Cloud Strife (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moseyin) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
kickitover2018-07-08 02:21 am
moseyin) wrote in kickitover2018-07-08 02:21 am
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[It happens in the middle of nowhere.
Just another nondescript hole Zack's found to curl them up into. Sometimes they're lucky enough to get a bed in the slums somewhere, the outskirts of some crappy little village or the deep, dank alleyways of a larger city. Most of the time they have a tent, if they're lucky, if Zack manages and money allows, and sometimes they're not lucky and they forfeit shelter for food, for potions for when Zack gets a wound that grit and gumption can't close.
Well- Zack does all of these things. They're a 'they' in bodycount only.
It's Zack dragging himself and Cloud across the countryside, it's Zack finding them shelter, finding them food, tearing into monsters to scrape together enough gil to keep them alive. It's Zack looking after the few wounds Cloud acquires during their journey, it's Zack who talks to him, who feeds him, who carries him on his god damn back for days and days and days on end. Weeks. Months.
Cloud isn't often awake, but sometimes he is. Things are hazy like a dream, sloppy like slumber, slips and strips of memory, of experiences that barely thread together to make something patchwork. And that's how it is when it happens too, because it was only a couple times, fighting to break the surface of a pool of tar. He emerges not with a gasp but an awareness, only for a few moments before he's pulled under. Each time Zack was gone, or asleep, clutching Cloud to his chest for protection but too exhausted to hear his breathless whispers of Zack, Zack as Cloud tries desperately to rouse him, if only to reassure him of I'm here, I hear you, I see you, you're not alone until the mako curls around and into him and pulls him back under.
And then, that middle of nowhere.
Cloud wakes to the sun on his face; weak morning sun, wobbly, not yet hot. They'd slept outside. Zack is already awake, humming to himself, murmuring something, fiddling with a fire. He's going to make a hot breakfast for them. A luxury.
Cloud waits those few minutes, tense and unnerved, waiting for the coils of mako to pull him back under. His limbs still feel weak but something is...different this time. Things feel sharper. He can hear things more than Zack this time, more than the beat of his heart and the hush of his breath; he can hear the crackle of the fire, the chirp of far off birdsong. Cloud can feel the humidity clinging to his skin, sticking his clothes to his chest and back. He can smell the outdoors around them.
He is present. At last, he is.
Zack's turning around towards him, probably to collect him and bring him closer to the fire, to feed him again and once Zack reaches for him, once Cloud is sure he'll see he reaches, just barely, and closes a hand around Zack's wrist.] Zack.
Just another nondescript hole Zack's found to curl them up into. Sometimes they're lucky enough to get a bed in the slums somewhere, the outskirts of some crappy little village or the deep, dank alleyways of a larger city. Most of the time they have a tent, if they're lucky, if Zack manages and money allows, and sometimes they're not lucky and they forfeit shelter for food, for potions for when Zack gets a wound that grit and gumption can't close.
Well- Zack does all of these things. They're a 'they' in bodycount only.
It's Zack dragging himself and Cloud across the countryside, it's Zack finding them shelter, finding them food, tearing into monsters to scrape together enough gil to keep them alive. It's Zack looking after the few wounds Cloud acquires during their journey, it's Zack who talks to him, who feeds him, who carries him on his god damn back for days and days and days on end. Weeks. Months.
Cloud isn't often awake, but sometimes he is. Things are hazy like a dream, sloppy like slumber, slips and strips of memory, of experiences that barely thread together to make something patchwork. And that's how it is when it happens too, because it was only a couple times, fighting to break the surface of a pool of tar. He emerges not with a gasp but an awareness, only for a few moments before he's pulled under. Each time Zack was gone, or asleep, clutching Cloud to his chest for protection but too exhausted to hear his breathless whispers of Zack, Zack as Cloud tries desperately to rouse him, if only to reassure him of I'm here, I hear you, I see you, you're not alone until the mako curls around and into him and pulls him back under.
