#cloud.

Cloud almost always lets him win where matters that might potentially threaten his life are not involved. Understandable and also frustrating, but they’re still working through that one. He can feel Cloud shifting in his seat, gathering himself, and bending under the weight of his perfectly good suggestion.

“Deal!” 

When it suits him, Zack demonstrates that he is perfectly capable of waiting patiently off to one side until Cloud finally pushes back in his seat. He hasn’t quite figured out what their new normal is going to look like, but it isn’t going to involve him twiddling his thumbs while Cloud works himself into the ground. 

On the other hand, ‘waiting’ also means turning right around, digging into their wardrobe to gather clothes in some semi-reasonable order of magnitude, locating a suitable bag that could be stuffed into Fenrir’s panniers for the trip up to the nearest air ship liftoff pad, and doing all of the above with a general sense of haste. 

They have no time to waste, and Cloud already said yes! There’s also the possibility that the tickets expire by the time they got there since he last glanced at the fine print, but that part isn’t important enough to mention right now.

It had been fleeting at first, the familiarity that came with being what he was. A simple touch upon his senses, while he had been out exploring what the city and its realm had to offer him. Upon the secrets walked any number of unique creatures, from the demigods to the aspects who boasted stories of their own. But it was none of them that had intrigued him quite like the creature that now stood before him, who itched at his senses in a far too familiar way. "I had almost expected not to find another like me."

@yeahinmyhead​

Cloud gave the other fighter a less than amused look in return, finding no humor in the current situation. Instead he gave a huff, returning to wrapping Squall's arm, "That's what you get for doing something stupid."

Unstoppable. That’s how he felt, for a long time. Now he feels a different kind of unstoppable. The kind that a person feels when they can’t stem the flow of blood from their open wounds, when their limbs won’t work anymore, when they sink to their knees from exhaustion, when the pain fades and everything sounds so far away…

Sunlight fades, his hands feel cold, and Zack wants nothing more than to rest. 

Except the pain doesn’t stop. Except the pain rises into an ear-splitting crescendo that eclipses anything he’s ever experienced before. More than the bullet holes and scratches, more than the first dose of mako injected like searing acid into his veins. He even forgets to scream. Tearing flesh and snapped muscles fibers. An eruption of blood and gristle, flung out from his back in a wide semi-circle and stained white feathers.

Zack bodily slumps against the Buster Sword, its tip driven deep into the earth and his hands knuckle-white underneath his gloves from gripping the handle hard enough to keep him upright by sheer force of will alone. He can see the tips of long primary feathers on either side of him, an artistic blend of both pristine white and bloodied, brushing against the ground from his peripheral vision.

Silence descends again, wraps him up like a comforting blanket, but not because he thinks he’s dying. 

Awe-shock-disgust-horror. 

Gun tips are lowered, mouths hang open. Zack is on his feet...and then in the air. Diving and cutting through them like paper soldiers, ripping them apart. Tossing dismembered limbs aside. They aren’t silent anymore. Screams, whirring gunfire, and a torrent of emptied shells clattering to the ground in a symphony of chaos and death.

He understands now– how Angeal felt. Peregrine. Monstrous. Zack looks out to a sea of corpses. His arms are bathed red all the way up to his elbows. 

With my bare hands…I killed them…all of them…  

Blood everywhere. His. Theirs. Knocking on the other side of a door he is too tired to answer, disbelief.  

Zack sinks to the ground a second time. He’s upright, wavering on his knees for less than a second before falling forward face-first  and landing in a rusty cloud of dust. The dirt is magnetic, sticking to the side of his face. His hair. His mouth. His feathers...

this is yet another pivotal text box in the final fantasy vii video game. wouldn’t be the same game without it

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