![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Dip In Fortune
Author/Artist: GW Katrina aka![[insanejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/ij-userinfo.gif)
icedark_elf
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII:![[insanejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/ij-community.gif)
mercverse
Pairing/Character: Zack
Theme: 15-Dip
Rating: PG-15
Wordcount: 901
Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII and Zack aren't mine. Concept formercverse is.
Warning: Suicide is mentioned, as is implied child abuse.
Dip In Fortune
Though he’ll never know it, Zack had a family before Cloud.
He knows he must have had parents in some form or fashion or else he wouldn’t be alive. But the dark haired man assumes that maybe it was a one-night stand that his mom couldn’t quite work up the courage to deal with the results of and he lucked out to be born.
That wasn’t the case at all.
Zack was born to a man and a woman who were told that they would never have children. His mom worked with a local mages guild and a few situations had happened that were supposed to have left her as sterile. So when it was discovered she actually was pregnant, the parents to be had thrown the biggest party their neighborhood had seen in decades, and it ended up turning into a miniature festival before it was over.
Zack was born to a family who loved him. When the doctors announced the baby healthy, his father had handed out ritual blessings to anyone who would hold still long enough for him to get a hold of. Sometimes those who didn’t hold still found themselves chased down and given one if they wanted one or not.
He had his mother’s eyes and his father’s hair. Friends of the family made loud moaning proclaims that they could already see his father’s sense of humor reborn into the small figure.
Zack also inherited his mother’s sense of protecting the weak. Nobody would ever know this, though.
When Zack was one, there was an accident where his mom worked. His family lost a wife and mother and got a shiny plaque proclaiming her a hero in her place.
Zack didn’t understand why Momma wasn’t coming home. Or why Daddy kept tossing that thing on the wall around before cleaning up the mess and hanging it back up.
He also didn’t understand why, two months later, the neighbors were horrified when he asked them why Daddy was so still. Most of their horror, though, came from the fact that Zack’s hands were covered in blood and there were thick black bruises on his neck. When asked, he told them Daddy had said something about going to see Momma and then Zack couldn’t breathe for a bit. When he woke up, Daddy was all cold and there was the red stuff everywhere. So Zack had covered him with a blanket, cause that’s what you did when someone was cold, and went to ask his neighbors for help.
Zack, thankfully, doesn’t remember any of this except in his most vague and disturbing of dreams. The ones that make him stay up until Cloud gets tired of the man lurking like a wraith and drags him to bed and sleeps curled around him. It helps to have a warm body next to him instead of one going cold.
So Zack had gone to live in the orphanage. From the age of one and a half to three, he had a total of eight broken bones, two concussions, one serious enough to put him in a hospital, and a three day coma. This was how the people who never knew his family discovered both his stubbornness and his need to protect. One of the night shift workers liked little children, and while Zack didn’t understand what the man was doing, he knew it made some of the kids cry. The man was a smooth liar, and Zack was active enough that people bought the lies.
Nobody asked Zack what had happened to him.
He ran away from the orphanage at the age of four, because he had just accidentally killed his first person. And discovered that he wasn’t normal. Cause according to the other kids, normal people didn’t move like him, and normal people didn’t try to tear out the throats of people who hurt others.
He ran and took to heart the name freak. If he was going to be different, then he was different, and he accepted it.
He lived on the streets until Cloud found him about two years later. Luckily for Zack, his bright eyes and cheerful smile got him made more of a mascot for a small group of homeless beggars and not picked up by one of the people who ran the various child whores. Zack was good at begging, and he was always cheerful.
Zack refuses to share what he does remember of his childhood before he met Cloud, and the others only know what they get from the various mumbles he makes during the worst of the dreams. He doesn’t want them to know because all he remembers are the bad times. He doesn’t remember a woman with smiling violet eyes who died saving her friends or a man who, before he went mad, always had an easy grin and a quick joke. He does not know that he even really had a family before Cloud. Only that a dip in fortunes put him on the streets, alone and without a family. At least until Cloud collected him.
