Zack thought he had known the meaning of exhaustion as SOLDIER. Early mornings, late nights, doing impossible feats on less than an hour of sleep; he knew damn well what it was like to be tired. But this hell was on a level of its own.

His mind, body, and soul were numb beyond comprehension. He was draped by a blanket of lead that clung to his bones, slowing him down, highlighting the stiffness in his muscles with every single damn movement he made. He was tired. Goddamn it, he was tired.

Hot tears pricked at his eyes, and muted surprise flickered in the deepest parts of his mind: he hadn't been aware he had more tears to shed. Self-pity really wasn't his style, but he was past caring. He was tired.

They had thrown his drugged body onto his cot, musty from years of use, minuteshoursdays ago, from where he hadn't since moved. His left arm tingled dully from having the misfortune of being crushed beneath his body. 'This is bullshit,' he thought to himself vaguely, before dismissing his half-assed attempt at self-righteous anger as being too energy-consuming.

Gray clouds of static filled his brain; a welcome relief from the intensive, mako-induced hallucinations he had been forcibly plunged into earlier. He longed for sleep, but knew better than to try; the mako coursing through his veins left him jittery and on-edge, like every nerve in his body was connected to a car battery.

Nausea swelled in his throat as images of his most recent trip through psycho-ville flickered like ghosts through his mind. He rolled to the side and threw up pure mako onto the floor, grimacing as acid coated his throat and tongue. Then he grimaced again, realizing that he had doomed his cell to smell like vomit for an undetermined amount of time. The stubbornly positive side of him — the side that had been wholly him before Nibelheim — was grateful that the sedatives had worn off enough that he had at least been able to move off the bed before getting sick. Small victories and all that. He took what he could get.

Footsteps sounded at the end of the hall. Zack's eyes drifted shut. Cloud was being brought back. He wasn't entirely sure why they were allowed to share a cell (perhaps lack of space?), but he wasn't complaining. He knew that if he didn't have Cloud he wouldn't have lasted this long. Cloud was his last tether to sanity, as Zack as his.

Cracking his eyes, he saw in his peripheral vision that a gun had been trained on him, loaded with a tranquilizing dart strong enough to take down ten grown men. He knew all about its fast-attacking and long-lasting effects, thanks to experience. He didn't move from the cot.

Cloud stood, if barely remaining upright on shaking legs constituted as standing, between two guards, whose hands were gripping Cloud's elbows with enough strength to bruise the skin, Zack noted with dissatisfaction. But after they shoved Cloud through the cell door (which they closed with a migraine-inducing clang), their need to exert such force on Cloud's arms was apparent, as Cloud slumped bonelessly to the floor and began seizing.

Zack was by his side in moments, exhaustion forgotten. With his own trembling hands, he took Cloud's thrashing head, trying to protect it from the worst of the damage.

"Hey, hey." he said, forcing all of the reassurance he had left into his words. "It's alright buddy, it's gonna be alright."

Cloud's skin shimmered with cold sweat, his eyes rolled up towards the back of his skull. His hands clawed at nothing, his fingernails scraping the floor, himself, Zack…

"Cloud, c'mon buddy, you're fine, you're fine."

Harsh, choking breaths filled the air, cutting Zack's heart in two. Cloud didn't deserve this, Cloud was too good for this, Cloud shouldn't even be here.

The anger he'd dismissed earlier returned in full force. We don't deserve this, he thought savagely, fingers tightening briefly on Cloud's skull. We've done nothing to deserve this.

Zack had often thought about his parents since waking up beneath Hojo's scalpel. Mostly he thought about the wisdom his mom had tried to impart on him during his childhood years. "Everything happens for a reason, Zack. The good, the bad, it all has a higher purpose." Harsh laughter spilled from his throat as Cloud's muscles contracted and his back arched off the floor. This had absolutely no higher purpose. None.

Cloud's lips were turning blue, causing panic to spike through Zack's body.

"C'mon, Spike, breathe. Breathe, yeah, that's it, breathe."

