Embrace Your Dreams

Wrong.

Everything seemed wrong, somehow. Heavy, like Zack had been awake for too long, or like he'd just come back in after an afternoon of throwing down with toads in the jungle back home, before his SOLDIER days, where he'd spend hours running around and then occasionally hopping around and his parents would scold him for worrying them but he was already halfway to curling up to nap for hours, and how were his parents doing these days anyway? He should check in with them sometime...

He shook his head to try to clear it from the fog, but shaking it just left him more dazed, made it harder to focus on the way the surroundings he was sitting amongst were all wrong, like someone had scraped away layer upon layer of the scrawlings of a madman to leave only broken stone and mako bubbling up from below.

He was sitting in caverns that hadn't seen any life besides him for a long, long while.

He frowned. Pulled out his PHS to see how long he had been down for the count, and then... frowned some more. His inbox was full of new messages, and idly he found himself scrolling through them, brow furrowing as he read an invite to coffee from Kunzel, an update from his Fan Club talking about... his favorite flavor of ice cream, apparently. And it wasn't wrong. They were super well-informed. But...

He frowned a little bit more.

There, a message from Cissnei inviting him to Rosalind's birthday party. There, a reminder of a bill that needed to be paid to keep the utilities running to his room in the ShinRa building. A whole chain of messages just shooting the shit with a trainee in the infantry who had wanted some extra pointers before he went off on a mission. An update from Tifa on her exploits in starting a small-scale chocobo ranch operation in...

... Nibelheim.

Zack felt nauseated, felt like he was peeking in on a life he had no business peeking in on, and by some strange quirk of fate, that life was his own. Experimentally, he pivoted at the waist, and was relieved, in a strange way, to feel the familiar pull of old scars over his torso as he did so.

So.

So... what was this?

This... was wrong.

[OOC: Apparently our approach to breaking canon is 'go big or go home!' For one, NFB for distance!]

It had been a rush, once Rufus' ticket had set the wheels in motion, to get everything in order and go. Zack had picked up his new sword from Amaya yesterday - had paid for it in materia he'd had kicking around - and had left the buster sword in her care. He'd arranged for Summer to take over administration of the shelter while he was away, since he had no idea how long he'd be away, and to take care of Girl, because there was no way he was bringing his dog along to a world where the main seat of government was willing to waste endless infantry on hunting him down in an attempt to kill him or drag him back to hell.

And he... really didn't have much else to arrange for, beyond that, but he'd done it all around snowman attacks and locating supplies to make this trek across The Planet a little smoother than the last one. He wasn't hauling a comatose person around this time and he'd had two years to heal after escaping Nibelheim. He liked his odds.

Even if the portal spat him out somewhere in Mideel.

Even if the moment he was through it, two dozen Genesis copies all looked up from what they were doing and attacked him in unison.

A grin slowly cut across Zack's face as he unsheathed his sword.

He was back home. And apparently he had more work to do than he'd thought while looking for Iris.

[OOC: This is not a permanent arrangement, nah, but the puppy had some loose ends that needed tying up back home because GUESS WHO FORGOT TO TAKE CARE OF GENESIS TWO YEARS AGO. GUESS. it was me, hello hi. NFB for distance, can be open for phone calls/texts if anybody's phone has a charge!]

After he'd finished covering the radio broadcast for Rufus, wherever he had gone, Zack went home, got his dog, took her for a walk, and then headed to the school with her to find his way to his office.

It was a very empty office, what with this being his first time ever setting foot in it, but that was fine. It wasn't like he was planning on spending much time here, right? All of his students knew they could find him at the animal shelter if they needed anything, and the shelter came with bonus puppies!

The fact that this office was so sparse was hopefully at least a little broken up by how he had his dog here, though? Girl kind of had a funny way of bringing cheer to any room she was in.

And now... Zack waited? For people. If there were going to be any.

Maybe he'd just pass the time by doing squats. Yeah!

For the entire day.

[OOC: Open!]

Zack woke up today and noted with some satisfaction that life was pretty okay. He'd had a good holiday with Ino, there was a dog sleeping across their feet, last night had been good in ways he hadn't anticipated it would be for some time, yet...

Good.

And he hadn't really expected that it ever could be again, especially not here. He was smiling as he slipped out of bed, leading the dog into the kitchen so he could dole out her breakfast before rummaging for bread and the toaster and putting on the pot for coffee. Yeah, today could keep whatever this was up. He'd like that.