Thus Zack clings to his new family and will die to protect them, and tries to help them live with the stress of their job with a quirky sense of humor and a fatalistic view of life. He is the product of his heritage and his upbringing, though Zack will never really remember either.
crossposted inicedark_elf, 25_streetsigns, acfiction, and mercverse
Author/Artist: GW Katrina aka
icedark_elfFandom: Final Fantasy VII:
mercversePairing/Character: Zack
Theme: 15-Dip
Rating: PG-15
Wordcount: 901
Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII and Zack aren't mine. Concept for
mercverse is.Warning: Suicide is mentioned, as is implied child abuse.
Dip In Fortune
Though he’ll never know it, Zack had a family before Cloud.
He knows he must have had parents in some form or fashion or else he wouldn’t be alive. But the dark haired man assumes that maybe it was a one-night stand that his mom couldn’t quite work up the courage to deal with the results of and he lucked out to be born.
That wasn’t the case at all.
Zack was born to a man and a woman who were told that they would never have children. His mom worked with a local mages guild and a few situations had happened that were supposed to have left her as sterile. So when it was discovered she actually was pregnant, the parents to be had thrown the biggest party their neighborhood had seen in decades, and it ended up turning into a miniature festival before it was over.
Zack was born to a family who loved him. When the doctors announced the baby healthy, his father had handed out ritual blessings to anyone who would hold still long enough for him to get a hold of. Sometimes those who didn’t hold still found themselves chased down and given one if they wanted one or not.
He had his mother’s eyes and his father’s hair. Friends of the family made loud moaning proclaims that they could already see his father’s sense of humor reborn into the small figure.
Zack also inherited his mother’s sense of protecting the weak. Nobody would ever know this, though.
When Zack was one, there was an accident where his mom worked. His family lost a wife and mother and got a shiny plaque proclaiming her a hero in her place.
Zack didn’t understand why Momma wasn’t coming home. Or why Daddy kept tossing that thing on the wall around before cleaning up the mess and hanging it back up.
He also didn’t understand why, two months later, the neighbors were horrified when he asked them why Daddy was so still. Most of their horror, though, came from the fact that Zack’s hands were covered in blood and there were thick black bruises on his neck. When asked, he told them Daddy had said something about going to see Momma and then Zack couldn’t breathe for a bit. When he woke up, Daddy was all cold and there was the red stuff everywhere. So Zack had covered him with a blanket, cause that’s what you did when someone was cold, and went to ask his neighbors for help.
Zack, thankfully, doesn’t remember any of this except in his most vague and disturbing of dreams. The ones that make him stay up until Cloud gets tired of the man lurking like a wraith and drags him to bed and sleeps curled around him. It helps to have a warm body next to him instead of one going cold.
So Zack had gone to live in the orphanage. From the age of one and a half to three, he had a total of eight broken bones, two concussions, one serious enough to put him in a hospital, and a three day coma. This was how the people who never knew his family discovered both his stubbornness and his need to protect. One of the night shift workers liked little children, and while Zack didn’t understand what the man was doing, he knew it made some of the kids cry. The man was a smooth liar, and Zack was active enough that people bought the lies.
Nobody asked Zack what had happened to him.
He ran away from the orphanage at the age of four, because he had just accidentally killed his first person. And discovered that he wasn’t normal. Cause according to the other kids, normal people didn’t move like him, and normal people didn’t try to tear out the throats of people who hurt others.
He ran and took to heart the name freak. If he was going to be different, then he was different, and he accepted it.
He lived on the streets until Cloud found him about two years later. Luckily for Zack, his bright eyes and cheerful smile got him made more of a mascot for a small group of homeless beggars and not picked up by one of the people who ran the various child whores. Zack was good at begging, and he was always cheerful.
Zack refuses to share what he does remember of his childhood before he met Cloud, and the others only know what they get from the various mumbles he makes during the worst of the dreams. He doesn’t want them to know because all he remembers are the bad times. He doesn’t remember a woman with smiling violet eyes who died saving her friends or a man who, before he went mad, always had an easy grin and a quick joke. He does not know that he even really had a family before Cloud. Only that a dip in fortunes put him on the streets, alone and without a family. At least until Cloud collected him.
Thus Zack clings to his new family and will die to protect them, and tries to help them live with the stress of their job with a quirky sense of humor and a fatalistic view of life. He is the product of his heritage and his upbringing, though Zack will never really remember either.
crossposted in
icedark_elf, 25_streetsigns, acfiction, and mercverse