Harsh Reality

It was late when the troop transport finally arrived in Midgar and made its ponderous way up to the Shinra barracks. Late enough that the graveyard watch shift at the Shinra gates had already been on duty for some time. Late enough that most of the weary troops in the transport were asleep despite the jarring ride.

Zack knew he'd pushed his men hard, maybe too hard, to get back to Midgar today. They should have stopped hours ago in Kalm and gotten some rest before heading home the next day. His report on the mission wasn't particularly urgent, there had been no good reason for him to decide to drive on through the night. But he'd wanted to get home, and nobody had been inclined to argue with a determined SOLDIER 1st Class.

He was no less bone weary than any of the men who'd been temporarily under his command, but he let the others disembark first. He wasn't sure if it was chivalry or just delaying the inevitable. At some point soon he was going to have to start thinking again, not just running on automatic. He wasn't ready for that yet, because then he would have to come to terms with what he'd done on this mission.

As he climbed out of the truck, he found his troops lined up at attention. He was actually impressed that they managed even that much, and deliberately turned a blind eye on the yawns that weren't successfully stifled. "Good work," he said, because it was expected of him. Because even though the words tasted like ash in his mouth, his men had only been following orders. His orders. Don't think about it, he reminded himself. Not yet.

"Go home, hit the showers, then your bunks," he continued. His voice cracked with something more than just weariness, but the troops ignored it the same way he was ignoring their yawns. "You're all off duty tomorrow, I'll clear it with your commanders. Dismissed."

There was a round of somewhat lacklustre saluting as Zack turned on his heel and strode off the square. He fully intended to heed his own advice. He was covered in ash and soot, the smell of smoke clung to him like a morbid perfume, and he thought by the time he gave up on trying to scrub himself clean it might well be dawn. Then he could crawl into bed and try not to dream.

Was Cloud on duty tomorrow? He couldn't remember. It didn't really matter, he could clear a day off for the kid as easily as he could do it for the troops he'd just dismissed. He made a mental note not to forget to send those emails before he collapsed, so they wouldn't all get in trouble.

So once he'd showered and caught a few hours of restless sleep, he could go retrieve the kid from his barrack before reveille. Cloud would squawk at being woken that early, but he would subside quickly enough. They could spend the day just messing around, getting into mischief, and Zack could wrap himself in the boy's brightness of spirit. Maybe that would make him feel clean again.

There was a light shining under his door, which made him pause for a moment. A week ago it wouldn't have been unusual to come back to his room to find Cloud up studying into the wee hours of the night; he'd given the kid the key so he could do just that, and not disturb the rest of his bunkmates with the light for his studying. The latest round of entrance exams for the SOLDIER program were over, though. Now they were only waiting for the results, and there was no reason for Cloud to be up this late.

He pushed open the door, blinking his weary eyes to make them focus properly on the scene inside. The light was on, but Cloud was curled up in a corner of the bed, fast asleep. It looked like he'd been sitting up trying to stay awake and slumped over, though there was no sign of a textbook.

Zack wasn't sure if he made a noise or if Cloud just sensed his presence, but the boy's bright blue eyes opened slowly. "Zack!" With a yawn only somewhat stifled by his hand, Cloud sat up and smiled at him. "You're back! I wasn't sure if you'd make it back today, but I figured it'd be nicer for you to come home to this than a dark, cold room."

Nicer, indeed. Zack stood on the threshold between the dim, shadowed corridor and the bright, warm room, and the metaphor wasn't lost on him. "I..." His voice failed him. Cloud had never seen him immediately after a bad mission before; there hadn't been one since before he'd given the boy the key to his room. Zack never sought him out until the next day, after he'd at least washed the literal blood off his hands.

Sleepy, innocent eyes regarded him curiously, as Cloud visibly wondered why Zack was just standing there. Suddenly all Zack could see was the face of the child he'd watched one of his troopers gun down right in front of him, earlier that day. The kid had blue eyes too, though his hair had been dark. He'd only been five, maybe six. A dangerous terrorist indeed, but Zack's orders had been to clear the caves where the anti-Shinra insurrectionists were hiding. Completely clear them.

"I..." Taking a step back, Zack moved out of the light and back into the shadows. "I... I forgot... Sephiroth wanted my report as soon as I came in!"

