Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

All he remembers of the crawl to Midgar is the grit in the hollows of his cheeks and the raw scent of iron trailing behind him. By the time he’s aware enough to feel sensation in his limbs, the blood is tacky on his knees and elbows, seeping all the way through the cotton in stark contrast. His skin has been frayed and weathered like wet tissue paper.

Cloud isn’t sure how long he’s been walking, or crawling, or awake. Memories are hitting him in obfuscated blips—all vague ideas of scents and shapes and sounds that ring too close to screams for comfort. He’s aware that there’s more blood on his skin than his own torn up joints can account for, but when he tries to reach for a name, his mind folds in on itself painfully.

He knows that his body doesn’t feel like his own. There’s a heaviness in not only the sword lining his spine, but in the unfamiliar strain of his muscles. His grip is stronger than he can ever recall it being, and each time he tries to make sense of it, that same pang shoots through every nerve in his skull.

Midgar under the plate is all dust and scraps and half-formulated ideas. Breathing the air down there leaves a dry film in Cloud’s mouth as he wanders, and the parched feeling of his tongue gives him inexplicable thoughts of calloused hands cradling the metal of a canteen against his unmoving lips.

Cloud is almost certain he’s lost his mind.

He can’t pinpoint which sector he’s trudging through, but the voices around him reach his ears in muddled tones— echoes about ‘SOLDIER,’ and ‘Shinra bastards,’ or a rarer and softer ‘Sir, are you alright?’

The cadence of that gentler voice almost has him turning on his heel to walk back up the sheer slope of the roads in Nibelheim. He was supposed to grab sandwiches a few doors down— bring them home all wrapped up to share with his mother. She liked them cut diagonal, and she would wait to eat the crusts Cloud left behind on his own plate. He was supposed to act meek when he saw her again, flushing all the way to his toes when she mentions how much he’s grown. He was supposed to protest when she insisted on drying his hair after the bath, only to end up crouched against her legs anyhow, feigning indifference.

He was supposed to do a lot of things, but all he feels now is the memory of weather-worn hands and thick Nibel accents seeping through the cracks of his fingers, slow like honey.

The woman with the soft voice calls to him again, and the sound feels much further away than it ought to as she crowds around his shoulders. All he can focus on are the tufts of her hair, tied up not unlike the ends of an unruly paintbrush. It distracts Cloud just enough to tuck away the lingering thoughts of his mother and narrow in on what the woman is saying.

“You alright, boy?” Her voice isn’t as gentle as he heard it just moments ago. The tone is wrong—not like Claudia at all— and it has a gruffness to it that signals a smoker's lungs. Or maybe that’s how people sound stuck under the plate, inhaling all sorts of things they shouldn’t.

Cloud tries to find his own voice, not recalling how it’s supposed to sound, and finds a rattle in his chest instead. She must hear his attempt though, because she’s lifting him up by the elbows with an effort to be gentle. He’s truly a pitiful sight then, to be dragged off the street by a well meaning stranger.

She leads him a few buildings down the road, muttering under her breath about something or another the whole way there. Cloud can’t understand a lick of what she’s saying, but he nods along anyhow, knowing that he should at least try to be polite.

The apartment they enter smells of dry rot, like the floorboards were dampened and could never well and truly wilt out. It’s cozy enough, though, with its single-room layout that has clearly been given thorough attention to appear homey. The couch she sets him on tries to pull him inside of it, insisting that he relax muscles he didn’t know he’d been tensing.

“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you, boy?” The woman asks, crouching in front of him and crowding close to his face. With this level of eye contact, Cloud suddenly feels the embarrassment of the situation, flushing hot in his cheeks.

He manages to mutter back a “No, ma’am,” but it comes out scratchy—another reminder of his parched tongue. Without even having to mention it, she springs up from her crouch to run the tap and fill a mug. He watches her fetch various dried leaves from her cupboards, pinching this and that into a small cheesecloth bag, before filling a kettle and popping it on the stove. Cloud can tell it’s one of the finicky ones, and he almost wants to jump up from the couch to help her light it, but the dead weight of his limbs protest the idea.

She leaves the kettle to warm and brings Cloud back the mug of tap water, clicking her tongue at him when she hands it over and he tries to chug it down in one go.

“Slow the hell down— you throw up on my rug, and I’m throwin’ you back out there on your ass.” She watches with her chin held up in reprimand until Cloud slows down his sips. “Already gonna have to scrub the blood outta my damn couch.”

Cloud doesn’t have the presence of mind to find the situation bizarre. He simply follows her ministrations, relishing in the way his brain fog lifts slightly as he rehydrates.

“Where’re you comin’ from? You got a name?” the woman asks from the stovetop, prepping her own mug for her tea blend. It takes Cloud a beat longer than it should to recall his own name, and trying to answer the former question feels like a lost cause.

His last string of memories are diluted and bathed in fire, licking up the sides of buildings until they crumple under their own weight. Then an unnatural glow of green, set in a pair of feline eyes, and the feeling of drowning in that same green, heavy in his nostrils and coursing through his veins. He almost latches onto a memory of hands that know the shape of metal, running their fingers through his hair; the record scratches again, blurring the image from around the corners until it fades entirely.

“Cloud. And…. Nibelheim.” His voice cracks in response, hurt betrayed by the rough sound.

The woman looks thoughtful for a second, brows furrowed and lips thin, before she opens her mouth to answer and swiftly closes it. As if debating with herself, she repeats the movement a few times before muttering, “You know Miss Lockhart?”

The name reverberates down his spine in a pang, like silverware falling on tile. The huff of breath he lets out in response must be enough of an answer, because the woman lets out a huff of her own and shakes her head. Cloud desperately wants to ask what she knows, how she knows Tifa, where Tifa is—if Tifa knows what has happened to him. The fog is dense again, and his eyes are watery at the thought of smoke and embers.

“Any friend of Miss Lockhart is a friend of mine. Name’s Marle, by the way.”

Cloud opts for silence, still reeling over the few memories that are clicking into place: Tifa’s blood soaking through the front of his shirt, the amber of her eyes dulling before they slipped shut, the bits of her that slipped through the cracks of grated metal.

The woman—Marle—distracts him again, reeling back his line of thought, with a gentle hand over the torn fabric of his sleeves. He isn’t sure how long he blanked, eyes unfocused and staring at nothing, but she’s returned with bandages and antiseptic and is moving to pry the cotton from the torn flesh of his wounds. The sting of it is enough to snap him back completely, hissing out a complaint as the dried blood pulls against his skin.

“No whining. A little pain is far better than an infection. And it’ll happen before you can blink under the plate— don’t forget that.”

Marle realizes why he had hissed a moment later, and lets out a sharp noise of her own.

“Damn Shinra, playin’ God like a bunch of lunatics. How much mako did they pump into you, boy?” she asks with a scoff, pulling her hand away from the offending wound.

Cloud follows her line of eyesight to the injury on his arm. The cotton that congealed to his skin from the dried blood has now melded with his healing flesh—flesh that’s repairing a hell of a lot faster than it ought to. He hisses again, fighting the racing thoughts that are trying to explain her question about mako.

“Just rip it out,” Cloud mutters, averting his eyes. He waits for the sting of pain with bated breath, and Marle does her best to remove it as quickly as possible. It’s sharp and white hot, and Cloud squeezes his eyes shut as she repeats the process on his other elbow. Thankfully the fabric of his pants is thicker, and they aren’t tight enough to have melded the same way.

Cloud comes back down from the pain and opens his eyes to find Marle disinfecting the newly torn flesh. The sting of it is so mild compared to before that he doubts he would’ve felt her doing it if he didn’t see it himself.

“Better not bandage these up, huh?” she states, more than asks. There’s an undeniable softness in her tone that’s been present since Cloud mentioned Nibelheim. It jolts him back to their previous topic, and he fights the oncoming spell of a headache to ask her about it anyways.

“How do you know Tifa? Is she here… in Midgar now?”

“She’s good people, that girl. Hard not to know her name in Sector Seven.” Marle’s voice takes on an impossible level of fondness, and her lips tilt up so quickly that he almost misses it. “I could call her, if you want. She’s workin’ now down in Seventh Heaven, but it’s not too often someone rolls in from Nibelheim. I’m sure she’d rush in to see’ya.”

Nausea rolls through Cloud’s gut intensely and inexplicably, and he shakes his head before he can register why. Flitting thoughts of promises he failed to keep lead to thoughts of SOLDIER and gleaming metal, and in contrasting gentleness, scarred olive skin and smile lines.

He’s once again chasing and tripping on the tail of his own mind—following a line of breadcrumbs that lead to nothing at all. His thoughts walk in circles, an aimless and anxious dog pacing around the thing they desire that’s been sealed up. The syllables of a name he used to utter in reverence rot on the tip of his tongue.

It’s all right there in front of him—he could almost reach out to touch it. Each time Cloud comes close to uncovering a memory, it’s barred behind another luminescent curtain, warping the faces of the people he’s known and his own. Suddenly his hands aren’t his hands, and everything feels as if it’s been rotoscoped into frame. Cloud is watching the world from the center of his chest, wondering why the shadows on the wall seem to be moving a beat behind.

If Marle is still talking to him, he isn’t aware of it. The pain that cuts through his skull is jagged— a serrated blade tugging on every thought he attempts to latch onto.

It could be hours of this, or days, or months, for all Cloud knows. The feeling of being suspended in his own mind is familiar, as if he’s been pinned in place like a butterfly, only able to observe the outside world in garbled noises and obscured images.

By the time he regains control of his body, he’s been moved to lie down on the couch, with a pillow propped under his head. Marle is skittering around the apartment, ignorant of the eyes tracking her movements.

It’s a difficult game and he doesn’t know the rules. Cloud wants so badly to explain these bouts of madness—to sort through them and put all the fragmented memories back into their rightful places. But anytime he tries to consciously do so, his mind runs off again. And to try and avoid anything that’ll trigger the bouts has him thinking about the things he shouldn’t anyhow. It’s all a rather unfortunate feedback loop.

“Is it just the mako? Or have you always had the falling sickness?”

Marle’s facing Cloud again, brows pinched and frowning sort of sadly at him. The sound of her voice startles him, even as she makes an effort to keep it quiet.

“Falling sickness?” he asks, attempting to sit up.

“The way you seized up for a while there. I used to know a boy with epileptic fits like yours. A lot of people in towns with raw mako come down with it. Gotta keep a close eye on your kids in those backwater neighborhoods, keep ‘em from slippin’ into the mako pools.”

Now that Cloud thinks about it, he remembers a frail kid in Nibelheim that used to seize up. It’s strange to picture it now, and he wonders if that’s how he looks on the outside when it happens–– his body convulsing, veins straining and muscles tensing. As if he’s fighting for dominance against something inside his own body.

For some reason, the thought of doing that on someone else’s couch is enough to remind him that he should be embarrassed about this whole situation. And that he’s most definitely overstaying his welcome.

“I should get out of your hair. Thank you for the water. And the uh—” Cloud glances down to his elbows, clean and somehow already fully healed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to make a mess of your couch. When I can pay you for the cleaning, I will.”

Cloud slowly moves to lift himself off the couch, assuming it’ll hurt a lot more than it does. If anything, he feels more refreshed than he has in who knows how long. Before he can fully stand, though, Marle pins him in place with a severe look.

“And where are you going?” she asks, brusque but not unkind. “If I catch you tomorrow wandering the streets like a lost puppy, I swear to Shiva. You’re gonna get yourself mugged, walking around like you’ve got no idea where you’re at.”

“I’ve got nothing to mug, ma’am.” Cloud mutters back, lowering his gaze.

“You’ll stay the night in one of my rooms, at least. Don’t make an old lady feel guilty,” Marle says, voice unwavering and leaving no room for argument.

“Why are you helping me?” Cloud blurts out before he can stop it, admonishing himself as soon as it leaves his lips.

Marle looks stricken for a second, setting her mug roughly down on the kitchen counter before replying, “Shinra crushed me under their black thumb too, kid. Doesn’t matter if they write your name on a check. It’s a blind beast.”

Something about that resonates with Cloud, filling him with a righteous anger that doesn’t feel like his own. He knows he ought to be mad at Shinra, but if he tries to pinpoint why, he’s never going to make it off the couch.

“Thank you, Marle,” Cloud says back with feeling, taking the key she offers him.

“Don’t mention it. I’ll have you replace light bulbs around the complex to make up for it once you’re well,” she chides, helping him to the door even though he hardly needs it. “Second room up the stairs. And go down to the bar tomorrow and holler for Tifa. I don't know how well you two knew each other, but I got a feeling she’ll be right pissed if she finds out you were in town and didn’t stop by.”

Cloud attempts for a smile in response, but he doesn’t need to see it to know it’s warbled and wrong. Before he can say anything else Marle is shoo-ing him out the door and ordering him to get some rest.

The door to the apartment creaks loudly in protest to Cloud’s entrance. The room itself isn’t anything special—a bed frame that looks like scrap metal thrown together, holding up a mattress that huffs a cloud of dust when he sits down on it, and a ‘bathroom’ with only a sink and a thin curtain for the toilet to give off the illusion of privacy.

Still, it’s four walls and a place to rest his head. Cloud couldn’t count the days it’s been since he had just that, but if he tried, he knows it’d be far too long. For some reason, though, the thought of being alone in a room with only his own beating heart is unsettling.

Cloud wonders if it might be a nervous habit he picked up in the infantry. The memories from his time with Shinra are still muddled for entirely different reasons. The routine of sleep back then, nestling up in dormitory bunks or in tents on missions, were all coined with a lack of privacy. Cloud doesn’t remember finding any comfort in that, though. Not when he can’t recall a comrade he’d call a friend.

Another sharp pang.

This pang somehow smells of rusted iron and saltwater.

He thinks he sees a smile with all its teeth bared, disarming and warm.

He thinks he’s mourning.

He doesn’t know who.

Cloud wakes up and wonders how the size of love can double when it turns into grief. He wonders if that’s why his legs shake under the weight of it.

He wishes he had a face to pair with the feeling.

The second time he wakes up, he’s clutching something on his chest. His hands have memorized the shape of it, even if he doesn’t know what it is, and he feels the trails of wetness on his cheeks seeping down to his pillow.

He moves his fingers across the edges of the metal, and up to the chain looping around his neck. Before even looking down to see it, the serrated edges of whatever name is written there and the ovular shape tell him exactly what he’s holding. Cloud’s stomach drops painfully and without reason.

Something is telling him not to look.

He looks.

Fair, Zack. 04756483. B Neg.

Chapter Text

It was enough to know that he’d done some good in the end. 

Zack wasn’t so naive to think that he’d make it out alive that day. His relief was palpable in his last moments, aware that even after everything—after every ideal he held was scorched to dust, his trust in mankind tested and withered in the face of deception— he’d been able to protect one of the few things he still had faith in. 

Teetering on the edge of death was a familiar feeling for the SOLDIER. He’d seen death in the eyes of the ones he loved too many times to count, and each time he reached close enough to touch it, it was like meeting someone new. 

Most things get easier with time and the more they’re encountered. Death is unique in this way for Zack—knowing all too well the way it smothers, the way their skin turns pallid, how minuscule you’ll feel in the face of it. That feeling never gets any easier. He thinks of the smell of it, and the shame in feeling sick when it tickles his throat. He thinks of the visible ley lines of the lifestream, always reaching up to take with icy and impartial hands, holding no regard for the ones still walking its surface. Ineffable and never to be bargained with.

Zack doesn’t think he wants his grief to get any easier. He wants to feel it raw and unsightly and in full awareness that people do die everyday, and he isn’t meant to grow a tolerance to the sting of it. It isn’t something that Shinra can wire or beat out of him. 

But grieving and dying aren’t the same. His own unrealized dreams are somehow easier to come to terms with than that of Angeal’s, or Lazard’s, or any other nameless and faceless comrade that walked far too few years on their own two feet. Or any other soul that he felt responsible for in the thralls of battle that he failed to defend. His life was his own to give, and he gave it with the comfort that a certain blonde would make it out in his stead. 

It was clear that Cloud wasn’t at peace in the same way Zack was. He didn’t sign up to take the torch in Zack’s place, as if that could alleviate the sting of loss in any way. His mind, already fragmented and diluted by the mako, wasn’t prepared to handle what happened that day. 

A mourning howl is what sent Zack barreling into the lifestream. An abraded and chafed sound— it was the kind of scream that rips through the throat like it’s wrapped in chicken wire. Even as Zack felt the hands of the lifestream urging him forward, the yell that Cloud unleashed had him tugging back, fighting against the grain to grasp some semblance of control. 

It was an all consuming thing. He felt saturated in contradictions; somehow he was floating free and sinking deep into the planet all at once. Aimlessly wandering through time, but also useless against the pull of a higher being dictating where he ought to go. Bathed in everything and nothing all at once, and finding they’re somehow the same.

Cloud’s wailing was a background track, playing on loop as he was swallowed. Where before he felt relief, knowing the blonde was alive, Zack now felt only worry and secondhand grief. Where would Cloud even go from here? Would Shinra still be on his tail, like the unkillable thing that it is? Would he even make it down the hill without losing consciousness again, let alone to Midgar?

Death strips away one’s coherence—Zack sensed it waxing and waning in layers, weaving him in and out of awareness. It also felt ironic to him that death is overwhelmingly green. When he imagined his own life snuffing out, ascending in wisps of candle smoke, he pictured something far darker. He wasn’t such a defeatist to believe that there would be nothing in the end, a blank slate and immediate ceasing of everything he’s known, but he wouldn’t have imagined so much green. 

There were echoes all around him; it took great effort to make out anything specific in the voices he heard or to hone in on any images flitting by. Zack was never any good at focusing all of his attention on one thing. It was something his friends chided him for, mocking his ever present restless demeanor and his need to skip between one thing and another. Even as he attempted to zero in on what he knew was Cloud, alone on that hill and bathed in crimson, his mind was drawn to the other countless souls and their whispers in the lifestream. 

One voice was louder than all the others, but somehow still gentle. The call of it resounded as if it were both inside and outside of the lifestream. It wasn’t as difficult for Zack to hone in on the noise, as he recognized the cadence and would be helpless to it anywhere. 

Aerith has always been an anomaly. She lives in beautiful juxtapositions—stares into the eyes of logic and shakes her head when it doesn’t suit her. Vibrant flowers blooming from poisoned soil, a smile in the face of grief, a gentle voice in the thralls of death. 

Tragedy seems to cling to her, inevitably craving her warmth and goodness. Zack fears now that he’s just another variable in this same equation—a mere thorn in the side of the kindness she offers freely. 

She senses it the minute he enters the lifestream. Aerith has been waiting years now for some sort of sign, listening with focused intent to the voices flitting from the planet. It was just as much an affliction as it was a comfort, to know that she’d feel it whenever Zack goes. She’d been sullen over that for the last five years, aware that even if he was alive in some capacity, whatever circumstances that kept him from getting in touch with her could be just as terrible as she pictured. At least the lifestream was a devil she knew. 

But now he wasn’t alive. And he didn’t seem all too content with the outcome. 

Zack couldn’t see her face, even as he sensed her close. He was graced with the scent of flowers, though, as she shrouded him in her voice and presence. It was hard not to sink into it. To just  forget his other concerns and give in to tenderness. 

A mere second of that thought has his mind reeling, replaying the sound of Cloud’s cry in full clarity. He can almost see him now, as he sifts through the layers of the lifestream in a devout search— the blonde tufts of his hair coated in Zack’s own blood, the scraping of his fair skin as he drags his body across the dry earth, the mess of tear stains descending his cheeks. 

“You should tell me about him.”

Zack startles, pulled back by the sound of Aerith’s voice and the ghost-like feeling of her hands on his shoulders. He knows she can’t really touch him here, but he feels it all the same, once again lapsing in his focus on Cloud. 

“About Cloud?” He asks, though he doesn’t feel his lips move or his throat work around the syllables. It’s a strange sensation, the feeling of the first words he intentionally sends out into the lifestream. Zack doesn’t have to wonder if it reaches Aerith. It’s still crystal clear in his memory, all the times she’d lean close to the dirt and whisper reverently into soft petals. 

“You’ve been mumbling his name since you got here,” she calls back. Zack can hear the smile in her voice, and it paints a spirited image of her in his mind. Or maybe he’s really seeing her, crouched in her bed of flowers in the dilapidated church, murmuring under her breath to the veins of green that run under the soil. 

He should have countless things to talk to Aerith about. He should be asking her what she’s been up to, how she’s been faring, all these years he’s been away. Above anything else, he should be apologizing profusely, kneeling at her feet and atoning for the time she’s already spent grieving.

Aerith offered, though, and Zack can’t find it in him to turn down the opportunity.

“He’s not doing well,” Zack starts. He isn’t sure if Aerith can see him or just hear his voice, but as the scene of the church settles into clarity, he sits himself down on one of the pews facing her. “I’m worried about him. I don’t know if he’ll be alright on his own.”

Aerith hums softly in response, her eyes not quite meeting Zack’s but searching in his general direction. She stands, twining her hands behind her back and shifting her weight from foot to foot in the endearing way she always does. 

“Is he who you’ve been with all these years?” Aerith asks, the question sending a wave of guilt through him, even as she asks it with no malice.

“More or less of him,” Zack replies. “Spike and I have kinda been to hell and back together.”

Aerith smiles, somehow even softer than before, her eyes shining and wrinkling at the corners. “I’m glad. It’s good to know you haven’t been alone.”

Zack rushes to apologize, but before he can get the words out, Aerith is shaking her head. 

“Don’t bother,” she utters, moving to pace around the edges of her garden. “I want to be mad at you, but I can’t. If you could’ve called me, you would have.”

“I promise it’s the first thing I would’ve done.”

Her smile wobbles at the corners, brows furrowing like she’s fighting a twinge of pain. Zack wants to smooth it away with his fingers. 

Strangely, Zack doesn’t feel the same tug of puppy love that would’ve had him at her beck and call years ago. The feeling has morphed now; utmost respect and admiration have taken up the place where butterflies used to reside. He wonders if it’s appropriate to mention that they never really ended things, while talking to his girlfriend from the afterlife, but as if she’s pulling all the thoughts directly from his head, she giggles softly.

“I won’t hold a grudge that you never dumped me.”

He thinks he smiles in response, but it’s hard to tell. He isn’t even sure he has a corporeal form to control anymore. Not that death could keep a smile off of Zack Fair’s face, anyways. 

He has so much more to say. He wants to tell Aerith that he gets it now—understands the faraway look she gets in her eyes when she thinks no one is paying attention. He wants to tell her about Cloud, really tell her, and send her after him to keep him company in Midgar. He has so many tales and tragedies on the tip of his tongue, arguing over which is the most important to blurt out first. He wants to warn her about the monsters in plain sight, towering over the slums in their steel castles. 

He thinks she already knows. 

They don’t get a formal goodbye before Zack is pulled in another direction in the lifestream. There’s no closure as the scene warps and swirls in shades of green and other impossible hues that Zack couldn’t give a name to. It’s a suitable title for life after death— a river of souls, its current vivacious and unforgiving. 

Scenes from his life are rolling in and out of view. Saltwater slick and lingering on his skin and in the unruly strands of his hair. His father’s wrinkled and stern features, misleading the minute he opens his mouth and offers gentle words. His mother admonishing him for something mindless he’d done to get himself into trouble— the clever insults she’d invent, laced with affection and a humor he learned from her. Scraped knees and busted elbows, bubbles of laughter with no guilt or worry at their volume. A boy merely sinless and glad to be alive.

The blips of Angeal haven’t lessened in their sting. He can still see the buster sword, now trudging through Midgar’s Edge with Cloud, once carried unused but perfectly in line with Angeal’s back. He can still hear the rough tenor of his voice, and the way his passion and intention bled into every word he uttered. He can still feel the rough way Angeal would rub his knuckles on Zack’s scalp, fighting the tilt of his lips in his attempts to reproach. Zack wants to call out to him here in the lifestream—search for his soul and ask him all the things he never got the chance to. 

Then there’s Cloud Strife, red in his cheeks and his head held high with the kind of naivety that can only be endearing. Images flit of his blonde tufts, always straying every which way when he took off his bulky infantry helmet. The remnants of his thick Nibel accent echo all around, the country boy always trying his best to mask it behind Midgar dialect, and blushing when he slips up. Scenes play of the awkward way he’d fumble around his attempts to comfort, aware of Zack’s grief and determined to ease it however he could. 

Zack wants to turn off the memories when they cut to Cloud’s body, his small frame disproportionate to the laboratory cots, hooked up to a countless number of tubes and wires. He wants to silence the muffled sound of his cries from the other room, victim to the gleam of scalpels and needles while Zack listens, helpless and tied down. He wants to shatter the glass tank holding Cloud suspended, already altering his mind beyond comprehension. 

His rare moments of coherence after the mako wiped him clean are a grace that comes after—not so much his tossing and turning in the fits of whatever terrifying thing is playing on loop in his mind. He recalls the years spent devoutly at Cloud’s side, guarding his unmoving body like a dog, whispering all his dreams and secrets and honor into what might’ve been deaf ears.

Zack isn’t ready to leave him.

It’s this thought that urges him forward, as if he’s holding an oar in the current of the lifestream to guide himself. He tries to focus all of his thoughts on Cloud. It would be easier, he thinks, if the white noise of all the other souls around him would quiet down. 

Almost like an old and crackly television, Cloud comes into view. It’s not as clear as his time with Aerith, but that doesn’t come as a surprise. Aerith is connected to the lifestream in a way no other living being is.

Cloud isn’t doing well. Zack doesn’t need to really be there to tell. 

The pain the blonde is in is nearly tangible, ringing sympathetically through Zack’s own head—the broken string of his thoughts, the aching in his skull like something is missing there. Cloud has made it to Midgar at least. Zack thinks he recognizes the streets of Sector Seven, but it’s been so long now that it’s hard to tell for sure. 

He’s close enough to touch him, if he could. The thought that he can’t anymore hollows out his gut, leaving a distressing and empty feeling in its wake. It shouldn’t be possible to feel nauseous in the afterlife , Zack complains silently. 

It only worsens when that woman approaches. Cloud isn’t well enough to answer her questions, yet she goes on asking him anyhow, crowding around his shoulders and then lifting him up by his bloody elbows. Zack wonders then, nearly snarling at this old lady, when he lost so much trust in the goodness of the people around him. 

He can’t help it, really. The last years of his life have been so centered around keeping Cloud close—Cloud’s slow beating heart against his spine, his warmth where they huddled for the night, the feel of his unruly hair as Zack ran his fingers through it, saving the blonde some dignity in having it detangled.

It’s a Pavlovian response of sorts. Any sign of distress from Cloud, and Zack is reaching to clasp his hands and check him over for unseen injuries. Any unfamiliar face leering or leaning too close to the two of them, and Zack is readying his grip on his broadsword.

Standing in that woman’s apartment, listening in on her words spoken to Cloud and watching her every move with a hawk’s eye, Zack feels like he’s haunting the place. Promoted from Zack the Puppy to a phantasmic guard dog. 

She asks him loads of questions that are met with silence, and a faraway look from Cloud. When he eventually tries to answer, voice breaking painfully around the word Nibelheim , she fetches him water to clear his throat. 

Zack wants to cry at the scene in front of him. It isn’t clear if he even can cry anymore, but he feels it, deeply and vividly, regardless of his form. 

Cloud doesn’t remember. This isn’t him fudging his story for this woman—Marle, she says— to keep his privacy. The confusion and distress is written in the lines of his face, as he sifts through his fragmented memories and tries to piece the puzzle back together. 

Zack wants to throttle Marle for mentioning Tifa, watching the way it sets Cloud off. He goes glossy eyed, trying to explain the pain that’s clearly radiating through his head, so Zack reaches a hand out to ease the tension from his rigid shoulders. It phases through, unsurprisingly, but before he can retract it, Cloud’s muscles are spasming around the ghost of a hand in his chest. 

It’s one of the more terrible things the SOLDIER has ever had to witness—Cloud’s body convulsing, arching up off the sofa as if possessed. Marle does what Zack can't, guiding his head to a safer position so he won’t bite his own tongue, then leaving him to ride it out from a safe distance. 

Zack sits in a sullen anger for the hours that pass after. He bargains in his head with the planet herself, demanding she give good reason for pulling him to this side so soon—for dragging him off when he’s clearly still needed on the other end of things. He argues with nothing until it’s devolved into baseless claims and, probably, downright blasphemy. Zack ends up so focused on berating unnamed entities that he loses sight of Cloud, once again drifting through the stream of souls, his seething shouts heard over all other noise. 

He might not have the right to be as mad as he is. He knows, deep down, that this is the natural cycle of things, and he ought to come to terms with it. He knows that he has no right over any other being in the lifestream to make the demands he’s making. 

Still, he demands. And writhes. And protests until the tongue of his soul grows weary.

“Zack…?”

 Aerith’s voice doesn’t sound gentle like before. No, right now, it sounds kind of terrified. 

Sometimes, if you complain hard enough, you can end up with exactly what you asked for. 

Chapter Text

Tifa’s dreams are hardly ever pleasant. 

Her routine starts and ends the same each day; she crashes after a long shift behind the bar, fighting to find a position on her thin mattress that eases the twinge in her joints, and eventually, she startles awake with a flutter in her chest and an ache over raised scar tissue. 

The nightmares don’t follow any discernible pattern. They’re always vivid and harrowing, pulling scenes from her life and altering outcomes, making what was already grotesque somehow even more so. In an unpredictable fashion, Tifa’s mind seems to invent new ways to torment her each time her eyes slip shut. 

Tonight’s fit of dreams is a rather recurring sequence. It lures her in with the same gentle stage; there’s resounding laughter from her friends in the neighborhood, bouncing off of slanted buildings and steep curved roads. The fabric of her dress blends with the open sky, echoing tales of a mother she still reaches a hand out for in moments of fugue. The blue above her always rings unfamiliar in dreams, like Tifa has somehow gotten the color wrong after so many years under unforgiving steel. 

Nibelheim air had a clear scent to it, a sweet kind of smell from the tall grass and pine, and that’s always what goes first. It’s still lucid in Tifa’s memory— the stark difference between the old mountain atmosphere and the rusted, mildewy air of the slums. She recalls what she’s missing each time her nose gets stuffed up, her head full of dust and rot in a town uncared for. 

Tonight, the pleasant parts of her dreams relay a little longer. Most of the time, she doesn’t get to see her father before he’s taken in a bath of blood by cold iron. Now he’s there clearly, salt and pepper scruff above his lip, telling Tifa she needs to be careful with herself. He was always such a worrier, rightfully so, knowing the reckless scenarios she tended to wind up in.

He’s telling a story about her mother. Fingers are running through the length of her inky hair, gently coaxing the knots out. He mentions something about her foolhardy nature and the remnants of it in Tifa’s own personality. He speaks of her kindness, and the way it bled her dry— the way that Tifa bleeds just the same.

The hands in her hair are melting into ichor, moving sludge-like and slow onto the crease of Tifa’s neck. The black rot of it is burning through the fabric of her sleeves, sizzling the skin underneath. Where before there were familiar calluses on the tips of her father’s fingers, bone is revealed, moving up the length of his arm until his skin and muscle fully dissolve away. 

Fire is always somewhere in her dreams. This time, it ignites as the pile of bones fall into a heap on the floor, turning what’s left of her father to ash. The smell is the most vivid, tickling down Tifa’s throat and watering her eyes. It isn’t long before it pervades everything around her, the ghoulish orange licking up the face of all she knows, laughing impossibly at her. Fire shouldn’t be able to laugh, but it does, wicked and spiteful and all-knowing.

Sephiroth takes a lot of forms in Tifa’s unconscious mind. Sometimes he’s just as he was, the face of SOLDIER who used to be a symbol of pride and honor. More often than that, he’s something gruesome, sprouting limbs from his flank, rotten and flayed and covered in feathers. His eyes stay the same every night, though, terrifying enough on their own with no need for her mind to exaggerate. 

She’s on the end of Masamune, the wind beaten out of her. The white hot pain that comes after is familiar, lighting up every nerve in her body as her skin gives way to steel like it’s made of tissue paper. 

And just like every other flitting memory of Sephiroth, nightmare or otherwise, it ends in green. The slit of his pupils bore down on her as she falls, his eyes creasing in disdain as her body is flung. The sight is all consuming, holding all of Tifa’s focus like he has her under some sort of spell until she wakes with a start, clutching her chest and inhaling sharply. 

Tifa tries to quiet the noise of her breathing, knowing how thin the walls of Stargazer Heights are. It would be no good to worry Marle, or wake her up, if she can help it. And lovely as she is, Tifa knows that if Marle catches her in conversation, she’ll never make it to the bar in time to open for lunch.

Getting ready in the morning is more of the same. Tifa has to avert her eyes from the mirror as she dresses, feeling the pang of last night’s dream as she avoids looking at the jagged and atrophic lines of her surgery scars. It would do her good to get used to them. She knows they aren’t going anywhere, but each time she tries to memorize the pattern of them, her mind flutters back to that awful day— let alone all the awful days after, clawing her way through survival and leaving a trail of blood behind her from Nibelheim. She thinks of the hours she spent under the knife, unconscious and photographed against her will. It’s with a well of bitterness that she recalls the corrupted doctors, targeting the vulnerable they're supposed to protect to fill their wallets and their textbooks.

So she changes with her eyes focused on the floor, basking in the familiar pull of worn leather over her knuckles, and laces up her boots. 

The bar is quiet for lunch. There aren’t many faces that Tifa doesn’t know in Sector Seven, especially of the ones that frequent Seventh Heaven. Most of them are kind, if a little rugged, and know exactly what they want before they come in. It makes for an easy flow of things— she’ll recognize a patron as they walk through the double doors, move to prepare whatever drink she knows they’ll like, and chat them up as she goes. 

The rest of her gang usually show their faces in the evening, bustling in with a liveliness and warmth that settles the bar into home— Barret, with Marlene in tow, Biggs and Wedge, slick with sweat and all smiles after a long day helping out around Sector Seven, and of course, Jessie. 

