Lithic Rune

Title: Slipstream
Rating: PG13
Summary: A world where Zack survived. Memories that say he didn't. Zack has no idea who or what he can trust when a slipstream becomes a riptide.

Chapter Five

Pain. Pain was what Zack woke up to when his mind slowly dragged him back to consciousness. It wasn’t just his head, or any one place, but a general pain everywhere, like a behemoth had rolled over him, then buried him under a pile of rubble for good measure, like some kind of giant dog with a bone it wanted to chew on later. Despite the pain, though, Zack forced himself to lie still, listening for any sounds that the fight wasn’t over.

Fight… That was right. They’d been cornered. President Shinra. The squad of ShinRa troops. Airbuster. Bit by bit, the fight came back, shouting and bullets and the clash of steel, then… nothing. There was a hole in his memory he couldn’t fill. What happened?

It was quiet. Far too quiet. And there wasn’t any mako smell. In fact, it smelled like… flowers? Confused and cautious, Zack slowly cracked open just one eye. No, his nose wasn’t lying. There were definitely flowers here. Yellow and white, nodding on green, grassy stalks, they were… familiar. He knew them.

Aerith’s church…?

Bewildered and certain there wasn’t anyone here, Zack ignored his body’s protests and pushed himself up, until he was sitting in the patch of flowers that Aerith loved so much. A few of them had been crushed underneath him, something she’d kill him for if she saw. It barely registered as important, though.

What was he doing here?

The moment he sat up and really looked around, something struck him as wrong – and it didn’t take him long to figure out what. There was too much light coming in, too much rubble, and- Holy-! A whole wall had been torn down! Zack surged to his feet, breath catching in a spike of alarm.

“What- Aerith!”

He whirled, searching for even a hint of his girlfriend’s presence in the ruined church. The wooden pews were empty, though, covered in a thin film of dust that had only been disturbed in spots. He tried to recall if Aerith would ever let that much dust collect, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember anything but flowers and dirt and her. Heart hammering, he all but launched himself at the broken pile of rock, scrambling up and peering through every crack all the while terrified that he’d see a trapped hand or a scrap of dress. But he had to know. He had to make sure!

“Aerith?! Aerith, if you’re in there, say something!” He strained his ears, listening for even a whisper of sound. A labored breath, the scrape of a hand on a rock – surely if she was in there, she’d let him know somehow.

But silence was all that greeted him, and the only thing that stirred was the dust he’d kicked up in his frantic search. Zack tried to find reassurance in that.

There wasn’t much to be found when he still had no idea what the hell had happened here.

But no sign of Aerith… That had to be a good thing. She hadn’t been here when… what? The Sector Five reactor blew up? Had the explosion been that powerful, reaching all the way into the slums? The thought made something inside his gut twist - except that didn’t make sense. The first rector’s explosion hadn’t been anywhere near powerful enough to punch through the structural integrity of the Plate, and this one shouldn’t have been any different. The Plate was built to handle anything from tectonic stress to air raids and bombs. The last thing ShinRa wanted was its crown jewel and base of power collapsing like a house of cards at the first thing to go wrong. Nothing short of taking out a support pillar should have made any difference, but any explosion above the Plate shouldn’t have even been able to touch one.

But then… what caused this? Uneasily, Zack lifted his head to stare at the gaping hole in both the ceiling and the wall. Something powerful enough to do that kind of damage… A second bomb? A monster in the slums?

There was no way to know without seeing more. Zack eyed the top of the broken wall, trying to decide if it would support him if he tried to jump up, or if he should take the extra few seconds to go out the door. Urgency and impatience nearly made the decision for him.

Nearly. Because at that moment, the old hinges of the front door creaked, and a man in dark clothes walked in. Turning, Zack half-expected to recognize one of the Turks.

He stopped in his tracks when he recognized Cloud Strife instead. Zack’s heart lurched before reality caught back up.

Dammit, not again…

He screwed his eyes shut against the vision of his friend alive and whole, with eyes that were bright and alert. Unfortunately, when he opened them again, the hallucination was still there, though slightly different from the reactor. He still wore black fatigues, still wore a charcoal vest, but the style zipped up in the front instead of just being solid knit. The pauldron on his shoulder now bore a wolf’s head, and the sword on his back wasn’t the Buster, but-

He stopped trying to catalogue the changes. None of it meant anything when he knew that Cloud was dead. Forcing out a breath, he turned to regard the rubble again. “Guess that answers that question,” he murmured. Still seeing things. Which meant none of this might even be real. He didn’t know if that would be a relief or cause for greater concern, but at least with this-

“What question?”

Zack blinked, giving Cloud a startled look. These hallucinations had never seemed aware of him before, either ignoring him or living out a false memory, but the blond was definitely looking at him, albeit briefly, before he looked away as though almost ashamed. Zack frowned at the pensive expression on the other’s face. Something about that bothered him a lot.

He considered for a moment not answering back, pretty sure that it wasn’t a good sign when you started talking to the figments of your mind, but in the end decided it couldn’t make things much worse.

And it had been so long since he’d talked to Cloud…

“Eh, you know,” he said, offering a shrug. “Just wondering if I’d gone around the bend.”

Cloud snorted softly, casting a sidelong glance at him. “You’re only wondering that now?”

Zack felt a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth despite knowing that this couldn’t be real. That quiet, wry humor was definitely Cloud. It ached to hear it again, but in the same way that reliving a good memory would. “Hey, I’ll have you know that I was an acceptable level of insane before. You don’t make it into SOLDIER without having at least a screw or two loose.” Case in point: one Zack Fair, who was talking to a dead man’s ghost.

Cloud’s mouth twitched, so briefly that Zack could almost have imagined it. “That explains so much.” His tone stayed perfectly bland.

Zack just laughed, hearing the joke for what it was. “Yeah. Yeah, it does. Come here and let me knock a few screws out of your head. You’ll be a SOLDIER in no time flat.” The threat was lighthearted, not serious in the least. He wanted to see Cloud smile again.

Instead, Cloud’s expression shuttered, wiping away any traces of whatever smile there might have been. “Zack…”