Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

you aren’t sure of when you fell asleep, but you did, and now you’re awake again. or maybe you’re dreaming, again. it’s hard to tell the two apart these days.

everything feels sluggish.

everything always does, in the tank; and when you’re not in the tank you’re-- no, no. when you’re not in the tank it’s not worth thinking about. 

if you’re dreaming, it’s another nightmare. you are always having nightmares, these days. he floats in the tank next to yours, which is weird--they don’t like to keep you both in the tanks at the same time. they like to make you watch. if you’re awake, this is a statistical improbability, as they would say. you hate them.

if you’re dreaming, you can’t quite read the words you last scratched into the glass. words only you and he know, only you and he understand. they have taken so much from you, these days. but they cannot take that. they cannot take that. (you hope.) 

if you’re awake, you wonder why it feels so much like you’re not. you can’t tell if the liquid lapping at your skin burns or not. it leaves you feeling raw, feeling like you always do, and you would twist away if you could. you can’t. it’s been a long, long time since you could. 

everything is sluggish. you try to twitch your fingers to scratch the glass again, and the surface you meet is not the same surface you expected to find. it’s unfamiliar. it’s... you aren’t sure what, actually, it is. it’s been so long since you felt anything other than the glass of the tank or the metal of the tables (you shudder, violently, and stop thinking about the tables)--you can’t identify this thing you now touch. it’s almost warm against your fingernail. you want to leave another message for him--the last thing you remember him leaving for you was that he would break you out at feeding time. did that happen? you can’t recall. did that happen? probably not. the guards are never so lax. the guards are never so--but you--they--no. no no no no no no no no no no no no no--

----

he’s still there, in the tank next to yours. he always is. you are always alone in the tanks. you don’t want to think about the tanks. 

you blink, and the liquid leaves your eyes. everything is a blur. you can’t quite tell what you’re looking at, some dark shape with fuzzy edges moving across your field of vision. you tilt your head to track the motion, but your muscles refuse to respond. not even your eyes want to move. maybe you’re on the tables again, that must be it. they always have you sedated, on the tables. tied down. restrained. you wait for the pain to come.

you can wait a long time, as it turns out.

they like to make you wait. they like to see what happens when they do things to you, and you never know what they’re going to do or when. least of all why. you can hardly even remember what happened before. before the tanks, before the tables. everything is a blur, indistinct shapes and colors in your hazy memory, unable to string two words together to form a single sentence. everything a non-sequitur. 

you’re still waiting for the pain, and like always, it hits only when you least expect it. it hurts. this time, it’s something rubbing against your raw skin, abrasive and grating and painful. maybe they are trying to see how long it will take your skin to grow back, again. the dark shape moves out of your vision. it almost sounds like someone is shushing you, trying to comfort you. you’re probably crying from the pain, but your face is still wet from the tank and you can’t tell. you think it’s from the tank. you must be on the tables again. you’re only ever in the tank or on the tables. you’re only ever in the tank or on the tables. you’re only ever in the tank or on the tables. you’re only ever in the tank or on the--

your eyes fly open (when had they closed?) at the sudden sensation on your face, unfamiliar and almost-painful. you try to jerk away, but the movement is aborted, incomplete. out of your conscious control. the dark shape is back. you can’t focus on it; your eyes feel dilated like they’re doing another vision test and you can’t focus on anything, can’t make out any details. it almost feels like someone’s thumb, stroking away your tears. you must be having another nightmare, because no one in the labs comforts you when you cry. it’s been a long time that you’ve been in the labs. a shiver runs through you. 

you slowly become aware of the way your fingers feel so cold, distant and far away from your mind as though detached. have they done that before? (you think they have.) you cannot recall, but it wouldn’t surprise you. you never knew people could be so cruel, before. they’re cold, so cold, and you would rub them together if only you could. you must still be sedated. your body ignores your commands, all your sensory input strained through a thick layer of cotton before it ever gets to your processing centers. your bogged down processing centers. everything is so raw, brushing against exposed nerves, and you can’t hear anything over the dull roar of your skin in your head. it’s not just your fingers. your whole body is cold, you think, and it’s a strange cold. not one you’re used to.

you’re used to the cold of the tank. the cold of the liquid, but... the liquid is gone. and where there should be the cold of the metal, of the table, of the restraints, there is... there is only... you aren’t sure. you shiver again. when they put you back in the tank, you have to warn him. they like to make you take turns. you and him. one after the other, always, and sometimes you think you hear them say he’s the control group. once upon a time you knew what that meant. but whatever they do to you, they do to him. which means you have to let him know that they’re going to do something very, very weird to him next. something that almost seems familiar, like something someone last did a long, long time ago. like something someone did before. it’s been a long time since before. 

you wish you knew why they didn’t just kill you. why they kept you, and did things to you you can’t bear to think of. why you? why you, of all people? why him? you care about him, you think. they use that against you. you think he used to be your friend, before. before was a long time ago, though, and everything always hurts so much that it’s hard to tell if he’s still your friend. he must be, because you leave messages for him and he leaves messages for you. when they aren’t making you watch. maybe they make him watch. you’re not sure. when you’re lucid enough to scream, you would. they don’t like it when you scream. good. you don’t like them. they shouldn’t like you. 

but you’re weak. you’re weak and you’re trapped, and you can’t do anything to rescue yourself, and they keep doing things to you and they keep you in heavy restraints and they sedate you, not enough to knock you out. no, they only care about paralysing you, when it’s convenient for them, when they aren’t making you move, and they never ever ever care that it hurts. they like it when it hurts, you’re pretty sure. even though they don’t like it when you scream. or when you cry. you don’t understand them. after all, what is there to understand? what is there to understand about the senseless cruelty they inflict upon you? maybe he knows why, but you don’t know how to ask. maybe when they put you back in the tank you’ll ask. if you can move your finger enough to scratch your nails against the glass.

you’re planning how best to ask, with your limited form of communication via the glass, when the acrid scent hits you. you smell smoke.

----

ma! ma! ma! you’re screaming, screaming, banging your fists against the door and she’s not there and a gust of wind pushes the flames out towards you in a sudden burst and you dive, dive to the ground to avoid it, and then you just stay there because your mother was in that house but he just came out of it and you know she’s dead. you know she’s dead. she’s dead and you scream her name into the dirt as loud as you can, which isn’t very loud because all the oxygen in the air is getting eaten up by the flames and you can’t breathe quite right. you can’t breathe. you can’t breathe--! 

you think you hear someone running up towards the mountain. they went there, didn’t they? both of them. you have to--you have to follow them, and you hear the girl start screaming and you have to get up and follow them if you can. but the town’s on fire. the town’s on fire, and your mother is dead, and as you push yourself out of the dirt you begin to realise that everyone is dead except for you and the girl and the two you came with and with a burning urgency you know exactly where they went.

the reactor.

you have to get to the reactor.

----

you have no words to describe the anguish you currently experience. you no longer smell smoke. distantly, you hear someone apologising. it seems as if they’re talking to someone else, someone in another room, and you’re just listening in. that isn’t very polite of you, so you tune them out. focus on your breathing. 

(you can’t breathe you can’t breathe you can’t breathe you can’t breathe you can’t breathe)

in through your nose, slowly. to calm down. it’s supposed to help with anxiety, although you’re not sure that what you’re feeling right now is anxiety. 

(you can’t breathe you can’t breathe you can’t breathe you can’t breathe the smoke fills your lungs you can’t breathe)

out through your mouth. aren’t you supposed to count? box-breathing, or whatever. 

(you can’t breathe there’s screaming all around you you can’t breathe you can’t breathe your mother is dead and you are dying on the dirt in front of her house you can’t breathe)

hold your breath for four seconds. in for four seconds. hold for four seconds. out for four seconds. hold for four. in for four. hold for four. out for four. hold for four.

(you breathe like a fish out of water, gasping for breath, desperate for oxygen but the fire consumes it all)

in for four. hold for four. out for four. hold for four. in. hold. out. hold. in. hold. out. hold. 

(someone is coaching you through this, propping you up against them because you can’t hold yourself up. aren’t you just pathetic? set off by some fucking smoke?)

in. hold. out. hold. in. hold. out. hold.

(but you feel better now, despite how you want to pinch your nails against your thighs until you break skin. weak. you’re weak. you’re weak and the stupid breathing exercise is helping, and it almost feels nice to lean against the person behind you except that the cloth on your skin chafes. hurts. scrapes horribly on your raw back. but still, it’s almost nice. you’ve... missed nice.)

your heartrate isn’t jackhammering away at your skull anymore, and the person holding you must notice, because they start to move you, muttering indistinctly in your ear. they must be new. none of the regular lab assistants would do this. you wonder why they’re doing it now, but you can’t ask even if you weren’t scared to do so. they don’t like it when you talk. your tongue is limp in your mouth, your jaw unresponsive. it takes all of your effort to breathe in, hold, out, hold; and if the person behind you wasn’t doing it in time with your shaky lungs you don’t think you could have done it yourself. they must have given you something really strong this time.

you’ll have to warn him. if ever you were really friends, you have to warn him. it’s only right. you wonder when you’ll be put back in the tank.

they always put you back in the tank, eventually.

----

he’s asleep next to you, and you’re surprised, because he’s pressed up against you this time. he’s not in the tank. you’re not in the tank. maybe his plan actually worked, or maybe you’re dreaming again. you think, idly, that you did this once, before. or maybe you just wanted it. if the before is real, really real, and you really were his friend, you liked him. he was... he was someone you looked up to. you still look up to him. if you could, you would press back into him, squish yourself against his back and wrap your arms around him. if it didn’t hurt. it would probably hurt. you would do it anyway, because it’s been so godsdamn long since you got to touch someone, least of all someone you care about. you’re more lucid than you’re used to, but you still can’t move. you should probably be concerned by that. 

this feels real, though. and it’s hard to be concerned when the material under you is a kind of scratchy almost-soft fabric instead of a cold metal, when there’s a solid wall against your bare back and someone warm in between you and the rest of the world. it’s hard to be anything other than kind of calm, half-awake in the dead of night, gaia-knows-where but at least it’s not the lab anymore. you really hope that it’s not a dream. please let it not be a dream. please let it be real. please let it be real. 

why’s your shirt off, anyway? you’ve got your pants on, or... well, they’re your pants now, you suppose. you don’t actually know whose pants they were. they feel a little big on you. there’s socks on your feet, and you think you have on boots. your boots? maybe, unless whoever dressed you had other men’s shoes in your tiny size. not likely. besides, your boots are perfectly good. were. they were, before. maybe they... maybe they aren’t, anymore. you try to flex your toes against the material of them, but between their lack of response and the socks you can’t feel anything at all. you can’t see your feet from how you’re laid out, curled on your side looking down at your knees. at least you can breathe, and your head isn’t too uncomfortable--oh, there’s some kind of pillow under your head. maybe it’s your missing shirt? no, that doesn’t seem right.

you got out of the labs, but everything between there and now is a blur. a foggy haze draped over your memories and consciousness, making it difficult to tell what actually happened. if you concentrate really hard, you think you can remember someone shooting at you, him moving faster than you could see to block the bullets with his blade. with his body. he’s SOLDIER, first class, everything he does is impossibly fast. maybe he’s higher than first class, now. after everything they did to him. to you. while you’re still weak. still limp. why is he doing this? why is he here, protecting you from the world? surely you don’t deserve that. 

you remember, abruptly, about the shirt.

it’s one of his spares, you think. it’s hanging over a nearby rock, you recall, because you had to go under a waterfall to get into the cave he’s stowed the two of you away in for the night, and you were so cold. he must have stripped the shirt off of you so that you wouldn’t be cold and wet. he probably shucked your previous pants, too, and you realise that he himself is just in underpants. where’s his shirt? there’s a mane of wild black hair running down his back, untamed and so fur-like you didn’t realise he was shirtless, too, at first. his clothes must be drying too. 

huh.

but why put you in pants, then? unless--no, but--ah. you’re more than a little embarrassed. he must have seen you naked, because you seem to have gone commando under the pants rather against your will. you can’t bring yourself to be mad at him, though. it isn’t his fault. and you... you trust him. you know he... he would never. he would never. if you know anything, you know that. it explains the pants. you wish you could tell him you know. you wish you could tell him how much you trust him, even if he’s the only person you have to trust right now. you still trust him. you think you would have-- did --trust him like this before. you hope he knows.

you’re so tired. 

you’re so tired, and you’re cold, but not as cold as before. not with his warmth so close. you don’t remember if SOLDIERs naturally run that hot, or if he’s just got a fever. you hope it’s not a fever. it’s not like you could help with it, if it was; your body refuses to obey you. you’re just a marionette with your strings cut. dead to the world, or might as well be. not that it matters. he seems to care for you anyway. and you trust him. gaia below you trust him.

you fall asleep again, atlas before you holding up the sky.

----

one of the many things they like to do to you in the labs involves scalpels. well. one is an understatement. a lot of the things they do to you in the labs involve scalpels. 

you’re used to the pain by now, but that never makes it hurt any less.

they never put you under. they don’t like it when you pass out from the pain, either, and gaia only knows how many times you’ve been shocked awake by some twitchy assistant with a thunder materia. they’re not supposed to shock you too much, though. interferes with the test results, or whatever. or so the professor says. you don’t remember the professor’s name or likeness. good. you don’t want to. 

this time, one of the assistants is cutting into you again. you’re strapped down, held to the table by the usual metal restraints around your wrists, your ankles, your neck, your abdomen. it’s cold. dry and cold. there’s the sharp pain of the scalpel as it slices you open, somewhere around the bottom of your ribcage by the feel of it. you bite down on the leather in your mouth. apparently it’s messy and difficult to deal with when you bite down on your tongue, instead. you think that happened once. you think it healed, somehow. 

it all heals, eventually.

you don’t know why.

you think they know, but it’s not as if they would tell you.

you think, if you could see yourself in a mirror, that your eyes would have that glow to them. like a real SOLDIER’s. they never let you see your own reflection for too long, though, when there are mirrors. 

even with the leather you want to scream, but your throat is too dry and hoarse already and no sound comes out. you’re used to the pain. 

but that never means it doesn’t hurt like hell, every. gods. damn. time.

you lose track of what’s happening after that.

you usually do. it’s hard to keep track of time. weeks could be hours could be days, seconds, months. tank. table. tank. table. sometimes they take you to another room, and do other things. things that aren’t the tank or the table. you go back and forth, never seeing the sun, and you would keep track via feedings if you were conscious for even half of them. you’re pretty sure you’re not. 

not that they let you really eat. there’s a tube shoved down your throat every time they put you back in the tank, two tubes if you’re counting. you’re not counting. you think they feed you maybe once a day, but. again. difficult to keep track of time when you’re drifting in and out of awareness. blacking out from the pain on the table. from dehydration on the track. in the combat simulator. eighteen continuous hours was his old record, before he passed out. the professor wants to make you do better. wants you to surpass him, even though he’s a SOLDIER, first class. the professor doesn’t like it when you fail. 

you fail a lot.

you know that they punish him when you fail. he’s just the control. he’s expendable. you’re not. the professor needs you. 

if you knew why, you wouldn’t be here. 

(he isn’t expendable, not to you.)

(they can’t kill him. you’d kill yourself, and then they’d be out of test subjects.)

(it’s a game, a terrible terrible game, but you have at least one thing in your corner here. they don’t quite hold all the cards.)

the pain makes it hard to think. you struggle to remember why they’re cutting into you now. probably to look at some organs in your abdominal cavity, see how the treatments have affected them. the mako and... and the... you’re not sure. you can’t remember. the pain eats the words, the memories; a fiery sting that is all-consuming and ever-present even long after the scalpel leaves and the sutures go in and you get put back in the tank. 

they always put you back in the tank, eventually.

----

you’re being pulled out of the tank again. you panic, because you forgot to warn him about the abrasive rubbing. or maybe you didn’t. you don’t know. you can’t see anything clearly, even after you blink several times. it’s a slow process. someone is saying words to you again, or to someone else nearby, but you’re pretty sure there’s no-one else around. maybe they have a PHS. maybe they’re on a call, talking to someone far, far away from here. 

it doesn’t smell like the labs.

it doesn’t smell like mako.

where are you?

who is with you? 

what... what happened?

this is a really weird test. and they’ve done some weird tests on you before, but this really takes the cake, as he would say. 

you would prefer being in the combat sim again, being forced to try and beat his record. you almost made seventeen hours last time. you think. you’d prefer that to this, whatever this is. there’s that abrasion again, although...

it’s different, this time. there’s... oh. it’s--it’s a shirt. someone is pulling a shirt over your head, pulling your arms through the sleeves. why? it’s the wrong material to be one of the gowns they make you wear when they put you in the combat sim. you already have on pants, and... socks? and shoes, of some sort? when did that happen? gaia, you don’t remember the last time you had on shoes. 

well, you’re dressed now, you suppose. you blink some more. it takes a while. 

the blurry dark shape in your vision doesn’t come into focus no matter how hard you try, and the words you hear don’t solidify into anything with meaning. you’ve been handled into something like a sitting position as strong hands clip some kind of harness around you. you think it’s a harness, from the way it feels around your chest. the dark shape ducks out of your vision for a moment.

oh, that must be the person. a lab assistant no doubt. and this is just some kind of really, really, really weird test. has to be. nothing else makes much sense, does it? maybe if you’re lucky, this lab assistant who is currently lifting you up and securing you to their back can help you find him.

where is he?

...

who is he?

...you don’t actually remember his name, do you? 

...

...you don’t even remember your name.

maybe when you get back to the tank, you can ask. you remember how to talk to him, in the tank, don’t you? the code. you scratch the code into the glass with your fingernails, and it hurts and breaks them probably but they always grow back. and he scratches back. hairline scratches in the glass that the lab assistants never seem to notice. 

your head lolls onto the shoulder of the person carrying you. your arms are draped over their shoulders, and they have their arms hooked under your legs. if you could make out any details, you think you would be able to see your shoes from here, but the world is a wash of dim colors that all of a sudden are too bright.

is that the sun?

...why would they take you outside? 

it’s so bright. it hurts, and you recoil, closing your eyes ineffectively as you make a jerky aborted movement, trying to get away from it. you only succeed in tilting your head into cool metal. 

cool metal, just like the tables, and you remember why you never trust any of the lab assistants. not even this one who’s been almost nice to you. maybe if you scream loud enough, he’ll hear, and he’ll come rescue you? ...yeah, right. they probably have him strapped down on a table somewhere, and they’re probably carrying you there, going to make you watch. they always make you watch when they’re cutting into him. 

you scream as loud as you can at this revelation, which isn’t very loud--your throat is sore, and nothing of your body is responding in a consistent or timely manner. you would smirk if you could, though, because from the jolt of the person carrying you, you angled your voice directly into their ear. another win for you. 

and then you panic, because you realise that your little act of rebellion is going to get him punished again, and you don’t--you didn’t mean to do that--no, no, they should punish you instead, just this once, please, please, please. 

but he’s expendable.

you’re not.

the lab assistant carrying you quickly shifts you in their hold, twisting and rearranging the both of you until you’re curled against their chest, them leaning against a tall structure of some kind. at least, you think it was quick, but you realise that the entire side of their shirt is wet from your tears, and you’re in shade, so you must have lost time again. they’re on the ground, actually, and they’re saying words to you. why? why are they doing this? why do they care? they’re just a fucking lab technician, they’re just going to hurt you again, why are they letting you cry into their shirt? why are you even fucking crying?

...’s me, it’s... they say, their words mostly unintelligible. you can’t see their face from the angle you’re at, held almost protectively against their body. your vision is still so blurry. so fucking blurry.

why is your vision so blurry?

the lab tech--they have to be a lab tech, nothing else makes sense--must be drugging you, injecting you with something or putting drops in your eyes to dilate them. your vision shouldn’t be this bad after being out of the tank for this long. you’re out of the tank, right? you’re out of the tank?

fuck, maybe you’re not. maybe you’re having another nightmare in the tank. that would actually be... that might... maybe that would be better. then none of this is real, and you’ll wake up, and you’ll be on the table again. the table is terrifying. you hate the table. 

you’d rather be on the table than whatever this is, because at least you know the damn table. 

there’s a sickening familiarity in the routine. if it can even be called that. this, though, this is all new. oh, the tech is still talking. you would scream again but your voice is too raw, your throat too sore. you wish they would stop talking. everything about this is wrong.

...Zack, it’s me, Zack. it’s Zack. you know me, buddy, the tech says, tilting your head up to look at their face. it’s a blur of sun-kissed brown surrounded by soft black. utterly unrecognisable. your eyes still don’t work. why don’t your eyes work? work, dammit! 

who’s Zack?

you really have to warn him when they put you back in the tank. if you’re really awake right now, that is. a weird tech talking to you, telling you their--his? Zack sounds pretty masculine--name, taking you outside, putting actual clothes on you and not just those damn paper gowns, did you mention taking you outside? it’s so confusing that you actually stop crying. the tech--Zack? if that is his name, he’s probably lying to you--wipes your tears away. 

why?

why is he doing this? nope, nope, you can’t think of the tech as him. there’s only one him. and he’s probably waiting on an exam table at the end of wherever this... technician is taking you, and you just have to tough it out like you always do and hope they don’t punish him even more for it. for you fucking up. for your failures.

they always punish him for your failures.

the tech, who must remain as they in your mind for your own sanity’s sake (not that you have much of that left), seems... comforted? distraught? both, at the same time, somehow, by your reactions. did they expect you to keep crying? or is it the way you blink confusedly at them, because by gaia you’re fucking confused, that has them so... emotional? is this another test?

it probably is.

they hold you close again, gently readjusting you so that your head is nuzzled up against their neck. they’re still talking but you’ve stopped trying to listen, so the words fade into the background noise. 

huh. there’s a river rushing somewhere nearby. or--actually, it’s pretty far off, but trying to figure out how far off dredges up memories of the auditory tests they like to do to you, and on the slight off-chance that this tech actually cares you’d rather not think about the auditory tests again. also, you already cried into his--no, their, remember--shirt for gaia-knows-how-long. and that’s embarrassing. you don’t want to do it again. 

as you listen to everything you can hear but the weird tech’s words, you realise that they deliberately avoided letting your head touch the cool metal from before. you also realise, belatedly, that they’ve shut up. you get the sense they don’t do that a lot.

there’s a grunt from them and the sound of fabric ripping, then they’re shifting you around again and wrapping something around you. you’re not really sure what they’re doing, truth be told. all your sensory input is still jumbled, probably from whatever they injected you with earlier. assuming they did inject you with something. actually... hm, that’s kind of odd.

you bring your awareness back to your body, focusing on your sense of touch as you do, and you come to the conclusion that... the pain has dulled to a low ache? your skin isn’t quite as raw anymore, either. the chafing isn’t so bad. did they... did they put salve on it? is that just your natural healing? surely they wouldn’t have used a cure materia; lab techs don’t carry those around. not for test subjects like you. well, maybe the weird ones do.

gaia only knows this lab tech is weird. maybe they do have a cure materia, and maybe they did cast it on you. it must... it has to be part of the test. the test. 

(you’re not sure this is a test, anymore.)

thinking about it is getting you nowhere, though. the tech stands up and starts walking again, and now their previous efforts with the cloth make a little more sense: they’ve got you in a makeshift sling, so they only have to use one arm to hold you up. it’s... comfortable. 

you’re tired, again.

maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to fall back asleep. you let your face be buried into the crook of their neck, and close your eyes.

----

you run after them, to the reactor. you don’t know why you know, but you know. 

the girl beats you there. of course she does, she had a headstart. she kneels by the body of her father, picks up a sword that you’re surprised to see there, and runs into the center chamber. that sword... you know that sword. it shouldn’t be lying around by a dead man. its wielder... where is its wielder? 

--it belongs to the general. 

where is the general?--you don’t know. you don’t know. you follow the girl--you know her name, what is her name? into the center chamber. she rushes up the stairs, screaming bloody murder but the words are static in your ears. oh. you know where the general is, now.

the general disarms the girl with ease, knocking the sword out of her hand before grabbing it and slicing it across the girl’s chest. she goes flying backwards, falling down the stairs. there’s nothing you can do. then he runs in, late as ever, tells you to stand back. he’s SOLDIER, first class, after all. if anyone has a chance of going up against the general, it’s him. you watch as he roars and challenges the general, taking the stairs three at a time, his own blade at the ready--

the general doesn’t even hit him with the sharp edge of the blade, just backhands him with the flat of it so hard that he hits the ceiling and falls onto one of the pods in the room. what’s with the pods, anyway? you don’t know. you’re just an infantryman, nobody briefs you on these things. he hangs limply off the top of the pod he’s landed on. you have to do something. you have to do something. 

you pick the girl up and lay her gently out of the way, remembering a promise you made to her once when you were younger. you swore you would save her. you don’t have any cure materia on you. if you did, you would use it. she’s bleeding, bad. you don’t think she’ll make it. nothing you can do. there’s nothing you can do.

and then, he turns to you and says--

Spike! wake up!

----

mornin’, Spike! he says. (oh. you were... asleep, again?) or really, it’s evening now, but it’s dinner time, and I found us something I hope is edible! one of... uh, nevermind where I got it. it’s a ration bar, shouldn’t be too stale! probably. think you can take a bite of it?

he holds out the bar to you expectantly. you’re on the ground, propped up against what feels like a tree, based on the bark digging into your back. it’s uncomfortable. he’s crouched next to you, you think. the details are still lost, but your vision is a lot better than it was earlier, when you woke up in the cave. 

you are hungry, you notice. your stomach growls. you try to reach for the bar, but all you get is a miserable twitch of your fingers against where they’re laid across your lap. fuck. 

he must realise the issue too, because he retracts the bar.

okay, Spike, I got this! don’t... don’tcha worry, I got this, ‘kay? 

he breaks off a bit of the ration bar and holds it up to your lips. you can’t really open your mouth very much, though, so he ends up having to push the piece into your mouth, which is really kind of embarrassing, except you’re so godsdamn hungry that you don’t want to even bother with feeling anything about it. and besides, he’s clearly embarrassed enough as is for the both of you. 

the bar is... chewy. it’s chewy, and your jaw isn’t working very well, so it takes a really long time to actually chew it all up and then swallow. also, your throat and mouth are really dry, which is definitely not helping the situation. 

uh, damn, this would be easier for ya if it weren’t so tough, wouldn’t it? he says, after watching intently as you eat the first piece. you can’t quite make out his facial expression so much as feel his eyes on you. 

you’re honestly surprised you can hear him so well, right now. you feel the most awake you have in a long time. you know better than to think it will last, though. nothing ever lasts. and you’re still not convinced this isn’t just a really detailed, hopeful dream, although... you don’t remember what bark feels like enough to have dreamt it, you think. and that’s definitely rough bark digging into your back. now if only you could remember your friend’s name... one step at a time, you suppose.

you’re pretty lucid right now, ain’t ya? he asks, sitting back on his haunches. you’d forgotten how perceptive your friend could be. 

why don’t we come up with a system, like our code? cus, I gotta admit, I really don’t like just doin’ stuff to ya without ya sayin’ if I can, when ya can, yanno? he scratches the back of his head, keen eyes still staring you down. and, um, I would just use our code, but that seems kinda long-winded for like, simple stuff, yes or no type things, yeah? so maybe you could just... 

he takes your left hand, places it in the palm of his own. 

give me a single tap for yes, two taps for no? I’m pretty sure you’ve, uh, you’ve got some control over your fingers, so... he scratches the back of his head again. you’re surprised he’s not doing squats, actually. your friend always does squats when he’s anxious.

or when he’s nervous. or when he’s just got too much energy and he needs to burn it off. or when he’s bored. actually, you think he just always does squats. you think.

you’d snort and turn your head if you could, but all you manage is a little huff of air. it isn’t a bad idea, though; you’re just not sure it’ll actually work. experimentally, you try to tap his hand just once, to say yes.

--! it worked? it worked! it’s a soft, tiny motion, but he was right, you could do it!

Spike? did you do that on purpose? he asks, sounding puzzled.

you tap him once more.

...so that’s not an accident? 

you tap twice.

that’s great! we’re in business now, Spike! okay, okay, wanna eat another bite? 

you tap once. he’s still holding your hand in his palm, and you’re suddenly aware of how small your hands are, compared to his. 

his excitement permeates the air almost palpably, and he breaks off another piece of the bar and presses it to your lips again. ah. that reminds you. you tap his hand twice, and you can’t hardly see his frown but you know it’s there.

what’s wrong, Spike? ...oh, it’s too tough, isn’t it? 

you tap once again, and then his hand leaves yours, the bite disappearing from your lips at the same time. you hear him shuffling about on the dry leaves (forest floor, you guess) as he... digs through something? picks something up? it’s hard to tell, and it’s dark, and your vision is still not great. the sun must have already set, the last rays of light sinking below the horizon in the last few minutes. if it’s been only a few minutes. you’re not sure. (you’re never sure, not anymore. it’s okay. he doesn’t seem to mind.) 

the hand comes back suddenly, and this time, your friend presses the rim of a bottle to your lips, tipping it carefully so that its contents mostly go in your mouth. some still dribbles out onto your chin, which is annoying. not much you can do about it, though. you have a good inkling of what he’s going to do next, so you wait to swallow the water until he pushes the bite of the bar in. you let the bite soak for a little bit, despite how strange it feels to do so, and you’re rewarded for your efforts a few minutes later when the bar is much softer and far easier to chew and swallow. 

was that better? he asks, and you tap once in response. yes, yes it was. 

he feeds you nearly the whole bar like that, a swig of water and a bite at a time, until abruptly you realise he hasn’t eaten this whole time. you tap no on his palm as soon as you do.

huh? what’s wrong, Spike? 

you trace the code symbol for mealtime on his hand, as best you can with your limited mobility. then, you draw the symbol for him, because he has to eat too. he’s the one walking. he needs the food.

(he probably needs it more than you, but you don’t have a good way of saying that, right now. and he would probably disagree with you on top of that.)

oh, nah, Spike, I’m not hungry, he says. you know that’s a lie; you hear his stomach growling too.

you tell him as much with a simple pair of taps against his palm.

...bud, we only have the one bar, he whispers, apologetic. I’m a SOLDIER. I can go without for longer. and you’re sick. 

you’re getting annoyed. is he being frustrating on purpose, or is he actually just this dense? you tap no on his palm again.

he sighs. you’re not gonna stop until I eat this, are you?

double tap.

okay, okay. I’ll eat it, he says, and pops the rest of the bar in his mouth. you tap his palm once in return, just to affirm that he did the right thing. 

if you could, you would tell him that the next food he finds, he needs to eat half of it, and no less. but you can’t, and you find that suddenly you’re quite tired. you keep being tired. you’re sick of it.

you trust him, though, so you close your eyes and let yourself drift off. 