Finally, Cloud drew in several staggering, ragged breaths. His eyes rolled back forward, pupils just pinpricks in a sea of mako irises, and his jaw clenched so tightly that Zack's mako-enhanced hearing heard his teeth grind together.

"You're alright, buddy, it's okay, it's over now."

Cloud responded by rolling to his side and vomiting raw mako.

Yeah, if only it were over.

"You know, I don't think Aerith's forgotten me." Zack said with confidence, although a voice in the back of his mind didn't quite agree.

Cloud hummed dispassionately, distracted by his attempt at carving some sort of drawing into the peeling paint of the cell's wall. It was a conversation they had had many times before, where the only thing that changed was whether or not Zack believed that Aerith had forgotten him or not. It reminded Cloud a bit of a nursery rhyme he had heard…somewhere. For every time you plucked a flower petal, the answer would change. She loves me, she loves me not…

"I mean, yeah, we knew each other for a few years and we were dating. You can't just forget about someone you were dating." Zack continued conversationally, apparently not caring that Cloud didn't appear to be listening. Sometimes it was just nice to talk as if they were still normal people, spending time together someplace that did not involve scalpels, blood, and syringes, like friends are supposed to do.

"Hm." Cloud said again, though not dismissively, as he cast a look at Zack over his shoulder. Zack's heart skipped a beat, as it had many times when he saw the impossible amount of mako that shone through his friend's eyes. The mako had started to bleed out of Cloud's irises and into the whites of his eyes, producing a decidedly eerie effect. He suppressed a shudder.

Aside from his seizures, frequent hallucinations, and inability to keep most foods down, Zack had to admit that Cloud was doing pretty damn well for the amount of mako he'd been introduced to. Especially considering that he had no tolerance whatsoever to it, unlike Zack, who had some small resistance thanks to SOLDIER. Zack forcibly dragged himself back to his lighthearted talk.

"When I get back to Midgar," he pretended not to hear Cloud snort derisively as he said when. "I'm going to take her out to dinner. The fanciest, most expensive restaurant the Plate can offer. And she's always liked seeing movies. I can't say I really like the kind she does — she actually has awful taste in movies, to be honest — but if she wants to see something, nothing's going to stop me from taking her."

Cloud's only response was to chip more paint from the wall.

"But don't worry, Spike." he called out with a grin. "You're invited too, of course. I can't wait until you meet Aerith. She's gonna love you. She's got a soft spot in her heart for chocobos, y'know."

That earned him a glare. Zack didn't miss a beat.

"Of course, if I'm gonna introduce you to my girl, you gotta return the favor." he said with a slight waggle of his eyebrows.

"…huh?" Cloud asked, finally turning away from his area of scratched paint.

Zack huffed and rolled his eyes for effect. "You know, Tifa? That cute chick who, uh," he avoided mentioning her tour of the now-destroyed Nibelheim. "you used to write to. Dark hair, bright eyes, cute face? Tifa."

"I don't know who you're talking about." Cloud said.

This time Zack rolled his eyes from exasperation. "You don't need to be ashamed, Spikey. Tifa's a bombshell, and I'm pretty sure she has something special for you."

"No, Zack, you're mixing me up with someone else. I don't know a Tifa."

"Oh come on, Cloud. You two grew up together you told me."

Cloud's face twisted into puzzlement. "No, I don't remember anyone named…" he stopped abruptly, eyes widening with a sharp intake of breath. Zack was up from his cot and next to Cloud in an instant, ready to help if he began seizing again.

"Cloud?" Zack said softly, peering into his eyes. Cloud's gaze remained fixed somewhere in the middle distance. Christ, there was so much mako in them. "Cloud, hey, you alright, buddy?"

Cloud's hand shot out and grasped the front of Zack's shirt. His breath was coming out in short, jittery pants. "Zack?"

"Yeah, buddy."

"Zack, I don't remember where I'm from."

"What?"

"I don't remember where I'm from." A border-line hysterical laugh bubbled from his throat. "I have to know where I'm from. We've talked about it before. I remember talking about it before." His hands came up to tangle themselves in his hair. "But I don't remember what it's called, where it is, who was there…there was someone named Tifa?"

