[Fic] Too Good To Be True - FFVII, Zack/Cloud, 2/?
I wanted to get this done by Thursday so it would be a week between posting, but yesterday and the day before were really busy for me. >.<

Several people have asked, so I want to clarify a couple of things:

This is not part of the Got Your Back continuity. This story sticks to canon, in that Zack was already a 2nd Class when Cloud joined Shinra. I want to explore what happens when their unbalanced friendship suddenly becomes a relationship of equals,and in GYB they started out as equals so it wouldn't have the same impact.

Secondly, 'not updated as often as GYB' means probably once a week, rather than once every two or three days. ^_^;;; When I'm working on stories, I tend to write at an insane pace. So no worries about being left to hang for weeks or months! My 'not as often' is faster than most people's 'posted regularly'.

Title: Too Good To Be True
Series: Final Fantasy VII
Pairing: Zack/Cloud, probably some Cloud/Tifa or mention thereof, same for Zack/Aerith
Rating: R, eventual NC-17
Warnings: violence, sex, yaoi, the usual.
Chapter Length: 6372
Total Length: 11,608
Author's Note: This takes place after AC, and is slightly AU in that Zack would not have been present with Aerith in the moments when Cloud touched the Lifestream. Or just tell yourself he was hallucinating Zack, if you like.

When things seem too good to be true it usually means there's a catch hidden somewhere. But hasn't Cloud earned his happy ending ten times over?

ETA: A new picture from ravyn_09! Minor spoiler for the chapter. Remember to leave feedback and feed the artist, because the artist is inspiring me to write faster, so you get two for the price of one. ^____^



The feel of the sun on his skin and the wind in his face was so startling that Zack had to stop just outside the doors, soaking it in. They were far enough into the mountain range that they didn't have a clear view in any direction, but just being able to see farther than the wall on the other side of the room was a novel experience as well. It was at the same time familiar and unfamiliar; he'd spent a lot of time outdoors in his life, but three years in a lab had made everything seem new and strange.

He remembered this from the last time they'd escaped, as well. At that time he'd been too distracted by trying to avoid the Turks and troopers to really pay attention to the newness of everything, more worried about getting them out alive than noticing minor details. This time he had a chance to appreciate it all.

"Gorgeous," he sighed in contentment, scanning the view from where they stood. "Gods, it's so good to feel the sun. Where are we?"

"South of Kalm," Cloud told him, moving forward to stand beside his friend. There was a small but completely sincere smile on the blond's face, and his eyes were soft as he watched Zack take everything in. "I guess Hojo didn't want to deal with the hassle of going farther than that every time he wanted to visit his lab. I'm pretty sure Shinra didn't know about this one. Not officially."

"Yeah, I think you're right," Zack agreed absently. His eyes tracked an eagle soaring over the valley, and the uncomplicated delight in his expression was like a little kid opening presents on his birthday. "What happened to him, anyway? I haven't seen him in a while, and you've been referring to him in the past tense." He glanced at Cloud with one eyebrow raised. He wouldn't cry if the bastard was dead, but it would be good to know for sure.

"He's gone," Cloud confirmed, his eyes narrowed and a light of vicious satisfaction flaring in them. "I made sure of that myself. There wasn't much left of him by the end; he used his research on himself, and fused himself with Jenova."

"Jenova." Zack's expression turned hard. To him that name meant little more than the project of Hojo's that he knew he and Cloud had been part of, and it had something to do with the events that had led to Sephiroth's death all those years before. "I take it that's part of the long story?"

"The heart of it," Cloud returned sourly. "Jenova and Sephiroth have been the root of everything that's gone wrong since Nibelheim. With Hojo as a willing accomplice, of course."

"Sephiroth?" Blinking, Zack stared at him. "Seph survived? You threw him into the reactor core!" He'd relived those events often enough to be certain of them, even though the mako had eaten holes into almost everything else. Surely even Sephiroth couldn't be powerful enough to survive that.

The way Cloud's shoulders tensed and he ducked his head was not a good sign. Zack winced, regretting his hasty words. Zack had looked up to and admired their general, but Cloud had worshipped the man. And it had been Cloud's hometown that Sephiroth had burned. If Zack saw his actions that night as a horrible betrayal of trust, how much worse must it have been for Cloud?

"It's a..." Cloud started, and Zack sighed and cut him off.