----

your eyelids feel glued together, when you wake. must be another test. always another test. you try to force them open anyways, bracing yourself for the pain, the inevitable pain. 

they don’t budge.

you let out a whimper, involuntarily, when several repeated attempts yield only the same nothing. they’re going to punish him for your failures again. aren’t you supposed to be able to do this? you can hear the professor’s voice in your ears, reprimanding you again for being such a miserable failure of a clone. (a clone?) a clone.

don’t you remember? her name was Jenova

there’s an unfamiliar voice in your head and you can’t get away from it. (it isn’t that unfamiliar.) you whimper again, in fear again, the cut strings being tugged on. they’re still cut, but you feel it. someone trying to pull them. someone, or some thing, you aren’t sure. you don’t want to find out. 

for once, you are grateful for the restraints around your legs. you’re being carried. trussed up like a doll, wrapped around your body to keep you flush to the chest of your kidnapper. kidnapper? lab tech. always a lab tech. you hear the professor again, saying something about reunion, and you shudder. there’s something wrong with that word. there’s something wrong with that word. 

reunion, little puppet.

(you don’t remember)

you’re afraid that, without the restraints, the voice tugging on the strings would make you hurt someone. make you hurt him. your friend. you can’t hurt him. they’re going to hurt him, for your failure to open your godsdamned eyes, and if you weren’t restrained you could stop them. you could fix this.

you could join us

finish what you started, little puppet

it’s getting hard to tell where your desires end and the voice’s begin. you want to see him again. you’re trapped. you’re weak. you could break out of here, if you tried. if you gave in. you already gave in a long time ago. there’s someone else in your mind.

there’s no one here but you.

----

someone is talking to you again. they keep doing that lately. you try to count the feedings, but you’re only ever awake for less than half of them. someone is talking over your head. you know that voice. (you’ve never heard that voice like that before.)

you’re being laid against something. it isn’t a table. or if it’s a table, it’s a new kind of table, which should probably terrify you. you don’t have it in you to be terrified. you don’t have it in you to feel much of anything, anymore. it’s so cold. why haven’t they put you back in the tank yet? they always put you back in the tank, eventually. so why are you still here?

ah, you’re being watched again. you don’t know how you know, but you know. someone is watching you. it isn’t the lab tech. the lab tech says something else to you and then covers you with something. it feels like a blanket. then the lab tech shuffles around, starts dragging something heavy towards you. you’re not sure. your eyes won’t open. makes it difficult to tell, but your hearing’s okay at least. for now. well, mostly okay. the words the lab tech says are lost to you. it’s just static in your ears, or maybe you’re ignoring them intentionally, but if it’s the latter you can’t figure out how to stop. (someone else is ignoring the lab tech for you.)

stop it, you hiss to the person lurking in the back of your consciousness. yeah, you. fuckin’ quit it.

no response. of course not, you’re thinking really loudly at yourself. weak and pathetic. you’re not even fit for reunion, are you, little puppet? 

little puppet? who are you calling little puppet? I’m not your puppet. I’m not your fucking puppet.

(aren’t you?)

you can still feel the sword piercing your chest. a beautiful ōdachi, belonging to a beautiful angel, piercing you straight through and staining the blade with your blood. how sacrilegious of you. 

really, it’s your fault. you killed Sephi--

----

you wake with a gasp. were you dreaming? you must have been. where is he? where is he? why are you all alone again, why did he leave you alone, where is he where is he where is he he isn’t HERE--

he left you alone.

you trusted him, and he left you alone. 

alone, in a dark room, splayed out on the floor. it’s damp in here, smells like old wood and rot and moss. smells like the forests outside your hometown. how long has it been? days? weeks? you don’t know. it’s cold. 

it’s always cold in Nibel.

you haven’t been home in two years, have you? you were on a mission. there were monsters around the reactor, and it was you and him and the general. why were you going with? you’re just an infantryman. this is a weird campsite, but something must have happened. 

there... there was that dragon that attacked, knocked you out with a single swing of its tail. the general killed it, you’re sure. the general never has any difficulty killing anything. every strike precise, every swing elegant and controlled. perfect. always perfect. you wish you could be half as impressive, but you’re not. you’re just an infantryman. 

you’re a country boy. you’re supposed to be used to the cold, dammit. so how come the chill seeps into your bones? freezes your muscles? turns your fingers blue in the dim light, keeps you pinned to the ground in a thick layer of ice, prevents you from getting up and going after him? how are you ever going to make SOLDIER if a little cold keeps you down? get up, Strife. get up. 

you can’t.

dammit, where is he?! he isn’t supposed to leave you alone. he promised he wouldn’t leave you alone. he’s... he’s your best friend. best friends aren’t supposed to leave you (alone, frozen, immobile, in the dark). you blink up at the ceiling and contemplate screaming. if you did, and he heard, would he come running? you’re tired of being the one nobody cares about. nobody but your ma, anyway, and you left her two years ago to chase a stupid pointless dream. you shouldn’t have done that. what kind of son leaves his mother alone like that? (what kind of son are you? are you even her son, really? really?)

maybe you’ve misunderstood the concept of a best friend. you’ve never had one before, after all. nobody back home liked you anyhow, except your ma. you miss her. (gaia, you miss her.) 

maybe this is a thing best friends do. maybe they leave you in damp caves and put a big log you have no hope of moving in front of the exit. maybe that’s... normal? okay, now that you’ve thought it, it doesn’t sound normal. it sounds kind of fucked up. actually, it sounds like something he himself would tell you isn’t normal, and you resign yourself to having some strong words with him when he gets back. he has to get back, right? he promised. he said he wouldn’t leave you alone. he promised.

you hear footsteps. your heart speeds up--could it be? is he back? you hope he’s back. you hope, more fervently than you’ve ever hoped anything before, that he’s back. fuck, you don’t even care about making SOLDIER anymore so long as he comes back--

you’re starting to understand the phrase heart in your throat, now. your pulse is so high it feels like your throat will explode with its intensity. you try to swallow it down as the log (you’re pretty sure it’s a log, judging by the smell; a Nibel pine if you had to say) moves, is shifted by a giant bulk of a man. it’s him. you’re still frozen to the floor but light spills in around him and you feel it warm you, just a little bit. he’s silhouetted by the light and you can’t make out any details of his face but you know it’s him. it has to be him.

(you’re muttering his name under your breath, on repeat, and you don’t even realise it.)

Spike! I’m back! he says, jovially, and you relax just a little more. you’re still kind of mad at him, though. why did he leave you?

sorry about that, bud, he laughs, but it’s a kind of sad sound. sad and pained. something must have happened. he comes into the cave, crouches down next to you, takes your hand. 

caught some squirrels, gonna make some stew for food, but I know you don’t do well with smoke and I dunno how else to make a stew without a fire, so... want me to close the cave off when I do it, so you don’t have to smell it? 

you look dumbly at him. what’s he talking about? when have you ever had issues with smoke? you open your mouth to tell him as much, but words are suddenly a battle you’re not capable of winning. you... you must have a concussion, from the dragon attack. (privately, you think, that would explain a great many things.) 

you can shake your head, at least. thank fucking gaia for that small mercy. the ice is melting, the closer he stands. crouches. whatever. (you handwave the technicalities of his stance in favor of basking in the warmth he puts out, like a radiator or a small star.) 

he cocks his head to the side and frowns at you. huh? did you do something wrong? has shaking your head suddenly stopped meaning no when you weren’t looking? 

Zack, you rasp out. your voice is so hoarse, like you haven’t spoken in years. if it weren’t for his SOLDIER-enhanced hearing, you suspect he wouldn’t even hear you--your voice is little more than a faint whisper. 

oh, Cloud, he says, tearful, and scoops you into a tight embrace, lifting you clean off the floor with ease. you’re really not sure why he’s doing that. you try to fight off the sudden hug to no avail. he’s always been a lot stronger than you, after all; he’s SOLDIER. you’re just an infantryman. 

(why does it feel like there’s something you’re missing?)

he holds you like that for a minute or two, hot tears falling onto the base of your neck as he crushes you into him. oh. oh. he’s always been clingy, but... something must have happened to the general. something bad. where is the general? where’s Sephiroth?

where’s Sephiroth?

you think you managed to get that one out, mostly-coherent. seriously, why is it so difficult to talk? must have been a really bad concussion, you think. like, really really bad. like, you should be seeking medical attention instead of being crushed to death by an over-emotional giant puppy of a man, only you’re very much not doing the former and are doing the latter, and that has to mean something has gone very, very wrong with the mission.

where’s Sephiroth?

Zack nearly drops you when you ask. 

shit, shit, I’m sorry! shit, Cloud, you okay? he asks, panic rising in his voice, taking your hand again. your left hand, again. you wish you knew why he was doing that.

you nod, because--well, almost being dropped was scary, but he caught you before his grip had even fully slipped and you’re fine. you’re fine. (concussion aside.)

but clearly, he is not. 

where’s Sephiroth? you ask again. 

Seph... oh, Cloud, don’t you remember? Seph’s dead.

heartbreak lingers in his gaze as he stares you down. why’s he looking at you like that? what happened? what did you do?

you shake your head as best you can, because, no, what could kill the general? what could kill the demon of Wutai? what could kill Sephiroth?

(or who?)

your friend swallows. he looks like he’s about to start doing squats again, like he does when he’s nervous, and you weakly swat at him with your free hand to get him to put you down before he starts squatting. you have no desire to be part of his exercise routine today.

Cloud, you... you killed Sephiroth, he says, gently, pulling away from you just a little. making eye contact. (you hate eye contact.) (he knows that.) not doing squats, or putting you back on the floor, or anything else. just. looking at you. 

you don’t like the way he is looking at you, right now.

(there’s a sharp pain in your torso and when you look down you see the blade. you know it’s pierced clean through. you know it’s pierced clean through.)

you shake your head again, because no, no, no, you didn’t kill Sephiroth. why would you kill Sephiroth? how could you kill Sephiroth? you’re just an infantryman! you couldn’t possibly have killed the general! the general!

(you grab the blade with both hands. dumb move, but you’ve already done it; might as well commit.)

Zack just looks at you, like there’s something you’re missing. something terrible.

why...? 

(you feel your feet start to leave the ground as Sephiroth lifts the blade higher. no. no! you’re not going down like this, you’re not going to die here!)

you squeeze your eyes closed to avoid looking at his face, but it doesn’t help. all that does is make the image playing in the back of your mind stronger. the insides of your eyelids twitch and play out the same scene, over and over again--but that can’t be real, can’t be real, can’t be real! 

you did not kill Sephiroth!

(you push down with all your might, jostling the blade where it’s stuck between your ribs. it’s agony, and you hope to all the gods above and below that you have the leverage to make. this. work.)

Zack is crying again. 

did you... did you really kill Sephiroth?

his tears drip down onto your neck, soak into your shirt. 

you... you didn’t have a choice, he whispers, pulling you back into his chest. you didn’t have a choice.

(this shouldn’t work. this shouldn’t work. this doesn’t make any sense. this doesn’t make any sense, it doesn’t make any sense, it isn’t possible)

your strength has left you. your voice has left you. you can do nothing but lay there, held against him, as he cries. you can’t even comfort him. you hate it.

(your hands are bloody, cut to ribbons, and you have a hole through your chest and you’ll never forget the shocked look on Sephiroth’s face as you flung the demon of Wutai into the mako far below.)

you killed Sephiroth.

you killed Sephiroth.

(you killed an angel, and that makes you a monster.)

----

Zack doesn’t make that stew for a long time.

----

it’s been several days since you arrived back at your hometown. you don’t know exactly what happened down in the basement, but Sephiroth hasn’t come out yet. that can’t be good. Zack has tried to go in, talk to him, comfort him, something, anything, several times. every time he comes back he tells you the same thing: Sephiroth wouldn’t even let him in the room. you’re getting concerned. the both of you are.

what could possibly even be in that basement that would disturb the general like that? 

...do you really want to find out?

...

...

...you don’t think you do.

Zack won’t tell you what it is they saw in the reactor that upset Sephiroth so much. you did your job. stood guard outside. kept Tifa out. and oh, it hurt to be so close to the one other person you ever remotely liked from your hometown when she didn’t even know it was you, but that was better than the alternative of the whole town knowing you were back. you would die of shame. you never want Zack to hear about that time you almost killed Tifa, even though that isn’t what happened. not that you remember what did. 

you stayed outside the reactor, keeping an eye on Tifa, and when Zack and Sephiroth came back out something had changed. something was wrong. and when you got back to town Sephiroth disappeared into the manor and that was that. 

you’re beginning to think there is something strange about the manor.

Zack’s doing squats. he’s anxious. you’re in the room at the inn that he and Sephiroth rented. you probably shouldn’t be sleeping here, but Zack insisted. you don’t have the heart to tell him that the other guys in your unit make fun of you for sleeping your way to the top, like they know something you don’t. Zack’s not into you like that. Zack has a girlfriend. and besides, you’re no good as a SOLDIER if you can’t make it on your own. 

you haven’t made it on your own.

you keep your helmet on in town because it’s easier. easier than everyone knowing the black sheep has come back, easier than telling your mother you still haven’t made SOLDIER, easier than being Cloud Strife in Nibelheim. you don’t want to be Cloud Strife in Nibelheim. you don’t want to be here at all. 

Zack’s doing squats. you said that already. he’s doing squats because he’s anxious. he’s anxious because Sephiroth is acting strange. you don’t know the general that well. maybe this is normal for him. Zack says it’s not. you don’t know how to comfort him. neither of them. words have never been your strong suit. emotions neither. none of this should be happening. what was in the reactor room? what did they see? what kind of dirty secret does Shinra hide here, in your hometown, in the mako reactor? maybe you’re losing your mind. maybe all of you are. 

why would you even want to be a SOLDIER?

why are you here, Cloud Strife?

why are you here?

----

you awaken to the sound of footsteps. the lab tech, again, most likely. it’s been a few days, you think, and you would really like to know what the parameters of this test are. you’re tired of it. maybe it’s all another VR simulation, like the combat sims but weirder. yeah. that would make sense, wouldn’t it? 

nothing ever makes sense in the labs, though, so maybe not.

the lab tech putters about. you can’t see very well--it’s dark, you think, or maybe your eyes are dilated again. they keep doing that. sedating you, dilating your eyes, injecting you with something that keeps you on the edge of awareness, paralysed and unable to move. you hate it. you hate it. are they so afraid of you escaping? as if.

you’re sick.

you know you’re sick. they say so, every time they take you out of the tank. you don’t handle mako well. that’s why they rejected you from SOLDIER, isn’t it? you’re overly sensitive to it, and it makes you violently sick. fever, coughing, delirium, migraines, exacerbated sensory issues, dissociative episodes, hallucinations, the works. you don’t know how you’re not dead yet, being submerged in mako every time they put you back in the tank. they always put you back in the tank, eventually. 

don’t they?

of course they’re going to put you back in the tank. they always do. they always do. 

they have to.

you need to leave another message for him. you need to talk to him, scratch into the glass again, bloody your fingers with the force you put on your nails in order to leave a mark on the surface of it. it’s the only way. it’s the only way you have to talk to him, and you have to talk to him, you have to, you have to. you have no other choice. 

they tried to take him from you, once. told you they had disposed of him and that you needed to stop struggling and cooperate. you didn’t realise they were lying, at first. they hadn’t learned to restrain you yet, either. their mistake.

the scalpel was halfway across your throat by the time the assistant realised what you’d done, and that was the only time they ever bothered with using a healing materia on you. then the professor forced you to explain why you had done that. 

your answer was simple.

if he was dead, you would be too.

apparently, you’re worth far more alive than you are dead. so the professor returned him to you, and decided against lying to you about his condition ever again. you don’t regret that part. 

you regret the other ramifications of that incident, though.

the professor decreed you would always be restrained in some capacity, not just sedated, after that. just in case. 

the professor also decreed you would always know what was happening to him; that was when the professor started making you watch. probably started making him watch, too, when they were experimenting on you. cutting into you. taking you apart. running their tests. pumping you full of mako; of something else, you don’t know what; hurting you in all the ways you could have ever imagined and then some. 

you thought about making a pact with him. a pact to escape this forever--a pact to die together, to return to the lifestream rather than endure any longer. but he’s too honorable. he would never agree to that. you think, bitterly, that he should have. then you wouldn’t be here right now, lying on damp ground in some place, you don’t know where, waiting for your captor (the lab tech) to pick you up and carry you off, again. 

no, you let him talk you into an escape plan. clearly that didn’t pan out. you don’t think he even got to try, yet. you hope not. you know they would just punish him, and they would make you watch, and then they would run another cruel test on you and make him watch and then they would put you back in the tank. they always put you back in the tank, eventually. they always do. 

you hope this isn’t that punishment.

you would rather he not have tried than he have tried and failed, but you aren’t sure anymore. you aren’t sure of anything, at this point. it’s been days. the lab tech’s fed you at least four times, not through the tube. the tube’s gone. you can’t taste whatever goes down, and you refuse to help. you’d rather starve. you’d rather they not feed you at all. but for some unknowable alien reason, the lab tech spends the time--a long, agonising time--to coax your mouth open, pour liquid in (soup, water, something else; it’s all tasteless to you anyway) just enough to get you to reflexively swallow. it doesn’t always work. sometimes they massage the sides of your face, your throat, to get you to do it. sometimes you refuse on purpose. most of the time you’re too out of it to even try. everything’s disjointed, blurry, nonsensical. 

in a brief moment of clarity, you think you might be delirious.

mako poisoning, most likely.

you would prefer the tank over this, truth be told. you hate the tank. but this is too strange, too different, and you’re sick of it, sick of being carried. sick of being fed. sick of being helped to relieve yourself. you miss the tubes. you miss the catheter. you miss the tank, and you hate the tank. that’s how you really know you’ve lost it. gaia should just take you back already.

if only you were so fortunate.

oh, right, the lab tech. you’re supposed to be paying attention to the lab tech, aren’t you? they’re going to ask you later, and you need to know. the footsteps stop near your head. now you’re being lifted, cradled in strong arms as you get put back into position. carried. again. you remember why you weren’t paying attention, now. 

briefly, you consider panicking over incurring more punishments on him, but you’re too fucking annoyed to be properly panicked, and besides, they can only punish him so much, right? surely he’ll forgive you. you’re friends. he’ll forgive you. you hope. 

you hope.

leaves crunch underfoot. your eyes slip closed, not that they had been open. it smells damp. it smells like the woods down the mountain. they never get the scents right in the VR simulations. maybe this is real. heh, wouldn’t that be funny? the professor is going to be pissed. some rogue lab tech stealing his prized subject--you’d double over laughing if you could. it’s just too funny. you can hardly imagine it. oh, he’ll be livid. he’ll turn red and pop like an angry balloon, or a pimple. yeah, like a pimple. it’d be gross. you want to see it. 

weak puffs of air that could almost be laughter escape your lips, pushed out against the fabric of the tech’s shirt. it quickly turns to coughs. you’d almost forgotten, hadn’t you? you’re sick. 

you’re sick, 一

(someone says your name. you know it’s your name, but you can’t hear it.)

一, you’re sick, buddy, the lab tech says to you, shifting you in their hold. that’s funny. they sound like him.

who’s him?

you don’t remember.

(your friend? don’t you remember your friend, 一? he’s the only friend you have left in the entire world.)

you don’t have friends. not anymore.

do you?

fuck, okay, says the voice, bodiless and far-away. you envision the professor bursting, piece by piece, eyeballs first. 

let’s get you some water, buddy, that cough can’t be good.

who’s talking? you don’t know. you laugh in tears as the professor continues to pop, splattering you with blood and green snot and pus. probably other stuff. it gets in your mouth. it tastes bad, but you swallow it anyways. why did you do that? the professor stares at you with empty eye sockets. why did you do that? 

he’s laughing, laughing at your weak prone form. his tongue is twice its normal size, lolling out of his mouth. his hands swell like balloons before popping, blood vessels engorged and painful-looking. you think. you’re laughing too hard. you can’t breathe. the professor’s laughing, and you can’t breathe. his head rolls under the table. 

your friend is laying on it, cut open. his blood is on your hands. don’t you know? don’t you know? they killed him because of you. you killed Zack Fair. 

who’s Zack Fair?

(who’s Zack Fair?)

the blood runs down your throat. you cough. you cough. you cough. the blood keeps running. it’s everywhere, all over your hands. soaking your hair. your shirt. your pants. seeping into your boots, staining the leather. you cough. it fills your lungs.

you’re drowning in it, back in the tank, the professor’s lifeless sunken eyes watching you as you gasp for breath in a sea of blood spilling from your own body and the air is thick with the stench of it and he’s dead he’s dead you raise the scalpel to your throat again they promised he would live where is he where is he you raise the scalpel and no one stops you and your hand misses, you can’t breathe, you’re drowning in an ocean of your own tears you can’t breathe--

...

...

...

that’s funny, you don’t remember dying.

the flowers bloom, pink as the blush on your cheeks

wilting away in seconds before returning to the patch of earth that birthed them

a tear slides down your cheek

you always thought heaven would be a meadow full of beautiful flowers.

...

...

(一, wake up.

you have to wake up.

一?)

Chapter Text

you wake to warmth. real, human warmth, nestled against you, and you curl tighter into its embrace on instinct.  it’s ...relaxing, honestly; you can’t remember the last time you got to sleep in like this. perks of being on paid leave, you suppose. 

you’re so glad he agreed to come with you for this one. glad that he, too, had paid leave at the same time; that this trip was even possible. you wonder if you have someone to thank for it. probably one of his friends, one of the ones whose name you don’t quite recall. you’re still waking up, after all--it’s hard to resist the urge to fall back asleep, to bask in the warm body next to you, in the way the early morning sunlight filters in through the gaps in the tent. 

someone has to get up and make breakfast, though, and you’ve never been able to sleep too long past dawn anyway. you always rise with the sun, without fail. he thinks it’s cute. he calls you sunshine. it makes your heart flutter.

you would never tell him that with words, though. talking about your feelings is so damn difficult on its own, a herculean task made even harder when the subject of your affections is right there in front of you, cosied up to you in the sleeping bag, having seemingly sought you out in his sleep. you think he knows, though, without you having to say a word: he reads you better than anyone else ever has, save maybe your mother, and does it like it’s a natural talent rather than some hard-won skill. you think he knows how much you care for him, because you tell him with every little gesture, every text message, every invite to dinner, every sizzle of the bacon you’re going to get up and cook after you extricate yourself from his sleepy embrace. it isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but you manage it nonetheless, all without even so much as a twitch from him. 

it’s surprisingly warm for this time of year. you wanted to go as soon as the frost melted, and you did, but even so, it’s not nearly as chilly as you expect from an early Nibel spring. must be the sun--or maybe his warmth just lingers on you, drapes around you like a cloak. heh, you’re getting sappy. when did that happen? you pinch yourself and let the tiniest smile crack across your face, a mirror image to the eggs you lay out in the pan. eggs and bacon is a classic, time-honored breakfast that you like to think you’ve long since perfected, even cooking over last night’s embers in your little travel pan your ma insisted you take with you before you ran off to join the army. 

you stir the coals and add a little more firewood, just enough to get the heat up, to let the eggs cook better. you’re going for scrambled, because over-easy is a little too annoying to do in the brisk air today. do you...? yeah, you do, you distinctly remember packing that block of cheese, and if it hasn’t all disappeared down your friend’s gullet already, you intend to shave some pieces off and mix them with the eggs. you dig around for it in the supply pack--a-ha, there it is! and the pepper, and the salt, and some other herbs and spices--you feel like going all-out this morning. no real reason, not really. maybe you just want to take care of him for once. 

(it always feels like he’s taking care of you, after all.)

you hear him stirring behind you. the soft rustle brings another smile to your face as you add the cheese in, mixing it with the eggs. they’re almost done, which means it’s almost time for the bacon--you definitely should have done the bacon first, but better late than never. you give a few good twists to the pepper grinder and add the last of your seasonings before taking the eggs out of the pan, placing them in a waiting bowl. it smells heavenly. it feels good, knowing he’s waking up in the tent behind you to this; getting to show him how much you care. how much you... how much you love him. 

because, well, you do. you love him, don’t you? you love him like you’ve never loved anyone before, and it makes your heart ache with the force of it. he’s your friend. your best friend. and he has a girlfriend, and it’s generally frowned upon to feel like this about taken guys, isn’t it? but you can’t help yourself. you’re still smiling, but a rogue tear slips out, draws a line down your cheek in its hasty escape. fuck. you put the bacon in the pan and stop thinking about that. 

sunshine? he says, voice thick with sleep, and you turn just in time to catch him poking his head out of the tent flap, hair mussed in a mess of black fluff. cute. you don’t say that, though.

mmmm, smells good, he continues, draping himself over your back. he’s so clingy. (you wonder if he’s like this with his girlfriend, too.)

‘is just bacon an’ eggs, you reply, nothin’ special. 

your accent’s thick this morning, thicker than usual. this does not surprise either of you--you’re near home, after all. you push him off your shoulder with a huff of laughter; he’s going to make you burn the bacon if he’s not careful. you tell him as much.

pfft, my apologies, chef, he snickers, and presses a gentle kiss to your cheek before he withdraws fully back into the tent.

(he does that, too, sometimes. you’re not sure why. you’d object to it, but... you just can’t bring yourself to complain--you’d rather have his attention, as much of it as he’s willing to give, than not.)

(it still leaves you flustered every time.)

(you wonder, again, about his girlfriend.)

oh, shit, the bacon’s about to burn. you got too distracted up in your own head again, but you catch it just in time and manage to save every last piece from a terrible charred fate. thank gaia for the little things, you suppose. 

there’s a low whiff of burnt, singed flesh in the air. you don’t like it.

(shhhh, not now. sweet dreams, 一. sweet dreams only, for just a little longer.

it’s the least I can do for you.)

a strong gust of wind dispels it quickly, though, and now that the bacon is done, you spear each piece with the knife you used to cut the cheese earlier and deposit them, one by one, into the bowl with the eggs. satisfied with the state of your cooking, you take the bowl and a couple of forks and crawl back into the tent to find him curled back up in his sleeping bag, well on his way back to sleep.

you poke him in the shoulder, good-naturedly, to get him to wake up.

he doesn’t quite budge after the first poke, so you set the bowl off to the side, forks balanced on top of it, and poke him again, more forcefully this time. then again, for good measure, because you know he’s awake (you can hear him trying not to giggle and give up the game), and from there it nearly devolves into a full-blown tickle fight. 

that is, until you remember the bowl, and gasp out for a truce before you spill breakfast everywhere. 

(you’re not usually one for touch like this, to be honest; but when it’s him, you don’t mind.)

warm laughter fills the cool air, warm, so warm, and you resituate yourself as he grumbles affectionately. you swat his arm, lightly, when he starts burrowing back down into the sleeping bag, complaining about the cold. you just laugh--isn’t he supposed to be SOLDIER? surely a big, mighty SOLDIER can handle a little cold, right?

I’m from the jungle! it’s different! he practically yowls when you drag him, forcibly, out from the nest he’s making. or, rather, trying to make. it’s not exactly what you’d call a successful venture. 

eventually, though, he sits up. he smiles at you, a big, face-splitting thing that looks so right on him (something’s off about his eyes but you pretend not to notice), and takes one of the forks, scoops a bite up with it. you think he’s going to put it in his mouth, but he feints the movement and suddenly the eggs are at your lips, instead.

(there’s something terribly pained in his gaze, just a brief flash of it, and you don’t know why. you’re not even sure it was there.)

(一, I’m so sorry

I have to go, I’m so sorry)

you laugh--what is he doing? feeding you? you’re supposed to take care of him, for once, just this once. you’re supposed to return the favor. for your best friend. it’s only fair.

open up, sunshine, he says, all sing-song. (something’s wrong.) you humor him, parting your lips to let him feed you the bite. (something’s wrong.)

just as the eggs enter your mouth, though, your jaw goes numb, stops responding to you. that isn’t supposed to happen. 

(he doesn’t look surprised.)

it’s okay, I got you, he murmurs, leaning forward. his hand cups your cheek. I thought you were awake enough for eating, that’s my bad. 

he sounds so sad when he says it. why? you don’t understand. something is wrong. something is wrong.

he places his other hand on your other cheek, then begins to work your jaw for you. it’s weird. you don’t really like it, because--well--it’s embarrassing, you suppose, although that’s not really bothering you as much as you expected, right now. (why is that?) no, the issue you currently have is more about the implication that you’re not currently awake. of course you’re awake! you made breakfast, didn’t you?

didn’t you?

you are awake, are you not?

his hands shift further down your jaw, now gently massaging your throat. like he’s trying to get you to swallow. you want to balk and object, but it’s as if some invisible force has cast stop on you--you simply can’t. you can’t do anything, can’t even consciously react, your body moving by itself in time with his gentle hands.

the eggs taste wrong, not the way you’re sure you made them, when he puts the next bite in. no cheese. no pepper. no salt. no herbs. just bland, rubbery eggs. you still can’t chew. 

he does it for you, working your jaw with his hands, smooth and practiced like he’s done it before. many times before. that can’t be right. he moves to your throat again. there’s that sad look in his eyes, pained and broken and it makes you ache to see it. you can’t look away. 

I got you, he murmurs again, and you’re not sure if it’s meant to comfort him or you. 

he doesn’t seem to be aware that you’re aware. you’re awake! you want to scream, you want to scream, you’re awake, you’re awake you’re awake you’re awake--

he feeds you another bite, and you catch glimpse of a tear tracing its way down his face. you wish you could say something, anything, let him know you’re here. you get the sudden urge to tap your finger against him, but your hands aren’t anywhere near him right now and it’s not just your jaw but your whole body that won’t respond, won’t move the way you want it to. the way you need it to. 

what would tapping your finger even do? what purpose would that serve? why do you feel like it would mean something, like it’s some kind of system you have with him? you’d remember setting something like that up, wouldn’t you?

wouldn’t you?

then he does something strange, even stranger than what he’s already done, and you realise he must be right: you must be dreaming. you must not be awake, because if you were awake, then--

he takes a bite of the bacon, chews it for a moment, then spits the bite back out, presses it to your lips, pushes it in. it tastes like fat and spit and char, like nothing at all. you still can’t chew. he does it for you again, with his hands again, gets your body to swallow it down when you yourself cannot. he looks weary. 

he feeds you your entire half of the bowl like that, chewing the bacon first with his own teeth before feeding it to you. the eggs he does not. the eggs must be soft enough. are soft enough, you realise with a start. he knows what he’s doing. he’s done this before.

just how long have you been asleep? why can’t you wake up? why can’t you just wake up?

come on, 一. wake up already. wake up.

wake up, 一.

wake up.

