The air was cool and crisp, like it always was at this time of the year, and he could see his breath when he stood still and blew out, like he’d always used to do as a kid. It would puff out in a swirl of silver mist, curling up from his lips and rising gently before disintegrating into nothingness as it flitted past his nose. The memory might have made him smile for the simple fact that it was a memory--his memory to be exact--but the occasion was not one for smiling. A gust of wind tossed his golden blond hair about and he shivered in the coat he wore, which was a few sizes too big for him.

He didn’t know exactly where he was going, just that it was somewhere on the outskirts of this ghost town. The memories were vague and foggy from the swirl of Mako showers and Jenova experimentation, but he remembered being able to see the city from the rocky wasteland surrounding it.

It was funny, in some weird sense of the word, some memories were so clear to him, and yet there seemed to be a five year period of time that was awash in a greenish glow and nothing else was very real. There were faces, horrible, smirking faces, and laughing, and everything was green. But that was all. All, until a strong pair of arms were holding him, like they used to do, and carrying him, up.. up.. up.. He’d thought maybe he could reach the stars if he reached out just then. There was a voice, and a heartbeat, and warmth of someone else, someone there to give him life. He remembered being tired, not wanting to open his eyes for fear that it would all be a dream and he’d return to his green-tinted solitude, where no one touched him and no one talked to him and no one thought of him as even being alive.

Looking back, he knew what had happened. He’d read the reports of the escaped experiments, he’d seen the fingernail scratches down the sides of the containers (it hadn’t surprised him at all that they were green). The knowledge he’d gained mixed with the memories he still held easily told him what had happened.

When had he gotten so messed up? He dug his fingers deeper into the pockets of the coat and kicked a reddish-brown stone out of his way. It had taken him a few months to admit to himself that he wasn’t who he thought he was, that this person Sephiroth kept showing him wasn’t him. He didn’t believe that he was who he thought he was at all, until he had fallen asleep inside himself, again awash in the emerald light he’d learned to dread. No, he wasn’t first class, or even in SOLDIER. He was just a trainee, a recruit, a failure.

A failure. Even as an experiment, he was simply a failure. He couldn’t live up to anyone’s standards, not even (or maybe especially) his own. He’d never been able to.

But...there had always been one person who didn’t have an expectations of him. The only thing he’d ever asked was that he be there. The one who had saved him from the endless jade sea of faces and laughter and torture. The one who loved him for him, and for no other reason.

Zack.

The one he had to find.

He looked up at the precipices towering above him, melting into the sky in an array of reds, oranges, and browns. Which one was it? He wasn’t sure the memories would resurface if he saw the peak where it had happened. He could only hope that the area would strike something inside of him, some sort of emotion or longing or something, damn it, that would let him know that this was the place.

He’d been wandering aimlessly around the city for nearly an hour and a half now, staying namely on the western side, as that would be the most logical direction to come from. But then again, Zack hadn’t always been the most logical person in the world. Of course, Zack hadn’t been running from Shinra with an unconscious, half-dead recruit to drag around at the times he liked to be silly and irrational.

The main memories he had to go on were really nothing but nightmares, the feeling of the voice stopping and the guns firing, the coldness of being alone, the night wind brushing over his bare shoulders, the sticky blood on his fingers, his own crying as the world around him turned red. He’d wake up, covered in sweat and tears and be completely unable to sleep again for the rest of the night, no matter how tired he was. There always seemed to be something missing when he lay down in his bed--there always had been, but now he knew what it was. It was cold, so cold, and no matter how warm the room was around him, it was never warm enough.

The emptiness had been consuming him ever since his memories had returned, but the empathy had been getting worse and worse. He supposed it had been more than a year now, but just more. He remembered the bitter coolness that didn’t settle until dusk, and the warmth of the day that wasn’t really warmth, but more like the life given by the sun that would make one feel that he was warm when the air was actually quite cool. Days when the sun would beat relentlessly down, but it was a gray sun and not really very warm. He supposed this meant it was early autumn, and it was now early winter.

Every peak, he’d climb to the top and peered over the top, down at the recently desolated city, and close his eyes. No, this wasn’t it. No, not this one. No, this can’t be the place. Trial and error, he supposed, though there was too much error for his tastes. He just needed to find the damned place before he could find closure. And maybe then, he’d be able to sleep again. Maybe.

He was about to give up home and go back to town a failure once more, when his eyes caught sight of one more cliff, one he had not seen before, as it was nestled there between two other crags, hiding from sight. A perfect place for two weary fugitives to hide for a while.

