Zack Fair Zine

“Loading the truck is real work,” his father said. “And you're not thirteen.”

“I’ll be thirteen next month.”

His father responded by tossing a sack of grain. Zack almost missed it, catching it at the last second only to be weighed down by it. His lips pulled into a scowl. 

“You see every other boy leave to find jobs,” he went on, dragging the sack to the truck. He bent his knees, then with all his might, lifted the sack onto the vehicle. “Why won't you let me?”

“Because you’re my son and I need you here.” His father tossed him another sack containing greens this time. Zack caught it with an oof and promised himself he’d grow some muscles over the summer. “Who’s going to continue the family business if not you?”

Family business. 

Zack scoffed as he placed the greens next to the others. He turned—only to find yet another heavy sack already flying towards him. He caught it mid flight before it could strike his face, the force making him stumble a few steps back until his butt hit the truck. 

“If you can’t catch a simple sack, how are you going to make a living in the city?”

A million rebuttals formed at the back of his throat, but before Zack could voice any of them, his father groaned. Zack peeked over the sack. His father was favoring his left leg, massaging a sore spot where he’d twisted his knee a few years back. 

“I’ll be back soon,” he muttered before turning around and limping back to their house.

The front door opened then closed; Zack watched with an unmistakable pang in his heart. 

“Hey,” a voice called from behind. Grey, a friend of his father’s who was also the driver of their truck, leaned out of the driver’s seat with a consoling grin. “Don’t think too bad of your dad. He just wants what’s best for you.”

Zack’s lips pursed. “What he thinks is best for me,” he said, setting the sack down along with the others.

“True.” Grey chuckled softly. “Where’ll you go if your parents let you leave?”

“Midgar.”

“Big city, huh?” Grey gave him an appreciative look. But then he popped open his bottle and chugged water down his throat. A quiet moment passed before he spoke. “Everyone goes to the big city nowadays.”

Zack didn’t miss the way Grey’s eyes took on a faraway look. The man had a son a handful of years older than Zack. Before he left, he’d told anyone who would listen he was going to make it big in Midgar. A merchant or some such. None of them had heard back from him.

“But I’m not like the others!” Zack intercepted. “I’m not just gonna look for any job. I’m going to join SOLDIER. I wanna be a hero.”

Whether or not Grey believed him, he wasn't sure, but after a quick pause, he flashed Zack a ghost of a smile.

“Just make sure you stay in touch with your folks.”

***

...ck…

...Zack!

Focus, Zack!

“Zack!”

The order came from somewhere above. Zack jerked, eyes flying upward in time to see a nasty looking sword slashing down right where his head would have been. He dodged and rolled over, but not before receiving a cut down his bicep. His blade parried at the last second only to meet thin air. The Midgar streets dissipated in block particles. Zack found himself back at the SOLDIER training simulation room. 

“Angeal!” Zack pulled his VR goggles off to glare at his instructor. “What gives?”

“You’re not focusing, Zack.”

“I am focused!”

“How many misses have you gotten?”

“I don’t know. Three?”

“Try again.”

Angeal gave a pointed look at the monitor behind Zack. His misses were ten. A far cry from the average point, but Zack was under Angeal’s tutelage. He should not have a single miss. 

“Is there something bothering you?” his mentor asked. 

“No.”

Too quick. Angeal clicked his tongue. He shut the simulation down. A whirring sound came from the ceiling, then the lights turned back on.

***

“I heard Sarah’s boy is coming home soon.”

The kitchen air was thick with moisture. Even opening the windows wide hadn’t helped at all, not with Gongaga’s constant sun. The stove burned hot; their pot bubbled as Zack’s mother stirred the spicy chicken stew over the fire. Why they were having something hot and spicy in this heat was lost on Zack, but he’d always loved his mother’s broths.  

Zack glanced at his mother as he helped her peel potatoes. 

“I saw her in front of her house when she received his letter.” Her lips spread in a smile. “She’s been quiet ever since her husband died, but word from her son always brings light back to her eyes.” 

“Where did he go?”

“Up north,” his mother said with a shrug. “Helping those Shinra people build a reactor or something.”

The mention of Shinra made Zack’s ears perk up. He turned his attention fully on his mother. 

“There’ve been a lot of those popping up nowadays. I think it’d be nice to have it here too. Imagine all the electricity we'd have. A massive boost to our quality of life. But your father’s quite adamant against it—saying he’d rather live by nature than be dependent on some untested technology. Though I wouldn’t say it's untested. Look at Midgar. He just doesn’t like change, but I told him maintaining a reactor would probably serve that limp of his better than working on a field. And do you know what he said?” She dropped her voice low to perfectly mimic his father’s. “‘Before you maintain it, you need to build it, and who’s going to build it if all our young, abled bodies leave the village?’” 