Zack nodded in affirmation.

"And I knew her?"

Zack nodded again.

"I don't remember her at all." Cloud whispered. Huddled on the ground, with his elbows on his knees and fingers threaded through his hair, he slowly began to shake his head. "How could I forget where I'm from?" he bit out.

"Hey, it's no big deal, Spikey." Zack said, although uneasy alarm coursed through him. "From what you have told me about your hometown, I wouldn't blame you for blocking it out." He sickened himself with the nonchalant words pouring from his mouth when something was clearly not alright.

"Tell me," Cloud said immediately. "Tell me everything you know about, uh…"

"Nibelheim." Zack supplied for him.

"Nibelheim." Cloud echoed. A flicker of recognition stirred in his eyes. "Nibelheim." he repeated, with a small nod. "It was in the mountains…there was a reactor there."

"Yeah, exactly!"

"And…and…" He went painfully white. "The fire."

Zack's stomach plummeted.

Cloud gave a high-pitched keening sound. "Oh my god, oh my god," he choked. "How could I have forgotten? The fire, Sephiroth, my mother." He broke off into sobs.

Zack couldn't do anything but rub circles into Cloud's back.

Cloud's memory declined so slowly it was practically unnoticeable for the next several daysweeksmonths. One day he gave Zack a blank look after he mentioned Angeal, although that wasn't nearly as disturbing as the time shortly after when Cloud claimed to have never heard of Aerith. But given the reaction Nibelheim had elicited, Zack rarely pressed the issue whenever their conversations brought up something Cloud had forgotten.

But Cloud wasn't stupid, and Zack knew that he had noticed when their conversations started taking on the feeling of walking through a minefield. Still, he didn't press the issue.

There was an increase of time spent under the knife, swiftly follow by a period of pure endurance testing. Zack assumed this was because Hojo had been called away, and didn't trust any of his underlings to gather cell samples from, ah, more delicate areas for him. But just because he and Cloud weren't strapped to a table didn't mean that their quality of life had improved.

Physical endurance increase was a key sign of mako enhancement, but it wasn't the only one Hojo and his team were looking for. They also hoped to push Zack and Cloud's pain tolerance to the extreme.

Personally, Zack didn't think the tests were exactly fair. Everyone had different levels of pain tolerance to begin with, so even if there had been a control group (which there wasn't), there wasn't really a way to measure one's pain against another's. He'd once tried to explain that through a mouth full of blood but only got a knife in his foot for his efforts, so he didn't bring it up again. Out loud, at least.

It also didn't make sense, he had once mentally debated as metal pipes slammed onto his exposed abdomen, that Hojo would allow him and Cloud, to be physically damaged so violently. Though the professor spent most of his time with them with his hands buried up to the wrists in Cloud and Zack's guts, he was extremely careful to maintain a clean, surgical environment, delicately stitching up every incision with liberal amounts of antibiotics to ward off infection. He couldn't have them up and die, after all. They were, in basic terms, huge investments of time and a lot of money.

So why would he allow the ever-loving shit to be kicked out of his two prized specimens? If Zack had to guess, it was probably just a method of measuring how quickly they could self-heal. Or testing how far they could be pushed before they needed medical attention. Either way, it seemed less like a science experiment and more like an opportunity for emotionally repressed guards to pound out frustration. Whatever the reason, Zack was kind of beyond caring, anyways. With each passing day he felt himself becoming more and more passive, just accepting whatever was thrown at him. And he hated it.

A dull, shiver-inducing crack echoed through the cell. Zack looked up to see Cloud sitting on his cot rigidly, staring at his fingers, swollen black and blue, distorted into shapes no hand should be in. Except his index finger.

"Bone reset itself?" Zack asked.

"Yeah," Cloud muttered. A second crack sounded from his hand, and this time Zack could see his ring finger twitch slightly as it straightened itself out. Cloud flinched.

