Hi friends! Thank you for your reviews to chapter 6. I have a warning for this chapter. This chapter deals heavily with the subjects of mental health, depression, and post-traumatic stress. There's been some of this content already in past chapters but this one in particular is very focused on the topics. There is some discussion of thoughts of self-harm and suicide in this chapter and some descriptions relating to the struggle with mental health, especially as it pertains to past trauma that could be triggering or upsetting. Many of us have struggled or continue to struggle with our mental wellness or know someone who does. It's important to know that if you're struggling you're not alone and there are people and resources that can help.

Stay safe and take care of yourselves always *virtual hugs*

Jaydee

~Seven~

"How long were you going to wait to tell me?" Zack found himself asking in a tone that he wasn't able to soften while his anger was flowing through him.

He couldn't help it. Hearing Rand's name mentioned, knowing he was in the city, and Cloud revealing to him that the man had dared to go near him after everything had him seeing red. He wasn't just angry at the thought of Rand having the nerve to approach Cloud now. He didn't want to but he couldn't help being a little upset at the fact Cloud hadn't mentioned it already. Why would he hide that?

"Would you have told me at all if this didn't come up?" he questioned when Cloud stayed quiet, referring to the news of Rand's possible disappearance and suspected death inside a mako reactor. He put the food from the delivery down on the kitchen counter and came around to where he could turn the television off, wanting to have Cloud's full attention. "Would you?" he pushed.

"No," Cloud confessed as he wiped at the tears on his cheeks slowly.

"No?" Zack echoed in question. The answer wasn't so much of a surprise but he still couldn't comprehend why Cloud would have wanted to keep it a secret.

"If I told you last night what would you have done?" Cloud asked in return, looking up at him from where he sat on the couch.

"I would have gone looking for that son of a bitch and I would have broken his damn neck!" Zack declared as he paced in front of Cloud slowly. "No," he said, pausing a moment. "I would have tortured him slowly over several goddamn months, and then I would have killed him," he decided. His fists were clenched at his sides out of his control. He actually had to talk himself out of picking something up nearby and throwing it or busting it to pieces.

"That's why I wasn't going to tell you," Cloud said. "You have a criminal conviction because of him. You're on parole," he pointed out. "The last thing I was gonna do was give you a reason to go after him again."

"I have plenty of reasons already," Zack fired back at him fast.

"It doesn't even have anything to do with you," Cloud pointed out. He knew from the look on Zack's face that it wasn't the right thing to say by any stretch.

"You really think that?" Zack questioned and Cloud shook his head.

"You hardly know anything about him," he said as he looked down at the floor. That also probably wasn't the right thing to say if the quickly reddening shade of Zack's face was any indication.

"Oh yeah?" Zack spoke back after the initial incredulity passed. "What else do I need to know besides what he did to you, Cloud? Is there more to the story than the fact he helped Hojo hold you captive? That he abused and brutalized you and was responsible for putting an implant into your brain to control you?!" His voice had reached shouting level then.

"I know what he did," Cloud returned sharply then. He didn't need the reminder. Every day he thought about what Rand had done. What Hojo had done. The things he'd done because of them. It never went away. "But it didn't happen to you," he told Zack.

"No," Zack agreed. "It happened to you, and that still hurts me," he argued. He felt suddenly his own tears building in his eyes, because it did hurt. Knowing what Cloud had gone through and that there was nothing he'd been able to do to stop it or to fix it was torture. "He hurt you. He hurt my best friend. He stole things from you that you can never get back. I hate him for that, Spike. And I would kill him for that. I would spend the rest of my life locked up for that if I had to, to make sure he never had the chance to do what he did ever again."

Cloud wasn't looking at him. His eyes were on the floor at his feet. More tears were running down his cheeks slowly and he wasn't trying to stop them but he was quiet. He looked incredibly sad and tired, like the light inside him was flickering out before Zack's very eyes. There was also other things he could feel coming from Cloud because they were so strong. Shame. Guilt. Hopelessness. Earlier when he'd started to worry that Cloud may not have been doing as well as he thought, he never thought it could be this bad. He looked broken in that moment and it was the worst thing he could imagine happening.

