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Title: Eyes
Author: GW Katrina aka![[insanejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/ij-userinfo.gif)
icedark_elf
Beta:skeren
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Claim: Zack Fair
Themeset/Prompt: Ten Set 04, 08-Eyes for![[insanejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/ij-community.gif)
story_arc
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,614
Link to Archive Post: Interconnected
One of the more irritating things about having a phone, really, was that people -called- you on them.
Eyeing the device, Vincent did feel some relief that it wasn’t Yuffie. Yet again. Once she had discovered his number, she had taken to calling him constantly, never letting more than a few days go between calls. He wondered if she harassed the others as much, or if she did it just to try fluster him.
This time, the ID said it was Reeve, and Vincent, with a sigh, answered the call. “Hello?”
“I was wondering if you were about to pull a Cloud,” came Reeve’s voice, tired, but full of humor. “He’s well known for ignoring his calls, and if Yuffie is to be believed, you do the same quite often.”
“I have caller ID.”
That earned a chuckle from Reeve, and Vincent listened quietly for a moment, knowing the other man would come to the reason for the call eventually. The WRO didn’t leave him enough time to just randomly call people and sit on the line for no reason.
“We need you to come to Edge.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Of course you’d want a reason.” A half laugh. “Honestly, I’m not sure why you in particularly are being requested, but you are. It’s from one of Cloud’s friends, who we found in a lab recently. He seems very determined that you come and visit.”
A murmur in the background, soft enough that Vincent couldn’t catch it over the phone. Reeve replied, but without the original comment, ‘for what?’ was not that much of a useful line. A few more exchanges, while Vincent again waited patiently, and then Reeve’s voice returned to its former volume as he spoke into the phone again.
“He says it has something to do with your younger sisters....” Ah, a confused tone. For a very, very good reason. Not even Vincent’s Turk file had any notes over the existence of siblings. They noted his father, his mother, and that was it. Actually, if he recalled correctly, Vincent was sure his records said he was an only child. For a very good reason, and he frowned. Who was this person that was a friend of Cloud’s, and -how- did he know things like that?
“Reeve?”
“I don’t think he’s going to explain, Vincent. Not without meeting you face to face, so you might as well come and find out what this is about.” And Vincent was sure that Reeve or Cait would be right there when he got to Edge. For all that he was a professional, Reeve did love to hear about new things, or else Cait wouldn’t be the clever little spy that he was.
“Where are you?”
Noting the name of the hospital and room, Vincent said goodbye, and hung up.
A friend of Cloud’s who had obtained information that not even the highly, highly suspicious Turks had been able to gain. A friend of Cloud’s who had been pulled out of a lab.
Vincent wanted to meet this friend, and see if he was a danger or not. Too much had happened for him to trust so easily, and he was sure that Cloud would appreciate knowing if this friend of his was safe or not. Though it was most likely that Cloud and Reeve had already checked him out quite thoroughly. Both were almost as suspicious as he was, and with a great many resources.
He should have asked the man’s name. Ah, well. He’d find out soon enough, and he could call sources as easily from Edge as he could Kalm.
///
It wasn’t hard to find the hospital. Edge only had two, which was a surprise, since it hosted most of the survivors of Midgar’s population.
But, most of the real hospitals, with the trained doctors, had been upPlate. He had never pondered just how many people from up there survived, and how many of them fell later to Geostigma. Without doctors, well, clinics would be just as good, especially when most of what they dealt with could be cured with materia or potions.
In any case, Vincent soon found himself ghosting down pale halls. A nurse had been kind enough to point him in the direction of the room he was looking for, and hadn’t looked the least bit afraid of Vincent. Though if they were bringing survivors of Hojo’s labs here, he doubted he was the most frightening thing she had ever seen. At least, not the most outwardly frightening thing at the moment. Chaos chuckled faintly in his head, and he just ignored the demon. They had gotten quirky over the years.
Spotting the door, he moved to stand there, listening, and hoping to get a few moments to observe who was there.
That didn’t happen.
Almost as soon as he was there, he was being looked at by Cloud and a dark haired stranger who was sitting up in a bed. From the looks of it, Vincent had come around meal time, and the man’s...dessert cube?, was still jiggling faintly. Oh, Vincent remembered those things. Not anything close to real food, and a standard all over.