Since the mako injections had started, their regenerative abilities had improved tremendously. Zack had some experience with accelerated healing before, but now they were able to mend themselves faster than anyone Zack had seen before. Cuts, even deep ones, would disappear within a day, and a nickel-sized hole in his tongue could knit itself back together in less than an hour. (He knew; it had been tested.) But having bones repair themselves was fairly new. And uncomfortable.

"So Cloud," Zack said, hoping to distract his friend from the bones grinding together in his hands. "Did I ever tell you about the time when…" he hesitated before saying Angeal's name. "…a friend of mine took me camping and totally abandoned me in the middle of the night?" He didn't wait for Cloud to answer, because even if Cloud told him he'd already heard this story, he wasn't about to stop himself from retelling it. "Yeah, we set up miles and miles from anywhere, and when I say anywhere, I mean anywhere. I didn't pack much because, you know, my friend told me that we'd only be staying for a night. And it was summer, so we didn't have a tent or anything. Just us, our sleeping bags, and the stars." Emotion briefly swelled in his throat as he remembered how beautiful the sky had been that night. "But, uh," he cleared his throat. "When I woke up the next day, there was no one there. That jerk had taken the car and my com-radio so I couldn't call for someone to pick me up. Rude, right?"

Cloud snorted, and Zack was relieved to see a small smile appear on his face, despite the black eye marring it.

"Yeah, just awful." Zack said with a grin. "And so I had to walk all the way back to Midgar by myself! A five-day hike! Alone!" He shook his head, though he wasn't upset at all by the memory. "It wasn't so bad, though. And when I got back, Ang-…my friend took me out for a beer."

Cloud's smile had dropped from his face and was instead replaced with knitted brows. "Midgar…?" Shit.

"It's, uh, it's nothing, buddy."

Cloud shook his head insistently. "No, it's not nothing. Midgar, Midgar, Midgar… I know I should know that place."

"It's just a city." Zack offered lamely.

"Have I been there?"

Zack hesitated.

"Have I been there?" Cloud demanded. "Answer me, Zack."

"Yeah," Zack said. "Yeah, you actually used to live there."

For a moment, Zack saw tears pool in the corners or Cloud's eyes, but they were quickly scrubbed away as Cloud drew his forearm angrily across his face.

"Why can't I remember anything?" he asked frustratedly. "I barely remember my childhood, my mother's face, my own birthday, and now you're saying I lived in a city I had no idea existed?" He laughed bitterly. "I'm losing my goddamned mind, Zack."

"We'll go there after we get out of here, when you see it, you'll remember-"

Cloud scoffed, full of scorn. "When? Face it, Zack, we're never getting out of here." Cloud said, eyes dark.

"We can't just give up."

"And why the hell can't we?" Cloud cut Zack off. He wasn't yelling, but he might as well have been from the severity of his tone. "What are we trying to prove? What are you trying to prove by being so damn optimistic? There is no way out. There's no one out there looking for us. There's no one left to care. We're going to rot in here until there's nothing left." He scowled furiously at his hands. "I just guess it's my mind that's going first."

His words so closely mirrored what Zack believed deep down that Zack had no response. Zack sat himself down heavily onto his cot and rolled so his back was facing Cloud. They sat in silence, only broken by the sounds of Cloud's fingers resetting.

Their mutual cold-shoulder treatment quickly ended. It was difficult, if not impossible, to avoid interaction with someone you literally spent twenty-four hours a day with in a ten by thirteen cell. That, and Cloud had almost immediately apologized for his harsh words. Zack had simply told him that there was nothing to be sorry for, and that was the end of that.

Hojo returned shortly afterwards with a new, extended, line-up of injections and blister-inducing mako-baths. The first few rounds left Cloud and Zack with heads full of cotton and angry sores all over, but it was no worse than before. But then…

"Step back, step back!" Hojo irritably swatted away his colleagues from Cloud's side, where he lay on his back, strapped down at the wrists, ankles, waist, and forehead to prevent movement.

The metal cuffs groaned as Cloud strained against them, thrashing to-and-fro, while his jaw worked furiously, as if trying to spit out some vital message. The skin around the restraints was bleeding profusely, mercilessly torn open from Cloud's fit.