And then, that middle of nowhere.
Cloud wakes to the sun on his face; weak morning sun, wobbly, not yet hot. They'd slept outside. Zack is already awake, humming to himself, murmuring something, fiddling with a fire. He's going to make a hot breakfast for them. A luxury.
Cloud waits those few minutes, tense and unnerved, waiting for the coils of mako to pull him back under. His limbs still feel weak but something is...different this time. Things feel sharper. He can hear things more than Zack this time, more than the beat of his heart and the hush of his breath; he can hear the crackle of the fire, the chirp of far off birdsong. Cloud can feel the humidity clinging to his skin, sticking his clothes to his chest and back. He can smell the outdoors around them.
He is present. At last, he is.
Zack's turning around towards him, probably to collect him and bring him closer to the fire, to feed him again and once Zack reaches for him, once Cloud is sure he'll see he reaches, just barely, and closes a hand around Zack's wrist.] Zack.
pls forgive my slow vacation brain
Emptiness is a feeling he's well and truly familiar with; he'd felt it too many times to count, down in the labs, on the bad days when Hojo was at his most sadistic and Cloud was non-responsive. When the loneliness kicked him so hard and so deep that he almost celebrated the appearance of one of the lab techs, because it'd been too long since he was able to interact with anything except the slow, weightless gurgle of flowing mako in his tank or reinforced glass so thick it took days for even SOLDIER fingernails to carve marks into it. Those were the days he let his mind drift into the black, trying to forget everything. It's not a talent anyone should have, but once it's learned he doubts that it's one that can be forgotten.
He's there, now. That empty dark swallowed him whole as soon as they'd settled and he let the world cease to exist around him, and just like that, he's floating again, surrounded by green. (that's just the forest.) Someone taps on the glass of the next tube over, muttering about injections. (Cloud's here. Cloud's there.) He's talking, his mouth is moving and the words don't mean a thing. (He hasn't said a word in days, he just stares and stares and stares at nothing. Gave up calling for him yesterday; it's another episode, he'll snap out of it soon-)
He's pulled, suddenly, against another body, and the dark curtains part enough for him to take a sharp breath in. He's here, he's here. Still a good man. A good man, who can see half of a face staring up at him from a shattered helmet, neatly split in two, terrified and tearful. Hadn't been that old. Shinra's recruiting young, as usual.
God but he hates mako eyes. They see too much too quickly.]
...I was thirteen, last time I was here. Ten years. Joined Shinra pretty soon after I left. [He exhales, the sound heavy, blinking the rainwater off his lashes and feeling wet fabric on Cloud's shoulder. He didn't notice the rain until just now.] How many innocent people you figure we killed, following orders like that?
[Shinra... it all comes back to Shinra. He'd had a lot of time in the lab to think about all the missions that felt wrong, the years he'd fought against that feeling. Wutai, Banora, Modeoheim. Countless others. Why did it take until Nibelheim, when it was too late to get out, for him to realize how wrong it all was? And now, because of him, Gongaga...
What's good about that?]
joke's on you i'm slower and not even on vacation
Calm descends on Cloud, swirling around them like sitting in the eye of a typhoon. The rain this close to Gongaga is too warm to be uncomfortable, won't set a chill in their bones even if they weren't SOLDIER...or something like it.]
I figure a lot, [Cloud says honestly, voice still low, but for good or for bad Cloud can't find himself agonizing over it. People are dead, and maybe it's their fault for not realizing sooner...or maybe not. Whoever's fault it is, they're still going to need to move forward, and they should do it knowing they're not going to do things the same. That's enough to assuage Cloud's (admittedly muted) guilt into something almost negligible. Maybe it makes him a bad person, to not dwell on things like this. Maybe agonizing over it like Zack would mean he still has a good heart, a good soul, if he ever did.
But it doesn't matter. Cloud can concentrate on just Zack, for now. If he needs to change later...then maybe he will.]