Jessie, with her sly flirtations, heavily leaning across the counter in an attempt to fluster, has Tifa wondering if this is how she’s supposed to feel when talking to handsome men— if the slight sting in her heart whenever Jessie directs that same coquettish behavior towards anyone else is what others call jealousy. 

Tifa tucks it away when the feeling flutters in her chest. 

“Somethin’ on your mind, gorgeous?” 

Tifa’s head snaps from her group of friends—arguably, staring at Jessie— to the customer on the other end of the bar, already a few too many drinks in and slurring his words around the edges. The thought that she might’ve let her emotions show on her face has her feeling pale, schooling her expression the best she can into something cordial.

“Just that this oughta be your last drink,” she replies with a wobbly smirk, walking over to pull back his empty glass, the condensation chilling the tips of her fingers.

The last hours of her shift pass in a blur. Tifa likes the way that time melts at the bar, lost in the dangling conversations between friends and the loosened tongues as the drinks flow freely. It isn’t what she would’ve pictured for herself ten years ago, young and full of wonder over the steel landscapes of Midgar, but it suits her just fine. Community is vital in the slums, and she’s glad to be in the heart of it.

Barret helps Tifa close up the bar after the final customers have sifted out. It’s always a sweet scene to watch— Barret moving through the motions of their closing tasks with Marlene pitter-pattering right behind him, trying her best at whatever menial direction her father gives her. Sleep is already set in her dark, droopy eyes, and her never ending yawns are a reminder of dusk settling in. 

By the time she’s helped with tucking Marlene in, said goodbye to the rest of the crew, and locked the place up, the exhaustion is set in Tifa’s posture. She has to fight to stay upright on the walk home. It hasn’t been a longer day than what’s typical for her, but she feels it anyhow, likely still fighting the remnants of a restless night and her bad dreams.

It’s while she’s gazing at the plate above, wondering what the stars look like tonight from up top, that Marle catches her gently by the wrist.

“I’ve had enough of people lost in their own heads for a day,” she tells Tifa, snapping her back from her daydreaming. 

Tifa smiles softly in apology, gripping the woman’s hand and running a thumb over her palm. “Sorry, Marle. It’s just been one of those days.”

“I might just make it worse then, hun,” Marle replies. Now that Tifa is looking at her, dim and flickery as the streetlights are, she can tell it’s been one of those days for the both of them. The bags under her eyes are heavy and sunken and her hands are shaky from overexertion. 

“What’s going on, Marle?” Tifa asks, leading them up the dirt path towards Stargazer Heights. There’s a sigh in response, as if she’s already sorry to bring the topic up at a bad time. 

“We ought to talk inside.”

Marle’s apartment is a second home for Tifa. With her own place just upstairs, she frequents it often, sparing sugar for morning coffee or indulging in whatever leftovers Marle always sets aside for her. Having someone like Marle— a person bathed in lived experiences surviving under the plate— is a priceless thing. 

It doesn’t feel like home now. The second the door closes behind them, Tifa is hit with the sterile scent of rubbing alcohol and the sight of blood soaking through the cushions on Marle’s couch. It has her heartbeat stuttering, reeling her thoughts back to years before. 

“What happened in here?” Tifa manages to choke out, turning to look Marle over in the light of the apartment, as if she might’ve missed a gaping wound on the woman. When she finds no more than the same weariness from before, the questions grow exponentially in her head. 

“You happen to know a Cloud? From Nibelheim?” 

With her mind already replaying scenes of that terrible day after seeing the state of Marle’s apartment, that name leaves Tifa’s ears ringing and her mouth dry in further distress. 

Do I know a Cloud… 

It’s been years of silence, now. Tifa thought she might hear something from the aspiring SOLDIER after everything they’d known was reduced to ash— after he lost his mother. She knows that most of his memories in that town are not pleasant. She knows that other than Claudia herself, he had very little attachment to the place at all, at least in terms of people he’d keep in contact with. 

Still, her thoughts flit back to feet dangling over the edge of a wooden platform, eyes gazing up towards a cloudless night sky, and children making promises with no thought behind the weight of those vows. Further back, she recalls urging the blonde to follow her blindly up Mt. Nibel, and the drop in her stomach at her thoughtless misstep on old rotten wood.

Cloud had no reason to reach out to Tifa. 

“Yeah, I know him,” she tells her, eyes cutting back and forth between Marle’s worried expression and the blood on the couch. “I’m gonna need more than that, though. What’s going on?”

Marle scurries further into the apartment, leading Tifa to her small café table set snugly along the wall by the kitchen. Tifa doesn’t really want to sit down, more concerned with the near crime scene in the room, but she forces herself anyhow. 

“I found the kid in bad shape, just wandering the main roads this afternoon. Could barely tell me his own name,” she says, exasperated. 

“What was wrong with him? Where is he now?”

“He’s in the spare room next to yours, sleepin’ soundly I hope. I tried to ask him how he knew you, but he kept blanking like—” Marle pauses, searching for how to explain. “It was like nothin’ was there at all. And then the seizures would come along.”

“Seizures?”  Tifa exclaims, inadvertently raising the volume of the conversation, and wincing apologetically once she realizes. “And what do you mean he ‘blanks?’ The Cloud I knew was always… quiet, sure. But nothing like that. At least not that I saw.” 

“Shinra’s grubby fingerprints are all over that kid. I don’t know what kind of sick things they do to their own men, but I wouldn’t even want to be a fly on the wall in one of those labs.”

Tifa feels the aura of a migraine tingling behind her eyes. She doesn’t know where to go from here, and she almost wishes someone would just tell her— tell her to fight the inkling to run from this, or tell her it’s out of her hands anyways. He wouldn’t even want to see me. I’d only make whatever is wrong with him worse.

“I think a familiar face could do him a world of good,” Marle calls softly, sensing Tifa’s line of thought from the look on her face, and reaching across the table to pry apart her clenched fists. 

“I don't know, Marle… We were never all that close, back in Nibelheim.” 

“The day Tifa Lockhart turns a blind eye to somethin’ like this is the day I croak.”

It would be pointless to wake Cloud up after the day he’s had, so Tifa promises Marle that she’ll visit in the morning. Scrubbing blood out of her landlady’s sofa isn’t her ideal evening after work, but it fits right in with all the other chaos that seems to strut in and out of Tifa’s life. 

By the time they’ve said their goodbyes and Tifa has made it back to her own apartment, she’s stuck in the state that’s beyond tiredness where she’s unable to fall asleep. It might be the stubborn cycle of thoughts still demanding her attention, or the fact that she knows Cloud is next door. 

None of it feels real yet. Her life now is so far gone from her days back in Nibelheim that sometimes, when she’s gone a while without the reminders, she can convince herself that it was all a bad dream. With no other survivors, and Shinra building up from the rubble to fill the ghost town with their own employees, that’s exactly how they want her to think of it anyways. 

It’s a heavy burden to carry on her own— the rich history of their mountain town, their old traditions and cuisines and dialect. Even the names of the deceased feel like her sole responsibility to remember and honor. Tifa should be thrilled that there’s a heart beating next door that was cut from the same cloth. 

She should, she knows. Dread insists on sitting in its place. 

Tifa doesn’t sleep deep enough for nightmares. It’s all fitful rest until the light seeps through her curtains— tossing and turning and checking the clock until it’s pointless to keep trying. 

It’s too early to pay Cloud a visit, or so she tells herself. There are still several hours before she needs to head to Seventh Heaven for lunch, but sitting in her room and twiddling her thumbs has never been something she’s good at. 

She only takes half the time she usually would to get ready, haphazardly throwing her hair up and putting on her usual gear. It’s a Saturday today, which means the streets will be bustling with vendors and shoppers alike. Sometimes weekends in town are more of a headache than they’re worth, but Tifa needs to pass the time anyhow. 

Familiar faces greet her as she idles around, some approaching for small talk or urging her over to their own stalls of trinkets. Staying on good terms with the vendors in town is vital to stay in business yourself— most of them know what she needs ahead of time, offering up their best prices and bagging up her produce before she even asks for it. 

Everything is still sort of hazy, as if her thoughts are filtering through cotton fibers. It’s hard to be fully present with her mind set on the blonde back in Stargazer Heights. She wonders if he’s awake for the day yet, or if he’s still sleeping off whatever awful affliction Marle was describing last night. 

“Flower for your thoughts?” 

Tifa startles lightly, turning her head towards the almost sing-song cadence of a voice that called beside her. 

Oh. 

This is probably what all of those books are talking about. Tifa has never seen a green so vivid and soul searching— not in a way that disarms rather than frightens her. She’s helpless to it all at once, not even phased by the flower the girl is offering her with an outstretched hand. 

As if noticing Tifa’s predicament, the stranger giggles softly. 

“I know, it’s a shock to see ‘em under the plate.” Tifa wants to stop and correct her— it’s not the flower that has her practically glitching. “Go on, take one.”

“How… what for?” 

She tilts her head in response, her long twisted braid flipping to the side with it. “Isn’t that something people do? Offer flowers to beautiful girls?"

Tifa barks a sort of awkward laugh, feeling the heat on her cheeks spread to the tips of her ears. This just seems to egg the strange florist on, though, her friendly smile turning a touch mischievous. 

“Sorry. I don’t mean to tease.” Something tells Tifa that this girl absolutely does mean to do just that, but she doesn’t comment. “You seemed pretty lost in thought there. I’ve never seen someone stare down a crate of onions so seriously.”

Tifa turns to what held her attention previously, but she’s not even sure when she wandered off this way. “Well… you have to make sure you pick the good ones. You know… the ripe kind,” Tifa manages to mumble out, feeling foolish as soon as it leaves her mouth. Do onions even need to ripen? 

She decides it doesn’t matter a second later, as it evokes the most angelic laugh she’s ever heard from the stranger’s lips. Tifa thinks that if she blushes any harder, she may pop a blood vessel. Or melt to mush all over this girl’s boots. 

“Well, I’m sure you’ll pick the best one, huh?” She smiles radiantly, masking the vibrant green of her eyes as they crease shut. Before Tifa can apologize for ignoring the flower still held out between them, the girl tucks it gently behind Tifa’s ear, leaving a trail of raised flesh in the wake of her fingers. 

There’s no time to reply. The girl saunters off as quickly as she appeared, waving goodbye high above her head as she turns, and then disappearing in a blur of pink fabric and yellow blossoms.

I should’ve at least asked for a name…

Tifa feels almost high as she trudges back to Stargazer Heights, replaying the scene from before and feeling the same rush each time she twirls the yellow lily between her fingertips. She almost doesn’t want to bring herself back down, knowing that whatever awaits with Cloud isn’t likely to be as pleasant.

“Not that anything could be as pleasant as that,” she silently comments, feeling a sting of shame at the thought. The spiteful part of her reasons that girls are better off not thinking of other girls that way. It’s almost a physical pain to force the flutter in her chest to still— to fight such a gentle feeling away with such vitriol. 

Still, she made a promise. Those might not mean much when they’re sworn thoughtlessly at age fourteen, but they mean something now. Especially to Tifa.

Marle is already in the room by the time Tifa gets there. She only has to gently knock twice before the door is swinging open and the landlady is ushering her inside. 

It isn’t a pretty sight. The room itself is bare, practically empty, save for the old bed frame and mattress with the blonde SOLDIER tossing and turning on top of it. 

He looks wildly different than the last time Tifa saw him. While he’s still short enough to fit comfortably on the bed, he’s grown significantly over the years, lean muscles filling out his arms and presumably the legs trapped under the covers. Tifa doesn’t have time to focus on the stark differences, though— not when Cloud is clearly in great distress, sweating up a storm and tensed up so tightly that it seems agonizing.

“Cloud…?” Tifa attempts, moving past Marle towards his prone form. There isn’t any response, other than the same tight crease in his brow and his rapid, labored breathing. But as she inches closer, she spots the hand clutched firm against his chest, holding something tightly enough to draw blood. She rushes forward, moving to claw open his hand and check the wound. 

There’s a pained mumble in response, and uncanny green eyes shoot open to meet hers. Tifa jumps back when she locks in on those slitted pupils, full of fear and hate and, above all else, confusion. 

Not before she glances at the name on the dogtags he’s holding, though— another name from that sinful day, coated in blood and cinder.

Zack Fair.

Chapter Text

It was no more than a whisper.

Aerith spends a lot of her days in that old church. From the outside, she appeared to be a devout believer, earmarking her time on her knees with her hands clasped in prayer. She doesn’t correct the assumption when people make it. It is a prayer of sorts— just with her on the receiving end.

Most of the noises that flit from the planet and make it to her ears are hardly intelligible. Aerith finds the sensation hard to describe, but it’s more like a stream of feelings than anything else. Some are happy to pass, humming with soft content. Others are hard pressed, or even suffering greatly when they first arrive. She tries to soothe the confused and distressed souls with soft encouragement and direction, easing their transition into the lifestream the best she can.

It’s almost like a double life. Focusing on two worlds at once is a skill she’s been trying to master even before she could walk, though it doesn’t quite feel like it on days like this one.

Zack Fair was a man who lived loud and died quiet. He was also a man that Aerith loved, in all the ways she knew how given her rather unorthodox upbringing. She doesn’t think it was love in the traditional sense— the kind that the novels and the plays wax poetic about. Even as it was, atypical and full of childish whimsy, it was crucial to Aerith.

So when the SOLDIER enters the lifestream with no more than a sigh of relief, Aerith finds herself choking on the air around her.

She knew the day would come. Aerith has been walking around with her heart in her stomach for the last five years, wondering with bated breath when the feeling would hit her. Wherever Zack was before this, she can only imagine it hasn’t been pleasant. Devotion is something integral to the man, and if he had been able to call her and let her know that he was alright, he would have in a heartbeat.

That left Aerith with millions of possibilities to ponder. And she did just that, often struck suddenly with haunted visions of Zack alone and in peril. This isn’t to say that she was a husk without him, a sitting duck waiting for his return— no, she made do. But there was a part of her heart carved out in his shape, and it rang hollow and echoed violently the minute Zack passed on.

He was only content for the first few moments. Aerith felt it in waves, as the arms of the planet engulfed him and led him towards that flow of soft greens and whites. He was at peace, loose ends tied up back on Gaia, ready to finally rest after fighting for so long.

Something must’ve happened in the moments in between. By the time Zack is barreling towards the church, she can feel his worry and discontent gurgling through the stream, separating and pulling him in different directions like oil and water.

If you know what you’re doing, the lifestream is sort of malleable. It can be what you need— a firm hand to guide for those without purpose, or calm navigable waters for those who know where they’re going. Zack seems stuck between the two— desperately searching for someone, and yearning to just give in.

“It’s going to be alright.” Aerith focuses the best she can to send the feeling to the SOLDIER. She tries to be a beacon, a guiding light in his mess of thoughts to aim for. It must work, somehow, because moments later she can feel him close, his soul pittering under the surface of her bed of flowers.

Zack is mumbling about the sky. Or at least, Aerith thinks he is. It’s hard to make out, but there are whispers about clouds, spoken with a gentle reverence.

No, maybe not the sky.

A person. And clearly a rather important one. 

Aerith gives herself the day to mourn.

Her conversation with Zack— before his soul was pulled off and away from the church— left her wrung out and a little clueless about where to go from here. It doesn’t feel right to her to just carry on with her day, knowing what she knows. Even with how long they’ve been apart, right now the loss is an open and bleeding wound that needs tending.

She wishes she could quiet the cries of the lifestream just for a little while— wishes she could grieve how a normal person would, without the pull from both sides of life tugging at her heartstrings. There isn’t the same sting in her grief, where one wonders what happened to the person they love after they’ve passed. She knows it all too intimately to wonder.

Ignorance can be a beautiful thing, and Aerith craves it.

Elmyra will know what to say at a time like this. She always knows just what to say.

Aerith brushes the dirt from her dress as she stands, and tries to distract herself enough to walk back home with composure. It would be a pain to break down in front of the prying eyes of Sector Five— not that she wouldn’t appreciate the concern, but right now, she needs something more familiar.

She manages to make it to the yard of their home, through the main streets and the winding tunnels, without shedding a tear. In the end, it’s the wagon propped up in the yard, full of yesterday’s harvest and beginning to wilt in the parched air, that finally has her eyes shimmering.

It’s simply too on the nose. Her business peddling flowers is just one of the many things the SOLDIER brought into her life, blossoming her worldview and introducing colors she’d never imagined before. There’s such a clear distinction to Aerith— before and after Zack.

She has no grave to leave flowers on. No address or phone number to let Zack’s parents know what has happened to him. No piece of him left behind with her other than this damn wagon, old and rickety and far too heavy to pull around between sectors.

Elmyra finds her there, hands around her knees, huddled like a child in the front yard.

“Oh, dove. . .” Elmyra calls, darting carefully around the patches of flowers to get to Aerith. “What happened? What’s the matter?”

Aerith can’t find it in her to answer, but she does lift her head from where it’s pressed against her knees. She bares her shining eyes to the woman in front of her. In the end, she doesn’t have to say anything at all— it’s intrinsic. Mothers just know.

There are arms around her in an instant, white fabric be damned, as Elmyra sits herself on the rough ground next to Aerith. All talk from then on out is barely registered, save for the mumbled promises that all will be well, and the featherlight kisses against the crown of her head.

Aerith isn’t sure how long they remain there, but by the time she’s cried herself out, they’ve moved to lay back against the ground. The tall grass shrouds their faces from each other, and it must make it easier to talk, because Elmyra opens up in a gentle voice.

“You know, when I lost Clay, it was like the world fell out from under my feet,” she starts, reaching her hand through the greenery to lay it atop Aerith’s. “I don’t think I ever apologized for that day.”

“Apologized for what?” Aerith asks, voice still scratchy from the remnants of her sobs.

“You tried to tell me, when he passed. And hearing it from you was far kinder than a half assed letter in the mail from Shinra, or a bag full of his charred stuff,” Elmyra scoffs at the memory, fidgeting before she continues. “You knew more about grief at that age than most will know in their whole lives.”

“I wish I didn’t.”

“I know, dove.”

Aerith feels another wave of heartache at the term, but she’s long since cried herself dry. She knows Zack wouldn’t want her to feel like this. He would probably be doing all he could if he saw her now, even from the lifestream, to put a smile back on her face.

“How did you get the world back under your feet, then?” Aerith asks.

“I don’t know if I ever did.” Elmyra sounds almost guilty in admitting it, like it might not be what Aerith needs to hear so soon after a loss. “The grief never got any smaller. I just grew around it, I think.”

“Sometimes, I wish I didn’t know all of the things that I know,” Aerith whispers softly, the tall grass becoming a curtain in a confessional booth, lending them momentary courage. “I don’t know how Mom dealt with it. Everything is just loud, all of the time. I can’t be in two places at once.”

“And I wish you didn’t have to hear it all alone,” Elmyra soothes, her voice laced with remorse. “But imagine never knowing at all— it could’ve been the rest of your life, stuck waiting around for a call or a letter that would never come. Whatever happened to that boy, Shinra clearly wants to keep it under wraps.”

“You’re right, I know it,” Aerith nods in reply, though her tone gives away her lingering discontent with the fact. “It’s just hard to really say goodbye when it feels like he’s still here—  with me, but a world apart.”

“Well, you can’t go floating off looking for him before your own time. There’s plenty of need for you right where you are— first on the list is getting you tucked into a bed with your name on it. And a hot cup of something to help you sleep.”

Elmyra sits up, guiding Aerith alongside her with a gentle palm against her back. She takes a moment to wipe the dirt from both their backs before ushering them inside the house.

“Thank you. Really, thank you,” Aerith tells her as the door is shut behind them. “Who knows where I’d be without you, huh?”

Aerith forces a wobbly smile that Elmyra mirrors. “I try not to think about that. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.”

Zack doesn’t visit Aerith again that night, and she makes it through the evening with Elmyra’s support and distraction. They keep themselves busy— scavenging through the backs of their cabinets for the ingredients to make homemade pastries, and cozying up while the oven fills the house with warmth. It’s what the SOLDIER would want her to do; he’d be glad to see her cherishing her time with the ones who care for her, sharing teary stories of the people they’ve loved and lost.

The feeling will probably hit her more violently in the days to come. Death is funny that way— it likes to take its time to settle in, to fill the space where shock and numbness reside. Zack’s death was always going to be a little different, as Aerith had already been mourning for years now in his absence, so it’s more like an old wound reopened.

Her mind keeps wandering to the boy Zack was searching for with such fidelity. She wonders if he ever found him and got the chance to ease his mind.

Cloud.

The name is fitting for a man that Zack clearly loved. She’d like to meet him, if she can find him here in Midgar. Zack wasn’t able to grace her with many details, but a name like Cloud can’t be all too common around here. And if his hands are tied by Shinra in the ways that Aerith thinks they are, they’ve already got a lot of threads in common.

She’ll look for him tomorrow. He might be the only one on Gaia grieving Zack alongside her. 

Aerith hasn’t sensed an aura so vibrant and troubled in years.

She’s making her usual rounds through the sectors, with just her basket full of tulips and lilies. There aren’t a lot of buyers in the slums— not for luxury items, anyways. It’s not like she minds, though. She hadn't even mused about charging for them until Zack came along.

Giving back to people— to those also trapped under Shinra’s thumb— pays well enough for Aerith. It feels like a blessing to see their surprise over real plants under the plate, and the delight when she offers one up for keeps. People tend to give more generously when they’re down on their luck, and often they’ll fill her pockets with trinkets or baked goods in place of gil.

She’s looking for Cloud, but not with any real insistence. She has a feeling that she won’t have to search very hard— when they’re meant to cross paths, they will.

Aerith is halfway through today’s basket, all the way to Sector Seven and handing out flowers haphazardly, when she sees her.

Everyone has energy. It isn’t entirely divergent from how the rest of the world sees; Aerith is just far more in tune to these kinds of things. Most of the time, people’s auras are subtle enough that she hardly notices them.

This girl, staring with more attentiveness at a crate of onions than Aerith has ever devoted to anything in her life, is buzzing with energy. It stops the florist in her tracks— has her stepping back a tad to observe.

It’s a bonus that the girl is beautiful. Not even just beautiful— no, she has the kind of look that would quiet a room when she walks in, all eyes following her like some sort of gravitational pull. Aerith almost wants to mourn for the rest of the world. She doubts they can see the vibrancy lingering beneath, with her oscillating shades of fiery deep reds and soft pinks. It has Aerith planning a floral arrangement in her head that could honor the impressionist-like aura around the girl.

Aerith is writing a list in her head of all the things she’d like to ask this stranger. What kind of life could ignite a passion like that? Am I missing something about those onions? Is she free for dinner?

Why does she look so sad, and how can I fix it?

She stares a while longer, and decides on an entirely different line of questioning.

“Flower for your thoughts?”

Making a beautiful stranger blush and fluster was a sufficient distraction from her despondent feelings. She didn’t leave that conversation with any of the information she really wanted— namely, a phone number, if she got lucky— but it did leave Aerith in a floaty sort of headspace, stomach fluttering and fighting the quirk of her lips.

Sector Seven has a different feel to it than Sector Five. Maybe it’s just because the streets aren’t familiar to Aerith in the same way, where she knows all the alleyways and hidden tunnel passages to get where she needs. There are always new faces when she treads this way too.

She only wanders for a little while longer, waiting for the afternoon heat to become just a touch unbearable. Being under the plate makes the weather strange in the slums, but the heat sure as hell makes it through all that steel somehow.

The lifestream is a background track for her walk through the sectors. It’s been mumbling discontentedly for a while now, hardly comprehensible to Aerith’s ears but still evident in its feelings of displeasure. She tries to hone in on something specific, wondering if maybe someone’s just passed on, but it only gets louder and more warbled as she treks closer to the church.

The distorted cries and moans turn to screams.

The lifestream almost sounds like a child after they’ve been sick, sobbing to the point of sputtered coughs. It has Aerith speeding up her steps, following the call that seems to be coming from the church itself.

She must look frantic to any onlookers, hustling down the dirt paths and around the bits of steel and rubble. It doesn’t matter much at the moment. Aerith doesn’t think she’s ever heard Gaia so upset— they’d be running to see what it’s all about too, if they could hear the deafening howls that she’s hearing.

The double doors to the church are shut when she arrives, but she can still hear the muffled noise of someone inside. It isn’t terribly uncommon for the church to have visitors, but Aerith knows this isn’t just any visitor. The lifestream wouldn’t be protesting like this for just any normal church goer.

Her ears are ringing by the time she’s inside. The sight before her only makes it worse.

It’s as if an earthquake shook the place, disturbing the base of the building and caving it in. The air is thick with dust and moisture, sending a tickle down Aerith’s throat as she makes her way through the wreckage.

Only a small portion of her garden remains. The rest has been swallowed–– pulled under by the open artery of the lifestream that burst through the floor of the church. The thick mix of mako and water where the altar ought to be is turbulent, gurgling like a sulfur spring and similar in color.

The sight could almost be described as beautiful— the faultless stained glass windows reflecting light onto the wreckage, and bouncing off of the unsettled stream— if it weren’t such a poignant loss.

There’s more thrashing in the mako. This time, Aerith spots what looks like a head breaching the surface. She hurries further in, careless with her steps and raking her ankles against the splintered floorboards, to get to them.

She knows to be careful around mako springs. She knows, logistically, she shouldn’t stick her hand in one to grab at whoever is floating around. Well. . . Aerith has always been a little helpless to her sudden whims. Restraint is a hard thing to learn.

Pulling dead weight out of any liquid is a chore, but she would argue that pulling it out of mako could be classed as an extreme sport. Aerith has to hold tight to the edge of the pool and lean back with all of her own weight to keep herself from barreling in. It’s with a huff and a burn through all of her muscles that she manages to grab the person under their shoulders.

The head of the nameless man rolls back as she fights to pull him up, and aberrant blue eyes blink open to meet hers.

There’s no way that’s. . .

“Zack. . .?!”

The disbelief over the man in front of her gives Aerith the last push she needs, sending her reeling back with the SOLDIER in tow. They collapse in a heap of oozing mako and rapid breaths, with Zack sputtering out whatever sludge remains in his lungs. After he works through his fit of violent coughs, Aerith tries to roll the man off of herself, struggling once again with his weight. She’s met with a pained moan and a wince from where she tried to push.

“Zack?” She forces the question out of her chest, somehow managing to gently slide out from underneath him. “Gaia, what’s going on? Are you alright?”

He’s rolled over on his back now, his breath still as quick as a hummingbird’s wings. Aerith crowds over his prone form, momentarily reminded of their similar positions the day they first met.

Cloudy eyes gaze back into hers. They’re almost unrecognizable, long hardened compared to the last time Aerith looked into them. And he seems to be looking through her, unfocused and millions of worlds away.

Zack opens his mouth to speak, voice scratchy and laced with pain. “I can’t. . .”

“Can’t what?” Aerith asks, fussing with the hair stuck to his forehead, thick with mako.

“Can’t feel my legs, I think.”

Aerith startles, leaning back to look over the length of him. He’s still in his SOLDIER First Class uniform, but without the shoulder brace, and the fabric is tattered all over his torso. She can tell he’s straining to move, tense all across the broad scope of his upper body and grimacing at the lack of response from the lower.

Aerith reaches a hand out to his leg, waiting for a nod of consent from Zack before gently gripping above the knee. He affirms, albeit shakily, so she touches and waits for the level of response.

“Any luck?”

“I don’t know,” he answers. Zack lets out a wobbly breath, reaching a trembling hand up to cover his eyes. “It’s all dull. I can feel it but. . . just barely. Aerith?”

“Yeah, Zack?"

“What’s going on? This isn't the lifestream anymore, is it? You shouldn’t be here if it is.” Zack’s eyes finally focus on her as he throws out his questions, his brows furrowing in the puppy-like way they always do.

“No, this isn’t the lifestream. I was hoping you could tell me how you got here,” Aerith replies, trying to smile and adjusting to kneel more comfortably beside him. “Gaia practically spat you back up— it was like you were making her sick.”

Zack snorts a laugh that makes him wince. It has Aerith fussing again, wiping the mako from his cheeks and turning the focus back to his legs.

“Can I ask—” Aerith pauses with a grimace, unsure how to phrase her question. Zack finishes it for her, anyways.

“Wanna ask how I died?” Aerith nods a confirmation for him to continue. “Shinra, but I’m sure you could figure that much out on your own. I think I might’ve pissed the planet off on my way out, though. You know if she’s in the business of paralyzing people who uh— you know, spew a bunch of blasphemy in the lifestream?”

“Zack!”

“Look, I was kinda freaking out! You try dying! Well, no. . . definitely don’t do that.”

Zack tries to move to sit up, but even the muscles in his arms feel like jelly. Aerith helps to steady him until he’s upright and leaning slightly against her shoulder.

The movement draws her eyes back to the pool of mako, now ceasing in its babbles. It’s a far cry from the violent stream it was before, and it almost looks like the mako is sinking underneath, leaving a glassy surface of water in its place.

“It might be the injuries from when I, uh—” Zack continues, gesturing to the tattered state of his uniform. “Even if Gaia didn’t mess me up, I don’t think she was itchin’ to heal me before spitting me out.”

“Can you move them at all? Your legs?” Aerith asks

Zack tries again, straining so hard it forces a grunt. It’s just enough to move his left foot across the dirt and frayed flowers, barely an inch.

“Lotta bullets that day, real close to my spine. . . Hah. Go figure, huh?” Zack’s breathing is picking up again. It’s clear he’s trying to fight the panic, masking it behind a teetery smile, but it isn’t enough to fool Aerith.

“Isn’t this something your SOLDIER enhancements could heal up? You always recovered crazy fast from all your scrapes and bruises after missions.”

Zack lifts the hem of his shirt in response, baring a chest and stomach marred beyond comprehension. All the wounds seem healed and scarred on the surface. Even that doesn’t take away from the brutality written across his skin.

Countless star shaped bullet holes— each an individual spiral galaxy of hurt— tell their own story from the day he died. It’s harder to find an inch of his flesh that isn’t blemished in some way. Aerith has to hold back from averting her eyes, or reaching out to map the tragic tale with her fingers. She can’t quite decide which would be better.

“Zack. . .”

“Pretty gnarly, huh?” He’s faking a smile again, his lie betrayed by the anxious pace of his chest rising and falling. “Bit more than some scrapes and bruises. I don’t know how much mako it would take to patch up a bullet to the spine, and I’d rather not find out.”

“Then we can go above the plate. There are doctors tha—”

“No."  Zack almost snarls the protest, shaking his head rapidly. “No doctors. Especially not above the plate.”

“Alright, no doctors. Noted.” Aerith doesn’t ask why. She doesn’t think she has to, and she doesn’t think she has the stomach for a real answer right now. “Where does that leave us?”

“Cloud,” Zack blurts out, unrelated but clearly lingering at the forefront of his thoughts. “Shit, shit. ”

“What about him?”

“Real hero I am, huh? I bitch and moan until the planet lets me come back to check on him, and what good am I now? How am I supposed to help him now?” His questions come out in a frantic rush. There’s no remnant of the calm he was masking before.

“Hey, hey. We’re gonna figure it out, okay?” Aerith soothes, pulling Zack in from around his shoulders. “Do you know where he is now?”

Zack’s eyebrows furrow as he tries to remember, his panicked breathing slowing at the distraction. “Sector Seven,” he replies. “At least, I think so.”

“Then we start there, huh? I bet he’s dying to see you.”

The SOLDIER wants to protest— wants to insist that he’s in no state to show up in front of Cloud. How can he, when he can hardly sit up on his own? This is Cloud he’s thinking of— the infantryman who looked at Zack like he hung the stars himself. The infantryman that Zack swore to protect. What good is a bodyguard that can’t stand? What good is a friend that runs off and dies, burdening him with all the things he didn’t get a chance to fulfill himself?

“You think I could pull you home in the flower wagon?”

Chapter Text

They have to go in the dead of night to avoid running into anyone.

Aerith feels a little nauseous heading home on her own to grab the wagon. She has a sinking feeling during her whole journey, insisting that when she returns to the church it’ll be as if none of it ever happened— that the wreckage and the visible flow of the lifestream will be gone, taking Zack back with them. She has to periodically glance down at the scrapes on her ankles, the blood now congealed and full of soot, to remind herself that it was real. 

Zack is back. He might be worse for wear, in a grand understatement, but he’s still the Zack Fair that she’s known for all these years. If anything, he’s kind of holding up too well for someone that death itself spit back to life. That has always been a core part of the SOLDIER— masking his hurt behind wide grins and shaky laughs, hoping it’ll ease the discomfort of those around him. 

It isn’t helping much this time around. No amount of contrived composure can alleviate his current situation and the worry Aerith feels in his stead. And no amount of it can fix his legs. 

She wishes he’d agree to see a doctor. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why he’s refusing the idea, but Aerith doesn’t know how else she can help. If it’s something his SOLDIER enhancements can’t touch, she doubts that her own skills with materia could even breach the surface of his wounds. 

Her mind flits back to stark finger paintings across white walls and rooms too sterile to call home. She knows what Shinra is capable of when they have someone in their grasp. There are no lengths they won’t go to for the sake of their own heavy pockets. She doesn’t have to theorize the horrors he might’ve faced— not when she grew up hearing the tortured screams from the laboratories down the hall. Not when the wicked smile on Professor Hojo’s maniacal face is something branded in her memories. 

She won’t bring up going above the plate again. Not until there are no other options. 

Sector Five is quiet at night. All the noise seems to waft to Wall Market— the night owls seeking their drinks and their neon lights and their kindred company. Aerith doesn’t have any old memories that would make her yearn for the night sky, wondering what the stars look like to those above steel. She’s content with the flickering streetlights, bouncing off of scrap metal and lending a shadow to fall behind her as she walks. 