----

hey, hey Cloudy, shhhh, it’s okay, it’s okay. I got you. I got you. you... ya probably need some water, don’tcha? yeah, I gotcha. here, okay? just drink that... yeah, okay, just like that...

this sucks. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. oh, some of it spilled; that’s okay, lemme just... okay, okay. fuck, I wish we had a medkit. you’re burnin’ up, Cloudy; can you hear me in there?

...

fuck, still nothin’. fuck. okay. um, okay, Cloudy, I gotta put you down for a sec, okay? I hafta remember some stuff. just a sec, okay? okay... shh, it’s okay...

what would Ange--shit, no, don’t say that, Cloudy needs me, I can’t start cryin’--what would he say? breathe, Zack. breathe. right. okay. breathe. I can do that, I can breathe--

(in, two, three, four. hold, two, three, four. out, two, three, four. hold, two, three, four.)

(in, two, three, four. hold, two, three, four. out, two, three, four. hold, two, three, four.)

(in, two, three, four. hold, two, three, four. out, two, three, four. hold, two, three, four.)

(in, two, three, four. hold, two, three, four. out, two, three, four. hold, two, three, four.)

hhhh, okay, okay. okay. ...I keep sayin’ that, don’t I, Cloudy? heh, ‘s jus’ silly ol’ Zack, sayin’ stupid shit. um, let’s, let’s see. you’ve got a fever, a pretty bad one, huh? what did... what did he always say? if it’s a fever, you gotta...

right! you need to cool down. and drink more water, but we got that one already started, didn’t we, Cloudy? chalk up another win for Zack, booyah! 

...sorry. shouldn’t’ve done that.

here, have some more water... yep, just like that... there ya go, you’re doin’ a great job. yeah. yeah. okay, I’m just gonna go knock off some of those icicles over there, I’ll be right back, okay? I’m not goin’ far. 

...

...

fuck!!! ...I’m okay!

...

sorry about that, heh, almost hit myself in the head with an icicle, that’s all. silly ol’ Zack. ugh, I’m just bein’ annoyin’, ain’t I? I’m so sorry. you deserve better than me ‘n’ my mediocre medical skills, but I got nothin’ better right now. if only I could get ya to Aerith...

shit, the ice. right, right, okay, it’s gonna be real cold for a second but I bet it’ll feel so good, okay? yeah? ...how’s that? okay, uh, lemme just wrap this around ya, so it don’t fall off, ‘kay? I’m sorry bud, we can’t stay here. we gotta keep movin’, so I gotta pick ya back up, ‘kay? okay, three, two, one...

there we go, yeah, lean into me. fuck, I’m so sorry. I... you can’t even hear me, can you? fuck, I hope you wake up. you gotta wake up, okay, Cloudy? please.

...please.

...

...

...

...did I ever tell ya about Aerith? pfft, course I did. I’m gonna tell ya again, though, cus I’m pretty sure if I stop talkin’ I’m gonna start cryin’ again and ain’t nobody wanna see that, heh. um, yeah. ahem.

she’s the most beautiful girl in the world, yanno. dunno how I got so lucky as to be her man, but she’s... she’s fantastic, real sweet, good with materia. better than... better than someone I used to know, really. and that was four years ago! think about how much better she’ll be at it now, with four more years of practice under her belt! she lives in the sector five slums, under the plate. 

...yeah, goin’ back to Midgar’s a pretty shit idea, but... I don’t trust nobody else to take care of ya, yanno? fuck Shinra, but... we ain’t got a choice, I don’t think. 

...

...if you can hear me, and ya got a better idea, tell me, okay? ...if you can.

...I know words are hard.

...I know.

...anyway! Aerith’s gonna love ya, I jus’ know it. ‘n’ I ain’t jus’ sayin’ that, even though she does love everybody ‘n’ their mama. nah, I know she’s been dyin’ to meet ya, kept tellin’ me so every time we’d talk. kept askin’ me when I was gonna bring ya ‘round, meet her folks... dunno why she’d ask me that, her mom ‘n’ Shinra ain’t exactly on good terms. she, uh, she grows these cute lil’ flowers, yellow ones, out at this ol’ church. I ever tell ya how I met her? fell through the roof of it one day, stupid story, thought I mighta died ‘n’ went to heaven when I saw her. asked her on a date right then ‘n’ there. 

...I think you’d like her too. 

can you hear me, Cloud? c’mon, use the lil’ system, remember? tap once for yes, twice for no... although, with a question like that, I guess you’d either answer yes or ya wouldn’t answer at all.

...

...nothin’, huh?

...I miss you. man, I’m too much of a coward to say it when you’re awake, but... I wanted to ask ya out on a date, after we got done at Nibelheim. figures it’s probably too late now. Aerith was cool with it. probably still is, she’s into all kinds of stuff, ‘n’ we wasn’t ever exclusive... wouldn’t be surprised if she’s picked up a new guy or gal or two by now. gaia knows she deserves the love. 

...you do, too, Cloudy. I hope you know that. you’re my best friend. even if you’d said no to the date, I hope it wouldn’t make this awkward. we got a good thing goin’, bud, ‘n’ I... I’m so scared of ruinin’ it, of scarin’ ya off. fuck, listen to me bein’ stupid... stupid, stupid Zack... I’m jus’ yappin’ to myself, ain’t I? 

I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me, if you’re listenin’. 

...

...

...

...

...

how’s that fever doin’, bud? lemme check... uh, you’re still pretty hot. um, to the touch, I mean. you’re always hot. in the, I think you’re attractive kinda way--oh, shut up, Zack. 

okaaay, ice pack on your forehead, gettin’ plenty of rest... some more water? it’s been a little bit, hasn’t it? I’ve jus’ been walkin’ ‘n’ talkin’, not really payin’ attention to how long it’s been. never was great at that though. ‘n’, oh, the weather’s you! get it? cus it’s Cloudy? ...that was bad, you’re right. 

ahem.

okay, let’s get some more water in ya, bud... yeah, okay, um, since I can’t see the sun, I have... no clue how long it’s been. shit, the ice melted. I don’t see any other icicles nearby... hold on, gonna put ya down again, ‘kay? 

okay, I’ll be right back...

...

...no...

...

...uh, what’s... no, not there... damn... okay...

...

sorry, bud. I can’t find any more icicles, but I did hear a river south of us--I bet it’ll be nice ‘n’ cold, full of icemelt from the mountains, yeah? I think we’re reachin’ the end of the forest, though. been a while since I had access to a map, heh... but I bet that river’s the one that marks the edge of Nibel. we’re gonna keep headin’ south, ‘kay? maybe, if I’m not totally lost, we can make it to Cosmo Canyon. s’long as they don’t shoot us on sight for how we’re dressed... okay, c’mon, bud, up you get. 

yeah, I know. I know.

I know.

----

(you’re in the tank again)

(they always put you back in the tank eventually)

(it’s so cold)

(your head hurts)

(stupid, stupid. how could you have thought this lab tech was any different? you probably were never even outside. you probably were hallucinating, weren’t you? they must have done something, administered something, part of some test. always another test with them. always an experiment, always watching, always recording, always there. breathing down your neck. never leaving you alone. never alone. never alone.)

(you breathe in, expecting the tube.)

(there’s no tube.)

(liquid fills your lungs. it doesn’t burn the way mako does. huh. must’ve put you in a different tank this time.)

(you let it take you, let it pull you under. let the liquid fill the empty space inside you where your will to live should be.)

(if you’re lucky)

(your heart slows down)

(if you’re lucky)

(it’ll cease all together)

shit, shit, shit!

(someone is panicking, and it isn’t you. you’re being dragged out of the tank, laid flat on the ground. supine. chest compressions. you feel your ribs crack. they’ll heal over soon, fifty minutes max, you remember. the professor was very insistent on timing it. always timing. always timing.)

you retch, air coming back into your lungs, water flowing out. someone turns your head to the side, helps you sit up as you cough it all out. disappointing.

you’d allowed yourself to hope it was finally all over.

as if I would let you go so easily, little puppet.

you flinch away from the voice, but there’s nothing there. nothing and no-one. you must be sick again, hearing voices again. 

someone is still holding you up. you blink the water out of your eyelashes. it feels like your eyes haven’t been open in days. that’s funny, you know they were open in the tank. you were looking for a message from him, right? he said he’d break you out at feeding time. where is he? who’s holding you? 

fuck, sorry bud, how’s that fever? 

a cold, clammy hand touches your forehead. you know that voice. you know that hand. they belong to a corpse.

he’s dead, you remember now, he’s dead, he’s dead his blood was on your hands they made you kill him they made you kill your best friend in the world your ONLY friend in the entire world and he’s dead dead dead at your hands dead--

you shiver and twitch violently in his grip--this is some sick joke, some sick and twisted joke; the professor must have done this, only the professor could be this cruel--where’s a scalpel? a sharp rock? can you slip back into the tank, escape the corpse? you told the professor you would not live if he was dead. you told him. you’re still sedated. you wriggle as best you can, aim for the water, it’s not the same tank but you doubt you could truly drown in mako anyway--let the water take you let the water take you let it take you away from here, from this mockery of your dead friend, let it take you away let it take you--

he--it, the corpse--struggles back, cold arms holding you down, it speaking in your ear with his voice. telling you to calm down. telling you lies, saying it’s okay, it isn’t okay! you have to get away, have to get away, there’s a monster wearing your dead friend’s skin and it’s trapping you, gripping you so tight. it won’t let you go. it won’t let you go, so you have to resort to drastic measures. you’ve already resorted to drastic measures. 

the sedation’s wearing off with the rising panic in your body, and you jerk your knee up as hard as you can into it, into where it would hurt a lot if it were a living person but you don’t know if it actually hurts or not. it drops you like it does, yelps in what sounds like pain, and it hurts to hear your friend scream but you have to remember it isn’t him, it isn’t him, it’s a monster pretending to be him and you have to get away-- you scramble for the water, faster than you thought possible. 

you have to drown yourself.

it’s the only way.

you won’t-- can’t --live without him, you told the professor that, and his blood stains your hands. you plunge them into the cold water, try to wash it off but the red stays, etched into your skin. you can never wash the blood off. a permanent reminder of what you’ve done. what you can never escape.

you scrub furiously at it, scratching your nails along the tender flesh of your palm, across the wrinkles of your knuckles, trying desperately to get it off. no matter how deep you scratch, it’s still red, still bloody, you can’t get it off, his blood is on your hands and it never leaves it never leaves

puppet, stop.

who said that? that wasn’t the monster, was it? it didn’t sound like your friend. your dead friend, whose blood mixes with your own in the murky water. he’s dead. why aren’t you? the monster grabs at your ankles, hauls you out of the water. why? why? maybe it wants to kill you for itself. maybe it remembers being your friend and wants revenge, wants you dead because you killed him. that would be fair, wouldn’t it? wouldn’t it be right? just? its hands are so cold. you’ve never been held by a corpse before. this isn’t right. this isn’t right. you’re shivering.

tears leak uncontrollably from your eyes and you feel like laughing, almost, in hysteria; something is dreadfully wrong here and why is the monster cradling you why is it wrapping you in a towel. where did the towel come from. you can’t move again, but you don’t think you were sedated again. you’d have felt the needle. smelled the materia. it doesn’t have any materia, does it? you don’t. your eyes get heavy, lids fluttering shut slowly despite your best efforts. did it cast sleep on you? can it do that? no, you’d have smelled the materia, noticed that tang in the air. why are you so tired? there’s a bottle at your lips and you drink it in greedily without processing the change. your eyes are blurry with your tears. there’s something dreadfully wrong here. there’s something wrong. a corpse is holding you. something’s wrong. you’re shivering again. again? were you shivering before? you can’t remember. you don’t know. 

time slips through your fingers like quicksand, disappearing from you faster than you can see it leave. where’d the corpse go? what corpse? someone is pulling pants onto your limp body. you hadn’t noticed you were naked. you think, maybe, you ought to feel ashamed, but you don’t. you don’t feel much of anything, anymore. there’s your shirt. socks and boots. harness (for the sword, you think, which doesn’t make sense because you don’t have a sword). a soft voice in your ear. hoisted up, fireman carry, march upstream by the riverbank. rushing water. you want to drown in it. you can’t move. where is he? you’re so warm. you’re so warm. 

you’re burning up. it’s hard to focus. hard to stay present. 

put down. something about looking for a ford. the person leaves. who was that? you’re boneless. collapsed against the base of the tree. is it a tree? feels like one. do you remember what a tree feels like? you don’t know. you don’t know. you’re burning up. everything’s too hot, too hot, and you shiver again, which is weird, why are you shivering if you’re too hot, why are you doing this? what’s wrong with you? c’mon, get up, what’s wrong with you? 

where is he?

did you... did you really kill him?

you killed someone, you remember now. someone... important. someone... you cared about. why would you do that? did they make you do that? will they make you kill again? is he dead? is he really dead? where is he? 

who did you kill, Cloud Strife?

----

(you’re floating downriver, in the lifestream.)

it smells like mako, like the labs, like pain. why are you here, anyways? shouldn’t you be elsewhere, somewhere on the surface? being cared for?

you’ve never been particularly good at being cared for.

you don’t really have a choice, right now, though. do you? you can’t eat, can’t drink, can’t piss by yourself. can’t walk. can’t even stand. you can barely tap your fingers against something and on your worst days you can’t even do that. 

(it isn’t your fault. it isn’t. you’re not the one who left you to die on that catwalk, nor are you the one who let the professor have you when he found you. you and him. the SOLDIER. it isn’t his fault either, you know.)  

(it isn’t.)

the general spent days in that basement. was the professor there, hiding, the whole time? in the secret rooms behind the shelves, in the labs you’re now painfully familiar with, waiting to strike? you don’t know. maybe the professor had something to do with the way the general lost it. it’s probably all his fault, the creep. you’re going to kill him one day. it would be right.

you still don’t know what it was that was in the reactor, even though you went in there and saw for yourself. those pods... that head... mother... you don’t understand. you hope you never do, because you suspect if you did you’d be as mad as the general was, at the end.

(he was right.)

(you didn’t have a choice.)

you wonder if the general is here, in the lifestream with you. you’d like to apologise. you wish there had been another way, if only because this way has turned out so horribly bad. you should probably feel worse about killing the general, but... you don’t. not really. you’re not really sure that was the general, at the end. you think--you pray--that was someone else, that the general was already dead and you just... what, finished him off? delivered the final blow? removed the last trace that he ever was? 

you don’t know.

(you have a bad fever.)

(you don’t know why. probably mako withdrawal, although that doesn’t explain what you’re currently doing in the lifestream.)

(did you die, maybe, and have come to rejoin the Planet as all things must?)

(...no, that’s not it.)

(oh, I get it.)

(you’re lost, aren’t you? well, that’s okay. we all get a little lost sometimes. you’ll make it back, though. there’s someone waiting for you, after all.)

(go on, I’ll help. you were at the riverbank, remember? there was a ford, and he carried you across it. he did it because he cares. he has such a big heart, you know that. he’ll always care so, so much for you.)

(you may be a burden, but you’re a burden he chooses to bear. don’t take that choice away from him, alright?)

(he’s waiting for you.)

(aren’t you going to go meet him?)

----

everything’s hazy, again, when you wake up. you’re in his arms, something cool strapped to your forehead, your hands pressed to his chest awkwardly. you don’t know how long you were out, this time. it’s late afternoon, you think, judging by the light level. his boots crunch on sparse grass and hard dirt, a thin layer of ice cracking beneath the weight of his steps. you’re out of the forest--it doesn’t smell like home anymore. 

you tap, once, to let him know you’re awake. then, because it’s relevant, you start to draw the symbol for drinking-water on his chest, although he interrupts the motion before you can finish.

heya, Spike, back with me, huh? he says fondly. he sounds like he’s been crying. 

he slides your left hand into one of his own, and you tap yes as quickly as you can. 

what was that you were drawin’? I couldn’t quite tell. 

you repeat the symbol on his hand this time. you have better control of your left hand. you’re not sure how he knew, but he’s known since that day, maybe a week and a half ago? you’re not sure--you’ve been asleep a lot. sometimes it almost feels like someone else is in your head instead of you. it’s disorienting. 

ah, yeah, lemme grab the bottle, ‘kay? he says, placing your hand back in its previous position, safely nestled between your bodies. you feel more than hear as he shifts, pausing slightly in his stride so he can pull the bottle out from the strap against his waist. then he stops altogether as he brings the bottle up to your mouth for you to drink, tipping it to your lips just right. it’s only been a few weeks since your escape, hasn’t it? and already he’s gotten so good at taking care of you. when he puts the bottle back, nary a drop spilled, and replaces your hand in his, you draw out a new symbol, one you’ve been thinking on for a while.

it means thank you.

what’s that one mean? he asks, puzzled. then pauses, having remembered you can’t exactly answer. right, sorry, I’ll just hafta figure it out, won’t I? 

you snort weakly into his shoulder. 

he’s clever. you think he’ll get it sooner rather than later, but you know he’s really thinking about it when he falls silent. if your positions were switched, you think you’d get it straight away--your code may be limited, but there’s only so much you would say after having a drink of water like that, most of which you already have symbols for. more, less, that sort of thing. but you didn’t have thank you. being polite was a waste of glass, in the tanks. honestly, it’s not the most complex code. it started as a joke about his bad handwriting, even in his native Gongagan, and turned into a simple set of alterations to some of the symbols already present in its orthography, with a bit of misdirection in-between. you’re confident he’ll figure this new one out in no time. it’s his native tongue, after all.

write it again? he asks hesitantly after a few minutes. I think I almost got it.

you oblige happily. you don’t think you could thank him enough, ever, for what he’s done for you. for all of it. maybe one day you’ll even be able to repay him.

not today, though.

one more time? 

his voice cuts through your thoughts, and you decide to tease him, just a little bit. you quickly (well, quickly for you, which isn’t saying much anymore) tap no. 

hey, he whines, sounding like a kicked puppy. you make a hacking sound that could be considered laughter, if only by him. you’re being a real tease. it almost feels normal.

it went like this, right? he asks, tracing something into your palm, now. it doesn’t feel the same.

double-tap on the back of his hand.

that’s why I asked ya to draw it again, I knew I had it wrong! you can hear the jesting pout in his voice, can see it in your mind’s eye.

one more time. you draw it one more time in his hand, and he murmurs, so soft you almost don’t hear it--

thank you.

(you draw in your breath suddenly.)

thank you, he repeats, more audible this time, and you quickly tap yes on his hand. 

(you get the sudden urge to say good boy, not that you really can.)

...it’s thank you? oh! it’s thank you! shucks, Spike, ya don’t gotta thank me for the water. it’s jus’ common decency to take care’a somebody who can’t themselves. ‘n’ you’d do the same for me, wouldn’t ya? 

he laughs, a soft genuine thing that melts your heart, and pokes at you gently when you don’t immediately respond.

you huff another weak snort into his shoulder and tap yes.

yes, of course you would. of course you would.

it’s not even a question.

you’d do anything for him, if only he asked it of you, if only you could. and it breaks you that you can’t.

you let that thought linger for a while, barely cognisant of the way he falls into silence as he keeps walking, still supporting you with one arm as he has you slung against his chest. you feel so small tucked against him. his arm must be getting tired. you want him to take care of himself, too, because you can’t do it for him. you’re just a burden on him, even if you’re a burden he carries willingly. even if you’re a burden he carries with love. how can you ever repay him? how can you ever, when with each step your debt grows and grows? when he insists that he could never leave you behind because that’s just what friends do? is that really what friends do?

you’d do it for him, you know in a heartbeat. less than. 

but would you have done it for someone else?

and if the answer is no, is that because nobody else is him, or because nobody else is your friend?

don’t you have other friends, 一?

一?

that’s--

(your head hurts)

that’s your--           isn’t it--        don’t you--            what is--?

(there’s a pounding, splitting headache right behind your eyes and the roar is getting louder)

一?

                         --your name that’s your--              why can’t you remem--     your--          don’t you know yo--
name, your name, 一? don’t you kn--                                     c’mon, 一, just get up, don’t you recog--                                    your mother’s voice calling you in the early mornings, calling out 一, 一 where are you, rise and shine--
                                                               get up, dammit, wake up wake up wakey wakey eggs and bakey

(there’s something in the inside of your skull, scratching to be let out)

(you know better than to let it out, don’t you?)

the waves draw back, further down the shore than you’ve ever seen. receding rapidly, pulling away faster than you think possible, leaving you on the cold sand. you’ve never been to the coast before; maybe if you had, you would know that you need to run.

you have never heard the word tsunami before.

but for one beautiful, terrible moment, the sky turns to ocean; gray and dark and rolling as it bears down upon your tiny, insignificant form. and for one aching instant, you understand. you were never really important. you have always been but a single grain of sand--and then the water crashes down, knocking you down and under as it hits you with the force of a thousand tons.

you are swept away.

and then, you are no more.

----

you surface with a gasp: this time, they’d kept you under the water for--

four minutes, twenty-eight point three seconds, an assistant reads off, bored. again. 

they force you back down. your lungs burn, having barely pulled enough air in the last time; you’re almost tempted to gulp in water intentionally, see if they’d revive you this time. they don’t like it when you die. (you’re pretty sure you’ve died before, or almost died anyways; they don’t like it when you do that, either.)

the edges of your vision black out. how many times have they done this today, five? six? it’s hard to keep count. they did it to him earlier. you’re supposed to be better than him at this; you don’t know why. something about S-cells. you don’t know what those are. your vision darkens further. maybe if you just drew in a little breath, let yourself drown a little bit--but no, no. your lungs burn. you never know how they know when to pull you out. your head feels light, so light, and the air in your body wants so badly to escape, to be replenished. it’s not happening. you’re probably shaking. it’s so cold. the water’s always so cold. you keep your mouth shut. they’d punish him if they think you’d died on purpose. you can’t let that happen. you can’t breathe. you need air. you need air. you need air, you can’t keep going like this something’s got to give--

they pull you out again.

you surface with another wild gasp, unable to draw in all of the oxygen you so desperately need at once. 

three minutes, forty-two point nine seconds, the assistant drones. again. 

they sound like they would rather be doing anything else, and you wonder if maybe they’re bored enough to let you go. 

you’re pushed back under.

you didn’t get enough air in last time. you can’t hold your breath like this without training, you don’t know how you’re holding it so long, what have they done to your body, what have they done to you-- you used to be weak, weak, weak. too weak. too sensitive to mako to join SOLDIER. you don’t even know how to swim. okay, that’s not really true, is it? surely you learned how to swim at some point, nearly drowned doing it, your mother trying to teach you in the freezing cold lake the hand on your back the drill sergeant’s whistle blowing as you thrash desperately. you can’t breathe. you can’t breathe you can’t breathe your lungs are burning aching you need to exhale you can’t exhale there’s water in your mouth and it’s in your throat and it’s in your lungs and you can’t breathe you can’t BREATHE--

they pull you out.

again.

they push you back in.

you were supposed to breathe, dammit! get some air in those lungs, get your ass off the edge of the pool and fucking swim already, cadet! you’ll never make SOLDIER if you can’t even tackle a little water! move, move, move!

but you’re frozen, unable to do so much as dive. there’s something terrible awaiting you in the water--you can see it, swimming right below the surface of that inky black pool, its scales shimmering in the moonlight. your mother warned you not to go to the lake alone at night. the sergeant pushes you in from behind, leaves you flailing helplessly in the water as it circles underneath, but you’re alone in the pool in the training room and there’s no one there. nothing. just you, floating in the middle of a vast tank, struggling to breathe as water gets in your nose and your mouth because you can’t swim, you don’t know how to swim you don’t know how to swim-- there’s a weight pulling your ankles down, sinking you to the bottom and it’s so cold, it’s so dark and it’s so cold, and you struggle upwards but you can never quite make it it’s right there it’s out of reach it’s--it’s--

your mother’s rough, callused hands yank you out of the water by the back of your shirt, returning you not-so-gently to reality. air floods your heaving lungs as you draw in big, gasping breaths, the oxygen re-centering you when it finally enters your starved brain. your mother isn’t here. you’re in the labs, like you always are, and they’re trying to kill you, like they always are, and... and there was something else, wasn’t there? something besides the cool metal of the table they’ve once again laid you out on, something besides the ever-present fear and pain, the eyes on your shivering dripping skin as you lay there. something... but what was it?

something cuts through your thoughts, a hot knife through butter.

five minutes, zero point two seconds, a voice says smugly. you pale. you know that voice.

the professor.

subject has barely approached ideal, sir, the assistant reports. certainly far over baseline, but averages have not yet matched control, and--

the subject will reach the ideal average, the professor interrupts smoothly. I do not tolerate failure. 

you gulp.

(the professor really, really doesn’t tolerate failure. you don’t want to find out what they’ll do to him when you fail here, because you’re going to fail here, there’s no way in hell you can hold your breath for six minutes--)

when they submerge you next, you black out.

----

hello, Cloud. do you remember me?

I remember you.

I intend to show you something. perhaps then you may better understand. I--

no, mother, I--

this one is different, mother--no, I--yes, when the time comes--

yes, of course, mother.

I will see you at our reunion, my puppet.

----

you sit upright, gasping in a wild panic. that voice--it sounded like Sephiroth, but Zack said he died--Zack said you killed him? 

rain check on that thought, you’re going to be sick.

you’re only vaguely aware of your surroundings, dry brush and cold hard ground and a canopy of stars overhead as you empty the contents of your stomach off to your right. your right, because to your left is a small campfire, barely smoldering but you think it would probably be rude to vomit on it. not that there’s a whole lot that comes out. 

Zack’s by your side in a flash. you don’t know where he was, maybe keeping guard somewhere, probably not sleeping--he wipes your mouth with a cloth when you’re done, turning your head to face him (like you can’t turn it yourself?) and you see the terrible dark circles under his eyes. how long has it been since the cave in the Nibel forests?

days, at least, because this is the... uh, you’re sure you know what area this is. the badlands, maybe? the... the dry lands, or something like that, by Cosmo Canyon. south of Nibel. south of the mountains. Zack’s wild-eyed, fussing over you, but you glance up to the constellations to check yourself anyway--yeah, either you’re right or your memory is even more fucked than you thought.

what are you doing so far south? you’re losing a lot of time. why hasn’t Zack taken you to a medical facility? why are you travelling on foot? 

(something feels very wrong in your head, a rising sense of dread with no discernible origin, when you think about medical facilities.)

(just to be safe, you wipe the thought from your mind.)

when Zack is satisfied you won’t throw up again, he settles back into a more comfortable position rather than being stretched over you.

Cloud! he cries, you can move! 

...is that really that big of a deal? you must have had a worse concussion than you thought. and you thought you had a pretty fucking bad one.

uh, you grunt intelligently.

(words seem to be, once again, an insurmountable struggle.)

he’s bouncing in place, rocking back and forth on his heels. 

uh, Cloud, man, you okay? why’d ya throw up? was it the food? fuck, I hope it wasn’t the food, I was takin’ a gamble cookin’ that lizard I know but I didn’t think it was bad--oh shit, am I gonna be sick? did I give us food poisoning? I am so sorry--

you raise a hand to cut him off. 

shuddup, Zack, you mumble. he’s talking too much. 

not food poisoning, you add after a moment, your voice still scratchy from disuse. 

you know exactly why you threw up, and it wasn’t whatever lizard Zack claims you ate (which you don’t remember, by the way--yet another bit of lost time you’re becoming aware of. you really don’t like that.)

he nods, way too vigorously for your already-nauseous self, and bounces up from his crouch to start doing squats, or maybe pacing. for your part, you’re hit with a sudden need to lie down, so you do just that. you’re lying on your back, staring up at the cloudless night sky. you pillow your head with your right arm and reach up your left to trace the constellations you’re familiar with. you let him walk wide circles around the whole campsite, watching from the corner of your eye as he navigates around where you threw up when he passes you. you don’t think too much about it, though, because if you do, you’ll throw up again.

mhm, yeah, you need something else to think about. asking Zack about the circumstances of Sephiroth’s death seems unwise. asking Zack about his surprise at you moving seems less unwise, but you also... don’t want to know? or, well, you do, but you think he’ll start crying again, and you don’t want to make your friend cry. you hate to see Zack, sunshine and smiles incarnate, sob into your arms. it... it only happened once before the cave, and you’re kind of fuzzy on the details of why, if you’re being honest. he might not even have told you.

which, really, just leaves one option.

Zack, you rasp out after he’s done a few laps.  why... Cosmo Canyon?

that, apparently, is enough to get him to stop and turn towards you, from the other side of the campfire. the now-dead campfire, actually. eh, it’s not that cold.

huh? he asks, clearly bewildered. 

oh, for... you know he’s shit with directions, you shouldn’t really be surprised. he hardly ever looks at maps, and when he does, it’s a miracle if he retains any of it. as far as you’re aware, his typical strategy is to run around on gut feeling alone and hope it gets him where he needs to be, and because he happens to be one insanely lucky son of a bitch, it works. most of the time, anyway. 

still, you’re a little frustrated.

you wave your hand around at the stars. Cosmo Canyon, you repeat, insistent. south, southwest of here? we goin’?

uh, sure, yeah! definitely, that’s where we’re headed, Cloud, Zack says, breaking out into a smile as he comes back over. uh, except, uh, I dunno if they’ll let us in, they kinda hate Shinra over there ‘n’ we’re all decked out in SOLDIER uniforms...

you give him a good once-over in the starlight. his hair’s a matted mess, and while there’s no hiding the mako-green of his eyes, his uniform is covered in dirt, sand, and possibly blood--he looks, for lack of a better word, haggard. and he’s... thin. you’re probably thinner, and your own clothes and hair can’t be in better condition. the two of you must not be eating right at all. you’re on the run from something, you think, and you have a good idea of what.

plus, you’re not stupid. there’s clearly something else he’s saying, here, something about why you’re not going back to Shinra. but you don’t know what happened, and if you weren’t so sure he’d start crying again you might actually just ask. 

we’ll be fine, you say with a huff, and roll yourself onto your side so you’re facing him. you scrape your bare elbow against hard rock in the process--it stings, making you suddenly aware of the tremendous ache in all of your muscles.