"What did he say to you?" he asked Cloud after a moment of silence. He moved to sit himself down on the wooden coffee table to face Cloud.

"That he was sorry," Cloud replied hoarsely, still looking downward.

"Sorry?" Zack said, trying not to let his feelings of skepticism reflect in his voice.

Cloud nodded lightly. "That he cares about me…He said he was leaving. I didn't think he meant…"

"So, what?" Zack questioned. "You think he was sorry enough to jump into a pool of mako?"

Cloud looked up at him with reddened eyes. "What if he was?" he challenged softly and Zack scoffed. He couldn't hold it back.

"Well, I guess, good riddance," Zack said and it drew a subtle look of disagreement from his friend. "Cloud, you can't possibly believe a thing that asshole says. No one forced him to do what he did to you. He could have helped you at any point in time. He could have saved you but that's not what he wanted for himself."

"I know that!" Cloud shot back at him. "I know, okay, I just…"

Zack shrugged a little as he waited for Cloud's explanation. "Just? What? Are you upset he may be dead and gone forever now?" he dared to inquire. He really didn't want it to be true, and he couldn't really imagine why he would feel that way, but he needed to consider all possibilities.

"No," Cloud was fast to reply. "I'm upset that I may have had anything to do with that," he claimed.

"What?!" Zack responded in shock. "Even if guilt drove him to kill himself, Spike, that's not on you—"

"I know," Cloud cut him off. "But…"

"But you…care about him, too?" Zack uttered somewhat in dread.

"I don't," Cloud said abruptly in return. "I hate him, Zack," he said then, his voice firm enough to send relief rushing through Zack. "I do. I hate him. And I do think about someone or something ending his life. Almost every single day I think about it. I wish I could be happy imagining something horribly painful like drowning in raw mako happening to him, but I can't. I know he deserves it for what he's done and yet…I can't help thinking that no one deserves to die that way." He shook his head and a renewed flood of tears struck his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said before lowering his face into his hands.

Zack moved himself off the coffee table onto the couch next to him and put his arm around him to pull him into him. "It's okay," he told him softly. "You don't need to apologize for thinking that way," he assured Cloud while he was trying to stifle his tears. "I wish I could be more like you, Spikey," he said as he rubbed Cloud's right arm with his hand.

"What? Weak?" were Cloud's muffled words from behind his hands.

"No, dummy. Compassionate," he replied. "Everyone should have a heart like yours."

Cloud wasn't sure if what he had was compassion, cowardice, or something else. He was confused. He had prayed hundreds of times over to never have to see Rand again. When the moment had suddenly come and he'd found himself confronted by the man he'd felt like all the progress he'd been trying to make in recovering from the things he and Hojo had done to him and made him do had been wiped away in an instant. He'd been angry when Rand had him cornered at work, but he'd also been scared more than anything else.

He should have felt relieved thinking Rand may have gone into that reactor to end his life, but he wasn't. The prospect of not seeing him ever again didn't change what had already happened in the past and the man still lived in his memories. When he and Zack had escaped the mansion back near Nibelheim where Hojo initially had them held for experimentation for four years, one of his biggest fears was being recaptured and subjected to more of the torture they'd already survived.

It was different now. His fear of something ever happening like that again was so small compared to the fear he had of never being able to get past the trauma and live a normal life. He was terrified by the idea that every single day he was going to be reliving over and over in his head emotionally disturbing and physically painful moments he'd endured. There was always going to be something to remind him of all the horrible things he didn't want to think about.

He hadn't wanted to think about the things Rand had said to him at the school. They didn't deserve to be acknowledged and yet with suspicions that Rand may have taken his own life that night after confronting him, the things he'd said were all he could really think about. He hadn't tried to deny any of the things he'd done. He'd apologized. Had he seemed sorry? He couldn't say for sure. He'd been too distraught to be able to judge something like that. He shouldn't even care one way or another, he knew that…but he couldn't stop thinking about those few minutes in the biology room with the man and trying to figure it out. Trying to determine the sincerity. Was he truly sorry? Did he actually feel as he'd said? Did Rand actually care enough about him to believe he really loved him? Did he care so much that he couldn't bare living with what he'd done?