[OOC: Open for the little, and the lady, and anybody who might want to visit or call, sure!]

To say that it was surreal to be back on the island again after so long would be something of an understatement.

To day that it was surreal to be in an unfamiliar apartment, staring out one of the windows at an all too familiar island, not having to worry about anything more dangerous than a gremlin?

Well, it was accurate. And also an understatement. The situation was complicated, and Zack was antsy. Their portal from Konoha had dropped them off almost right beside the back door of the Boards, and the key had been in the mailbox, just as Jono had promised Ino it would be. There were a few boxes here and there in the upstairs apartment, but Zack had barely noticed them, mostly just finding himself standing in awkward silence just trying to process the idea of being indoors.

He kept looking around in a quiet panic, trying to spot Cloud. Then he remembered; Cloud was in Konoha. Cloud was in good hands. Better hands than his own. He was a very sick man.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the blue-skinned apple that he'd been handed yesterday, looking at it in silence. And then he set it on the windowsill and started to pace again. For all that he'd been called a puppy in his lifetime, today he felt somewhat more like a coeurl in a cage. The island was just outside that window. This was real.

"This is real," he said again, out loud. Maybe if he repeated it enough, he'd even believe it.


[OOC: For she who is here with him!]

Zack was tired. Bone tired. Bone tired and heartsick, following the road toward Gongaga with a sort of exhausted stubbornness that would have seemed at least slightly more reasonable if he wasn't hauling a comatose kid around with him all the way from Nibelheim. Cloud was slowing him down. There was no question about that. He'd been able to stop for fuel a few times since his encounter with Genesis farther back along the highway, but doing so without raising suspicions, given that they were both dressed in the garb of SOLDIER, was a tricky endeavor. They had to travel only at night, and Cloud wasn't much help with anything. Zack had to stop on more than one occasion to fight off monsters that jumped out onto the highway, slowing him down even more. His stockpile of potions was running low. And food? Food was even harder.

He wished he had an easy way out of this. Wished it didn't hurt so damn much to think about who was and wasn't safe to trust. He'd never had difficulty trusting before, but...

The only one who had made any effort to check up on him in what was at least months was Kunsel. Genesis apparently wanted to eat him or something, the Turks had been there when Hojo had taken him in, and Ino...

Well, she'd been paying the phone bill. But she hadn't reached out to him. So... which was it? Did she know he was alive but was unable to make a call? Was she with out the Turks trying to find him? Maybe she just hadn't gotten around to cancelling the phone bill. He had no idea how long he'd been gone, though it felt like almost forever.

He glanced at Cloud, set in the sidecar in a way that hopefully would keep him from lolling over too much while he rode. And then he pulled over, dug out his phone, and tapped out just one word.

Ino?

It took him another several minutes of just sitting there on the shoulder of the highway to nerve himself up to it, but eventually, heart pounding in his ears, he hit send.

[OOC: For she who knows who she is!]

You call yourself SOLDIER?

Everything was dark and pain. It always was. But there was that voice, Angeal's voice, cutting into the darkness, and Zack found himself opening his eyes to see him there, white-winged and disappointed, looking at him from the other side of the thick glass that had been his only barrier to freedom for years.

You tarnish the SOLDIER name.

It couldn't possibly be real. Angeal was dead. And the way that Angeal turned and flew away, in spite of the fact that they were somewhere underground, ignoring the way Zack pounded his hand feebly against the glass, just cemented it.

Zack's world went blindingly white for a moment. And then everything was sky. Another dream. It was always a dream. But he flinched away from the glare as though it hurt his eyes all the same, and then looked up to see a single white feather drifting down toward him. He watched in confusion as it floated down past him, to settle at his feet on a liquid sky, sending out ripples as though from water. And then he looked up again, in the direction that Angeal had flown.

"Those wings," he murmured. "I want them too."

( The world shattered. )

[OOC: I meant to do this a month ago BUT I DON'T CARE. LOOK AT ME GO. WILD AND FREE. Ahem. This was all adapted from Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII because... Crisis Core. Zack is currently not answering his phone anyway, what with being a fugitive and all, so OOC is welcome if anyone has any, but post is NFI otherwise.]