The man had glowing eyes, which was a good guess on why he had looked up as soon as Cloud had. Another SOLDIER. Which made him worry more for what the man knew of his background. SOLDIERs had often been too close to Hojo to keep effective secrets.
Sitting near them was Tifa, who had a bag of books next to her. It looked as if she had dropped by to visit and lingered, though he was sure he knew why. Probably the same reason that Reeve was sitting in the corner, tinkering on one of his Caits, the back of the robot wide open, black fur pushed aside. Didn’t either of them have places to be?
Ignoring them for a moment, he looked at the man on the bed, studying him again. Thin. It was easy to pick out bone under pale skin. Skin was dry, cracked, bandages wrapped around joints and such. Vincent had seen it before in projects abandoned in mass amounts of mako. Too long meant that when a subject left it, the body had to adjust to not being coated in fluid. Dry skin and hair, which broke easily. Easy to damage, and cracked skin was bleeding skin. Damage enough, and the subjects were already weakening from blood loss.
A person could live in mako unattended far longer than should be possible. Mako seemed to support the systems, nutrition being leached out of it, damage done to the body by its own need for food, sleep, and fluid slowly repaired by the green liquid. One couldn’t live forever in it, but he knew there were tests that one creature, some sort of bird, left in a mako tube had still be alive almost a decade later.
It was a thought that had echoed in his nightmares. Even before he had ended up in a tube himself.
Vincent also made a note to -never- share that test with Cloud. No need to give him the same nightmares.
Around them, the silence stretched on and on, finally broken as he moved closer.
“Who are you?”
Pushing away the plate, the man waved at the chair that was free. “Pull up a seat. I have a few things to talk to you about.”
About to refuse, Vincent stopped, and then sat in the chair. He trusted Cloud and the others. They would not lead him into a trap, though he still wanted to know how this man knew his family.
“Again, who are you?”
The man grinned. “Name is Zack Fair.”
Well, that explained a great deal, such as why Cloud hovered like he did. Vincent knew of Cloud’s own bout of lab time. He knew a few details even, though he never pried. Zack was a name he knew well, remembering when Cloud had explained his memory issues, explained that while he had been in Nibelheim, it wasn’t as a SOLDIER. The SOLDIER, Zack, had later died while protecting Cloud, trying to draw away those who hunted him, and fell trying to deal with them. All strong reasons for Cloud’s devotion to the man.
Still, that did not explain how Zack knew his family.
“What do you know about my sisters?”
Two young girls, twins, though not identical. His half sisters, in reality, who delighted in talking to their older brother. Twelve years old when they had been born, he had been rather dismissive of them. Once he had started to work for Shin-Ra, he rarely left Midgar except on missions, and his mother, who was very Wutian, had stopped talking to him.
“I know they grew up in Wutai. Did pretty well there.” Zack shifted, snagged a glass of water in a hand that trembled just a bit, and sipped at it. “One of them, Amara, she ended up joining Lord Godo’s nin. Did pretty well, from what I know. She ended up being one of his primary bodyguards. Had to beat out a lot of people for it.”
Vincent nodded, and let go enough to smile faintly. “She was always the more active of them.” It was good she had become a ninja. It had been her dream since she was tiny, and he wondered if he would have met her during that full fledged war that happened sometime after he had gone to sleep.
“Yeah. As for Jerusha,” Zack gave a sheepish smile. “Well, she decided she liked the look of a traveling merchant. Courted him until he finally agreed to the idea of marrying her.”
He paused, violet eyes bright as he looked at Vincent. An odd color, but the SOLDIER process seemed to bring out almost unnatural colors in people. Sephiroth’s green, Cloud’s vivid blue, now this glowing purple. Though some people had odd colors. His mother’s had been greenish-gold, while Vincent had gotten his father’s red eyes. His sisters had more green than gold, but still rather unusual among the greys and blues of the Wutai people.
When Zack started again, his words were in Wutanese. “They ended up moving back to Gongaga, where they had a son who was awesome and left home at fourteen to go join Shin-Ra and be a SOLDIER.”