Zack, from his limited viewpoint a few feet away, struggled to turn his head against the metal halo that encircled it. This wasn't the first time Cloud had a seizure after an injection, so why was Hojo suddenly so interested?

"Yes, yes! The subject is reacting to the cells, turn on recording devices, prepare to document everything."

Cells…?

The lab swirled into a flurry of rushed, but oddly silent activity. Everyone seemed to be holding their breaths, waiting for Cloud's seizure to pass and…

An inhuman scream pierced the air. Although restrained, Zack's hands still flinched with the instinct to cover his ears. Several scientists had the same idea, as many slammed their own hands over their ears. One even fell to his knees. The scream endured far longer than normal lungs even had the capacity to sustain. It drilled deep into Zack's mind, resonating within him with such discord and wrongness that he felt with certainty that there was no possible way for anything to ever be right again. The lights in the lab flickered wildly, casting the room into dark, light, dark, light, darklightdark, was that green light? He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to retreat into his mind to get away from the sound, just to escape, even for a second, but there was no escape, no way to get away from the scream, because there scream was there in his mind, taking over everything, everything, everything, everything, until-

Silence.

Zack opened his eyes to the dull glow of emergency lights overhead. Dust drifted down from the ceiling, and broken glass from shattered lights littered the floor.

The scientists unsteadily rose to their feet. Zack noted with disgust that they had taken cover behind a desk. Cowards. Only Hojo remained standing next to Cloud. Zack's eyes snapped over to him, as best as his bonds would allow. Jesus christ, Cloud.

He would have looked unconscious, had it not been for his eyes stretched wide-open, staring emptily at the ceiling. In the dim lighting, Cloud's eyes shone like beacons of pure mako energy, bright enough to illuminate the space around him. As Zack's eyes adjusted, he could tell that it wasn't just Cloud's eyes. It was everything.

Cloud's skin shone with a thin sheen of glowing sweat, his veins tracing trails of light underneath his skin. Glowing tears, snot, and saliva ran off his face, and onto the table below. The blood, now trickling from his ears and the cuts he'd opened during his seizure, dripped luminescence onto floor around him.

Zack looked without really comprehending how much mako was in the kid's system. That amount of energy would be enough to kill someone a hundred times over, and still a threat to anyone who came to closely. Zack wouldn't be surprised if the lab junkies who handled Cloud got cancer from being exposed to the high amounts of radiation that were undoubtedly rolling off him.

Hojo, however, did not look worried.

"Vitals," he snapped to his colleagues. After a few false starts, one underling made her way over to Cloud and reached for his carotid artery. Before she could touch him, Cloud's unfocused gaze snapped into perfect clarity, his lips tearing back into a cold snarl. The scientist ripped her hand back. Cloud began to speak, but it wasn't Cloud's voice that came from his lips. Harsh, rasping words filled the air, incomprehensible to Zack because whatever Cloud was speaking, it didn't sound like it even belonged to this planet.

Zack's blood ran cold.

"His eyes! Get documentation of his eyes!" Hojo screamed above Cloud's chanting, which was steadily increasing in volume and intensity. Snapped back into action, the scientists swarmed Clouds body, taking photographs and several syringes-worth of blood samples.

Only Hojo remained unmoving in the chaos. He hovered above Cloud, braced on hands splayed on either side of Cloud's face. He was bent low, close enough to Cloud that only a few inches separated them. "Speak to me, Jenova."

Zack slammed his fists on his freshly-locked cell door, yelling at the guards to get back here or I'll slit your face wide open. Cloud was still in the lab. He had still been chanting when Zack had been escorted away, his voice slowly being worn down to the point of breaking. Hojo hadn't moved from his post at Cloud's head, either. He had stood there, gazing unnervingly into Cloud's eyes, only looking up to give the orders for Zack to be removed, after Zack had become too much of a disturbance.

When the last of the footsteps died away, Zack pushed himself roughly away from the bars and punched the wall, barely noticing when his knuckles give way on impact.