[OOC: I'm pretty sure most of the game has him defriended. But today was the day that I was going to throw him into Nibelheim - There's a calendar with his name on it, it's been marked down and waiting there for years - and it feels wrong, somehow, to just let it pass without anything at all.

So, fic. Today, for a Puppy...]



Everything is a blur. A blur of hot blues and freezing reds, all tied up in the green haze of the mako bubbling up from down below. You feel your body trying to shut down around you, silently curse yourself for using the last of your Potions, for wanting to save that other Phoenix Down for another day. You couldn't cast a Cura now if your life depended on it.

Maybe it does.

The steps are cool against your face, but all wrong angles, sharp and uncomfortable and an unwanted reminder that you're still alive. You are. You refuse to let go. You let him wander alone up there, let him take a sword, just infantry, not even SOLDIER, like yourself, to face the greatest. To face the madman that probably killed you. And that... that should bother you more. So many things should bother you more than they are, right now. But every time your eyes slide closed, you see white feathers, and that seems inviting, somehow. Just feathers. Enough to ignore the faraway sounds of fighting, up the stairs and away in another room, in another world. For a moment, you slip away to be with those feathers.

For that moment, everything seems a little clearer, a little less immediate and painful and stark. It's weird, you think, how letting your mind slide away into that kind of haze can bring the whole world into focus. You remember the girl you left behind for this mission, all bright eyes and a playful smile and you ache again, even here in the mist, surrounded by the sun and the sky on all sides, to be able to reach out for her. To be able to hold her and whisper to her and tell her that everything is going to be okay.

Everything... will be okay... right?

The feathers are silent.

And then the sound of footsteps above you jolt you bodily back into the present, onto the angles pressing against you and the pain and the tiredness, and you don't need to look up to know that he's hurt too. That you sent him away and you killed him. Your heart aches as he falls, as that shock of bloodied blond hair comes into view, and you murmur your reassurances, he tried, he did well, and you try to reach for him, to pat him on the shoulder as you always used to, but even that's too much.

Feathers. Clarity. The sky. One of your friends used to be terrified of that sky. And you'll never get to show it to her, beyond letting her look into your eyes.

Pain. White jackets and stretchers. The occasional black suit shifting into your blurred vision. The Turks are here, maybe she's here too, not your friend, the other one, the one you want to spend all of your life with. And you can, now. They have you. They'll help you, because they're friends. They're family. They'll help you and they'll help him and see? Everything will be okay, you tell the feathers.

But the feathers just seem so sad, so tired, as that twisted laugh cuts into your thoughts, and you can't even cry out, can't even struggle when you realize what it means.

Nothing is going to be okay again.

Live or die today, your life is over.

The trip to Icicle had been... long, to say the least. From Midgar to Junon by chopper. From Junon up farther North still, this time by boat. And then, once they'd landed on the Icicle continent, there were transport trucks to cover the rest of the way. Somewhere in there, Zack had been briefed on the mission. Something or other to do with AVALANCHE, but they weren't really his specialty, and he was way too excited about the fact that he even had work again to pay too much attention.

The trucks had stopped at the rendezvous point, where he was supposed to meet up with a couple more members of SOLDIER and a Turk, and there they waited.

... And waited.

And waited.

Really, with all of this waiting, Zack could hardly be blamed for dozing off the way he did, could he? All he needed was a quick nap, anyhow.

[NFB for distance, yay! For those NPCs that he is waiting for, wheee! This is all going to be ganked pretty solidly from some inconsequential canon bits, a-la Before Crisis, because I like keeping up on these things like a weirdo. Warning, for impending NPC Death also.]

It had been a bit of a roundabout trip out of Junon for Zack and Ino, yes. They'd managed to thumb a drive as far as Fort Condor, and the walk to the cave from there hadn't been terrible. Actually, Zack had been pleasantly surprised to see that at least that much hadn't changed. Caves were going to be caves no matter what year he was wandering around in.

Really, it was a shame that he couldn't say the same for apparently every human settlement ever.

Past the cave, it was the swamp, which they managed to slog through with surprisingly little difficulty.

Zack dusted his hands off on his shirt as they continued their way through the bog, leaving a giant, cobra-like carcass behind them.

"Man," he mumbled, looking at the piddly 400 Gil that he'd picked off the corpse, "they really just don't make monsters the same way that they used to."

[For That Girl and phone calls!]