Time moves slow like ichor when she’s alone past sunset. The mechanical buzz in the air isn’t enough to drown out the voices coming from the lifestream like during the day, when Aerith can hardly tell which murmurs are from the living and which are from the dead. She likes the ease that comes with having one stream of sound to focus her attention on; she wonders if this is how normal people might feel, eavesdropping in on conversations in line at a café. 

Gaia doesn’t sound quite so sick anymore. Aerith feels torn between soothing the pulsing flow beneath her feet, and seeking comfort for herself after the day she’s had. 

Elmyra chooses for her as she makes her way up the winding wooden path to their home. The woman is sitting grim outside the front door, arms crossed over her chest and worry etched into the curve of her brow. 

“Aerith,” she starts, her concern not completely blanketed by her attempt to chide, “where have you been?”

It’s almost like déjà vu, the way they mirror their talk from yesterday morning. Aerith thought she was holding up alright. She’s finding now that the words are impossible to form, stuck in her throat but too thick to swallow down. 

Elmyra must see it, because her cold posture immediately warms, arms open and beckoning. Aerith is helpless to do anything but accept. 

She doesn’t cry, but it’s a near thing. The touch is grounding in a way she didn’t know she needed— like she hadn’t realized she’s been floating since she opened the doors to the church. 

“You can’t be upset,” Aerith beseeches, leaning into the hand carding through her hair. 

“You? Getting into trouble? As if .” There’s an audible tilt to Elmyra’s lips as the sarcasm spills unbidden. 

“Not on purpose. I kind of stumbled into this one. But if you’re gonna blame anyone, blame Gaia.” Aerith pauses for a moment, leaning out of Elymra’s grasp to look up at her. “Or don’t, maybe. She’s been a little moody today.”

That seems to perk the woman up. Getting into trouble is one thing, sure— Elmyra sort of expects it of her daughter at this point. Aerith has always been that way, like a bird fluttering from one strange circumstance to another. She’s always wrapped up in some Shinra or SOLDIER mess, letting her tender heart lead her to where the suffering is. Getting into trouble with the planet itself , however… 

Elmyra moves to usher the two of them inside to talk further, but Aerith stops her by grabbing lightly around her wrist. 

“I’m actually in a bit of a crunch,” she says, shaking her head. “I need to take the wagon back to the church.”

“Surely the flowers can wait until morning…?” Elmyra asks, confusion lilting the end of her question. 

“Not this time.” Aerith fights a crooked smile at the thought of Zack propped up in the wagon, surrounded by colorful blossoms. It’d suit him quite well, she thinks. “By the way, is the spare bedroom set up?”

Zack knows fear. He felt it, raw and uninhibited, as he crossed swords with the comrades he would’ve laid his life down for— the ones he looked up to, mirroring his goals and his honor around their own. He felt it in the laboratories, throat exposed to men in white coats with little care for the agony of others. He felt it the whole year he was on the road with Cloud, dreading that the blonde would never flutter those vibrant blue eyes back open on his own. 

He’s never felt it like this. 

Laying alone in that church, unable to even adjust the uncomfortable way his legs are folded, Zack feels his fear tenfold— like the pearly white belly of a fish, vulnerable and waiting to be gutted. 

It’s an irrational thing bubbling up in his chest. He knows there’s likely no danger to him inside the walls of this church. People don’t frequent this place often, unless they’re looking for Aerith or strung out to the point of desperate prayer. It’s hard to be religious in a place like the slums, where you can’t see the hard work of the planet straining under the ground. The people have learned to put their faith in other things— namely, their own hard work. 

Even though he understands that the fear is unfounded, it persists as if it is. If someone were to burst through those double doors, he would be helpless against them. Even as a child, milk teeth bared and finding trouble around every corner, he wasn’t this unshielded. 

He maybe should’ve thought things through before harassing the planet. But if he had, the consequences he’s facing now pale in comparison to watching Cloud suffer, locked behind the luminescent curtain of another world. You win some, you lose some, huh Gaia? Lesson learned. 

Zack is hoping that Aerith will get back soon. He’s never been a very patient man— too much time alone always leads to a spiral of thoughts that he can’t untangle. Normally, he’d sweat them out, squatting until his mind is fuzzy around the corners. The fact that he no longer can only spurs on more of the unrelenting anxiety. 

He misses Cloud. It’s like the ache of an old broken bone when the weather changes. He keeps turning to the side, hoping to find a head of blonde hair slumped over, heart beating at a worryingly slow pace and eyes fluttering slightly behind his eyelids.

Cloud may not have been awake, but Zack thinks he was listening. It was a lot of time on the road for stories and mundane opinions and feelings that are easier to share with no promise of a response. Even if he wasn’t partially conscious, Zack would have talked to him anyways. 

He wants to talk to Cloud now— wants to apologize for not making it out that day. This would all be so much easier with his legs in working order. He’d be running to Sector Seven screaming Cloud’s name before the lifestream could even think of reaching back out to grab him. 

Since he can’t do any of the things he wants at the moment, Zack turns his attention to the place he’s been dreading. He hasn’t tried to move his legs since he attempted to for Aerith, but the need to know how deep the damage runs is stronger than the fear. 

He’s seen the cartography of scars across his abdomen. He felt the bullets— at least in the beginning. After about a hundred of them, it was hard to tell what was going through him anymore. The only sensation left by then was the contracting of his own muscles, his body trying its damndest to stop the bleeding, and the burning. Bullets shouldn’t burn, but they do, more than anything else. It was like he’d been bathed in fire by the time he’d finished the troopers off.

So yes, he theoretically knows the damage. It’s probably the sane solution to see a doctor. But the thought of having to go under the knife again, conscious and writhing or not, sends a pang through all the raised bits of scar tissue across his skin. They’d most likely have to cut him up. Who knows how many bullets never made it out to the other side? 

Zack tries to focus his energy on wiggling the toes of his left foot. It’d be easier if he could take off his boots, but leaning forward would mean losing the balance he has sitting up right now. 

There is a response. All the sensations are muted, like all of the tissue in his legs has been replaced with itchy cotton fibers, catching on his nerves and dulling the feeling. It’s as if he sat with his legs crossed for too long, cutting off the circulation and leaving sharp pins and needles across his skin— only with injuries like his, the feeling is deeper, permeating through the muscle and far more intense.

He had to take courses on basic life support and medical aid before he was promoted to SOLDIER. While healing with enhancements is different, the anatomy stays pretty much the same, and it’s important to know how to help when they come across injured civilians. It wasn’t all too in depth, and it’s been so long now that Zack’s memories of the class are sort of hazy. 

Zack has seen comrades with injuries too severe for their enhancements to touch. Anything surface level patches up alright— the trouble begins when the nerves are hit. It’s such a complex web of a system, that often the speed of SOLDIER healing will leave them permanently impaired instead of repaired. It’s why the commanders advise so sternly to never use healing materia on a head injury— the planet’s abilities can fall short compared to the complexity of the human mind.

So with his vague knowledge, he can piece together that his spinal cord has been wounded. It explains all the nerve damage and the numbness. It may go further than that, but it’s not like he can assess his own organs from the outside. 

Zack strains his right leg— a little movement in the foot, a slight bend of the knee. The tingling radiates, his muscles burning up from the effort. He repeats for his left side, finding it a little harder to maneuver. It isn’t much, but it’s something. He supposes he should be grateful to have any feeling in them at all.

Aerith is probably right. This is all beyond his scope of knowledge. Maybe, if the doctor she takes him to is under the plate and unassociated with Shinra… 

As if she can hear his contemplation, the double doors to the church burst open. Aerith has the wagon in tow, devoid of its usual flower arrangements and just as bulky as Zack remembers. 

She looks absolutely exhausted, and it washes a wave of guilt over Zack, knowing he’s the cause. This is all far more than she signed up for. How someone can even begin to atone for a hindrance like this is beyond Zack. Her boyfriend goes missing for five years, dies without a word, and argues with the planet until he’s spit back up for Aerith to deal with— he doesn’t even know where to start with Cloud’s role in all of this. Aerith is far more forgiving than she ought to be, and Zack is putting himself in the running for the most difficult ex-boyfriend on Gaia. 

Still, he missed her. And he thinks she’d put up with all his trouble regardless, because she’s missed him too. The initial assumption that she was an angel might not be so far off these days. 

“Sorry I was gone for so long,” Aerith says with remorse, pulling the wagon up to where Zack is prone in the remnants of her garden. “How are you holding up?”

“I should be asking you that,” he replies. “Wasn’t polite to let a girl walk home so late on her own.”

Aerith pouts endearingly in response, raising her arm to mockingly flex her bicep. “I’m tough enough on my own.” With the wagon parked, she walks around Zack to crouch in front of him, assessing their situation. “So, how do we wanna do this?”

Zack tries to hide how much he’s dreading it. It would almost be hilarious, letting Aerith pull him around town like a child in a grocery cart, if it weren’t so utterly humiliating. It’s not like there’s an abundance of wheelchairs for grabs below the plate, though. And he doesn’t know if a wheelchair would feel any less embarrassing; at least with the wagon, there’s some humor in the act. 

“I think I can mostly get myself up. Might need you to lift my legs, though,” Zack says, trying for a smile and feeling it fall short. If she notices, Aerith pardons him by ignoring it. 

The people who knew Zack Fair might’ve described him as shameless. He’s rowdy, a little unaware of his own volume at times, and he isn’t reserved in the slightest. His Zack the Puppy moniker was an accurate one— boundless energy, quick to trust and adore, and brazen with his emotions. 

The shame he feels now, as he struggles to pull himself inside the wagon with Aerith gently lifting his feet, is an unfamiliar feeling. Even though he knows Aerith doesn’t think of this as an inconvenience— she would scold him for even assuming it, perish the thought— it roils up violently in his gut. He thinks this might be the first time he’s felt true, full bodied humiliation. And with the state of his legs, knowing this likely won’t be the last, the knot in his stomach only grows.

“The wagon is just for today, okay?” Aerith soothes as soon as he’s fully seated. “We’ll find something easier to get in and out of. Elmyra said she’ll ask around in the morning.”

Aerith markedly doesn’t mention a wheelchair, likely sensing Zack’s tension. He knows that’s what she means, anyways. 

“Thank you, Aerith.” Zack leans back on his elbows as Aerith leads them out of the church. “There aren’t enough ways for me to say it.”

“You’re back, right?” Zack isn’t facing her, so he can’t see the smile that graces her lips. He can hear it in her voice, though. “That’s enough.”

It takes a while to make it back to Aerith’s house. The wagon creaks its protests the whole way, grating unpleasantly over gravel roads. The uneven ground proves quite the challenge, and Aerith’s arms feel like jelly by the time they arrive.

Zack and Aerith silently share the same line of thought each time a bump in the road sends him jostling— this would be just as difficult in a wheelchair. The slums weren’t well constructed in general, but they definitely weren’t designed with accessibility in mind. Severe disabilities under the plate tend to be a death sentence, so what’s the point in accommodating them? Shinra must think so, anyways. 

Even the yard to her own home is a struggle. Aerith wants to apologize for it, as if she could’ve guessed this would be an issue to prepare for. One glance at the red hot blush on the back of Zack’s neck has her biting her tongue. Their decided silence might be what he needs. 

She isn’t quite sure how to comfort. Normally, things with Zack are simple. They’re both pretty easygoing, and a shared laugh is often the thing they need to get over a hump. Aerith doesn’t think she’s allowed to poke fun in a situation like this— not when she’s never been through anything similar herself. And even without the punching down, he doesn’t seem to want more attention drawn to his current reality than necessary. 

Distractions. Aerith can manage distractions. 

She doesn’t bother with keeping quiet as she rolls the wagon into the house. The lights are still shining through the windows, and she knows Elmyra will be staying up until the two of them are settled. Aerith plans an apology in her head as she shuts the door behind them, blocking out the soft bleeding orange of the rising sun. 

Elmyra is waiting on the couch, still looking stern despite their earlier talk. Aerith did her best to debrief the situation, but there wasn’t much she could say to allay someone rising from the dead. 

Zack visibly tenses as Elmyra stares him down. 

They don’t have the best history. It’s never been from a real place of hate, but Elmyra is well known for her protective streak— no one was surprised at her hesitance in letting a Shinra SOLDIER so close to Aerith. In the two years they were together, she hardly warmed up to him at all. The furthest they managed was cordiality for Aerith’s sake. 

Well, Elmyra managed. Zack has been trying to win her over since the day they met. 

“I won’t have Shinra barging into this house,” Elmyra says, breaking the lingering silence. “If you think it’ll be a problem, I advise you to find somewhere else to stay.” 

Zack has the cognizance to look remorseful, ducking his head before calling back. “Yes, ma’am. Shouldn’t be a problem. Unless they know something I don’t about uh— coming back to life and shit. I mean— stuff . Sorry, ma’am.”

“They got you pretty good, huh?”

“Mom,” Aerith exclaims in a whisper, snapping out of her exhaustive silence and finally turning to chide Elmyra for the brash remarks. “We talked about this.”

“No, it’s okay Aerith. She’s right.” Zack lifts his head to look Elmyra in the eyes. “I’d die again before I let anything happen to you guys.”

Zack tries to sound confident in saying this, but it falls flat. He clearly means it, but the underlying hesitance is there— if Shinra came looking for him, there isn’t much he could do in his current state. It’s felt by everyone in the room, and even Elmyra softens, uncrossing her arms and heaving a sigh. 

It isn’t his fault, in the end. She can only be so rigid in the face of someone so violently victimized by an institution he trusted. That was how the SOLDIER program got them— targeting the strong and well intentioned, and hiding their own corruption behind idyllic posters of heroic men and their good deeds. Ignorance is not a crime; even if it was, he’s atoned for it.

“We’ll worry about finding you a doctor tomorrow,” Elmyra says, the ice melting out of her tone. She glances at the light leaking through the curtains. “Or today, I guess. Doesn’t matter. We all ought to sleep like the dead for a while.”

Zack isn’t able to hold back a bark of a laugh at Elmyra’s poor choice of words. Her eyes widen as she realizes, and she shakes her head almost fondly. It distracts him just enough to tuck away the mention of seeing a doctor.

They decided the stairs weren’t worth it for getting Zack up to the spare bedroom. The couch is a little short, but with the ottoman pushed up against it, Aerith was able to help him curl up on his side. 

After having Aerith wheel him in the wagon to and from the bathroom, he thinks he can confidently verify that the spark between them has long fizzled out. He’s trying not to think about any of it too hard, but shame is a violent feeling. It’s nauseating to try and force it down. 

Zack keeps insisting that she goes and gets some rest— it’s been useless. Aerith has always been a contrarian. 

“You still haven’t really told me about him,” she says, fussing with the pillows propped around him from her spot perched on the ottoman. 

“I can tell you about him tomorrow,” he tries again, removing her hand from where it’s fidgeting and placing it gently in her lap. He questions her gently. “Why are you still up?” 

Aerith seems to consider it for a moment, her face warring between a mask of composure and the deep set exhaustion. 

“I’m scared you’ll be gone when I wake up,” she says, the confession almost a whisper. It’s laced with an undertone of venom, as if she feels ridiculous for even thinking it. “Stupid, huh? I just… I don’t think I could do it again.”

Zack softens, huffing a sigh and offering his hand back out. Aerith takes it like a lifeline, squeezing around his fingers hard enough to burn. 

“What if you take the couch, then? I’ll sleep in the recliner.”

Aerith must’ve been waiting for an invitation. She springs up from her spot on the ottoman, and curls herself up on the recliner next to Zack. They’re lying a bit apart but face to face this way, and her tension bleeds out as she pulls a throw blanket over herself. 

Zack wants to protest that she should take the couch, but with the seat rest kicked up she already looks content. 

“I still want you to tell me about him, Zack. Just til you’re falling asleep."

There’s no point in denying her now. She’ll just grow more persistent if he keeps changing the subject. It’s not like Zack is lacking in things to say about Cloud, anyways.

“You’d eat him up,” he starts, helpless to the smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “He might pout about it, but it’s impossible to not tease him. He’s super resilient, though. People are usually too embarrassed to try again after they fail to get into SOLDIER . Not Cloud. I don’t think he ever would’ve stopped trying, if it weren’t for…” Zack pauses to shake the thought out of his head.

“It sounds like he should’ve made it in, huh?” Aerith asks, wary of her volume for the sake of Elmyra sleeping upstairs.

“Probably better that he didn’t. But he had what it takes. More than most of the guys I’ve known.”

“What about now?”

“He’s super sensitive to mako. That was part of why he didn’t make SOLDIER to begin with,” Zack replies. “I mean, anyone would’ve been messed up after what he went through in those labs. But it doesn’t help that he’s already weak to it.”

Aerith doesn’t think that’s an invitation to ask Zack to elaborate. Whatever he shares about their time with the Science Department will have to be on his own time. 

“He’ll push through it,” he continues. “Spike’s doing better already, compared to the year he’s had. I’m just glad that he’s awake.”

“So how long have you had feelings for him?”

Zack sputters, cheeks turning an endearing shade of pink. “For Cloud? ”

“No, for Spike, ” Aerith teases back, voice moving in a singsong cadence. “Or is this news to you?”

Zack laughs nervously, shaking his head at the accusation. “It’s not like that. I mean, I care about him a lot. But it’s a normal amount, I think?”

“You came back to life for him, if I remember correctly? Like, argued with the planet? Made her throw you up?”

“Well, yeah. As a friend. He’s in trouble, and I’m looking out for him. And… Cloud’s not even like that.” Zack sounds a lot like he’s trying to convince himself of the fact. Aerith looks expectedly smug about it. 

“I think I’ll be the judge of that when I go look for him tomorrow.” 

Aerith didn’t end up getting much sleep. For all her insistence to sleep on the recliner, it wasn’t comfortable enough to sink into. And with Zack right across from her, eventually sleeping soundly, she was more inclined to keep watch. 

Talking about Cloud seemed to light him up. It was a glimpse of the Zack she remembers so fondly, before cruelty shaped him into the man he is now— in a perpetual state of fight or flight, with shame in the place of exuberance painting his features. 

He might deny it, but it’s obvious to Aerith. She only hopes that the Cloud she finds today is worthy of Zack’s affection. 

Aerith is a little worried about leaving Zack alone with Elmyra, but it’ll be better to leave before either of them wake up. She needs to do something today— something that she knows will make a difference for Zack. And maybe Cloud can help convince him to see a doctor. She has a feeling that his opinion will hold more weight for the SOLDIER . 

She manages to slip out of the house quietly. It’s late in the afternoon now, and her head feels cloudy from the lack of sleep and the never ending day before. It’s a path she’s well acquainted with, so the time passes in a bit of a blur. 

Sector Seven is noisier than usual today. Aerith isn’t sure where to start her hunt— she could ask the shop owners if they’ve seen anyone, or peek down the alleyways for someone that looks like a Cloud. I maybe should’ve asked what he looks like first, she silently chides. 

There’s a flow of people down the thin roads between shabby buildings. People aren’t in a hurry under the plate like they are above, but they still feel like schools of fish, migrating mindlessly to their destinations. 

Aerith spots a little girl, no older than five, crouched down on the side of the dirt path and scratching a cat behind the ears. She wishes she had her basket of flowers to offer one to her. She glances around for the girl’s parents, wondering if she ought to be out on her own so young, but a voice behind her stops her short. 

“Need somethin’?” The voice calls, deep and gravelly and a little wary. Aerith turns around and has to crane her neck to look up at the man. His face is set in a deep scowl, his eyebrows furrowed and lips downturned, but his aura is overwhelmingly warm to Aerith. And there’s a fondness in his amber eyes each time he glances at the little girl behind her. She hardly registers his prosthetic arm, with a multi barreled gun in the place of a typical hook or hand attachment. 

Aerith decides he’s a good place to start. 

“I do, actually,” Aerith replies, twining her hands behind her back. “Do you know a Cloud around here?” The man relaxes a touch, shoulders dropping slightly. 

“I don’t. Don’t think so, anyways,” he says, padding around Aerith and towards the little girl. “If anyone would, it’s Tifa. She knows just about everyone in Seven. We’re headin’ to the bar now, if you wanna follow.”

The toddler’s attention drifts away from the cat, and up towards the tower of a man. Her face splits into a blinding smile, deep brown eyes almost twinkling as he offers his non-prosthetic hand for her to hold onto. 

“Going to see Tifa?” she asks, patting the cat a few times in farewell and wrapping her small hand around one of the man’s fingers. 

“That’s right. Daddy has to go to work, so you get to hang out with Tifa today. Think we can show this lady the way?” His tone is far softer when he talks to who Aerith now knows is his daughter. She suspected as much, anyways. It’s a cute sight, the way he hunches slightly to the side so she can reach his hand without straining. 

Aerith smiles when the little girl turns to look at her, finally noticing her presence. She looks like she’s pondering for a moment, taking in the whole of Aerith’s outfit and then darting her gaze back up to Aerith’s eyes. 

“Yes. I can show the way,” she says, her childlike cadence soft around the consonants. 

“Well, thank you. I’d appreciate it,” Aerith says, moving to follow behind the sweet pair. 

The bar isn’t a far walk from where they were before. Aerith thinks she’s passed by it before, making her rounds around the sectors to sell flowers. She’s never gone inside, though, and from the look of it, it could’ve been a good place to find business. 

The little girl runs ahead when the bar is in view, letting go of her father’s hand and straining to push open one side of the double doors. He’s behind her in an instant, assisting with the rest of the weight until she can fit through and scurry inside. 

“Tifa’s behind the bar,” he says, holding the door open and waiting for Aerith to make it up the steps. 

A familiar voice calls from inside. It greets a sweet hello to ‘Marlene.’ Aerith knows that voice; it’s the one that left her fluttering the whole way back to Sector Five, a slight skip in her step. It’s weird to note how she’s already missed it. 

“Hey, Barret. You headi—” The girl, Tifa, cuts herself off when she spots Aerith in the doorway. 

“Onion girl,” Aerith exclaims thoughtlessly, smiling wide and ushering herself inside. 

Tifa sports that lovely blush again, eyebrows jumping up and lips slightly parted. She looks like she’s fighting to find a response, sputtering quietly and setting down the whiskey glass she was wiping down. 

“ Onion girl? ” the man, Barret, barks out with a laugh. “I gotta hear that one.”

Tifa huffs, eyes darting between the two of them like she’s trying to piece something together. 

“So you two already know each other?” Barret asks, letting the door close behind them and heading up to the bar. Marlene scampers back over to grab onto the fabric of his pants. 

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Tifa replies. It comes out scratchy, and she has to clear her throat after, blush still blossoming on the apples of her cheeks. 

“We met outside. Barret was just helping me find you,” Aerith chirps, inserting herself into the conversation. The comment has the desired effect— Tifa flusters further. Aerith is starting to really like this game. 

The bar is cozy inside. There are only a few customers milling about, seated at the tables and near the end of the bar. It’s probably a bit after lunch rush, if the few empty tables yet to be cleared are enough of a sign. Aerith doesn’t shy away from letting herself in, waltzing up to take a seat on one of the wooden barstools, right in front of Tifa. 

She catches something out of the corner of her eye. 

Bright yellow and unwilted, fluttering slightly against the breeze of the ceiling fan and dangling inside a whiskey glass full of water— she kept it. Aerith’s smile grows sly, and when she turns back to Tifa, they catch each other’s gaze. Tifa’s eyes flicker towards the flower and back to Aerith. There’s a guilty shine in them, as if she’s been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. 

“You were looking for me?” Tifa asks, blinking in confusion. 

“You kept it,” Aerith says instead of answering. 

“Was I not supposed to?” Tifa looks even more confused now, red as a rose. It compliments her eyes quite nicely, Aerith thinks. 

“No, I was hoping you would.” Aerith can’t fight the need to kick her feet underneath the counter. “Just glad you found a spot for it. I can bring you another, when that one wilts.”

“Do you usually follow up like this? Checking in on the flowers you hand out?” Tifa asks, tone half serious but with slight exasperation running underneath. She seems to chide herself after for being rude, eyebrows furrowing in a wince. 

Aerith doesn’t find it rude. In fact, it warrants a giggle, laced with unfiltered charm. She props her elbows up on the hardwood, resting her cheeks in the palms of her hands. 

“Not for every flower, no.” She lets Tifa piece the rest of it together herself. Aerith might be a tease, but she doesn’t want to send the poor girl fluttering out the door. 

“Is that really why you’re here?” Tifa’s tone isn’t accusatory, but it’s clear she isn’t convinced of the flowergirl’s antics. Aerith has to force herself to reel back to the task at hand. 

“Not exactly. Though I did want to find you again,” Aerith admits, not so sly this time. The genuine tone of her voice must be clear to Tifa, because the bartender’s lips quirk into a warm smile. “I’m looking for someone. Barret said you know just about everyone in Sector Seven.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Tifa replies, tucking a stray hair behind her ear. Aerith bites her tongue, resisting the urge to call her cute for her modesty. “I know a few people around here, though. People that frequent the bar or sell things in town. Who are you looking for?”

“His name is Cloud. Couldn’t tell you much else about him, though. I don’t know if you’d believe me if I tried.”

Tifa’s face pales. Aerith can see her guard go up, almost like it’s something tangible. The warmth from before bleeds out of the room. 

“So you do know him, then,” Aerith says, mostly to herself, breathing a sigh of relief. 

“I do…” Tifa quietly replies, nodding slowly. She looks exhausted, suddenly, mask slipping as her cordial smile falls. “Why are you looking for him?”

“It’s not really me that’s looking for him, per say. But like I said, I doubt you’d believe me if I told you.” 

“Try me,” Tifa says, huffing a bitter laugh. Aerith is helpless to do anything but believe her. 

After all, that was the florist’s first impression of Tifa. She has the aura of someone who’s seen things— even more so than the average civilian below the plate. Aerith would almost compare it to that of a seasoned warrior. 

“What time are you off?” Aerith asks. She’s proud of herself for keeping the question neutral in tone. 

“I can take a break.”

Tifa leads them outside and around the bar, where there’s a patio with a table and chairs set up. It’s pretty secluded, save for the decks of the other surrounding buildings with a few people lingering. None are close enough to be within earshot, though. 

Aerith didn’t mention that this conversation should be in private. Tifa must’ve known anyhow. 

“So, who is it that’s looking for Cloud?” Tifa asks, pulling a chair out for Aerith before sitting down herself. Aerith nods her thanks and settles in, straightening the line of her dress and crossing her legs. 

“I wouldn’t think so, but just to make sure… The bar isn’t a side gig, right? No ties to Shinra?” Aerith asks, attempting for something stern. 

Tifa looks minutely shocked before shaking her head in denial. 

“The bar is full time. Closest tie I have to Shinra is that I grew up in a reactor town.”

“Good,” Aerith says, nodding and rolling the tension from her shoulders. “Zack Fair. That’s who’s looking for Cloud. He would be out here now, instead of me, if he could.”

The minute shock is gone. Tifa turns white as a sheet, eyes widening in what’s most likely disbelief. Aerith reaches a hand out to gently grasp her arm. 

“You know Zack too, then?”

Tifa nods before replying, “Yeah, I knew him. Back in Nibelheim, he…” Aerith doesn’t know where Nibelheim is, or why Tifa is here now instead, but she can see the hurt that flashes in the bartender’s eyes. “I thought he was dead. Cloud’s been mumbling his name, even when he’s knocked out cold.” 

Aerith lets out a huff of a laugh. “They’re two peas in a pod, then.” Tifa tilts her head in question, so Aerith continues. “Zack did die. Not… back in Nibelheim, but— anyways, he’s back now. I wish I had a better explanation for you. He’s not well, though. Gaia isn’t really in the business of healing the grave injuries of people who make her sick.”

It’s clear the explanation only leaves Tifa with more questions. Aerith can see the gears turning in her head, and she tries to soothe her by softly moving her thumb across the gooseflesh of Tifa’s arm. 

There’s a sigh in response, and instead of asking any of the important questions, Tifa grabs Aerith’s hand in turn.

“Let me make you a drink.”

Chapter Text

Everything is burning and it feels like coming home. 

Cloud’s awareness is fleeting— he oscillates between a world on fire and a world in a dark room with a hardly familiar face hovering above his own. She’s calling gently to him, but the words aren’t soothing in the way they’re meant to be. It only sends the flames crawling higher, dancing up the face of what he knows is his mother’s tomb. 

He wishes his mind would just decide. It’d be much easier if he could remain in one place, rather than having to fight the pull from both directions. He doesn’t have the constitution to win against it. It’s a nauseating feeling— taking the backseat in his own mind. Especially when whatever is behind the wheel is dead set on crashing. 

His mother’s voice is gritty and sharp as she calls out to him. Cloud is well accustomed to the feeling of crawling, but he can’t move now. Everything else is the same as that day. He just can’t move.  

She’s telling him frantically that he ought to run. As if he’d just leave her behind. The old wood of their house is collapsing in slow motion, and the pillars almost look like they’re floating before they hit the ground. It’s an explosion of color and red hot embers that make their way to the back of Cloud’s throat. He wants to cough it out, but it’s all stuck there, moving like acid into the hollow of his lungs.

There are so many ‘what if’s’ from that day. Cloud repeats them like a mantra each time he’s forced to remember— what if I’d gotten to him earlier? What if the water tower never collapsed? Would it never have happened if I’d been stronger— if I could move a little faster? Why didn’t I stay and dig through the rubble? Was there even anything left of her?

When Sephiroth speaks in these memories, it isn’t anything intelligible. But Cloud doesn’t need to hear the words he’s speaking to know that they’re sinister. His visage warbles in front of the massacre he’s committing with hands that were meant to protect, and there’s no hint of remorse as the long silver line of his blade cuts down anyone in his path.

Sephiroth’s sword is an extension of the SOLDIER , like an extra limb. It used to be something that Cloud admired— the way the man seemed to forge it into existence each time it was needed, never truly apart from his blade. Now it’s a symbol of dread itself. Now it curdles his blood and turns his stomach, even just in recollection. 

The fire continues to eat at everything around him, gluttonous and all consuming. Even in this fugue dream state, Cloud feels it all vividly. The fabric of his clothes are weighing him down like they’re made of concrete, and he can feel the blonde fibers of his eyebrows and eyelashes singeing off each time the embers burst a little too close. Sephiroth’s maniacal laugh is a siren song as his world turns to ash. 

Something cold hits the side of his cheek. Cloud doesn’t think he’s crying, but it drips down his face as if he is. His eyes feel too dry from the smoke to cry. 

More cold drops accompany it. When he looks up, he thinks it’s merely ash fluttering through the air, but it’s hard to tell through the mirage of smoke. 

“Cloud.”

The white particles continue to cascade around him. They dissipate when they hit the ground, leaving small droplets that mirror the flames behind them. He thinks the inferno is getting smaller, dying out— he can’t hear Sephiroth anymore. 

“Cloud. You should wake up.”

There’s a hand in his hair and he wants to flinch. He wants to pry his head in the other direction, as if the hand is a scalding brand, but he still can’t move a muscle. He doesn’t know why it sets him off— why it reminds him of a boisterous laughter he’ll never hear again. Of sweat-slick skin and flushed cheeks. 

The flames are almost suffocated. He can tell now that the white particles falling gently around him are snowflakes, even though it shouldn’t be possible. It shouldn’t be able to softly pillow on the ground over the bed of ash, but it does. It glistens like something magical. 

Cloud thinks he’s hearing a voice he hasn’t heard in years. The tone is deeper now, still soft in its cadence but weary with time. It says his name in a familiar way— in a dialect that sends him back to years before. He hasn’t heard anyone say his name like that since he said goodbye to his mother, before he left for Midgar. 

Nibel accents are more than uncommon. His mother tongue was incinerated. Those who moved to Midgar wouldn’t utter it, knowing the way that city folk view their thick accents as something unrefined. It all died out in one way or the other— shame or fire. 

So when Cloud hears that mountain dialect now, calling his name and softly urging him, he thinks it must be a part of this hellacious memory. Some grace in the midst of his grief. But if it is Tifa’s voice here, why does she sound so different? And why does the hand carding softly through his hair feel so real?

The snow buries the town around him like dirt over unmarked graves. Cloud feels buried under it too, and his body is warring between the cold moisture on his skin and the lingering heat from the flames. 

“His fever is getting worse. ” Tifa’s voice echoes around him again. It doesn’t sound like she’s talking to Cloud anymore, and the Nibel accent slips away like it was never there to begin with. He misses the sound. 

“Hopefully he’s sweating it out,” another voice calls, somehow familiar even though Cloud can’t quite place how. The snow piles up high enough to cover his head. He can’t see the scene in front of him anymore, and maybe it’s a blessing. 

When Cloud was a child, he used to do this often. Winters were harsh in Nibelheim, and it was more of an omen if the town didn’t get hit with heavy storms. It was the season of death before rebirth, and the townspeople were well prepared— heavy snowfall led to beautiful springs and balmy summers. The people kept their fires stoked and their oil lanterns lit, and congregated in the warmer buildings to watch the snow dance from their windows. 

Cloud was a little reckless. He would often sneak out once the snow settled after a heavy storm, hardly donning the necessary gear but too roused to care. It was always quiet on mornings like those, and he took advantage while the rest of the town slept cozily under their quilts. 

He liked to make the first footprints outside of their house. The awning kept the snow from blocking the door shut, and if he was lucky and it was as tall as him, he could make a Cloud-shaped imprint in the glacier wall that would pile up.  

Once he’d climbed over the heap, fumbling his way around and hoping the snow was thick enough to pack under his feet, he’d find a spot— usually right in the center of town, away from the cover of any buildings. 

Then he’d lie there, letting his head sink just enough to block the sounds around him, and watch the sky. The clouds after a storm were especially beautiful when dawn broke through. And with his head encapsulated, he could hear all of the blood rushing through his body. Cloud used to believe it was Gaia herself mumbling to him, like the sound of the ocean through the hollow of a seashell. 

His mother would find him out there once the sun was all the way up. It was a game they played every time, though they spoke no word of it— she would make her way through the snow, huffing white wisps of hot air, and pretend to sneak up on him. He’d be fighting a giggle the whole time, eyes glued to the sky and feigning ignorance, until her hands snaked through the snow to find his feet buried there. 