Zack’s giving you a really weird look, now.

Cloud, I don’t think you should be... moving that much, he says in a small voice, suddenly right next to you. you’re... you’re real sick, bud. ya know that, don’tcha?

Zack, I threw up once, you tell him, puzzled. unless you mean the dragon attack, which, yeah, okay. 

the dragon attack...? Cloud, that--the one before we arrived in Nibelheim?

(there’s a strange kind of shock in his voice, and while he isn’t loud at all, he might as well be shouting with the way his voice rings in your ears. your head is pounding. you don’t like the way he said arrived, in the past tense. you choose to ignore it.)

yeah, I know I’m losin’ time, you snap, because you know that was a few weeks ago at least--fucks’ sake, you don’t remember today’s lizard dinner and you’ve been on foot since, what, the Nibel forest? since before that, probably; since... whatever happened that meant you had to--you had to-- nope, not going there. you do not want to throw up again, especially not when Zack is making that face at you like when you told him you used to just eat a bunch of salt as a kid or your legs would get super painful and you’d fall over, which... maybe that was related to whatever those pills were that Shinra made you take. you don’t remember, but you’re pretty damn sure you’re fine now and you haven’t taken those pills in weeks as far as you know--okay, actually, you wouldn’t be surprised if Zack just, like, had them and was giving them to you. he’s a good friend like that. he’s a good guy like that.

but shit, if that look doesn’t have you on edge.

Cloud, he starts, slowly. (uh oh, this can’t be good.)

the, uh, the dragon attack, was, um... okay, um, Cloud, what year is it?

of all the inane and stupid questions to ask--really? really? 

0002, duh, you say with a frown.

wait, no, it’s clearly winter, and by the way his face grows pale you’ve clearly been out longer than you thought. you recalculate, backtrack, raise your hand to hush him as he opens his mouth.

I mean 0003, you correct swiftly before he can correct you, and his mouth slams shut so loud that if it were anyone else you’d assume they’d just shattered their jaw.

(he’s SOLDIER, though; first class, so you’re reasonably sure that didn’t happen. reasonably being the key word, here.)

he ruffles his hair back in that painfully familiar gesture that says I don’t know how to respond to this, his face falling even further. you don’t think you’ve seen him this dejected in... well, in a while. you can’t stand to see him like this, and--shamefully--you look away. avert your gaze, because it hurts too much otherwise. where’s the Zack Fair you know? and who hurt the one in front of you so badly, so horrifically, that he can’t even smile?

(and why does it feel like you’re supposed to know the godsdamn answer to that, Strife, motherfucker--)

he swallows nervously, like he wants to say something else but can’t quite manage it. like you’re wrong. like the year isn’t 0003, or 0002, but... something else. 0004? 0005? surely you’ve not lost a whole year, much less two or more, right? right? you start to hyperventilate at the mere thought, because you’re just sixteen and you haven’t seen your ma in two years and oh gaia please no don’t let that have been longer, don’t let it be longer, please please please. you don’t think you could take it. you’re not taller, are you? you’re suddenly overcome with the need to know, to map out your entire body once again because you think it might be different from how you remember (from how it’s supposed to be), and you stagger to your feet and--and--

you’re not any taller, that you know of, but there’s a new force to your legs that you just hadn’t noticed before. you move faster than you expected to; you’re off-balance and nearly fall back down, flat on your ass, as soon as you’ve risen. also, your legs hurt. like, they feel like someone’s sharpened your very femurs into wicked little points, and that those points are now stabbing up into your abdomen with wild abandon. this does not help the aforementioned feeling of dizziness--in fact, that only gets worse, like all the blood is rushing to your feet. you sway dangerously as you struggle to adjust. it’s not working. 

there’s a sudden shout from your left--

Cloud!

--and then, time seems to dilate, moving slower than molasses as you feel your balance fail completely, falling backwards in slow motion. out of the corner of your eye is a flurry of black spikes and brown skin as Zack dives to catch you, but the moments before impact seem to last forever. an entire bead of sweat forms, lazily, on your forehead, then a second and third form beside it. they roll down, down, down, in-between your eyebrows to the bridge of your nose--you reach to wipe them off but you’re already off-kilter, already falling, and your hand doesn’t move with any seeming urgency. your vision is blurry, out of focus again, and you cross your eyes desperately as you feel that first droplet make its way to the tip of your nose--

you never make it to Zack’s waiting arms.

----

there was a time, a while ago, that you realised it was easier to not scream. that it wasn’t worth the effort of scraping your throat raw trying to voice your fear, because they never listened anyway. and you hated, hate, the taste of the leather gag in your mouth. not that your lack of screaming ever stopped them from forcing it on you, but. the point stands.

so instead of screaming, or biting your tongue off again, you just lie there, still. quiet. let them strap you down without resistance, keep silent unless they address you directly, which they never do. try not to mess up again, try not to be a pathetic fuck-up failure again, not because you care anymore--you can’t--but because you need him to be safe, as safe as you can manage. you can’t give them any more reason to punish him than you already have. you won’t.

it’s really fucking hard to keep silent, though, when the professor is breaking every bone in your hand one by one. your left hand, your dominant hand, to be cruel. the professor is always cruel. he leaves your right hand alone for now, focused on recording how fast your hand will heal itself.

he gets to work on your legs next. starts with your right calf, breaks both of the bones in several places and you’re sure you would be able to see the white of them if you could tilt your head down that way, but in a twisted kind of mercy the professor has your head strapped down, too. the leather gag’s in. it always is, when the professor’s working on you; the pain is too great, though, and you howl behind it involuntarily as he swings something hard and heavy into your right calf again. again, and again, and again. it’s unbearable agony, and the pain blacks out your vision for a moment before a sudden burst of electricity shocks you back awake--the professor prefers you to be aware during these proceedings. 

if your world existed of anything other than horrific, unending pain, you might understand the meaning of the words the professor mutters as he circles you, hawkishly. you don’t know when he stopped hitting you. you don’t know much of anything beyond your left hand and your right calf, the bones of the latter pulverised and shattered into oblivion, the bones of the former already beginning to feel a different kind of heat and ache as they knit themselves back together. you hear the words exothermic reaction and mako enhancements and other science garbage that passes through your awareness without a shred of understanding attached. there is only the pain, the horrible unending pain, and your throat begins to hurt alongside your left hand and right calf as it dries out. you’re probably still screaming. you don’t know. 

your lungs burn and your throat is too hoarse after a while. you don’t know how long. you didn’t black out again--you’d have been shocked awake and you’re pretty sure you’d remember that. (you wouldn’t.) the professor has moved on to your left thigh, the lowest set of ribs. your pelvis. there’s an IV in your arm that you hadn’t noticed before, or maybe it just hadn’t been there. you don’t know. 

you can’t let yourself focus on the professor, on the way cold gloved hands roam your bare skin. you’d flinch away if you weren’t strapped down. he presses on the places that just finished healing, on the places he just broke, on other places. makes another comment you can’t understand over the blinding searing pain that radiates out from the breaks, from the bruises littering you. at least he isn’t flaying your arm again. that was worse. there’s not a lot he’s done that’s worse, and while part of you struggles to imagine what worse could even be, there’s another more cynical part of you that knows whatever worse exists is only something the professor has yet to subject you to. you’d kill yourself to escape if you didn’t have--if it wouldn’t mean he was here alone, in the professor’s grasp. you can’t leave him like that, and you can’t break out, which means the best option you have is to lie here and take it like a good little test subject. your best option is just to endure.

good thing you’re plenty skilled at that, right? 

hah, as if. it’s just dumb luck that you aren’t dead yet. dumb luck and dumber friends who care about a worthless bitch like you. ...oh, you can think again. the professor must be done for now--the hands are gone. don’t get complacent, though; you’re still in indescribable agony. there’s fire in your veins as your body struggles to piece itself back together, bones re-forming underneath new tender pink flesh. muscles and nerve endings alight as they knit together, and you’re probably screaming again from the sheer overwhelming pain of it all--you can’t tell, your audio processing is out for the day. night. whatever. you don’t know, and you’re far beyond being able to care that you don’t know. 

they put you back in the tank, eventually.

----

sometimes, in the tank, you dream. 

like, dream-dream, not just nightmares. you’re always experiencing something when you’re asleep in the tank; you know you are, even when you wake up and don’t remember anything but the acrid scent of fear. but sometimes you dream. 

not... soft things. no, you’re too scarred-over for your brain to think of soft, anymore. but sometimes the things your mind conjures up in your sleep aren’t scary, just there, and you’ll take it.

you relish the mundane dreams. they’re your one secret source of pleasure, something not even your friend knows about (though it’s not as if you have a means to tell him). (for the record, you would.) 

this time, you’re outside, sitting on a rock watching the sun rise over the eastern mountain ridge. your friend is trying--and failing--to catch one of the canyon lizards with his hands. he should really make a spear, or throw his knife, but at least he’s not trying to hunt small game with the buster sword. you’d give him pointers, but... well, this is funnier to watch.

and besides, you’re dreaming, so it doesn’t even matter.

you stretch yourself out on the rock, take in the first rays of sunshine as they scatter across your body. maybe you’re the lizard, and he should catch and eat you. wouldn’t that be funny? eh, but with his hunting skills, you don’t think he could manage to kill you and leave any meat intact for eating. 

kinda morbid thought there, but whatever. the mind is a strange place, yours especially, and that goes double for when you’re dreaming in the tank.

you don’t remember the last time you dreamt outside of the tank.

he’s good at fishing, you remember suddenly. and hunting birds, but canyon lizards must be out of his purview. funny, he’s supposed to be a fellow country boy, isn’t he? you’d have thought he’d know how to hunt--wait, maybe he’s challenging himself or something. yeah, that must be it.

you track him with ease as he darts back around a rock formation, and wonder again why he’s using just his hands, rather than his claws. at this point the buster sword might actually work better, and that’s saying something. you look away from him for a moment, out towards where the buster sword lays, and when you look back you see him pawing idly at a small hole in the rock formation. ah, that must be the lizard’s nest.

no, really, did no one in his old pack teach him to hunt? small holes like that are exactly what his snout is for, and you can tell even from your relaxed position over here that his fangs would be more than enough to kill anything trapped in that hole. why isn’t he doing that? of course his paw won’t fit in there, it’s too big. stupid pup. you’re going to have to intervene, and soon. you rise to your own paws, stretch, give your tail a good shake to get the dust off--

tail?

oh, right, dream. dream? dream, dream, you’re a wolf, you know that, there’s a stupid pup who doesn’t know how to hunt in front of you but in your brief moment of confusion (when you were still waking up from your nap where you had dreamt you were some kind of two-legged pale thing, rather than the powerful mountain predator you know yourself to be) the pup has managed to pin a lizard down. you watch, proud, as he breaks the thing’s neck and takes a bloody bite out of the soft underbelly. good boy.

you settle back down and go back to resting in the dawn glow.

----

it smells of blood.

where’s Zack?

the last thing you remember is--you were falling, you were falling, you felt really sick--oh, that was just because of. yeah. you do not want to think about that again. 

why does it smell like blood? did you cut yourself when you fell? there’s plenty of sharp rocks in the area, that would certainly make a lot of sense--but, no, you don’t feel like you’re bleeding. you’re plenty sore though, like somebody threw you around like a rag doll for a couple hours or something. there’s probably a massive bruise on your ass and back from when you fell. you’d sit up and check, but the mere thought of sitting up makes you unbearably dizzy, so you don’t. 

no, seriously, where is Zack?

you... you can’t really tell where the blood is coming from. the scent of it, you mean; you can’t see any nearby, although you can’t see a whole lot in general right now. turning your head too far is a no. are you even fully conscious right now? you’re not sure. there’s a kind of low shake in your body that feels like low blood sugar, and the thought occurs to you that there might be something wrong beyond the concussion. but you can’t get to a doctor. no doctor. doctors... can’t be trusted, can they? (where did that thought come from?) 

no, no, you need to focus. stay focused, Strife; where is Zack? you were on track to be an officer. you’re good at logic. think about it for a second: you smell blood, and Zack is not here. he’s probably at the source of the blood. you take another good sniff--it doesn’t smell like just monster blood, but there’s regular old human blood in there. or, wait--wait, uh, your nose has gotten more sensitive, it seems. that’s... weird. whatever, no time, you have to strategise. 

...that’s SOLDIER blood, mako-enhanced. the scent mingles with the aftershocks of heavy magic usage and monster guts, something you’re not familiar enough with to identify with any accuracy, and it’s coming in on the wind blowing from your right. what direction is that? ugh, you’re suddenly nauseous--it feels like you’re on a boat, waves rocking your footing out from under you even though you’re lying on your side--you need to do something, quick, before the dizziness and shakes and queasiness overtake you completely. Zack needs you. that’s way too much blood for him to be standing upright. and--

shit.

you should have noticed before, but it’s entirely too quiet. what if you’re too late? if Zack were actively fighting that monster, you should be able to hear it, especially if the wind has already carried the scent all the way over to you. and--fuck, what fucking direction is it coming from?! you have to--you have to stand up. stand up, cadet, you did not pass your wilderness survival classes with flying colors to be kept down by some stupid bodily malfunctions at a critical juncture like this!

you don’t vomit again when you finally make it to your feet, but it’s a close damned thing. your head pounds. the... the sun is... nearly directly overhead, a little to the south, and the forest is to the north, and that means the blood--you don’t even need to know the direction, now, because the scent is so strong. you stumble, unsteady on your feet. your legs ache like you haven’t used them in a long time. are the muscles atrophied? probably. there’s not enough blood in your head, right now. it’s all rushed to your feet. you’re too light-headed to think properly. 

what were you doing again?

oh, right, the blood. you’re following the blood. you’re following the blood, yeah? the smell is so strong, too strong. you can’t hear anything. no, wait, no, it’s just the wind, high-pitched and insistent in your ears--

fuck!

that’s your fucking tinnitus, you dumbass, not the fucking wind! get it together, Strife; you can’t hear well enough to tell if the fight’s over and you’re weak and stumbling towards what could possibly be an active combat zone, you’re about to get yourself killed! 

but Zack might need your help. you owe him. you have to get to him.

you keep moving.

or, you would, if it weren’t for that fucking rock that you trip over on your way downhill that sends you sprawling, and the last thought you have before your head hits the ground hard enough to make you lose consciousness is godsdammit, not another concussion.

----

you see it happen in slow motion.

the way his body flies through the air, hits the ceiling with a low thump, falls down onto the pods below. his sword, not fully secured in its scabbard, detaching and clattering to the ground. his head lolls back, eyes closed. you can’t do anything about it--you have to get to Tifa. there’s an ugly gash across her stomach. you can see far too many of her internal organs. you should have come equipped with your cure materia, but you didn’t, and now one of the only people you ever thought of fondly is going to bleed to death or die of shock or get sepsis or something horrible, you don’t know--medical was never your strong suit--and there’s nothing you can do except gently move her out of the way as you walk up the stairs.

before you’d seen the wound, less than a minute ago, you thought she was lucky that she hadn’t broken her neck as she’d fallen down the stairs. now you’re not so sure. maybe a quick death would be better than the slow one she surely faces, but you can’t bring yourself to end her misery. how are you meant to kill someone you know, even if it would be the merciful thing to do? the right thing to do?

you leave her.

you have no other choice.

you grab his sword on the way up, and prepare yourself to confront the general.

----

this time, you’re sure you’re dreaming.

or maybe you’re awake again, and they’ve drugged you again, and you’re seeing things. again. 

or (and the thought occurs to you with a sickening lurch in your stomach) you’re in the VR simulation. again.

...you hate it, but that option actually makes the most sense--why else would you be seeing that monster close down on you? why else would there be the buster sword in your hand, why else would you be raising it to strike, why else would he be gone?

because, well, he’s gone.

...why wouldn’t he be? you’re in VR. they do this all the time. they probably want to see how well you do against this monster, this time, and then they’ll compare it to him, and then when you inevitably fail the impossible standard they’ve set you up against they’ll punish him. like always. and they’ll make you watch. like always. c’mon, you know how this works by now, don’t you?

you raise the buster sword as high as you can. your muscles ache, burn with the effort, and something twists wrong in your abdomen when you do it--no time to worry about that, now. the monster is bearing down. you don’t recognise it; it has tentacles and it’s moving erratically, swaying back and forth in your vision. you have a split second to brace behind the buster sword before it collides with you, sends you skidding backwards in a low crouch. the pain is blinding. there’s blood in your mouth--you must have bitten the inside of your cheek. you have to get up. you have to get up.

it backs off; lunges forward, striking out with a whip-like appendage. you cut it off. there’s a disconnect between the motions of your body and the motions of your mind, here. you’re sluggish, reacting slowly, unaware of each move and yet it hardly lands another hit on you as your arms move by themselves, blocking each incoming strike. anticipating, even. you can’t keep track of it. like someone else is puppeting you, moving your muscles for you, darting forward under the impressive weight of the buster sword to slice across the beast’s chest. like cordyceps, and you’re waiting for the shoots to crawl through your skin, for the little spores to appear. there’s a prickling sensation on your back, under the shirt. bristling. your shirt’s too tight, now. something’s growing, and you’re afraid. you don’t have time to be afraid.

dart forward. roll to the side. jump back. block. jump back again. roll to the other side. dodge. block again. a split second to slash across it as you run past its side. tank the hit. dodge the next one. dive out of the way. flat to the ground, roll into a crouch, dart forward again. again, again, again. it doesn’t know what you’ll do until after you’ve done it, and neither do you. someone does, though, or some thing, because you’re doing it. a marionette, dancing on strings to someone else’s tune. 

the thought makes you sick, sick enough to throw up, but even as the bile rises in your throat your throat is not your own. you (someone else) swallow it back down as you (someone else) dance out of the way of the monster, land another strike on its flank, all elegance and grace unbefitting of the sword you (someone else) wield. you ought to have something else in your hand, shouldn’t you? no, not you. someone else. your small, lithe body is all wrong for the buster sword. unbecoming. you don’t deserve to carry its weight. doesn’t matter what you deserve, though; you’re here, you’re fighting, the air smells of sweat and rain and blood and monster guts. blood, so much blood. it drips down your face, soaks your shirt. maybe that’s the rain. (no, it’s just the sweat, you’re in VR, remember? none of this is real.) but it smells so strongly of blood, and you feel it on your face--you’d raise a hand to investigate but you don’t have the time. 

dodge. roll. block. evade. strike. parry. duck. run. skid. halt. lean. stab. slice. deflect. dodge again. parry. block. twist. stab again. dammit, why won’t this beast just die already?! you snarl at it, baring sharp canines that don’t belong to you. the space reeks of its blood, of your sweat, of your blood. a gash in your arm, across your torso where it clawed you a few minutes ago. an open wound on your forehead, dripping blood. its blood cascading down your back as you finally slip underneath it and rip its belly open in one smooth glide, and for a moment the sword you hold in your hands is not the buster sword, but rather something else. you don’t know what it is. (you know damn well what it is, and you can’t fathom what it’s doing there, in your hand.) then you blink and it’s just the buster sword again, and as you stand there, sword in your hand, covered in monster guts watching it dissipate back into the lifestream, you scan the horizon. searching for the next adversary.

there’s nothing.

you wait, patiently, for them to take the visor off. you’d rip it off yourself but they don’t like it when you do that, and the professor always dresses you down for it after--wait, dresses you down? the professor doesn’t talk to you, he talks at you, around you, like you’re not even a person. like you aren’t even in the room. and then he punishes--he punishes--he...

who does he punish, 一?

...he punishes you.

the professor punishes you, in the same way he always does, because he wouldn’t dare touch one of his rival’s little pets. because you’re supposed to be perfect, and he’s the only one who reminds you that you’re not. he’s the only one who ever sees you like you truly are, broken and weak and naked and shivering under the cold sterile light of the exam table, and you hate him, you hate him for everything that he’s done to you. 

you hate him, and you hate everyone else on this miserable Planet, and you’re going to kill them all.

isn’t that right, mother?

Chapter Text

you’d like to come back here some day, if you could. but as you’re stumbling away, half-carried by his strong arms, you know better. nothing good ever lasts, if what you had here could even be called good.

you’re getting ahead of yourself.

----

...the last thing you remember is the overwhelming stench of blood.

how did you...? it smells almost clean in here, not sterile, thank fuck it doesn’t smell sterile--breathe, c’mon, breathe, don’t think about that right now--clean as in homely, earthy, not sick. no rot in the air. no blood. is this... did he...? he isn’t in here with you, you’re pretty sure. he’d be holding you. he was always clingy, but since the escape he’s been practically joined to you at the hip. not that you mind.

...you minded at first, before you figured out that you need him here.

speaking of, you kinda have to piss. and if he’s not here, you’re not sure how you’re going to manage that. you can’t really get up on your own--you’ve figured out your limitations over the past few weeks; and as it turns out, pissing on your own isn’t one of the few scant things you can do. hell, you can barely chew on your own, and some days you can’t even do that.

you’re always floating above yourself, just a little bit. passing the open window. looking from the outside in. you twitch your fingers, stretch your awareness as far as you possibly can through your body. your eyes, stubbornly, remain closed, and your hearing is faint, as though blocked by fabric. there’s... medical wrappings on you? like you’d been torn open, maybe, but by what? you’re out of the labs. he would have kept you safe from any further harm, unless it was something he literally couldn’t have stopped... no, no, but--no.

you can’t let yourself think about that. no.

(but you think about it anyway: if he couldn’t have stopped whatever it was that injured you, then he himself must be... must be in very bad condition. or--no, you’re not going to imagine the alternative.)

despite your best efforts, you can feel the panic at his absence start to set in. he should be here, next to you, standing guard over you, taking care of you. at least the room is empty otherwise. you don’t think you could handle someone you don’t know trying to take care of you at this point. it has to be him, he’s the only one you can communicate with and he’s the only one you can trust. you learned the hard way that you can’t trust anyone else.

he should be here, dammit! where is he? why isn’t he in the room with you? fuck, you need to calm down--breathe, dammit, breathe. what was that stupid thing he always does, the four count or whatever? box breathing? try that, maybe it’ll help.

...yeah, no, you can’t do that on your own: your body trembles with fear and anxiety, your heart rate spikes through the roof. fuck, you still have to fucking piss, dammit! where is he? will he come back? did he tell you where he went and you just don’t remember? you know he tells you things that you forget, sometimes, because he tells you later that he told you and you remember the second (or third, or fourth, or whatever) time. and you don’t think he would lie to you.

you choose to believe he would not lie to you, because if you can’t trust him then--well. trusting him is better than the alternative.

seriously, you have got to calm down. focus on your senses: it smells clean-ish; there’s bandages, well-wrapped bandages, on sore parts of your body; you’re on a soft surface like a bed; you can’t hear any feet puttering about; your eyes are closed--wait, actually, they’re not. there’s just something over them. probably another bandage, if you had to guess--you must have gotten a head wound at some point, although you don’t remember. where are you? somewhere safe, you hope--you’re willing to try pretending that you’re here because he put you here, which would mean he trusts this location enough to leave you alone, and that he’ll be back soon. if he really did put you here. if.

if he doesn’t come back soon, though, he’s going to have to help you out of these pants, and that’s a situation you’d really like to avoid.

you can’t help it, can’t help but think about it. what if he doesn’t come back? there was so much blood earlier--is he okay? did he get hurt, is that what happened? did you get hurt? wait, actually--

just when did you smell blood?

...you must have... it had to have been... there’s... okay, why don’t you run through what happened in your head again, one more time? you were in his arms. you were thirsty. you taught him that new symbol for thank you. then you got a bad migraine out of nowhere, and you... you must have passed out, and you’re guessing you got a nosebleed right before that happened? then, while you were out, something must have attacked and mauled you pretty bad, or mauled him, or maybe you had a seizure and convulsed out of his arms and onto sharp rocks? ...no, that doesn’t make much sense, does it? his reflexes are far too keen to have dropped you even if you were having a seizure, though.

so just what the fuck happened to land you in this room? and again, where on gaia are you?

you’re not going to find out by just sitting around, that’s for sure. it isn’t like you have much say in the matter, though; dependent as you are on other people for even the simplest of tasks. you drum your fingers impatiently against the cover of the bed, hoping he’ll come back soon. you need him here. you miss him.

far off to one side, you pick up the faintest sound of shod feet on stone, growing louder as it approaches. it doesn’t sound like him--his steps would be noisier, heavier; boots clomping around. he does it on purpose, has ever since that time he didn’t and snuck up on you, startling you so bad you decked him on reflex and broke his nose. he’d laughed it off, said it was okay, that he probably deserved it for sneaking up on you like that anyway. you remember the feel of his blood on your hand, poured across your knuckles. the smell of it. you’d recognise that scent anywhere.

but this person, approaching you now, is not him. the footsteps, too light and even to belong to him, come to a halt outside the door and hesitate for a moment.

you don’t want anyone else but him in this room with you. you really, really don’t want anyone else in here, but if this is anything like the labs--and you don’t quite think it is, but you can never tell these days--what you want doesn’t matter. you force yourself to still, to control your breathing. pretend you’re asleep.

the door creaks open, slowly, as if not to wake you. good. your ruse may still work.

then again, the lab techs never cared if you were asleep when they came for you, so. it’s a coin toss, what with how unfamiliar your surroundings are. or it would be, if you were anything less than paranoid.

in your defense, your paranoia is justified. you know better than to trust anyone other than him. the labs made sure of that. the professor made sure of that.

those unfamiliar footsteps creep closer to you, soft and gentle like they’re trying not to wake you. heh, either you’re better at this than you remember, or they’re just stupid. nobody’s hit you with a thunder materia yet, though, so you’ll count this as a win.

you really don’t like that he’s not in the room.

you definitely remember the escape, or at least bits and pieces of it; you shouldn’t be back in the labs. you’re far away from the labs, you have to be, because this place doesn’t smell like the labs. and yet. and yet, you can’t shake the feeling that you aren’t somewhere safe, that the person hovering over your splayed-out form is someone here with intent to harm. you can’t get up--your muscles refuse to respond--so you can’t escape despite just how much you ache to. you have to hold on to that sliver of hope, have to hold on to the unending bone-deep trust you have for him in your heart--hope that he’s okay, and trust that he’ll be back--

dammit, there goes that pair of pants.

you hear the person mutter something about bedpans and cleaning up the mess--their voice is high-pitched, which just goes to confirm what you already knew: they’re not him. there’s a stranger in the room with you, and he’s not here, and you’re alone at the mercy of someone else.

and as much as you hate to be stuck in urine-soaked pants, you hate the idea of what they’re about to do to you more--but you’re pretending to be asleep, remember? you can’t let on that you’re awake. you’re catatonic, or whatever. wetting the bed isn’t that weird for a non-responsive patient, you hope, even though you hate to think of yourself in those terms. (patient is better than subject, at the least.) there’s a lot of things you hate these days. you’re getting tired of the energy required to hate, though, so maybe it would be better to stick to apathy. easier to feel nothing than to feel anything at all.

you wish you could just drift away from everything again, let your consciousness hang suspended from the ceiling like your namesake against the deep blue sky. (your namesake? you’re missing something.) you want to close off your perception of your body--you don’t want to be aware of the foreign hands that strip you of your soiled clothes with clinical efficiency, even when you feel a blanket settle over you before your legs can even get cold. you can’t help the whimper of fear that escapes you.

the stranger clicks their tongue, whispers an apology to you as they tug the blanket into place. strange, you assumed they’d be upset at the deception--surely, they have realised you’re awake? why aren’t they hurting you yet? everyone who isn’t him hurts you, you know that. unless they’re hurting him to get to you, in which case these guys are doing a horrible job at it. just look at the scene before you: you’re alone in a strange room with a stranger, and where at least the professor had the sense to make you watch, these guys have him elsewhere. a blind panic may have set in, sure, but if they want you alive, they’re gonna have to prove that he’s alive, too.

they’re lucky you don’t have the muscle control to move, or you’d lunge for a knife, scalpel, letter opener, anything sharp. your life holds no value to you, after all; so if it holds value to them, you’ll happily gamble with it to keep him safe. you’d do just about anything to keep him safe. and if this is all some ploy to sell the two of you out to the professor, well. your captors should probably know that you’ll kill yourself before you let that happen. you’d do it in less than a heartbeat.

not that you can, really, with your body’s general lack of response at this juncture and the stranger hovering right over your limp form as they replace your bandages. they’re... cleaning your wounds, you think, noting how your torso stings when they apply antiseptic to it. you think it’s antiseptic. smells like it, anyway. weirdly nice of them. like something he would do for you, truth be told, which isn’t helping you figure out if this stranger is on your side or not. you’re still leaning towards not, because you know that it’s you and him against the world. you know that. nobody else is on your side, nobody at all.

where is he trying to get you, anyway? you rack your brain, trying to recall your end destination. if there is one. maybe he knows of somewhere safe, somewhere you could stay for a while in relative peace--not here, but maybe like here, since the stranger has been so weirdly nice so far. but you know better than to think the professor would ever stop searching for you, which means it’s only a matter of time before any safe haven you find is inevitably destroyed, the trail of bodies behind you growing with every passing moment. maybe you and him are doomed to wander forever. at least you have each other, if nothing else. at least you’ll never be truly alone.

the stranger’s hands have left your body, now freshly wrapped in new, clean bandages, and their footsteps echo softly away from you as they leave the room. they even changed the wrappings around your head injury, and you made sure to keep your eyes closed when they lifted the bandage. you’re still surprised they let you stay like that, pretending to be asleep when they surely knew better. the lab techs would never have let that slide.

that cements it, in your mind. wherever the fuck you are, it’s not in their clutches. thank gaia for that small mercy, but that certainly doesn’t mean you can trust these people. they may not be working for the professor, but that doesn’t mean they won’t hurt you or him either. is it really paranoia if it’s justified? surely not, right? it’s not like these people have earned your trust, nor would you miss them if he had to come to your rescue and kill them all. or if the impossible happened and you had to come to his rescue and kill them all.