And he turned on his heels and fled, like the coward he had never been on the field. He caught a flash of the shocked and hurt look on Cloud's face, but there was nothing for it. He wasn't ready to face that light, that innocence yet. He needed time to gather himself back together, to come to terms with the fact that he'd ordered the deaths of women and innocent children, ordered them shot and their homes burned and even though he hadn't pulled the trigger himself, every one of those innocent deaths was on his head...

He stumbled into a familiar door, only then realizing that he hadn't just been fleeing aimlessly. But of course he'd come here, where else could he go? He pulled himself together enough to knock, hard. The general was a light sleeper, assuming he was asleep at all, but he had more than just the one private room that was the allotment of the SOLDIER 1st class members.

Zack waited what seemed an interminable time, and was just about to knock again when he heard a familiar dry voice on the other side of the door as the locks turned. "If this is anything less than a genuine emergency I am going to be highly displea... Zack?"

Sephiroth had gotten the door open, and was obviously surprised to see him. It only took a moment for the man's expression to fade from startled to grim. "Did the mission go badly? How many men did you lose?"

Shaking his head, Zack pushed past his friend and commander, letting the older man close the door behind him. "None. No losses. It went as well as you could expect it to have gone, considering. The 'terrorist group' was mostly women and kids, Sephiroth. The fighters must have been elsewhere. But we cleaned them out, as per orders." His voice came out more bitter than he'd meant it to, and he scrubbed at his sooty face with an equally dirty hand. "We burned them out, and shot them as they escaped from the flames. Women and kids, Seph!"

"Even if the men weren't there, it will serve as an example," Sephiroth said, pushing at his shoulder to get him to move further into the apartment and sit on one of the chairs. Zack wasn't sure what his expression was when he lifted his head to stare at the older man, but clearly it told Sephiroth that his words had been the wrong tack to take. Sometimes Zack forgot that the general was only now learning to truly see other people as something more than counters on a map.

"You were under orders," Sephiroth tried again, raising one silver eyebrow as he sat down across from the SOLDIER and leaned forward. "What else could you have done?"

"That's not the point," Zack shook his head. "It's not... I just... it's not like this is the first mission I've been on where innocent lives were lost. I swear Heidigger's orders get stupider every day, and they were pretty bad to start with. I'll be fine once I get my head straight."

"Then why are you here?" Sephiroth asked curiously. Zack wasn't in the habit of coming to the older man after missions like the one he'd just finished.

"Cloud decided to give me a warm welcome," Zack said, squeezing his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to ward off even the memory of that moment. "He stayed up and left the lights on, so I wouldn't come home to a dark room."

"That sounds like something he would do," Sephiroth agreed. The general hadn't had a great deal of personal contact with Zack's 'pet rookie', largely because Cloud tended to go rigid and mute in his presence, but Zack had talked about the boy often enough to his friend. "And?"

"And... I couldn't face it," Zack explained, his eyes haunted as he opened them again. "The kid's never even been off the base on a mission. He's never killed anyone, much less an innocent. I can't face him until I've gotten the horror of this out of my system, or I'll spoil him."

"You do him an injustice," Sephiroth said. "He's stronger than anyone gives him credit for, even you. The exam results are being posted tomorrow morning."

For a moment the seeming non sequitur threw Zack, until he realized what the general was really saying. "You've seen the results? He passed?" Sephiroth's nod sent a thrill of pride and triumph through him. He'd always known the kid had what it took, that was why he'd taken Cloud under his wing in the first place. The shy boy from Nibelheim wasn't that different from the wide-eyed farmboy who'd gotten off the boat from Gongaga not so very many years before.

Now all that was left was for the boy to undergo the mako infusions, then training, and then...

And then next time one of these missions comes in, he'll be the one giving the orders to shoot the women and children, instead of you.

That thought stopped him cold. He tried to picture Cloud doing something like that and just... couldn't. Cloud had an integrity that shone through everything he did. He wasn't precisely naive or idealistic, but once he'd decided something was the right thing to do he would follow it through even if it killed him. No, Zack couldn't picture him ordering the deaths of innocent children.