Once she’d hauled him over her shoulder, she would playfully chide him on the trek back. Claudia would pinch the reddened tips of his ears, mock-scolding and fighting a smile of her own at his laughter that resounded back.

They paid no mind to the melting snow dripping on the wood floors. His mother would instead set him gently on the kitchen counter, towel already fetched, and wrap him tight enough to stave off the cold. 

Things like hot chocolate were more of a luxury for the pair— some mornings like these, she’d make him some. Other mornings, she’d heat up just the milk, allowing Cloud a dash of coffee for taste and warmth. He’d pretend to like it just the same, even if he had to fight a wince at the bitter taste.

And if he was left weak and sniffling the next morning, it was all par for the course. 

“How long has he been like this?” Tifa’s voice resounds again. Cloud tries to blink his eyes back open, and finds that the scene from before has melted away. The room he’s in now feels damp— or maybe he’s just damp. It’s hard to tell with his head swimming. 

Cloud’s glossy eyes dart in the direction of the conversation the women are having. Neither of them are facing him, but he recognizes Tifa with a pang. She’s much taller now, and far more built than he ever remembers her being. The light in the room is dim, but the flickering bulbs are enough to see the musculature of her arms as she talks animatedly. 

Her hair is the same inky black, cascading all the way to the hem of her skirt. She has it tied in a new style, just loosely knotted near the end, but he remembers. 

“It’s about time you woke up,” the other woman calls, pulling Cloud’s eyes away from Tifa. Marle, his mind supplies. The preceding events are vague and warped, but he recalls her. 

Tifa spins around, inhaling sharply and rushing over when she sees that Cloud is conscious. It’s an overwhelming sight, and Cloud wants to retreat from the hand that reaches out to grasp his arm. Unlike the useless state of his limbs in his dream, he’s now able to move himself. The disparity causes him to overshoot it, flinging himself back hard against the wall. 

Tifa draws back, holding her own hand like it might be something poisonous. 

She shouldn’t be here , his thoughts add unhelpfully. You saw her bleed out. You felt it. 

“Cloud?” Tifa questions warily. She looks like she’s fighting the urge to check up on him again from halfway across the room. Marle places a protective arm on her shoulder, eyeing Cloud with an awful mix of pity and caution. 

He wants to apologize, but the words are thick as honey, and his breath is coming all too fast. Cloud’s body feels different—  so unlike the one he knows. It’s like he can feel each cell, moving under his muscles and pulsing erratically through his veins. The disconnect makes him feel flighty, ready to jump out of his own skin at any given moment— as if this isn’t his body at all, and he ought to go find the real one. 

“Hey, you’re okay,” Tifa soothes, still not moving any closer but slipping back into her Nibel accent. It’s less jarring to hear it fall from her lips. The brisk Midgar tone doesn’t suit her the same. 

Cloud instinctively reaches around his own neck. He doesn’t know why–– doesn’t know what he’s looking for— but he knows it’s missing. This only quickens the pace of his breathing, and he wants to ask one of them to explain. His throat won’t comply, and he wouldn’t know how to phrase it anyways. 

The only thing he knows for sure is that he feels wrong. And that there’s someone he needs to see. Someone he can’t bear to be apart from. 

Marle is the one to step closer this time, after Tifa encloses something in the palm of her hand. Her steps are cautious, as if Cloud is some rabid dog, begging for food but biting the hand that offers it. 

She sits herself on the foot of the bed, and Cloud manages to slow his breathing down. He never meant to frighten them, and it sobers him up to see it etched on their faces. It’s silent for a while as they wait for him to settle. The tension is high, and Tifa is still glued to her spot across the room, but at least he’s calming down. 

“The last time you saw this, you went into one of those episodes,” Marle starts, cutting the quiet like a dull knife. “Tifa thought it would be best to hold onto it. We weren’t taking anything— promise.”

“What?” Cloud asks, dumbly. He comprehended well enough. Whatever he was looking for, they have it. He can have it back. 

“That big ass sword, too. You’ll have to get it from my apartment when you’re able. I could hardly lift the damn thing,” Marle adds preemptively, as if Cloud might strike when he notices it’s gone. 

Big sword. The thought brings forward a blip of memories— raven hair, unruly and spiked not unlike his own. ‘Dreams’ and ‘honor’ and an equal amount of getting into trouble. Warmth he’d never felt from another person before. A closeness he never would’ve dared to ask for. He itches to check his neck again, some nameless thing gone unaccounted for. 

Cloud wishes the words would stop sticking in his throat. He thinks he’d cry out if he could. The lids of his eyes grow red instead, compensating. 

Marle reaches again, slowly taking Cloud’s hand and opening it, facing his palm up. He watches the movement carefully as the metal slides into his palm, the chain dripping out through the cracks of his fingers. His hands know the shape— have learned the curves of this metal. 

He doesn’t have to flip it around to see the name. He remembers the night before vividly now. The grief hits his chest all at once, hollowing out the center of him like a spoon carving at the rind of a grapefruit. The forgetting wasn’t for nothing— he was better off before this. Better off with something else behind the wheel, forging a reality where he’d never known Zack. 

Or at least one where he’d never lost him. 

He wishes he could blank again— reel back to the confused state he was in before— but he remains right where he is. Marle is staring at him with a sympathetic look, her hand hovering near Cloud’s and the dog tags as if she’s afraid he’ll shatter into pieces for her to catch. 

He doesn’t shatter. Instead he feels voided, searching for some reasonable way to react. 

Zack left him with everything. All of the dreams that were ripped from his clenched fingers. All of the hope that they could still make something good of themselves. He bled it out of himself and into Cloud up on that hill.

Cloud doesn’t know what to do with any of it.

Marle’s lips are moving, but Cloud’s ears are ringing too loud to register any real words. She probably thinks he’s falling back into a fugue state again, rewinding the tapes in his head, the film getting caught on its own frayed edges. He doesn’t have it in him to explain otherwise. 

When Cloud’s eyes dart over to Tifa in the corner, she looks guilty. He wants to assuage whatever she’s feeling, but he’s already drawn a stark line between the two of them without meaning to. He doesn’t want to deepen the gap. 

“Thank you, Marle,” he manages to force out around the lump in his throat. She looks surprised to hear him speak. “And I’m sorry.”

Marle shakes her head and stands from her spot on the bed, giving Cloud some much needed room to breathe. 

“You ought to eat something,” she says, walking back over to place a soothing hand back on Tifa’s shoulder. “You got somewhere to be?”

“I—” Tifa starts, cutting herself off when she locks eyes with Cloud. It’s heavy and uncomfortable and Cloud wishes he could rewind. He has too many things he needs to ask her. “I have to head to the bar. I’ll be back later, though? If that’s alright?”

She offers a shaky smile in Cloud’s direction and he returns it with a brisk nod. She doesn’t waste any time in leaving the apartment. The door that clicks behind her feels like an omen. 

“I’ll go make us some lunch,” Marle says, snapping him out of staring at the place where Tifa was standing. “You gonna be alright on your own for a while?” 

Cloud wants to confirm confidently. He isn’t sure what he wants, though. All he can manage is another shaky nod. 

Marle hesitates much longer than Tifa, hovering near the entrance and scanning the room like there might be something she’s missing. When she finds nothing, she huffs a sigh and creaks the door back open. 

“I’ll just be downstairs. Holler if you need anything.”

Being in that unfamiliar room on his own is suffocating. Cloud keeps idling, waiting for the other shoe to drop— to blink and wake back up on that hill with Zack, motionless in kind with the shell of his friend. He keeps staring at the dog tags that haven’t left the palm of his hand, wondering when the memories will slip again. Wondering if he would feel more whole in a world where Zack never existed. 

He doesn’t think he really wants that. Zack deserves the grief he’s feeling now. The barrier his mind is putting up to protect him feels dilapidated and rotten. 

Lunch passes by in a blur of conversation. Marle isn’t gone long, though Cloud has no way to tell the time even if he wanted to. She brings back warm broth and bread that’s too tough to chew, and it sits heavy in the pit of his stomach. 

Marle doesn’t offer condolences or words of wisdom to placate his grief. She must recognize that it’s something fresh, even if he has cycled through the feeling over and over again. It’s exhausting in that way— to forget and remember in a twisted cycle. A scar reopened each time his mind rewinds. 

“How’s your head feeling?” Marle asks, and the attempt to distract doesn’t slip by him. It’s a hard question to answer, though. Physically, Cloud feels wired. Full of energy in a way he hasn’t felt before. It’s with an ache that he recounts all the squats Zack used to do to pass the time— if he felt anything like how Cloud feels now, the weird habit makes more sense. 

Emotionally, he can’t even breach the question. He thinks that the sound would echo if someone yelled inside of him. It’d be much easier if he could just cry. 

“I’m alright,” he settles on saying. “Figuring things out, I think.”

Tifa makes good on her promise that evening. Cloud is left alone for a few hours after lunch, rotting under the covers and gripping the dog tags tight enough to leave an imprint on the palm of his hand. It’s a seemingly endless afternoon, spent tracing the lines of Zack’s name and wondering if everyday will feel this long from now on. 

She knocks quietly before entering, and Cloud picks up the sound of two sets of footsteps. It doesn’t register that it could be anyone other than Marle, so he doesn’t think twice. 

It isn’t Marle. It isn’t anyone he knows at all. 

The girl trailing behind Tifa is striking. They both seem to be buzzing with some unknown energy, bouncing off of each other in kind. It’s a jarring sight compared to the Tifa he saw just earlier today— the apples of her cheeks are lush with color, and her eyes are glassy as they dart between the two others in the room. 

The unknown visitor isn’t shy in her entrance. She grazes a lingering hand on Tifa’s shoulder as she passes, heading towards Cloud with a smile that’s almost sly. 

“You must be Cloud,” she starts, her melodic voice breaking hours of silence. She’s up close now, boundaries forgotten and looking into his eyes with her own vibrant green. Cloud is left a little speechless, confusion cinching his brows and parting his lips. 

“I am,” he chokes out. “Who are you?” 

“I’m Aerith,” she replies, and things start to click. 

He knows that name. He’s all too familiar with the bitter well that would rise in his chest each time he heard it. And seeing her now, foxlike and bubbly and everything that Zack would seek out in a partner, the well overflows. 

Cloud has to force down the feeling. He has to restrain the urge to dart past the both of them and out the door. How can she be smiling at me? Does she even know? What is she doing here?

“You know, you’re not like I pictured you,” she continues, oblivious to the gears turning in Cloud’s head. “But I can see it.”

There’s a sweet scent of wine that accompanies her words and it turns his stomach. Now that he’s glancing at them both, the flushed cheeks make sense. 

“Aerith, maybe we should, uh—” Tifa cuts in, moving past the entryway and towards the two of them. 

“Right. Sorry.” Aerith leans back from her uncomfortable closeness to Cloud’s face, her smile morphing into a serious expression that looks almost comical. “I was just excited to finally meet you. The Spike thing makes sense now.”

“Huh?” Cloud fumbles, sitting up at full attention. “What do you know about me?” It comes out more accusatory than he means, but Aerith doesn’t seem to mind. 

Her eyes are darting in different directions— taking in the clothes he’s wearing, the hair on his head, and then settling on the metal held tightly in his palm. 

“I know that someone is going to be really happy to see you up and moving.”

“Do you always speak in riddles?”

There’s a giggle in response, but Aerith quickly corrects herself. He doesn’t know her well, but he thinks the stern expression she’s attempting for looks out of place.

“Not making a great first impression, huh? Sorry, this is all a little much. Even for me.”

Tifa sighs behind them, finally working up the nerve to cut back in. 

“Cloud… It’s about Zack. Aerith can probably explain all of this better than I can, though.”

His throat closes violently. Whatever it is that they have to say, he doesn’t think he wants to hear it— doesn’t think he has the capacity right now to share his grief with someone else. Especially not with someone who knew Zack in all the ways he dreamt he could’ve. 

“Long story short, he’s sleeping soundly on my couch right now,” Aerith announces, rather  unceremoniously. Cloud doesn’t fight the bitter scoff that bubbles up. 

“That isn’t funny,” he replies in an icy tone, wincing at the pained crack in his voice. She must notice, because she winces in turn, realizing her error and sitting herself down next to him.

“I know it must sound strange, but I wouldn’t lie about something like this.” Her voice is serious now, quieter and more palatable. “He really is here. He’d be telling you in my place if he could, but… It’ll all make more sense if you let me take you to him.”

Cloud thinks he might vomit. Or pass out. Or wake up alone in this room again, with whatever weird dream this is fading slowly to the back of his mind. 

When the silence lingers and none of the above happens, he tries to process. 

“If this is some sort of joke, I really…” Cloud doesn’t know how to continue. He isn’t sure what he’d do in either case— if Zack really is okay somehow, or if his maybe-ex-girlfriend somehow finds amusement in playing pranks as twisted as this one. It feels harder to get his hopes up, though. 

“I promise it isn’t,” Aerith replies, and her sincerity is hard to ignore. “Just trust me, okay?”

What else is there for him to do?

The trek out of the apartment and through Sector Seven is quiet. Aerith and Tifa are walking side by side ahead of him, close enough that their shoulders brush occasionally. Cloud is trying to keep up but his limbs feel dull and heavy. 

Every once in a while, Aerith will turn back to face him, offering a tight smile and slowing her pace if he’s too far behind. He thinks there might be words of encouragement laced throughout their walk, but it’s all white noise to him now. 

His thoughts are only on Zack. Just this morning, he’d forgotten the man existed. Then hours later, he was forced to relive the searing grief of his death in full color. Now, if this stranger is by some mercy not playing him for a fool, Zack is alive again. Whiplash would be an understatement for what Cloud is feeling now.

Aerith slows her stride until she’s walking in tandem with Cloud. Her hands are intertwined and bouncing behind her back with each step, and even the way she puts one foot in front of the other is a graceful thing. It makes his limbs feel longer and more gangly than they actually are, out of place next to someone like her. 

“Are you feeling alright?” she asks, and Cloud wants to laugh. 

It all feels unreal. The line between delusion and reality is already a blurred thing for Cloud. There’s nothing else to do at this point— he’ll just go along with the pull of the tide. How much more can it hurt? What’s left of him to carve out?

“Just confused,” he understates.

“Tell me about it,” Aerith replies, exasperated and weary. He can tell she means it. 

“I don’t understand,” Cloud continues. He doesn't know where the courage comes from, but the need to regurgitate his thoughts is stronger than the restraint. “There was no way he could’ve survived that. I watched him, felt him—”

Aerith is keeping her eyes glued to the path in front of them, but there’s empathy evident in their shine. There’s a world of hurt behind them, too, and Cloud doesn’t know how he missed it before. The well of envy in Cloud’s chest feels a lot more like guilt, now. 

“I felt it when he passed,” she says, filling the space after Cloud’s unfinished thoughts. “Not in like, some vague metaphorical way or anything. I really felt it.”

“How does that work?” Cloud can’t help but ask.

“Story for another day,” she calls back, her smile pained but not entirely forced. “I just mean to say that I get it. I don’t think I’d believe it either, if someone was telling me what I’m telling you . I stayed up all night when he got here, just to make sure the planet wouldn’t take him back.”

The remorse over his initial assumptions is nauseating. She clearly does understand, and the grief feels a little lighter carried between the two of them. 

“I’m still scared now, if we’re being honest,” she confesses in a whisper. “So if we get back to my place, and he’s gone, don’t hate me, alright?”

“Okay,” he agrees, before he can even register what he’s saying. “I won’t.”

The walk feels longer than it should. Cloud doesn’t recognize the area like Aerith and Tifa seem to, veering in and out of alleyways and tunnels that spurt them back onto main streets in half the time. 

Cloud’s head is full of fog in a way that feels different from before. It isn’t the kind that comes before an ‘episode’, or the lull that hits after— it’s more intense, somehow, the anticipation blurring the peripherals of his vision and hastening his thoughts.

He doesn’t think it’ll feel real until he sees Zack. 

Aerith and Tifa have been chattering quietly beside him. Cloud thinks they might be trying to ease the tension, making conversation about unrelated things and passing the time. It isn’t helping— he’s filtered it all out without thinking. 

He only snaps back to his wits when they approach a homely cottage, surrounded by florals and greenery that shouldn’t be possible in the slums. Cloud has to double take, peering upwards to make sure they’re still under the plate. The unforgiving steel is as vast as it always is, so his confusion doubles. 

Tifa has stopped walking. They both turn to look at her at the same time, and Aerith immediately warms with a knowing smile, turning on her heel towards the bartender. It’s a raw look of amazement on her face, and Cloud thinks he’d be mirroring it if he weren’t so preoccupied. 

“Pretty cool, huh?” Aerith says, sounding a bit bashful and gesturing around her. 

“How…?” Tifa utters, her jaw slack and eyes scouring around the vast field. “I haven’t seen anything like this since I moved to Midgar.”

Aerith’s cheeks are warm, and she’s watching Tifa with a sort of reverence. Cloud instinctively steps further back, catching himself before stepping on any of the blossoms— he has a feeling it wouldn’t bode well with either of them. He doesn’t know why it feels like he’s intruding on a moment between them, but it does. 

“Cloud?” Aerith blurts, snapping out of her blushing haze and turning back towards the blonde. “How about you head on in? You two could probably use a bit to catch up, huh?”

He almost wants to shake his head. Something about walking in there alone, not knowing what to expect, sounds too overwhelming. If Zack really is there, what is he supposed to say? And if he isn’t… 

“Okay,” he says instead of voicing his doubts. “Thank you, Aerith.”

His boots feel plastered to the dirt beneath them, but he manages to make it up the path towards the front door. Cloud tries to smother the hummingbird’s pace of his heart, certain it’s audible to everyone around him, but it won’t still. 

The metal doorknob is cold in the palm of his hand, and he turns it painfully slow. 

“I was wondering when yo—” Two sets of blue eyes lock onto each other. Cloud has to hold the door in a death grip, lest the floor give way beneath his feet. “...Spike?”

Nothing else registers. There are no questions anymore about how this might have come to be— how he could’ve made it out that day. No doubts when the SOLDIER’ s pupils widen, face slack in a manner that’s just so—

“Zack. ”

Chapter Text

Aerith isn’t on the recliner when Zack wakes up. 

It’s already disorienting to blink his eyes open in a place that’s familiar, but not quite familiar enough for him to feel at ease. He’s spent a fair amount of time in this house, picking Aerith up for dates or stopping by for awkward lunches with her and Elmyra. He equates his inability to relax now with that ever present tenseness from before. 

It probably has more to do with the state of his legs. 

The pain is a dull ache, but it’s far from comfortable. It was nearly impossible to get settled all night; Zack kept waking in annoyance each time he barely dozed off, itching with the need to toss and turn and having no real way to do so. He could only manually adjust his position with his arms so many times before it all felt pointless. 

In his fitful rest, he’d catch Aerith’s gaze each time he stirred. Zack tried to meet that vigilant stare with reproach, urging her to turn around and get some sleep instead of worrying her bottom lip between her teeth in such a pitiful manner. It was a moot point in the end. Zack Fair is more likely to stand up on his own two feet and carry her off to bed than he is to tell Aerith ‘ no’ or ‘stop that.’

He can hardly blame her for the worry she’s feeling. Zack only wishes he could alleviate it somehow. If he could avoid death with his sheer will alone, maybe he can also focus hard enough to undo whatever is twinged so horrendously in his spine. 

‘Wouldn’t that be convenient?’ he thinks bitterly to himself. 

Zack felt untouchable before all of this. Not in an arrogant way, in some school of thought that he was stronger than all of the other SOLDIERs with the same level of enhancements— his skull isn’t that thick. 

But before Nibelheim, and all of the hellfire that rained after, he was able to separate himself from the things he’d seen on the field. Troopers coming home baring fewer limbs than they set out with was horrific, but it wasn’t something that could happen to him. His mind didn’t allow itself to drift in that direction. In the same way that one might thoughtlessly not wear a seatbelt, assuming they drive safe enough for it to be irrelevant, Zack assumed his own safety. 

He figured he’d come back in one piece, or not at all. Never this strange middle ground full of uncharted sensations. Never without the use of his legs.

Nibelheim did change things. No matter how strong he was— and he was stronger than any of those whitecoat maniacs— he was helpless against the hands that crafted SOLDIER. Helpless against the face of the SOLDIER program himself, someone he once would’ve handed his own beating heart to for safekeeping. 

His naivety died in those labs. Maybe it died even sooner, in a slow bloodletting after he lost Angeal. Zack doesn’t know for sure. 

He’s aware now that no amount of armor, figurative or tangible over his skin, can shield him from this world’s inevitabilities. He’s just as vulnerable now, legs limp and useless and dangling over the sofa, as he was five years ago. 

And he really has to pee. 

Elmyra likely wouldn’t mind if he called out for her. She’d prefer it even, to him making a mess on their sofa. The words are stuck in his chest anyways. 

Zack Fair, SOLDIER First Class, once a man to be feared and admired on varying ends, is caught in a losing battle with his own bladder. He’s never felt so keenly disgusted with himself before. He almost wants to silently admonish Aerith for leaving before he awoke, but even that thought riles up a bout of self shame. She shouldn’t have to worry about someone else’s bodily functions.

There’s no way he can ask someone for help with this. If he’s going to be stuck in this state indefinitely, he’ll have to figure out how to do it on his own anyhow. If the bathroom is just down the hall… 

His arms aren’t as useless as they were yesterday, fresh out of the mako and in a state of perpetual shaking. Zack does find himself wishing that he had devoted some of his squat time to bicep curls instead. It isn’t impossible to lift himself off the couch, gently maneuvering to the floor, but dead weight isn’t a trivial thing. 

It’s a slow process. And he only makes it halfway, raking his arms against the rough fabric of the carpet, before he hears footsteps descending the staircase. 

Zack attempts for a sheepish sort of smile, lifting his head to look towards Elmyra at a painfully slow pace. She’s stopped halfway down the stairs, eyes wide and brows furrowed in worry. He forces out an awkward laugh that snaps Elmyra out of her frozen state, sending her rushing down the rest of the way to reach him. 

“What are you doing? ” she chides, crouching to check Zack over. The lack of venom in her tone is jarring from her usual manner of speaking to him. “You could’ve called for me.”

Zack doesn’t want to explain in detail. He tries to keep his smile from wobbling and fails, gesturing towards the bathroom with his eyes. She’s quick on the uptake and responds with an exasperated scoff. 

“Just shout next time. It isn’t any trouble.”

Zack is sure he’s sporting a furious blush by now. He nods in agreement, fighting every self shaming thought insisting that he should do otherwise. 

Even with Elmyra’s assistance, it’s a struggle. The wagon won’t fit through the doorway, so all they can do is bring it as close as possible and maneuver from there. 

Elmyra is stronger than one might think at first glance. Zack vaguely recalls hearing about her work in construction with her late husband; he scolds himself now for the assumption that she had been working strictly behind the scenes. She clearly did her fair share of the heavy lifting, if the casual way she’s assisting him now is evident enough. 

She’s quiet about it in a way that Aerith wasn’t— almost clinical. The process feels detached, and Zack is grateful that he doesn’t feel the need to comfort someone else as he’s assisted into the bathroom. It’s still awfully embarrassing— trying his damndest to ease some of his own weight off of her and steady himself on the counter with his arms— but she’s doing all the right things. She doesn’t apologize unnecessarily or handle him like he’s made of glass. She doesn’t meet his gaze with pity or disdain. Her eyes are stagnant pools of water instead, resolute that this is just the way things are. The gurgling of his shame silences itself in the face of her steadiness.

“You should shower while we’re at it,” she says, turning her nose up slightly. 

Zack can’t afford to miss the opportunity. “I smell like death, huh?”

Her scoff in response is not unkind, but it isn’t amused either. She shakes her head, averts her eyes as Zack settles, and moves to stand outside the doorway. As if she can read his discomfort, she flips the switch for the bathroom fan and quietly shuts the door. 

Zack zones out alone on the toilet, forgetting that he has to call Elmyra back in to repeat this whole process. Or maybe he’s stalling. The flickering bulbs above the mirror spur on the blurring of his vision, and the whir of the fan is almost harmonious with the sounds resonating in his head. 

Aerith is likely out in Sector Seven, searching for Cloud. 

Part of him is desperate for the chance, willing to ignore everything else going on at the prospect of seeing his friend. The louder part of him is itching to find an out— itching to blanket himself from the world until he’s able to take a goddamn piss on his own. 

He’s in no state for some grand reunion. There’s hardly any good news in regards to Zack’s return from the lifestream; what’s the point of him now, insisting that he needs to be here to protect Cloud in such a state? What kind of laughter will that provoke if he even tries to explain himself? 

No, Cloud wouldn’t dare to laugh at him. It would all be so much worse than that. His eyes would shine with some impossible and undeserved grace, and his hands would be gentle. He would forget himself and give his all to Zack. He would quell the whole purpose of Zack’s protests to come back here, worrying himself sick.

It’s like wasps are buzzing underneath the muscles of his thighs. The pins and needles hum sharply, and each time he glances down at the galaxy of scars across his skin, the tingling reverberates. He hardly recognizes his own body. 

“Zack? ” Elmyra’s muffled voice against the door is accompanied with a knock. It isn’t enough to snap him out of his staring. 

He almost wishes they were gone. If Gaia had just taken his legs, each nerve wouldn’t be prickling like they’re insistent on escaping his body. He already feels like if he looks away, they’ll be gone by the time he glances back down. 

It’s a phantom feeling. He should be able to sense his feet planted on the floor. He should be able to slide the pads on the underside of them against the cool linoleum, or sense the difference in texture between the tile and the fabric bath mat. His brain tries to mimic it each time the physical feeling comes back dull, fighting for recollection of all the sensations he’s missing. 

Zack doesn’t register the way his hand is gripping tightly to the skin of his thigh. He doesn’t feel the crescents of his nails breaking the surface, or the rivulets of red that follow. His eyes are too unfocused, fading in and out of the nebulous scene in front of him— the slight flutter of the shower curtain underneath the air vent. 

A bead of sweat makes its way down Zack’s forehead, over his cheek, and onto his white-knuckled fist still in a tense clutch. His eyes flit as the droplet rolls, eventually making its way into the crimson stream running down his leg. Only then, watching as the blood cascades to the floor, does he have the cognizance to loosen his hold. 

He can hardly feel where the skin is torn. Staring at it now, the only difference in sensation is the slightly stronger thrum of blood moving around that area. In his frustration, Zack’s fist moves without his approval, pounding into the meat of his thigh.

It’s all so strange. Almost like an explosion of color, the numbness ripples from his fist’s point of contact. It doesn’t hurt in any traditional sense, even as the skin reddens from the strength of the punch. All the sensation just migrates to that one focal point.  

His hand continues to beat at the same spot, his mind too muddled to stop himself. Zack’s line of thinking is deluded, like somehow the feeling will come back if he carries on punching. 

“Zack, I’m coming in,” Elmyra calls again, with an undertone of urgency. It’s enough this time to still his fist. The door creaks open slowly, carefully. 

Elmyra doesn’t let her gaze wander for long, and Zack can’t meet it anyways. She only glances for a moment at the swollen and discolored patch on his leg before cutting her eyes back up with a frown. 

“How do you want to do this?” She asks, ignoring the glaring problem, much to Zack’s appreciation. 

“Just throw me in there?”

She clicks her teeth in reproach. Zack wishes he could fold in on himself. 

In the end, the process isn’t any more painful than getting to the bathroom in the first place. Zack insists that he can undress himself, shaking his head and flushing all the way to the tips of his ears.

After he’s settled in the tub, towel folded and within reach, she leaves and shuts the door behind her again. But not before insisting that he should call for her if he needs anything. 

Zack averts his eyes from his own body as he peels the nearly filthy clothing off of his frame. The pants are a struggle, even as he uses the edge of the bath for leverage to lift himself and slide them down. He tosses the heap of fabric haphazardly in the corner, but with the state of his uniform, he thinks they ought to burn it anyhow. 

Elmyra is always thinking a few steps ahead; all of the products that he’ll need are scattered around the lip of the tub. It’s a strain to reach the faucet, and once he’s turned the knob, the shock of cold water brings him back to full awareness. 

Zack is meticulous in a way that he normally isn’t. He spends more time scrubbing than necessary, following each pattern of scar tissue until his skin is more bright pink than olive. By the time he’s rinsed his hair, the stream has gone from cold to hot to cold again. 

The warmth loosens something in his joints. It isn’t a miracle cure by any means, but after a while in the steam, his legs are less feeble than before. Zack can even shakily slide them against the porcelain, slow as it is. 

He’ll have to ask Elmyra for a sack of rice, or something else they can heat over the stove and compress against the worst of his spine. 

Elmyra is gentle in all her ministrations, and Zack would be a fool not to note the contrast from her tone. She’s careful but not too careful, aware that the longer the process of assisting is dragged out, the more uncomfortable it gets for the both of them. 

The clothes he’s wearing now, settled on their couch and nursing some floral blend of tea, must be her late husband’s. The way her eyes trace the folds of fabric with a harrowing sadness is more than telling.

“I made some calls while you were in the shower,” she says, and Zack immediately knows. His grip on his mug and his lips tighten in turn. “I know a doctor in Sector Six. He’s good people.”

“Is he coming here?” Zack asks, and he tries to fight the wariness from seeping into his tone. She doesn’t know, after all. And he can only ask so much of the Gainsboroughs. 

“He said he’ll stop by tomorrow morning. Doctors are extra busy under the plate, rare as they come. But he’s the best there is in the slums. Went to school up top and everything.”

“So why’s he down here?” Zack sports a wince at the briskness of it— he knows his intent isn’t to be condescending, but Elmyra might hear something else entirely. 

She isn’t phased, if her tight laugh is enough of a tell. “Isn’t this exactly where a doctor should be? The ones who give a shit, anyways.”

Zack bites back a protest that there are no good doctors . He feels the phantom prick of unwanted needles and the burning pull of restraints. The rational part of him— the small part of his heart that Hojo couldn’t turn to steel under his unforgiving touch— knows that she’s right. It recalls the gentle hands that stitched nine lines with care on the crook of his knee, after his mishap scrambling the branches of a crepe myrtle in his yard. It recalls the hard candy he was given after he was bandaged up, melting on his tongue and leaving the throb of pain as a mere afterthought. 

“I’m sure he’ll tell you his story tomorrow,” she continues. “But I let him know you’ll need something to get around in. You should only have to bear with the wagon for another night.” 

“Thank you,” Zack chokes out, even though he wants to protest the whole idea. Elmyra didn’t have to do any of this for him—probably has more reason not to— but she did. And he isn’t going to sully it with his own reservations. “When I can make it up to you, I will.”

“This isn’t a debt to owe,” she rebukes softly. “If it helps you sleep at night, just assume I’m doing it for Aerith.” 

The afternoon is quiet between the two of them. 

Zack has never been fond of silence, always rushing to snuff it out when things turn tense or when his own brain is pacing too fast to keep locked up. He doesn’t mind it at the moment. Silence now, as they stare with unfocused eyes at Elmyra’s old and crackly television in the living room, feels like gratitude. 

His mind wanders to Cloud more often than not. The thoughts wax and wane between the dread in his gut and the bubbling delirium over getting to see him again. Especially to see him up and moving. 

Zack wants to disregard Aerith’s comments from before. He wants to write them off as baseless fables, and file the idea deep in the pits of his mind. It’s difficult though, when her sing-song cantation about his feelings for Cloud are playing on loop every time he thinks of the blonde. 

It’s not as if he’s never considered it. Zack’s attraction has always been something sort of fluid; he’s an appreciator , as he’d claim. But Cloud is different. Cloud has always been in his own category. Labeled separately as a sacred thing that Zack isn’t allowed to tarnish, juvenile as it sounds. 

Even if he were to admit to the fact, there’s no point in it now. Anything he brought to the table before is currently tied up, lifeless as the muscle beneath his waist. His misfortune is the last thing Cloud needs on his plate right now, and Zack plans to do everything he can to focus their attention on Cloud’s recovery. He might be futile as a physical shield, but he can at least do that much.

Shiva, he misses him fiercely— wishes things could be different with a searing ache. 

“You’re thinking too loud. It doesn’t suit you.” Elmyra’s voice rings over the droning noise coming from the television. Zack takes a moment longer to register what she’s said. 

“Just, uh. Really invested,” he replies, gesturing to the figures on the screen, caught up in what looks like an argument laced with melodrama. 

“That so?” she teases back with a smirk audible in her voice. The sound of it holds an uncanny resemblance to Aerith’s manner of speaking, and it has him turning his head to face her. She doesn’t bother meeting his gaze, but her lips are quirked. 

“Yup,” he calls back, enunciating the end of the word with a pop. “Mom always loved soap operas. Thrilling stuff.”

The comment seems to set something off for Elmyra as her smile slips and her forehead creases. She finally turns to look at Zack, asking gently, “Were you planning on phoning home?”

The question gives him pause. It’s not as if he hasn’t thought of his parents since he returned, or during their years on the road. 

It’s extreme to say that he thinks they’re better off the way they are now, assuming he’s gone. The thought worms in anyhow. They’d only worry themselves to death if they knew the state of him. Or find a way to Midgar, when Zack knows they can’t afford it and shouldn’t have to uproot their own lives. 

“They’d want to know you’re alright,” she continues. “Doubt Shinra gave ‘em any updates.”

The image of his parents, their hair laced with more strands of silver and the lines on their faces more pronounced, never straying too far from the phone on the wall, gnaws in his chest.

“If it were Aerith…” Elmyra cuts herself off. Zack knows what she’s getting at, and it stings. It isn’t fair to leave them waiting, desperate for a semblance of a clue. He just doesn’t think he’s ready for it now. 

“I will. Eventually,” he finally responds. “Just need to sort some things out first.”

Zack can’t remember the last time he’s had a home cooked meal. 