"Long story, yeah, I know." Reaching out in an instinctive desire to comfort the younger man, Zack slung an arm over Cloud's shoulders. "Let's find somewhere quiet and comfortable so you can tell me all about it. Preferably somewhere with easy access to alcohol, from the sounds of it."

"It would probably help," Cloud agreed dryly. Whether he meant it would help Zack to hear it, or him to tell the story in the first place, even he wasn't sure. Both, most likely. "I just want to seal the door, and then we can leave. The last thing we want is the techs coming back to destroy or steal all the records. We might still need them."

Turning, he pulled free of Zack's embrace with a pang of regret. As much as he'd protested all the touching before, now he found it a reassuring reminder that Zack was real, solid and right here beside him. He had a feeling it would be a very long time before he'd be happy to have Zack out of reach, let alone out of sight.

The door to the lab was well hidden, cleverly disguised to look like the rock around it. The elevator it led to went down halfway to forever, or so it had seemed when he was riding it. Lifting his hand, Cloud activated the single materia he'd slotted into an old bracer for this trip. First Tsurugi didn't have materia slots; nothing was made with them any more. Now that everyone knew the truth about the nature of mako, materia weren't being produced any more and the existing ones were rarely used. People had a tendency to panic when they saw magic these days, fearing its use would cause the planet to retaliate again.

Bolt 3 was a powerful spell, beyond the ability of most people to cast. It was more than powerful enough to fuse the door into the rock around it, leaving it glassy and solid. Nodding in satisfaction, Cloud dropped his hand and turned his back on it. Nobody would be able to get in easily now, but if he needed to he could still blast it free again.

"Nice casting," Zack complimented him, raising an eyebrow as he watched Cloud return. He was impressed, and it showed how much Cloud had improved from the awkward young boy Zack had once worked with. Back then Cloud probably wouldn't even have been able to cast the second level Bolt spell, but he didn't look the least bit drained now after casting Bolt 3.

He had to keep reminding himself that Cloud was effectively a SOLDIER now. He'd had the same mako treatments they got, and then some. For that matter, Zack was going to have to relearn his own abilities and limitations, because it was a damn sure bet Hojo had changed something.

Later, though. All of that could wait until later, if they weren't going to have to be running from Shinra troops. Zack still couldn't quite wrap his mind around that one, but he trusted that Cloud knew what he was doing.

"Did you ride a chocobo up here?" Zack asked, tilting his head. "We're going to make an interesting spectacle, trying to ride double."

Snorting in amusement at the mental image, Cloud smiled slightly again. "No. I only take them out if I'm going somewhere really inaccessible by bike, or where there are still a lot of big monsters around when I don't feel like fighting. We'll still have to ride double, but Fenrir's big enough for both of us."

"Off-road bike, huh? Sounds like fun," Zack said, grinning. "Lead the way, then!"

The bike wasn't far, and Zack whistled appreciatively when he saw it. "Sweet wheels. Custom job?" he asked, running his hand over the exhaust pipes and crouching to get a better look at the engine. "What the hell is this? That's not a mako engine." He poked at the unfamiliar configuration, baffled. "What does it run on?"

"Everything is a custom job these days," Cloud told him softly, standing back and letting his friend check it over. "It runs on refined oil. Not nearly as efficient and clean as mako, but..." But the reactors had all been shut down, and you couldn't buy mako for love or money these days. They were slowly developing alternative sources of energy, but being set back more than fifty years in terms of energy technology had been a painful blow to the world. He didn't want to explain that just yet. He also didn't mention that he'd built it mostly with parts scavenged from the ruin of Shinra's warehouses, because that would require going into more detail about why they were ruined.

"We can make you one, too," he added almost shyly. The hours he'd spent working on the bike had been soothing, letting him concentrate on nothing more complicated or life-threatening than connecting hoses to valves and making sure they worked. He couldn't think of anything he would enjoy doing more than sitting around with Zack, putting a bike together. There were still plenty of parts around, if you knew the right places to look. "If you want."

"Sounds like a plan," Zack agreed, his eyes lighting up as he stood and dusted his hands off. "I don't suppose you're going to let me drive?"

"In your dreams," Cloud retorted, his smile growing. "You get to ride pillion for once." Moving over to it, he hit the release for the sides, and Zack jumped out of the way as the holders for the pieces of First Tsurugi opened out. Pulling the sword out of the holster at his hip, Cloud quickly broke it apart and slipped the pieces in where they belonged before shutting the sides again.