Zack stayed with him at Rayna's apartment as he said he was going to, but the hospital had only indicated Zack should be with him at all times for what amounted to approximately 48 hours or two days. It had been Friday night—actually early Saturday morning when he'd been sent to the hospital by ambulance and Zack was still with him by Wednesday. He said he was planning on going back to work at Tifa's that night but that he would be coming back to the apartment afterward, despite Cloud's half-hearted protests. Cloud almost didn't care either way, he decided. He could only tell Zack so many times that he didn't need to babysit him before he gave up and just accepted Zack was going to do what he wanted.

By the middle of the week, he'd been contacted by the police, who confirmed for him that, based on what they got from witnesses, he had been walking in a designated cross-walk when the car almost hit him. Because he hadn't been paying attention to oncoming traffic, the accident would technically have been partly his fault regardless, if it weren't for the fact he'd been in a "confused" or "intoxicated" state from taking too much of his medication. Because he'd been in what they considered medical distress, he was absolved of any blame for what happened. So, he wasn't receiving any charges for what happened.

Outside of the visits to his therapist's office and short trips to the grocery store that Zack forced him to go on with him, he didn't leave the apartment. His supervisor had called him Saturday morning trying to figure out where he'd gone the previous night and why he hadn't clocked out at the end of his shift. Zack had called in for him later that day to let them know he wouldn't be making his shift that night or the following one. All Zack had told his supervisor was that he'd gotten really sick and he wasn't sure when he'd be well enough again to return to work. It was mostly the truth, he supposed.

He supposed he was sick in a way. He certainly didn't feel well. It hadn't really entered into his head though that he actually may not be able to go back to work at all, but by Friday, a week from his last shift, he just couldn't imagine himself going back. It felt like he didn't even have the strength or the willpower to make it happen. A week after Rand's ID was located just outside Reactor 8, he still hadn't been located and while no body had been recovered from inside the reactor, it was looking like whoever had been seen trespassing at the site had probably perished.

Even if Cloud wasn't happy the way he was about Rand's suspected death, Zack tried to be understanding and supportive of whatever his friend was feeling. He wanted to help him and be there for him, even if it was hard to comprehend Rand's demise giving Cloud something other than a feeling of relief. He'd expressed his concerns to Aerith about how Cloud had seemed to be taking Rand's possible death harder than he would have imagined and she had reminded him that Cloud and Rand had spent a lot of time together alone in both Gongaga and Midgar and so when Cloud had said Zack didn't really know anything about Rand in comparison to, say, Cloud, he was right.

In Zack's mind, Rand's only shape or form was of something hideous. He had only one dimension. He was an enemy only. Someone who had knowingly and systematically dismantled the one person outside of Aerith that he cared about the most so that he could build him into something he and Hojo and Shinra could use. Cloud had seen things he hadn't. He'd seen things that for him gave Rand a full and human form. In some ways maybe that could make him easier to hate, but in some ways also harder.

Zack hadn't really had a plan when he'd made the decision to say with Cloud temporarily once he'd been released from the hospital. Initially, before he knew Rand's involvement in what led to Cloud being hospitalized, he had imagined staying with his friend a few days, lecturing him on how dangerous it was to take higher doses of the medication he'd been prescribed and how he needed to be eating and taking care of himself better, but that quickly changed. Not only was it clear Cloud had been struggling in ways he hadn't been fully aware of, but after Rand's appearance at the college and disappearance under concerning circumstances immediately after, Cloud's mental health seemed to take a hard hit that had him very abruptly slipping into a low Zack had never seen him in or at before.

During that week after his brief encounter with Rand, Cloud slept more than it seemed he had in the few previous months combined, and not in a good way. Zack found himself having to force him to wake up to take medication, to eat or to make the trip to his therapy appointments, otherwise he would have slept straight through all of it. He was worried and at the same time didn't know how worried to be because he didn't know if maybe his presence was actually worse than him not being there. If he weren't there to force Cloud to wake up to eat and medicate, would he actually do it himself? Was his being there actually somehow demotivating? Cloud told him he was fine and that he should go back home to Aerith but he was scared. What if the minute Cloud thought he was no longer being watched things took an even darker turn? He never thought before then that Cloud might have the thoughts the nurse had asked him about. Thoughts or self-harm or suicide that went beyond just a brief imagining. But he was concerned now.

