008 || tea for two?

[lottato_prima]

Zack's strength of mind hasn't been at its peak lately, which may explain his absence from the consciousness of others.

As it was, the former SOLDIER was secluded in a web of emerald wisps and crystals, cocooned in the center by an even thicker web and two white wings surrounding his form. His eyes were closed, head bowed, the rest of his body also concealed by the maze of webs. So he... hasn't been able to meld himself entirely cohesive yet, but he's getting there. There's no telling what the rest of his body looks like, trapped in that mess.

If you dare to approach, he'll glance up briefly, quietly. He's studying you, wanting to know the reasons why you would come deep into the Lifestream like this, to talk to a forgotten, deceased SOLDIER.

And he'll welcome the company.

Comments

drive by before I disappear again

[findmyownreason]

Maybe because he's not forgotten. Because as long as Cloud lives, and as long as the children he's raising live, someone's going to remember.

Because heroes need to be remembered.

But so do friends. Especially friends.

Cloud might be a little twitchy about the Lifestream and mako green these days but it doesn't stop his somehow solid footsteps or cause them to hesitate. He'd search right to the center of the Planet to find Zack if that was what was needed. And his one word greeting holds all of it as he works his way carefully past the green, eyes never leaving his friend.

"Zack?"

--I suddenly have work in the morning as well too, so we'll both vanish. XD

[lottato_prima]

It's been a long time since he'd heard his own name - a very long time. Or maybe it just feels long because time is at a complete standstill here, keeping its occupants ageless as the rest of the Planet goes by. He isn't sure... but he remembers the sight of his friend approaching, and a small smile spreads on the former-SOLDIER's face.

Cloud.

One of his hands move out from under the wing, cragged and misshapen, but also gentle and caring. It runs along his old friend's forearm, a light grip upon those dead fingers, and the smile becomes just a little more sad. It's also been a long time since they'd been able to talk like this, too.

"Cloud."

Is it a voice, or a distorted, broken attempt at a word? Was it even human? It might be to Cloud, but it's the best he can manage in this Half-Awake state. The other wing shifts to the side, where a twisted, gutted excuse for legs lay, almost fused with the webbing.

"It's good to see you."

[findmyownreason]

The wings make his own shoulder blades twitch uncomfortably but he doesn't shy away from them when they shift. This is Zack. Or... what's left of him. And it twists in his gut and a part of him wishes he'd never bothered save the damn Planet in the first place because this was what it did to them all, in the end. Zack deserves better than that. Better than this.

His grip is firm when he raises his own arm, hand catching his friend's forearm and holding on tight. Maybe just a little too tight but he tries to keep his grip controlled. Tries not to damage what's already been damaged.

"Yeah. It's me, Zack." The words come out a little rough at their edges, result of his suddenly tight throat and the sting in his eyes but he's not going to give up or let go this time. This time he's going to be strong enough. "I'm here to get you whole again."

[lottato_prima]

The SOLDIER's head tilts to the side, curious, yet understanding. He can feel the touch of the other, of his friend, and it's an unfamiliar sensation he knew he'd lost in his years of purgatory. But his gaze remains focused, his visage gentle. Even in this state, he wouldn't harm a fly.

His fingers shift, a sense of euphoria welling over the spirit.

How long had it been since he had any kind of physical contact? How long had it been since he'd even had a glance of the world of the living? He knew Cloud wasn't supposed to be here, but at the same time, he didn't want his dear friend to leave.

"You won't make me whole." The distorted voice rumbles again, sad and longing. "It's... only a matter of time. You'll see."

He closes his eyes again.

"The Planet told me."

[findmyownreason]

"Fuck the Planet."

The growl is out before he's really thinking of what he's staying but he doesn't regret it when it does come out. He's risked it all for this Planet. His friends have died for it. And what does it care? It doesn't. They're just stubborn batteries to it, something to be stripped down and reused. There's no gratitude for what they might have done for it, no care that a small band of them are the reason it's even still breathing. It's just a mindless entity that's already taken one of his closest friends. He's not going to lose Zack just because some over-sized symbiont says so. It doesn't get to have it's own way anymore than he let Sephiroth. His fingers tighten down firm around Zack's arms and he steps in closer, eyebrows down as he starts looking for ways to pick apart that damnable green.

