hojo's wrath.
He extends his hands in a sign of non-aggression. The SOLDIER shakes his head.
"Not you." He points to Cloud's right. "Him."
His stomach drops. He feels light-headed. "What do you mean? I'm Hojo's subject. It was my fault—"
"Those are my orders."
"No—" Cloud steps forward and the riot shields close rank. Five gun safeties flick off at once.
The Time materia glows on the night nurse's wrist, but Cloud doesn't move. Roche has the audacity to look apologetic.
"Subject C, be reasonable."
"But it wasn't his idea."
"Cloud," Zack warns. He turns to find his friend rising, warily sizing up the line of guards.
Words don't come when he opens his mouth, lost in the sinking feeling consuming his chest. Zack stretches, and sighs as several joints pop.
"But—"
"Look at me." Zack steps in front of him, giving his back to the guards. The corner of his mouth twitches, his lip quivering. "Is this a face Hojo can stay mad at? No way. It's too damn handsome."
He claps his hands on Cloud's shoulders, but then he seems to reconsider, and jerks him into a hug that knocks all his air out. He caves to the hold, eyes pinching shut against the wave of anguish it brings up.
Zack pets his hair and squeezes his neck. "Don't look at me like that. We're okay. We're gonna make it through this."
Cloud shudders. He nods into Zack's shoulder. Roche clears his throat awkwardly. Cloud clings as Zack pulls away.
"Be good. Wait for me."
"He's gonna hurt you," he says, thick with anger.
"Probably," Zack tweaks his lip, and sighs, "but look at you. It's better that it's me. You need time to heal."
Cloud shakes his head, but the other man doesn't give him time to bicker. He turns, and extends his wrists for the manacles. Roche clips them on, and parts the wall of shields for him to pass.
It feels like the air leaves with him, like Cloud's a limp, deflating balloon that's falling flat on the ground. His knees give out, and he props himself up on the weak support of his arms.
All his fault. It's all his fault, and now Zack will pay the price.
His vision goes hazy, and this time he doesn't run. He wants the icepicks in his brain and the numb fog of the void. He wants that voice to tell him that he's right.
There, there, little puppet. Why do you fret? All this will fade when our Reunion comes.
Don't call me that.
Dark laughter encompasses him. The presence draws near.
But that is what you are. Hojo gave you strings. It cannot be undone. Your only choice is who pulls whom. I can give you the power to move him. I can take you from this place.
Far away, in another room, he hears Zack screaming.
It's there, and then gone. He jumps to his feet and turns, straining to place its direction.
A tall, lean shadow materializes in front of him. It's a mass of hate and bad feeling, the features smudged like a charcoal drawing. His coat is black snow, his hair acid rain. He has a magnetism to him that shakes the ground under Cloud's feet.
Focus, Cloud, we are speaking.
He hears the voice again, and this time he's ready. He bolts in the direction of it, moving and yet not moving.
There are no landmarks in this place, only a vast expanse of white, but he feels his own motion. He is the first to disrupt this stagnant land, a footprint on the moon. It makes him an axiom, an origin point, a mathematical proof. He gets to select the axis from which everything else will turn, and he chooses Zack.
The moment he swears it to himself, his feet sink into the ground. He tries to keep running, but it's quicksand sucking him down. He crashes into an unknown room.
It's dark, lit by mako tanks and computer screens. Strange devices dangle from the walls, and metal arms hang from the ceiling. A putrid, rotten stormcloud paces around a table where Zack lies helpless under massive metal bars.
He's nothing but a human-shaped fog of scribbles and zig-zag lines, but Cloud knows it's him, the same way he knows that this is all real and not a figment of his imagination. He's sensing it, like the doctors so often demanded.
He wonders if he should hide, but neither figure reacts to him. Cloud is a ghost in this room, allowed to watch but unable to participate.
The aggressor—Hojo—holds a baton in his hand. It's long and tapered, with a round metal tip that crackles. He prods Zack in the side, and bright arcs of electricity plunder into his skin. His abs tense and contract, and his back arches off the table. Cloud winces at the timbre of his yelling.
"You have one purpose in this experiment, boy. One. To keep the subject pacified. I don't believe that to be a high expectation."
"Told you—" Zack hisses, his chest quaking with his harsh, heavy breaths. "M' not doin' shit for your sick fucking—" A shout cuts off his defiance.
Cloud runs to him. He doesn't know what to do. Hojo unknowingly walks through him to leer at Zack face to face. The Professor jabs his victim twice more.
"You will, or you'll be terminated like I should have done already."
"You can't, he won't work with you—"
"Let's not waste time with hypotheticals. Subject C's will shall be broken. That is not up for debate. The question we must answer today is… how necessary are you to this process?"
Neither of them moves, and through the odd filter of the void Cloud can't see what transpires between their faces. He can only lay his invisible hand over Zack's and feel his fear ratchet up.
The stillness holds until Hojo raises the baton abruptly and brings it whistling down upon Zack's stomach in three quick hits. Cloud doubles over.