His heart caught in his throat as he carefully climbed the mountain face. Trying to swallow back the feelings to keep down his hope and possible disappointment was futile, but he tried anyway. An icy wind rushed by him, but that wasn’t the complete cause of the tears in his eyes. The rush of hope and anticipation was mixed with a deadly fear that it was, in fact, the right cliff. He didn’t know what he intended to do once he found it, he suddenly realized. What could he do? Pay his respects to Zack, and leave? He didn’t know, but he needed to find the place where the closest thing he had to a family had taken his last breath.

The peak looked just like any other, with a decent view of the city below. That city had been their salvation. They could blend in with the other outcasts in the slums under the upper plate in any given sector, really. It may have been a dirty, polluted city, but that night, nothing had looked brighter.

When he stepped on to the peak, he knew.

He wasn’t sure how it happened, how he knew, but he did. The air seemed to freeze and turn to glass. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. Tears spilled down his cheeks as a whisper of wind gently caressed his trembling form. He closed his eyes and allowed his knees to buckle, and he felt himself fall to his hands and knees. The numbness consumed him and he opened his eyes, enabling him to see the small pools upon the reddish rock created by his tears. His hands were clawing at the rock futilely in his small fit of grief, and now they ached a little. He pulled himself up and leaned against a rock nearby.

If he closed his eyes, he could still hear Zack’s voice. “Stay here a second,” he had whispered. “They’re coming behind us. I’ll be right back.” He felt Zack place him against a rock--was it the one he was leaning against?--and there was a whoosh of motion as Zack quickly took care of the four of them trailing the renegades. Then he dug the large buster sword into the dirt and returned to his side. “See? That wasn’t so bad, was it.”

It was then that all sound ceased to exist. He could not even hear the rain of gunfire coming from the woods below. He’d felt pain, then, the pain of a larger body pressed up forcefully against his; pain, pressure. It was hot, horribly hot, and he could not move or breathe. The world was awash with crimson and Zack was trembling above him, something warm and scarlet dripping from the side of his mouth. His silver-blue eyes were fading, fading away, even as his head bowed nearer and nearer to his. Zack’s quivering lips met his for a brief moment until Zack’s head finally fell, against his shoulder.

He lay there, beneath the weight of his closest friend, for a long time. His numbed mind had been shocked too greatly and he couldn’t really comprehend what had happened. But the blood, it was everywhere, and it was burning him. There it was, covering his hands and his arms from where he held Zack, and on his cheek, painted across from when his head had fallen. As he turned his friend on his back, though, the fire left and was replaced by the most horribly cold ice he’d ever felt.

He’d spent the night there, unable to go on. Too weak, too much a failure. He just cried, his tears washing away the scarlet stains covering everything. The silence had been unbearable. The world could have shattered into a billion pieces and he would not have known, nor would he have cared. The silvery eyes that he’d admired so much were gone. They had faded before him and would never alight again. For what purpose could he have moved?

The sun peaked over the ridge that next morning, finding he had cried himself to sleep next to the large sword, still packed in the dirt. When his eyes had opened, he saw a flash of light reflecting in the weapon, and his eyes were drawn to it. There, reflected in the sword, was a pair of silver-blue eyes, staring back at him. They were red from crying, bleary from sleeping. They were his own eyes, and he wondered if Zack had really been the one to die. Perhaps he was Zack, and Cloud had died. He looked down. He did not wear the clothes of a recruit. He was wearing the clothes of a SOLDIER.

He had taken the sword and gone into the city without looking back. Tifa had said his name was Cloud, so he was.

He opened his eyes. “Zack. How in the name of Holy did I forget you?” he whispered into the breeze. The sun was beginning to set, as it had that night, splashing the cold, empty sky with a spectrum of colors, looking as if a child had taken a paint brush and whimsically streaked it through the sky, mixing the pinks with the purples and the blues with the reds. If he squinted enough, the scattered, forlorn looking clouds, pale with purple rays from the sunset, began to resemble Zack’s face.

The thought brought back a memory of the days with Shinra, the times when they would spend every free moment with each other, half of that time in each other’s arms. There were days when the sun shone so brightly that if they didn’t go outside, it seemed like a sin. So they would go out, and stare up into the skies at the clouds that all, somehow, reminded Zack of random people in charge of Shinra.

“What about that one?” he would ask, pointing at one that didn’t resemble anything, in any way, shape, or form to him.

“That one?” Zack replied. “That’s definitely Heidegger. Look, that part is his fat little nose, and there’s his eyes. Look, his mouth is wide open, he must be letting out one of his god-awful laughs. He sounds like a friggin’ horse when he does that.” He glanced sideways at his companion and snickered.

He frowned. He didn’t think it was appropriate to be sitting here, laughing, here in the place where the man he’d loved had died, died protecting him. But, then again, something told him the last thing Zack would have wanted was to see him sad. Every time he was upset about something, about anything, Zack had been there, with a hug and kiss and a comforting word. He was sincere in his words, and that’s what made Cloud melt into him.

