kickitover | (no subject)

[It begins with the rain.

The sunlight was bright and lazy, a hazy blanket that settled on his limbs and weighed them down. He could hear the warm hum of Zack's voice but nothing could make him move. He drifted. He knew he'd be safe, somewhere, in some primal part of his brain, so he didn't try to think. All he did was shuffle his feet when he was carried, toes dragging through the dirt, fingers dragging through his hair.

The leather of his gloves squeak. The safety leaves. He goes back to drifting but then the rain comes, fat drops of it plink-plinking against the armor on his shoulder, dripping into his face; it's cold and it's heavy and it whispers in a rhythm he thinks he's heard before, get. up. get. up.

It takes some doing but he gets up. He falls more than once but he gets up. And as he gets up it's as if he breaks the surface of a lake; suddenly the water dripping into his eyes is in the way and he reaches up to wipe his face, staggers over to a rock to push his shoulder into it, listening to the rain and the gunshots and the sharp clang of metal just past the path. Safety went that way. Warmth and care and-],

Zack, [Cloud croaks, shaking all the way down to his guts, to his bones, as he clutches the boulder and searches for somewhere inside of him the strength to move. Gunshots- Zack doesn't use a gun. Zack doesn't use a gun. Cloud can't remember his last name but he knows this, he knows this, knows the broad shape of the sword on his back like the broad shape of his shoulders, like the broad stretch of his smile. He's fighting, he'd tucked Cloud away- Gods, everything is so confusing but he knows that there are people dying over there and one of them could be-

He finds within him the strength to move, from the same dark, furious pit that had him pull himself down onto a sword what feels like eons ago. Cloud literally stumbles into someone, startles them and when they swing their weapon around to bear he moves so quick he knocks himself off balance, knocks them both into the mud and he wrestles the rifle from him. Shoots him dead.

Shoots him d- Cloud looks up, eyes wide, and shoots the next man too. And the next, and the next, anyone without mako eyes, anyone without a huge sword like Zack's. Anyone standing between them, between the sound of his voice shouting. Suddenly the forces are split in half as they realize their opponents are now two, and Cloud clocks someone with the empty rifle before slipping his way over to where Zack sags, barely holding onto the sword.

He pushes Zack behind himself, stares at the troopers before him, every limb and every word and every breath shaking as he hisses, too low to make it over the rain,] Get away from him...!

[The ground beneath their feet gives a lurch, a sickening swoop and then, suddenly, they fall.]

Threaded | Flat

[Falling with swords is dangerous, he thinks, as the ground collapses beneath them. And then, a heartbeat later, when did Cloud wake up?

Dumb question, he knows. Cloud woke up between now and when Zack left him tucked away behind a rock where it was safe. He's just a flash of colour, blue and dusty yellow amidst all the grey and brown, hardly recognizable, but Zack would know his voice anywhere even if it's been years since he heard it properly. Your mind tends to cling to the good when you're surrounded by awful, and the lab... oh, the lab had been awful.

He tries to reach out for Cloud, but he'd already been falling backwards when the cliff broke beneath them, and his arm won't move anyway, so instead he just lets it happen. He's so tired.

He can hear her voice, too. He can hear the sounds of Midgar, the steady drip-drip of water on her flowers, the surprised, delighted lilt in her tone when he shows up unannounced-

I was almost-

He hits the ground hard, but he barely feels it, ricocheted once from the force of it and sinking deep into the muck upon the second impact. The Buster is ripped from his grasp and lies useless at his side. He already knows he's going to die; he can feel the uncountable holes in his chest, the life bleeding out of him with every struggling heartbeat. He'd kept on fighting for as long as he could, the Buster sword dipping lower and lower with every gunshot that met its mark, but he'd been running out of time and strength well before the last bullet struck.

It's alright, he thinks. He'd faced down the army under the assumption that death was the likely result, hoping against hope that maybe, if he was good enough, if he fought hard enough, he'd make it out alive somehow. And even if that proved impossible, at least Cloud would be safe.

One out of two's not bad.

Exhausted and bleeding out, he stares at the mud, the only miserable thing in his view, since he lacks the strength to even turn his head. What an awful way to go. The rain... even with how nice it feels, even with how it somehow carries this strange, nostalgic feeling... he wishes for just a few seconds that it would clear up.

It just... would have been nice to see the open blue sky one last time before he died.]