What was that?

Something…something hadn't been right back there. Well, more not right than usual. This had been more sinister than anything he'd sensed before. It wasn't natural. Not of this earth. A shiver rippled from the back of his neck down his spine.

Jenova, Hojo had said. J-E-N-V-O-V-A. Zack had known that Hojo was obsessed with Her, but never thought, never even imagined, that the experiments they were being subjected to were connected to Her. But pieces snatched from overheard conversations and glimpses at clipboards were slowly lining up. Cells, J-E-N-O-V-A, repeated mentions of a new breed of super SOLDIER…goddamn, he and Cloud were to become the next Sephiroths.

The thought understandably did little to ease Zack's worries.

When Cloud came back, he was standing, much to Zack's surprise. He stood on the cell's threshold, silent and immobile, with eyes cast downwards.

"Hey, buddy." Zack said, relieved to see his friend in decent shape. "You alright?"

Cloud didn't respond. Or move. Or give any indication that he heard Zack at all.

"Cloud?" Zack moved to stand in front of him. "Hellooo, can you hear me?" he joked, waving a hand in front of Cloud's face, although dread pooled in his stomach. He took Cloud's hands in his and kneeled before him. "Hey, Clou-…oh."

Cloud's eyes were no longer completely filled Mako, although Zack couldn't say that their current state was an improvement. They had changed to an acidic, corrosive green, slit down the middle with one, long, cat-like pupil. Sephiroth. Zack resisted the urge to throw down Cloud's hands and back the hell away.

"Cloud?" he tried again. "You gotta say something to me, buddy, you're kind of freaking me out." Cloud stared indifferently down at him. Zack squeezed his hands tightly and held them up to his lips. "Cloud, come on, please." Cloud didn't move. Zack's lungs seemed to malfunction as he took a large, shuddering breath.

They had discussed before, with varying levels of seriousness, the benefits of permanently retreating into their minds as an escape from the lab. Zack doubted he would ever actually allow himself to do that, although his conjured-up mental paradise did sound real attractive some days. Clear skies and open spaces? Hell yeah, sign him up. But he had never thought about what the disconnect implied, though. That Cloud might have actually (finally) lost his mind and now Zack was left alone.

He dropped Cloud's hands and rocked back onto his heels. He was scared, real fucking scared, because losing Cloud wasn't an option. He firmly shook his head. He wouldn't give up that easily.

He rose to stand at full height and took Cloud's face in his hands, tilting the blond's head up to meet his gaze. Or he tried to.

With inhuman speed, Cloud's hands came up to grasp Zack's wrists with enough force to send Zack to his knees. No sooner did he slam into the ground than Cloud's foot connected with his chest, sending Zack flying across the small room. He collided with the wall with a muffled thud.

Stunned, Zack sat in a heap on the floor, trying to suck breath back into his paralyzed lungs. The back of his head smarted fiercely. He warily regarded Cloud, whose eyes were still cold and expressionless, and seriously debated whether or not he should take up a defensive stance.

He struggled to his feet. It took more effort than he liked to admit.

"Okay," he said shakily. "You don't want to be touched right now. That's fine." Keeping his back to the wall, he edged over to his cot and, despite his natural instincts screaming at him not to, took a seat. "I'll be over here if you need me."

Time passed and Cloud didn't move.

The guards brought their dinner and Cloud didn't move.

Zack's eyes drooped from fatigue and Cloud didn't move.

Zack was nearly asleep when Cloud dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

Flying out of bed, he was at Cloud's side prepared to help him through his next seizure. It turned out, however, that there was no need.

"Zuh-…" Cloud started, but then grimaced and cleared his throat. Zack handed him the cup of water the guards had brought earlier, which Cloud accepted gratefully. His eyes had gone back to normal. Honest-to-goodness normal, like they had been before mako had started bleeding from his irises. And his pupils were refreshingly circular, Zack noticed with relief.

"Zack," he tried again. His voice sounded like broken glass, and was so soft that even Zack's mako-enhanced ears had to strain to hear him.