The goulash Elmyra prepares is something special, and even though it’s not a dish his own parents would make growing up, it feels like a taste of home. The vegetables are nurtured in their yard, and they aren’t bitter like most are under the plate, sprouting from poisoned soil. They dissolve on his tongue as if Aerith herself has blessed them.

The warmth of the heavy broth is a balm for his throat. Zack is caught by surprise, eyes momentarily watered at the sharp spice of the chili peppers. Elmyra finds the whole thing funnier than he does. 

Time itself feels wrong after his bout in the lifestream. Just one afternoon, lazing and waiting around for Aerith to return, feels like it could pass in the blink of an eye or drag on indefinitely. The hours are warped in a way that they weren’t before— it’s far easier to slip into his own head now, staring at a speck on the wall for who knows how long. 

Rustling resounds in the yard long after they’ve finished their meals. Elmyra has gone upstairs, reminding Zack that she’s only a call away, to deal with her own matters. The nervousness is back as soon as she’s out of sight— the irrational worry that something will happen to him while he’s incapable of fighting back. 

So when he hears what sounds like Aerith’s soft chatter outside in the yard, the relief hits him in a crashing wave. 

None of what she’s saying is clear, even with his enhancements, so he props himself upright on the couch to lean closer to the entryway. He registers the sound of footsteps on the wooden deck. 

The door creaks open at a painful pace. 

“I was wondering when yo—” 

The eyes that lock onto his aren’t the vibrant green he expected. He’s met with a turbulent blue instead, widening incrementally as he takes in the scene before him. They’re at a stalemate, the fragile silence broken only by the pounding of two hearts. 

Cloud looks unwell. His hair is tousled and the shadows under his eyes are blooming in an unsettling shade of violet. The hand tightly gripping the doorknob is pale as plucked cotton and shaking with vigor.

“...Spike?” 

His own voice rings much too far away. It can’t compete with the loud staccato of his pulse. 

“ Zack,” he calls back, and the tight coils in both of their chests unwind. 

Cloud is pulled like the tide towards the sofa. He doesn’t even bother with shutting the door behind him, stumbling over his own feet around the furniture blocking his path. The blonde’s breathing is a frantic sound, while Zack isn’t quite sure if he’s breathing at all.

He stalls before they make contact. Their gazes haven’t parted, but by now Cloud must’ve noticed Zack’s uncharacteristic stillness where he’s settled in the cushions. 

The shame cloaks him in a dark shadow. He snaps out of his momentary reverie, starkly reminded of his ailment as he fights to force his legs into motion. Every cell inside of him wants to give Cloud the greeting he deserves— to prostrate on the ground and apologize, to stand so he can hold him against the breadth of his chest. 

It’s almost awkward the way the mood shifts. They’re both at an impasse, hands twitching with an urge to reach out but stagnant in the end. 

“How are you even—” Cloud starts with a shaky voice, tongue darting out against cracked lips. “I was there, and you were…”

“Miss me?” 

The humorous deterrent is all he can manage to choke out, but it doesn’t land. Cloud is scowling now, finally daring to make contact with a half-hearted punch to Zack’s shoulder. The SOLDIER’s hand darts out on instinct, grabbing Cloud’s with his own before he can fully withdraw. 

“What the hell, Zack?” he warbles. The anger isn’t earnest. The softening of his features as he stares at where their hands are clasped, eyes reddening and lip wobbling, shows more disbelief than anything else. 

The blonde’s touch is grounding as he grips tightly with an urgency that Zack mirrors. They both need the reminder— the tangible proof of what’s in front of them. The intricate lines of Cloud’s palm are something he could recognize with his eyes closed.

Without letting go, Zack uses his other arm to shift himself over on the sofa. It’s a cumbersome maneuver, lifting his legs to align them with the direction he’s sitting. Once the space is free, he tries to tug Cloud down next to him, but his pull is met with resistance. 

Cloud’s eyes were tracing his every movement. Keenly watching the limp dangle of Zack’s ankles, noting the way his legs seem to collapse in on themselves, bending at an awkward angle like they’re dead weight. He can’t actually see if they’re damaged through the fabric of Zack’s pants, but he can assume.

Schools in backwater towns may not be exemplary, but Cloud has always been sharp witted. Not that it would take any real cleverness to figure out the scene in front of him. 

It’s all unlike Zack. The SOLDIER was always seething with frenetic energy, letting out the excess in rapid foot taps and mindless fidgets. Cloud has never seen him so still. And while it hasn’t been that long since they parted, the circumstances were grim. The Zack he knows would be rushing to the door to lock Cloud in a death grip at the first sight of him.

“Cloud?” Zack calls, noting the guarded awareness in the blonde’s eyes— the last piece of the puzzle visibly clicking into place.

“You can’t move them,” he calls back, as if it’s something simple. As if Zack won’t shatter at the sound.

It’s not like he thought he could hide it. He isn’t so deluded. He just thought, maybe, things could go on a little longer. Something solidifies in Zack’s chest at the blunt statement, hardening parts of him that have always been soft; this is just how it is now. This will be the first thing anyone regards when they look at him. He’ll be defined by this uncontrollable thing, this ailment, before he can open his mouth. 

Cloud does sit down now, concern and confusion plainly displayed in the shine of his eyes. Zack wants to laugh it off— to ease the tension how he normally would. He doubts that Cloud would believe the farce. 

“Turns out the lifestream isn’t super forgiving. Go figure, huh Spike?” The lack of seriousness is followed by another punch to his shoulder, and then surprisingly, a fierce embrace around Zack’s middle. 

Cloud never initiated things like this before. He was all bluffed anger and crimson cheeks, feigning annoyance at the SOLDIER ’s near constant need for physical touch. Zack’s shock at the gesture has him delaying before he reaches around to reciprocate, winding one arm around his shoulders and nestling the other in his disheveled locks of blonde hair.  

“I’m so sorry,” Zack professes, muted as he rests his chin on the crown of Cloud’s head. The huff in response is felt more than heard, in a tingling warmth against the skin on Zack’s neck. 

“You were gone, ” Cloud chokes, and Zack has to fight back a shiver at the movement against the junction of his throat. “Dead, Zack. I know it.”

“I was,” he responds, as if it answers anything. Zack doesn’t know if he can explain in full, given the other circumstances— isn’t sure he can take another blow to the dilapidated remnants of his pride. “But I’m back now. Well, like…half of me, I guess?”

“Idiot, ” Cloud pauses, fighting to swallow against his dry throat. “You can’t ever pull something like that again.”

“I mean, even if I wanted to…” The humor tries to slip out unbidden. Cloud doesn’t laugh. 

In fact, he doesn’t respond at all. His weight has gone slack, and his hands have fallen from their tight grip on Zack’s waist to around his side. 

This is a familiar feeling. Zack knows what’s happening without having to check him over thoroughly. All of Cloud’s rare moments of lucidity were followed by this same string of events: the foggy tint to his eyes, his muscles giving out abruptly, his lips parting as his face goes lax.

Zack hates this part. He hates watching the dilation of Cloud’s pupils eat up the blue around them. He hates that no amount of jostling his companion will make any difference in the end. 

“I’ve got you, Spike.”

It must’ve been far too overwhelming— too much for his already fragmented mind to hold onto. 

Zack can just barely feel the pressure as he maneuvers Cloud’s head into his lap. For how often they wound up just like this on the road, his mind can fill in the gaps— mimicked apparitions of soft breathing against his legs, the tickling of spiked hair when he tosses and turns.

If he closes his eyes now, fingers still carding through coarse strands and throat humming some nameless tune, it’s as if they’re back on the road. The sharp outcrops of rocks they’d huddle against are bartered for soft cushions, and the bright sun is exchanged for flickering fluorescent bulbs. The fear that they’ll be found is almost the same, even as deep in hiding as they are. 

Cloud doesn’t look as entrenched in the sickness as he used to get. As painful as it is, Zack prefers the distressed pinch in his brow over the lifelessness he’d display before. At least he has a sign that there’s something going on in that pretty head of his.

He still wants to smooth the wrinkle away with his fingers. And he gives in and does just that, only to watch the skin tighten into a deeper scowl under the pad of his thumb. His own lips quirk as Cloud’s pull downward, as if he’s scolding Zack for meddling unconsciously. 

Aerith’s head eventually peaks through the open doorway, snapping Zack out of his mesmerized staring. She takes in the scene on the sofa with a twisted sort of satisfaction, eyebrows inching towards her hairline.

“Is he alright?” She asks, ignoring the other burning question on her mind. 

“He will be,” Zack replies. “He needs to rest. And some time to process, probably.”

“Don’t we all?”

Aerith is still standing awkwardly in the entrance. She glances behind the frame again, widening the door a fraction. Zack catches a glimpse of bright red boots and long black hair.

The recognition trickles in slowly. It’s not until she’s all the way inside, fingers twined behind her back and feet shifting nervously, that he pieces it together. 

“You’re—”

“So it is true.”

They call out at the same time. Tifa flushes, shaking her head like it’ll rattle the world back into focus. 

“Back in Nibelheim, I thought that you…” Zack doesn’t finish the thought. He has no room to bring up someone else being presumably dead. 

“Ditto,” she replies, with an equal desire to move on from the topic. 

Something about her presence here makes him jittery. She carries a different air than the girl he met all those years ago— more meek than the brash and playful teenager that he remembers. He heard a fair amount about her from Cloud, too. For some reason, that thought has him tightening his grip on Cloud’s arm, adjusting him to nestle further into his own lap. 

Both women track the movement with their eyes. Aerith’s are shining with amusement, but Tifa’s are indiscernible to him. 

“Down, boy,” Aerith chastises. In a blatant display of familiarity that only the Cetra can pull off, she loops her arm around Tifa’s to pull them both inside. Something about it— the pink on both of their cheeks, the nervous stolen moments of eye contact between them— molds a theory in the back of Zack’s mind. 

Aerith Gainsborough is a tease. 

Chapter Text

“What do you want to do?” 

Claudia’s voice is stern. She talks with the kind of authority that’ll shun a woman in Nibelheim. 

“I don’t know what I want. What does it matter, anyhow?”

Narrowed eyes cut up sharply to meet Tifa’s. The hands winding gauze around the young girl’s calf tighten, inciting a wince. 

“I hear a whole lot about what women ought to be doing,” she says, catching Tifa’s pained expression and softening her grip near the wound. “But no one in this town ever asks what they want. ”

Tifa wants a lot of things. Far too many to name. She wants to hop in puddles after the rain clears without worrying about the state of her garments. She wants to scuffle and play rough like the boys her age are allowed to. She wants to feel the sputter of a real engine beneath her thighs— to hitch a ride in one of those trucks that pilfer all of the boys with dreams off to vast steel landscapes.

She wants to say ‘no’— wants to scream it until the word tastes like iron on her tongue. 

She doesn’t dare to mutter any of this to Claudia. Tifa cradles her thoughts in secret, like fabled wishes on falling stars, never breaching tight lips for fear of them not coming true. 

Claudia can guess, though. She’s seen it often in Nibel girls around this age— the same sort of fire that burned in her, scorching through the restraints that this town ties them up in. The kind of defiance that sent Tifa wandering off the beaten path today, tripping over sandals with too many straps and showing up teary eyed and bloody on Claudia’s doorstep.

“It matters,” Claudia continues, tying off the end of her work. “What you want will always matter.”

“What’s the point in wanting,” Tifa counters, failing to bite back her indignation, “if it’ll never really happen?”

Anyone else in this town would scold her for talking out of turn with such nerve. Claudia smiles wide. 

“Who says so?” She hides her spark of amusement behind creased eyes and musses the hair on Tifa’s head. “I’ll ask again, Tifa. What do you want ?”

“Hello,” a voice calls beside her, dragging out the syllables in ludic irritation. “Planet to Tifa.” 

The bartender hums in acknowledgement but doesn’t raise her eyes from the glass she’s wiping down. She’s been spacey all afternoon, and Jessie is more than suspicious. 

“It’s never this hard to get your attention,” she continues, a pout audible in her tone. “I might resort to setting something on fire in the bar.”

Jessie gets what she wants in the end. Tifa does look up from her task, if only to shoot a weary look at her friend. It’s enough to leave the former actress feeling scorned, raising her hands in submission. 

“No fires,” she mends, still trying her utmost to wring a response out of Tifa. “But you should tell me what’s going on. Am I not allowed to be worried?”

“When have you ever quit something because you weren’t allowed to ? I’d love to hear about it,” Tifa teases back. Her diversion isn’t subtle, but Jessie permits it just to keep her talking. 

“Fair enough,” she calls back. “Speaking of things I’m not allowed to do, you should come over later. I wanna show you what I’ve been working on.”

It’s a tempting distraction. Jessie’s work is always fascinating, and even if Tifa worries that most of it is far too dangerous, she can’t deny the skilled craftsmanship. There’s little competition in the art of innovative ploys to bug Shinra. 

Alluring as it all sounds, watching Jessie tinker over gadgets with that signature crease between her brows and her tongue poked out in concentration, Tifa has to decline. Nights in that crowded house are always followed by groggy mornings and hardly coherent memories. And even if she were up to the task, there’s already more on her plate than she can handle without it cracking.

“Wish I could, Jess. Tonight’s not a good night for me,” Tifa answers, the preemptive feeling of exhaustion winning over her guilt in the end. The rejection feels unfamiliar in her own throat. “Whatever it is, don’t blow it up before I get to see it. We’ll plan something later this week.”

“You wound me, Miss Lockhart.” Jessie mimics burying a knife into her own chest, twisting her hands and tensing up in a theatrical display. It’s just enough to pull the first genuine smile out of Tifa since she woke up. 

“I’m sorry. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

“Oh, really?” Jessie is never one to miss an opening, and she takes it shamelessly, leaning over the counter to invade Tifa’s space with a salacious grin. “How would you make it up to me?”

They aren’t rookies in this back and forth banter. It follows the same pattern every time; some innocent comment is met with brash flirtation, and the scene ends with a flustered denial from the bartender and a triumphant look on Jessie’s face. Tifa has been learning her way around it since the day they met.

It doesn’t ignite her cheeks in a rose colored flush like it would have any other time. The whole ploy feels empty somehow— almost tiresome. 

“You shouldn’t joke like that, Jess.”

Tifa glances without reason at the yellow lily propped up on the counter. It practically twinkles under the low light of the bar, fluorescent bulbs refracting off of glass and white anther, dreamlike amongst the dark wooden decor. The actress follows her line of sight, leaning back from her suggestive pose and trying to piece things together. 

“Oh you’re not getting out of explaining this one,” Jessie demands, gesturing to the blossom with wide eyes. “Who’s giving you flowers? Actually, where is anyone getting flowers down here? Is that thing real?”

Tifa doesn’t want to explain. She knows that Jessie means no harm— that her curiosity gets the best of her more often than not— but the thought of baring those few precious moments with anyone else leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. Unreasonable as it is, she feels as if the petals will dissolve at the mere mention of what transpired. 

It was less than a minute of time. The flower peddler likely meant nothing at all with her gestures. 

Still, the fixation is undeniable. Something clicked in Tifa’s heart that night, lying awake and wondering if she’ll ever spot that mysterious girl again, claiming a new soul to bewitch with her emerald eyes and seamless fluidity. 

Of course Jessie’s banter would feel hollow in the face of that. She only recognizes now how she’s been played for a fool. All this time, it lacked any real intent . Tifa wasn’t unaware of that fact, knowing how the actress behaves with anyone she can get her hands on, but it’s never been so glaringly obvious. 

Her heart has always been a thing to toy with— a spectacle when she flusters, or an object for men with the entitlement that it should be given away after any common decency. Tifa vows silently to hold on to it tighter. 

“Just a stranger,” she replies, downplaying the whole interaction. It isn’t a blatant lie— Tifa has never been any good at those— but she hopes it’s enough to nip this talk in the bud. “Nothing special.”

Jessie hums in suspicion, her eyes darting between the object in question and her friend. She knows the tells by now, well aware that Tifa is blurring the lines of truth, but she drops it in the end. The bartender will only clam up further if she tries to pry it out of her. 

“You’re no fun,” Jessie bickers back with no real bite. “Really, though. Are you doing okay? You’ve been out of sorts all morning.” 

“I’m okay, Jess.” Her wobbly smile and watered down reply come almost naturally. “Just didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Well… if you change your mind and wanna talk, you know where to find me.” Jessie’s smile is gentle, and the shame is instantaneous. She really does mean well. 

“Thank you. But I’ll be alright, really.” 

Tifa has no justifiable need to hide what’s going on. If she can trust anyone, it’s her crew, and she’s well aware of the fact. They might even have an insight on the mako sickness plaguing Cloud that would be of more help than what she can offer. 

Still, she watches her friend saunter out of the building and doesn’t utter a word to stop her. She listens to the creak of the doors swaying, and doesn't take her eyes off of them until they’ve stilled in their movement. 

If she breaches the topic of Cloud Strife, Nibelheim is an inevitability. Her grief is something harbored— guarded and barricaded like the curse might pass on to someone else if she isn’t careful.

Or maybe she’s afraid of forgetting. Maybe when they ask, and she tries to recall the name of her neighbor that lived three doors down, all that’s left will be charred. Maybe she doesn’t have any right to talk about it at all— not when she’s still standing here breathing. 

“I want to learn how to fight,” Tifa answers, exuding more confidence than she feels. “Or… fight back, at least.” 

“Oh? Big plans to join Shinra’s forces?” Claudia tries to sound encouraging, wary as she is of the company. The Nibel girl shakes her head firmly in denial. 

“No. Nothing like that,” she says, pausing to gather her thoughts and to reach for her mug on the coffee table. It’s distracting for a moment, the way the heat seeps from the ceramic and sends tendrils of warmth through her fingers. “If all the guys that can fight run off to Midgar, who’s left if something happens here?”

“I don’t know how much help I can offer in that department.” The relief is unveiled in Claudia’s tone and in the soft sigh that follows, and Tifa laughs sweetly at her lack of subtlety. “Maybe once you’re all trained, you can teach me a thing or two.”

“I will.” There’s something vibrant in her eyes now, shining far brighter than a mere hour before when she arrived. Her confession gives her the bravery to broach a subject she’s been wary of. “Claudia… can I ask you something?”

“Haven’t I told you? Questions first, forgiveness later.”

“How do you handle it?” Tifa blurts the thought out, not nearly as graceful as she intended. “I mean, hearing the stuff they say about you. Doesn’t it get tiring?”

“That drivel?” Claudia scoffs, but not unkindly. She knows her reputation around town— knows that Tifa’s own father likely has unkind thoughts about the two of them spending time together. “It does get tiring. But you’ll learn to filter it out, and they’ll learn to cope with it.”

“Why not just… leave? Follow Cloud to Midgar? City folk are way more tolerant,” Tifa offers, blushing after the fact. “At least, I’ve heard they are. I wouldn’t really know.”

“And why should I be the one to go?” The challenge isn’t meant to put Tifa in her place. It’s the whole purpose of their meetings— to tackle the probing questions they aren’t supposed to utter outside. “Why should I leave, when I haven’t done anything wrong? Will that change anything?”

“I guess not,” Tifa replies, still not satiated. “It’s just hard to imagine they’ll come around.”

“If you learn how to kick their asses, they won’t have much of a choice, huh?”

There’s little to be said about Sector Seven on days like these. The air is brittle enough to leave the townspeople’s lips cracked, and the dust from the streets ride boots into buildings, dirtying the floorboards and caking the crevices. The real dull patterns— the reality of a day in the slums— aren’t remarkable to anyone but the residents. 

And the Sector Seven residents love to talk. They’ll blather on about pedestrian things, complaining about the dry heat and the dirty floorboards, or the water running cold in their taps. They want to know everyone else’s business, whether they have a right to it or not. 

Tifa likes to hear it. She doesn’t ramble back often, but she likes to listen. A bartender could be coined as a town’s archive, always at the heart of the latest news, collecting information and polishing it off at the end of a shift. There’s something sacred in that to Tifa— to hoard and protect the culture of a town, knowing intimately how fast they can scorch and be reduced to nothing but ash.

So she listens, nods, and makes note of the important things quietly: the complaints about more Shinra troopers hovering near the train stations, the rising prices, the baby just born in the house down the road, or the off comments about a peculiar girl running around tugging a wagon full of flowers. 

The bar follows its normal routine after Jessie’s departure. Customers trickle in leisurely, sometimes just to chat, before the lunch rush sends the flock over all at once. The regulars have their designated tables or preferred seats at the counter, and Tifa somehow manages to work a three person job all on her own. 

Barret has been busy. The whole crew has been, really, and Tifa wishes she could offer more. He’s supposed to bring Marlene by today so he can work without the stress of watching her, and the bartender agreed to it before the whole thing with Cloud came up. 

She’s forming a plan— rehearsing it in her head and fine tuning her options. Tifa has to tell them. Cloud might’ve been involved with Shinra, but her friends' hearts aren’t made of steel. And she knows well enough that it’s time to reach out for help, daunting as it is. 

Even now, aware that Marle is close by and will keep an eye on him, it’s all she can worry about. Especially after the harsh reunion they had this morning. 

It’s while she’s zoning out, reliving the searing guilt over Cloud’s recoil from her hand, that she hears flitting footsteps on the bar patio. She can’t help but smile as the door is cracked open with immense effort, quietly creaking its protests and revealing inky black pigtails and a sheepish smile. 

“Hi, Marlene.” The greeting is called out in a tender voice she reserves for the young girl. Tifa watches her struggle to push open the door, puffing her cheeks and grumbling, before Barret steps in and eases the weight off for his daughter. “Hey, Barret. You headi—?”

There’s another figure behind the two of them. The porch bulbs flicker over her frame as she sidles into the bar, her dress almost orange under the warm light. Tifa’s greeting to her friend dies on her tongue and she doesn’t mourn the loss. 

If someone were to ask her what they talked about then, the bartender’s memories would be hazy. All subsequent conversation is diluted by her pulse pounding in her ears, the blood rushing to every inch of her face each time the flower peddler addresses her so fondly. 

Aerith. She catches the introduction somewhere along the line. Tifa couldn’t have conjured up a more fitting name if she tried. 

She feels pulled along by some unspoken force, lost in the peaks and meadows of Aerith’s voice, going on about onions and flowers and someone she’s been looking for in Sector Seven. Tifa thinks she could listen for ages and leave the whole thing with no complaints. 

Tifa answers Aerith’s questions with little thought— an anomaly that would only feel apparent to the bartender. It’s so rare for her to let her mask slip, to banter back without knowing someone’s firm boundaries, that she hardly notices it’s gone at all. Aerith makes it all easy somehow, coaxing the sincerity out of Tifa with her own.

Good things don’t last long. At least, not in Tifa’s experience. She knows to savor them while she’s got them, to let them melt on her tongue without biting, but still— still, she got carried away. And when the voice that rang sweet just seconds before calls out the name Cloud, she can’t help the sting of grief as the curtain falls. The taste in her mouth turns sour in an instant.

She knows Aerith can see it too. Tifa is sure she’s gone pale as marble, her once tender expression falling slack and her feet involuntarily putting some distance between them. 

“So you do know him then,” Aerith half whispers, and the relief rivals the worry in her tone.

Tifa isn’t sure if she wants to confirm the claim. The door isn’t far, and she’s always been quick on her feet. Still, ‘no’ isn’t a word she’s ever been good at uttering. There’s always a workaround somehow— maybe next week , or I’m not sure , or a simple thank you. 

None of her usual diversions are fitting here. To say 'no'— to push this whole thing under the rug and send Aerith out the door in a fruitless search— would be an irrefutable lie. And eyeing her desperation now, her normally vibrant eyes clouded with worry and hope all blurred together, it’s even more impossible.  

So she takes a break and leads Aerith outside. 

And when Aerith utters that other notorious name— the other ghost of her past, somehow still haunting her all the way across the planet— she offers to make them some drinks. 

Barret is understanding about it all. He must’ve heard snippets of their conversation before they went out on the patio, and it’s undeniable that he has questions. She can read it clearly in the furrow of his brow— the urge to jump in, to protect Tifa from whatever situation she’s tangled herself up in.

Tifa signals her appreciation in a firm squeeze of Barret’s good arm, lips tilted in a weary imitation of a smile. 

“I promise I’ll find time to watch her this week,” she says, far enough away from Aerith still standing in the entrance to grant them some privacy. “And I’ll explain. Just give me some time. I don't even know if I could explain right now without keeling over.”

“Don’t worry ‘bout me and Marlene,” he replies, and there’s no question of his sincerity. “You know if there’s anything we can do for you, we will. Questions can be answered later.”

“I know. Thank you, Barret.” Tifa crouches down to sit eye level with Marlene, ruffling her hair in a way that rings familiar to her own youth— to the woman in her own life she gazed up at in awe. “And I promise you I’ll make up for it tenfold. Whatever you want, you can name it.”

Marlene’s pout wavers at the corners as she runs through the limitless options in her mind. “Can we make sandwiches? Where I get to pick the stuff? Or… Can I wear your gloves?”

“Yes to both, and your favorite movie this weekend.”

“Deal.”

Any trace of her pout from before is gone, replaced with the beaming smile that Tifa was aiming for. She returns it in kind as she sprouts up from her crouch, glancing between Aerith in the corner and the pair she regards as family. 

“You’re worse than I am,” Barret mutters under his breath. The quirk of his lips give away his amusement entirely. “Go. We’ll close up here.” 

Tifa leads them upstairs with little preamble, and Aerith doesn’t seem keen to fill the silence now. They’re both tense— inevitably still lingering on their talk from before and the two men in various states of unease back at their homes. 

It’s as comfortable as an apartment can get in the slums. Barret and Tifa did their best to make the whole thing feel like home for Marlene, filling it to the brim with cozy furniture and mementos so it feels less like a temporary gig and more like a place where she belongs. 

“Do you live up here too?” Aerith asks, tracing a finger across a dresser against the wall and eyeing the framed photo of the three of them sitting atop it. “Talk about ‘always on the job.’”

“Hah,” Tifa huffs and veers in the direction of the liquor cabinet. “No. Barret and Marlene live here on their own. I’m just down the road, though. You have a favorite drink?”

Aerith twines her hands and walks towards her, bending over to eye the contents of the cabinet Tifa opened. 

“You’re the bartender. Think you can guess?”

They’re close together like this, shoulders almost brushing. Tifa notes that if they both turned their heads, they’d be nose to nose. 

“Something sweet, then,” she replies, and she doesn’t fight the creeping blush as Aerith beams back at her. 

Tifa has to sift towards the back to find the wine she has in mind. It’s nothing expensive, but a sweet wine doesn’t have to be. She picked this one up above the plate after seeing the watercolor design on the label, and it feels fitting now. If the softening of Aerith’s expression at the sight of the delicate florals means anything, she’s made the right choice.

“You keep this place stocked upstairs and downstairs, huh?” 

Tifa shakes her head, laughing all the while, and leads them towards the sofa with their wine glasses and bottle in hand. Aerith trails behind her with no qualms about the whole thing— no wariness in making herself at home in a near stranger’s apartment. 

“Gotta keep the good stuff locked up for a rainy day,” Tifa parrots back, sitting herself down and trying not to fluster at how close Aerith plops down next to her. 

“Do you think it’s raining? Above the plate, I mean.” Aerith takes the stem of her glass from Tifa, fingers lingering where their hands meet, cold to the touch. 

Tifa doesn’t correct her— doesn’t note that the circumstances themselves are the rainy day, and she hardly meant it literally. She doesn’t have the heart to. 

“It could be,” she entertains the thought. Closes her eyes and listens for good measure. Sometimes, when the rain beats down hard enough, she can hear it pattering against the steel above them. It’s a pleasant sort of white noise, and the petrichor smell even makes its way down to them if it’s been a remarkably long drought. She can’t hear the sound now. “Don’t think so.”

Aerith seems despondent over the fact, eyes lowering as Tifa gently pours their wine. She adds the image to her rapidly growing list of observations about the flower peddler. 

“So, about Cloud,” Aerith starts, swirling the pink liquid in her glass so the smell wafts up to her nose. “Do you think he’ll go and see him?”

“I think only Gaia can stop him once he knows that Zack is back.” There’s no uncertainty in Tifa’s tone. She doesn’t know the extent of their relationship, but the scene from last night is branded in her mind now— a perfect picture of grief, Cloud’s hands bloody and indented with Zack’s name. His hesitancy to part with the only piece of him he had left, even so deep in his sickness. “I didn’t bring you up here to talk about them, though.”

Tifa and Aerith both blush at the comment, burying their noses in their glasses. 

“Just—” Tifa swallows a hearty sip of wine and tries to recover. “I needed a second away. To breathe. If I misread, and you’re in a hurry, though…”

“Nope,” Aerith is quick to interrupt. “No qualms here. They’ll be fine for a bit. My mom is with Zack back at the house, so I know he’s in good hands.”

The smile they both offer then feels like the nervous rush after sharing a secret. Tifa should be cautious at a time like this, wary to let her guard down so greatly around someone she’s just met, but she isn’t.

She can’t dig the feeling out of herself. Something about the whole thing— the way their lives are twined by the people they know and the odd ways they’ve cropped back up— feels too much like fate to run away from. 

When Aerith leans back into the sofa, crossing one ankle over the other, Tifa catches her wincing softly. 

“You alright?” she asks, sweeping Aerith over with her eyes for anything amiss. 

“Oh, I’m okay,” Aerith replies. “Just scraped my leg up a bit yesterday. You ever seen Gaia throw someone up? She sure makes a mess when she’s sick.”

The florist tries to adjust the hem of her dress to cover her torn up ankle, but Tifa’s eyes are quicker. Just a small glance at the caked blood marring the pale span of her skin makes Tifa feel queasy. 

“Let me have a look,” she offers, already setting down her glass and moving to kneel against the carpet. 

It’s Aerith’s turn to fluster now, and it's a sight to behold. Her cheeks light up as a gentle hand reaches for her calf, slightly bunching up the fabric of her dress to fully see the damage. 

“No, no, really, it’s alright Tifa,” she counters, hands hovering above the bartenders shoulders, hesitant to touch. “I honestly forgot it happened— it doesn't hurt!”

Tifa looks up, throwing on her best attempt at a scolding stare. It must fall flat, if the giggle in response is telling enough. 

“You have to disinfect it. Even small wounds are dangerous if you don’t.”

Aerith is left stunned, still pink in her cheeks as Tifa stands up and hurries towards a door on the left. She only has to rummage for a moment before she returns with a raggedy looking first aid kit in hand. 

“Just lean back against the sofa,” Tifa coaxes, settling herself back down next to Aerith. “I’ll be quick, promise.” 

She isn't sure where the authority is coming from. Something about it though— a girl like Aerith, running around town for someone else’s sake without taking the time to tend to her own wounds— emboldens Tifa.  

“It’s really no big deal…” Aerith mutters with an almost childish air of defiance. Still, she complies, unlacing and removing her boot before propping her leg up in Tifa’s waiting hand. The bartender only hums her thanks, fighting a flush of her own as she slides the lace on the hem of Aerith’s dress up to the end of her wounds. 

The first sting of the antiseptic burns like ice. Aerith takes another sip of her wine to counter it, finding only a drop in the bottom of her glass. 

“Feel free to refill,” Tifa says, her eyes still trained on the shallow red divots— the beading of fresh blood as she wipes away the old. “So, did I choose alright?”

The bottle is still half full, and Aerith doesn’t decline the offer, carefully reaching over to pour herself another serving. There’s only pressure now where the cuts are being tended as Tifa lays the gauze and lets it stick. 

“It’s good,” she answers, understating it. Really, it’s one Aerith would’ve picked out for herself. “So, do you do this for all the girls who give you flowers? Tend to their wounds?” 

“Not all the girls.” Tifa catches on quick, parroting back their conversation from the bar. “Maybe just the pretty ones.”

They don’t drink to lose their senses. By the time they’re done, their limbs have loosened just enough to ease some of the week’s stress, which was Tifa’s goal in the first place.

Conversation is easy between the two of them. If it weren’t for the extenuating circumstances leading them here, Tifa might’ve said it all feels like a first date— the rush in getting to know someone, always walking a delicate line, riding the high and fearing the fall. 

The topic of Cloud and Zack is skirted around carefully. And when Tifa struggles to bring up new points, Aerith is there to fill the silence with stories about odd folks in the other sectors, or the rowdy orphans she looks after on off days. 

It’s well past dinner by the time they’ve left the bar. Aerith’s gait is wobbly as they trek down the dirt path towards Stargazer Heights, and the orange light of the setting sun seeps through the cracks in the plate, illuminating the slums in stark lines of color. 

“You wanna tell Cloud?” Aerith asks once the apartment building is in sight. “You know him better, after all.” 

“I don’t know if I do anymore,” Tifa admits. “Won’t make much of a difference. He’ll probably think we’re messing with him. Just— he’s fragile right now. You’ll understand once you see him.”

Aerith is staring at Tifa inexplicably. It’s intense in an endearing way, the way her eyes lock on Tifa’s even as she stumbles in her steps. 

“What is it? Is there something on my face?”

Aerith flashes a fox-like smile, and the green of her irises are almost swallowed by the black expanse of her pupils. 

“Nope,” she answers, offering little explanation and continuing to let her gaze linger all the way up the steps. “You ready?”

“Can’t keep putting it off, huh?”

Tifa knocks, enters slowly, and feels the sweet serenity of her evening dissipate as she locks eyes with Cloud. 

Aerith wasn’t smooth about it. In her favor, it’s a hard topic to breach— to make the whimsical claim that Zack has returned from the lifestream, when Cloud himself witnessed his departure— so she did her best with what she was given. 

Tifa wants to fret over them both as they make their way towards Aerith’s house. Cloud, lingering just a bit behind the pair and seemingly still in shock, hasn’t warmed up any further to the bartender. Things are just as tense as they were this morning. 

They talk about mindless things to pass the time, following the flower peddler’s lead through side tunnels she knows like the back of her hand. Tifa overhears the snippets of conversation between Cloud and Aerith— the murmurs of soft encouragement and promises to lighten the grief shared between them. 