There was an expectant look on his face, and Vincent wasn’t sure what he was implying. Then he looked closer at the boy.
He could see the shape of his sister’s eyes, angled and large when the man’s face was still, that disguising grin gone for the moment.
“Hiya, Uncle Vincent. Mom is going to be mad you didn’t call her.”
Vincent leaned back in his chair, a bit in shock.
///
Zack couldn’t help but chuckle weakly at the expression on the man’s face. Though he was studying him. It was odd, seeing the longer hair, the red clothing, more leather than anyone but Seph ever wore. There was a wildness around him, a feralness, that never showed up in his mom’s pictures of her older brother. If it wasn’t for the eyes, Zack wasn’t sure if he would have recognized the man. Definitely hadn’t when he had run across him sleeping.
Next time, make sure to wake up sleeping people he found in coffins. Learned that lesson real fast.
Although part of his attention was distracted by the rather amusing noise that Spike was making as he looked back and forth between them, obviously looking for the resemblance. It was hard to see, most of the time. Thankfully, Zack had taken after his Gongaga father more than his Wutian mother, or else there would have been an issue when he had shown up to join SOLDIER. Right now, though, with as much weight as he had lost, he knew it was a hell of a lot easier to tell. Those damn cheek bones and the shape of his eyes were more prominent than not when he was so thin. He had seen it himself while in the bathroom.
Though Zack had totally forgotten that Spike had picked up Wutanese from him while they were in the labs. It was something to focus on, between tests.
Finally, after a few long long moments, Cloud had sat back with a faintly surprised sound, which drew a chuckle from Reeve. Now that one, Zack wasn’t so sure what he had gotten from the last bit of that conversation, if anything. Reeve he knew in a vague ‘we work for the same people’ sort of way. But, well, a lot of people worked for Shin-Ra.
Though he was really starting to like the guy.
Tifa was just giving him a look. “What was that last bit?”
A chuckle. “Well, I was introducing him to the fact he has a nephew who was made of pure awesome.”
That just got a snort, and the woman rolled her eyes. “In any case, as I was saying before all of this, Marlene and Denzel thought you might like things to read. To pass the time and all. For -some- reason, they adore you.”
He just grinned at her, knowing she was teasing in her own way.
“How are they?”
Both of them looked to Vincent, who was watching Zack. “My sisters, how are they?”
Zack paused, and then shifted. “Aunt Mara died during the war. She had a little girl, but there was an assassination attempt by a noble who wasn’t thrilled with how Godo was dealing with the war, and she was his lead bodyguard.....” He trailed off. “Mom is still alive. I called her a few days ago. She’s a bit upset that I vanished like that. Seems like Shin-Ra was doing a bit of mail censoring, because they never got any of my letters.” Zack let out a slow sigh over that. He should have called, at least once.
“Need to go visit them. You need to go as well, cause once Mom finds out that you are alive and not visiting, she is going to hunt you down. I, being the good son that I am, will shamelessly rat you out.”
“Because you -hope- it will distract her some from you,” was Cloud’s low comment, just shaking his head. “I would never have expected the two of you to be related, of all people.”
“Well, we should probably go meet my uncle and cousin.” A pause. “I wonder if she’s still mad I joined Shin-Ra?”
Now Cloud was looking at him, eyes curious. “Why did you join up with them? I mean, your family is from Wutai, right?”
“So is Tseng’s. In any case, I joined to see if I couldn’t find my uncle, who both Mom and Aunt Mara knew was a Turk, and then I met Seph. And he needed a friend too much for me to leave.”
The others fell silent at Seph’s name, and Zack had a pang of why, Seph?, still not fully understanding why his friend had done what he had done.
“Tell me about them? Just stories.”
Zack looked into Vincent’s eyes. The man seemed to honestly want to hear the stories. “You want stories, you should ask Dad. He’s full of them. But...I can tell you some. I mean, there is a lot I don’t know, or remember, but I do remember some.”
Vincent’s eyes lightened, some of the brooding in them vanishing, and Zack cheered mentally. Then, after another sip of water, and a few minutes to gather his thoughts, he began to talk about his mom and his Aunt Mara.