"No. If the Planet can let Sephiroth run rampant and have his way, than you damn well can too. He proved it doesn't always get its way and I'm not letting it have you."

[lottato_prima]

He knows where Cloud's getting from.

When Angeal had passed, long ago, he'd cursed at the Planet. He'd cursed at everything about it, about why these types of things had to happen, why people had to die so needlessly. For what? To feed it? Life worked in a cycle, so if the Planet could create energy, it could also take it back.

But that was then. This was now.

"I'm too far gone, Cloud." He didn't want to be Sephiroth. He never did. He knew his time had come, he knew this was natural. And somehow, someway, he would make Cloud understand that. It hurt to lose a loved one, but it would hurt even more to disrupt the natural order.

He wasn't supposed to be alive anymore.

"You need to focus on yourself. You still have a future."

[findmyownreason]

"No, you're not." If Cloud is anything, it's stubborn. He was stubborn about dying himself not that long ago, almost to the point of losing everything. Now he's stubborn about this. It's Zack. The world still needs Zack and not in the form of random floating bits of energy. Maybe it's selfish but damn it - isn't he allowed by this point to be selfish?

"You're still here. You can still fight. We can still fight this. I can have a future and still have you too. It's not an either-or this time."

[nohometown]

In Sephiroth's time, Zack isn't dead. He became the heart of SOLDIER, after Angeal...

After Angeal.

Zack doesn't smile as much or as openly as he used to, but he still smiles. He makes others smile. SOLDIER's heart: Sephiroth supposes he is only SOLDIER's head, then, a mind without a heart. He walks through the light of the Lifestream, the color of Mako, the color of his eyes. He reaches up a hand to touch its glow with his leather glove, but it leaves no mark. It lets him pass.

He pauses at the sight of Zack. He doesn't like the sight of those wings. He doesn't think he'll ever again see a person with wings, in life or art, without feeling slightly cold. "Zack," he says, turning his head slightly to one side, in his way of asking for an explanation without actually asking.

[lottato_prima]

Unlike with Cloud, the wings continue to conceal the rest of his form, even pulling tighter at the sight of Sephiroth drawing nearer.

He isn't afraid - the real Sephiroth had no place in the Lifestream - but he doesn't exactly want to expose how much he had been tearing himself apart, either. To force his mind to be this active, to tear against the endless waves of mako just to hear a dear friend's voice... he certainly stood out from all the others here.

He opens a path, allowing Sephiroth entry to his personal little space in the Lifestream.

"You remembered my name." He barely did, himself. With the knowledge that comes, knowledge is also lost, passed to others so that they may learn.

"...Sephiroth."

[nohometown]

"Of course. I saw you not long ago." He knows many of the SOLDIERs in his command, and the Firsts best, especially reduced as they are in the time of the Genesis War. He knows Zack better than any others, now.

He studies their surroundings soberly as he continues his approach. It's an odd, shifting place. Yet oddly, it doesn't feel strange, no matter how unfamiliar it is. He adds, in case of some confusion, "Following the incidents at Modeoheim."

And his mind returns, as it always does (always will?) to the betrayals and deaths of his friends, that low heat of anger slowly beginning to rise, only to be pushed away again, pushed down under further pressure.

[lottato_prima]

Modeoheim. Of course... where everything ended, and everything began.

It robbed him of his childish naivety, twice over, and melded him into the man he'd grown up to be. And who he'd passed on as. This gets another uncomfortable shift, but the eerie, vacant gaze remains gentle, warm.

This was not about him - it was about Sephiroth.

"It's been a few years." The 'voice' chimed in erratically. "And more's happened since then. Is still going on."

[nohometown]

"Then you're also from a possible future." He considered no future set before its time. That defied all reason, as far as he was concerned.

He did not believe in fate, like Genesis. What had happened to them was the result of the chance actions of individuals, not the subject of some prophecy written out in poetry. If you sought similarities between vague verses and reality, of course you would find them. That did not mean it was anything more than coincidence.

The mind saw what the heart showed it. What he wanted was to see the truth. "And what is it that is happening?"

[lottato_prima]

"You don't need to know. Not yet."

To tell him would be to disrupt the Planet's order. It would be simple, to change the course of events for the better, make Cloud's life better, to fix everything. That just wasn't how the world worked, and he wouldn't be responsible for the next cataclysm following Meteor.