It’s a perceptible thing, now. The low burn of a candle is flickering in Tifa’s stomach, in tune with the pounding of her heart. Aerith is something indelible, and there aren’t any words to workaround the feeling. 

Maybe it’s the buzz from the wine. Maybe it’s the low light, or the spinning in her head from this bizarre sequence of events. 

All of Tifa’s excuses fall flat once they arrive at Aerith’s house.

That yellow lily she’s cherished for the little time she’s had it feels even smaller now— almost laughable as she takes in the yard in front of her. Tifa doesn’t think she’s ever seen vast florals like this— not even in the meadows of the Nibel mountains. She stands immovable on the path, her eyes darting between the patches of color so starkly different from the dull grays in the rest of the slums. 

“Pretty cool, huh?” Aerith says, gesturing around her and looking as close to bashful as she can get. 

Tifa isn’t sure what she mumbles in response. She’s still absorbing it all, taking in the rich scent of soil she’s missed with such fervor. 

Aerith sends Cloud inside alone to talk with Zack. It’s a sly sort of move, and she gives the scheme away with her air of accomplishment once the SOLDIER heads inside.

“Wanna take a walk with me?” 

They’re standing much closer now. She isn’t sure when Aerith approached, but she’s made herself comfortable in Tifa’s space, offering her pinky to hold and glancing between the bartender and her garden in question. 

“Yes. I would love to,” Tifa answers, and she’s never been more sincere. 

Their fingers link, curling around each other with little reason to do so. Neither are keen to question it as their hearts pound in tandem. 

“These are my chrysanthemum bushes.” Aerith points to the neatly trimmed, spherical shaped hedges of greenery and multicolored blossoms lining the path. “They don’t taste very good, but your heart will like them. You can cut the bitterness with honey.”

“They’re beautiful,” Tifa responds, using her free hand to stroke a petal. “What are those small white ones? The batch back there?”

“Chamomile,” she answers. “Great for sleep. I like to steep them with lavender.”

“We had those, I think. Back in Nibelheim.”

Aerith hums as she tugs them both along. The whole yard is full of winding paths, wrapping around the cliffed edges and converging towards a bridge in the center. Tifa hardly even noticed the cascading waterfalls beyond the curtains of greenery, but now that she sees them, she can only follow the gushing stream with her eyes. 

“The humidity feels nice, huh?” Aerith sounds like she’s enjoying this plenty— clearly proud of her yard and the hours she must spend tending to it. “The plants love it.”

“What kind is that?”

They make a game of it, then. Tifa ends up setting the pace, pulling Aerith along by her finger and pointing out new plants for the florist to identify. She learns about carnations and the way they’ll soften your skin, citronella and lemongrass used to ward off pests, and the gardenias she simmers to make her own perfume oils. 

Tifa tries to soak it all up, losing count as they go along. Her focus is torn—drawn to both the scene in front of her and the animated way Aerith describes it all, lighting up each time the bartender engages back. 

She doesn’t know which one of them moves to twine their hands together completely. Tifa would take the sentencing for it anyhow, if it means they can stay like this for just a little while longer. 

Cloud is out cold when they finally make their way into the house. It isn’t an unexpected outcome considering the state of him this morning— in and out of his feverish fugue, lost in the fine lines between dream and reality. 

Still, there’s comfort now. Tifa’s eyes are keen, but even so, no one could miss the protective stance Zack has taken over his limp form.

His eyes are tender. That’s all Tifa pays mind to.

It's awkward in a way that’s entirely unique to the four of them. Zack and Tifa can’t quite help the way their faces pale each time they lock eyes, both feeling as though they’ve seen a ghost. Aerith at least seems immune to it all, darting upstairs to grab her mother and check in after the long day they’ve had. 

‘She doesn’t look much like Aerith,’ is Tifa’s first thought as they descend the stairs together. Her features are stern and sharp. 

“Feels like I meet someone new every time I come down here,” the woman calls, eyeing the four of them and then stopping her gaze on Cloud’s unconscious form. “Help yourselves, I suppose.”

The cold tone doesn’t phase Aerith. She just smiles, giggling softly and rushing back towards her three companions. 

“Thanks, mom. We’ll stay out of your hair.”

“You haven’t minded your own business a day in your life,” her mother replies, and Zack and Aerith both huff sounds of amusement.

Tifa wonders where Aerith gets it, now— that carefree shroud of energy around her, the life she brings into everything she does. Still, her mother’s scowl softens imperceptibly each time she looks at her daughter, and the Nibel girl understands. 

She understands when she glances back at Cloud, his features cinched tight, and Claudia is there. In each line on his face, in the lightly gold tufts of hair following their own agenda, she knows. Tifa wonders if her father thought the same whenever he looked at her. Her own mother’s face is too diluted to recall in the mirror. 

“Tifa,” Aerith beckons, her voice low enough to give some illusion of privacy. “Why don’t you just stay the night?”

The insistence that she shouldn’t impose wilts on her tongue as she sees the shine in the florist’s eyes. It isn’t an offer for Tifa— Aerith wants her here tonight. 

“You sure?”

“Positive.” Aerith is beaming now, nodding her head rapidly like she’s afraid Tifa might rescind her agreement. “I just have to help them settle down here, and I’ll meet you up in my room. First door on the second floor— make yourself at home.” 

The decor is just as eccentric as the girl herself. Tifa can hardly find an inch of empty space on her walls or shelves, and she wouldn’t have expected anything else. 

Tifa makes use of the ensuite bathroom, mindful to leave everything where she found it once she’s washed up enough to feel decent. It should feel uncomfortable— lingering around in someone else’s home, sitting and waiting on the foot of their bed. 

It doesn’t. From the dried bouquets hanging upside down on the walls, to the clay trinkets on her nightstand, it isn’t possible to feel unwelcome here. 

By the time Aerith makes it upstairs, Tifa feels like there’s still half of the room left for her to observe. 

“Sorry that took so long,” Aerith says, clicking the door shut behind her and looking almost nervous as she toes off her boots. “Let me find you something comfortable to wear.”

For how ‘cluttered’ one might say her place is, there’s an order to everything. Aerith doesn’t rummage through the folded clothes in her drawers. Rather, she sifts until she finds what she’s looking for and then tucks everything back the way it was. 

“Thanks, Aerith.” 

The nightclothes she’s handed are velvet soft and smell of gardenias. It makes Tifa feel giddy, all the way to the ensuite as she removes and folds her own garments and dons Aerith’s. The set is meant to be loose, so the shorts hang low on Tifa’s hips and the shirt slips just shy of her collarbones. 

“Ready for bed, then?” Aerith asks, already in her nightclothes, as Tifa heads back into the room. They both do a once over, helpless to the near intimacy of it all. 

Aerith’s cheeks rival her pink slip. 

“I’m ready,” Tifa says— almost chokes. “I can take the floor.”

“Don’t be silly,” Aerith chides back. Her attempt at a no-nonsense tone pulls a laugh out of Tifa before she can stifle it. “We can just share the bed. I mean, if you don’t mind.”

Tifa feels like her heart might break free from her ribcage, but still— still she nods. She nods and wills it to settle, resilient as it is. 

“I don’t mind,” she lies. Tifa does mind, but not because she doesn’t want to. She minds because she shouldn’t be allowed to feel this giddy. She minds because the person she’s giddy over is all wrong— against the grain of all she’s been taught. 

What you want will always matter.

Claudia’s voice rings in her head as they move to settle beneath the sheets. It resounds as they face each other there, knees bumping under covers and heat trapped as the blood pulses rapidly between them. 

“Tifa?” 

The lights are off now, but if Tifa focuses her gaze, she can trace the outline of Aerith’s nose lying so close to hers. Almost bumping. 

“Yeah, Aerith?”

Their whispers compete with the sound of rushing water, muted through the window panes. 

“I’m glad I got to meet you.” 

I’ll ask again, Tifa. What do you want?

Tifa knows. 

Chapter Text

Cloud can’t remember the last time he's slept without dreams. They’ve become something almost corporeal in his life, seeping into his waking hours and tangling so inextricably with reality that he can hardly pull them apart. 

Yet after a mere moment in Zack’s presence, half of it spent scolding, his sleep is restful. He isn’t sure if it's the man himself that soothed him or if he was too overwhelmed to conjure anything up, but when he wakes, it’s quiet in his mind. The usual pounding against his skull is absent, and the fissured remnants of nightmares that usually like to linger have all wisped out of his grasp. 

He’s cradled against something solid, a ghost of breath hitting his ear from behind. Cloud wants to crane his neck— to look back and confirm that the heart beating against his spine is really Zack’s— but that would mean jostling the both of them. It’s far too comfortable to risk. 

“Spike?”

The voice that rings out behind him is heavy with sleep and close enough to send a shiver down his frame. Zack must feel it too, because he huffs a laugh and leans up just enough to lay Cloud flat on his back, their faces finally level. 

There’s hardly enough room on the couch for the two of them, but it’s a familiar thing to be tangled so close. Even if half of his memories of them doing so are fogged over, too milky to recall much more than vague shapes and feelings, his body remembers. 

“Feeling better?” Zack asks, his eyes scanning the planes of Cloud’s face. 

It’s hard to work around his fumble of a tongue. Staring back into once lifeless eyes, shining with a mirth that Cloud himself watched fizzle out, he feels the hollowed out space inside of him echo in confusion. 

Zack’s brows furrow in worry as the silence drags on, his face hovering closer like he might find something he missed before. 

“You with me?” He tries again, and the fear in his voice is enough to snap Cloud out of his reverie. Right. It’s probably alarming to stay unresponsive when Zack has been witnessing that same glazed-over look for months now. 

“I’m here,” he musters, turning on his side so they can lay face to face instead. “Sorry. It’s still not—”

“I get it,” Zack cuts him off, his mouth quirking in a crescent moon smile at the sound of Cloud’s sleep soaked voice. “Big day yesterday, huh?”

“You think?” Cloud replies, exasperated, his hand twitching to smack his friend on the shoulder. “I still have questions, Fair.”

“And I can try to answer,” he avows, his amusement over Cloud’s scowl evident in his tone. “I don’t think the planet was dying to spell things out for me before I got booted.”

The situation isn’t humorous— not even a little. It’s all too fresh to prod, the wounds glaring with open maws. Still, Cloud mirrors the grin on his friend's face, helpless against the tug of his lips. Zack can only smile wider in response. 

It’s barely morning, if the amber light just making its way through the windows is enough to go by. The sun is always diluted under the plate. Everyone else in the house must still be asleep, or their footsteps are too soft to hear through the wooden floorboards. Cloud bets they’re still sleeping; it was a long night for all of them, their emotions laid bare, weary feet wandering through the sectors with dusk softening the town around them. 

This house is hardly familiar to Cloud, but it’s cozy enough to bring his guard down. Or maybe it’s just Zack, clearly comfortable when for the longest time he’s been tense just about everywhere else. Even if he remembers so little from their time on the road— and adamant as Zack would be to smile through it— he couldn’t hide his taut form with Cloud propped up against him. 

“Okay,” Cloud concedes. He can’t bring himself to tear his eyes away from Zack’s first. “What about your…?”

It’s easier to lightly kick beneath the blanket draped over them, indicating his legs, than it is to say the words. Zack doesn’t even twitch in response to the prodding, but his expression immediately sours. 

“Right,” he yields, finally averting his gaze and settling it somewhere between them. “I guess that’s fair.”

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” 

“No, it’s okay,” he tries to soothe, dejected as his voice sounds. “Elmyra called someone in to see me today. Said he’s a real doctor, best there is under the plate. Trained up top and everything. Guess he’s gonna figure it all out for me.”

Cloud feels Zack tense against him just talking about it. The film in his own mind is reeling back, frayed edges catching and hissing as the images blur. A lot of it is lost, floating just out of reach and melting through his fingers anytime he grasps the tip of them. The bits he does remember he’d probably be better off forgetting— the gloved hands invading his space, wrists rubbed raw as he tugged against leather bounds, his own body filled to the brim with something nameless and sickening, invading his every vein and orifice. 

He tries to stop searching. Cloud knows what happens when he digs too far, hitting a bed of rock until the sound of metal against stone renders him powerless. It takes a moment to vault himself back to the present, but the thump of a heart so close to his own is grounding. 

They’re alive. Both of them, somehow. That should be enough. 

“You gonna be okay?” Cloud asks, already knowing the answer— knowing Zack will lie about it, anyways. 

“Hey, we’ve lived through worse, huh?” The diversion is expected and it sits heavily between them. “Not like I’ve got much of a choice.”

That kind of desolation doesn’t suit Zack Fair. It sounds ungainly falling from his lips. Cloud wonders when things changed so much for him— if the final straw was Angeal or Sephiroth or the labs or some instance he can’t remember on the road. Whatever took his optimism, Cloud would like to squash it beneath his boot.

“Still,” he argues, not willing to let it drop. “You’re allowed to be upset. I know I would be.” He fiddles again with Zack’s legs under the blanket, kneeing gently and frowning at Zack’s resounding wince. “Do they hurt?”

“Not really,” he answers, shaking his head and then crossing his arms behind it. The pose is so reminiscent of the Zack he remembers that Cloud almost forgets to keep listening. “More like pins-and-needles pain, I guess. And it’s just weird— I can feel the pressure, but it’s all dull. Like when your legs fall asleep after sitting on ‘em funny.” 

“Your spine, then?” Cloud adjusts too, propping himself up on his elbows. 

“I think so. The doctor will tell us more today.” He nods, smiling something forced and pained. “Hey, Cloud—”

“I’ll stay with you,” he interrupts, sensing his friend’s hesitation. “If you want me to.” 

Zack loosens, his tension sagging almost imperceptibly. His eyes are underbelly soft and fond when he finally meets Cloud’s gaze, and it’s almost painful to look at. 

“Yeah,” he calls back, voice quiet. “If you don’t mind.” 

Cloud doesn’t know where the urge comes from, but he’s leaning forward to rest his head against Zack’s chest before he can stop himself. It shouldn’t be embarrassing, nestled up as they were last night, but his cheeks still burn with color. 

Zack doesn’t seem to mind. If anything, he seems relieved, unwinding even further as his hands find their way around Cloud’s shoulders, tugging him impossibly closer. It feels right to be held like this, in a way that little else does, slackening some deeply rooted knot in his chest with each syncopated inhale between them.

The moment of bliss doesn’t last long. Aerith’s mother comes downstairs eventually, her footsteps purposefully loud down both flights of creaking steps. 

The two of them startle and sit up at the sound of her coming, like school children caught unawares doing something they aren’t supposed to. There’s still hardly any distance between them, but Cloud supposes it’s better than cuddling on a near stranger’s couch. 

Well, a stranger to him. It’s even worse that this is Zack’s old girlfriend’s house. Or his current girlfriend? He should probably ask before snuggling up to the guy, though he isn’t sure he wants to explain the nature of things between them to Aerith. Not when he doesn’t have a clue about it himself. 

The rest of the morning is awkward. Elmyra is standoffish, scoffing and scowling even as she cooks them breakfast and adjusts the blanket tossed over their laps to fully cover Zack’s side. Cloud knows her type, and it rings a little too close to home for comfort.

She’s nothing at all like Aerith, but Cloud wonders if her daughter is so carefree because she has someone fierce looking out for her. Gaia knows most would wilt under her mother’s stare; how Zack managed it all of those years ago is up in the air. 

Aerith and Tifa meander down soon after, blearily rubbing the sleep out of their eyes and bumping shoulders. Cloud remembers the scent of wine on their tongues the night before and can guess the headache that followed this morning. 

Breakfast is a silent affair, all five of them nestled together in the living room so they don’t have to jostle Zack all the way to the dining table. Normally, Cloud would guess that Aerith and Zack like to fill the silence. Today is different though. 

For Zack, the doctor arriving later today hangs heavy as an anvil above his head. For Aerith, periodically sniffling beside them and pinching between her brows, he can assume the pounding in her head is loud enough entirely on its own. 

Tifa looks sated on the other end of the sofa. Her own hangover must be slight; she looks more sleep drunk than pained. It’s still off between them, even more so than the lingering awkwardness in the room at large. They both catch the other looking too often to deem it coincidental, their gazes cutting back across the room each time they meet. 

It’s all too surreal. Cloud can hardly wrap his head around the company he’s in; two presumed dead friends passing jam and butter around the sofa. 

“When is the doctor coming by?” Aerith asks, her voice almost too quiet to catch. 

“Not sure,” Elmyra answers. “Things are busy under the plate. I doubt his schedule is set in stone.”

She’s right in the end. They wait hours before he comes knocking, dawdling the time away in stunted conversation and thinly veiled patience. 

After Zack has to use the restroom, insistent that Elmyra should help him instead of Cloud, things are tense between them. The blonde thinks he gets it— understands the embarrassment in needing a helping hand for something like that at all. Still, he wishes he could help. If he could erase the shame entirely, he would at any cost. 

When the doctor finally makes it, it’s a needed reprieve. Elmyra is the one to rush to the door, glancing at Zack before turning the knob like she might be able to gleam his hesitance in the smile he throws her way. 

By all measures, the man seems normal enough. His dark hair is cropped short, the remnants lying flat save for an unruly wave across his forehead. There are clipboards cradled in one of his arms and a handled container at his side in the other, presumably full of steel and rubber and needles for prodding. Nothing seems truly off about him or his wide smile or his eyes that crinkle at the corners. 

Nothing, if it weren’t for the white coat reaching just past his knees. Nothing, if it weren’t for the circular framed glasses perched on his nose. 

His eyes may be kind, but it’s easy for Cloud’s mind to warp it into something sinister. His visage almost seems to be glitching, the outwardly kind doctor fading out before he can even open his mouth. 

Then there’s a hand on his knee in a firm grip, and he can only cut his gaze back to Zack, steely beside him with his eyes locked on the man at the door. 

Right. It isn’t Cloud’s place to worry. Not when the man isn’t here for him. Somehow, that thought only winds him up further as he stares at the tense line of his SOLDIER friend’s jaw. 

Zack doesn’t need his fear, though. He didn’t ask for Cloud to be here so he could comfort him in his own distress. No, he needs something immovable to anchor him. Someone that felt the gleaming cold steel alongside him and made it out still breathing. 

So Cloud forces a calm that he doesn’t feel, counting the inhales and exhales sounding beside him and returning the grip on his knee with a grounding fervor. Zack lets out a heavy breath at the contact, relieved and sated for the time being as the doctor follows Elmyra into the house. 

“You must be Zack,” he starts, his eyes still crinkled at the corners as he offers a closed mouth smile. “I’m Ellis. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

He doesn’t introduce himself with a title and there’s something disarming about that. Then again, the getup speaks for itself; there’s little need for prefixes with the stethoscope looped around his neck. 

“Thanks for coming in,” Zack answers beside him, his voice tight. His unnerving mako stare hasn’t left Ellis since the door opened, but the man seems unphased. “I guess Elmyra gave you the rundown?”

Tifa and Aerith made themselves scarce somewhere else in town, running some errand, so it’s just the four of them present. Thankfully Elmyra doesn’t intend to leave them here alone, standing steady as an oak between the doctor and the sofa like she plans to take the brunt of whatever comes to pass. It’s a small comfort but it does the trick. 

“Just the basics,” she answers, her gaze fond and genuine as she ushers Ellis towards the living room. It’s a slow affair, with both of them stepping at an even pace as if Zack were a cornered animal set to bite if they aren’t careful. 

Elmyra pulls two kitchen chairs to the living room, facing the sofa. They both seem comfortable as they get settled, with Elmyra crossing her legs and adjusting the hem of her skirt, and Ellis setting down his things and turning to face Zack. 

The same can’t be said for the ex-SOLDIER, taut as a pulled quilt and shaking with more fervor the closer Ellis gets to the two of them. It’s even worse as he addresses Cloud with a cordial nod, the hand still gripped firmly on his knee squeezing impossibly tighter in response. 

Ellis is probably making assumptions about it. His eyes only cut down briefly, and his expression doesn’t waver, but Cloud knows what it must look like. He isn’t concerned about diffusing the thought; the man can assume whatever he wants. If it’s grounding for Zack to have some sort of contact, little else matters right now. 

And if it’s grounding for Cloud in turn, there’s definitely no need to mention it. 

“Can you tell me a little bit about what’s going on?” Ellis starts, handing Zack the reins. 

Zack doesn’t seem keen to put it into words as he gestures to his legs, folded over the sofa and bending awkwardly at the ankles where his feet are planted. It isn’t glaringly obvious that he can’t move them unless one knows what to look for. Ellis clearly knows. 

“Elmyra mentioned a potential spinal injury,” he continues, glancing between Zack’s legs and his face. “What’s your range of motion? Any at all in your legs?” 

Zack’s face is tight like the man is making an accusation instead of asking a question. His shame is almost a tangible thing in the room, hanging and rotting between them. 

“I can move them a little,” he answers, trying to demonstrate and grimacing in pain as his foot slides mere centimeters across the floor. “It was better after a hot shower— loosened something up, I guess.” 

Ellis nods, holding his hand up to halt Zack in his movement with an empathetic, pinched look. 

“That’s good news, then. Can I take a look?” 

Cloud knew it was coming. There’s little a doctor can do without actually seeing the issue, or their ensuing poking and prodding to get to the heart of it. Still, aware as he was that this is inevitable, Zack’s breath hitches beside him quietly. 

“No problem,” he answers, though the waver in his voice gives him away. “Should I just…?”

Ellis shakes his head and stands, his movements almost birdlike as he approaches Zack. He brings his case with him, rifling through it for a moment and pulling out a triangular rubber hammer. 

He does things efficiently and without fanfare. The rubber hammer is tapped against the base of his knees, and the answering jerks seem promising, even as Zack winces and tenses at the contact. With Ellis so close, their hands finally part from their place on Cloud’s leg, and he misses the contact fervently as the doctor speeds through his reflex tests. 

The ensuing chaos is too swift to even register. 

Ellis was only trying to ask a question. He just needed Zack to lie down for the rest of his exam so he could look at his back, where the bulk of his injuries are. He wasn’t trying to be threatening— no, there was no threat at all in his gentle hand on Cloud’s shoulder to usher him somewhere else. Cloud was just in the way. 

Zack must’ve seen something else entirely. His mind must’ve played the same tricks that Cloud’s did when the man first walked in.

That is, if the abrupt punch to Ellis’ nose is enough to go by. 

Ellis rears back at the contact, grunting and coughing on the ensuing blood likely trickling down his throat. It’s only a split second before Zack registers what he’s done, snapping out of his haze and pulling his fist towards his chest like it’s something infectious. 

“Shit. Shit! I’m so—” Zack startles, rambling out apologies in such an earnest and panicked voice that Cloud thinks the SOLDIER might start crying. 

Elmyra curses and rises to her feet to intercept. Her hands are gentle on Ellis’ shoulders, but her eyes are pained and firmly set on Zack.

“It’s alright,” Ellis calls back, gargled and nasally as he pinches his nose and leans his head forward to try and quell the bleeding. “It’s okay, that was my bad— my fault.”

“No, no. ” Zack is well and truly panicked now, shaking his head rapidly and fighting the urge to reach out. “I’m so sorry. I don't know why I…” 

Zack cuts himself off before he can finish the lie. He and Cloud both know why . They’re overly aware of the fact. Justifiable reason or not, a doctor has just been punched in the face for an innocent gesture. Their excuses won’t erase that. 

“I should’ve just asked,” Ellis continues, somehow still smiling through the pain and raising his non-bloody hand in surrender. “I get it, I do.” 

His voice is firm on the matter even through the gargling. For some reason, Cloud believes him. 

“What’s your name?” he asks, suddenly turning towards the blonde. The change in topic renders him silent for a moment, his eyes cutting between Zack still heaving panicked breaths beside him, and Ellis, calm as ever as he drips red onto the carpet. 

“I’m Cloud,” he mutters back. “Sorry for, uh—”

“Okay, Cloud,” Ellis cuts in. “Would you mind making some room for Zack to lie down? You can stay on the couch if you’d both like.”

“You aren’t leaving?” Zack asks, his surprise overriding the panic. 

“Would you like for me to leave?” Ellis asks, once again offering the reins. “Believe it or not, patients have done me far worse than just a broken nose. I think I can help you out if you let me take a look at your back. There isn’t much we can do without real imaging of your spine, but if you let me see the damage, it’ll be a good start. We can decide where to go from there.”

They’re all silent for a moment, three sets of eyes on Zack as they wait for the verdict. Cloud gives his shoulder a comforting squeeze, heeding Ellis’ request and sliding down to the edge of the sofa to give his friend the space to make his choice. 

Maybe it was a bad move. Zack looks alarmed as they part, following Cloud with his eyes as if breaking the contact alone could cause his friend to wisp into smoke. There’s little Cloud can say to alleviate the concern, but the soft smile of encouragement he sends to Zack unwinds a little of the tension in both of them. 

“Okay,” he answers, finally looking back to Ellis. “Gotta warn you, though— it’s pretty gnarly back there.”

Zack ends his agreement with a tight laugh, his attempts to make light falling flat given the subject at hand. The warning might’ve been directed at Ellis, but Cloud has a feeling he was really warning him , conscious of the memories that may resurge if he catches sight of the vast surface of scar tissue on Zack’s back. 

Elmyra slipped away at some point in the chaos, grabbing a wet rag for Ellis to wipe the blood off of his face. He thanks her softly, turning from the group to clean himself up. It’s only when Cloud hears an audible crack and a groan that he looks up in alarm. 

“Sorry,” Ellis grumbles, pained but still grinning as he swivels to face them with the rag pressed tightly to his nose. He makes quick work of it, wiping the rest of the blood from his face and hands. “Wanted to reset it fast— not my first rodeo, don’t worry.” 

Zack can only thank Gaia that the bleeding has stopped, swollen and mottled as the man’s nose looks after he set it. The guilt over punching him is warring with the downright awe he’s feeling, watching Ellis take it all like a champ. It’s nearly enough to separate the doctor from the uptight whitecoats in the Shinra labs. 

“ Dude,”  Zack exclaims, his mouth ajar. “Did you really go to some stuffy school above the plate? You didn’t like, learn this shit in a Sector Five gang?”

Ellis cackles at that, donning some gloves from his case and moving towards the sofa to help Zack onto his stomach. The whole room feels loosened after that stunt, the awkwardness melting as fast as butter between them. 

“I did grow up in Sector Five,” he answers, aligning Zack’s legs into a more comfortable position. He catalogs every movement before making direct contact, voice soft and mollifying. “I knew when I was studying above the plate that I didn’t want to work there. Alluring as their fancy tech is, they’ve got plenty of doctors to fight for rank.”

“So,” Zack continues, settling some internal debate. “I’m not the first patient to punch you?” 

The tinkering laugh that follows is enough to distract Zack from the hands on his spine, gauging the scars on his lower back. Cloud looks away as his shirt is lifted, respecting the earlier warning. If Zack wants to show him, it’ll be on better terms. 

“Not the first, no. Probably not the last, either,” he answers candidly. If he’s put off by the question, he doesn’t let it show. “I’ve worked with a lot of ex-SOLDIERS, infantrymen, common folk spurned by Shinra… I get it. The ones we can’t see are the real gnarly scars.”

“They’ve messed us up pretty bad, huh?” 

Ellis huffs, pressing particularly hard against a bit of scar tissue and then soothing it with his thumb in apology when Zack winces. 

“Nothing irreparable. Not in your case,” he answers, his grin uncontrived. “ SOLDIER enhancements can make things difficult. Sometimes you guys heal up before you should. In your case, though— I think your enhancements will aid in your recovery.”

“Really? You think I’ll be able to…” 

“I think it’s a real possibility,” Ellis continues. “From what I can see, you’ve definitely nicked your spine in quite a few spots. Possibly the cord itself. But your level of mobility is already promising— reflexes intact, sensation in the legs, even if it’s dull, and heat easing your symptoms. Those are all good signs.” 

“So what can I do?” Zack asks, his hands twitching where they’re pillowed under his head. “Physical therapy and stuff?”

“That’ll be a good start.” Ellis hesitates then, huffing a sigh and easing his hands off of the SOLDIER. “I’d really like to get some scans of your spine. There are other options up-top that I can’t manage down here— injections, higher quality mobility aids than the ones I’ve got, even surgical repair might be possible. That is, if you—”

“No . No injections, no surgery,” Zack cuts in quietly, his voice perturbed. “There’s gotta be other options.”

Ellis nods in understanding, pulling down the hem of Zack’s shirt and helping him sit back up to face them. He doesn’t look aggrieved at the refusal; he doesn’t even look surprised. 

“We can explore other options,” he says, pulling his gloves off with a snap. “Topical treatments can help with the inflammation, but they can’t do much for the nerve damage. As for the pain— that pins-and-needles feeling— there are lots of medications we can try. I’d like to stop by once a week and work on some exercises with you. Until then, I can leave you guys with some to try on your own.”

“Thank you, Ellis,” Zack professes, dripping with sincerity. His hands are kneading the fabric of his pants in a nervous tic, and Cloud wants to cover them with his own to stop the fidgeting. “You mentioned mobility aids…?”

“I’ve brought a chair with me today,” he answers, glancing towards the door. He must’ve known it would be upsetting to bring it in right off the bat. “I imagine it’s been difficult, not being able to move on your own. I think you’ll get the hang of it pretty quick.” 

Ellis gives them the rundown on the wheelchair before heading out, helping Zack get settled and showing him the best ways to transfer himself in and out of the chair. Their goodbyes are fond and full of thanks— rather, full of due apologies for the broken nose and vows that it’ll never happen again.

He’s sullen after the doctor takes his leave, even with the promise of a scheduled return and a bag of pills and topical medication to try before next week. Zack does get the hang of the chair in record time, clearly relieved to have the freedom to wander the house. 

Cloud knows he’s trailing listlessly behind the SOLDIER, stifled and watchful as the three of them work quietly around each other in the kitchen. Gloomy as the mood may be, none of them see fit to disturb it, focusing instead on chopping vegetables and getting dinner ready in time for Aerith and Tifa’s return. 

When they do make it back, it’s with a bustle of energy entirely unlike the sad entourage in the kitchen. Aerith’s disposition is back to normal, her fluttering steps and sly smile lightening the space around her as she drags Tifa by the arm to the dining table. 

Both women eye the new wheelchair with varying shines in their eyes— Aerith’s, ever mirthful, and Tifa’s as indecipherable as ever. Cloud thinks he sees pride there. 

“How was the doctor?” Aerith asks, greeting Zack with a kiss to the cheek that flips Cloud’s stomach uncomfortably. He really needs to ask if there’s still anything between them. 

“He was, uh—” Zack flounders, shocked by the words before they even leave his mouth. “Really great, actually. He’ll be back next week.” 

Aerith smiles wide at that, her stare glistening with surprise and satisfaction in even measure. She doesn’t ask for specifics, but Cloud can tell that their conversation won’t end there. The flower peddler will badger him plenty in private. 

The silence from before isn’t missed as they eat together, trailblazed by Aerith as she fills it with stories from their afternoon at the bar, all leaving Tifa red in her cheeks and sputtering. It’s sweet to watch them interact, teasing and light with real undercurrents of care each time they lock eyes. 

Tifa parts from the rest of them after dinner with promises to visit tomorrow, insisting that she can’t stay the night again. She doesn’t seem eager to leave, lingering with Aerith far longer than necessary, filling the corridor with words too quiet to catch. 

Still, she has a life outside of these last few days of chaos— friends closer to family waiting in Sector Seven for her. Cloud knows she can’t drop it all to stay with them, anxious as he is to really sit down and talk with her. 

He thinks she feels the same. When her eyes catch his just past the door, they don’t avert so quickly like before. Cloud tries to hold it steady, offering his own small smile and nod in the hope that she’ll glean his peace offering. Tifa sends the same back and clicks the door behind her like a pinky sealed promise.  

Once the sun melts down past the plate, sending its farewells in soft lines of amber, Zack invites Cloud out to the garden. The yard is a living, breathing thing that the blonde finally has the time to take in with full fervor. 

The tall grass walks with them as they make their way down the winding path, the breeze guiding them gently across the wooden planks. Zack’s chair makes a soft thud over each crack, rhythmic and soothing in the otherwise quiet evening. 

Cloud has to give a helping hand over the particularly large bumps, using the handles to ease the wheels up and over to even ground. Once they’re past the stairs— where the blonde lifts the chair and the SOLDIER himself almost effortlessly, despite Zack’s chagrin— the man is mostly able to steer on his own.

They settle by the trickling stream, gentle in its current and ice cold as Cloud dips a finger in just for the sake of doing so. Zack laughs an obtrusive sound at his quick retreat, fumbling himself out of his chair to sit in the grass. 

It’s easy to perch himself on the ground next to Zack, mindful of the blossoms growing nearby, suckling at the stream beneath the soil. It’s a comfortable and familiar thing, easing into each other’s space. 

Cloud glances at his friend, smiling softly and fiddling with a blade of grass, and his mind boils over with the questions he wants to ask. The SOLDIER did promise him answers, sparse as they may be with his gaps of knowledge about the last few days. Zack’s posture reads as easy and open, and Cloud doesn’t want to shutter his expression by asking something difficult. 

“What’s on your mind, Spike?” Zack breaks the ice, likely sensing his hesitation. 

“What was it like?” Cloud blurts it out before he can think better of it, wondering if he’s allowed to ask or if it's still a bruise he shouldn’t poke. Something tells him Zack won’t mind, though. 

“Dying?” Zack asks, finishing his thought. 

“Yeah. I mean, whatever you remember about it.”

“It’s hard to say, really.” Zack starts, his soft gaze meeting Cloud’s. “It’s a lot brighter than you’d think. Time feels all messed up and you’re getting pulled in a million different directions and, if I had to describe it— everything is always singing.” 

“Singing?”

“Yeah, it’s like—” Zack pauses, gesturing around them wildly in an attempt to convey his thoughts. “Everything has a voice, all of the plants and animals and shit, and it’s hard to make out what anything is saying when they’re talking all at once.”