"Yeah, Spike?"

Cloud gestured to his throat. "Why…?"

"You don't remember?"

Cloud shook his head. "Just getting to the lab." Zack's throat gave a twinge of sympathy listening to him talk. "What happened?"

Zack hesitated, not really sure how to proceed. He didn't want to remind Cloud of what had happened in the lab, partly for the semi-irrational fear that he would trigger it again. But Cloud gave him his trademark look of insistence; the one that said he would be getting the truth one way or another, and he would prefer it now from Zack.

Exhaling through his nose, Zack said "I'm not totally sure what happened," and hurriedly continued as Cloud cast him a doubtful look. "But you freaked out after they dosed you up something. You, uh, screamed, and then ended up chanting something that definitely was not in English, and scared the hell out of pretty much everyone. Once you got back here, you just kind of stood around and didn't move for a while." He didn't mention anything about Cloud attacking him. "I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty scary. It was like you were possessed."

"Possessed…" Cloud echoed softly, then stiffened with a small gasp. "Jenova." His eyes flickered green and then back to normal so fast that Zack thought that he might have imagined it.

Cloud relaxed and moved so that his elbows were resting on his knees with his head in his hands. "I'm scared, Zack." he admitted.

"You and me both, buddy." Zack said. "You and me both."

Zack sensed something was wrong with Cloud the moment he was brought back from having his blood drawn.

"Something up, Spike?"

"I'm just cold." Cloud mumbled between chattering teeth. "Really, really cold."

Zack frowned. It wasn't exactly summer weather down in the labs, but the temperature wasn't too terrible. Still, he shrugged off his shirt and tossed it to Cloud.

"Here, put this on."

"You don't want it?"

Zack waved his hand dismissively and grinned. "Nah, I'm good. We Gongagans run hot."

Cloud rolled his eyes, but tugged on Zack's shirt immediately before wrapping himself in his thin, cotton sheet. Zack promptly wadded up his own blanket and lobbed it over to him, which Cloud accepted without protest. He curled himself into a shivering ball.

Zack watched him for a moment before reaching a decision. He threw his mattress pad onto the ground and walked over to Cloud's cot.

"Get up, buddy, I need this." he said, tugging on Cloud's mattress.

"Huh?" Cloud's eyes peeked out from his meager cocoon of blankets.

"Get up." Zack repeated insistently.

"S'too cold to move." came the muffled reply. "Hey, gah!"

Zack had grabbed the mattress on either end and hoisted it up with Cloud folded awkwardly in the middle. He spun on his heel and lowered his cargo to the ground, then positioning his own mattress next to Cloud's.

He stepped neatly over Cloud and laid down next to him. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"…'m still cold." Cloud muttered sullenly.

"Hang on, sheesh, I'm getting to that part." He tugged on the covers. "Open up."

Cloud eyed him doubtfully, but complied. Zack scooted towards Cloud, opening up his arms to draw him closer. "Jesus Christ, you're freezing!"

Cloud mumbled something against Zack's shoulder that sounded suspiciously like "I told you." Despite Cloud never being a huge fan of physical contact, he moved closer to Zack to soak up more body heat. He felt as though his insides had turned to ice and were radiating arctic levels of coldness out into his limbs. It was different than the cold that came from winter air or falling into a cool river. This felt like his cells were shutting down and refusing to produce any heat.

With Cloud's head buried in his chest, Zack lay there, hands tracing patterns into Cloud's back. He was shivering so violently now that, if Zack didn't know any better, it felt like he was having a seizure. Zack repositioned his hold on him, his legs tangling with Cloud's just to give him whatever extra heat he had. He hadn't been exaggerating earlier when he'd come into contact with his skin; Cloud was cold, and shockingly so.

Gradually, Cloud stopped shivering. Zack thought of this as a good thing, until he shifted his hand from where it had been resting and felt a different patch of Cloud's skin. He was like ice.

Zack yelled for help.

Cloud was in bad shape. Bad, bad shape. Worse than he'd ever been before. Zack didn't expect Cloud to survive the night. He didn't think the guards expected him to either.