His mother glanced at him with a conspiratorial grin, but even that did nothing to lessen the painful twinge in his chest. Zack averted his gaze. 

“He’s not wrong,” his mother went on, “but it wouldn’t do him any harm to be more positive about it.”

Silence fell and the stirring continued. Beside him, his mother plopped sliced chicken breast into the pot. “Are you done with that?” she asked. Much to his chagrin, Zack realized his hand had stopped working. He quickly finished peeling the potatoes before handing them to her.

For a quiet while, he watched his mother work. Her soft hum tickled his ears, and before long, she’d chopped the potatoes into clean chunks and added them into the pot. She stirred the thick boiling gruel, a hand on her hip. 

“If I were to leave…” he began, but his voice failed him. His mother looked at him with a tilt of her head and a smile to her lips. Zack cast his eyes down. “Nothing.”

***

“So he kicked you out of training.” A statement, half-hearted and amused besides, which rubbed Zack even worse than if Kunsel had posed it as a question. 

After Angeal left, Zack had stormed out of the simulation room, halfway through which he’d met Kunsel, who had only finished his own training. It had only taken Kunsel one glimpse of Zack’s face before he invited Zack out to lunch. 

“Not my fault if I couldn’t focus,” Zack said, stabbing a chunk of beef in his stew. 

Kunsel’s brow quirked. His incredulous stare made Zack feel stupid. 

“Okay, fine, yes, but ten misses aren’t a big deal. You’ve made more mistakes and still finished the simulation.”

“Angeal’s not my mentor though.”

Zack opened his mouth, but whatever smart retort he’d thought of didn’t sound smart anymore. He pursed his lips, eyes shifting back to his meal. Kunsel stared at him for a few more seconds.

“Is this about your parents again?” he asked.

Zack tried and failed to hide his flinch. 

“I told you you should write to them.”

The stew before him swirled dark and thick. He scooped a spoonful of it into his mouth. A tad too bland—and too cold. It could use some of his mother’s spices. 

“Zack,” Kunsel said.

“I haven’t become a hero yet.” 

Once upon a time, he had believed a dream was all he needed in life, but the silence that followed was deafening. He would have tried to convince his friend just as he'd tried to convince his parents, but Angeal had looked at him as though he'd grown two heads and Lazard had suppressed a smile when he’d told them about it. Unattainable—that’s what the Director had said. That even people within SOLDIER said it was stupid—

“I’m not saying it's stupid,” Kunsel said after a while. Zack glanced up. His friend always had this uncanny ability to read people’s minds. “It’s good to have dreams, but ‘to become a hero’ is not something you could measure by some universal metric. Keep saying that and your parents might start thinking you’d died in a ditch somewhere.”

The sting it brought was more painful than Zack would like to admit. Across from him, Kunsel finished his meal. 

“I won’t force you to do something you don’t want, but if you ask me, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sending a simple ‘how are you’ and ‘I’m doing fine.’” Kunsel pushed himself off the table and lifted his lunch tray with him. Before turning to leave, he added, “I’m sure they'll appreciate it.”

***

His mother was one thing, but his father would never understand. Zack stared at the blank piece of paper on his desk. Dear Mom and Dad was written at the top with nothing following it. His father’s disapproving frown was still fresh in his mind. 

Make sure you stay in touch.

Zack straightened his back and gripped his pen tighter.

How are you? How’s your limp? Does Mom still make stew every night? I’m doing fine, by the way. I'm sorry I left without saying anything. I wanted to join SOLDIER. I want to become a hero… 

Even that sounded hollow in his mind now. 

Zack cast his gaze sideways in search of inspiration when he spotted a box sitting beside his would-be letter. A card rested at the top. It said, ‘Happy birthday!’ 

Zack paused. Carefully, he unwrapped the yellow ribbons and retrieved one of the many small bottles from inside. Tea leaves for his father, he now recalled, ones he'd bought on an excursion to Sector 8 a couple weeks back. The shopkeeper had said they were good for the bones.

What thoughts crossed his parents’ minds when they found his bedroom empty and clean the morning he left? Did his father curse him? Did his mother look for him? Kunsel was right. The longer he postponed, the more they’d think he’d died somewhere.

Zack stared at the blank paper.

He’d make them proud. Someday, he'd do something so extraordinary, it’d go down in history. Then he’d be the son they could be proud of.

He promised.