(you don’t really want it to come to that, though. you’ve never really liked killing, and while you know he would kill, has killed, for you, you don’t want to--you won’t set him on these people, not when all they’ve done so far is tend to your wounds. even though you don’t trust them in the slightest.)

gaia, you really are tired, aren’t you? you still don’t know what happened. it’s been minutes, longer maybe, and the stranger hasn’t come back. eh. not like you could escape anyways. might as well let yourself sleep some more, cus you probably really fucking need it. blood loss, or whatever. your energy is sapped, you can’t keep good track of anything at this point. can’t quite tell if the noise coming from down the hall is one of anguish or something else. can’t quite tell if the fear in the air is yours anymore.

you close your eyes beneath the bandage and let go.

----

they sit up straighter at their desk when their superior comes by. some pencil-pushing middle manager who shouldn’t be in charge of any part of the SOLDIER program, but... the company’s in a sorry state. all the better for them to do their side work, at least. they’ve been shadowing the Turks for months--years really, now--sending sly hints the group’s way when they deem necessary. doing their own hunt. there are, unfortunately, things even they don’t know, such as the location of their best friend and the little trooper he loved so much. loves so much.

at least, not until a month and a half ago, when a certain MIA first class SOLDIER popped into existence in Nibelheim and promptly disappeared into the Nibel forests. well, they always knew he wasn’t dead. call it a gut feeling, call it the whispers of the lifestream, call it their spy network--but they knew that, wherever he had gone four years ago, it wasn’t to his grave. they knew. and now they have their proof. a lead, however small. there’s a secret in Nibelheim, and if they can get their way (which they always can) they’ll be visiting the town next week.

all they have to do is catch up to their friend before the rest of Shinra does.

maybe it’s time to cash in that favor.

they tap their fingers against the keyboard restlessly as they suddenly become aware of that strange prickling on the back of their neck, the one they feel whenever they’re being watched--they get up, head for the bathroom. leaving the offices far behind as they trek across the hall.

I know you’re there, they say aloud to the empty air, too quiet for anyone but a SOLDIER to hear. or someone watching from the lifestream.

what is it this time?

a thick silence fills the air. they get no response, but the sensation doesn’t let up.

...Aerith, I don’t have all day. tell me what I need to know, and make it snappish, they say irritatedly.

(Aerith? who’s that?)

(oh...)

(you’re not Aerith.)

(...you’re not supposed to be here.)

----

another scene, another room in which you do not belong. you often find yourself in places you do not belong, these days. why is that? how do you keep getting in here? you never asked for any of this, never deserved any of it in the slightest. well, not the good things anyway. you haven’t done anything to deserve the kindness he’s given you, that’s for sure, but you can’t be certain about the horrors you’ve experienced. you probably deserved at least some of those.

you killed the general, after all.

you don’t really remember much of doing that, but the professor made sure you knew. the professor was never pleased that you, lowly infantryman, had offed his prize specimen. just the kind of shit luck you have, you guess. how fortunate that the professor had you to play with after, you think bitterly.

if your friend heard the way you think about yourself, he’d probably tell you all about how wrong you are. and while you’re sure he believes the words he says, you sure as hell don’t. not even from him. because, well, you know better, don’t you? you’ve always been such a failure, and four years of torture at the hands of a psychopath didn’t change that. the professor also made sure you knew that, too. and you even have proof--proof you could extract from him! not the professor, him!--of your failures, your many many failures, because the professor punished him for every single one. and you aren’t going to let him tell you that you weren’t failing, or whatever nonsensical bullshit he might try to pull. the professor had tests for you, and you failed those tests. just like you’ve failed everything else in your life.

hell, that’s probably what they’ll put on your tombstone, if they bother putting one up at all.

you wouldn’t bother, that’s for sure.

even when you’re not actively failing, you’re still the weird one: the sore thumb sticking out, the one who doesn’t belong. how you managed to befriend a SOLDIER is a feat you still aren’t sure of. why he hasn’t abandoned you yet when you’re just dead weight’s another thing you don’t know. how he still manages to care, yet another. you’ve caused him so much suffering the past four years.

serves you right that you’re alone now, you think. after all, he should have left you behind weeks ago--you’re an invalid, and you’re barely conscious half the time anyway. hell, you don’t remember most of the several weeks it’s been since the escape. you think it’s been several weeks. you don’t know.

you’re still in the same room, the one you were in the last time you woke up. still bandaged. still alone. there aren’t any strangers with you, at least. the crook of your right elbow feels funny. it’s almost enough to distract you from the spiral of shame and self-hatred you’re on. almost. but aren’t you just pathetic? sure, your wounds have been tended to, but you doubt you’re wanted or welcome here, wherever here is. you haven’t been wanted anywhere your whole life, your ma and him notwithstanding. your hometown, your squad, SOLDIER, here, it doesn’t matter. you’ve always been dead weight. you’ve always been alone, and you learned to deal with it a long time ago, learned to stand the crushing loneliness that envelops you at all times. fuck, you’d even learned to like it, hadn’t you? what other choice have you ever had? nobody, nobody except your ma and that girl, ever liked your company back home. and that girl--you liked her, you know, but her father couldn’t stand you. didn’t trust you. you were just a child, and the whole town wanted you gone, so you left. you left, and tried to follow your dream and join SOLDIER and what fucking happened? what fucking happened? you ended up back in your hometown a fucking failure and killed your hero!

shit, you swore off caring for this exact reason. it hurts too much to be so angry at yourself, even when you know you deserve it. and you know you deserve it.

fuck, not even in your sleep can you manage to stay out of where you don’t belong. that dream... that dream you had was so strange. who was that person? they seemed almost familiar, but you didn’t get a good look. they seemed... off, somehow, like when you’re looking at someone you last saw in elementary school with a bowl cut and the thickest glasses known to man and now you’re both teenagers and they grew their hair out and shed the glasses for contacts and dyed their hair neon pink or something, and with all the changes you just can’t seem to recognise them on sight anymore. like you’d only ever seen half their face, maybe, and without the other half blocked they just don’t look the same. well, it has been four years.

one of his friends, maybe? but... there was something off about that dream, too. almost like it wasn’t a dream. but that doesn’t make sense--you were definitely asleep, and now you’re awake again in this weird room that doesn’t smell like a lab even though there’s an IV in your arm--oh, FUCK!

fuck fuck fuck, that’s what that weird feeling in the crook of your arm is, you should never have let yourself fall asleep, you have to get the IV out now you don’t know what they could be putting in it--just because it isn’t the labs doesn’t mean it’s safe, dammit! c’mon, c’mon, you’re desperately willing your arms to work so that you can rip the thing out as fast as possible but your damn arms refuse to respond just like every other time you’ve tried to move them since the escape--

a high pitched scream rings out into the air around you, going on for what seems like forever, and it takes you an embarrassingly long time to figure out it came from your throat. really, it’s only the scratchy ache in your vocal cords that clues you in. you’re too busy being consumed by blind panic to be truly aware of anything other than the IV, its needle still buried in the flesh of your inner elbow, dripping gaia-knows-what into you just like the professor always did.

you let out another scream. maybe let is the wrong word--that would imply you’re allowing the scream, like it were a conscious decision for it to happen. it’s not. nothing about this is under your control. the scream just rips itself out of you, ignoring any input you might have had for it on its way out. it’s followed shortly by another, one that quickly chokes into a sob; and now you’re too out of breath for another one, hiccuping and crying pathetically where you lie on some stranger’s bed in some stranger’s room gaia-knows-where with gaia-knows-what flowing through your veins and everything is just too much. can’t they just leave you alone for a little bit? an hour? is that too much to ask? when’s the last time you got a godsdamned break?

there’s a distant sound of crashing, low and shaking like thunder on the horizon. between sobs you hear shouting, someone clamoring to subdue someone else; then the smell of materia wafts down the hallway to your poor, snot-filled nose. someone’s running, bare feet pounding against stone. it’s far away. another sob overtakes you, another soft wail echoing out from your sore throat. you’re not even sure why you’re crying. probably because you’re a fucking pathetic piece of shit weakling who can’t handle a little IV. probably because you’re broken, hopelessly and irrevocably broken, and you never were worthy of anything good ever but this just confirms it. everything hurts. you’re terrified of what they’ll do to you. more tears fall, the salt of them seeping into your open mouth along with the snot from your stupid runny nose. you wish you could just curl in on yourself, hide away in a bundle of nothingness and disappear forever. the footsteps get louder. there’s a second set, a third, hot on the trail behind the first; wearing soft shoes by the sound of it. not boots. not bare. slippers, maybe. you can’t quite tell. whimpers escape you as you keep crying, and you’re crying about crying, which is really just sad if you stop and think about it--and gaia knows that’s all you’ve done is think about it! that’s all you can do, your body is no longer your own and you’re trapped here and nothing is going right and where the fuck is he, where is your best friend, who took him from you?!

you would scream his name if you could but you don’t. fucking. remember it.

someone is calling out, loud and panicked. several someones, in the hallway nearing your room. words you don’t recognise. a name that should be familiar but is just static instead. another name, more static, and none of it makes any sense. why doesn’t it make sense? who’s calling to you, if they are calling to you? it isn’t his voice, so what does it matter anyway?

it doesn’t, is what. it doesn’t matter at all. there’s a loud thud against something wooden and then the shriek of a door splintering, barrelled over by a display of strength that you instinctively know isn’t as powerful as it should be.

whatever happens after that, you’re not sure. you’re out before the smell of materia even hits your nose.

----

crying. you’re crying. his body, slumped over at an awkward angle against the boulder. the monster, dissolving into nothingness behind you. you’re too exhausted to get to him, the buster sword heavy in your arms. too heavy and yet not heavy enough. you’re not the same as you used to be, as you once were.

dry sand and drier rock greets you as you collapse to the ground. the grit gets into the cuts on your thigh, where the beast tore through the material of your pant-leg. you don’t know what that was. you never want to see it again to find out. you need him to get up. it reeks of blood, so much blood, and he’s just lying there, collapsed like you. a good several meters out of reach. you can’t get to him. you don’t have any cure materia. what if this is the moment you lose him? what if he’s gone forever this time?

at least back in the labs you never had to worry about losing him, not after you made it clear what would happen if he were permanently gone.

you’re... well, you’re reasonably certain that you’re not in the labs anymore. you think. you hope.

you cry harder, as if that would do anything. maybe this is just another corpse, like earlier, and he’s been gone and you just need to finish the job. that would make sense. that would be the right thing to do. you told the professor you couldn’t live without him. and he’s just lying there, still, too still. is he breathing? he doesn’t seem to be breathing. there’s so much blood. there’s so much blood. he’s dead, he has to be. you just have to finish this. c’mon, you know what to do. the buster sword is right there. it’s right there--you just have to reach out... and...

before you can reach it you’re swarmed. oh. you never did leave the labs. you let your head slump back against stone, let it cut into your bruised cheek as a sudden influx of lab assistants flood into the clearing. you close your eyes and let them pick you up, waiting for them to remove the visor. you hear them cast curaga on him even as they cart you off. why would they cast curaga on a corpse? the visor doesn’t come off. are you sure there was one?

if you’re in VR, why does it still smell so strongly of blood and monster guts? VR never gets the scents right. are you actually... outdoors? being field-tested? you... you must be, mustn’t you? your head hurts something awful. there’s a ringing in your ears and a cut across your forehead where the monster landed a lucky hit.

at the very damned least you beat the thing where he did not. surely they won’t punish him. surely this was a success?

...although.

he’s dead, isn’t he? so what does it matter if you succeeded or you failed at the test--you failed where it mattered most, and he’s dead. the only important person in your whole world is dead. (why would they cast curaga on a corpse?) he’s dead, isn’t he? he wasn’t breathing. there’s so much blood. (they wouldn’t cast curaga on a corpse.) are you sure he wasn’t breathing? you’re crying. you’re still crying.

someone is dabbing away your tears with a rough cloth. you refuse to look. materia overtakes the blood in the air for a brief moment. you can feel the magic wash over you, taking with it some of that sickly smell weeping from your open wounds. they’ll heal over soon by themselves, you know, but the professor never was pleased with the function of your kidneys nor the rest of your immune system. he always reminds you how weak they are, how weak you are by extension. just another failure to tack onto an already too-long list. so it’s probably a good thing you got hit with esuna, because it’s not like your body could have flushed the poison out by itself. you shudder.

where... where are they taking you? you’re slung over someone’s shoulder, dripping blood all over their back. someone else must still have his body. or--maybe--no, no, but--you’re sure he wasn’t breathing, right? there’s not a chance, however small, that he... lived? that he’s alive? you... you’ve always been resigned to your inevitable death, you know this. so how come you almost don’t want to die now? if he’s dead, there’s nothing worth living for. and if he’s dead, and you’re dead, no one can ever hurt you again. so why do you hope you’re wrong? why do you want him alive so bad? you thought you’d sworn off caring. you thought you’d cut that part of your heart out.

why change your mind now? you don’t seriously want to live, do you? not when living means the labs, not when living means pain, not when living means the worst things you’ve ever experienced before. you can’t stand living.

...right?

luckily, you pass out before you can think too much about this--blood loss has a funny way of doing that to you. when you wake, you’ll forget any of this ever happened.

----

you wake to a steady pressure on your chest. someone has pillowed their head there--no, not just someone. him. your heart leaps into your throat. he’s in the room with you? when did this happen?

rundown of everything: the footsteps, the screaming. the voice calling out. the materia. someone--your captors? your keepers?--must have cast some level of sleep on the room. he must have heard you scream. he must have come running. gods, you love him. you think this is what love must be. there’s still a dull ache in the crook of your elbow, but when you crack your eyes open and try to look, you no longer see the tubing of the IV. your mouth is dry.

you struggle to breathe, just a little bit, under his sleeping weight. tap tap. tap tap. trace the outline of something, anything, with your hand, trapped beneath his chest. soft black hair tickles your nose. how strong a spell did they hit him with, for you to have woken first? what kind of materia takes out a first class SOLDIER? you are waiting for him to wake up. you tilt your head as best you can away from his hair, trying not to sneeze into it. he wouldn’t mind. but you would, so you’d rather avoid it. he never minds.

he takes such good care of you, and you don’t deserve it, but you’re in no position to argue. he doesn’t smell of blood anymore. (when did he smell of blood?) your keepers--captors? caretakers?--must have cleaned him, or left him to clean himself--why are they doing this? why did they separate you? how long has it been? you’re in a sleep gown. he’s in a soft shirt, unfamiliar to you. what happened to your other clothes? when will he wake up? please, wake up. wake up.

someone else enters the room, creaking the door open slowly. cautiously. like there’s a sign outside that says caution: dog. you wouldn’t be surprised if he’s bitten someone before. matter of fact, you think he has; a story flits through your head about some stunt he pulled as a third, something involving a bet and his old mentor’s old friend--the details slip away before they fully form, scraps of memory lost to time as you lie there on the bed. it’s that stranger again. their high-pitched voice floats gently over you, the words never quite connecting with your cotton-filled mind. he doesn’t stir from atop you. still out cold.

the stranger draws closer, pulling ever-so-slowly into your line of sight. you blink, slow as molasses. the figure melts into a blur from the tears in your eyes before sharpening again, the outline of a woman appearing before you. brunette. short. bangs and a braid. or, wait, blonde hair pulled back--inexplicably, she reminds you of your mother--not your mother. someone else. you blink again. the bangs disappear. she wobbles in your vision, and you can’t tell if it’s her or if it’s you.

dirty blond hair, dark enough to look like real brown in the low light, suddenly hangs directly in front of your face as she gently shifts your sleeping companion off you, tugging him to the side. he must be on a chair, you realise. the bed isn’t big enough for him to be on it with you, not without fully crushing you, and even with half his weight (less, now) stretched over your limp form you’re crushed as is. it’s still only half. less. a third, a fourth. less. it’s unclear. you want him to wake up. the curtain of hair leaves, as sudden as it came, and that voice--her voice, you suppose--whispers an apology as she sticks yet another needle into your arm. you think you catch the words saline drip, not that it means anything to you. not at first, anyway.

it clicks after she disappears out the door again--you’re dehydrated. you probably shouldn’t pull the IV out again. maybe your loyal hound will behave when he wakes up.

if he wakes up.

he’s still breathing, snoring gently now, pulled back from your chest but still slumped over the bed.

he has to wake up at some point, right?

right?

you hope so. oathbreaker that you are--you care. sue you, you care! you need him alive, and you need him awake--he’s the only one in all of gaia you could ever trust, the only one you could ever stand, the only one you could ever love--who else will talk to you? can talk to you, when your tongue won’t hardly lift itself from the floor of your mouth, when your vocal cords refuse conscious manipulation and instead act solely on their own initiative? who else comes running when you scream in barely-aware terror? who else cares?

they will call you a warlock, one day. a liar. a hypocrite, a self-absorbed asshole. you used to care a lot. you used to be full of love for the world, but your love died in the fire that claimed your mother’s life, and now all there is is him, your anchor to reality. asleep at your side where he belongs. you itch to reach your hand over, card your fingers through black locks. you manage a weak jerk, crawling your hand millimeter by millimeter until the tips of your fingers graze the jet-black hair protruding from his scalp.

you can feel the tension in your body relax at even just the slight contact--it oozes out of your drawn-up shoulders and taut spine. you don’t know where it goes. somewhere beyond your awareness, seeping out into and through the mattress like so much sweat and dead skin. you don’t know how long you lie there, unmoving. you stink. you need a bath.

you close your eyes just for a moment--

----

there’s that voice again, ringing in your ears. unfamiliar. speaking in a language you don’t know. shoulda paid more attention in your language classes, cadet--stupid, stupid, stupid. who’s talking? rule number one of engagement: identify your surroundings. (is that rule number one? you don’t actually remember.) oh, you definitely flunked out of SOLDIER for that low score. what was it they said? low mako tolerance? how would they even know? you don’t remember ever being dosed with any, so they must have done some kind of blood test. the blood draw on the intake medical evaluation. there’s a second voice joining in with the first. an argument? you’ve only ever been fluent in Nibel and Common--he always said you were decent at Gongagan but you think he was just flattering you. ah, there’s his voice. you’ve been expecting it. the weight left your bed. the room is dark. your eyes are closed. something rustles, a curtain, the sound of wheels on stone, something else. why are they arguing? did he get into some trouble again? who’re they? it’s been four years. where have you been, C一 S一? where have you been? where have you been, 一 一? where did you go? you aren’t here. you aren’t here, you’re somewhere else. where are you? you’re supposed to be somewhere else, aren’t you? aren’t you? this is why you flunked out of SOLDIER. you can’t keep focus, you can’t keep the facts straight in your head. can’t figure out who’s talking or why. is that him? is that Z一? is that his name? you aren’t sure. 一k? what’s his name? what’s your name? 一d 一e? something is floating around inside your skull, bouncing off the bone and ricocheting around uncomfortably. a single thought. a concept, something other, something strange and foreign to you. something undeniably familiar. the voices rise in volume. still indiscernible, still unintelligible, still nonsense. your Common never was quite as good as your Nibel. it slipped away from you when you were frustrated, when you were tired, worn out. you were never confident in Gongagan around anyone but him. he always says you sound fine, but you struggle to believe that. words fly over your head. there’s the sound of crashing. the curtain gets ripped open, yanked hard along its track, and the sound is so grating that it hurts. blood trickles from your ears. you’re scared. you’re so scared, which is funny, because you swore you stopped caring a long time ago. you stopped feeling a long time ago, didn’t you? didn’t you? rule number two of engagement: identify your target. (sure that’s not rule number one? unsure. you don’t remember. it’s been a long time since cadet training. you remember cadet training, right? you had cadet training, right? right?) who’s your target, 一? there are three voices in the room. it’s so bright now. your eyes are closed. squeezed shut to avoid looking at the disaster that awaits you beyond the confines of your mind. your mind’s disaster enough, right now. the voices are louder still. the curtain slams closed. slams? slides, violently; rattles the track. embedded into the ceiling, like in a medical ward. are you in a medical ward? or maybe like a shower, but you’re in bed. nobody puts a bed in the shower. right? right. probably. wait, where are you? you forgot rule number one. what’s rule number one? you’re in a bed, maybe in the shower, in the dark again with the curtain closed, listening to an argument rage just beyond the cloth confine. maybe the argument is in Common. you’re so tired. you’re so tired. where’s Z一? who’s Z一? who are you? don’t you remember? why don’t you remember? identify your target. rule number three of engagement: remember the mission. what’s the mission? you don’t think you know the rules of engagement. you’re going to fail the SOLDIER exam again, you just know it. you shoulda paid more attention in class, cadet. shoulda studied harder. shoulda studied, period. what a pathetic specimen. not even worthy of reunion, are you? the voices are silent. they’ve been silent for a long time, haven’t they? you’re all alone. you’ve always been alone. you’re always alone.

you’re always alone.

----

(oh, 一. how I wish we could meet in person.)

(and how I wish you would stop getting lost in the lifestream, too. you’re probably worrying Z一 out of his mind.)

who’s there? someone is talking to you, which is weird, because you’re alone in here.

alone? hardly. not when I--

oh, shit, not the other one too.

(hey. who’s your friend, 一?)

puppet, who is this? I was... unaware there were others who could speak to you like this.

this is your head, dammit! you’re so sick of the voices, both of them, and you wish they would just leave.

(oh, I’m so sorry, 一. but I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave you alo--)

and why would that be? I know you, Cetra. we are the same, you and I.

(the fuck we are. what are you even doing here? your presence is a blight on the lifestream.)

I would offer you godhood with my puppet.

you’re not anyone’s damned puppet.

no?

(一, what’s going on?)

you wish you knew. you feel trapped between two ancient forces far beyond your comprehension, a game of tug-of-war with your mind as the rope.

puppet, I will remove this intruder. you are needed for reunion.

(huh? reunion? what in gaia’s name--I can’t risk kicking this weirdo out without damaging you, 一. maybe I can--)

ah! what--what have you done? you cannot simply cast shield around all of--this is--this is--!

...

(...that should do it, for now.)

(I hope.)

(一, take care.)

...

well, you’re alone for real, now. finally. alone with your thoughts once again--you almost wish you weren’t, but. turns out, it’s exhausting having more than one person in your head all the time. you’re not the biggest fan of having either of them there, not even when it’s just the one who doesn’t call you puppet--seriously, that’s creep behavior. you kind of thought--

doesn’t matter what you thought.

you’d really just like to go back to sleep, now, thanks.

----

you were eight, the first time you didn’t feel like a girl anymore. your ma loved you anyway, as you knew she would--she cut your hair for you in the bathroom, in front of the mirror, and you watched as the blond locks fell to the floor one by one. she kissed the top of your head when she was done, when you decided that the kid looking back at you in the reflection looked enough like a boy that it didn’t feel wrong anymore. then she asked you to help her sweep up the mess, since you’d made it anyway, and you laughed as you got the broom from the closet. it was too big for your little hands, back then.

you were nine when your ma explained what all girls went through, and even though you weren’t a girl anymore she told you you’d still experience this, too. she told you to come to her immediately when you first started bleeding from down there, and that her first period happened when she was ten. she said yours would probably happen within the next year or so, but you had bigger things to worry about: your legs hurt all the time, and you craved salt constantly. it wasn’t until after the incident on the bridge that your ma really took notice. by then, though, your ma had many more struggles than just your aching legs.

when you were ten, you did not get your period. your ma wasn’t too surprised; she told you your father’s family were all late bloomers. then, because you were curious, she told you about how babies got made, but you were always pretty sure she was leaving out some pretty important details. mainly, why anyone would want to do that in the first place. you concluded that other people were silly, and that you’d never feel like that, not for anyone.

you were eleven when Tifa got her first period. you weren’t allowed to play with Tifa anymore, not because of that but because of the other thing--but she still snuck out to your window some nights when no one else was awake. your ma pretended not to notice, and that was good enough for you. your ma always wanted you to have friends, after all. despite everything, Tifa trusted you enough to tell you, and that lit a little fire in the deepest pits of your heart.

your twelfth birthday was the first time you thought of yourself as a boy, not just as not-a-girl, and coincidentally, the last time you spoke to your grandmother. your ma never once told you it was a bad thing to be a boy with girl parts, but you overheard a heated argument in the kitchen while your grandmother and your ma were making dinner, and you learned then that it wasn’t respectable to be such a way. you hadn’t been a girl for going on four years, then, and you were pretty damn confident in being a boy, so it hurt a lot to hear the way your grandmother spoke of you. you secretly wished you’d never get your period so that you’d never be a real girl.

you were thirteen when you started growing breasts, and your ma took you to Corel to buy your first bra. you didn’t want to go--you didn’t want to acknowledge the way your body was changing, didn’t want to acknowledge the blood that would surely follow this new development. your ma may never have told you this, but you learned it anyway: boys don’t have breasts. your ma did tell you that you needed a bra if you didn’t want your back to hurt later, or if you didn’t want your nipples to chafe on the rough cloth of the shirts she’d made you. you suspected that it was also to keep people from staring so much at you, but--people were always going to stare at you. no one else in Nibelheim wanted you around.

at fourteen, you left for Shinra. Tifa caught you before you left, made you promise that you’d be back to rescue her if she ever needed rescuing. you said you would. what else were you supposed to say? when you got to Midgar, it turned out that Shinra didn’t care if you were a man or a woman--they took both, a foreign concept to you at the time. women in Nibelheim weren’t supposed to be fighters, and you knew everyone blamed you for Tifa taking up martial arts. everything that went wrong was your fault, because you were a curse who should never have been born. you never regretted leaving Nibelheim. you only regretted not being able to take your ma with you.

Shinra opened up a whole new world of possibility. you told them you were a guy who just happened to have girl parts, and during your medical intake examination they diagnosed you with primary adrenal insufficiency and prescribed you daily hydrocortisone tablets, then put you on a waiting list to start testosterone injections. you were told you could pay out of pocket or have the cost deducted from your paycheck. you wanted to keep the small amount of gil you’d scraped together for emergencies, so you agreed to let them deduct it from your pay. as it turned out, you had to break into the stash before the end of the month just to feed yourself, but you’d never felt better in your life after you started the hydrocortisone--you didn’t crave salt anymore, and your legs stopped hurting like that every night. even though you were verging on the edge of debt to the company, it was so worth it, every single gil.

six months into your training, you started testosterone. you were still fourteen, and you still hadn’t gotten your period, and now you knew you never would.

you had your top surgery scheduled for after the mission to Modeoheim, having scraped up enough in savings to pay for it out of pocket. you were fifteen. it was supposed to be a happy affair, but after everything that went down in that cursed town, you didn’t have it in you to be excited anymore. you were small enough to qualify for keyhole, at least, so the recovery was a lot better than it might have been otherwise. Zack spent as much time as he could with you then--he was afraid to be alone, and you needed someone who understood what you were going through.

you were sixteen when you became the professor’s specimen.

there was one day--you’ll never forget it--when the professor told you exactly what you were. a defective male, he called you. XY chromosomes, impaired testosterone production and absorption, grade four feminised genitalia, although the professor suspected it was originally grade five prior to your testosterone treatments. at least he recognised you as male, even if he was an ass about it. you don’t know how old you were then--time passed as sticky as syrup in the labs. you could have been anywhere from sixteen to twenty and it wouldn’t have changed a thing.

you have no good words for what you are. the professor never gave you a nice name for your condition, only described it to you. you remember some of the experiments they ran had to do with your adrenal insufficiency, but you don’t remember the details. the best language you’ve ever had to describe yourself came from Zack--Zack, another guy with girl parts, who taught you the word trans and helped you feel more at ease for not wanting a dick. Zack, who started testosterone when he was 16, a year before you met him. Zack, just over two years your senior, devastatingly handsome, and the first person to truly make you reconsider the assumption you’d been holding since you were ten and your ma explained the concept of sex to you.

you don’t know how old you are anymore. your life ended at sixteen, and you’ve been a dead man on borrowed time since. you barely remember anything from the labs. hell, you don’t even know what hydrocortisone tablets actually are, only that you’re supposed to take them daily. Cloud Strife died in Nibelheim, in that fire. whoever you are now, you’re just an empty shell. the body you wear does not belong to you. the face you have is not yours, and the gaze that meets you in the mirror is unrecognisable.

the only thing you can really think is that you need another haircut.

----

you wake to another standoff: the stranger from before, another stranger, and him. they’re shouting. spittle flies. a curtain you hadn’t noticed before sits, half open, half drawn closed. you want them to stop.

stay the hell away from him! your friend shouts, seething. he’s in a defensive stance, between you and the strangers. the IV is yet again gone from the crook of your elbow. you suspect he took it out.

sir, he urgently needs treatment, one of the strangers says--you can’t focus well enough to tell any details. the voice isn’t the same as the one from before, though.

if he needs treatment so bad, I’ll do it! don’t fucking touch him!

...you need to defuse this situation. you don’t trust these strangers, but you’re suddenly so thirsty, and if he doesn’t calm down... they got him with a sleep materia before, somehow. they could very well do it again. you tap no against the mattress, just forceful enough for him and no one else to notice.

he doesn’t turn to face you--unwilling to take his eyes off the intruders, probably--but he does mutter to you in your native tongue.

what’s wrong, Spike?

a lot is wrong. your legs hurt in that way you haven’t felt since you started taking the medication the Shinra infirmary provided, your throat is dry, your vision is blurry, you need to eat--the list goes on. as per usual, your voice ignores your every command, which means you have to wait for him to take your hand.

what did you say? asks the first stranger, puzzlement evident in her voice.

private conversation, he bites out, in Common again, scooting backwards so he can fumble his hand around on the bed until he finds one of yours. left hand, again, as always.

you draw mealtime on his palm, trying not to dig your fingernail in too deep (old habits die hard, it turns out). you follow it up with drinking-water, then start on pain before he catches your wrist.

got it, he murmurs, still in Nibel. then, in Common: we need food.

...sir, one of the strangers begins in a soft voice, only to be cut off by the other one. you’re starting to get a feel for who’s in charge, here.

what kinda food?

you notice a strange lisp to her voice--difficulty with labial sounds, maybe? you think. you’re not sure.

his voice is calm, measured--forcefully so, you’re well aware: any food. and water.

a small, frustrated sigh escapes your lips. he’s still facing them, still a wall between you and any threat, and while you appreciate the gesture you need this stand-off to not be happening. you’re too tired for this nonsense.

the one in charge says something to the other stranger, something you don’t quite catch but it makes his hand clutch tighter at your wrist anyway. then there’s just the sound of footsteps walking away, and three tense sets of breathing. the awkward quiet continues for a long, drawn-out moment.

fuck, your legs hurt. you can’t help the hiss of pain, the whimper, that leaves you when a fresh wave of agony arcs up into your stomach. is it hunger pangs or real pain? or both, maybe? whatever it is, it hurts, hurts like a bitch--he turns to look at you, the shaggy curtain of dark hair moving in your blurry vision as he does.