"Okay, I want a really good look at that sword sometime soon," Zack said, fascinated. "And I want to see you fight with it. What good is a sword that comes apart?"

Cloud's smile turned into something closer to a smirk. "You'll see." Finally, finally he was going to be able to face Zack on equal terms! Some of his returning memories were of sparring sessions, and he remembered his frustration with the fact that Zack had always had to hold back for him. Not any more. Hades, Cloud might even beat him. He'd taken on Sephiroth multiple times, after all, and Sephiroth had been better than Zack.

The reminder made his smile vanish and the light in his eyes fade, and he tugged on his goggles quickly before Zack could ask about the sudden change. "Climb on," he invited as he slung his leg over the bike and settled himself.

Deciding that now was not the time to ask, Zack nodded and slid onto the seat behind the blond. This felt decidedly odd; they'd ridden together often enough in the past, but it had always been Cloud clinging to his back, not the other way around. Odd, but not unpleasant. Grinning, Zack set his hands on Cloud's hips and tucked his feet up as they pulled away from the lab door.

No, not unpleasant in the least. Zack was delighted to discover that Cloud drove like a SOLDIER, with a reckless abandonment that would have been suicidal in anyone with slower reflexes. Whooping with glee at the feel of the wind on his face and in his hair, Zack hung on to Cloud's waist and revelled in it.

Hearing Zack shout with joy like that brought Cloud's smile right back again, and he dismissed his dark thoughts for the moment. It was impossible to brood when Zack was around and obviously enjoying himself. He nudged the throttle to coax a bit more speed from the bike, racing down the mountain trail towards the main road. Zack moved with him on the turns as easily as if they shared one mind, and Cloud let himself just enjoy it.

They reached the flatlands far too soon. Cloud could have kept going for days with only the rushing wind and Zack's laughter for company. Once they reached the plains Zack settled down against him, no longer cheering and egging him on, and they passed the rest of the trip in companionable silence.

Kalm was pretty much the way Zack remembered it, a quaint little village that capitalized on its differences from Midgar to attract tourists and troops on leave. At the same time there were some major changes, most notably the utter lack of anyone or anything bearing the Shinra logo. His memories weren't that fuzzy, and he knew the place should have been crawling with troops in Shinra blue.

There were also signs of recent reconstruction on most of the buildings, as if something had happened to damage everything at once. The damage pattern wasn't right for a fire, and this was the wrong area for earthquakes. Even the monsters in this area were weak enough that they shouldn't have been able to cause that sort of chaos.

"What happened?" he asked as Cloud slowed the bike to a more respectable pace, in order to keep from terrorizing the pedestrians and the rare other drivers. "More of the long story?"

"Yeah," Cloud nodded, glancing at the damage and shrugging. Kalm had fared surprisingly well, especially compared to Midgar. The damage wrought by the meeting of Holy and Meteor had been compounded by the sudden loss of mako energy and everything that ran on it. Humans were remarkably resilient, but it would take time before the last of the scars were erased, even here.

Pulling up outside the inn, he swung off the bike and pulled the goggles off. He put the first three pieces of First Tsurugi together again, but hesitated before slipping it into its sheath. Turning, he offered it to Zack. "Here. Until we can get you a sword," he offered.

"Why, something happen to my old one?" Zack asked, surprised. He took the offered blades, testing the weight and balance of them and deciding they - it? - would work well enough. "I thought you said you had it in Midgar."

"It's not in very good shape any more," Cloud admitted with a wince. Two years on the cliff had weathered the blade badly. He'd never thought he would use it again, preferring to leave it as a marker for what he'd thought was the place where its owner had died.

Taking the last three pieces of his sword, he put them into their holders at his hip and locked the bike up. He wasn't actually anticipating any trouble, but he'd learned a long time ago never to go anywhere without at least one weapon. His vague memories of working with Zack suggested the older man was probably the same way.

"So, what's your first priority?" Cloud asked as they walked up the steps and into the inn. "Food, a bath, sleep, or the story?"

"Tough choice," Zack replied, considering. "I want to say 'story', but in all honesty I think the bath and food are going to have to come first. Sleep can wait until later. I didn't do much but doze when I was in the tanks anyway." It had been easier to just let himself sleep or drift off into the whispers of the mako than try to hold himself together.

Cloud remembered that well enough from his days in the lab, so he nodded. "All right. Why don't you..."