He leaned forward, hugging his knees to his chest. The coat he wore was big enough to wrap around his legs, and he let his chin rest on his knees. He could just blame Hojo, he knew, and say that his memories being so tardy was the fault of the experimentation performed on him. But there was that nagging feeling--if he had been the one to die, would Zack have forgotten him? Doubtful.

“But you were so much stronger than I was,” he whispered, feeling the tears stinging his eyes once more. They were burning his cheeks and he wished he could stop, no matter how cold it was getting. How had Zack done it? Keep his wits about him after all that torture? He could not even stay conscious for more than five minutes at a time after Zack had broken out of there with him. Why? Was he that weak?

His mind traveled back to those research reports. Subject A had not responded to Jenova treatments, but he, Subject B, had. Could that be the reason he had forgotten? Because he was injected with Jenova’s cells and been turned to failed clone of Sephiroth?

“I guess it doesn’t matter,” he murmured. “The fact is that I...couldn’t remember you.” He shook his head gently, his golden locks losing their luster as dusk settled. “I couldn’t remember the man I love.”

The wind picked up again, whispering in his ears. It seemed like it was trying to tell him something, so he fell silent, listening to the gentle rustling as it brushed by him in a way he could have sworn was a caress.

That’s just like you, kiddo. Always looking back.

He wasn’t sure if it really was the wind talking to him, in a voice that sounded distractingly a lot like Zack’s, or it was his imagination running wild. Either way, he’d keep listening. Maybe it was Zack, talking to him out of the lifestream somewhere. Maybe he needed his head checked. But he didn’t care. It was still talking.

If you look back all the time, you’re bound to run into something in front of you.

That was Zack’s form of philosophy if he ever heard it. A smile tinged the corners of his lips, but the tears were still there. It was comforting to here his voice, but it also filled him with an overwhelming sense of loss and despair.

I’m not sayin’ you can’t learn from your past, but if that’s all you’re looking at, then you’re gonna screw up again.

“That’s all I am, Zack. A big screw-up,” he sighed softly. “You were the only one who didn’t see it. I don’t know why, you were the one who knew me the best.” The beginnings of the smile had faded now, and his eyes had fallen shut in shame.

Or maybe I was the only one to see you for what you really are.

His eyes remained shut. He wasn’t sure what he really was. He hadn’t been sure since he could remember. The poor boy down the street, always wanting to fit in with the others. The little boy no one wanted to play with. The new recruit, nothing but a runt, he’d never make it into SOLDIER. That poor kid who failed the SOLDIER exam (not that anyone thought he’d actually make it). The failed experiment, no good, not even good enough to get a number. He was all of those things, and nothing more.

“It doesn’t matter,” he whispered, burying his face in his arms. “I was the one who should have died here, not you. You were the one who deserved to keep living. I...I...”

There was a long silence before the wind replied again, and for a moment, he thought he was alone again. The silence haunted him, the same silence as before, the perfect silence that could shatter his heart because it was so deafeningly loud. But then, a breeze swirled around him as though it were trying to hug him, to comfort him, to hold him.

Cloud, if you had died... I probably would have blamed myself and jumped over the side of this mountain.

“Like I should have done,” he murmured, a few more tears slipping from his eyes, wetting the coat he rested his face on. “You died protecting me. If I hadn’t been here, you could’ve kept going and...”

You were my incentive to keep going. I had to get you to town, I had to save you. Had you died, I would have had nothing to keep going for.

He raised his head, ever so slightly, his azure eyes sparkling in the growing moonlight. His fingers intertwined themselves with each other in a half useless gesture of hopelessness. “But what about me, Zack? What have I got to live for without you?” he asked the skies.

As much as you hate to admit it, you’re not alone, love.

That struck him, and hard, like a cuff to his cheek. He had never thought about it before, but it was true. Tifa and the others cared--hell, Barret probably even cared. They had to have cared. Every single one of them had gone willingly with him, even after he had screwed up and given away the black materia. And every single one of them had come back after he had told them to go home. Tifa had never left in the first place, but had stayed with him. “It’s okay,” she’d said, “because we’re together. We’ve got each other. That’s all we need.”

I’m right, aren’t I.

He could feel Zack grinning at him. “Oh, hush, you,” he replied, a smile forming on his lips, the lips that hadn’t seen a smile in too long.

He could still hear Zack’s laughter ringing in his ears as he slowly climbed down the peak.

In this white wave

I am sinking

in this silence

in this white wave

in this silence

I believe

I have seen you

in this white wave

you are silent

you are breathing

in this white wave

I am free

“Silence” by Sarah McLachlan and Delerium