'An experiment...'

'I'm so sorry...'

'Vincent...' the voice echoed. 'Vincent...'
Repeating.
Fading.
Dark...

Silence...
Nothing except a single lonely heart-beat, and tormenting memories.
Everything had vanished. There was nothing left anymore.

Body was cold. Hard to imagine it had ever been warm, now. It didn't matter any longer. There was no reason to care anymore. A depressing inky blackness all around. Consciousness faded as more hated memories swirled around him, silent, yet his ears could still hear them, the words that had been spoken so long ago. Everything.

'Some bodyguard you are! Falling asleep on the job...
but that's okay. Hey... would you like to join me for a picnic?...'

'Lucrecia! It's your child. You can't let some guy experiment on it! Lucrecia!...'

Gunshots. Gasping as blood seeped from his body. Above him, a nasally, reedy voice in maniacal laughter. Footsteps. A sharp horrified gasp. 'oh no! Vincent!...' thick, burning green. Glass. White lab coats. 'An experiment.'

'I'm so sorry...'

Gone. Slowly, the familiar sound of a heart-beat faded, giving way to blessed sleep.

'Lucrecia...'

...

It was mid-day in Midgar, although being below-Plate made it rather hard to tell. The slums stank, streets filled with litter and muck, buildings run down and crumbling, the people didn't appear to be in any better condition either. Mostly, the slums went by the same shades, brown, which gave the already dark place an even darker completion. But once in a while, some raise of sunlight would find their way in despite the Plate; though welcome, it pouring in through the window straight into ones eyes, wasn't exactly pleasant.

Light blazed in his eyes, seeming to burn to the back of his skull. It had been a bad idea to open them. Turning his face away with a hiss and a groan, blinked owlishly up at the large black blur standing over him.
“Your up! Great! For a second I thought you were dead! I guess there's nothing like a blond pancake in the morning!” the voice boomed happily above him. It took a while for his eyes to focus, but finally the hazy blurriness was dissipating. Only to be replaced by the conscious awareness that he had no idea where he was.

He choked! Breath catching in his throat as he jolted upwards. Only to flop back down with a gasp of pain. Everything hurt!
Immediately the stranger was by his side, his voice laced with worry “Hey you okay!? How does it feel?”
The blond groaned piteously as he gripped the front of his shirt. “Hn. It feels like I got run over by a herd of behemoths.” Or more appropriately, like he'd been landed on by a SOLDIER Second Class. “ugh.”
“Yea.... sorry 'bout that. I really, honestly didn't see you there. But your okay right?”

“I guess.” he managed, sucking in shallow breaths, “still hurts though.”

“Good. Well not that it hurts! But that your fine, I mean!” he sputtered awkwardly, trying to pull himself back from the brink of disaster. “You have a lot of bruising. But don't worry, you got out with no broken bones.”

“I'm not sure that's very comforting.” the blond grumbled, carefully raising himself onto his elbows.
“Sorry,” was the toneless reply.

An awkward silence ensued. The blond preoccupied with trying to remember the day before, and the black-haired teenager busily scratching the back of his head in an attempt to hide his embarrassment.

Finally, after a long silence, the spunky teenager shattered the quiet. The blond, startled, let out a painful squeak.

“So what's your name?! I'm Zack!”

A moment passed as the blond processed his words. “Cloud.”

“Cloud, huh? Where you from Cloud?” the blond stared blankly at him for a second, obviously not quite registering the question, until recognition dawned on his face. “Nibelheim.”

“Nibelheim, huh? That's sound so back-water!” Zack laughed, his voice bouncing pleasantly off the walls.
Thoroughly put-out, Cloud glared defensively, “Oh yeah? And where are you from?”

Zack puffed up slightly, head thrown high in a gesture he often watched Genesis make for photo-shoots. “Gongaga!”

The blond coughed, trying to hide an escaping chuckle beneath his hand.

“Hey! What's wrong with that?! You ever been to Gongaga?!”
“No. But there's a reactor there right?”

“Yeah. So- oh... Ha! I get it! Reactors mean that there's nothing else out there!... I guess you got me!” his lips split into a cheek-hurting grin. But nearly got derailed by the blond's reserved expression. “What!”

“Nothing. It's just- are you SOLDIER?”
“Yep! SOLDIER Second Class, Zack Fair!” A beat, “ I'm gonna be making First any day now!”

A small tentative smile flickered across the blond's features.
Zack was immediately beset by the urge to make it grow. “Do you know what makes a SOLDIER?”

His only response was a stony silence and a blank stare.

“Honor! And pride as a SOLDIER!” the blonds expression remained the same. Zack sighed. This wasn't going that well. “Well there's a lot more than that to being a SOLDIER though. Not that you'll ever get my mentor Angeal to admit to it.”

“And what else are SOLDIERs?” Finally a response! Zack leapt at the opportunity.

“Protectors of the innocent, defenders of the peace! And the creators of justice!” Zack announced, as if he were speaking at a rally meeting instead of to a solitary kind in a small, cramped room at an Inn.

“But what decides what justice is?” he asked, openly curious. His previous awkwardness beginning to fall away.

The chips were coming down.
“Well uh... I- hmm. That's a good question.” he mumbled with a frown, absentmindedly scratching the back of his head. “I'll have to ask my superiors about that.”

Cloud attempted, and failed, to stifle the laughter bubbling up from within him. He couldn't help it! Even though it still hurt fiercely to draw breath and things like that. He felt so comfortable with Zack. At the moment he looked like a grumpy puppy.
If it hadn't been for that faint luminescent mako glow in his sky-blue eyes and the purple jumpsuit, he'd have thought the teenager sitting cross-legged next to him was just an ordinary kid from the slums.

Zack tilted his head to the side, his expression a mixture of confusion and curiosity. “What's so funny?”
however, he quickly noted that at the moment, the blond was in no condition to extrapolate. He grinned, pleasure running thick through his veins. Great! The chocobo headed blond was finally loosening up.