He hesitated, torn. The obvious thing to do was suggest that Zack grab his bath while Cloud scrounged up food - and alcohol. But that meant splitting up and losing sight of his friend.

Get a grip, he ordered himself firmly. Either this was real, in which case Zack wasn't going to vanish the moment Cloud turned his back. Or it was a dream, in which case... well, he'd like to keep dreaming as long as possible, but he'd wake up eventually, whether or not Zack was right beside him.

"You go up and clean up, and I'll get us food and the like," Cloud forced himself to say reluctantly.

No more anxious to be separated than Cloud was, Zack grimaced but admitted it was the best course of action. He was truly desperate for a bath, since he hadn't had a chance to clean up after being in the mako tank. His hair was a mess of wild spikes, and he could still feel traces of the mako on his skin. Anyway, following the blond around like a lost puppy was a bit more pathetic than he wanted to be.

"All right," he agreed, just as reluctantly. Hearing the same grudging tone in his own voice that had been in Cloud's, Zack had to laugh. "We make a fine pair, don't we? Tell you what. I promise I'll still be there if you will." He offered his hand.

Looking at it for a moment, Cloud finally gave the older man that little smile again and took it in his. "Deal," he agreed, squeezing Zack's fingers as the brunet did the same. It was still hard to turn his back and walk away, but Zack had never broken a promise to him yet. That he remembered, anyway.

It took longer for Cloud to get the food and alcohol than he'd anticipated. When he'd approached the tavern part of the inn, he'd frozen on being asked what he'd like to have for dinner. Presumably at one point he'd known Zack's preferences for that sort of thing, but he hadn't the first clue now. He'd finally just ordered some of everything, grateful the menu was limited, but it was a stark reminder of everything that had changed.

By the time Cloud made it upstairs to their room Zack had emerged from a blissfully hot shower and was sitting on the edge of one bed, finger-combing his hair. The dark strands still tended to spike oddly, especially at the back, but they were at least somewhat less disorganized than before. He could have stayed in the shower forever, except that the hot water had run out far too quickly.

"Hey," he greeted the younger man as Cloud came in with a tray full of food that smelled delicious. Actually, Shinra field rations would probably have looked pretty good to him after years of the gruel they'd fed him in the labs, so it was a little hard for him to judge the quality of the food. "Whatever that is, I hope you've got plenty of it, because I'm starving."

"There's lots," Cloud assured him, brow furrowed as he walked with his eyes on the food to avoid spilling any of the over-full plates. "And more where that came from if we need it. Go easy, though. You don't want to make yourself..." He glanced up once he'd set the tray down, and the words died in his mouth as his throat closed. Zack was dressed in nothing but the stolen pants and a towel around his shoulders. He'd lost some of the muscle definition in his chest and arms from spending so long inactive, but less than Cloud might have expected. He'd been in too much shock to really pay attention back in the lab. Zack looked... he looked...

A fierce blush crept its way over Cloud's face, and he ducked his head again and had to brace himself against the table as another wash of memories flooded him. It seemed he'd had a rather painful crush on his best friend, the existence of which he'd forgotten about until just that moment. In all honesty it didn't really surprise him, despite the fact that he hadn't consciously realized he had any interest in other men.

After all, who wouldn't have a crush on Zack?

Concerned by the way Cloud had gone abruptly silent and then leaned against the table like he was dizzy, Zack left off fussing with his hair and stood to make his way to the younger man's side. The bright red shade of the blond's face wasn't reassuring. "You okay, kid?" he asked putting a hand on Cloud's shoulder to steady him.

"Yeah," Cloud said hastily, flushing darker and hoping his thoughts hadn't been written all over his face. None of his newly returned memories indicated whether or not Zack had known about the crush, and this wasn't exactly the way he'd like the man to find out. "I'm fine. It's just... memories." He shook his head and straightened, pressing the back of his hand to his heated face. "Every so often I'll look at you, and something will trigger all these memories that I'd thought were gone forever. It's disorienting."

"Ah." Yeah, Zack could understand that. He hadn't actually lost any memories - he didn't think - but he'd lost enough details from many of them that he could imagine what having them suddenly return would be like. "How much had you lost?"

"Everything from the first time I left Nibelheim to when the three of us returned, pretty much," Cloud said, a touch bitterly. "And even the later part is scrambled. For a long time I didn't remember you at all... I thought I was you." That was hard to admit. How awful was it to forget your best friend, the person who'd gone through hell to rescue your unresponsive body, and then to steal his very life? "I went around telling everyone I was a SOLDIER. I believed it."