“That doesn’t sound peaceful.”

“I don’t know. I think it would’ve been, if I’d been ready to go.” Zack confesses, the weight of it sitting heavily between them. 

“You seemed… pretty content, at the end there. At least I thought so.” 

Cloud doesn’t like to think about it. It all feels real again when he does, the emotions rearing up in his throat as he pictures his dying smile— the slick blood against his cheek, the trail that seeped out of Zack and down the hill with the stream of rain.

“I was at first.” Zack smiles, all mischief bared in the whites of his teeth. “ But, there’s this blondie I know that was wandering around the sectors all mopey and lost. Thought I might do something about it.”

The images halt all at once, the shock rendering Cloud still. 

“You came back for me?”

Zack laughs. Like it’s something funny. Like he should’ve just known. 

“Who else, Spike? Turns out the planet gets really annoyed if you nag her hard enough.” Zack’s laugh peters out, his expression turning to one of mock seriousness. “I think I’m fucked when I go for real next time. You think she’ll hold a grudge?”

“ Zack! What the hell? You can’t just say something like that,” Cloud sputters, exasperated and furious and endeared all at once. “What do you mean you came back for me?"  

Finally noticing his frustration, Zack has the gall to look sheepish. 

“I mean, I didn’t think it would really work,” he argues, rubbing the nape of his neck. “I couldn’t really think at all. Nothing coherent, at least. I was just pissed, Spike. Pissed at Shinra, pissed at the planet, pissed at myself. And you were…” 

“I was what?” Cloud asks, his voice wavering.

“I just couldn’t leave you like that,” he answers. “Not after the hell we went through to get out. You just seemed so sick, and there isn’t anyone else that knows wh—”

Cloud cuts him off, letting his head fall limp until it lands on Zack’s shoulder. They both sigh at the contact, missing it even as they sit a few inches apart, but too afraid to grasp without reason. 

“Idiot,” he mutters into the fabric of Zack’s shirt, impossibly fond under the layers of incense. 

Zack just chuckles, raising his arm to card a hand through blonde hair. The calluses on the pads of his fingers as they rake across his scalp feel a lot like coming home. 

“You know,” Cloud continues, finding bravery where he’s now nestled against Zack’s chest. “It's kinda like that for me too, sometimes. How death was for you.”

“Really?” Zack jolts. “Like your— episodes? The mako sickness?” 

“Yeah,” he confirms, scooting closer until their thighs are pressed together. He knows that only he can feel the sensation, but still, Zack relaxes further at the sight. “I mean, maybe not the ‘everything singing’ part. But time is all warped, and it’s hard to separate reality from the other stuff. It’s hard even now. Sometimes, when I glance over at you and—”

“I’m here,” he cuts in, accentuating it with a gentle tug to Cloud’s hair. “The real deal. Promise. Think the planet could spit out a fake as cool as this one?”

Cloud huffs a breath of a laugh, shaking his head. He really does doubt that the planet could replicate Zack Fair. 

“How are you feeling now?” Zack asks, looping his arm around Cloud’s shoulders. 

“Better,” he replies, and he means it. “For the most part, at least. When I’m not— you know, like before. It’s weird though. I feel stronger than I did. Like my body isn’t even mine.” 

Zack tenses at that, his grip tightening on Cloud’s arm. He probably knows the feeling well. 

“We’re gonna figure it out,” he calls back. “I came back for a reason, right? We’re both gonna be just fine.” 

Cloud hums his agreement, the sound competing with the steady thump of a heart. Sitting here, watching petals race down a trickling stream and pressing further into Zack’s space, he almost believes it. 

Chapter Text

“You’re not so subtle either, you know.” 

Zack’s grin is familiar and smug. Aerith has long grown used to that honed blade of a smile, and even feels quite fond of it most of the time. Right now, it makes her want to sputter and thump the ex-SOLDIER over the head.

She didn’t really mean her comment like that. Zack and Cloud have just been inseparable this week, stuck to each other’s sides as if a mere moment apart might send the other skybound in tendrils towards the lifestream. They’re constantly shoulder-to-hip, given Zack’s current stature in his chair, always seen working and wandering in tandem.

Cloud ran off to shower, and Aerith thought it was an innocent jibe to suggest that Zack should follow him to the washroom. He turned it on her before she could even accompany her own tease with a wink. 

“We are not that bad,” she defends, eyes widening as the admittance of guilt slips past her lips. “I don’t want to hear it from you, loverboy.” 

Zack laughs, a full and hearty sound that’s becoming far more common as they settle into this odd new routine. It melts the annoyance in an instant, softening her heart to putty to hear the cadence she grieved just days before. 

“So you do know who I’m talking about,” he probes, waggling his eyebrows and moving to the edge of his seat. “I thought I’d have to pry it out of you.”

“I’m afraid I don’t, actually.” Aerith carries on with her feigned bashfulness, fiddling with the beds of her nails and averting her gaze to the ceiling. “I’ve been too busy mourning. Can you believe it? I have to watch my first love shamelessly flirt with some blonde, in my own house, even. Heartbreaking, truly.”

It shouldn’t be a laughing matter. To any other couple, pulled apart by corrupt government factions and death itself, and reunited by equally unfathomable means, this would be a tragic time. They ought to be all over each other, weeping into each other’s chests and declaring the things they never got a chance to voice before. 

Instead, they laugh. And swat at each other, refusing to drop the bit as the days have passed, always hunting for opportune moments to tease and poke at the obvious pining from both parties.

At least Zack has given up on denying it now. He tried at first, claiming through vibrant rosy cheeks that he only sees Cloud as a friend. While he hasn’t outright confirmed his feelings to Aerith— just as she hasn’t for a certain bartender— he’s yielded to this game of back and forth banter.

“And to think, I have to watch my first love abandon me with no explanation, day after day,” Zack continues, wheeling around to the kitchen counter to fetch two mugs for tea. “The other woman must be something special.”

“Maybe she is,” Aerith replies, pulling the kettle off of the stove as it whistles a final tune. They both peer over the counter, watching the tea leaves dance as she fills their mugs, letting the warm steam coat and soothe their throats. “Or maybe I’m trying to fill the void in my heart, watching my love move on without me. Maybe I’m the other woman.” 

Zack squeezes the ticklish side of her waist in reprimand, not relenting until she’s reduced to laughter of her own. 

“Alright, alright,” she concedes, moving out of his reach with both mugs in tow. “I don’t want to sweep up shattered ceramic today. My mom and I made these, you know.”

They both move to settle on the couch, where Zack transfers himself out of his chair in a reckless display of upper body strength and accepts the tea that Aerith offers. It’s been nearly a week now since the doctor’s visit, and the flower peddler can tell he’s antsy for his next checkup. 

The medication has helped, if only in easing his pain. Not that he’s ever vocal about the matter unprompted; Aerith can simply tell, watching the relaxed slump of his shoulders and the mirth slowly returning to his once lifeless eyes. He insists on remaining private about it now that he’s got his wheelchair, loathe to ask for help when he can manage most things just fine on his own. 

“Did you make this one?” He holds up the mug in his hand, investigating it from every angle. Aerith can tell as she peers over to see his lips fighting a quirk that the question is a thinly veiled insult. “It’s really, uh—”

“Don’t.”

“I was going to say original!” Zack just manages to dodge the loose fist thrown his way, raising his hand with the mug to protect the wobbly, messily painted clay that Aerith knows is barely salvageable to drink from. 

“Pottery is hard, you know,” she defends, hiding her own smile behind her mother’s far prettier, finer crafted mug. “It takes a delicate hand— I doubt you could do any better.”

They banter back and forth from there, savoring the warmth of their drinks and their shoulders pressed firmly together. It’s easy between them in a way things never could be before, as if they never had to adjust at all to their altered relationship.

“Are you heading back out today?” Zack asks, his teasing tone almost entirely withered. 

“I think so,” she answers, popping up from her spot between the cushions and taking both of their mugs to the sink. “Tifa promised she’d let me behind the bar today. I’ve been bugging her about teaching me to make that Cosmo Canyon drink.”

“Switching career paths? And here I thought you loved scamming locals out of their gil for flowers.”

“It isn’t scamming if they’re getting exactly what they paid for. Who asked me to start charging them in the first place?” Aerith defends, turning her head so Zack can hear her over the running faucet. “And I’m not giving it up. I just think if I flounder hard enough while I’m pouring shots, Tifa will have no choice but to show me the reins, all up close and personal.”

Zack barks a laugh at that, and it bounces in an echo up the stairwell. “You are scamming, then. Scamming pretty bartenders.” 

Aerith hmphs at that, but doesn’t deny the claim. She knows she’s pretty transparent with her feelings; she’s always worn her beating heart on her sleeve. It’d do no good to reel the topic back to their festering crushes. 

Cloud stumbles out of the washroom eventually, water droplets lingering on his neck and warm steam pillowing behind him, and Aerith doesn’t have to worry about diverting Zack’s attention at all. 

The lifestream is a quiet and melodic whir on her way to Sector Seven. Like a beet with its bulb at the center of their planet, its roots run close to the surface, extending in webs underneath the dirt that almost line up with the well-worn paths she follows. Maybe it likes to feel the pattering of footsteps above, not entirely unlike the thump of a heart. 

Aerith is glad to hear the planet at peace after the week she’s had. Maybe for her own sake, as she’d rather not repeat the headache of Gaia’s sickness in evicting the ex- SOLDIER, but it’s a mutually beneficial thing in the end. If her mother ever taught her how to pray, she would’ve liked to offer her thanks and apologies at a time like this. 

The planet probably hears them anyway. 

She runs into Marlene first, wandering outside the bar like the first time she met the girl. Aerith can only assume that Barret is nearby as well, so she quickens her stride to approach. 

“Aerith!” Marlene calls, voice softly struggling around the end of her name, almost in an ‘ s’ sound. “Tifa’s been waiting for you.” 

“Oh?” Aerith questions, crouching down to eye level once she reaches the girl. “Has she?” 

Marlene lets out a put-upon sigh of exasperation that she surely picked up from the adults around her. “Yes. She just watches the door all day.” 

Aerith tries to fight her smile in response, but it’s useless in the end. Barret saves her the trouble of explaining her amusement and sidles up behind his daughter, scooping her in his arm before she notices the lack of sun hitting her neck. Her earlier exasperation is swallowed by a fit of giggles and kicked feet, clearly pleased even as she squirms. 

“Hi, Barret,” Aerith greets, sprouting up and wiping the soot from her dress.

He’s softened up with her in the few times she’s stopped by the bar. Not that he hadn’t been soft at first— he couldn’t hide the warmth that shrouded him, not from Aerith. Still, he’s open about it now. Honest and genuine. 

“Aerith,” he greets back, following her up the steps of the bar entrance. 

Tifa is mopey when they go inside. She looks spaced out, her chin propped up in her hand as she leans listlessly over the counter, an empty gaze fixed on the double doors. The bar is quiet save for a few patrons tucked away at a corner table, nursing hard drinks and minding their own. 

She brightens as they enter, snapping out of her daze and straightening herself up to greet them. 

“Flower for your thoughts?” Aerith starts, alluding to the first time they met even as she strides in empty handed. “You waiting for someone, or am I free to bug you today?”

Tifa smiles a sheepish sliver of a crescent moon, beckoning Aerith towards her with a nod over her shoulder. 

“I believe I promised you a lesson,” Tifa says, sliding open the latch on the half-door to get behind the bar and waving the flower peddler over. Aerith beams brightly, wasting no time in sauntering over with a grin. 

She takes in the rows of honey colored liquor lining the back wall, and the spigots, fresh glasses, and coolers full of ice below the wooden counter. There isn’t much hidden here— not quite like the bars one might see in Wall Market. Aerith would guess that the options for mixed drinks are limited, though what they do serve, they’ve mastered the art of. 

“I thought you’d back out on me today,” the flower peddler chides, running a hand across the bar and wincing as a piece of splintering wood pricks her finger. “It’s never too late, you know. I’ve been told I’m a bit of a klutz.”

“Are you?” Tifa questions, sounding genuinely curious over such an inane statement. “I wouldn’t say so.”

Aerith can only laugh at her tendency to take things so literally; it’s endearing, more so than it ought to be, and an awfully fun prospect for a woman who likes to dance around a topic with no clarity in her tone. It’s almost like she was made to tease the bartender. 

“Let’s find out, then.” 

Aerith was serious about being a klutz. Tifa realizes the truth of it nearly ten minutes in, holding a hand out to inch the glass she’s pouring a shot into closer to the center of the counter. 

Nothing has shattered or spilled quite yet, but Tifa thinks they only have her martial sharp reflexes to thank for that. If Aerith were left to her own devices, she bets they’d have to restock the cabinets after their losses. 

“Is this the right amount?” Aerith asks, holding her glass up to Tifa’s face, far closer than necessary. “I think I should add more.”

Tifa stills her movement with a hand over the flower peddler’s fingers, halting her from pouring any more of their rather pricey vermouth. 

“I think that’s plenty.”

Or maybe she’s not clumsy at all, if the sly grin she sends Tifa’s way as their pinkies graze is enough evidence to go by. 

They work through the steps for a couple of drinks— a dry martini to start, for Aerith herself to nurse as they work, and a whiskey sour with a double-oaked bourbon that Tifa favors. The garnishes are Aerith’s favorite part, and she gets creative with it, bending cocktail skewers into intricate shapes that look fancy but are hard to pierce the olives with. 

“I should bring you more flowers from my garden,” Aerith comments as she works, her brow furrowed as a wooden skewer snaps between her fingers. Tifa blushes at the sudden thought, her mind flitting back to the first yellow lily she was gifted, pressed between the pages of a thick book in her apartment. “Little ones, for garnishing. I could bring fresh herbs, too— mint, rosemary… What else do you put in your drinks?”

Tifa hums in response, only registering half of the question. Her eyes instead follow Aerith’s lean fingers, bending and snapping another stick she was attempting to twist. 

The flower peddler groans, tossing the shards aside and looking back up to the bartender in question. 

“Tifa?” she continues, looking far too sly as she notes the clear distraction. Tifa snaps her gaze up to meet Aerith’s. “What kind of herbs could you use? For cocktails?”

“Um,” Tifa starts, bashful over her own inattention. “Rosemary would be nice. Lemongrass or sage, if you have them… Dill is good in a bloody mary.”

“Noted.”

It’s peaceful in the afternoon, with crackly music drifting from the jukebox, not nearly loud enough to be obtrusive, and the soft thump of the dart board as Barret hoists Marlene onto his shoulder and shows her the ropes. No one new has arrived since Aerith waltzed in, and the patrons from before have all filtered out, leaving gratuities beneath their glasses to collect condensation. 

Tifa should’ve remembered that things are never quiet for long. It’s not until they’ve finally made it to the Cosmo Canyon cocktail, shoulders brushing as Aerith watches her grind in the salt, that the door swings back open with newcomers. 

Shit.

Jessie is clearly about to announce herself, with Biggs and Wedge in tow and a smug air around her, when she spots the two of them cozying up at the counter. Her carefree air is swallowed up in an instant. 

“Hey, Tifs,” she calls out, sauntering up to her usual barstool with a slimy grin and propping her elbows on the counter with her chin in her hands. “That drink for me?” 

Aerith looks slightly on guard, turning the glass in question between her fingers and eyeing the newcomers with clear curiosity. Jessie doesn’t even glance in the flower peddler’s direction, eyeing Tifa with a weighted stare that she knows is a precursor for trouble. 

“No, not this one,” Tifa answers, grinding one last pinch of salt into the mix and sliding the glass further into Aerith’s palms. “If you’d like a drink, you can order one, like every other paying customer in this bar.”

Jessie looks around, pestilent and sizing up each empty table, before leveling Tifa with an icy smile. This is the girl, huh? The flower girl that’s got you smitten? Tifa can glean her thoughts with ease. 

“Jessie, Biggs, Wedge— this is my friend Aerith. Aerith, this is uh— everybody, I guess.”

Biggs and Wedge offer polite and shy greetings respectively, which Aerith returns as they take their seats beside the actress. 

It isn’t that Tifa has been dreading this meeting out of malice. She loves Jessie, she really does, but she knew undoubtedly that it would be a wearisome encounter. In fact, she honestly thinks that the two women would get along quite well given the chance to sit down and talk. That might be what scares her the most in all of this. 

She shudders imagining a combined assault— the two women scheming as a team. 

“Nice to meet you, Aerith,” Jessie greets, though her tone sounds more like she’s issuing a challenge. “How long have you been working here?”

Aerith’s eyes widen only slightly before she slips them shut, mirroring a faux smile of her own as if the curl of their lips are swords slowly unsheathed. 

“Oh, I don’t work here,” she answers, leaning a little further into Tifa’s space. “Tifa was just showing me around behind the bar.” 

The bartender hasn’t heard Aerith’s voice lose its warm cadence before now. All of the fondness from before seems to have melted out of her, and her grip on the cocktail leaves her knuckles mottled with white, threatening to shatter the thick glass. 

“Tifa never lets me behind the bar,” Jessie grumbles, conceding to the tension just a little as the air around them grows thick enough to choke on. 

“You’ve never even asked, Jessie.” 

It’s an exhausted retort, and at the sound of it, both women lay down their swords, their eyes softening and averting from the cold impasse they’ve reached. Clearly, neither of them have it in mind to stress Tifa out, which she notes and appreciates. 

“Tifa’s told me a lot about you guys,” Aerith diverts, eyeing the three of them lined up across the bar. She hesitates for a moment, fidgeting with the drink in her hand before sliding it towards the former actress. A white flag, then. Jessie takes it in stride, the last bits of tension leaving her shoulders as she takes a slow sip and grins. 

“All good things, I hope?” Biggs chimes in, watching it all with a keen eye. Tifa knows he’s picked up on more than he’s willing to share, but she doubts he’ll ever be the one to bring it up. 

“Oh, mostly,” Aerith calls back, her normal teasing tone engulfing the cold one from before. “There was something about an obscene amount of cats— that piqued my interest.”

Wedge predictably takes the bait, and the conversation lightens up from there. Aerith is good with people, so intrinsically, and it ignites a sick bubbling mix of admiration and envy in Tifa’s gut. She knows she gets by just fine with others, but to see them all fall into rhythm so simply when it took the bartender months to feel truly at ease with her friends is a little disorienting. 

Despite their earlier tiff, Jessie and Aerith eventually find a groove in the conversation and settle with open palms on common ground. It’s easy to get the former actress talking about her work, and the flower peddler seems genuinely interested in her tinkering gadgets. 

It’s a comforting sight. With how hazy and unfamiliar this week has been, to see her friends interact like usual— sly punches under the bar between Jessie and Biggs, a dopey smile on Wedge’s face as he recounts endless details about his feline friends,  Barret chiming in from across the bar with a booming voice, or the subtle prodding to rope Tifa into any given topic— is a needed reprieve. And to watch Aerith, who she’s already so fond of, fit seamlessly into their dynamic? She couldn’t ask for more. 

Tifa frequently picks at the skin of her cheek with her teeth, just to make sure she’s really here. 

They filter out of the bar eventually, leaving Barret to man the counter and eventually close up once the night crowd shuffles in and out. There’s a warm buzz lingering for both of them, quite like their evening over cheap fruity wine and scratchy gauze; not enough to inhibit any senses, but just enough to unwind the tight coils in their chests. It’s how Tifa prefers to drink these days. 

“You should come back to my place,” Aerith interjects, straying from idle chatter as they weave through the tight paths of the slums. “Zack is on edge about the doctor coming in tomorrow. I thought the four of us could hang out, try and take his mind off of it? Unless you’re busy tonight.” 

Tifa pretends to think about it. Normally, she is pretty busy after a shift, making rounds with the gang or picking up odd jobs to pass the hours. It’s a self-imposed enslavement of her time, though. She doesn’t know how to sit idle, lazing away in solitude. 

“I think I’ve got time tonight,” she answers, heart singing as Aerith beams back at her in clear excitement. “Anything in mind?” 

“Oh, there’s a lot I have in mind,” Aerith huffs, turning on her heels and grabbing the bartender’s hand to drag her along. The touch sends a flutter through her chest unbidden, given how often the flower peddler freely offers her affections. “I’m sick of watching them dance around each other. We should team up, speed things along.”

“Huh?” Tifa mutters, too lost in the feeling of slender fingers twining with her own to register the offer. Aerith laughs, but it’s an endearing sound with no trace of mockery. 

 “Zack and Cloud,” she carries on unbothered. “Believe me, I know what a pining Zack Fair looks like. It’s kind of unbearable to live with the two of them right now.”

“Oh,” Tifa sputters, cheeks red at the implication. She hadn’t realized they were—

“What, you couldn’t tell? The puppy dog eyes? Constantly clinging to each other? The way Zack won’t even let anyone breathe near—"  

“I get it, I get it,” Tifa cuts off, waving her hands in surrender. Now that it’s been brought to light, she does see what Aerith is getting at. It’s a little hard to wrap her head around, though. 

Cloud hasn’t mentioned it to her in the few times they’ve met up this week, or said anything about his inclinations in the time they grew up together. Not that he had any reason to entrust Tifa with something so vulnerable as that. And it’s not like Tifa has divulged any of her own harbored feelings to anyone else, either. 

Still, the thought of them together has her heart thumping funnily against her ribcage. It isn’t a jealous feeling. Not even slightly. It’s a comfort. 

To hear Aerith talk so openly about a type of love that her hometown would deem an incurable sickness— it’s like a gentle kiss to an old and festered wound that Tifa has long grown accustomed to the throb of. 

She tries to hide the way it all dawns on her, but nothing seems to slip past the flower peddler, and she knowingly tightens her grip as their hands sway between them. It should be a frightening thing, to be so transparent in the eyes of someone she hardly knows, but it isn’t. There isn’t anything to fear about Aerith Gainsborough. 

“You alright?” Aerith probes, albeit with a familiar gentleness that Tifa is happy to recognize. “We could find something else to do tonight, if you want. There are some new stalls up in Sector Five that I’ve been meaning to try. Or we could have a quiet night in, just the two of us.”

“No.” Tifa shakes her head, fighting the crawling heat over each offer sounding unquestionably like dates. “I’m alright. So , how do you plan on shepherding them together, oh wise matchmaker?”

It’s quiet as they slink into Aerith’s house, save the air conditioner emitting a warbled hum as it struggles to tame the arid summer heat. 

The boys are nestled on the couch, jaws slack as they breathe in sync and sleep soundly. It’s a sickeningly sweet sight; the blonde is tucked neatly into a sturdy chest, his arm thrown loosely around Zack’s waist and his legs curled up against unfeeling thighs. The ex- SOLDIER has a protective arm thrown around his shoulders, clearly on guard, and Aerith doesn’t doubt that to wake him suddenly would end in worse than a broken nose. 

So she treads carefully, hauling Tifa behind her by their laced fingers and tiptoeing into the living room. She sends the bartender a devious grin, gesturing to the two of them as if to say, see what I mean? Tifa’s resounding flush tells her the message is clear. 

“ Zack ,” she calls in a sing-song cadence, drawing the name out quietly. She’s far enough across the room to ward off any flying fists, or so she hopes. “Time to get up.”

He doesn’t flinch or spring up like the first few times Aerith caught him dozed off. Instead, he grumbles protests and tightens his hold on Cloud who seems to be blinking awake as well. 

Cloud sputters as he gains awareness, quickly averting his eyes from Aerith’s after they fleetingly meet. It’s unbearably cute to watch him try to untangle himself, pulling back only to meet the immoveable resistance of a half-asleep ex- SOLDIER. 

“Zack,” he chides, voice low and embarrassed. “Wake up, man.” 

He heeds the command, finally. It just needed to be issued from someone else.

Tifa and Aerith hardly came up with any firm plans for matchmaking. Even with the bartender’s assent, they spent the rest of their walk slipping into unrelated discussions and looping around town, taking a far longer route than necessary to the house. Not that either are complaining about their delayed arrival.

Aerith doesn’t think they’ll have to push very hard to get things moving. It’s clear that both men are aware of the tension, though why they’re choosing to skirt around it so messily is up in the air. She thinks it’d be far easier to throw things out in the open. 

“What’d you wake us up for?” Zack groans, clearly still miffed over his interrupted nap. He rubs the lingering sleep from his droopy eyes and takes in the scene in front of him. “What time is it?"

“It’s time for game night!” Aerith answers, with far more enthusiasm than the room at large. At least Tifa has her back, smiling and nodding behind her in confirmation. “And it’s too late for a nap. You won’t be able to fall asleep tonight.”

Even so groggy, Zack isn’t one to say no to Aerith. Or to fun prospective game nights, huddled up around the coffee table. So they do settle, tossing cushions to the floor around the sofa and fetching drinks from the kitchen. Aerith hunts down a deck of cards from the junk drawer before joining them with a faux smug air around her. 

“What game are we playing?” Zack asks, eyes wide and fixed on the swift shuffle of cards flitting through Aerith’s fingers. “And where’d you learn how to do that?”

“Spades,” she answers, offering no hints to his latter question. “Tifa and I are on a team.”

Zack smiles, settling in to receive his hand from the shuffling, while Cloud visibly stiffens beside him.

“What’s wrong, Spike?” The question is immediate, as if Zack has siphoned the feelings of distress straight from the blonde and into himself. It’s eerie how in tune they are to each other sometimes. 

“I’ve never, uh—” Cloud fidgets, scratching the base of his neck and avoiding the three sets of eyes on him around the table. “I never really learned any card games growing up. I don’t know the rules.”

Aerith tries to muster her most gentle smile in his direction, still carrying on in her dealing of the deck. 

“It isn’t hard, don’t worry. Just placing bets,” she soothes, hand lingering as she divests the last card in Cloud’s pile. “You’ll be on Zack’s team, so he can pick up the slack. Or you can just blame him if you guys lose.” 

Zack sputters a protest in mock offense, but quickly takes the reins in explaining the rules to Cloud. Aerith lets him, watching the blonde absorb each word with rapt attention, the two sitting close enough to warrant accusations of peeking at the other’s hand of cards. 

She’ll spare them for now. It’s all a part of her plan, anyways. 

The boys didn’t stand a chance. 

It was a massacre, honestly. While it’s traditionally a four-player game, Aerith has learned the ropes playing frequently against Elmyra in an adapted version for two. 

Zack is too obvious when he’s bluffing, his anticipation or trepidation for whatever card he’s about to lay down written blatantly in the set of his jaw and the curve of his brow. Aerith could read each line on his face like a book, eyeing the card she knew had to be the big joker as his index finger twitched against it restlessly. Or a measly four of clubs, coveting the last card in his hand until his turn, pretending it wore a crown.

It helped that Tifa and Aerith seem to work together seamlessly. Each lowball bet was met with knowing glances, subtle enough to be missed across the table. And with his notorious competitive streak, Zack ended up convincing Cloud to bet on far too many tricks for each given hand. 

“I’m teaming up with Cloud next time,” Aerith comments, tallying up the final score in her notepad even with a defeat as transparent as this one. “You were dragging him down, Fair. He really got the hang of it at the end there.”

“I was not dragging him down,” Zack defends, the sore loser that he is. “I think you guys were cheating over there. Showing each other your hands under the table.” 

Cloud huffs a laugh at that, cheeks pink and clearly pleased that Aerith’s offered to team up with him the next time they play. “Don’t act like you weren’t flashing me your cards, pretending to scratch your nose. Cheating won’t help if you still insist on betting so high.”

“ Traitor!” Zack exclaims, jabbing the blonde’s side until he taps out in a laughing surrender. “She’s never gonna let me live that down, Spike. You don’t know how she gets.”

Aerith sends her most ominous smile in Zack’s direction, letting it wobble at his resounding shudder of fear. 

“Yeah, Cloud’s on my team next time for s ure, ” Aerith threatens, reaching over to link her arm through the blonde’s. “Tifa will whip you into shape. I doubt she’ll let anything suspicious slide.”

Tifa nods, comically serious about the matter like she’s prepared to carry the weight of Zack Fair’s dishonesty on her shoulders alone. Aerith adores her all the more for it. 

They don’t play any more card games that evening, and Aerith will claim she’s being merciful to the dejected ex- SOLDIER, conceding for the sake of his tattered pride. Zack pretends to yawn, his excuse for tapping out thinly veiled and laughable. 

Still, it is getting late. Elmyra retired to bed halfway through their game, already weary in asking them to keep their voices down. Zack and Cloud have moved back to their makeshift bed on the couch; though it’s far too small to house two grown men all night, Aerith won’t be the one to tear them apart. It’s not like Zack has to worry about another twinge in his spine from something so minor as a cramped sofa. 

Tifa looks hesitant as they wrap things up, eyeing the mellowed group and the door in question. 

“Gotta head back to your apartment?” Aerith asks, trying to keep her voice impartial. 

“I promised I’d watch Marlene tomorrow morning,” she answers, though she doesn’t seem thrilled to leave. “I don’t think I’ll want to walk home that early, so I’d better go back tonight.”

“Let me walk you home?” Aerith offers, already fetching her shoes before she can get a confirmation. 

Tifa doesn’t fight it. She only smiles softly, reaching for her own bright red boots next to the flower peddler’s brown pair. 

By the time they’re heading towards the door, the boys are back to the position they found them in earlier, curled into each other protectively. Cloud’s eyes are already slipping shut unbidden. 

“You gonna be okay getting home?” Cloud mumbles, watching the women slip quietly through the door frame. The question feels familiar somehow, tugging at her heartstrings as he murmurs it in a half asleep state. 

Aerith resists the urge to tease, nodding in affirmation and slipping outside to follow Tifa, already trekking towards the stairs. 

She thinks she hears Zack utter something in response to Cloud alone, under his breath and soaked in slumber. 

“Don’t need to worry about her. She’s tough as nails.”

Tifa seems happy to have company on the way home. It’s more of the same; fingers brushing as they walk, lingering around the closing shops and stalls as they pass, wandering through the backroads that double the time in getting where they’re meant to go. 

Time spent with the bartender is serene. It’s easy to let her guard slip, blathering on with no worries about going unheard, and listening even longer when Tifa finds momentum of her own. Even the most menial of topics become something captivating; Aerith is loath to tear her gaze away as she rambles on about new coasters for the bar, a trinket she found for Marlene, or a swift kick she’s mastered the art of. 

Slow as they are to meander around, they eventually make it to Stargazer Heights. Sector Seven is a graveyard, and the only accompaniment to their footsteps is the soft buzz of the flickering streetlights, discordant and out of tune. 

“This is me,” Tifa calls somberly, gesturing to the stairwell of a rickety looking apartment building. She pauses, glancing between her home and the flower peddler. “This is hard. Now I want to walk you back home.” 

“You could,” Aerith beams, leaning into Tifa’s space until her cheeks burn. “We could go back and forth all night if you want.”

“Or you could come upstairs,” Tifa mutters, her voice considerably quieter than before. “I haven’t had the chance to host you yet, you know.”

Aerith wants to tease her. She wants to draw her answer out in a mock moment of pondering, fingers propped against her chin in deep thought. Tifa is so genuine though— so earnest in her request, and so clearly prepared to be shut down. 

“I’d love to,” Aerith answers, looping their arms together before the bartender can stew in her worry. “But I didn’t bring anything with me. You’ll have to lend me some clothes”

Tifa is radiant, so obviously pleased over their change of plans. The stairs to the second floor creak under their combined weight, but the protest has gone unnoticed, both women far too wrapped up in the buzz of each other’s presence to pay it any mind. 

“It’s not much,” Tifa apologizes, letting them inside and slipping the door shut behind her. The apartment is cramped, more of a single room than anything, but she’s clearly gone out of her way to liven it up. There are hints of her life scattered in the odd knick-knacks on the dresser, the dog eared book at her bedside, the clothes peeking out of her overflown hamper. “I would’ve straightened up if I’d known.” 

“No worries,” Aerith soothes, lacing her hands behind her back and snooping around, hardly shameful in doing so. Her eyes roam the framed photos dispersed around the room, all looking incredibly recent. Most of the faces are ones she recognizes. “It's cute in here.” 

“You don't have to flatter me,” Tifa corrects, straightening the rumpled baby blue quilt over her bed and hurrying to her dresser to fetch clothes for them both. “I just— wanted to spend more time with you. Wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet.”

It’s Aerith’s turn to flounder, her own cheeks tingling with heat. She smiles privately, silently grateful that they have their backs to each other, and fiddles with the book on Tifa’s bedside. 

The pages flutter open in her grasp, creased near the middle of the rather thick book. Flat and far duller than the day she picked it, a yellow lily is pressed, its copper anther cascading down the lines of text as it’s disturbed from its slumber. 

“You kept it?” Aerith mumbles, fingers hovering over dehydrated petals. “I figured you’d toss it once it wilted. I can always bring you more, you know.”

Tifa whips around, her arms stuffed full of articles of clothing, eyes widening as she sees the open book. 

“I wanted to preserve it,” she defends, tossing the clothes on her bed and hurrying over to hide the evidence. She pulls Aerith’s hand away with her own, checking that the flower is straight before sealing it shut again. “This one is special.”

Aerith grins something more soft than smug, swiveling on her feet until they're practically nose to nose, her fingers still clasped tightly in Tifa’s. The urge to lean even closer is all encompassing, so she does, letting their noses brush in a ghost of touch. 

“Why is that?” Aerith asks, her voice lowered. She can feel Tifa’s huff in response flutter against her lips.

“I think you know,” Tifa answers, her brow furrowing, though she makes no move to back away. “Don’t tease me.”

“What if I want to hear you say it?”

Tifa’s brow wrinkles even further, her frame as taut as a drawn bowstring. There’s a determined shine in her eyes, though the flames of her cheeks are stoked as Aerith presses closer.

“I—” Tifa’s voice cracks around the syllable, and she swallows before continuing. “I like you, so that flower is special. I’ve liked you from the moment you gave it to me.”

Aerith’s lips turn up at the corners against her will, and Tifa follows the movement with her eyes, tongue darting out unbidden at the sight. 