There was no one at the lab to help him. Hojo and his colleagues had been called away, and were at least a day's journey from the lab. There was no one there to assist them, except for the few guards that had been assigned look after them. One of the more sympathetic guards had brought Cloud a fleece blanket, but that was it. There was no other help coming.

Cloud's breathing had slowed down to the point that Zack found himself fearing that the next one would never come. He floated in and out of coherency, one moment begging Zack to help him please and the next engaged in slurred conversation with someone only he could see. His eyes rolled lazily in their sockets, coated with a dull sheen.

Sometimes he would look Zack right in the eye, and Zack would get a spark of hope that he might finally be coming back to himself, but they would always fall back out of focus.

His lips were dry and cracked, causing Zack to believe that Cloud was severely dehydrated, but the small sip of water Zack had managed to get him to drink earlier only caused him to retch bile. Of everything Zack had faced, the idea of losing Cloud was the most frightening.

In the back of his mind, he had already started planning his suicide for after Cloud had drawn his final breath.

Zack had started talking over Cloud's rambling a while ago, more to comfort himself than Cloud. He talked about his childhood, things that made him laugh, his early aspirations and dreams, and basically any good memory he had that he desperately wished he could live again.

When talking about his past became too painful, he sang and hummed his favorite songs; the ones whose lyrics he still remembered despite the time that had passed since he'd last heard them.

He stroked Cloud's back and rubbed his hair, and teased him about his uncanny resemblance to a Chocobo. He protectively tucked the blankets over them once, twice, three times, to make sure they were a secure as possible, But Cloud wasn't heating up.

"It's okay, buddy." he said, voice cracking. "You're alright, you're alright." He repeated those words like a prayer.

"…who are you?"

Zack awoke immediately upon hearing Cloud speak, momentarily disorientated. He hadn't even realized he'd fallen asleep. It took him a moment longer to register that Cloud was directing the question to him. Cloud's face was lined with exhaustion and his eyes were half-mast, but he was looking directly at Zack.

"…you don't know me?" Zack whispered.

"Who are you?" Cloud repeated. His words were slow and heavy, as if his mouth had forgotten the movements of speech.

"You don't know me…?"

"No." Cloud breathed, his mouth barely moving.

Vertigo slammed into Zack and the room spun wildly around him. How could Cloud forget, how could he forget? Zack wanted to scream, destroy, tear, attack, just do anything to rid himself of the raw wave of anguish that had slammed into him. Cloud had forgotten him. His best friend had forgotten him. It was incomprehensible. Tears welled in his eyes, and for once he didn't bother to keep them in check. Cloud had forgotten him and he was alone, alone, alone, alonealonealone…

Without realizing, he'd tightened his grip on Cloud and pulled him closer. One of his hands tangled itself desperately in Cloud's hair, while the other clung frantically to his back. Cloud stiffened, barely perceptible in his weak state. Nevertheless, Zack forced himself to relax his embrace and took a deep breath in attempt to steady himself.

"I'm Zack." he choked.

"Oh," Cloud said, although it was clear he didn't consider his question answered.

"…Zack...?"

"Yeah, Spike?"

"Who am I...?" he asked drowsily.

Grief clogged Zack's throat.

"You're Cloud, buddy." He cupped Cloud's face between his hands and pressed his forehead to his. "You're my best friend." he whispered fiercely.

"Mm..." Cloud murmured. His eyes slid out of focus, drifting shut. "Zack…?"

"Yeah, Spike? …Spike?"

He never got an answer. Cloud had become unresponsive, limp in Zack's arms. Drawing in a shuddering breath, Zack pressed his lips to Cloud's forehead and waited for the end.

Except there wasn't an end. Hojo arrived some time after in a blaze of fury, demanding to know what had happened to his favorite experiment. They forcibly dragged Cloud from Zack's arms, carting his body away on a gurney.

Alone in his cell, Zack wept.

The next time he saw Cloud, he was being shoved into a mako tank while Cloud floated like a corpse nearby.