"Mako can fuck with your head that way," Zack told him softly, squeezing his shoulder. "At least you kept the first part of your life. You didn't forget who you were entirely. But who can blame you for not wanting to remember all the shit you'd been through, and editing it so you came out looking a little better? I'm flattered you picked me."

Astonished, Cloud stared at him. That was so far from any of the reactions he'd expected that he didn't quite know how to process it. "Zack, I forgot you," he said, his voice cracking with stress. "I stole your life and forgot about you! How can you be flattered?"

"Cloud, you were catatonic for the better part of a year after I got you out of there," Zack said patiently. "It's a miracle you ever came out of it at all, let alone with your childhood intact. If thinking you were me is what got you through it, then I'm glad I could help even though I wasn't there! Besides." He grinned. "If you'd completely forgotten about me, then you couldn't think you were me. You remembered, it just got a little scrambled."

Realizing he was trembling, Cloud sank down in the nearest chair before he did something embarrassing like have his knees give out on him. Just like that, a part of the heavy weight of guilt he'd carried for so long was gone. Zack wasn't upset that Cloud had forgotten him. "You're very strange," he informed the other man gruffly, turning his attention to their dinner so Zack wouldn't see the dazed look in his eyes.

Patting his shoulder, Zack moved to the other chair and flopped down across from him. "So people keep telling me," he admitted cheerfully. Under his outward merriment he was concerned, unsure why Cloud seemed so shaken. "Anyway, after listening to me babbling in your ear for most of a year, it's no wonder you got messed up. So if you thought you were me, did you go straight to Aerith? How did you survive that attack, anyway?"

He'd certainly talked often enough about how he was bringing Cloud to Midgar so Aerith could fix him. If Cloud had been awake and aware when they'd escaped, Midgar would have been the absolute last place in the world Zack would have headed for. But somehow he'd just known that Aerith would be able to help the boy, bring him back from where he was trapped inside his own head.

It had, of course, occurred to him that Aerith would probably have another boyfriend after he'd been missing for five years, but there also had never been a doubt in his mind that she would drop everything to help him if he asked it of her. That was just the way she was.

The mention of his one-time girlfriend had apparently been a mistake, though, because Cloud hunched in on himself like he'd just taken a blow. That worried Zack more than anything had yet. "Cloud?"

"No," Cloud replied, shaking his head and picking at his food. "I didn't remember her at all. They left me for dead on the cliff, next to you. I woke up just enough to take your sword and haul myself down into the city, then I collapsed again. How did you survive?" That was the part that had been eating at him, that made him still half certain this was a dream. "You were dead, I remember! I saw it my..."

For the second time that night he broke off in mid-sentence. A horrible thought had just occurred to him. Had he checked? He remembered seeing Zack fall, and crawling forward to get the sword, but had he stopped and actually looked to see if the older boy was dead?

Why would he have? At that point he'd been barely aware of anything around him, and hadn't even remembered Zack existed. "I didn't check," he said, stunned. "I didn't even... gods. How could I have been so careless?"

"From what little I know, I'm not sure it would have done you much good even if you had," Zack shrugged. "I was more than half dead when they got me. You couldn't have carried me to Midgar in the state you were in. If you'd stuck around, you'd just have been recaptured right along with me and we might never have gotten out. Don't worry about it, kid. Under the circumstances, you did exactly the right thing - armed yourself and got the hell out of there, so you could come back for me later. You just got a little sidetracked along the way."

There wasn't a trace of blame in Zack's voice, because he did think Cloud had done the right thing. Never mind that if their positions had been reversed, he'd have died rather than leave Cloud behind - he'd proved that several times over by refusing to give up on the comatose boy during the time they were on the run. If he hadn't been carrying Cloud, Shinra would never have caught him. But Zack freely admitted that he could be stupidly stubborn sometimes, and he didn't encourage others to follow his example.

"So if you made it to Midgar and collapsed again, then what?" he wanted to know. "You're lucky somebody didn't stab you in the back and steal all your stuff."

"Tifa found me," Cloud told him. "She recognized me and took me back to her place to help me." If not for that, he wasn't sure he'd have even remembered what his name was. It was seeing her that had jarred a cascade of memories back into his empty mind - much the same way having Zack around kept doing now.