"Why don't we just talk? How are you, Sephiroth?" The wings relax slightly, revealing a little more of the soul's form, but not too much. He would do this gradually, give the other time to adjust. There was no need to rush, after all.

They had all the time in the world.

[drinkandforget]

She approaches without fear, because this is where she belongs: the end of everything, the place everything melts back into nothing.

No; this is even beyond her river. This is more like the galaxy cauldron, which Galaxia hopes to control. She notes it, but without fear. And she notes the man who seems to be immersed in it.

Even she, a senshi, feels a strange sense of awe, here.

"You've come to the end of your struggles," she tells the man caught in the web. "Why do you still thrash about?"

[lottato_prima]

Minerva...? No, this felt different.

She was still familiar, with an odd sense of... power immersed in her form. She was meant to be here, and she wasn't. So he wouldn't question it.

Instead he watches, his voice coming more as a feeling, rather than anything truly vocal. "In the physical world, yeah." Though his eyes still glow, are still very focused... they are also still very dead.

"The Planet isn't finished yet, though. We're not finished. A cataclysm is coming."

[drinkandforget]

In her world, the person already at this place would have nothing left. They would be empty of memories, purpose, friendships, goals, everything but their power - if they have it.

Perhaps this man in front of her is simply a manifestation of whatever remains of 'Zack Fair'.

"You're bound tightly," she observes. "What will you do next?"

[lottato_prima]

"I'm bound to the Planet." He answers simply. "I'll protect it, and it'll protect me. It's the whole reason I still exist now."

And then, the entity smirks. Perhaps a trace of who he'd used to be, or an attempt at regaining his old self.

"There's still too much to do before I take a nap. Meteor's gonna return soon."

[drinkandforget]

[He says it like a name.] Meteor?

[Lethe has never heard of any senshi by that name - her first thought, as senshi are always named for the celestial objects they were born under.]

Who is it?

[lottato_prima]

"Who? Not who. What."

He felt the need to correct her, even if Meteor was some sort of entity. Even if it was, he didn't feel the need to acknowledge it as such. He just knew that it was a terrible, destructive force that either needed to be evaded or destroyed somehow, a way not even the Planet was sure of right then and there.

"It's a terrible danger to the Planet. It's... afraid." And that fear, in turn, was reflecting into his own energy. He felt its sadness, its pain... and he wanted to do whatever he could to make it stop.

"But it's also in good hands. I'm sure of it."

[isomorphology]

Quorra stops short when she sees him studying her. She still hasn't gotten a true understanding of how dreaming works. She glances around, looking at the emerald streams and glows, keeping her hands close as she won't touch them. Even if she's curious beyond measure and it's written on her face.

[lottato_prima]

She feels... different, somehow.

Not quite like the souls of either living or dead, but something far more foreign. It doesn't turn him off from the approaching company, however, and he welcomes it with open...

Er. Whatever he had for arms now.

"It's okay. I don't bite." The voice is not physical, or vocal. It is simply a feeling, translated into cohesive words she could understand. "Don't think I could if I wanted to."

[isomorphology]

She's taken by surprise, but at the same time she's curious. And excited. She's never heard--felt--anything like it before. A smile forms on her face with a small laugh.

"Why not?"

[lottato_prima]

He tilts his head to the side, regarding her with growing interest. She doesn't seem so bad, despite the odd, initial feeling - maybe she was just different. But he does have one simple question, to combat hers.

"Do you have a concept of 'death' in your world?"

[isomorphology]

"There's de-resolution." She says. Reintegration in Flynn's case. "You're deleted. There's no way to restore a Basic or an ISO from that."

Of course, she doesn't realize that he may not understand those terms.

"...are you...?"

[lottato_prima]

Even in death, Zack couldn't say he knew too much about computers at all, so most of those terms were lost on him. But he understood deleted, and the concept of someone's entire soul being gone for good. In that case, it was more terrifying than death in his own world, where the spirit at least had a fighting chance.

"No hope of an afterlife, huh? Sounds pretty gloomy."

Some worlds really were more merciless than this one.

"As for me? Yeah... I am."

Though he doesn't sound bothered by this, oh no. There's a calmness to his tone, a smile on his face. He accepted what he was and what was going to happen to him, so why even worry about what couldn't be changed? "When we die, our spirits return to the Lifestream, to become a part of the Planet again. I just... really hope the same would happen to you, if that time came."