“Was that so hard?” 

Tifa doesn’t answer in words. Instead, still stiff as a board, she presses her lips feather light against Aerith’s in a mockery of a kiss. The flower peddler’s grin grows even wider at the phantom touch, and the sight of Tifa’s eyes screwed shut in concentration. 

When Tifa pulls back, limbs shaking and prepared to shuffle away as if she’s done something gravely wrong, it’s easy for Aerith to cradle her jaw and pull her closer. She only has to tilt her head just so, narrowly avoiding the clash of their noses like before, and Tifa has melted into something pliant in her palms.

She offers a real kiss this time, firm and encouraging and somehow tender all at once. Tifa, still ashamed over her own assumption in the first place, lets Aerith swallow the dread in a sweet slide of her lips, a dart of her tongue. 

It doesn’t last long, though Aerith would be content to drag it on all evening. Tifa eventually pulls back, chest heaving and heart stuttering a rubato tempo against her ribs, too hazy to stay standing. 

Aerith can feel Tifa wobble against her, so she guides them both to the edge of the bed to sit, her hand lingering on the small of the bartender’s back. 

“I’m sorry,” Tifa mutters, seemingly snapped out of her daze as soon as they meet the mattress. “I don’t know wh—”

“I’m not,” Aerith interrupts, her fingers once again finding the curve of Tifa’s jaw, redirecting her downward gaze to meet the flower peddler’s. “Sorry, I mean. I’m not sorry at all. I wanted to kiss you.”

Though it’s hardly possible, Tifa flushes brighter, her eyes fighting to stay locked onto Aerith’s.

“Really?”

“Yes,” Aerith replies, no hesitation. “I like you too, if it wasn’t obvious.”

Tifa sputters, coughing an embarrassing sound that she wouldn’t know how to classify. 

“Oh,” Tifa manages to utter. She doesn’t offer anything else, lost in her own distressing swirl of thoughts, the aura around her oscillating and pulsing new hues like the rubbery skin of a squid. Part of Aerith wants to offer comfort— to soothe however she can— but a larger part of her recognizes the turmoil and knows to give the bartender time to ride it out. 

Aerith can’t say she fully understands, but she can sympathize. From the tidbits Tifa has shared about her life before— a backwards town and a grief that runs deep in the wake of its ideas, all imparted to a malleable mind— the flower peddler can guess the kind of turbulent thoughts cycling through her head right now.

So she gives space where she can, sifting through the heap of fabric on the bed and separating out two pairs of nightclothes. Grabbing a pair for herself, she leaves a set in Tifa’s lap and plants a dry kiss to her forehead before slipping behind the curtain of her bathroom. 

Aerith takes her time in changing, appreciating the lingering earthy scent on the fabric and the loose slide of it over her shoulders. She can hear the shuffling of Tifa’s own clothes from behind the curtain, so she lingers, using the sink to wash up and the milky mirror to fix her tousled braid, trying to pretend the heat of their kiss isn’t still tingling on her lips.

“Aerith?” Tifa eventually calls, closer than she was before. 

She slips out then, carrying her own folded clothes and shoes, trying to keep a neutral air about her. 

“Do you want me to stay?” Aerith asks, gentle as she can muster. 

“Please.”

It’s nearly whispered, but Aerith hears it, and is far from hard pressed to heed the request. 

Chapter Text

The hyacinths are in bloom. With a smell as vibrant as that, it even seeps into the house, wafting from the yard and tickling the back of each inhabitant's throat. 

Cloud isn’t accustomed to such a sweet smell. He might have been ten years ago, basking in the early Nibel spring and twisting lupine stems into crowns for the statues in town to wear, but hardly since then. The scent of rust and ash and iron are far more familiar, though not nearly as comforting. 

Aerith has forced him outside, claiming she needs extra hands to hold wicker baskets and point to flowers ready to be picked. Cloud doesn’t know much about flowers or their ripeness, but he follows wordlessly, content to soak up the thin rays of sun that peak through the plate near Aerith’s house. 

He also thinks that she doesn’t really need any help at all. Not with the grindingly unsubtle look she shoots towards Zack on their way out, clear enough that he can hear her unspoken hiss of “Don’t follow.”

Maybe they’ve been a little inseparable these days, but Cloud doesn’t think it’s unreasonable. It’s easier to stick together, he’d argue— easier to reach the top cabinet for a glass when Zack needs one, or to lift his chair over the particularly uneven bumps in certain doorways. Easier to sit close enough that his mako-enhanced hearing can pick up on the thud of a heart or the rush of air into a pair of still breathing lungs. 

Maybe their current routine is a little unhealthy. Aerith seems to think so, at least. She keeps glancing over, eyeing him up and down as if he’s set to bolt back through the door the second that Zack is out of earshot. 

He won’t, but he isn’t deluded enough to claim that he doesn’t want to. 

“So,” Aerith starts, hiking up the hem of her dress to crouch before a bed of geometrically pleasing flowers that Cloud couldn’t name to save his life. “How about we head into town today? I think we’d make some decent gil with your face selling my flowers. I’ve got a few errands to run, too.” 

Cloud’s cheeks mirror the deep pink blossom that Aerith snips with her shears, but he turns to face the other way before she can chide him further. 

It isn’t that Cloud wants to stay inside all day. He’d be lying if he said he hasn’t been itching to go work some excess energy off, and Aerith can surely sense that. It just doesn’t seem fair to meander around town while Zack is stuck at home, even more pent up with a buzz of vigor that he has no way to dispel. And besides, they can hardly stand to be a room apart right now, let alone whole sectors. 

“Thanks for the offer, but I should probably—”

“I guess I shouldn’t have phrased it like I was asking you,” she interrupts, her smile as sharp as the blades in her hand. “I’ll need some help while I’m out today. You’re staying here rent free, remember?”

Cloud has learned quite a lot about Aerith in the few weeks that he’s been living in her house. She’s quick to excite and equally quick to tease, but her need to intervene can only be called a kindness. Even now, gardening shears pointed in warning towards an unarmed Cloud, she’s looking out for him. 

“Alright,” he concedes. He throws his hands up in surrender, smart enough to call the argument off in advance. “There’s someone I need to visit, anyways.”

Aerith’s lips morph into a triumphant smirk at the first syllable of his agreement, and her shears are lowered back to the bush of dahlias. Her hands are gentle as a babbling brook against the woody stems. 

“I’ll need to talk to Zack first,” Cloud says, quieter than before as she places a handful of flowers in his basket. 

“He’ll be okay.” Her voice doesn’t waver, but it’s not nearly as confident as her earlier tone. Even her posture changes, her shoulders sinking slightly as she turns on her heel. “We’ll get him out soon, too. I’m sure he misses the fresh air.” 

Cloud doesn’t like to think about it. It isn’t like Zack is complaining. Not openly, anyways. He’s been milking his carefree mask, chipper as ever and turning down any of their attempts to soothe. They spend a lot of time together in the garden, but sometimes, Cloud wonders if it only makes him feel worse to sit in such a beautiful place with no way to explore the heart of it. If he sulks about it now, it’ll be even harder to part with him for the day. 

“Yeah,” Cloud agrees, letting the guilt hang between them, too cowardly to be the one to name it. “We’ll get him out soon.”

Zack doesn’t seem upset about their outing; he even cranks up his usual blubbering excitement by a couple of notches once he hears about it. He lingers behind Cloud as he gets ready, leaning back in his chair to show off the new trick he’s taught himself this week. 

“You going to see Tifa?” he asks, his wheels hitting the wood with a thud as he loses his grip. 

Cloud shrugs and continues rifling through the trunk by the couch, recently turned into a shared dresser as it’s clear their stay will be a prolonged one. It’s all still Gainsborough property, even down to their threadbare socks. 

“Probably,” Cloud answers, picking up the worn black tee-shirt that he wears most frequently nowadays. “Aerith didn’t really give me details. She just demanded that I tag along.”

Zack barks a laugh at that, more boisterous than the comment deserves. He’s been doing that a lot lately— laughing without really meaning it. 

“Tell her hi for me if you do,” he says, flipping the brakes and pulling himself out of his chair and onto the sofa. He’s gotten better at that in the passing weeks, loath as Cloud would be to point it out. “I highly doubt Aerith will head in that direction without stopping by the bar.”

There’s an implication in Zack’s tone that Cloud can’t place, so he shoots him a questioning glance at the sound of it. The ex- SOLDIER is grinning from ear to ear, slimy and pleased, and Cloud wracks his brain to figure out why only to come up short. 

“You really are clueless about these things, huh?” Zack teases, watching the gears turn in his friend’s head and clearly biting back a laugh. 

Cloud’s baffled expression turns into a scowl, and Zack finally loses his composure. 

“Just tell me then,” Cloud mumbles, turning away to fetch his shoes and avoid Zack’s giggling.

“I don’t know,” Zack manages through his fit. “It’s kinda funny, watching you try to figure it out. You’ll get there eventually, Spike.”

The pillow hurled in Zack’s direction is too swift to dodge, but it doesn’t deter his onslaught. Cloud can’t feign his annoyance for much longer, too weak to the sound of rich laughter to fight his own grin. There’s no harm in it, really; if anyone has the right to prod and tease right now, it’s Zack Fair. Cloud won’t be the one to deny him his fun.

“Just watch how Aerith acts around her,” Zack hints, draping an arm over the sofa as Cloud sits down beside him. “Think about it.” 

Cloud thinks about it. He still comes up short. 

Aerith is sweet to Tifa as far as he can tell. There’s even more of that trademark teasing towards the bartender, and Cloud has parsed by now that it’s her unique form of affection. Tifa doesn’t seem to mind it either; they’re always attached at the hip any time he sees them, mumbling privately and looking out for each other in their own subtle ways. 

“Isn’t she like that with everyone?” Cloud asks, turning to face Zack like he might find his answers there. The ex- SOLDIER’ s eyes widen at the question inexplicably. 

“Well, she was like that when we were dating, sure,” he replies. It’s Cloud’s turn to look perplexed, trying his damndest to file away this new information even with no clue where he should put it. 

“So you aren’t anymore?” Cloud questions. Zack’s eyes widen impossibly further. 

“You thought we—” Zack cuts himself off, taking in a measured breath that still seems to stutter in his chest. “Seriously? Did I really not say anything?”

“No,” Cloud defends, though he feels stupid for asking at all. He can see now that it’s unlikely they’re still together, what with Zack snuggling up to him on the couch every night rather than his supposed girlfriend. “You never told me you guys broke up.”

“Oh wow,” Zack huffs, running a hand through his hair. “Shit. You’re worse off than I thought with this romance stuff, Spike.” 

There’s no pillow nearby to hurl, so Cloud settles for a half-hearted punch to his shoulder and a scowl with no real bite behind it. 

“What the hell, man.” 

“Sorry, sorry,” Zack concedes, though no part of him looks apologetic. “I didn’t think I’d have to spell it out this much. Tifa and Aerith are a thing . At least, I’m pretty sure they are. If Aerith had the guts to make a move. If not, it’s only a matter of time for those two.”

“Oh.”

“Do you see it now?”

Cloud thinks back again, rewinding the scenes from before as if they’re finally in focus. It does make sense now that it’s clicked into place. 

But Tifa’s never even hinted about the matter to him. They’ve had more moments alone as the days have passed, mostly filled with stunted conversations, skirting around the pile of ash in the room. He supposes there hasn’t been a good time to bring it up. Or even if there was, he’s likely not a person she’d choose to confide in on the subject. 

He tries to sift through his memories with Tifa growing up, searching for some tattered flag he might’ve missed. It’s a bitter thought, now— feeling a sense of camaraderie so far after the fact, knowing they could’ve suffered those backwards Nibel ideas hand in hand. 

She was always so close to the kids their age. If they’d gotten wind of her inclinations that wouldn’t have been the case. They surely got wind of it with Cloud. Maybe that was the kicker in her pulling away, putting distance between them in the years before he left for Midgar. In Nibelheim, one is guilty solely by association for matters like these.  

His knuckles feel chafed and bloody all of a sudden, and the knobs on his spine feel raw and bruised as if they’ve been pelted with stones. There’s a chorus of hyena laughter catching up to him— a coda of skinned knees and rough gravel digging its way into the wounds. 

Nibelheim is a dangerous place for his mind to drift. Zack must sense the slip too, because he has a firm hand on the back of Cloud’s neck and the blonde isn’t even sure when he placed it there. Or how long it’s been since he last spoke, if he answered the question at all. 

Cloud chokes back the charred pine on his tongue and forces his eyes to hone in on the present. 

“Sorry,” he mutters, finally meeting his friend’s gaze beside him. “Don’t know what happened there.” 

“You’re okay,” Zack soothes, all of the previous goading evaporated from his voice. “It wasn’t long. Just a minute or so.”

The fits have been far less frequent, and he has Zack to thank for it. Since they’ve resided here, tucked away and mostly oblivious to the workings of the outside world, he can count the lapses in his mind on both hands. It’s still far too often for Cloud’s liking, but given the state of him a month ago, he’s doing far better than the worst he’s been. 

“Still too long,” Cloud huffs, digging into his temples until the room stops blurring at the corners.

“Better, though.” Zack rubs a sympathetic thumb into the tension on Cloud’s neck, working at the knot there until it recedes. “That was a lot shorter than the last one.”

Cloud wants to protest, but he’s gone pliant as a willow branch in Zack’s palms. A minute or so of kneading and he can hardly recall his previous thread of worry. 

Maybe Aerith has a point about their attachment to one another. Sometimes it even feels like it’s Zack’s own hand lodged in his chest, clutching his heart and pumping blood until it’s back in rhythm. 

“Are you gonna be okay out there today?” Zack asks. Cloud seems to have settled by now, but he doesn’t take his hand away. “I’m sure Aerith will understand if you need to call a rain check.”

“I’ll be fine. I’m more worried about you,” Cloud says, glancing up to find a gaze he can only describe as tender. “I haven’t gone out since—”

“What are you worried about me for?” Zack interrupts, and the mask is back. Though his eyes stay soft, his mouth warps into a sad excuse for a smile, a mere mockery of the kind that Cloud knows he’s capable of. “I’ll have Elmyra around if I need anything. It’s not like I can’t survive on my own for a few hours.”

That isn’t the point, he wants to say. Be honest with me for once. 

“I wish you’d stop doing that,” Cloud blurts instead, relieved the moment the weight of it is off his chest. 

“Stop what?”

Cloud pulls back, needing the distance to put his thoughts in order. It isn’t a new nagging worry in his mind; Zack has been playing this game since the day he got here. It’s clear he thinks he can distract Cloud from the chasm between them with petty banter and a warped grin, but it won’t hold up much longer. The more time they spend here, inseparable from the moment they wake up to when their eyes slip shut, the more Cloud notices the visible cracks in the wall around Zack’s heart.  

“Acting,” Cloud continues, averting his gaze. “Acting like what happened to you doesn’t matter. Acting like you’re just okay with it. I know you aren’t, and you don’t have to pretend that you are. Not around me, at least.”

There’s a slip of his mask so brief that Cloud nearly misses it— a glance towards his unmoving legs, limp against the sofa, and a furrow of his brow. He corrects himself and overcompensates, expressions warring like a record scratching over a particle of dust. 

“I don’t really see the point,” Zack finally says, full of defeat that he must be too tired to veil. “It won’t change anything, and you’ve got enough shit going on without throwing my mess into it. I didn’t come back just to be a nuisance.” 

Cloud wants to smack him again. Or pinch the lobe of his ear until he calls uncle. That wouldn’t do anything either, though, and this is the most vulnerability he’s gotten out of the ex- SOLDIER in days. 

“If you came back to life to be my caretaker, you chose wrong,” Cloud says, leaning back against Zack’s arm still draped over the sofa instead of acting on his earlier ideas. “You’ve carried my weight long enough. Literally, dude. Halfway across Gaia. Am I not allowed to worry about you too? Because I’m going to anyways.”

“Spike—”

“Don’t you think it might help a little?” Cloud barges on. “I’m not saying it’ll fix everything— I know it’s not that easy. But doesn’t it help to get it out? To just be pissed about it? I’d be pissed about it.” 

Zack is silent for a moment, tugging on a loose thread from the seam of the sofa, his gaze downcast. He hasn’t clammed up though, and the smile from before has dropped, so Cloud gives him time. 

“Maybe,” he finally utters. “I can try.”

Cloud deflates at that, sinking further into the sofa and letting Zack’s arm fall around him fully in a quietly acknowledged promise. 

When Aerith wanders back downstairs to fetch Cloud for their outing, he can sense the complaint on the tip of her tongue. He was supposed to be getting ready while she did the same. As far as she can tell, he’s in the same clothes as before, hair knotted against his nape and leaning against Zack without a thought for their earlier plans. 

She must see something in his gaze when their eyes meet. Cloud watches her swallow the scolding down, descending the rest of the steps and settling patiently in the armchair beside them to wait. 

“Sorry,” Cloud says, hopping up from their huddled position and making haste to the bathroom with his bundled clothes in hand. “Just need five minutes and I’m good to go.”

He hears Aerith hum a disbelieving sound that he ignores, and does his best to speed through the process of getting ready. Cloud wouldn’t put it past Aerith to time him in the bathroom and hold him to his word. 

Their goodbyes are hurried even as both men try to prolong the departure; Aerith is having none of it. She waves a hand over her shoulder, the other gripping Cloud’s wrist and pulling him along, and doesn’t spare an ounce of patience for Cloud’s need to linger in the doorway. She’s swift to snatch the basket of freshly picked flowers on the porch.

“Ripping the bandaid off?” Cloud mutters, almost tripping on his feet as he’s tugged down the stairs and towards the tunnels leading out of Aerith’s yard. 

“If I let you have your way, we won’t be out ‘til the shops are closed,” she bites, though her soft voice takes some of the edge off. Cloud knows better than to be fooled by it.

“So where are we going?” 

Aerith finally releases her grip, apparently trusting him to not bolt in the other direction. The sound of their footsteps echo throughout the tunnel, and Cloud has to duck his head when the iron walls narrow around them like the neck of a bottle. 

“You both need new clothes,” Aerith answers. When they reach the end, she stops, eyeing the streets of Sector Five in both directions in a silent debate. “And you’ll help me sell some flowers in Sector Seven to pay for ‘em.” 

“Don’t know how much help I’ll be with that ,” Cloud mutters, following as she heads to the left towards some dingy looking stalls. “I used to peddle peanut butter and jelly sandwiches growing up.”

“Oh yeah?” Aerith asks, her eyes curious and glistening with amusement. “How many did you sell?”

Cloud makes a show of pretending to count on his fingers. 

“One.”

“Just one?”

“Yeah. I think my mom felt bad for me— gave me five whole gil for a sandwich she helped me make.”

Aerith laughs, rich and hearty, and tugs him again towards a dilapidated stall with various trinkets and recycled-looking clothing. He picks out a few items, sticking to the staples they’ve been wearing but with less holes and loose threads. The pants are a gamble, and Cloud tries to find the closest he can to Zack’s size, settling on something a little too large rather than too small. 

They end up with a good handful of clothes, wrapped all neat in some old newspapers. The fabric might reek of mothballs, but it’s in better shape than some of the other pieces they’ve been wearing, so Cloud feels pleased. Aerith makes room for them in the base of her basket, arranging her flowers on top in the same order as before. 

“Just under forty gil,” Aerith comments, tucking away the intricately knotted red bracelet she just bought. Cloud remembers the girls in Nibelheim making accessories like that; sometimes with string, sometimes with sturdier blades of wheatgrass. He wonders if it’s a gift for Tifa. “That’s how much you have to make, then.” 

“And if I can’t?” 

Aerith pretends to think about it, pointer finger propped against her chin in a mockery of concentration. 

“Then you’ll owe me one,” she decides. 

“I owe you plenty already."

Her shit-eating grin tells him that’s exactly what she wanted to hear.

They make back their forty gil and some change, which is far better than Cloud was expecting selling luxury items in the slums. He wonders if there’s a holiday approaching, or if the flowers this time around are more vibrant than usual. Maybe Aerith always makes a pretty penny in her trade. 

It’s refreshing, interacting with new faces rather than the same four he’s been seeing everyday for the past month. He hasn’t grown sick of them, but it’s revitalizing to fumble his way through awkward conversations and get a feel for the outside world again. It doesn’t hurt that Aerith is with him to pick up the slack when his poor salesmanship falls short.

She insists that they leave a few dahlias behind, which Cloud now knows the name of, and he’d bet another forty gil that she’s taking them to the bar. They’re heading in that direction now, and though the flower peddler claims it’s to avoid the heat under the plate, he now knows her ulterior motives thanks to Zack. 

“Didn’t you say you have someone to meet up with?” Aerith asks, speeding ahead with an obvious spring in her step. Her ploy for some alone time with Tifa doesn’t go unnoticed. 

“Yeah, there’s something I need to pick up while I’m here,” Cloud says. He stops, trying to orient himself with what he remembers of Sector Seven. It isn’t much, but that’s a given considering most of the time he spent here was in a bloody, mako-induced haze. “Gotta favor to repay, too. You know where Stargazer Heights is?”

Aerith’s eyes widen slightly, her head cocking to the side in question. 

“Yeah, that’s Tifa’s place,” she answers. “She should be at work right now, though. Does she have something for you?”

“Not Tifa.” Cloud shakes his head. “Her landlord. She helped me out when I first made it to Midgar. Promised I’d change some lightbulbs for her.”

Aerith hums in acknowledgement and points Cloud in the right direction. It’s nearly a straight shot, and he’ll know the building when he sees it, so he bids her farewell and promises to meet back up in a couple of hours. That should give the girls enough time to do… whatever it is they do together, he guesses. 

Stargazer Heights looks a little different during the day. Cloud mostly remembers seeing it past the sunset, with gnats and moths swarming on the lanterns, almost ominous in its tar colored metal. 

It's still shabby now, but he thinks the old pipes and steel doors have a unique kind of charm in the light of day. Maybe it’s just because he’s come to know the inhabitants. 

He thinks he remembers which unit Marle is in, but he still hesitates and stutters an uncertain knock against the door, hoping he isn’t disturbing an unknown napping tenant. 

A muffled “ Just a second!” makes its way through the cracks and the gravelly voice is familiar, leaving Cloud to relax. When she appears a moment later, he recalls the first time he spotted her coarse updo just down the street. Her no-nonsense tone and affixed scowl are just the same.

Marle’s jaw slackens at the sight of him but she quickly snaps it shut, ushering him inside with a huff. Cloud finally has the wherewithal to take in the place, his gaze ultimately falling on a familiar shape wrapped in linen and tucked neatly in the corner of the room. 

“Thought I might never see you again,” Marle says by way of greeting. “That damn sword’s been collecting dust for weeks. Any longer and I might’ve run off to sell the thing.”

“Sorry for the trouble,” Cloud replies, eyes falling to the floor. “I can bring it home today.”

Marle looks him up and down, her eyes narrowed. It’s a scrutinizing gaze. A lot like the kind that Elmyra shoots him almost daily, even as they’ve warmed up to one another. Cloud hates it— hates feeling flayed and strung up, unaware of what others might find when they look at him too closely. 

“You clean up pretty well,” she finally says. It doesn’t really sound like a compliment. “Any more of those falling fits lately?” 

Cloud wants to say no and shrug it off. It doesn’t seem right though, especially as he catches sight of his own diluted blood, now a tawny brown, staining the cushions of her sofa. 

She offered kindness to him before anyone else in the slums. Honesty isn’t such a hard feat in the face of that. 

“I get ‘em sometimes. Not as bad anymore.” Cloud pauses, his eyes still glued to the stain and his mind reeling to frayed elbows and serrated blades. “Sorry about your couch.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” she mumbles, feigning irritation as she waves him off. “Like I said back then, a friend of Miss Lockhart is a friend of mine. Besides…”

She turns, her neck cricking to gesture towards the ceiling and the flickering lightbulb above them. Cloud grins before he can stop himself. 

“I knew you’d pay me back for it someday.”

Marle was understating it with the lightbulb. She made sure to collect his debt with interest, assigning any and all of the miscellaneous tasks around her apartment for Cloud to repair. By the time she lets him tap out, he’s dusted every surface above her height, fiddled with the heater until it ceased its rattling, fixed the hinges on her refrigerator door, and unclogged all of her drains with a makeshift snake. 

She doesn’t seem guilty in the slightest as she bids him farewell, offering her nursing services for trade anytime he’d like. Cloud honestly might take her up on that; it was a surefire way to burn off some of his relentless mako energy. 

He makes sure to grab the cloth wrapped buster sword on his way out, leaving it concealed as he heads onto the street. His hands know the shape of the handle and could likely recognize it by weight alone— though it feels much lighter than it ever did when Zack let him hold it as a far weaker infantryman. It’s impossible to stifle the flood of memories with it grasped in his palms. 

Cloud really shouldn’t stop to look at it. Even masked behind the khaki fabric, it’s enough to tilt his world on its axis. He should head back towards the bar to meet with Aerith, saving the unwrapping for when he’s home and settled with Zack. 

He doesn’t heed his own advice. His legs move unbidden towards an alley to the left, ears tuning out the chatter of the townspeople and their impassioned shouts. Cloud thinks he hears the pluck of discordant strings, harsh enough to make it through the static buzz in his mind. 

The alley is so dim that he can’t help but stumble through it, laden with a steel canopy thudding mechanically against the buildings holding it up. Cloud doesn’t take in any of his surroundings. His back hits the wall and then he’s sliding, puffing up a bank of dust like thick smoke from an incense cone. 

Motionless as he is, propped against the wall and clutching the sword so tightly he risks cutting himself through the fabric, he feels nauseated; almost as if he’s been lifted by sheave and left to swing as a pendulum back and forth.  

He peels back the linen, delicate like he’s uncovering a corpse and not a hunk of metal. It doesn’t frown back at him, but it does seem to gleam, even in the dark. 

Reality is warped after his first sight of it. Even more so than before. Cloud quickly loses his sense of time, and not by the minute; he could hardly answer for the year he’s in, let alone which sector or street or time of day. 

He thinks it might be raining, but there’s no pattering against the canopy above him. 

He thinks he might not be awake at all. 

As the tips of his fingers graze the nicked and rusted metal, he swears he can feel a pulse thrumming inside of it. Or maybe it’s his own pulse— frantic and grating and entirely out of place.

Or maybe it’s Zack’s heart, deathly slow and sputtering a final attempt at living, pressed firmly against Cloud’s forehead and competing with the slosh of rain. 

The blood is tacky on his skin again. He feels more bathed in that than the shower falling down around them. Zack is muttering something, weak and gargled against his ear. His grip on Cloud’s nape is firm, though. Where is he getting the strength?

Ribbed edges of the broadsword’s handle dig into his palms, surely leaving an imprint of red behind. He tugs it out of Zack’s grip without thinking, missing the brush of their fingers the moment he’s withdrawn. 

Zack’s eyes slip shut, but his lips stay curled. Cloud glances down at the carnage across his frame. There’s not an inch of skin left unstained. 

Some deep and buried part of his mind is calling out— calling bluff on everything around him. Cloud can hardly hear it over the sound of his own screams. 

As they’ll tell him once the dust has settled, a friend of Tifa’s found him huddled in the alley, his shouts catching on a throat torn raw. Barret Wallace, he’ll learn the following day; an intimidating presence hovering near the doorway of Aerith’s house as he regains his bearings. His burly arms might look like they could capsize a ship, but Cloud found them to be incredibly gentle as he was carried home. At least as far as he can recall. 

Cloud assumes he attracted the attention of several townsfolk, likely lowering their gazes as they passed him by, just as they would for any other drunkard or strung out slum dweller. Barret must’ve heard enough about him from the girls to put the pieces together, so he hauled the incoherent blonde off to the bar. 

And now they’re here, lungs heavy with dread and crowded around the Gainsborough sofa, as they often find themselves these days. 

Cloud hasn’t spoken since his eyes peeled open, still trying his damndest to make sense of the room around him. He knows he feels Zack against his spine, supporting his neck and holding up his dead weight so he doesn’t keel over. 

That feeling will always be familiar enough to recognize, even when he finds his own reflection to be a stranger to him. 

He has to tune in to make sense of the voices around him, like twisting the knob on a crackly radio, wincing when only static shrills back. Tifa is speaking softly, he thinks, but the words sound like another language to his ears. If he breathes in deeply he can smell the hyacinths from the front yard, thick and tacky in his nostrils. 

“You with us, Spike?”

There’s a voice he recognizes— a language he’ll always understand. 

Cloud grumbles a sound he hopes is affirmative, too nervous to test the state of his wrecked throat. Who knows how long he was screaming out there? He’s afraid to ask for the time. 

“You’re alright,” Zack says quietly, sounding pleased to get a response at all. He’s used to this, Cloud reminds himself. “We’re back at Aerith’s place. Barret found you and brought you in.” 

His uncanny gaze darts to the man still lingering by the door, shifting on his feet like he’s not sure if he should still be here. Tifa is beside him, standing close enough to convey a disarming familiarity between them. 

“Thanks,” Cloud attempts. He doesn’t think the word is intelligible, but Barret nods in a jerk of movement and seems to comprehend. 

Cloud doesn’t have the energy for more than that. When he tries to blink some moisture back into his eyes, his lashes feel too heavy to haul back up. 

The next time he wakes, his body feels back to normal. Mako enhanced normal, at least. Cloud still isn’t quite used to the newfound strength of his grip or the extra bounce in his step. 

Zack is a steel force behind him— likely dozing off as well, if his steady breathing is to be believed— and the rest of the room has cleared out. There’s a light left flickering in the kitchen above the stove, and it’s just enough to illuminate his surroundings and ground him in the present. 

Cloud tries to remain still but it’s a null effort. They almost always wake up in sync, and as expected, Zack inhales a startled breath within the minute. 

“Spike?” His voice is sleep laden and startled, and his hands fumble blindly to grip onto any part of Cloud that he can reach. Zack settles one clammy palm on the relaxed muscle of his bicep. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Cloud whispers back, and his voice isn’t nearly as raw as it was before. “Better now.” 

Zack sighs in relief, loosening his grip but letting his touch linger. Every point where they’re connected feels ignited on Cloud’s skin, and he’s all too aware of his own heart pounding against his ribs. He hopes Zack won’t think twice about the gooseflesh on his arms. 

“Was it—” Zack pauses, curling in a little closer. “Was it the buster sword that set you off?”

Cloud nods, glancing around to see where they’ve put it. When he can’t find its looming shape leaned against any of the walls, he startles, sitting up and looking towards Zack for answers. The ex- SOLDIER rises with him, hauling himself up so they’re both cross-legged and facing each other on the sofa. 

“We took it upstairs. It’s in the linen closet,” Zack answers, reading the unspoken question with ease. “Didn’t want you to wake up and see it.”

It’s Cloud’s turn to huff a sigh of relief, his alert posture falling slack. 

“I should’ve waited ‘til I was home to look at it,” Cloud says, staring at where their knees brush. “Sorry. I knew it would set me off and I did it anyway.”

“Why, then?” Zack asks. “Why not wait?”

Cloud wracks his brain for an answer that makes sense. He hardly knows himself, and can barely recall what sent him towards that alley in the first place. Zack is quiet as he works through his own faulty reasoning.

“It’s stupid,” he finally says. “Sometimes I need a reminder. It doesn’t feel real, just sitting with you, or eating breakfast with you, or waking up next to you. Not after I watched you die. Makes me wonder if nothing’s been real since then.”

“I’m sorry,” Zack apologizes quietly, like it’s somehow his fault.

“No,” Cloud barrels on, not even willing to entertain it. “It was my fault. I guess I thought it’d be grounding, like the tags…” 

“My tags?”

Cloud tenses, his hand moving to grip the metal through his shirt. He was sure Zack must’ve seen them through the cloth by now, but he sounds surprised. 

“Guess I should give them back to you, huh?” 

Zack raises a hesitant hand, fingers grazing the raised flesh on Cloud’s neck until he reaches the chain. Cloud has to hold his breath as his fingers wander, slipping across his collarbone to pull the tags out from under his shirt. 

“You should keep them,” Zack mutters back, gently tugging to get a good look at the etched steel and inadvertently bringing Cloud closer. He can feel every ball of the chain as it’s pulled, tightening around his neck like a vise. “They look better on you. And I’m dead to Shinra anyways, so it kinda works out.” 

Cloud doesn’t think he could pull air into his lungs if he tried. Zack is glistening in front of him, warm in the dim yellow light, his nose casting stark shadows across his face. Cloud wants to reach out and map the bump of it with the pad of his thumb— wants to count the faded olive freckles, amazed that the kiss of sun followed him through the afterlife.

When their eyes lock, it’s impossible to tear his gaze away. Cloud’s mind inexplicably drifts back to their conversation before things fell apart today. 

You’re worse off than I thought with this romance stuff, Spike.

Is there something he’s missing here, too? Cloud hasn’t had a lot of close friends in his life apart from the one sitting in front of him. He for sure hadn’t stared into the eyes of his old infantry buddies, or slept tucked against them, or touched them just for the sake of doing so. 

Zack is different, though. Cloud has witnessed him ruffling the hair of his other friends, leaning into any touch he’s offered and offering it freely in return. And besides, it’s a given that he’d be clingy with Cloud after their time on the run. 

Cloud still isn’t sure if this is right. He knows how he feels, and could name it faster than he could blink. He isn’t as confident about Zack. 

“What’s on your mind, Spike?” Zack asks, still thumbing over his own name and holding Cloud in place a breath apart from him. He sounds like he knows exactly what’s on his friend’s mind, but he’s enough of a bastard to ask it anyhow. 

It’d be simple to lean a little closer and tell him that way— to map out his answer against Zack’s curved lips. But Cloud has never been quite that brave. 

He settles on closing the distance between them another way, letting their foreheads rest against each other. Zack offers a genuine smile, the gentle kind that Cloud knows he really means, and nudges back. 

“Just glad you’re alive. That’s all.”

Anything beyond that is a worry for tomorrow.