"Tifa!" Zack lit up, sitting straighter in his seat in excitement. "Tifa Lockheart? She survived? That's fantastic! I was sure she had to be dead, after what Sephiroth did to her. What in the name of the Ancients was she doing in Midgar?"

Blinking, Cloud shook his head. He kept forgetting that Tifa and Zack had met - a lingering effect of his one-time conviction that he had been the SOLDIER assigned to Nibelheim with Sephiroth, not Zack.

But this was getting into territory that he didn't want to discuss yet. "Eat," he said, pointing at Zack's food. "I'll tell you everything, I promise. But if I start now, you won't eat, and you said you were hungry."

"Oh, right." Sheepish, Zack grabbed a couple of the plates and dug in, savouring the rich taste and varied textures of the food. Real food. It was the next thing to heaven. Cloud had been right to caution him against making himself sick, though. His stomach just wasn't used to handling this sort of food any more. Far sooner than he would have liked he was forced to push aside the rest of the meal.

Glancing across the table, he frowned as he realized Cloud had hardly touched his plate. Well, Zack was about to put him through what was obviously going to be a very painful retelling of events. If he wasn't hungry, it probably wasn't surprising.

"So? Talk," he said when he was done, giving Cloud a level gaze. "Or do I have to get a few shots of alcohol into you first?"

"Maybe," Cloud admitted, grateful to stop pretending he was trying to eat. He shoved the remains of dinner to the side of the table, leaving room for the bottles of vodka he'd brought along with the food. "I don't know where to start."

"Start with whatever comes to mind," Zack suggested, pouring a couple of glasses and passing one to the blond. As he watched Cloud drink half of his like it was water, he debated with himself. He had a sinking feeling the answer to his most burning question was going to be bad, but he needed to know. "Cloud? What happened to Aerith? You flinch every time I mention her. Did you ever find her?"

Sure enough, the younger man winced and proved his point for him, draining the rest of his glass and pouring another before he answered. "I found her by accident, if you can believe it," Cloud said, his voice rough with more than just the alcohol. "I fell through the roof of the church right into the flowers. I don't think she recognized me at first, but then later she kept asking pointed questions about whether I knew you. I think maybe she was trying to jog my memory."

He swallowed, and his eyes went distant, staring into his vodka like it held the answers to the universe if he could just look deep enough. "Did you know she was half Cetra? An Ancient?"

"She's a what?" Wide-eyed, Zack stared at him. He wanted to protest that statements like that were only going to convince him he was dreaming again, but half a dozen odd memories popped into his mind that stopped him. The way Aerith could get anything to grow, anywhere. The way the flowers seemed to respond to her like she was better than the sun. The way she would stand sometimes when she thought he wasn't watching her, just listening to nothing he could hear. And her unbelievable sensitivity to mako.

It would explain a hell of a lot. Like why Shinra was so desperate to get their hands on her. Zack had been able to offer her a certain amount of protection while she was his girlfriend, but he wondered how she'd fared against the Turks once he'd been reported missing.

Then the true impact of Cloud's words sank in. "Was?" he repeated weakly. That was it, then. She was gone. Part of him had known from Cloud's reactions, but he'd been hoping he was wrong. With a grimace he downed his own glass of vodka, welcoming the burn of it to help cover the tight feeling in his chest.

Taking a deep breath, Cloud clenched his hands around his glass and started to talk. Slowly, painfully, he got the entire story out, lubricated by enough vodka to kill anyone without a SOLDIER's metabolism and leaving Zack sitting quietly in numb disbelief. It was an unbelievable tale, and if it had been anyone but Cloud telling it Zack would have laughed in their face and called them a liar. Hell, he'd have accused Cloud of making it up if the younger man's pain hadn't been so obvious.

Cloud left nothing out. Not his reluctance to get involved or his repeated attempts to give up, not the way he'd handed the black materia over to Sephiroth, not even the fact that he had very nearly been the one to kill Aerith. He even told Zack what he'd admitted to no one else; the dreams - if they were dreams - that he had of Aerith in the Lifestream. That she'd told him it wasn't time for him to be there yet, and sent him back.

It was actually much easier for Zack to accept the idea there was such a thing as the Lifestream, and that Cloud had been in and out of it multiple times and had conversed with Aerith's ghost while doing so, than all the rest of it. Sephiroth repeatedly coming back to life, Jenova's true identity and her part in Sephiroth's creation, Shinra's collapse and the near destruction of the world were a hell of a tall tale. The three silver-haired men who could absorb materia into their own bodies and transform into Sephiroth were even harder to swallow.

