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It felt like screaming into the void. Throat raw, face covered in Zack’s blood and his own tears, Cloud attempted standing. His legs gave out halfway there and he collapsed again, struggling to think straight. He was in the eye of a hurricane, in the quiet part of the storm he’d started, and he knew he needed to leave while he still had clarity, but the emptiness in his soul was overwhelming.
Cloud was all alone, without his strength, his rock, his Zack. He shouted “Where are you?!” for about the fiftieth time, as if it could bring him back. As if anything could bring him back.
“I’m your…living legacy…” he repeated to himself, looking at the Midgar skyline. He had to make it through this, he had to live for the both of them. But, by the gods, he wanted to give up. He wanted to lay down and die and be with Zack again, even if it meant failure at the promises he’d made.
The Buster Sword rested on the ground, next to the shell of its former owner. The rain had washed the blood away from its blade, and Cloud’s reflection stared back at him. Hollow, haunted eyes, the bright blue of the mako masking the darkness that lurked within.
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I will follow you to the edge of the earth
Watch the lights finally hide behind their curtain
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Lights flashed before his eyes, and Cloud felt something changing inside him, swirling around in his head and washing everything green. His memories were slipping, and his resolve along with it. Why was he still here? He would surely die of thirst if he didn’t make his way out of the wastelands, towards whatever that glowing mass of buildings was…Midgar, that was Midgar, he’d been there a few times before. In another life.
The clouds parted, and Cloud picked up the Buster Sword, turning the hilt in his still-weak hands. Something in his elbow cracked and he dropped it with a pained yell, deciding it would be better to drag it along the ground.
He could almost hear a voice telling him not to do that, that it was disrespectful to someone’s honor, and he looked to his left to see a man lying on the ground. A familiar man...Zack, that was Zack, who’d given everything up for him, who would’ve done it a thousand times had he lived to tell the tale.
There was a sharp pain, and something broke inside of Cloud that moment. A flood of words rushed past his mind’s eye, instructions on how to survive, on how to live without the person he loved most, but something old and dark blocked the way.
It all disappeared, blown away by the wind, and the blond turned towards the city, letting the gusts dry the rain out of his stolen uniform.
Mind blank, he knew he’d lost key parts of his being. The panic rose within him when he realized he didn’t even remember his name. Vision shaking, the survivor mustered every ounce of strength he possessed and pushed the panic back down. One thing at a time. He didn’t know his name, his story, or his purpose, but he would look for it. He would walk opposite the setting sun and make his way for the city – he could find work in the city.
There was a lingering feeling of loss, and the sudden knowledge that a huge part of his soul was missing. The survivor pushed that away too. He didn’t need his soul to make it out of the wastelands, and he didn’t want it when he did find work. The word mercenary came to mind. That’s what he’d be.
The word rested on his conscience like something found, but he couldn’t place why. There was something yellow, something blue, something warm and comforting. Then the idea dissolved into the oceans of his broken memory, and Cloud took his first steps forward.
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I will meet you there at the end of the age
Catch the sounds as they slowly, softly melt away
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The blond didn’t wake up, exactly. It was more like his body had gone somewhere without letting him know, and he was just now catching up.
Red lights flashed, and he realized he’d been here before. A security check, it was called. Sirens started blaring and he could tell something was wrong, but he didn’t want to deal with it. So he didn’t, letting his mind slip back into fog.
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Every passing day, it brings another piece in view
Another joy, another secret beauty perfectly, perfectly you
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The first thing he remembered was Tifa.
A dirty brick path and an old friend were waiting for him when the train man threw him out, leaving him in sector seven with nothing more than a statement of pity and the sword strapped to his back.
“Are you all right?” she asked, putting her hand to his forehead as if to check if he was sick. He wasn’t sick, he was sure of that. Tired, yes, and very confused, but not sick. Mercenaries didn’t get sick. SOLDIERs don’t get sick, another part of his mind said.
He looked up, and her brown eyes were full of concern and something like remorse, and the expression was familiar. She’d looked at him that way before. Someone else had too, but he couldn’t remember their name or their face.
He knew hers, though. “Uh…uh…Tifa?”
She seemed relieved that he knew who she was, holding out a hand and a kind smile to help up, and that was familiar, too. The beginnings of a story formed in his head, and he was fairly certain he was remembering who he was. Or at least enough to pass as a functional human being. Tifa shook her head in astonishment. “Cloud?”
He stood up on shaky legs – from exhaustion, he told himself, not sickness – and straightened his posture. “That’s right. I’m Cloud.”
There was still something missing – Tifa seemed positive, like the train man, that he was sick with something bad. Cloud assured her that it was nothing, that he was fit as a fiddle and an ex-First Class to boot. That seemed consistent with the story in his head, so he figured it had to be true.
But when she asked him how long it’d been, something strange happened. A thunder in his brain, and a lightning in his eyes – time seemed to stop, and something called out to him. Something dark, something departed, something broken. Like him, except there was a desperation to it, a determination to make things right, in contrast to Cloud’s halfhearted goal of survival.
