Crawling.

He crawls: through the mud and wreckage of a thousand lives unlived for themselves. The scent of death is strong here, and he follows it.

He wants to collapse with the weight of it all, but because there's nothing else to do when your lifeline is bleeding out before you, he stares and whispers a name.

"Zack..."

The man before him chokes and lowers his eyes wisped and blurred in haze to focus on the lone survivor. "For the...both of us..."

"Both of us?"

"That's right...you're gonna...

"You're gonna..." He raises his arm, reaching for the sky; but it falls short, crashing into Cloud and staining him red with the blood of memories and angel wings and dreams and honor. "Live. You'll be...my living legacy."

The hand drops, and half the world is seen in crimson.

There is life and death in that half, in his friend and his sword. In the equivocal slip between past and present.

"My honor, my dreams...they're yours now."

But as always, after words and weapons, there is grave silence.

And prayers. With eyes that lift heavenward; the same eyes as the dead: blue rimmed in mako green--the mark of a SOLDIER, First Class. They assume the look of eternal supplication.

And he screams.

All the thousand screams he has suppressed come pouring through in that one moment. Released as he loses his soul, part dead and forgotten, part closed away; a lifetime's worth of screams burn in that solitary note.

And the darkness wins.

The world crumbles a little more, but he still ends with whispered thanks, a promise, knowing that a long time ago those meant everything to him.

But now, resigned, he drags himself to his feet for the final act of a soulless, loveless life. The part of him that once knew more is sealed and shut, to open for no one except she who holds the key.

So he walks with only a legacy to the place that calls for him. Something in his soul aches to slink towards the grime of misbegotten civilization.

He shakes his head, and focuses on what's ahead of him--not behind, battle scarred in forgotten blue. Even though he knows that somebody, somewhere once knew him.

His eyes are proof that they existed.

And perhaps, somewhere deep in his heart or someone else's, he exists too.

But not today.

Today he walks away when everything ends on a name, and he thinks this is twice that that's happened.

At least this time the world had the sense to weep for its demise.

Not his, though. Not his.

He lives.

XXXX