Archive of Our Own ^beta

Zack hesitated in the doorway of the church. He half turned, looking back inside at the sunlight pouring through the windows and motes of dust swirling through the golden beams. The flowers rustled in a wind he didn’t feel - he thought, maybe, it was meant to be reassuring.

Turning back to the open doors, he held a hand out and raised his palm to catch the rain pouring down from the gaps in the plate overhead. The sky was black with storm clouds that flickered with lightning as thunder boomed hard enough to rattle the shards of colorful glass in the windows. He stepped back, closing the door and turning around again to look at the beautiful sunshine in the utterly silent chapel. No rain fell through the holes in the ceiling. No storm shook the windows… he pressed his hand against the door, and it vibrated from the power of the wind and rain beyond it.

He remembered as a kid, watching Stamp cartoons, where a fireman had given a lesson about touching a door to find out whether it was safe to open it in the case of a house fire. If the door was hot, it was dangerous and would likely explode right towards you if you tried to open it. This felt a little like that - not hot, but just as threatening. Which was real, though? What was real? Zack wasn’t sure, anymore. Was this the parting or the coming together part of this weird-ass day?

He opened the door again and looked up, wondering if there was a bright crack in the sky on the other side of those clouds. He took one last look at the flowers that shivered in anticipation as he nodded, “I’m coming, I guess,” he said, “one way or another…”

It was tempting, once he’d stepped out into the deluge, to turn away again and go back inside, but Zack had a feeling that if he did he’d walk into a church filled with puddles - he closed the door behind him without looking, he didn’t want the temptation to go back inside and not deal with whatever weird fuckery was going on.

The main streets of the slums were more crowded with people than he’d seen since returning to Midgar, not just more people in general but the way they were acting was strange - men and women walked with purpose, not just to get out of the rain but as though they had things to do, places to be, when everyone had been listless and demoralized as the planet died around them. A handful of children splashed around him, laughing and shoving each other into deeper puddles as a dog bounded around them with joyful barks. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen someone so happy.

A small television, a black and white screen tucked under an awning at the counter of a food cart showed a bright sunny sky and the main thoroughfare of Junon decked out in red banners.

“Turn that shit off,” an old woman sitting on a bar stool just barely out of the rain waved a fist at the television, “they keep showing that stupid parade and that fancy little rifle dance every damned day - bread and circuses while Wutai sets bombs in the streets.”

“I like the fancy little rifle dance,” the man running the booth laughed, “their leader’s cute as shit, look at him!”

Zack glanced up and felt his heart constrict in his chest as the camera closed in on a familiar face. Cloud, decked out in a familiar uniform - with a much higher rank than he’d ever achieved, leading an intricate and perfectly coordinated routine he knew his buddy had loved practicing even though he’d never got to do something like this. Except, he had, maybe.

“Hey, when was this?” Zack asked, pointing up at the tv and ducking under the awning himself where he’d been standing in the rain and staring.

“Couple months ago,” the man said, scratching at a scraggly growth of stubble on his neck, “you know with the new pres’ whole coronation thing.”

“He ain’t a godsdamned king, it’s not a coronation!” the old woman snapped, slapping her hand on the table as she hopped off her stool, “have fun wanking to your propaganda Derick, I’ve got better things to watch like paint dry or mold growing on my ceiling from all the damned rain these days.”

“Rain?” Zack knew he sounded like an idiot as the word left his mouth and the guy looked like he thought Zack looked stupid too.

“Gonna buy anything or not?” The man pointed his thumb at the menu scrawled on a white board behind him, “chicken skewers on sale right now, huge load fell off a truck in sector four if you know what I mean.”

Zack shook his head and backed off, turning and rushing towards Aerith’s house with a light headed feeling pulsing in his head as he passed people doing normal things like it was a normal day, charging for food and watching TV like it was something people did at the end of the world. No one looked depressed, or well no one looked ‘we’re all about to die’ kind of depressed. The slums were a depressing place, but most people still tried to make the best of it. Or, they had, before the end of the world thing.

He looked up at the dark clouds, hoping somehow that there was a bright blue sky overhead - but if there was, what was he supposed to do now? Heart pounding in his chest, he came to a sudden stop just inside the little tunnel that led to Aerith’s house. He stared, bending over and sucking air into his lungs as he propped his hands on his knees.

Everything was green. The garden was every shade of green, and yellow, and pink, and blue, and white - flowers of every kind tucked into every corner of the yard around the house and waved in the wind from the porch in little pots. Wonder and fear filled his chest as he began to walk forward, that light feeling in his skull was like a warning, somehow. He reached out and tried the door, finding it locked as it hadn’t been when he’d left.

He hesitated, just like he’d done in the church, and gently rapped on the wood with his knuckles. Little feet pounded on the floor outside and the door flung open, Marlene’s face filled with hope as she shouted “Daddy?!”

Her face fell immediately and she took several steps back, and the words that came out of her mouth affirmed every fear that Zack had.

“Who are you?”

Slowly, he sank down into a crouch, shifting the buster sword on his back so it didn’t hit the ground and pop free of the magnet on his back. He took a small breath, not really letting himself hope, but not… not… hoping at the same time.

“I’m a friend of Aerith’s…” he said, finally, “is she home?”

Marlene shook her head, and he knew as her face scrunched up with suppressed tears that the answer was no - but the explanation wasn’t at all what he’d been expecting. “Huh-uh, my daddy went to save her from the mean man and then they didn’t come back, but daddy said he’s going to come back. He’s going to! And he’ll bring Tifa and Cloud and Aerith too with him.”

Aerith’s mother appeared in the doorway, bending down and scooping the little girl up in her arms to rest on her hip. Marlene buried her face in the front of the woman’s shirt, and it was so strange seeing something on Elmyra’s face other than grief and resignation - she’d been ready for the end like everyone else had been. Or at least the end of… of whatever this all was - where had he gone, what had that been in the church with Cloud and Sephiroth and he hadn’t seen Aerith but she’d been there!

“Are you going after them?” Elmyra asked, and she’d never trusted him not even for a second back then, when he’d met her for the first time and she’d seen his uniform and saw the pain she knew he’d bring to her daughter no matter how much he’d thought it wouldn’t ever happen.

“Yeah,” Zack nodded, “I don’t know where they went, but I’ll find ‘em.”

“Don’t make my girl cry again,” the woman scolded, rubbing small circles against Marlene’s back, “and you bring her home.”

“I’ll do my best,” Zack said, honestly. He had a feeling things were about to get a lot more complicated than they already were but…

Somewhere out there, in a world that was in danger but not quite dying… Aerith was waiting, and Cloud, and Sephiroth too - and he wasn’t about to leave them to do it alone without him.