I figure more than just us, people killed people under Shinra orders. Other SOLDIERs, other troopers- hell, Shinra scientists mighta killed more people than we can imagine. It'd be stupid to think we're the only ones Hojo put his claws into. [Cloud turns his head so his mouth and chin are against Zack's hair, murmuring into it almost like a kiss, unease mysteriously gone the second something in Cloud had shifted back into himself...or further away.] That's why you're gonna keep going. You 'n me. We're gonna go right to Shinra's core and we're gonna tear it apart so nobody else like us can use the excuse of orders to hurt people. [Now he does kiss Zack, a hard press of his closed lips against his wet hair, fierce and protective, arm curling around Zack like Cloud would pull him inside and keep him safe that way, if he could.]
HONK HONK IT'S A SLOW THREAD PARTY
For a moment after Cloud finishes speaking, there's no response and no movement on Zack's end; he has to pause and wonder, as he drags his mind away from the misery funk, if he'd just imagined what happened. It was a subtle gesture, so very easy to miss, but firm and undeniable at the same time. He could ignore it if he was a coward, pretend that his SOLDIER perception was too tired or rain-muddled to catch that pressure of a mouth on his hair. He's felt it before, though. He won't ever forget what that feels like, what it is.
He should move, he knows. Get up, be useful, work to get their camp in decent order, walk the rounds to make sure they're truly safe, check on their bike so they don't break down or end up with rain in the gas tank. Don't ruin this by wanting too much. But Cloud's here, Cloud's sitting with him, holding him, and gods if it isn't the first time in what feels like ages that he feels truly, genuinely grounded, despite everything they've been through, everything they had to do to get here. "You 'n me," he said, holding Zack like he was everything, like he might never let go.
He wants this. Too much.
When the moment passes he shifts his position just enough to catch Cloud's eyes, his expression searching, hopeful, almost. His lips are so close to a smile, on the very cusp of it and holding off, entirely dependent on Cloud's response.]
You with me, Cloud?
[With me. Not just with me, but with me. His hand shifts, finding Cloud's where it winds around his body, holding it there to keep him close.]
NOT THIS TIME
This close, the minute tremble of Zack's lips is obvious; not cold. Nerves, probably, terror at what they did, what they're capable of, what they could do. What they will do? No, Zack's never been afraid of a challenge like that. Zack's always been more afraid of never having the chance to try.
So this close, Cloud's heart splits neatly into two parts, fear and want: fear, because for a while he wasn't there but his body was and anything could've happened; fear because Zack still has mysterious, fragile parts to himself that Cloud can't understand, no matter how desperately he wants to be the sure, steady source of comfort Zack needs.
But then he wants, god does he want, he wants Zack to be safe, he wants Shinra to be dead, he wants to stay in his body with Zack's fingers around his wrist, pulling Cloud's arm tight around him. He wants that seething, acidic anger that eats away whenever he sees that ugly Shinra logo to disappear but he also wants to feed it until he can burn down the entire fucking Planet. He wants Zack to exist in a time and place separate from all this hurt, maybe even from Cloud, if only to protect him from a future Cloud can't even begin to see.
It's that there, the fear-want pounding away inside his ribs that makes Cloud act. It's not like what he'd always thought it would be, when he was thirteen and innocent, imagining himself giving Tifa flowers and her thanking him with a kiss. It's not like what he'd recoiled from that one time after making it to Midgar, as he slogged his way up onto the plate and a leering old man had offered to help him make a quick buck. It's not like anything, because in this, like everything else, Cloud is woefully unprepared.
But Zack's still here. And his eyes are...so, so pretty.
Cloud's answer, You with me, Cloud? is a brush of his free hand against Zack's cheek, over his scar, curious, clumsy. Touching in a way he's never touched somebody else before. He slips his hand behind Zack's hair to curl his fingers against the back of his neck, his thumb just barely against Zack's ear, and he leans over to press his lips off-center to Zack's own.
I'm here. I'm here, I'm here I'm here.]