Author: GW Katrina aka
icedark_elfBeta:
skerenFandom: Final Fantasy VII
Claim: Zack Fair
Themeset/Prompt: Ten Set 04, 08-Eyes for
story_arcRating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,614
Link to Archive Post: Interconnected
One of the more irritating things about having a phone, really, was that people -called- you on them.
Eyeing the device, Vincent did feel some relief that it wasn’t Yuffie. Yet again. Once she had discovered his number, she had taken to calling him constantly, never letting more than a few days go between calls. He wondered if she harassed the others as much, or if she did it just to try fluster him.
This time, the ID said it was Reeve, and Vincent, with a sigh, answered the call. “Hello?”
“I was wondering if you were about to pull a Cloud,” came Reeve’s voice, tired, but full of humor. “He’s well known for ignoring his calls, and if Yuffie is to be believed, you do the same quite often.”
“I have caller ID.”
That earned a chuckle from Reeve, and Vincent listened quietly for a moment, knowing the other man would come to the reason for the call eventually. The WRO didn’t leave him enough time to just randomly call people and sit on the line for no reason.
“We need you to come to Edge.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Of course you’d want a reason.” A half laugh. “Honestly, I’m not sure why you in particularly are being requested, but you are. It’s from one of Cloud’s friends, who we found in a lab recently. He seems very determined that you come and visit.”
A murmur in the background, soft enough that Vincent couldn’t catch it over the phone. Reeve replied, but without the original comment, ‘for what?’ was not that much of a useful line. A few more exchanges, while Vincent again waited patiently, and then Reeve’s voice returned to its former volume as he spoke into the phone again.
“He says it has something to do with your younger sisters....” Ah, a confused tone. For a very, very good reason. Not even Vincent’s Turk file had any notes over the existence of siblings. They noted his father, his mother, and that was it. Actually, if he recalled correctly, Vincent was sure his records said he was an only child. For a very good reason, and he frowned. Who was this person that was a friend of Cloud’s, and -how- did he know things like that?
“Reeve?”
“I don’t think he’s going to explain, Vincent. Not without meeting you face to face, so you might as well come and find out what this is about.” And Vincent was sure that Reeve or Cait would be right there when he got to Edge. For all that he was a professional, Reeve did love to hear about new things, or else Cait wouldn’t be the clever little spy that he was.
“Where are you?”
Noting the name of the hospital and room, Vincent said goodbye, and hung up.
A friend of Cloud’s who had obtained information that not even the highly, highly suspicious Turks had been able to gain. A friend of Cloud’s who had been pulled out of a lab.
Vincent wanted to meet this friend, and see if he was a danger or not. Too much had happened for him to trust so easily, and he was sure that Cloud would appreciate knowing if this friend of his was safe or not. Though it was most likely that Cloud and Reeve had already checked him out quite thoroughly. Both were almost as suspicious as he was, and with a great many resources.
He should have asked the man’s name. Ah, well. He’d find out soon enough, and he could call sources as easily from Edge as he could Kalm.
It wasn’t hard to find the hospital. Edge only had two, which was a surprise, since it hosted most of the survivors of Midgar’s population.
But, most of the real hospitals, with the trained doctors, had been upPlate. He had never pondered just how many people from up there survived, and how many of them fell later to Geostigma. Without doctors, well, clinics would be just as good, especially when most of what they dealt with could be cured with materia or potions.
In any case, Vincent soon found himself ghosting down pale halls. A nurse had been kind enough to point him in the direction of the room he was looking for, and hadn’t looked the least bit afraid of Vincent. Though if they were bringing survivors of Hojo’s labs here, he doubted he was the most frightening thing she had ever seen. At least, not the most outwardly frightening thing at the moment. Chaos chuckled faintly in his head, and he just ignored the demon. They had gotten quirky over the years.
Spotting the door, he moved to stand there, listening, and hoping to get a few moments to observe who was there.
That didn’t happen.
Almost as soon as he was there, he was being looked at by Cloud and a dark haired stranger who was sitting up in a bed. From the looks of it, Vincent had come around meal time, and the man’s...dessert cube?, was still jiggling faintly. Oh, Vincent remembered those things. Not anything close to real food, and a standard all over.