In the blink of an eye, it stopped. But as the days wore on, it kept happening, again and again, until Cloud grew terrified of the part of himself that didn’t want to get with the program.
The next time was after he met Aerith in her church, when a man in a dark suit walked in and and looked like he’d seen a ghost. The third time, when Barret asked him if he knew his way around Shinra’s headquarters.
It was clear that something was very wrong when Cloud had to tell the story of Sephiroth, of Nibelheim’s burning and their subsequent duel. No one knew what had really happened…it shouldn't have been possible to fight the Silver General and live, but here he was, fighting for the Planet with a ragtag band of revolutionaries.
So while Barret searched for a way to stop Shinra and Aerith searched for answers about her heritage, Cloud searched for the truth about his past, a search that took them across continents and oceans, through life and death, all the way to the North Crater. He would learn the truth. He must.
And Sephiroth seemed very happy to provide on that front. Except that was after he’d declared his intentions to destroy the world and brutally murdered Aerith, so Cloud wasn’t too inclined to trust him.
His story was nonsense – Sephiroth claimed that he’d never been in Nibelheim, that he was a failed science experiment built from Jenova cells and Tifa’s memories. Lies, he was sure of it.
Cloud told Tifa the photograph on the ground was an illusion, but neither of them believed it. It was written all over her face, and the face that had replaced his in the photo tugged at some part of his mind and his heart, but a wall was blocking the way.
His – Zack’s – kind eyes and confident posture reminded Cloud a lot of who he was, who he was trying to be. But he couldn’t be trying to be Zack, he never knew him, the image had to be a fake and so what if he didn’t remember getting into SOLDIER? He had the enhancements and the equipment to prove that he was who he said, Nibelheim or no Nibelheim.
When the truth was finally revealed, after what he later learned was his second battle with mako poisoning, it was a sucker punch to the heart.
Cloud could forgive Tifa for everything she’d left unsaid – he was probably the least mentally stable person on the Planet, and taking care of him had always been like sneaking past death’s door. It had taken his mother, his friends, Aerith.
And as he stood in the lab, the prison where he’d lost five years of his life, he remembered that it took Zack, too. He felt the pain again, the void where his soul used to be, and he knew he would never be truly whole again.
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Give me year after year, but my love for you won’t change
Cause you covered all my senses
And I just want to go back to that time and place
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He trekked through a forest of grief, memories floating past every so often and making it all the harder to keep going, to keep living for the both of him like he promised he would.
Zack, who threw his whole being into everything he did, who did all in his power to protect the people he loved, who had led him through teenage misery and the hell that was beyond.
Zack, who had eyes like the summer sky after a storm and a heart to match, who could make Cloud’s whole world better with a smile and a ruffle of his hair, who refused to let him face the world alone.
There was not a single thing he could do without him. He wasn’t fit to be anyone’s family, anyone’s help, anyone’s hero. Zack had made him his living legacy, but he’d taken all the best parts of Cloud with him when he left. All his love was in the Lifestream, waiting to be reunited, and there was no fix for it unless he could turn back time.
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Every step, every breath
I will not forget our story
The sun is coming out again
But it ain’t like the fire you’ve shown me
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It was a quiet day in spring, years after the Geostigma, when one last memory found its way back to him. Or was it just a dream? Whichever it was, Cloud would cherish it for the rest of his days.
Denzel knew the drill by now, taking the driver’s seat in his cherished motorcycle. He’d grown up so quickly, learning how to be a man while Cloud was stuck on learning how to be human again.
The memory was a vignette, a small glimpse into his lost years, the parts of his time in Shinra that never resurfaced. A dark day in Nibelheim, a break from watching over the library. Anxious hearts entwined, calloused fingers laced together. A confession of love. Laughter, and a happiness that rivaled anything Cloud experienced before or after.
In the eye of the hurricane, Zack changed the game. He must’ve known, known that they were running out of time, and he made the most of every second they had left. The last piece had fallen into place, the final chord played after so many years of waiting for it. He made me so happy…but Tifa, Barret, Denzel…they can help me be happy, too.
“Are you okay?” Denzel asked, Cloud’s old goggles masking his expression.
“I’ll be okay,” he answered, and he meant it with all his being.
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Grey fades to blank sky
There is nothing good about goodbyes
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Even if he’d spend the rest of his life making it up to his living friends, for everything he’d done and and everything he’d failed to do, he’d be okay. They’d all be together again one day.
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I still see your face each morning
I still hear your voice call for me
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Cloud would see Zack again. It was only a matter of time, and he would make the most of what he had left. The people still alive – they deserved the patched-up remnants of his heart. He wasn’t alone, he never had been.
There was one more promise he would make to Zack, one he knew he could keep, one he knew would honor his legacy more than words or deeds.
I will not forget our story.