Cloud was fully aware of what Zack was worried about. Zack straight up asked him if he was having those dark thoughts. He said no but it wasn't really the truth. Sometimes he had them, but it wasn't really the thoughts that he was in danger of, not exactly, because after a few days at home after his confrontation with Rand, outside of thinking of those last painful moments with him, he wasn't really thinking about much at all. He was too tired to really think of much of anything. It was almost peaceful to suddenly have so much quiet when things in his head had seemed so loud for so long. His morning panic attacks stopped during that week. He didn't find himself waking up on the brink of 6 a.m. with memories and feelings of fear from the days he'd been dragged from his cell and beaten until he would give in and accept three things he could still sometimes hear in his head like a chant. My name is C4. I belong to Shinra. Shinra is home.

No, he wasn't being shaken awake by his anxiety in the early morning hours that week. He wasn't waking at all, unless it was Zack doing the shaking. He would have had no idea what time it was, day or night, if it weren't for Zack waking him up to tell him and to make him do what really just seemed like unnecessary actions at that point. Medications. Food. Short trips outside or to his therapist. No, it wasn't dark thoughts that were anything to worry about at that point. It was not having them. Not having any thoughts at all. Just memories. Just wisps of feelings attached to them. Little strands he didn't even try to hold onto unless his therapist, Mia, forced him to. She was good at that. It was her job to make him acknowledge what he felt.

He didn't tell Mia about Rand ambushing him at work until the following Friday after it happened. She knew mostly everything about what had happened to him and Zack. It had been easier to tell her than it had been the first time he'd opened up to someone in her position about his past. The first time had been in Costa del Sol with one of the therapists there. Having to recount it a second time was like reading a book aloud to someone. It felt like a story and one which wasn't actually about him. That hadn't lasted though as he was slowly forced to fully acknowledge it as his story and no one else's. He had talked a lot to Zack about things he'd been through in Gongaga but Mia knew more. She knew the things he didn't want Zack to know.

Zack, and unfortunately Tseng as well, both knew that Rand had coerced, or essentially forced, him into a sexual relationship in Midgar. They had no idea the depth and details of what occurred from what he could remember upwards of a hundred or more times. A hundred or more separate acts or incidents of the two of them engaged in something intimate and which he had never truly consented to. It was worse than having to remember the rapes he'd suffered at the hands of Sephiroth and even before that when he'd been assaulted by Mailer or been subjected to other acts of abuse in the mansion because at least he could call it what it was and it was easily defined in his mind.

The hardest thing about remembering what he did with Rand was knowing that he had at times agreed to do some of what he did or even made the first move. He knew he'd done those things without emotion or without being able to understand the significance because of the implant in his head, and without knowing the impact it would have on him later.

Still, because he couldn't remember what he felt at the time, looking back at the things he'd done with Rand, participating and engaging sometimes what he perceived as very willingly always had him questioning himself. He kept asking himself if he had actually wanted to do what he did. Maybe when he had the implant, he did want to. Even if he felt and knew now that he hadn't needed or wanted Rand in his life at all, he could see himself back then doing things and acting in ways that suggested he had. It was impossible to reconcile in his own mind.

After days of feeling only exhausted mentally and physically, when he finally revealed to Mia that Rand had come to where he worked to confront him, she brought him back to that moment and made him face the feelings he'd had. Fear. Anger. Disgust. Even betrayal. She reminded him that at one time he'd trusted Rand. He hadn't known enough not to at one point. He'd been like a child after his brain surgery. He'd looked up to Rand as a source of knowledge, of protection and authority. He hadn't been in a position where he was capable of questioning anything or whether he should second-guess what he was told.

As he relayed to Mia his feelings when being suddenly confined in the biology room by his abuser, this person that he had at one point looked up to and trusted because he'd had no choice, he broke down and cried hard.

"He ruined everything," he found himself declaring through his panted sobs.

"What did he ruin?" she asked him gently.