The man had glowing eyes, which was a good guess on why he had looked up as soon as Cloud had. Another SOLDIER. Which made him worry more for what the man knew of his background. SOLDIERs had often been too close to Hojo to keep effective secrets.
Sitting near them was Tifa, who had a bag of books next to her. It looked as if she had dropped by to visit and lingered, though he was sure he knew why. Probably the same reason that Reeve was sitting in the corner, tinkering on one of his Caits, the back of the robot wide open, black fur pushed aside. Didn’t either of them have places to be?
Ignoring them for a moment, he looked at the man on the bed, studying him again. Thin. It was easy to pick out bone under pale skin. Skin was dry, cracked, bandages wrapped around joints and such. Vincent had seen it before in projects abandoned in mass amounts of mako. Too long meant that when a subject left it, the body had to adjust to not being coated in fluid. Dry skin and hair, which broke easily. Easy to damage, and cracked skin was bleeding skin. Damage enough, and the subjects were already weakening from blood loss.
A person could live in mako unattended far longer than should be possible. Mako seemed to support the systems, nutrition being leached out of it, damage done to the body by its own need for food, sleep, and fluid slowly repaired by the green liquid. One couldn’t live forever in it, but he knew there were tests that one creature, some sort of bird, left in a mako tube had still be alive almost a decade later.
It was a thought that had echoed in his nightmares. Even before he had ended up in a tube himself.
Vincent also made a note to -never- share that test with Cloud. No need to give him the same nightmares.
Around them, the silence stretched on and on, finally broken as he moved closer.
“Who are you?”
Pushing away the plate, the man waved at the chair that was free. “Pull up a seat. I have a few things to talk to you about.”
About to refuse, Vincent stopped, and then sat in the chair. He trusted Cloud and the others. They would not lead him into a trap, though he still wanted to know how this man knew his family.
“Again, who are you?”
The man grinned. “Name is Zack Fair.”
Well, that explained a great deal, such as why Cloud hovered like he did. Vincent knew of Cloud’s own bout of lab time. He knew a few details even, though he never pried. Zack was a name he knew well, remembering when Cloud had explained his memory issues, explained that while he had been in Nibelheim, it wasn’t as a SOLDIER. The SOLDIER, Zack, had later died while protecting Cloud, trying to draw away those who hunted him, and fell trying to deal with them. All strong reasons for Cloud’s devotion to the man.
Still, that did not explain how Zack knew his family.
“What do you know about my sisters?”
Two young girls, twins, though not identical. His half sisters, in reality, who delighted in talking to their older brother. Twelve years old when they had been born, he had been rather dismissive of them. Once he had started to work for Shin-Ra, he rarely left Midgar except on missions, and his mother, who was very Wutian, had stopped talking to him.
“I know they grew up in Wutai. Did pretty well there.” Zack shifted, snagged a glass of water in a hand that trembled just a bit, and sipped at it. “One of them, Amara, she ended up joining Lord Godo’s nin. Did pretty well, from what I know. She ended up being one of his primary bodyguards. Had to beat out a lot of people for it.”
Vincent nodded, and let go enough to smile faintly. “She was always the more active of them.” It was good she had become a ninja. It had been her dream since she was tiny, and he wondered if he would have met her during that full fledged war that happened sometime after he had gone to sleep.
“Yeah. As for Jerusha,” Zack gave a sheepish smile. “Well, she decided she liked the look of a traveling merchant. Courted him until he finally agreed to the idea of marrying her.”
He paused, violet eyes bright as he looked at Vincent. An odd color, but the SOLDIER process seemed to bring out almost unnatural colors in people. Sephiroth’s green, Cloud’s vivid blue, now this glowing purple. Though some people had odd colors. His mother’s had been greenish-gold, while Vincent had gotten his father’s red eyes. His sisters had more green than gold, but still rather unusual among the greys and blues of the Wutai people.
When Zack started again, his words were in Wutanese. “They ended up moving back to Gongaga, where they had a son who was awesome and left home at fourteen to go join Shin-Ra and be a SOLDIER.”