Spike? gaia, he sounds so concerned. he quickly repositions your left hand again, putting it back on top of his upturned palm.

pain, you draw--once, twice, thrice, tracing over it again. pain. pain. pain.

shiva’s tits, it hurts. you haven’t felt pain like this in a long time--it’s so bad, you can barely focus on your hearing anymore; there’s this ringing in your ears as blinding white shoots up through your vision. you want to double over but your body can’t manage it. another whimper. fuck.

through the ringing you faintly make out his voice: don’t come closer, I don’t trust you.

followed by the stranger: we could use a cure ‘nateria?

give it, he growls. I’ll use it.

there’s a second of deliberation before you hear the jangle of metal being handed over--some kind of bracer, you assume. at least, you think it’s metal. the ringing makes it hard to tell.

honestly, you’re surprised the stranger has given in so easily; these people knocked him out earlier, didn’t they? why is she being so nice now? is this some kind of coercion tactic? another spurt of agony shoots up your legs. you smell materia--feel the healing glow wash over you--it doesn’t help. it still hurts. ifrit’s balls--it hurts, it hurts! someone whimpers from it all, probably you.

he’s still in pain, you hear him growl again. you imagine his teeth bared in warning.

let me help, says the stranger (or something close to that, at least).

...I don’t trust you.

I know.

there’s some more shuffling--what is the stranger doing? then--a dagger, drawn from a scabbard by the sound of it. a low gasp from him.

kill ‘ne if I hurt hin’. (labial sounds impaired, right. n where it should be m. you think he understands plenty well, though, from the way he sucks in a surprised breath.)

I don’t need a dagger to do that, he says instead, a warning. you help him, get us some food and water, and give us our stuff back, and then I’ll consider not killing you.

I know, the stranger repeats, sounding almost... fond? you must be mishearing her tone.

he needs ‘fain ‘neds, she says gently, and a saline IV. can I ‘fut that ‘dack?

you feel him stiffen, spine going straight in displeasure and fear. it rolls off him in waves, practically stinking up the area. (you didn’t used to be able to smell fear, before.)

no, he answers, uncertain. you can’t blame him. you’re uncertain yourself; you despise the thought of yet another needle in your skin--too many memories of the labs attached to that sensation, but this isn’t the labs but you can’t trust her but there’s something in her voice and you can feel the panic burbling up in your chest but you choke it back down because you need this pain to go away yesterday, godsdammit--

then, so quietly only someone with enhanced hearing would catch it: the choice is yours.

in Nibel, of course.

the tension thickens as you deliberate.

and he’s still got that dagger (not that he needs one)--which, if you think about it, is really a staggering display of trust from this stranger. not that you can think very well around the searing, excruciating pain that radiates from deep within your femurs.

it’s an easy decision, after all. you tap yes on his palm.

he grits his teeth loud enough to be audible and spits out a response to the stranger. fine, but make it quick.

thank you, you draw on his palm. the stranger shuffles closer. you have to steel yourself for the needle, anticipating it long before it comes. it’s the only way you’re going to get through this.

‘freathe in, she tells you, pinching the skin at your elbow again. your left one this time--she’s afraid to move behind him, you realise. smart woman. the needle is in before you can even blink, and she does it with such precision that you hardly even notice. you try not to think about it too hard. (the panic still rises in your throat anyways. you have to keep it down. you have to stay calm, for his sake if nothing else.)

in Common: hand the pain meds over.

in Nibel, for your ears only: you good, Spike?

you tap yes, even though it’s not really true.

liar, he murmurs, but doesn’t press you on it.

mister August! calls that third voice from the doorway, suddenly back. I have food and water for the patients!

‘fring it here, the stranger (mister August? shame colors your cheeks) calls back, speaking over his shoulder. (gaia, you can’t believe you fucked up like that.)

the other stranger’s footsteps draw near, cautious again. a healthy fear. your protector’s not any less ill than you, you’re starting to realise, but he’s still a formidable opponent--he could kill these unenhanced folks with ease, even underfed and dehydrated and sick as he is. and he would, in less than a heartbeat, if he thought he had to. you’re glad he doesn’t think he has to, because to be frank you’re tired of being sick, tired of hurting; and even though you don’t trust these people as far as you could throw them, you want to pretend you can relax here. you haven’t relaxed in years.

your loyal hound growls a sound of displeasure at their approach. you wouldn’t be surprised if he’s poised to bite.

ceramic clanks on wood--bowls, on a tray, perhaps?--and then the other person quickly retreats back to a safe distance.

thanks, nurse O‘naki, August says.

will you be okay by yourself, sir? Onaki (Omaki?) asks, timid.

yeah, I got this. go on, shoo.

a brave man (man, not woman! dammit, you’re still embarrassed about that one), you think, willingly risking the ire of your guardian. there’s the sound of pills rattling, a cup of water sloshing around, then something is pressed to your mouth--your friend is gently tilting the cup to your lips, letting you swallow the pills yourself. they’ll take a little while to kick in.

Z一, right? ah, the stranger--doctor? August--is talking again. do you want to bother paying attention? not really. August says something about dog tags, about the buster sword. you’re not listening too hard. you’re kind of delirious from the pain, though, at this point. you imagine him--your him, not the other him--in a collar, thick leather snug around his throat. a tag reading if lost, return to--

that’s funny. where the name should be is only gibberish, meaningless dents in the metal. you don’t know where the thought comes from.

his weight shifts next to you--he’s readjusting himself, angling so that he can feed you easier. then he readjusts you, too, props you up against some pillows so you’re not laying quite so flat on the bed. he’s leaning in so close to you. there’s a spoon at your lips--tastes like some kind of stew, you don’t know what--it doesn’t really matter. you swallow it down easily enough. you hear him snap some harsh words at the doctor. August was probably too close for comfort, you think, and you hear the scuff of his shoes against the stone floor as he backs off. another spoonful to your lips. another swallow. he’s not feeding himself, you realise, but then August retreats from the room entirely--is the doctor getting more stew? you think August said something along those lines. does it matter?--there’s a loud crunch of something, like an apple, and he chews it for you for a moment before putting it in your mouth. more stew. if you could tell tastes apart, you might complain that the stew clashes horribly with the fruit, if you had it in you to care. you don’t.

August returns. you can tell by the footsteps alone, a useful skill you perfected in the labs. different techs took you different places, and you learned to tell them apart by their gaits alone. visuals weren’t very helpful in the tanks, not when you were always placed facing the wall.

I got you ‘nore food, he says, simply. ceramic clatters again, jostling another metal spoon.

didn’t need a second spoon, your hound grunts. he crunches the fruit again.

ah, good, you’re eating, the doctor remarks. hah, too soon; August has only seen half the process.

the fruit leaves his mouth and enters yours, just like the last three bites. just like every food he deems too tough for you to chew. he’s usually right. chewing is a monumental effort, and you appreciate him making it easier. other people--August, by the sound of it--probably think it’s gross. you got over gross weeks ago. can’t afford to care about gross when you need to survive, and even though you still think it’d be easier to be dead, you know that as long as he’s alive he won’t let you die. you’re grateful for that, really. all the little sacrifices he makes for you. you don’t deserve them.

at some point the bowl of stew must get nearly empty, because he stops using the spoon and just tilts the lip of the bowl itself to your mouth. you hadn’t realised just how hungry you’ve been until now. slowly, as not to make you sick, he starts on the second bowl. there’s a second fruit, you think, and you hear him eating it. actually eating it, not just chewing it for you. good. he needs to eat, too. spoonful by spoonful he feeds you the second bowl of stew, until you’re too tired to really keep eating.

your eyes slip closed just as you hear August telling the both of you that he’ll be back in an hour, and it doesn’t take you long after that to fall into a dark, dreamless sleep.

----

four weeks. you spent four weeks here, 28 days, being fed relatively well. access to clean drinking water, baths, clean clothes. four weeks. four weeks in heaven.

and then he got paranoid, you both did--or rather, the paranoia you’ve both always had got too strong to ignore--and the doctor deemed him healed enough to go, and so you left. here you are, leaving. walking away from heaven of your own volition.

fuck.

you wish you could have stayed, but you know that the professor is looking for you. every moment you lay still is a moment he creeps closer. every day you’re not on the move is another day lost. where are you going, again? you don’t remember. did he tell you? you’re sure he’s told you, but you spend so much time out of it--so much time asleep--you think you’ve maybe been lucid for less than a fourth of your journey so far, the way he tells it. you have no reason to disbelieve him.

you’ve turned, headed east. towards his hometown, you think, not that it matters. after the second day you were used to the doctor, used to the way he came in every other hour (that you remember) and made sure you were eating, hydrated, had gone to the bathroom--of course, he always took care of those things, and he always reminded the doctor that that was his job, not the doctor’s.

you got used to the doctor, yeah. but you never trusted the man. you don’t think you could ever trust another doctor again, truth be told. not after everything that’s been done to you.

28 days. he counted. tally marks somewhere, inked shakily, maybe with the dagger or maybe with a marker. he knows how to scar himself. you think of the cross on his jaw, the one he should have healed over quickly, the one that you know he picked at and re-scratched until it stayed. a reminder he wears on his body, never letting him forget. just like the weight of the sword across his back. you wouldn’t be surprised to find those tally marks on the inside of his arm, on the soft parts of his thighs. you aren’t going to look.

four weeks isn’t a very long time. four weeks might have well been eternity.

and here you are, walking away from the only real good you’ve had in a long, long time.

by the gods, what the fuck is wrong with you?

----

once upon a time, when you were still small, you used to believe in miracles. in things like the gift of the goddess or true heroes, in the thought of being rescued.

of course, no rescue ever came, and so you learned to pick yourself apart, little by little, until the walls were so solid between each part that there was no single you anymore.

you stopped believing in miracles. good things don’t simply happen. they have to be made, and you were too little to make them. now, all grown up, you still can’t make miracles--there’s far too much blood on your hands for that. only angels, those gifted by the goddess, could ever pull such a thing off. all the angels you know are dead, leaving only you. just another devil sent from hell. just another fractured soul longing to be made whole again.

but miracles don’t just happen, and you know no one is coming to save you. you’re gonna have to save yourself, if that’s even possible. you don’t really think it is, but you’re obligated to try.

you used to think there wasn’t a single chance. then you met the puppy and the boy--well, you’d met the puppy. of course you’d met the puppy, he belonged to an angel you loved. your angel is dead. it wasn’t until after your angel’s death that you really got to know the puppy, though. and now, sitting in this dusty old library, trying to figure out how to save yourself, you wonder--is that voice you keep hearing, that voice in your head telling you it’s possible, is that his?

or is it mother’s again?

does it even really matter?

you’re going to create your own miracle. you have to. you have no other choice. mother’s right: it’s the only way you can save yourself, the only way you’ll be truly free. and isn’t that what your angel would want? what the puppy wants, what the boy wants? even--even the one you used to think was blessed by the goddess, though he’s fallen far away from you now, doesn’t he want your freedom? shouldn’t you be free?

heaven is far beyond you, you know. but you’ll claw your way out of hell if it’s the last thing you do.

----

so, Zack. I can treat you guys ‘detter if I know what’s wrong. how’d you get so skinny?

don’t wanna talk about it.

looks like ‘nalnutrition to ‘ne--‘deen wandering long?

I said, I don’t wanna talk about it.

not gonna stop asking unless you ‘nake ‘ne, and I know how to treat your friend.

ugh.

...

I can also just ‘nake guesses and gauge the truth ‘dased off your reactions, ‘dut I’d rather hear it from you.

...fine. I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine.

sure.

why’d you take our stuff at first?

not ‘ny call. ask ‘Dugenhagen.

hmph.

so, I repeat--‘deen wandering long?

...what’s today’s date?

don’t dodge the question.

‘m not, we broke out on the, uh, nineteenth of December, I think. least that’s what the computer I skimmed said, but I dunno how long ago that was.

oh.

yeah.

well, it’s the first of February, 0007. so, six and a half weeks?

mkay, there’s your answer.

anything else--

how long’s--

you go first.

uh, um. okay. ...how long have we been here?

a cou’fle of hours.

what?! only a--a--what, what the fuck?

well, so’ne scouts s’fotted you fighting that weird ‘nalboro that’s ‘deen off north, kee’fing everyone fron’ going over there. you got hit ‘fretty ‘dad, colla’fsed, then your friend killed the thing and ‘Dugenhagen ordered ‘ne and the local ‘nedic and so’ne other folks over there. that was... ‘naybe three hours ago?

fuck, well, fuck. how long was I out?

forty ‘ninutes, the first ti’ne.

oh, uh, yeah, I--I just. I heard him screamin’, and I had to--I--I won’t apologise about the door.

...and fuck y’all anyway, knockin’ me out after that. how--fuck, how the fuck’d y’all manage that shit?

er, I think O’naki cast four sleef’ s’fells. ke’ft you out for a good half hour.

...damn.

yeah.

...so, can you think of any reason your friend ‘night ‘de in such ‘fain? or why his wounds heal so fast?

that’s two questions.

we never set a nu’nber.

...shit, fine. but remember, if you hurt him, I kill you.

I know.

well, to the first question, uh, no. the second one, uh, same reason mine have. you did notice I ain’t bleedin’ out or nothin’, yeah?

...your ‘foint?

dude, have you never met a SOLDIER before? this is--this is normal, for us. shit, I knew y’all Cosmo Canyon folks were weird, but--I mean--really?

...I ain’t fron’ here.

buddy, there ain’t nowhere in the three continents that Shinra ain’t set foot in, that don’t know of SOLDIER.

seven.

huh?

there’s seven continents.

the fuck? no there ain’t. there’s just the three, and then the equator, and then it’s ocean the, the whole rest’a the planet.

there’s other continents to the south in the other he’nisphere.

...and, what, you’re from there? you expect me to believe that shit?

I ain’t fron’ there, either.

okay, buddy, now you’ve lost me.

I’n’ fron’ another world.

...odin’s cock, you’re actually insane.

is that so un’delieva’dle, when your world has ‘nagic?

...fuck, dude, I... I got. I got nothin’.

...

...sorry. least you didn’t kill ‘ne this ti’ne.

this time? I would remember if I’d killed you, and you’d stay dead.

didn’t ‘nean to say that out loud. ignore ‘ne.

...sure, fine, whatever. I don’t--I can’t deal with this right now. Cloud needs to get clean. where’s a shower?

----

there’s a deep, searing ache in your left shoulder, almost like it’s been crushed beneath a two-ton weight.

oh, right. it has.

you stumble upright, gripping your useless shoulder with your other hand. you have to get back to base, have to get back to the commander, but first--the monster had thrown that truck so suddenly, you barely had time to dive and push your fellow infantry out of the way. are they okay? did they make it? you look, desperately, at your surroundings: the town’s in ruins, struck by a rampaging beast. the very same one your squad was sent here to kill. ah, there’s the trooper you were looking for--they’re fine, scratched up a little, but you’re definitely worse off for having been slammed by an airborne vehicle. you’re surprised you’re not dead, truth be told. you should probably be dead after that.

let’s get back! you call out, still clutching your ruined arm. where’s the squad mage with a healing materia when you need them? you’re gonna need something better than just a simple cure--you think not even curaga would be strong enough on its own for this, truth be told--but something would be better than nothing.

the trooper, turning at the sound of your voice, runs over when they see you. you look like shit, and they tell you as much. they reach a hand out to offer you support--you shrug them off with your good shoulder, knowing the pain would be unbearable if they tried to support your weight on either side. besides, you can walk just fine, thank you very much.

you’ve got to retreat. the monster’s nowhere in sight, and surely the SOLDIERs who were assigned to this mission have it covered from here. seriously, why assign a squad of infantrymen at all?

Strife! an authoritative voice barks from across the way.

oh--it’s--that’s weird, it’s commander Hewley. what’s he doing here? didn’t he go rogue, or something? Zack keeps crying about it when he thinks you’re not looking. he doesn’t want to be sad around you, even though you’d never judge. he’s seen you at worse, after all.

(that doesn’t make sense, does it? this mission was before Modeoheim.)

Strife! the commander calls again, jogging over to you at what must be a sustainable pace for him, but would leave you winded if you had to keep up. your chest constricts just thinking about trying, knowing that your binder would press uncomfortably into your ribs. you really shouldn’t be wearing it out in the field, but--well.

sir! you salute him as soon as you deem him within reasonable range, dropping your injured shoulder to do so and immediately regretting it. you’ve never been so frustrated by formalities before--they’re usually a source of comfort: of knowing that as long as you stick to regulation, you can’t fuck up the social situation too bad with your own stupidity--but now, when formality puts you in physical pain, you’re starting to get frustrated.

commander Hewley, of course, immediately notices the wince. he returns, then dismisses, the salute as fast as possible--you drop your hand gratefully as soon as you’re allowed. he looks the same as he always does. the buster sword hangs heavy on his back like always, a standard-issue Shinra blade in his off-hand.

status report, trooper, he commands to the other trooper, turning to you and silently casting cura on your shoulder. you don’t see the healing materia he must have equipped--it’s probably embedded in his bracer, or maybe in the pommel of the other sword.

thank you, sir, you stammer, the pain fading to a dull ache as the magic flows through your shoulder. it doesn’t fully heal the injury--you’re definitely gonna need to go to medical when you get back, as much as you hate the very thought--but it helps a lot.

you can’t focus on the words coming from your fellow trooper’s mouth. something about the vehicle that got thrown, about you diving to save them or whatever. explaining your busted shoulder to the commander, probably. fuck, did you get a concussion, too? you really can’t focus on their words--they swim lazily, around but never through your mind.

(this is definitely not how this mission went. something’s not right here.)

the trooper finishes their report. there’s an odd look on commander Hewley’s face, almost like he’s unsure of how to proceed from here--you blink and his form shimmers, shifts for the barest of moments; you almost see a--but--then he’s back to himself, composed and calm like a commander should be. you must have imagined it.

you don’t imagine the white feather you spot on the ground behind him, though, when he turns and starts shepherding the two of you to safety.

(how did this mission really go? the details are slipping away. you were in... Kalm, maybe? you dove to save the other trooper, walked away with a broken arm--it wasn’t one of the army trucks that got thrown at you, though. was it? and--you certainly weren’t fighting that. you were sent out here on a routine patrol with your squad, weren’t you? ran into some... into... did you even run into a monster? or... or was it just people? ...how’d you break your arm?)

Hewley’s face is set in stone, unreadable. he cares about the troopers under his command, you understand now. no wonder Zack’s so smitten with him--he probably makes for a fantastic mentor. you wonder if anyone else ever had one of the firsts mentor them. you don’t really think so. how many firsts have there even been, anyway? you really only know of three--well, four now--Sephiroth, commander Hewley, commander Rhapsodos, and Zack. lieutenant Fair, to be respectful, but he insists you call him Zack, and besides, you’d like to think you’re actually friends at this point. friends have first-name privileges, you think.

(of course, you hadn’t met him yet when this really happened. you couldn’t really be called friends back then.)

but that feather... that feather weighs heavy on your mind. (what happened in Modeoheim? you don’t remember. if you ever actually knew. did Zack tell you?) what was it doing on the ground, snow-white and perfectly clean? why does your back itch thinking about it? and--the thing you saw, the thing you did not see--no, it couldn’t have been. that wouldn’t make any sense.

there’s something else you’re forgetting, isn’t there.

(when this really happened, you went back to medical at the tower, having been fine enough with the cura the squad mage cast on you in the field. they didn’t even have to re-break it or anything, just told you to keep a cast on it for a week and come back in five days for a follow-up. it healed pretty slow--no mako--and you ended up needing the cast for longer than a week, but...)

oh, you know where you are, now. how could you have forgotten? you’re in Wutai, of course. of course commander Hewley is here. (wait, what? why are you in Wutai? you--you weren’t deployed at all until after the war ended, and you never went to Wutai. what are you doing here?)

speaking of, he’s been staring at you for the past few minutes: waiting on some kind of response, likely, if the look on his face is anything to go by.

commander? your voice comes out as a squeak.

Strife, you seem out of it. talk to me. what’s going on?

you can’t help yourself.

I... I’m not supposed to be here, sir, you tell him, unable to meet his gaze.

you’re expecting him to disagree, to ask you why you’d think such a thing, or to remind you of your squad details, your posting, your assignment. he doesn’t do any of these things.

no, you aren’t, he says instead, and neither am I.

huh?

(huh?)

sir? what do you mean by that?

I’m dead, he says bluntly, and something clicks in the back of your mind as he says it, pieces slotting into place.

you’re... dead, your mouth repeats numbly, on autopilot while your brain kicks into gear.

yes, for almost five years now. there’s a hollow note to his voice, like he’s pretending he doesn’t feel the grief that shines clearly in his eyes, dripping down the sides of his face and getting caught in his beard. you don’t think you’ve ever seen him cry. another pure white feather floats to the ground, falling from the wings sprouting from his right shoulder blade. they’ve always been there. it’s only now that you can see them.

then you remember--remember the way Zack cried in your arms, remember that scar on his jaw he hadn’t had before, remember how tightly he clung to you for the first week back. and the final piece clicks into place.

that was cruel, you blurt out. you shouldn’t have forced him to kill you.

now it’s commander Hewley’s turn to avoid your gaze. shame flushes his cheeks dark red as he turns away, looking off towards the treeline, past the series of tents that make up the field base. you’ve never been here before, you know that now; you can’t help but wonder how accurate the scene is to the place it’s presumably based off of. some construct from Hewley’s mind, you suspect.

just where are you, really?

(that’s a question you find you’ve been asking yourself a lot, recently.)

I was--am--a monster, Hewley says after an eternity. it was Zack’s duty to rid the world of me.

he doesn’t really sound like he believes that--he still won’t look at you, still staring off into the distance.

pardon my rudeness, sir, you start, but why do you think you’re a monster?

he sighs, long and drawn out. finally, finally, flicks his gaze over to you, but just as quickly flicks it away. then he just... gestures, vaguely, at the wings protruding from his back.

and, for the record, you can see the argument he’s trying to make. the issue is, it’s a stupid one. if wings alone were what made a monster, there wouldn’t be any gods left. are angels monsters? is the phoenix, agonisingly bright in its burning glory? or the condor, immense and powerful in its nest above the mountaintop? you don’t know how to tell him that, though, not in a way you think he’ll believe. not right now anyway, not when you’re mad at him.

and of course you’re mad at him! he broke your best friend’s heart, and you think he probably broke his own heart, and maybe even broke other people’s hearts in the process--there’s a deep, deep well of grief that you’ve come across, far too monumental for you to comprehend it, and even if you could comprehend it you don’t think you could help the commander out of it. not by yourself. not right now.

so instead, you let the silence stand, and you just exist there, in this liminal non-existence with a ghost. then, an unknowable amount of time later, you blink, and it’s like you were never even here at all.

----

Zack’s hands are in your hair, massaging your scalp--that’s the first thing you register when you open your eyes again, back in the real world this time. then you process everything else: the empty tub, the smell of floral shampoo, the washcloth, the showerhead running itself into the drain. your nakedness, droplets of water across you. the ceramic edge of the tub digging just a little bit into your lower back. the soaked-through towel draped over your lap, giving you some semblance of decency. you know it’s Zack’s hands for two reasons: one, he loves to tousle your hair, so you’re pretty familiar with how his hands feel so close to your scalp; and two, you know nobody else would ever be allowed close enough to you to wash your hair.

what you don’t get, though, is why Zack’s washing you rather than, you know, you washing yourself.

Zack, you grunt, stoppit.

almost done, Cloudy. he half-hums his answer, clearly not paying full attention--and then he stutters, stops, his hands frozen in your hair.

wait--Cloud?!

(you’re getting real tired of this surprise he keeps showing every time you do literally anything. just what in gaia’s name is going on? is this some kind of running gag? cus if so, it isn’t funny.)

I can wash m’self, you grumble, reaching up and over to swat at his arms.

I already washed ya, Cloud, he replies, voice unsteady. (is he... actually shaken by this? surely not, but... he’s not that good of an actor. it’s probably not a running gag. probably. right?)

and--to his credit, you feel pretty damn clean. that’s a relief, because now that you’re paying attention yourself, you realise your legs are far too weak to support your own weight right now.

so what are you doing, then? you ask, a little gruffer than you mean to be.

just finishin’ up your hair, that’s all. ...if that’s okay? I can let ya do it, I just didn’t think ya... uh, ya could.

you turn to look at him more directly, uncaring of the shampoo that drips into your face.

whadda you mean? you arch an eyebrow for good measure.

...Cloud, remember how you’re sick? real sick?

oh, this again. you roll your eyes, putting a pained look on his face that you can’t stand to see, then nod ever-so-slightly. just to get him to stop looking so sad, you tell yourself. definitely not because you know you’re sick.

and... ya know how, uh, ya don’t remember most’a what’s happened since, uh, since we were on our way to Nibelheim? ‘n’ when I asked ya what year it was, you said it was 0003?

yes, these things you do remember. you also remember the fall, and the vomit, and the campfire, and then waking up on that ledge and smelling so much godsdamned blood in the air--shit, what happened after that? oh, right. you tripped over a rock like an idiot and knocked yourself out.

oh, fuck, you know what he’s getting at, now. you have another godsdamned concussion, don’t you? you knew that tumble over the rock would give you one. how’d you even get here, anyway? how long have you been out for?

well, Zack says, obviously considering his words carefully. it’s February now. it’s the seventh.

we were headed for Nibelheim in September, you croak out, frozen in fear of whatever it is he’s not talking about.

that was four years ago.

what? what? four--no, that can’t be--

four years and five months, your dumbass mouth corrects him, unbidden.

no. no, you don’t believe this. you refuse to believe this. it has not been four and a half years.

it... it can’t have been four and a half years. you’d be... you’re... you’re sixteen, you know this. you turned sixteen a month before you went to Nibelheim. you never made it to Nibelheim, right? you got a concussion from that dragon, and made camp out in the forest for some reason, and the general went missing, (not dead not dead you did not kill the general oh fuck you killed the general) and now you’re--now you’re--

for the most part, you manage to aim away from Zack when you throw up.

he doesn’t even look particularly surprised.

Cloud, I’m sorry, he says, sounding a lot like he’s said that before about this exact situation. like he’s had this entire conversation with you before, really.

you shake your head, turning away from him so you don’t have to look at his vomit-covered boots. his hands reach into your vision anyway, holding a washcloth and grabbing for the showerhead.

no, ‘m sorry, you mumble, still turned away even as his hands retract, washcloth newly damp.

it’s okay, really. ya don’t gotta be sorry, Cloud. I just wish I knew why ya don’t always remember.

this conversation really just keeps getting more confusing, doesn’t it? you--you know you’ve been losing time, a lot of time. years, maybe, if Zack’s telling the truth. and you... you don’t think he’s lying, but you... you have a really difficult time believing that. you don’t feel twenty. do you look twenty? you haven’t seen yourself in a mirror. you’re unwilling to look away from the tiled wall right now, so you’re not sure if one exists in this room.

and what does he mean that you don’t always remember? is there... are there... has he really had this conversation with you before, like you’d first thought? why don’t you fucking remember? even over the showerhead, you hear him untie his boots, hear the way the rag wipes over the surface of them. how he sets them to the side before he starts to clean them. before you woke up in the forest, you know your hearing wasn’t this sensitive. mako-sensitive. you haven’t wanted to acknowledge it. about how different your body really is from how it was.

he’s not doing well with the silence; he never does. you’re sure he’s about to start talking any moment now, after he reaches over again and turns the showerhead off.

uh, Cloud, I think, uh, your consciousness might be splintered, or somethin’, cus yesterday I was tryin’ to talk to ya ‘n’ ya didn’t even recognise me, started screamin’ like ya sometimes do ‘n’ I guess ya had a panic attack? I... I wasn’t sure the last few times it happened, but... I think ya thought I was one of--one of--that I was--fuck, I can’t say it. can’t say the bastard’s name. fuck. ...worked for him, ya thought I worked for him, that I wasn’t me, ‘n’ it... it’s breakin’ my heart, Cloud, cus I can’t fuckin’ help ya like that, and then other times I--

he chokes off, and it’s then you realise that he’s sobbing. you turn back to him and lean the short distance into him, putting your still-wet arms around his shoulders as you tuck your head into his neck. you’re probably getting shampoo everywhere, but it’s worth it for the way his breathing starts to even out, just a little bit. hot tears hit the back of your head, your shoulder, and you just do your best to hold him for a little while. it’s what he needs from you right now, and you don’t mind giving it to him. (you’d give anything to him, if he needed it. you know this to be true, just as you know the sun sets in the west and rises in the east. just as you know any other immutable truth.)

eventually, his tears stop enough for him to start speaking again. you don’t let go of him, though. you’re not sure you can.

I--I--he begins, broken, faltering. sometimes ya just don’t remember any of it, but ya talk to me, talk to me with--with words, Cloud, ‘n’ then other times ya--I think ya remember more than I do ‘n’ ya just... ya can’t hardly move a muscle, and most’a the time ya ain’t even really awake ‘n’ I don’t know if you’ll ever wake again ‘n’ it scares me. scares me so bad, Cloud. what’d he do to you? what’d he do to ya that--that you’re in so many pieces? how do I fix it? how--how can I make ya better?

I don’t know, you tell him, words muffled as you speak them into his shirt. I don’t know.

but fuck, if that doesn’t explain some shit. his confusion, at least. this is hard to process. remember what? who’s this... man, the one whose name Zack can’t say? what did he do to you?

you’re... you’re Cloud Strife, infantryman. sixteen--no, twenty, apparently--years old, from Nibelheim, fluent in Nibel and Common, best friends with lieutenant Zack Fair, SOLDIER first class. if you’re twenty, and it’s February, then... he’s... twenty-two? his birthday’s in June. you’re... where are you, exactly? you were headed to Cosmo Canyon, and since you’re in a tub with a working shower, you figure you probably made it there. something horrible happened between the dragon attack and now, or maybe a long, drawn-out series of horrible somethings. the general, Sephiroth, is... dead. dead at your hand, supposedly, but not because you wanted that. because you had no other choice. (vague memories flash through your mind of a fight in the town’s mako reactor, but you’re not sure that was real.) that was... four years and five months ago, just about, or so he tells you. your hearing, eyesight, strength, sense of smell are all significantly different than you recall, indicative of having undergone mako treatment. your body hurts in that way it used to before you got to Shinra and they started giving you those pills, which probably means you’ve been off them for a while. also, your sweat smells different--you might be off testosterone, too. maybe you’ll actually get your period for the first time, now? (that rings false, in your mind; something someone once told you in a memory you don’t quite have.)

just what the fuck happened to the two of you?

you know, in your heart, that whatever you’ve gone through, Zack went through it too. Zack’s been by your side since the dragon attack. Zack must know a lot of what happened to you, because Zack has been taking care of you this whole time, maybe. most likely. and if not this whole time, then as long as he possibly could have been, you’re sure.

you contemplate all this while still holding him, although he’s since started holding you too, now. you’re holding each other. you’re each the only thing keeping the other afloat, you think. if you let go, how far down might you sink? how far gone would you be? and would he sink with you, or would you sink alone? you don’t really want to find out.

