Chapter Text
The wind whistled through broken steel and torn bodies, carrying rain that stung Cloud’s eyes. He didn’t remember when the gunfire had stopped, only that the air still smelled like petrichor, gunpowder, and blood.
Something in him said move.
He didn’t know why or where. Just that if he stayed still, everything would stop.
His body didn’t feel like his. It felt heavier, full of something thick and humming. He dragged himself through the mud, palms slipping, breath catching in his throat. The sword—weapon—gun wasn’t in his hand anymore. His helmet was gone.
Did he have a helmet?
His own name felt wrong in his mouth, even if he could have said it.
He just kept crawling.
Every motion was a slow disaster, elbows shaking, stomach scraping the gravel, the world tilting sideways. But ahead of him, through the haze, he saw a dark shape slumped in the dirt.
Familiar? Yes.
Zack.
Something inside him tore open. Fear, sharp enough to burn through the fog in his mind.
He clawed forward faster, the sound of his gloves rasping against the ground too loud in his ears. When he reached him, he almost didn’t know the man. Mud and blood had made him unrecognizable except for the hair. That impossible, stupid hair.
Zack wasn’t moving. His chest was a shallow tremor beneath torn fabric. His eyes were half-lidded, unfocused.
He was speaking. Cloud could hear the words, knew the words, but couldn’t process.
“You’re gonna…” he felt his mouth repeat Zack’s words heedless of their meaning.
Zack pulled him into his chest, warm blood mixed with the rain on Cloud’s face. His brain felt like it was lagging behind his body, like nothing that was happening was real.
“You’ll be…my living legacy…” Zack whispered. He shoved the Buster Sword into Cloud’s shaking hands.
Cloud dipped his head. He couldn't speak, couldn’t even remember why they were here. All he could do was press his hands to the wound and feel the warmth leaving, blood mixing in pools of rain.
The sword fell to the ground.
The materia slot pulsed faintly, a weak green light flickering beneath the grime—Cure materia, cracked but alive.
Cloud didn’t think. His hand moved on memory he didn’t understand, something deep in his bones he couldn’t identify. He pressed the sword’s edge against Zack’s side and reached.
Mako surged through him like lightning through a dying wire. It burned. It blinded. He felt it eat through his veins, claw up his throat, crack behind his eyes. He thought his heart might burst. But somewhere in the chaos of it, Zack breathed.
Just once. Shallow. But alive.
Cloud slumped forward, forehead pressed to the mud beside him. His vision flashed white, then black. He stayed there for a long time, listening for that faint sound of Zack’s breathing.
It was there. Thin, uneven. But there.
He didn’t stop shaking. Couldn’t stop whispering sounds that didn’t sound like words, maybe his own name, maybe Zack’s, maybe both.
The rain continued to fall. He felt each drop as if it were cutting through him. His skin was on fire. He couldn’t move anymore, but that was all right.
Zack was breathing.
That was enough.
Cloud had no sense of time.
He didn’t know how long he lay in the mud beside Zack’s body.
The rain didn’t stop. It came harder now, thin sheets of it cutting through the air, turning the dirt beneath Cloud’s palms to thick black sludge. Every drop hissed against the Mako glow under his skin, like little sparks in the puddles around him.
He blinked hard, trying to see, but the world kept drifting in and out of hazy green focus.
Zack lay beside him—too still. The faint sound of breath was there, but barely. Cloud reached out again, fingers shaking, and touched his wrist. There was a pulse, weak and wandering, but enough.
He had to move him. Get him out of the open before they came back. Before the rain washed everything away.
His body disagreed.
He tried to push up and his arms buckled. His head swam. For a second he thought he might just fall beside Zack and let the dark take both of them, but the thought of that—the idea of Zack’s breath stopping—sent something violent through him.
He tried again.
And again.
It took forever, but he got to his knees. His hands found the sword and dragged it closer, the blade carving shallow lines through the mud. He didn’t remember standing. One second he was on the ground, the next the horizon was swaying in front of him, Midgar’s shadow glinting faintly in the distance.
Zack was heavy when he lifted him. He’d always been bigger, built for fighting, laughing, carrying the weight of the world like it was nothing. Cloud staggered, nearly dropped him twice, but each time he caught him again, arm locked under his shoulders, Zack’s head lolling against his chest.
“Got…you,” Cloud muttered. His voice didn’t sound like his. It scraped out rough, mechanical, scratchy with disuse. “Got you, got you, got you—”
He didn’t know what he was saying, only that the words kept him moving.
The plain stretched forever, the road ahead half-buried by mud. Every few steps, he saw flashes that weren’t real—faces in the rain, glints of gunfire that were only lightning. He ducked, stumbled, and kept walking. His legs moved without thought, the sword dragging behind him in the mud, leaving a long, crooked trail.
He tried to remember where Midgar was. He tried to remember his name. But all that came was Zack’s voice, Zack’s face, memories looping in fragments.
Cloud couldn’t run. But he could walk.
So he did.
By the time the lights of the city began to burn through the stormclouds ahead, his vision had narrowed to a tunnel of rain and noise. He couldn’t tell if Zack was still breathing, but he held him tighter anyway.
Every step closer felt like it might be the one that killed him. But he didn’t stop. He wouldn’t.
Zack had carried him this far once.
Now it was his turn.