There was an expectant look on his face, and Vincent wasn’t sure what he was implying. Then he looked closer at the boy.
He could see the shape of his sister’s eyes, angled and large when the man’s face was still, that disguising grin gone for the moment.
“Hiya, Uncle Vincent. Mom is going to be mad you didn’t call her.”
Vincent leaned back in his chair, a bit in shock.
Zack couldn’t help but chuckle weakly at the expression on the man’s face. Though he was studying him. It was odd, seeing the longer hair, the red clothing, more leather than anyone but Seph ever wore. There was a wildness around him, a feralness, that never showed up in his mom’s pictures of her older brother. If it wasn’t for the eyes, Zack wasn’t sure if he would have recognized the man. Definitely hadn’t when he had run across him sleeping.
Next time, make sure to wake up sleeping people he found in coffins. Learned that lesson real fast.
Although part of his attention was distracted by the rather amusing noise that Spike was making as he looked back and forth between them, obviously looking for the resemblance. It was hard to see, most of the time. Thankfully, Zack had taken after his Gongaga father more than his Wutian mother, or else there would have been an issue when he had shown up to join SOLDIER. Right now, though, with as much weight as he had lost, he knew it was a hell of a lot easier to tell. Those damn cheek bones and the shape of his eyes were more prominent than not when he was so thin. He had seen it himself while in the bathroom.
Though Zack had totally forgotten that Spike had picked up Wutanese from him while they were in the labs. It was something to focus on, between tests.
Finally, after a few long long moments, Cloud had sat back with a faintly surprised sound, which drew a chuckle from Reeve. Now that one, Zack wasn’t so sure what he had gotten from the last bit of that conversation, if anything. Reeve he knew in a vague ‘we work for the same people’ sort of way. But, well, a lot of people worked for Shin-Ra.
Though he was really starting to like the guy.
Tifa was just giving him a look. “What was that last bit?”
A chuckle. “Well, I was introducing him to the fact he has a nephew who was made of pure awesome.”
That just got a snort, and the woman rolled her eyes. “In any case, as I was saying before all of this, Marlene and Denzel thought you might like things to read. To pass the time and all. For -some- reason, they adore you.”
He just grinned at her, knowing she was teasing in her own way.
“How are they?”
Both of them looked to Vincent, who was watching Zack. “My sisters, how are they?”
Zack paused, and then shifted. “Aunt Mara died during the war. She had a little girl, but there was an assassination attempt by a noble who wasn’t thrilled with how Godo was dealing with the war, and she was his lead bodyguard.....” He trailed off. “Mom is still alive. I called her a few days ago. She’s a bit upset that I vanished like that. Seems like Shin-Ra was doing a bit of mail censoring, because they never got any of my letters.” Zack let out a slow sigh over that. He should have called, at least once.
“Need to go visit them. You need to go as well, cause once Mom finds out that you are alive and not visiting, she is going to hunt you down. I, being the good son that I am, will shamelessly rat you out.”
“Because you -hope- it will distract her some from you,” was Cloud’s low comment, just shaking his head. “I would never have expected the two of you to be related, of all people.”
“Well, we should probably go meet my uncle and cousin.” A pause. “I wonder if she’s still mad I joined Shin-Ra?”
Now Cloud was looking at him, eyes curious. “Why did you join up with them? I mean, your family is from Wutai, right?”
“So is Tseng’s. In any case, I joined to see if I couldn’t find my uncle, who both Mom and Aunt Mara knew was a Turk, and then I met Seph. And he needed a friend too much for me to leave.”
The others fell silent at Seph’s name, and Zack had a pang of why, Seph?, still not fully understanding why his friend had done what he had done.
“Tell me about them? Just stories.”
Zack looked into Vincent’s eyes. The man seemed to honestly want to hear the stories. “You want stories, you should ask Dad. He’s full of them. But...I can tell you some. I mean, there is a lot I don’t know, or remember, but I do remember some.”
Vincent’s eyes lightened, some of the brooding in them vanishing, and Zack cheered mentally. Then, after another sip of water, and a few minutes to gather his thoughts, he began to talk about his mom and his Aunt Mara.