Sensation ripples across his abdomen—first the thud of impact, then stinging, sharp pain, and finally a gushing, tight heat as blood rushes to the site. Zack whimpers through his clenched teeth.
"That was your cue to plead for your life, mongrel," Hojo snaps. "I know intelligence isn't prized in a SOLDIER, but honestly, you're almost too stupid to live."
He raises the baton again, and Cloud acts on pure instinct. He can feel Zack's terror and fear, can see how he turns away and anticipates the blow. His disorganized thoughts flow off him in waves of what can I do, what can I say, make it stop, make it stop, please , and Cloud jumps between him and Hojo without a moment's hesitation.
He lays himself over Zack, his back braced to protect his friend's core and his arms caged around his precious head. He wants to take every bit of pain from him because this is his fault. He deserves it. Zack would be free if not for him, and now he's taking this beating for no reason other than because Hojo wanted to hurt Cloud through him.
Cloud ducks his head into Zack's neck, hoping so intensely that he can do this one small favor for him, and watches as the baton passes through his spectral form.
The baton batters Zack's chest and Cloud gasps at the force of it, at the way it seems to spread and vibrate through his ribcage. It knocks the air out of Zack, his mouth falling open but not making any sound. Then Hojo angles the baton up and the metal tip connects.
Cloud screams on Zack's behalf as electric current rockets through them, muscles clenching involuntarily and skin lighting with lancing heat.
"...Cloud?" Zack whispers in a weak, shaky voice. Cloud lifts his buzzing head, and finds flushed skin where there used to be stippled shadow. Unfocused eyes rove his face and thick, arched brows furrow.
He lays their foreheads together and nods. I'm here.
How?
He doesn't know. It doesn't matter. He threads trembling fingers into Zack's hair and wishes for strength, for this torment to end quickly. The other man gasps. His eyes slide shut like he's trying to savor something.
"What was that?" Hojo asks. The baton comes up to Zack's throat and he flinches, swallowing.
"N-nothing."
The noxious cloud of Hojo's wrath floats towards a wall, and condenses into something more person-shaped. It taps on a console, pondering a screen.
Extending his arm, he shocks Zack's side again. Then his chest. "Hmm."
He walks to the end of the table and, one at a time, zaps each of Zack's feet. Cloud shifts his attention to the monitor on the wall, and the room morphs back into rich, detailed color. His own body lies on the singed carpet of the children's lab, clutching his stomach and then reeling back his feet. First the left, then the right.
"Subject C is mirroring, interesting. But the wounds were severe before, I wouldn't have thought… ah, of course! The precipitating event isn't injury, but heightened emotion. Yes, that would correlate with—" Hojo cuts himself off, drawing near to the table again. "What a lucky boy you are, Zack Fair. Every time I deign to dispose of you, your devoted friend unknowingly vouches for your continued existence."
Hojo's smile is so wide and toothy that it shows even on his smudged, indistinct shadow's face. He pats Zack's cheek, and Cloud shivers at the familiar gesture.
"A replicated result, how marvelous." The Professor adjusts an arm hanging from the ceiling, locking the joints with knobs so that it hovers menacingly over Zack's chest. "I'm afraid you'll have to settle for a less hands-on punishment. I must update my notes with this development."
He clips the baton to the end of the arm so the tip rests a hair's breadth from bare skin. It makes contact each time Zack breaths, shocking the air out of him and making his body writhe.
Panic and dread pass between him and Cloud as the doctor turns his back and walks to a desk on the other side of the room.
Zack whines and squirms, but he can't get away, not with the restraints holding him. The sting builds with every contact, until it's pulling awful shouts from Zack's throat.
"Quiet! How am I supposed to work with that racket?" Hojo growls. "The more you break my concentration, the longer this will take."
Zack's mind degrades into a chaotic scribble between Cloud's palms. What started as fear and dread descends into animal panic. Cloud feels everything, with him and through him. He stays even as he feels Zack's spirit retreat into the depths of his mind. The body's restrained grunts turn into pitiful whimpering, and then into a mindless, toneless drone.
Hojo ignores it, bent over his desk with a finger stroking his lip and his pen looping lazily across page after page. He sits back occasionally to read over his notes or blot out a line with white-out and write it over again.
Hatred takes root in Cloud's chest. Deep, scornful, destructive. The sort of hate that consumes a soul. It becomes the sole tether holding him there as pain grinds everything else to dust.
He clings to Zack in that liminal space for what feels like eternity, whimpering his name and kissing his neck. Weary gratitude flows from the vague puddle of Zack's consciousness, and Cloud plasters himself to it like second skin.
Together, they endure. Together they cry when Hojo finally caps his pen and turns off the baton.
The guards return to carry them away, and together they shut their eyes to the sickening sway of rooms and people passing by.
Huddled in the space between their minds, they press their spirits against each other until the lines between them blur, and—when the motion stops and their body is laid on a scorched, polka-dot floor—they crane their neck together to see Cloud's vacant, glassy eyes staring back.