...gotta finish washing your hair, Zack whispers a long time later, still tangled together with you.

more like restart, you reply. you can feel how dry the shampoo’s gotten.

I don’t wanna let go of you, he says in return. but if ya want me to let ya wash your hair on your own, I will. I just... can I stay in the room, at least?

it’s not even a question.

get in with me, you say instead.

wha--huh?

get in with me, you repeat, since Zack.exe seems to have stopped working. it’s the most logical solution you can think of, given that you don’t want to let go of him either.

he boots back up, restarts. uh, ya sure, Cloud?

yes, you tell him, firm. you do not say things you don’t mean, and you know he knows that.

if... if you’re sure, um, gonna... gotta... don’t wanna sit around in wet clothes, if that’s--is that okay?

you detest the feel of wet cloth against your skin, even the towel still sitting across your lap, so you would rather he strip before he gets in so that you don’t have to feel the clothes pressed against you at any point. you give him a quick jerk of your head in response, and carefully avert your eyes as he undresses.

there’s an agonising moment where he’s both out of your sense of touch and your line of sight--then it’s over, his comforting warmth sliding into place as he climbs into the tub behind you, scooting you forward to give him room to sit. you lean back against him, let yourself be cradled in his arms. it feels natural. feels right in a way you can’t articulate, like this is how it’s supposed to be.

he reaches over you, turns the shower back on, grabs the showerhead where it dangles against the wall. hands it to you while he grabs the shampoo, then--

can I still wash your hair?

yeah.

--takes the showerhead back from you after he’s placed the shampoo down somewhere and starts to rinse out your hair. the hot water feels nice against your scalp. so do his fingers.

you could probably fall asleep like this, you think, and you let all your other questions about all of the things Zack’s just revealed to you slip away under the hot water.

----

you blink awake blearily--you must have fallen asleep in the bath. you’re in some kind of bed that’s been turned into a makeshift medical gurney, dressed in clothes you don’t recognise. Zack is... not immediately in your line of sight, so you scan the room for him--there, asleep in the chair next to you. your legs ache. honestly pretty normal, all things considered.

you wouldn’t mind going for a bit of a walk, though, so you ignore the oncoming dizzy spell and start to go through the motions of getting up. odin’s cock, your legs hurt. fuck! and your whole body is so sore, like it hasn’t been used in weeks or maybe longer--you suppose that part’s probably true, unfortunately. you stagger through the pain like you always do, though, and swing your legs over the side of the bed. you hit the ground with a low oomph and a wince. it’s whatever.

Zack’s eyes fly wide open at the sound--fuck, you didn’t mean to wake him. gaia knows he needs to sleep too.

Cloud? wha’ya’outta bed f’r? his voice, thick with sleep, tells you exactly how awake he is; that is to say, maybe twenty percent? despite military regulation, he really isn’t much of a morning person.

fuck, what time is it anyway? is there a window in here? you don’t think so. no clock either, not that you’re seeing. you can see just fine, but you’re realising now the lights are off. this whole being enhanced thing is gonna take some getting used to. (something small echoes in the back of your mind, but it’s too quiet to understand. you steadfastly ignore it.)

Cloud? he repeats himself, a little more intelligible this time, when you take too long to respond.

goin’ for a walk, you answer breezily, nonchalant. you’re trying to avoid drawing attention to the potential weirdness of this behavior.

it doesn’t work even for a second, because of course it doesn’t. he can see right through you. he always can. you see it in the little wrinkle that forms in his forehead, in the narrowing of his eyes, in the way he starts to rise out of his seat even as you move away from him. you’re starting to feel a little bit like deer in the headlights, like prey caught in a predator’s sights. it’s not quite anxiety, not quite fear. (it’s just Zack. why do you feel this way?)

his eyes, a pinprick of light in the dark each of them--that mako glow in them, is that why you feel like this? but then the moment passes, and he’s standing, now; silent for once. it’s implicit permission, so long as he comes with. you’re okay with that. right? you think you’re reading him correctly, at any rate. maybe he’s actually secretly fuming, bottling it all up, and he’ll explode later. gods, you hope not. (you know him better than that. he doesn’t do that, right? right?)

do you really, now, Cloud?

who said that?

who said that? you ask, whipping your head around. sounded like it came from behind you, but the only person there is Zack, and that was not his voice.

huh? did you hear something, Cloud? Zack still sounds a little out of it, still half-asleep. shit, but do you feel really bad for waking him up--the man clearly needs more sleep than he’s been getting.

no, you mutter, turning back around. it’s right about now that you realise you have no clue where you’re headed. you’ve been in all of two rooms in this place: the bathroom, and here. and you don’t have a clue where they are in relation to each other, much less anything else.

well, maybe it’s a good thing you woke him up after all.

take me outside, you ask, though it comes out as more of a command than anything.

his hand lands on your shoulder, turns you once more to face him. he’s frowning. why?

Cloud, that’s too far for you to walk, he says, insistent.

like that’s going to stop you. you’re more stubborn than a mule and far more willing to outlast him, and so, to prove him wrong, you twist out of his grip and take a few stumbling steps towards what looks like a door. or, it would look like a door, if it hadn’t been smashed to pieces. you aim a glare in his direction.

Zack, you chide, did you wreck the door?

there’s a brief flash of guilt across his face before he schools his features back to that weird neutrality he’s been practicing. it looks wrong on him--he’s always been so expressive, and you wonder just what happened to strip him of it so. to make him so afraid, because you’d like to think you know him well enough by now to know that the emotion he’s really hiding is fear.

that look is confirmation enough, though, so without another word you continue out into a stone hallway. still dark out here, probably too dark for unenhanced eyes to see through. you really don’t like that you can’t remember becoming enhanced. hasn’t that been your dream, since, like, ever? you--you had to impress Tifa somehow, since everything you did was kind of always a miserable failure in everyone’s eyes but your ma’s, and Tifa’s father hated your guts. and of course, your ill-fated little crush on the silver general. only SOLDIERs get enhanced, right? so you must have made SOLDIER.

then why did Zack act like something horrible happened to you? to the two of you? he didn’t just act like it, you realise as he overtakes you and begins to lead you somewhere. he genuinely believes that something horrible happened, and from what he’s seen of your overall behavior, he thinks whatever happened made you like this.

broken.

it’s not his fault that he doesn’t know--you’ve been broken for a long, long time. (it hurts to think about, but... maybe he’s onto something with the splintering comment. no, no, you’re not thinking about that right now, you can feel the nausea and bile rising. swallow it back down, Cloud, you are not throwing up in this stone hallway!) you... you have a lot of bad memories of your hometown. a lot of bad memories that you don’t care to ever relive. but you’ve been broken since you were just a little child, maybe five, if memory serves? (you’re starting to suspect your memory isn’t to be truly trusted about these things, but that’s a problem for later Cloud.) he said you’d been having panic attacks sometimes. that doesn’t surprise you; you’ve had some pretty bad ones that you don’t remember most of for years now. it’s just another fact of your miserable life: sometimes you blank out, only coming to minutes or hours later with no clue what happened or why your memory is gone. most of the time you find yourself alone in a corner, or a bathroom, or your bunk if you’re close enough--you guess that some part of your subconscious takes over during these episodes and guides you to somewhere without anyone else, somewhere relatively safe. you’re pretty sure a lot of these episodes start as panic attacks, although you’ve never quite identified any trigger. it’s just the way it is.

you’re not about to tell him that right now, though. you’ll do it eventually, it’s just... well, who knows who might be listening in? you’re a very private person. you’re not about to go telling Zack about this deep vulnerability of yours in the middle of a random hallway in Cosmo Canyon (or wherever you actually are). maybe sometime later, if you ever move on--you get this feeling that’s a given, really, but you couldn’t describe where that feeling comes from.

you’ve been stumbling forward without your conscious input for several minutes now--you’re still no closer to the outdoors, as far as you can tell. maybe he doesn’t actually know where he’s going, either. although, you are walking in front of him--perhaps he’s just letting you wander mindlessly. you kind of doubt that to be the case: isn’t it more likely that he would redirect you if he really thought you were going the wrong way? yeah, yeah, he would.

but he’s always had trouble with directions--and he never said he knew where he was going--he’s been oddly silent, actually, hasn’t he? where’s your talkative Zack? (your heart thumps irregularly at that phrase. your Zack. don’t think about the implications of that one, Strife. just don’t.)

a soft baritone cuts through your thoughts--

the stars are this way, Cloud.

--calling out from somewhere in front of you. who said that? it kind of sounded like--but, no, you must be imagining things. and yet... you’re curious, now. you’d be lying if you said you didn’t want to follow, just to see. you love looking at the stars out in the country. the light pollution is so much less out here, and it’s just so much better than the night sky back in Midgar. c’mon, Cloud, you can make it just a few more steps, right? your legs don’t even hurt quite as bad as they used to. he’s still following, right? you check behind you for a second; just long enough to confirm that he’s there, ever the loyal hound at your heel. kind of a weird thought, but whatever. you brush it off and head towards where that voice came from.

you think you catch a glimpse of silver starlight far ahead of you, a single wisp of something you can’t quite identify but that seems, to you, to be recognisable. like you’re supposed to know what it is, but just... don’t.

you keep following, tugged gently by that unseen force, little silver flashes at the end of the hallway, that silky smooth baritone whispering sounds too soft to be truly words into your willing ears. you can’t look behind you. you don’t want to look at Zack. (why is that?) you can’t look at Zack. he’s afraid. why’s he afraid? you smell the fear rolling off of him in waves, you know he’s still following behind you as you lead him through the winding corridors. it’s a miracle no-one has spotted you yet--you must have a guardian angel or something.

yes, Cloud. something like that.

(you think you know whose voice that is; it’s a voice you’ve heard before, but... there’s something not right about it. not quite the same. softer, maybe; altered, changed.)

the stone walls give way to a small room, moonlight streaming in through a simple window carved straight into the rock. there’s a rug on the floor, old and hand-woven, and beyond it a doorway covered only by a bead curtain.

you’re almost there.

you can trust me, you know, that other voice whispers in your ear. then it dissipates, vanishing when Zack opens his mouth to suck in an awed breath.

shit, Cloud, he says, stepping through the beads almost reverently. c’mere ‘n’ look at all the stars.

(with the voice gone, you become aware of the pain in your legs once more, and it’s a struggle to not collapse on the spot--but you came all this way, you’re going to see the damned stars.)

you drag your tired, beaten body over the threshold, stepping out into the night air, and--

----

--and cordyce’fs, fron’ the cater’fillars. got it?

an unfamiliar voice. new person in the lab? not likely, the professor rarely hires new folks.

I always heard that had arsenic in it.

ah, you know this voice. it’s that lab tech, the one who’s been assigned directly to you. they’re a strange one--you’re just the test subject, the specimen, so it’s not like it matters if you know what’s going on, but ever since you met this one, something has been incredibly off.

cus it does, says the newbie.

they sound like they have their fingers in their mouth, or maybe a cigar. that can’t be right. lab techs aren’t allowed to smoke down here, not around you anyways--and these two are close by. hone your focus: how far exactly? close is anywhere from two centimeters to fifteen meters, and that’s not precise enough. (the professor punishes him when you’re not precise enough. better not risk it.)

three point three meters to your left stands the newbie, heart rate elevated in what you suspect to be fear. stone wall, bouncing their voice off towards the stone floor. the newbie’s weight is shifting, back and forth on their legs as they talk. listen carefully to their words, now: SOLDIERs can handle a little arsenic ‘foisoning, if what you’ve told ‘ne is true. they’re nervous, but their tone doesn’t betray it. nothing but confidence in their tone, as far as you can tell. (despite the professor’s best efforts, you’re still inadequate at distinguishing tone. just like the last specimen, apparently. you almost wish you knew what that meant. almost.)

between you and the newbie, however, is that lab tech. their breathing is--oddly familiar?--steady, even, but you can tell it’s forced. heart rate spiking. why? the newbie seems calm, in comparison. the lab tech is close enough to touch, if you weren’t strapped down. no, wait, you’re not strapped down. they must have hit you with another paralytic agent. not the first time they’ve done it, and likely not the last, either. just a few scant centimeters between you and the lab tech, at any rate: maybe ten at most? they’re faced away from you, and they’re big, which throws off your calculations a little bit. you’re eighty-five percent confident in your answer. the lab tech waits a long moment before speaking their reply. why? you hear the rustle of leather over knitwear, metal buckles clicking as they hit each other awkwardly in the movement.

you want me to feed him arsenic. their voice comes out flatter than you expected. don’t the techs normally jump at the chance to experiment on you? you’re the professor’s favorite specimen-slash-subject, and you’d kind of thought there to be some kind of curried-favors-system established. like in ancient Wutaian courts, or something. you’d distinctly gotten the impression that only the professor’s favorite assistants got to be lab techs working on you, and yet here this tech is, acting like they don’t want to feed you arsenic? not that you particularly want to be fed arsenic, but you’ve long since learned that what you want is irrelevant.

not really feeding when it’s tea, the newbie muses, half under their breath.

tea, whatever. why the fuck would I do that? the lab tech is actually growling now. (at this point, you’re pretty sure you’ve misunderstood the social dynamic at play, and you have no clue how to correct your understanding from here.)

you want hin’ to live, yeah? not ‘de in ‘fain?

of fuckin’ course I do, what kinda stupid... oh. ...fine, have it your stupid way. if he dies, though--

yeah, yeah, you’ll co’ne ‘dack here and kill ‘ne. I know.

weird, that almost sounded like resignation in the newbie’s voice. like they do actually know what this lab tech may do. you sure as hell don’t; every moment you’ve been awake with this lab tech (which hasn’t been very many moments) has been unusual in some way. you’ve even been outside with this one, which is, as far as you’re aware, a complete first. also, this is an awful lot of talking for the lab techs--don’t they usually just do their tests on you in silence? why is this newbie even bothering with explaining their actions?

scratch that. why do you care what these lab techs are up to? it’s all the same: test after test, pain with each one. you don’t have a symbol for arsenic, so the warning you’re plotting out will have to be a little less specific than you’d like, but it should be good enough anyhow--oh.

oh. you forgot again.

there’s no point leaving a message for him to warn him of what they’ll do. he’s dead. don’t you remember? or--no, you know he’s dead. (they would not cast curaga on a corpse.)

the lab techs are still talking, unfortunately. they seem to have changed topics, moved on from the arsenic test to some other subject.

I noticed he talks so’neti’nes. what’s that a’dout?

(wait--you were sure they were talking about you. but you never talk. you haven’t spoken a word in the labs, not unless forced to by the professor; not after that first time. you learned your lesson fast that first time.)

I don’t know, the lab tech tells the newbie, sounding... befuddled.

I don’t know, they repeat, forlorn, and you really would like to know what they’re talking about, now.

(surely not you. not you. but then--who’s being fed arsenic, or whatever? not... not him, right? wait, no, no. they never call you he in the labs. always it, only ever it, because you’re just a specimen, just a test subject, not a person, never a person--did they call him him? you don’t remember. did they? did they? who are the techs talking about?)

the first time he did it, I couldn’t understand a word he said, the lab tech continues. every word is mumbled to hell ‘n’ back, ‘n’ he gets all weird when I try ‘n’ touch him like that--remember a couple weeks ago, when ya found us out on the overlook at three in the mornin’? ‘n’ I wouldn’t tell ya what we were doin’ out there at the time--well. 一 took us out there. stumblin’ ‘n’ barely standin’ upright ‘n’ I was freaked out, man, cus he don’t just walk like that--for fucks’ sake the last time he’d talked to me was, shit, the first week we were here?

so, it’s not an often occurrence, then.

you hear the soft drag of hair over cloth as the lab tech shakes their head in silence.

every time I tried to hold him on the whole walk there--took forever cus he was movin’ so slow--he just hissed at me, like, like, some kinda feral cat, ‘n’ it scared me so bad, August. it didn’t use to be like this. it didn’t use to be like this, I’m gonna kill the sonuvabitch who did this to him if it’s the last thing I do.

(you wonder, again, who they’re talking about.)

you wish he were here. he would know what they were talking about.

where is he? is he really dead? could you have killed him?

they’ve started talking again, or maybe they never stopped. you tune it out. there’s more important issues at stake, here: your friend, for instance. your head hurts. what were you doing? the techs were talking about something, something important. you were supposed to be listening, weren’t you? where is he? why isn’t he here? how long has it been since you last saw him?

they wouldn’t use curaga on a corpse.

(they wouldn’t use curaga on a corpse.)

...what corpse? c’mon, 一, what corpse? there’s no one else in the room here, just you and the lab techs, and the lab techs don’t fucking count. wherever he is, it’s not here. he’s behind another one-way mirror like always, being made to watch just like they always do to you, c’mon, you’ve been here long enough to know that, right? you’re not that stupid, are you? no, you’re not so stupid as to forget how this place works, not so easily. c’mon, 一. this isn’t even hard. pay attention.

if he really were dead, you’d be, too.

or did you forget already?

you told the professor: you told the professor! you told the professor! you told him, you made a promise, you swore an oath, 一, you’re not going to break your oath are you? are you? you swore an oath--!

...they will know you for what you are. warlock that you are. oathbreaker. odin will have your head for this, you know.

if you could move, your throat would already be open, and you would be no more.

----

a month in heaven.

Zack doesn’t call it heaven, but you know what it is you’re leaving nonetheless.

you weren’t awake for most of it.

clean food, clean water, clean clothes, clean bed, clean hair, clean bodies. and Zack is walking away, has already walked away, has you supported with one shoulder as you walk away with him. you woke up this morning in another campsite, Cosmo Canyon far behind you, and realised then that it was over.

he won’t tell you why beyond that you have to keep moving. Shinra is chasing you, you think. you don’t know why. Zack won’t talk about it much, and you’re not awake most of the time anyway.

it’s March tomorrow.

Zack said so.

he’s caught more lizards for dinner, and left you by the campfire for a little bit earlier while he wandered around looking for caterpillars, or something like that. you offered to look with him. he was very insistent that you stay put and not exert yourself too much, and. well. you are tired.

the lizards don’t smell as good as your ma’s cooking when they’re roasting, impaled on a makeshift spit, over the fire. Zack apologises for the boring flavor, tearing your food into little bitty chunks before handing it to you. you ask him why he does that. he doesn’t answer.

the snow should be melting at home, by now, and you’re sad to miss it. Zack gets weird when you ask about what happened at Nibelheim, and when you try to think about it for yourself you get nauseous. you don’t know why.

he set up camp in a cave tonight, put himself between you and the cave entrance. you’re too nervous to fall asleep, your mind racing with questions you know he won’t answer. maybe he can’t answer, or maybe he’s tried and you’ve just... forgotten. or had another episode and he’s decided against trying again. why is Shinra after the both of you? what did you do? what happened in those four years, the ones you’ve lost? is your ma okay? why did you have to kill Sephiroth?

what happened in Nibelheim?

...and are you sure you want to know the answer?

you’re still waiting for his breathing to even out when the fatigue grabs hold of you, yanking you into the inky black depths of sleep by force.

that night, you dream only of fire.

Chapter Text

partial timeline:

[ μ ] – εγλ 1959. Shinra discovers mako energy

[ μ ] – εγλ 1960. Shinra chooses Nibelheim (small mountain town on the western continent) as research base

[ μ ] – εγλ 1968. first mako reactor built in Nibelheim

[ μ ] – εγλ 1969. Shinra begins construction of Midgar

[ μ ] – εγλ 1976. Midgar completed

[ μ ] – εγλ 1977. Jenova discovered; Project Jenova (?) begins (details redacted?)

[ μ ] – εγλ 1978. Vincent Valentine (Turk) goes missing near Nibelheim; Project Jenova update (details redacted?)

[ μ ] – εγλ 1979. Project Jenova update (details redacted?)

[ μ ] – εγλ 2000. Cloud Strife (from Nibelheim, age 14) joins SOLDIER cadet program

[ ν ] – εγλ 0002. Cloud (cadet, 16) + Zack (first class, 18) + Sephiroth (first class, 23) go missing in Nibelheim; Shinra announces them all KIA less than a month later. Project Jenova update (details redacted?)

[ ν ] – εγλ 0006. two specimens escape one of Hojo’s labs and are spotted in Nibelheim--descriptions match Cloud + Zack

well, shit.

Kunsel lets out a long sigh through their mouth, looking over the notes they’ve accumulated so far.

this... this isn’t good.

----

you’re dreaming again, like you often are. you’re back in the reactor, looking up the stairs he just ran up. in the dream it is different. he screams in agony, just beyond the silver arch emblazoned with a name you do not recognise. you race up the stairs after him, coming upon a bloody scene in the other room. what is that, suspended in that tank? the general holds aloft a severed head, his ōdachi sticking out of your friend’s unmoving body. there’s so much blood, red and mako-green alike dripping onto the catwalk, coating the general and your friend. pulsing from the severed head. a woman’s head, you think, or maybe not--it twists, morphs in his hands, looks at you with its cold, dead, unseeing eyes.

come home to mother, it says, and it speaks with the voice of a thousand dying stars, with the voice of your grandma and your ma and the general and your friend and the girl, with the voice of everyone you’ve ever known. it speaks, and when it speaks, it makes no sound. your ears ring with the weight of it.

come home, my son. come home.

you are but your mother’s son.

you are helpless but to obey.

when she blinks, you see a flash of white feathers, smell a burst of jasmine. of tiger lily and daffodil, of another floral scent you don’t quite recognise; and then the dream shifts, changes--the head is gone. the general is gone. your friend, too, is gone, and with all of it the blood, and you’re left alone in a austere white room. you tilt your gaze up, drawn inexorably to the skies--nebulae swirl against a dark black sky, all the colors of the rainbow dancing amongst the stars. a snake circles, lazily--jörmungandr, the world serpent, unhooks his mouth from his tail and begins to swallow the stars in great gulps. the end of the world is nigh.

you’re okay with that, you think.

(it isn’t as if you have a choice.)

you wake, still waiting for the snake to swallow you.

----

you know damn well that nothing short of being beheaded could really kill you. the professor makes the lab techs keep phoenix down on them, and every time your heart has stopped it’s been fixed pretty fast. whether you wanted that or not. they need you alive, apparently; need you able to complete the tests the professor has set out for you. need you to make a suitable replacement for the specimen you unwittingly killed.

you don’t know what the professor means by that.

you know, at some point, you were not in the labs. you don’t remember terribly much from before the labs, though. something about a boy with the face of an angel; or maybe, when you sift through your older memories, looming figures with whips and belts. your mother’s voice, crying out in pain. a deep-seated fear that comes from being small and knowing you have no way out of the horrors you’re forced to bear witness to, forced to endure. by comparison, the labs aren’t that much worse.

you can endure anything. you know you can, because you’ve had to, because you’re a filthy little cockroach that better men’s boots never managed to properly crush, because you’re too worthless to even die properly like a real man.

(you’re not a real man.)

it doesn’t matter, then, when the lab techs force you back onto the running track, wrapping the manacles back around your wrists. your pale, skinny wrists that are almost too small for the manacles; your feet are tired and slipping and you can’t keep up the punishing pace forced on you. the metal cuts into your skin, deep enough to draw blood, making it easier for your wrists to slip out of their bindings and it takes all of your remaining strength to hold on and not let your face hit the treads.

your face hit the tread last time, and the techs didn’t grab you in time to keep your cheek from being ripped apart.

it grew back within an hour of being submerged in the tank again.

then, to top it off, they punished him for your failures, like they always do--you don’t remember what the punishment was. it could have been anything. they might have ground his face into the treads, next, or whipped his back raw and bloody, or cut up the soles of his feet and forced him to walk around on the gravel in the combat arena, or any number of other punishments you’ve seen him endure for you. because of you. they blend together after a point. everything does.

this time, you succeed in keeping your grip on the handles, the manacles cutting back into your wrists even as the wounds begin to close up on their own. there’s a lot of blood. you wonder who will clean it up, if they don’t make him do it. the professor is bad, but the techs are almost worse: they have a sadistic streak bigger than the professor’s and they know they can get away with doing anything they want to your friend. well, just about anything; they’re not allowed to kill him, and you’ve never seen them rape him. doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, but if it does it’s out of your sight. not like it matters what they do to him: you’re powerless to stop them, and the professor doesn’t care as long as it doesn’t interfere with his data on you.

if you hadn’t already learnt your lesson about speaking out of turn, you might tell the professor that anything done to him will affect the data collected on you. you’re stressed, you’re tired, you’re worried about him--they have to force-feed you because you won’t eat, won’t choke down the meals the professor wants to give you to balance out whatever they see in your bloodwork. you don’t sleep but in the tanks. you’re underperforming, and the professor uses that against you, uses that against him, tells you to do better or he’ll suffer the consequences but it’s just a continual downward spiral--there’s a brief moment when the treadmill slows down long enough for you to regain your footing, and then it’s back on its maddening, punishing pace. you wonder how they’ll punish him for your failures this time. you’ll find out when the test is over.

you’ve never quite measured up to the professor’s standard. not once. everything about you is inferior to his prize specimen, but his prize specimen is dead at your hands and he wants to know how. if you could conjure up an answer that would satisfy him, you would, if only to see if he’d let you go. your feet hurt on the treadmill. you’re panting. long-form cardio has been a weakness of yours for a long time, mostly because you suck at breathing appropriately. you falter again, yanking yourself upright at the last second again. something gives in your right arm, something that isn’t supposed to make that sound. it hurts. you bite down the scream forming in your throat and keep running, because the treadmill hasn’t stopped, and if you stop now they’ll just shock you about it and add more punishments onto him later.

you wish, not for the first nor last time, that it were easy for you to die.

then, at least, you’d be free. until then, you have no choice but to keep running, don’t you?

don’t you?

----

you’re not very far out from Cosmo Canyon when hot, arid rock begins to turn to cold, kind of damp rock. at least, you don’t think you are. you’re not sure. you’re never sure of anything, anymore.

how long has it been, since you last saw the professor? long enough that you have to wonder when he’ll track you down. not long enough for you to believe he won’t. you know better.

they always put you back in the tank, eventually.

you’re not sure who you’re with right now. you’re not sure who you are, either; head all scrambled and screwed up on the inside. you were... you belonged to the professor, you know that. belong, maybe. and you... had a... a friend? you had... you had a friend, in the labs, right? didn’t you?

...that can’t be right.

you were always alone in the labs.

just you, the professor, and his assistants, and the scalpels. no mirrors. no privacy. clothes off, discarded every time he wanted to perform another test on you. then the tanks (plural? there was only one) (there was someone else in the other tank, you know there was; who was it?) and then after the tanks the... the...

back to the tables, right? always back to the tables. where else was there? where else could you have gone? you were trapped down there, in the professor’s labs. trapped for years. and now that you’re out, you won’t go back. you’ll die on your own sword before you go back.

(sword?)

(what sword?)

who’s carrying you?

...what were you doing at Cosmo Canyon, again? you know you were there. it’s the only town out in the badlands region at all, and you were in a town, out in the badlands region. you know that. there was... someone was there, you think, with you. probably the same someone who’s--oh, oh, you remember now. you know what happened, don’t you?

it was the boy, his boy, is his boy, (he’s dead) (who’s he?) and you’re--you got injured? your body won’t respond to your commands you’re--there was that voice, in the reactor, and--no. no, that isn’t right. you don’t know the boy, but he did, and the boy killed him. the boy? no, he’s your best friend. he’s your only friend, right? right. everyone else is gone. (dead.) (gone?) no wonder you can’t walk, you have a splitting headache. like when you come out of the mako and all the lights are on too bright and you get a migraine. (like when they drag you out of the tank again.) (gone? where did they go?) (no, one of them’s not dead. no, but--no. they made it out, you have to believe that.) (you saw them in the reactor, remember?) the pressure is building in your head, throbbing just out of sync with your pulse. you swear you know him, the one carrying you, whose shoulder you lay your head against. the edge of his pauldron digs into your temple and you wish he would take it off.