But he had to either accept that it was true, or conclude that Cloud had gone completely around the bend. Scary as it was, the story held too much internal consistency for him to believe it existed only in Cloud's mind, and besides it explained the odd lack of Shinra troops in Kalm and the fact that nobody seemed to be using mako any more. Zack certainly couldn't think of an explanation for Shinra's abrupt disappearance that made any more sense than what Cloud was telling him.

And damned if he wouldn't put it past Sephiroth to be just stubborn enough to be able to hold himself together in the Lifestream and keep finding ways to come back.

By the end of the story, Zack had drunk nearly as much as Cloud and was in a state of shock. "I'm glad she did," he said in response to Cloud's revelation about his latest dip in the Lifestream. "I'd have been left to rot in that place, otherwise. Maybe she knew."

"Maybe she did," Cloud agreed, startled by the thought. It certainly made more sense than any other reason he'd come up with for why she'd refused to let him stay with her in heaven. "So now you know everything I do. And more than most people ever will." He rubbed his face, startled to feel wetness on his cheeks. He'd been crying quietly for much of the story, and hadn't even realized it.

"It's a lot to take in," Zack said, fiddling with his glass. "I'm going to have to sit on it for a while before I'll be able to absorb it all, I think." That was an understatement. When Cloud had told him he'd missed 'a lot', the younger man hadn't been kidding!

But there was one thing he did know, without needing to think about it. "I'm proud of you, kid," he told Cloud. "Really damn proud. You did good. Better than I would have, maybe. I'm not sure I could have held up under all that and still kept going."

"What?" Startled, Cloud jerked his head up and stared at Zack. Once again Zack was reacting in exactly the opposite manner Cloud had expected. "I got Aerith killed and helped Sephiroth nearly destroy the world! What is there to be proud of?" He shook his head. "Of course you would have done better than I did. You managed to hold yourself together and get us out of the lab and most of the way to Midgar, while I sat around and drooled. You're a hundred times stronger than I am, you always have been."

"Nobody ever really knows if they'll be strong enough to get through adversity until it happens to them," Zack shrugged. "Maybe I'd have held up, or maybe it would have been the last straw. I didn't do so hot at fighting back these last three years. I gave up when they told me you were dead. But you did better than could be expected of anyone, and I am proud of you. And proud to call you my friend."

His eyes were warm, his expression just a little wistful. If he was lucky, they'd be able to rebuild their friendship even better than before. Zack wanted that bad enough to be able to taste it. He knew Cloud had always wondered why he'd taken the scrawny private under his wing; it was because of all the people in Shinra, Cloud had been the only one willing to treat him as a friend first, and a SOLDIER second. After everything they'd both been through, having each other to trust and rely on again would feel a lot like winning.

Stunned, Cloud just sat there looking at him for long minutes. The younger man could hardly countenance the idea that Zack might not have done as well as Cloud had. But there was no arguing with the conviction in the SOLDIER's voice when he said that he was proud of Cloud. He could think Zack was insane for feeling it, but he had to believe the older man meant it.

And that gave him a warm feeling inside that was so unfamiliar he almost didn't recognize it for what it was. Delight. Delight, and an answering pride, and a bit of awe. He'd looked up to Zack for so long that getting approval from him on this level was just about the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Drawing a shaky breath, he managed to give Zack a small but genuine smile. Gods, he hadn't smiled this much in a long time. "Well, I've always been proud to have you as a friend," he said, his voice only a little rough. "Even when you were at your most irritating. So now what?"

"Now we finish off the alcohol, while trading stories about our time in Shinra to help jog each other's memories," Zack declared, reaching for his bottle again. "Then we're going to crash, sleep like logs, and tomorrow we'll head off to Midgar to start fresh. Together." He grinned. "I may be a little late in delivering what I kept promising you while we were on the run, but better late than never." He lifted his full glass. "To you and me, kid, and a brand new start."

His heart shining in his eyes, Cloud lifted his glass and knocked it against Zack's. "To you and me," he agreed, his smile widening. He couldn't remember ever being happier to make a toast. Nothing short of death was going to separate them again, he swore to himself. After everything their friendship had already survived, it would take an act of the gods to tear them apart now.