Of course, it wasn't like the boy would be dumped straight into a situation like that. He'd be led up to it by small steps, just as Zack had been. There was a time when he wouldn't have thought he could ever give an order like that, either. Shinra Inc. was very, very good at conditioning its SOLDIERS; it had lots of experience in manipulation, after all.

"Sephiroth? Will you do me a favour?" Zack looked at his friend and commander, and prayed. He never played on the fact that he was a personal friend of the general, or at least as much of a friend as Sephiroth ever allowed himself to have. He'd never asked for favours even in a casual way, knowing that Sephiroth's sometimes literal interpretations of things would see it as him asking for favouritism even if the request was completely innocuous.

"What is it?" Sephiroth asked, cautious as ever. Zack took a deep breath.

"Will you fail him?"

Startled green eyes met his. Ordinarily Zack would have found some pleasure in taking the general completely by surprise like that, but at the moment pleasure of any kind was the last thing on his mind. "You want me to what?" Sephiroth sounded disbelieving, as well he should.

"You heard me. I want you to change his result," Zack said stubbornly, desperately. "You've got pull with the Shinra brass, I know you can do it. You said they're not posting the results until tomorrow, right?"

"Whether or not it would be possible to do as you ask wasn't what I was questioning," Sephiroth replied dryly, already recovering his poise. "What I'm wondering is why. You've spent the last several months coaching the boy to help him pass, and now that he has, you've changed your mind?"

"Seph, you've met him," Zack shook his head. "You've seen him, even if he is too awed by you to speak to you. The things you and I have done would break him. I don't know if it would drive him insane, or drive him into deserting, or just break him to the point where he could do those things and accept them the way you and I do, but it would break him."

"The chances of him deserting or going mad are slim," Sephiroth said. "Unsuitable candidates don't pass the exams. You were the same, when you first came here. I remember."

"That's exactly my point!" Zack countered. "That light of his, that innocence, it will be gone. He'll end up just like us, another company killer. He deserves better than that." And though it was selfish of him, Zack realized he wasn't ready to let go of Cloud's light just yet. He might not be able to face it right after a mission like this, but sometimes he thought being able to bask in it later was all that let him keep going.

"Don't you think that's his decision to make?" Sephiroth was eyeing him warily, like he wasn't certain Zack wasn't about to break himself.

"It is." That much Zack couldn't argue with. "I know it is. But he doesn't know what he's deciding, yet. All he sees is me, and while he hasn't elevated me to god-like status the way he has you, I know there's hero-worship there. Let him grow up a little, face some bad missions as a trooper taking the orders before he has to start giving the orders. Let him learn what he's really getting into, before he makes that decision."

He stopped and faced the seated man, only then realizing that he'd risen to his feet to pace back and forth in a short arc, gesturing wildly with his hands. Small wonder Sephiroth was looking at him like he was waiting for the bomb to go off.

"I've never asked you for anything before and I swear I never will again," he said softly, staring straight into the general's glowing eyes. "Please, Sephiroth."

Wordlessly, Sephiroth stared back at him for a long moment. Finally he sighed softly and shook his head. "I'll consider it," he said, and Zack knew from the tone of his voice that it was the best he was going to get. "Go get some rest, Zack. You're understandably overwrought."

In other words, he thinks I'll change my mind once I've had some sleep, Zack acknowledged with a humourless laugh. "Yeah, all right," he said gruffly, rubbing his hand over his face again. "Just, uh... one more thing?"

Sephiroth had already risen to show him to the door. He paused and quirked an eyebrow at Zack again. "For a man who has never asked for favours, you're suddenly asking quite a bit," he said, a not-so-subtle warning that Zack was pushing him too far.

With a weak grin, Zack shrugged. "Can I crash on your couch?" he asked. "And maybe borrow your shower?"

Surprisingly, the look in the general's eyes softened slightly. "You didn't need to ask for that," he said, turning to go back into the bedroom. "You know where everything is. I'll wake you before the results are posted so you can go with him."

Nodding, Zack moved to grab blankets from the closet to bed down with, and towels for the shower. Either way, whether he changed his mind or Sephiroth refused or not, he would want to be there with Cloud. He didn't think he was going to change his mind, though, and he was fairly certain he had Sephiroth convinced.

There was only one thing he would regret about altering the boy's result, and that was that he wouldn't be able to tell Cloud just how proud he was.

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