(he’s gotten so much stronger since you saw him last.) (he hasn’t taken a break all day, not since you rose at dawn.) (you’ll walk until dusk, and then and only then will he put you down while he goes hunting for something to eat.)

hah, imagine that. the professor never let you eat anything he hadn’t already personally signed off on. but it was all you’d ever known, wasn’t it? (your ma’s stew that she would make in the winter was your favorite, still is, maybe, but she’s--oh gods, she’s--) (...it was good stew. you remember.) (oh, it’s starting to make a bit of sense, now.)

you’re not who you thought you were.

you’re not 一.

or, well, you are, but there’s someone else who isn’t, and--

you’re not sure who you are, but you’re someone else.

someone whose name slips your tongue, whose life lines up a little too well with 一’s. what are you doing here?

what did the professor do to you? it didn’t--it didn’t use to be like this, did it? you didn’t use to have anyone else in your head, did you? did you?

this isn’t the first time this has happened.

you’ve heard the voices before, but you always assumed they were not real. you ignored the memory lapses and the empty gaps in your mind, the way you would space out sometimes after the war, when they would touch you without warning you first or when you thought too hard about your childhood.

and when the memories do come, unbidden, you’ve always suddenly felt so tired, unable to focus on the blurry shapes of the men in dark clothing, faces covered, the sound of your mother’s voice still ringing in your ears. the smell of the shotgun when she found out. the way she never explained herself to anyone, not even to you, because you didn’t remember. you still don’t.

and even if you did, it wouldn’t matter. there is no revenge to be had. you’re just a powerless pawn, a puppet, a weapon in someone else’s arsenal to be used when necessary and discarded afterwards. all your status as his project ever afforded you was pain. as long as he lives, he will never stop searching for you.

and why would he? you’re his prize specimen after what you did at the reactor, as he loves to remind you. you think that might be one of the only things he loves in the whole of gaia. your personhood means nothing to him. your comfort, your joy, your pain, your tears, your screams--they all slide off him like oil on water, never sticking, never being acknowledged except merely to be brushed off. you don’t even remember the brunt of it, do you? there’s only a hole where the memories should be; a hole ringed with burnt flesh, eaten through by acid. someone has taken the actual memories away from you, leaving you with the aftershocks of it all. the flinches, the nightmares, the panic attacks with no real source. the blackouts.

just who are you, really? there’s a name you’ve been called before, but it doesn’t ring right in your ears. all you hear is static nowadays when it’s said to you. meaningless bubbles of sound that float through your head, riddled with gaps as it is, and then float right out again. oil on water.

your name has fallen out from one of these gaps, you realise. you don’t know to where, or you would dive to get it. there are too many voices and yet it is utterly, completely silent. the silence is blessed. the silence is cursed. in here, you can only hear yourself, and even that sense is fading. there is too much overlap. where are you, really? you can’t move. you can’t feel, only the cold around you, and it is so cold. there’s a hole in your chest where a sword once was.

the mako healed it over, though, and with it the scar you might have had. the professor never liked his specimens to have such unsightly marks. you wonder how the boy kept his, the one on his cheek, when you’re sure the professor did his utmost to keep that from happening. you can’t bear to have kept the scar on your ribs, though, so what does it matter how the boy did it?

and you understand the impulse, really, you do. the desire to inflict pain upon yourself is a desire well known to you. if you weren’t under such strict surveillance all the time, you might have tried it yourself. might have learned how to make the scars stick if that would not have earned you the wrath and ire of the professor, a wrath you have always trembled before. when he calls you to heel, you do. you know no other way.

and during the war, even when there were no longer those eyes scrutinising you every moment of every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year, your newfound friends--if you could have called them that, then--worried over you, cared so deeply about you, that they would waste their energy casting healing spells you did not need if they so much as saw a drop of blood on your form. it was usually your blood, and it was always your fault. enemies rarely got close enough to bleed onto you.

at least by the time you met him, your best friend, you no longer needed to learn how to be cared for. you only needed to learn how to let him care for you. him, with his boundless energy and his bright smiles that you now know hid the depths of his grief; him, who taught you something new about yourself every moment he was near you; him, who was not your first friend but maybe will be your last; him, him, him. and even still he carries you. even after everything, even after everything.

you really don’t deserve him, do you? you don’t. you may never. he’s been through so much, all because of you. the professor--in the labs--the punishments for every failure--all of it your fault. all of it your fault, and even as he lays you with tender care down against the damp rock, even as he brushes your hair out of your eyes (your eyes that are closed, or perhaps just blind), even as he whispers something in your ear that you do not understand and then walks away--even as he cares for you, you know you don’t deserve any of it, not a single moment. and he won’t stop. you’re afraid he would die for you if he had to. you wish you could tell him he shouldn’t. you wish he knew you weren’t worth that much.

after all, what use is a broken weapon?

what use is a broken trooper? a broken specimen?

and you are far beyond broken, you know.

and yet as broken as you are, he comes back with some mushrooms that he patiently, tenderly feeds you. sips of water from some canteen. he covers your nose with a loose scarf, to block the smell, before he lights the fire. he has a small bag with a couple of pieces of metal cookware--a pan, a kettle, some kind of small collapsible stand, another canteen--that rattle around when he carries you. he got the kettle in Cosmo Canyon, you think. the second canteen too. the pan was from the manor, back in Nibelheim. (was it?) (you don’t remember much of Nibelheim, anymore.)

too many bad memories, all of them now eaten away by the acid.

whatever he’s cooking on the fire smells bad. you heard the splashing of water as he poured out one of the canteens into the kettle, and you know it was the kettle because of the way the sound got higher-pitched as the space for it to echo diminished. if it were the pan, you’d have heard the water sizzle as it overflowed the pan and fell into the fire, instead. he doesn’t like tea. why does he have the kettle? and it’s late at night, so he shouldn’t be making coffee. he sleeps when you sleep, you think. if it’s safe enough. does he even have coffee grounds to make coffee with?

you didn’t think he liked coffee. or was it that he could never drink it in the mornings? ah, yes, you remember now.

he doesn’t drink it because it makes him sleepy, right. so, if he’s making coffee now, then you know the sun must have set because you’ve made camp for the night (unless you’re travelling under the cover of darkness again--are you? you can’t see, won’t open your eyes. you don’t know.) if he’s making coffee, though, it’s the worst coffee you’ve ever smelled--smells like dogshit, like rot and the earth around it.

notes of ginseng, you think.

yeah, that’s what it is, alongside something else--something bitter and unpleasant on your tongue as he pours liquid into your mouth several minutes later, and you choke it down because he would never feed you something meant to hurt you. he would kill himself before he did that. his voice, hushed in your ear, tells you it’s okay, tells you he knows it sucks but you have to drink it anyways, it’ll help you get better. it’s supposed to help you get better.

the taste is reminiscent of a traditional Wutaian herbal blend, one someone used to make for you many years ago now. someone you loved. someone else whose name has fallen through the gaps, and you’re not getting it back anytime soon. when it was made for you, it was sweeter, softer on the palate. this is harsh and overly strong, brewed in an old iron kettle and metallic for it. not his fault, you know.

he’s doing his best, as he always is. you just have to hope that his best is enough.

----

there’s that presence again, persistent and pushing at the back of their mind--they stand up from their small desk, pushing the chair back as they do. some days, they consider trying for a promotion, if only to get a bigger desk.

not that they would, of course. they’re safest right where they are, for now at least--second class suits them just fine. not directly in the line of sight of him, which means their little secret can stay a secret. it’s still a bit of a wonder to them how they got away with hiding that during their previous rounds of mako treatments, when they made third and then again when they made second, but really it’s all their hard-won skills in deceit that did it.

they have no desire to go back under his knife, however, so trying for first is off the table.

the presence pushes again, insistent, and they sigh, making for the single-person bathroom at the end of the hall. they’re overdue for a break anyways, and it wouldn’t surprise them if their visitor were aware of this. she often is, chiding them for not taking better care of themself.

hey, they whisper into the empty air as soon as the bathroom door is closed and locked behind them.

she wanted me to see you, their guest replies, her voice nothing more than a faint suggestion in their ears, her words loud and clear in their mind.

what for, this time?

I’m not sure, she admits, a trace of defeat in her voice. a... warning, I think? I’m not sure what about, though.

why can’t she tell me herself? they ask, the mirror showing a frown on their face, the only feature visible beneath their helmet.

it’s... complicated, she answers. vague. well, it can’t be helped. goddess knows they haven’t been entirely truthful with her about themself; she’s certainly entitled to her own secrets.

they wish they could be honest about why they can talk to her like this, but the Turks are always watching her, even if their boss never lets them into the church proper. that’s not a risk they can take.

okay, I’ll keep an eye open, they promise. let me know if anything happens.

I’ll keep writing him letters, she says by way of answer, and with that she leaves a ghost of a smile in the mirror’s reflection and is gone.

they sigh, dropping their head into their hands as they stand in front of the sink. well, might as well actually take a bathroom break before they get back to work. hopefully their other contacts have something else for them--getting to Nibelheim is turning out to be harder than they thought, as even their first exploratory inquiry drew attention, too much and of the wrong kind. they can’t take that risk, can’t push too hard lest they be discovered by the wrong eyes. (all the eyes are the wrong eyes except for his, but he is still far beyond their reach for the moment. shit.)

they’ve never liked leaving things to other people, much less to the whims of fate. fear sits heavy on their heart.

they don’t get much done for the rest of the morning, and when lunch-break hits, they take a monster-killing mission out in the slums and stop thinking about it.

----

you’re still out of it, you know that. he must have heard something you didn’t, or maybe you did hear it and just didn’t process it, because he puts you down somewhere and walks off. it’s too bright out to be nighttime. he takes the sword.

well, fuck.

it’s been--fuck, how long has it been? you have a headache, dehydration maybe. or just thinking. thinking’s a real strain, these days. your body aches--has it always done that? is it new, or had you just not noticed? both are equally plausible--and you wish, fruitlessly, for some painkillers. you almost miss that doctor. almost, key word being, because you don’t miss doctors, as a rule. doctors aren’t safe. doctors, lab techs, assistants, nurses, professors. none of them are safe, not anymore.

(maybe they never were.)

you’re tracing out the symbol for him over and over in the dirt beneath your hand, waiting for him to come back. if he said where he was going, you missed it. you miss a lot, these days. where are you? it’s still springtime, you can smell it in the air. heavy, rich soil. flowers, just barely beginning to bloom--you’re farther south than you realised if flowers are blooming this early in the spring. close to the equator. you must have passed the rain shadow of the badlands. you smell rain coming, not the sparse kind that only comes once in a blue moon out in the dry rock of the canyons, but the heavy kind, a true storm roiling on the horizon. you must be on the edge of the jungle.

he’s from the jungle, isn’t he? gods, he’s not stupid enough to intentionally go home, is he? that’s how you get caught. that’s how the both of you end back up in the professor’s clutches, you know that. maybe you’re just passing by. fuck, but you wish you remembered what he told you before he walked off--you’re useless like this, slumped against some rock face or maybe a very smooth, very broad tree (it doesn’t feel like bark digging into your back)--you can’t get up, can’t run after him to tell him how stupid of an idea this is. he better come back. he needs to come back.

there’s dirt trapped under your fingernail at this point. gods, they’re getting long. when’s the last time you cut them? okay, bad question. when’s the last time he cut them? uh, you’re--you’re not sure. probably that town, with that doctor. he cut your hair then, too, you think. he must have. it isn’t tickling the back of your neck the way it was, and it isn’t in a ponytail either--you’d feel the tension of it if it were. you’re grateful, now, that your hair has always grown slowly. saved you money on haircuts in Midgar. that, and you would do it yourself, cause it isn’t like you gave a fuck if it was choppy or stupid-looking or whatever. it just had to fit under your helmet and not tickle the back of your neck and you were good.

shit, where is he?

you ask that question a lot these days, you think. any time he’s out of your sight, really. ah--your eyes were closed--you crack one open, slower than molasses, look around the space. it’s green, so green. definitely near the jungle, then, no doubt about it.

oh, the light is fading. it must be later than you’d assumed--how long have you lain here, unmoving against the stone? for it is stone you lie against--the grit of it cuts into your back, a vine creeping down its rugged surface off to your left. you think. it’s only visible in your periphery, and as per usual, your body resists your attempts to move it. turning your head to get a better look just isn’t happening. eh, you’ve accepted that long ago by now; it doesn’t faze you anymore. you must be on the very edge of the jungle. you wonder what it is he heard that had him running off and leaving you here; it was probably something he felt he had to fight--you know he doesn’t want to put you in any danger if at all possible. it’s sweet. you’re dead weight. it makes sense.

the wind whistles through the trees, up on the other side of the rockface. must be a cliff. can’t be too tall, though; the rustling of branches is too loud for that. you don’t hear any monsters or animals--he picked a good spot to leave you, you realise. he’s getting good at this. you think you remember a time, maybe a few weeks ago, maybe longer--time is not your friend, anymore, and neither is memory--when he’d had to leave you somewhere for a while, immobile as you always are, and something had come a-hunting in the area. had almost gotten you, if he hadn’t rushed in at the last second. would have. you remember his panic more saliently than the actual encounter. you had no words to soothe him then--no symbols, from the glass, to draw against his brown skin, sickly and discolored. you’re ill. you’re both ill, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

another noise--someone approaching? it sounds like footsteps, like footsteps too quiet for anyone unenhanced to hear, despite the rough terrain. someone well-trained, then. him? perhaps. but he would announce his presence if it were him--wouldn’t he? unless--if he were on the hunt, perhaps not. what could he be stalking, here in the cool shade of evening against the bottom of the cliff? do you know? you didn’t hear anything that might serve as prey.

for a moment, the rational, healthy fear of being discovered has not yet caught up to you, and you do not think to be afraid of the person who is not him when they appear in the corner of your eye. then reality sets back in and you can’t help but let out a shaky exhale--who is that there you see?

short, in a dark suit. auburn hair in the low evening light. thin, unassuming, but you remember what the suits mean, and you wonder if this is about to be your end. not like you could do much if it were. the figure does not approach you--they stay largely out of your direct line of sight, clearly choosing to ignore you--why? for what purpose? you’re wanted, stolen property; isn’t it their job to return you, and if they can’t, terminate you?

the figure recedes, a wave pulling back before it crashes upon the shore. you hear them walk off, back out of immediate earshot. the jungle does well to conceal the noises they make, so quiet and stealthy but not quite to you; you can’t track them very far out and they’re gone after a few seconds of travel.

you’re once again alone. you’ll have to tell him about this when he comes back, if you stay awake long enough to do so. you feel exhaustion creeping up on the edges of your awareness--you can power through it, you believe in yourself, you can--your fingers go back to tracing his name, over and over, into the dirt beneath you. you think it’s his name. it’s a character in his native tongue, and it means him, so it has to be his name. right?

but if that’s true, why can’t you remember his name? what’s his name? what’s his name?

the footsteps come back, just as quiet, but accompanied now by a set of tires. tires supporting something heavy. wide wheels, rugged rubber, made for off-roading--only three of them. a tricycle?--oh, it’s--it comes into view, being walked along by the figure. they’re stronger even than you’d thought, given the suit. the motorcycle they have must weigh several hundred pounds, and here they are, walking it fairly quietly over patches of grass and bare rock to rest in front of you. it has a sidecar.

(huh.)

you wonder what’s up with that.

i hope this helps, the figure whispers forlornly. you don’t recognise the voice, high and feminine. you wonder what it could mean, that they seem to be helping the two of you--could they be on your side? surely not, they work for the company, the company you belong to--but he’s always made friends everywhere he goes. maybe this is a favor owed, or a kindness for a friend. the figure walks off without another word, disappearing into the rustling branches and distances beyond your sight. you expect you’ll never see them again.

----

it’s always someone different, every time they take you to that room. every single time, another face. another voice. another set of questions you can’t answer. it doesn’t matter who they are--you cut them down just the same, and then they take the bloody remains away, and that’s the last you see of them.

their eyes, though, are all the same: in every one of their eyes you see him.

green iris, slit pupil, staring you down. every time. and every time, you cut them down, and every time, something burns in your chest, that spot between your ribs, and every time, you see that blade again, feel the phantom blood trickle down your stomach and your spine. every time.

they scream and plead with you, at you, sometimes. you never answer. you can’t. it isn’t that they cast silence over you, or that you’ve been gagged--it’s just that, when you see those eyes, you lose your grasp of language entirely; you can feel the way you start to drown in them, in the fear and the panic and the grief--yours, or his? his, or yours? you can never tell. you never found out.

you remember the way he looked at you, in the reactor. there was so much fear there. you saw yourself in those slit green eyes--saw the flames as your home burned--saw tears, streaked down his cheeks. why would he have been crying? the way he turned to look at you when you stabbed his side with the buster sword. there was something in his eyes, there, and you see it, that something, every time in theirs; why? why? what did you see, what do you see again? it’s reflected again in their eyes, those tears welling up as you hack and slash with the buster sword. none of them sound like him, though. none of them bleed the same, though blood is blood and his was no different than the rest’s.

you worshipped him, once. he was your hero, your salvation, an angel come down from on high to save you. to make something good out of you, a real man, maybe. you don’t know. you were trapped--this town a prison, your mother your only true ally--and then you saw him, someone to look up to. someone powerful. someone you wanted to become. you never were good enough for that, though.

you didn’t know much about the war, before. you don’t now. the arena smells like flowers and blood. pink petals, floating down from elegant branches, stained and dripping with viscous dark red--it nauseates you, but you have to keep going. you know what happens if you don’t. they let another lookalike out into the arena. this one fights better than the last, but you swing the sword stronger than they can counter nevertheless, and all too soon it’s once again over.

you think, strangely, that you crave that blade betwixt your ribs. the fire. you lost your mother to his destruction, and you can never forgive him. he died for that. died for hurting your friends. but not for the town. you don’t miss that town. in some sick, twisted, perverse way, he freed you, didn’t he? you prayed and prayed and the gods delivered. the gods are cruel, fickle things, and you should have known they would name their price.

you wanted out, and you paid in blood.

and here you are, still paying off that debt--once the professor has decided you’ve done enough for this round, you’ll be pulled out of here, sedated and hosed down and put back in the tank. you don’t know when you’ll see those eyes again. those green, green, green eyes, the way the slit pupil rounds in surprise when you drive the buster sword through them. he wasn’t surprised. he just looked lost, and then he burned, burned like your home like your mother like your childhood--cleansing, holy, destructive, meteoric--and knocked you down and walked away--

like the nothingness that you are, he left you on the ground.

(they always did call you a cockroach.)

his eyes fade once more before you. you’ve seen it a dozen, a hundred times now, the way they turn to glassy orbs before the bodies dissolve back into the lifestream and return to the planet from whence they came--it’s never quite the same, always hollow. leaves you aching. you didn’t want to kill him. you didn’t understand. you wanted to ask him why--ask the gods why you had to pay with your mother’s life, ask him why you had to pay with the lives of your friends, of the only people who ever tried to love you--but he turned, and when your angel turned he saw, and when he saw he killed.

(you always did want him to notice you.)

and it’s all meaningless now, anyway. you’re still trapped. you changed one prison for another and lost everything good on the way. you have forsworn the gods, for they have forsaken you. why pray to that which does not care? why pray to that which only takes and takes and takes? you killed your angel in a fit of vengeful violence. if they send you another, it will be only to take your life in recompense. the body dissolves.

they all have his eyes, but none of them look at you the way he did, at the end. none of them see you, and none of them could ever tell you what it was he saw, when he ran his blade through your chest. when you flung him into the mako far below. when you killed him, when you thought you might finally die yourself, one final salvific act from your own personal angel.

the professor casts sleepga on the arena, when the last body has dissipated. you’re out before your limp form even hits the ground.

----

you wake to the rumble of the highway, rocking you back and forth in the sidecar of Zack’s motorcycle. you haven’t gone riding with him in months, have you? there’s a crick in your neck. and when did he get a sidecar, anyway? you always rode holding onto him, clutched against his back as the wind whipped around you. ...he must have gotten it because you were asleep. you’re only half-awake now, the whistling in your ears waking you up more as you go along.

the road is straight, too straight to be Midgar--where are you?

--oh.

you remember now, jolting as the memories crash over you in waves, timed to the uneven texture of the road beneath the wheels. you’d nearly forgotten. how could you forget?

Zack is paying attention to the road, and doesn’t notice that you’re awake. that’s--well, that’s good, objectively speaking. gives you time to process in silence, you suppose, although you miss him. is it weird to miss someone who’s right next to you?

his hair whips freely in the wind, no helmet in sight. you’re both delighted at the sight and mournful that he’s not obeying best safety practices--seriously, Zack, haven’t you lectured at him enough about this? he’s supposed to wear his helmet every time in case he crashes. but you long to run your fingers through those surprisingly soft black spikes--

--yeah, it’s definitely weird. you’re being weird, Strife, you’re being weird. stop that. just... stop that. think normal thoughts about your best friend, okay?

there must have been only one helmet, because you realise with a start that it’s on your head. gods--you’re touched, really, by his selflessness; but also, damn that boy is stupid! he’s driving! you’re in the sidecar! you have a seatbelt--wait, you do have a seatbelt, right? you guys aren’t--shiiiiiiit.

Zaaaaaaack, you moan, annoyed. where’s the fuckin’ seatbelt.

with the loudness of the wind and the unprotected nature of his ears, you’d be surprised if he can hear you at all.

he does, though. (of course he does. why did you ever think otherwise?)

Cloud? Cloud! we’re pullin’ over, just a sec, buddy! he calls over his shoulder, doing the smart thing and keeping his eyes on the road.

you’re pretty sure he’s on a raised portion of the road, so you’re not sure where he’s gonna pull off to--and isn’t it odd that there aren’t any other cars on the road? it must be early morning--the light has been getting steadily brighter as you go along, even though it’s still kind of dark out. shit, you’re driving due east--he’s gonna be blinded by the sun in his eyes without any kind of helmet or shield to protect him! all right, that’s it. he’s taking the helmet; it has a visor.

it’s a good couple minutes, maybe longer, before Zack finds an exit to pull off on. you very nearly nod off to the rumble of the road in the meantime--you’re so tired; gaia fuck. odin’s shiny backside, you are tired. you’re always tired. you’re tired of being tired, and you know it shows on your face when he finally does find an exit and pulls off, stops on the shoulder of the exit right there, doesn’t even bother driving more than a few meters away from the highway itself before he turns and looks at you, stares those violently violet and green eyes directly into your soul and sees you.

it’s piercing. it’s breaking you, because he can see something in you that you don’t, that you can’t, and you don’t know what it is. the helmet’s visor isn’t even down, and you can’t make yourself pull it down now just to block his gaze. you pull it off.

hey, Cloud, what’d ya wanna talk about? his voice is so kind it hurts. your heart aches underneath your ribs, and you wish you didn’t know why.

where’s the damn seatbelt? you force out, trying your best to to let the crushing weight of your feelings show in your voice. it’s probably not working well.

thank the gods he’s stupid, though, because he doesn’t notice.

oh, uh, Cissnei didn’t give us a sidecar with one, sorry, Zack says.

Cissnei? the name rings a bell, but not a loud one.

friend of mine, you met her at my birthday party? if you remember that? fuck, he looks so... mournful, or something, a kind of strange grief shining in his eyes. like he thinks you might actually not remember that.

(of course you remember his eighteenth birthday party. you fell in love with him then, when he did some stupid trick with a beer can and ended up spilling it all over himself and the couch. it was the first night you’d ever gotten properly drunk, too, and Zack made you stay the night instead of letting Kunsel walk you home, and you wanted to kiss him so bad but you weren’t even quite sixteen yet and you were drunk and he was just being a good friend--how could you ever forget? the way you felt when you woke up the next morning in his bed, how he’d slept on the couch, that he had those painkillers out next to a tall glass of water on the dresser--how could you ever forget? of course you remember. of course you remember.)

you nod, in lieu of a verbal answer. you remember Cissnei, now, her auburn hair, her short, slender stature. she’s a Turk, obviously; but you think maybe she wasn’t the only Turk at Zack’s birthday party that night. Zack makes a lot of friends everywhere he goes, like a literal ray of sunshine or some kind of cute puppy.

and shit, but he looks so relieved when you nod that you can’t help but let out a breath you didn’t even know you were holding.

great! I’m so glad you remember, he starts rambling. she’s probably not supposed to help us, but I got some emails from Kuns back in Cosmo Canyon ‘n’ I think there’s some weirdness goin’ on at Shinra about us ‘n’ our escape, ‘n’ the Turks are kinda on our side? I think? I mean, I always thought of Tseng as a friend, ‘n’ for sure Kuns is helpin’ us, but then Cissnei showed up a couple days ago ‘n’ basically just handed me this bike with the sidecar. she didn’t say nothin’ ‘bout it, really, but I figure she couldn’t grab one with a seatbelt or a second helmet--you’re sicker than me so I gave ya the helmet, ‘n’ I ain’t takin’ it back, I see that look on your face!

yer’ a chatterbox, you grump. (you’ve missed this, though.)

yup!

an insufferable one, you add, because he’s grinning like a damn fool and it’s making your heart beat uncomfortably fast.

he looks like he’s about to add something else stupid to that statement, and you don’t think you could handle it if he did. you smack him across his arm.

shut up an’ drive.

he laughs, almost carefree, like you aren’t two fugitives on the run from the most powerful corporation in the three continents.

sir yes sir!

you fall back asleep to the rumble of the highway.

----

he’s breathing heavy, hands in a deathgrip on his knees, rocking back and forth on the ground next to you. you’re propped up in the sidecar of a motorcycle--probably the one that woman brought earlier, however long ago that was--and you can tell you’ve been awake for a while, but it’s the sound of his panicked breathing that brings the world back into focus around you.

you can’t reach out to him. you can’t call out his name. you might as well be asleep, for all that he’s aware--you wonder what happened, why he’s rocking like that, brushing his back against the metal separating you from him with every other stroke. something happened, that’s for sure. maybe something reminded him of the worst of the labs? although, he’s been doing a scarily admirable job of seeming unaffected by those long four years. even when he’d told you exactly how long it had been, in those first few days right after the escape, he seemed calm, like this was all just another mission to him; you suppose, though, that if he hadn’t assumed that calm exteriority that you wouldn’t be here right now. it isn’t like you could keep the two of you alive, that’s for sure. you’re nothing but dead weight.

you’re somewhere near his hometown still; somewhere a lot closer, now, than you were. it must have been a few weeks since that town--time is sticky, and you’re just matter out of place here. you belong in some other place, some other time. did you ever leave your hometown, really? you were born there, some twenty-odd years ago now, and you died there too. you’re buried under ash and rubble of a town long since gone, and the man who would have pulled you from it all sits, head between his knees. you’re both dying, aren’t you? dying slowly, and you’re already dead, but still your lungs heave, his tears crawl down his cheeks to land in the grass at his feet. something happened. he doesn’t know you’re awake--how could he--and maybe you aren’t, maybe you’re dreaming once more.

I know what happened.

there’s that voice again, the voice of a ghost. shut up, you snarl to the ghost, because the ghost died with you that night, the first of October, and you refuse to be haunted by the spectre that burnt your town. you refuse. neither will you be taunted by the promises of knowledge that damned ghost can’t possibly have, because how could he know what happened when you do not? if you didn’t witness it, anyone else in your head surely couldn’t have, either; you can’t be made to choke down his lies any longer.

if you ever see him again--ghost or not--you’re stabbing him, again.

oh, 一, as if that would keep me away.

don’t you know already? he cries because of Ge一

the rest of that word is cut off. whatever. it isn’t as though you’re naive enough to trust the word of a homicidal ghost. if only you could reach out, call his name, speak to the man who’s so close and yet so far--!

but the gap is uncrossable, the distance uncoverable--a few scant centimeters might as well be a gaping chasm a hundred kilometers long. there is no bridge. there is only him, far away, and you, seated on the cliffside with only your mother’s dead murderer for company.

come now, 一. am I not more than merely that to you?

no, you hiss in your head, and mentally turn your attention away from the gleaming spectre. your savior is still on the ground, although he’s stopped rocking and is now just silently sobbing into his arms. how unfair it is, that when you cry he’s there for you, but when he cries you’re paralysed, unable to comfort him in the slightest. you can only even see him because your head was already lolled to the side when you awoke, and you’ve definitely got a bad crick there but you can’t even do a single damned thing about it. not that the rest of your body is happy, far from it: you’re slouched all over in the sidecar, legs cramping and spine screaming at you to straighten up. you’re gonna get scoliosis if this keeps on, and let’s be real, you have more than enough health problems already. what other issues is he facing, you wonder? it isn’t fair, asking him to take care of you like this. in the three or so weeks, maybe a little more, since you left that town, he’s only added to his responsibilities when it comes to you.

when does he have time to take care of himself?

(and aren’t you just pathetic, unable to even lift a finger to help him even in his hour of need?)

he’s added this tea (if you can call it that) to your meals. it’s not replacing the boiled water--you wonder how much work he has to do every day, gathering food for the both of you, ingredients for the tea, helping you relieve yourself before you set out for the day. you’re going to run out of gas for the motorcycle eventually. what happens then? do you go back on foot, and he carries you everywhere like he did before? you don’t want to do that to him again. you hate that you don’t really have a choice. it’s not like he’s capable of leaving you behind, apparently, no matter how much of a smarter choice that would be.

and all the while, the ghost of your mother’s killer haunts you, either because you’re crazy or there’s something worse going on, and your faithful caretaker doesn’t even know.

he doesn’t even know.

you’re catatonic and you’ve lost your mind and he doesn’t even know, just keeps taking care of you stupidly until he breaks, and now here he is, broken, sobbing into the jungle floor while you sit, paralysed, in a fucking motorcycle sidecar!

what a shitty fucking friend you are.

he was protecting you again, puppet.

gods, and the fucking voice in your head can’t even tell when to shut. up.

I would have him protect you until reunion, if possible.

especially from fools like 一esis.

you don’t want to listen to this crap anymore, but you can’t exactly escape.

how moronic, to think eating the boy’s hair would do him any good, when you are my perfect other half.

the professor was right, for once--

you can’t take it anymore--you can’t take it--your head overflows with a burst of pain, blinding white spilling across your vision as your other reminds you of what you truly are--agony, agony; there’s so many visions swimming through your head and all that cuts through is her voice, calling you to her.

calling you to your mother.

your mother is dead--

she’s right here, awaiting you--

how can you tell her no? can you tell her no?

you’re supposed to give her anything, if she needs it.

and you did, before your life ended in fire.

you didn’t, though.

you left home. you ran away. you abandoned her, and hid your face when you came back to town.

you’re shameful, 一.

but you did say hello to her, the night before you went to the reactor! the first night you were there! you, and him, and him--and oh fuck your head hurts at that, splitting apart at the seams when you try to reconcile this ghost with the sweet timid man who ate dinner with your mother and complimented her cooking--a week later she was dead at his hands--what even happened? what even happened?

something broke, someone said something cruel, there was something in the reactor that shouldn’t have been there--you don’t know, you didn’t see.

how could you have? you’re weak and useless. they left you behind in the reactor and your pathetic frail body missed what happened to him earlier, something big enough to break him open and flood the earth with his tears.

of course they didn’t let you in the reactor.

of course you missed whatever it was there that broke your ghost, that killed the man who destroyed your town, that made your best friend tell you those words you’ll never forget:

SOLDIER is like a den of monsters. don’t go inside.

SOLDIER is like a den of monsters. don’t go inside.

SOLDIER is like a den of monsters--

--don’t go inside.

well, you didn’t, and you won’t ever get the chance to again, will you?

the professor didn’t exactly give you a damn choice! you’re so sick of being a total non-agent in your life--the last thing you really chose was to leave, back at the tender age of fourteen, and who the fuck even lets a fourteen year old join the military anyway? you were barely pubescent, didn’t know anything of the world outside your mother’s house, and you broke her heart when you left anyway!

so you’re self-aware after all.

come here and she will forgive you, you know.

she is kind and patient. she would take him too, if you brought him.

don’t you miss her? don’t you miss your mother?

don’t you miss your mother?

...

...

...

...that’s what I thought.

come home to mother, 一, and he need never cry again.

I swear it.