"I was figuring shit out," he told her. "I was functioning. I worked for months to get to where I was. I did everything I was supposed to do to get better, and he shows up and tears my fucking life apart again," he explained to her tearfully.

"You think so?" she questioned and he nodded.

"I can't go back to work, I can't even handle the thought of seeing anyone outside of Zack at this point," he said.

"You can't? Or you don't want to?" Mia asked next and he shrugged.

"Both? I don't know," he said. "I feel like I'm back to where I started now. That all the months I was moving forward and trying not to think about what happened are just erased. It was all for nothing."

She nodded in understanding. "He should never have tried to make contact with you again," she told him of Rand. "But you're a survivor of some very severe violence and trauma," she stated softly. "Things that most people couldn't ever comprehend happening to them. Things that no one should ever have to go through. You need to acknowledge that what you went through is not something that you just get over and never think about again. You're going to think about it, a lot. It's never going to be fully out of your life but it doesn't mean you're back where you started. It doesn't change what you've done to help yourself heal and it doesn't erase the relationships you have built with the people in your life."

Cloud nodded slowly. "It's just with me for life," he repeated her words, letting them sink in. "It never really gets better then," he said and she shook her head.

"No, that's not true. You're going to have good days and you're going to have bad days. Some days will be better than others. Some weeks or years may be better than others," she explained.

"But there's never going to be a time when I'm actually 'recovered.' Only ever 'recovering'," he stated rather than questioned. "There's never going to be a time when the risk of some memory or some reminder of what happened, sends me into some damn panic attack and leaves me struggling just to breathe, is that it?" He felt himself getting a little angry then. "There won't ever be a time when I'm not afraid?" Mia was about to attempt to answer and he interrupted. "This is what I have to look forward to for the rest of my life?"

"No, Cloud," she said. "You've got a lot to look forward to. You can be happy, you really can," she promised him. "It's not going to be just the dark times."

"What if I don't want to live like that?" he asked her quietly while looking at the buildings outside through the window in her office.

"What do you mean?" she asked him and he shrugged.

"What if I don't want to spend my whole life in a war with my trauma?" he clarified.

"Cloud," she said as she looked at him straight, leaning forward a little in her chair, her forearms resting on the notebook in her lap that she wrote in during their sessions. "Are you having thoughts of ending your life?"

He nodded. "I have thoughts about my life ending," he admitted.

"Thoughts of you doing something purposefully to end your own life?" she spoke back seriously.

He lowered his head a moment and thought about it. He did try to look inside himself and discern if he really could do something like that.

"Sometimes when I take my meds I think about how it would be easier if I just didn't wake up after I went to sleep. I've even hoped for that a few times," he told her. "I think about how easy it would be to make that happen. Sometimes I hope for the train I'm riding on to derail and the crash to kill me." He took a slow breath as he thought about.

"And then I feel guilty," he went on. "I think of all the people with me on the train and how many of them may be hurt or lose their lives and how many were so happy to be living every day. I wonder what they'd think if they knew someone was sitting next to them hoping or something bad to happen. And I imagine what it would be like for Zack to find me at home, never having woken up if I died in my sleep and what he would think." More tears were leaving him then. "How he cares so damn much about me. I feel like, if he ever knew or found out that I did something to end it all, or that I was responsible in some way, that I just gave up or didn't fight hard enough, after everything…that I even wished for something bad to happen…it might just kill him too."

Mia watched him in silence then. He used a tissue from the box on the coffee table between them to wipe at his cheeks and nose.

"You need a goal, Cloud," she spoke finally and he rolled his eyes a little. "I know, I say that a lot," she said. "You need to decide where you want to be. Maybe it's something bigger or more important for you than simply getting used to doing the normal things like working and functioning as part of society. Maybe you need a mission. A purpose. Maybe that's what you need to remind yourself to fight. Something that you can lean into when memories of your past trauma try to drag you back. Something only you can do. No one else."

Something only he could do. There was a time when he could do what no one else could do. That's when he was implanted and playing host to Seraph. He couldn't do the things he'd been able to back then. What mission or purpose was going to be important enough for him to fight and get out of the crushing hold of his past knowing it would never really be far behind him? Whatever it was, he needed to figure it out soon.