"Surely you don't need the offensive ones. I mean, I can understand having a restore or two around for good measure, but really, ma'am. There hasn't been a fiend attack in months. I'm sure you can bear to part with--"

The voice was unfamiliar, but most of the voices in the bar were. The sky had rained itself out after the first night of such, and the bar was much more crowded that night than the last. Despite protests, Cloud was able to convince Tifa that he was feeling much better and wanted to help out. Things were much easier, as Zack was helping out as well, and he found himself with less to do than normal anyway. That was probably better, he reflected, absently pressing two fingers to his cheek--which was still a little warm.

Tifa was at the counter, dealing with an unsatisfied customer. He knew very well that Tifa was more than capable of handling herself, but he always kept an eye on her in these situations. Drunk males and female bartenders did not always mix and he often felt a little overprotective of the brunette. But this particular customer didn't seem to be drunk and wasn't offering to take Tifa to bed or get her to share a drink with him either.

"I said I wasn't interested, sir," she was saying frostily, even as Cloud approached to see what was going on. "If you're not interested in what we do have, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave."

"Ma'am, I don't think you understand exactly what I'm offering you." The speaker was a wiry young man, a good half foot taller than Tifa, his long, auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail extending a little over halfway down his back. His smile was suggestive and his light blue eyes trained to the point where Tifa must have been feeling uncomfortable under his gaze.

Cloud made his way over, behind the counter, his fist instinctively tightening around the concealed dagger he kept beneath his belt. It was a reflex more than anything, he had never actually had to use it inside the bar before. Still, this man wasn't exactly the normal lonely, half drunk idiots who typically bothered their server. He was perfectly sober and didn't seem to be asking for Tifa's companionship at the local inn.

Cloud came up behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder, glancing first at her and then at the man at the counter. "Is there a problem?" he asked, his voice slightly dangerous and low, but loud enough to be heard.

The man's gaze flicked back and forth from Tifa to Cloud, the smile never leaving his lips. "No," he said, his voice obtaining a hint of something unrecognizable. "No problem at all. But I will be back." With that, he pushed away from the counter and slowly made his way toward the door, casting a glance or two over his shoulder on his way out, still flashing that cunning grin.

"What did he want?" Cloud asked once he was gone, his hand sliding from her shoulder and back to his side. While Tifa knew that his gestures were meant only as friendly ones, it sometimes helped when the patrons believed otherwise.

Her countenance turned toward him slowly, her wide reddish brown eyes blinking with a look of confusion in them. "It's kind of odd, really," she murmured, half under her breath. "He wanted to buy our materia. All of it. He didn't even care what kind...as long as it was working materia, he wanted to buy it off me. His prices were good...but he gave me the creeps, so I turned him down."

Materia collectors weren't rare, but they weren't exactly plenteous. Especially around Kalm, where many of the impoverished Midgar survivors were taking refuge, the usually wealthy collectors were uncommon. Not many people had materia to sell, nor the money to buy it with. Materia collectors also generally only collected one type of materia and didn't want anything to do with other types. Support and Independent materia were the most widely collected types, as they were not only plentiful, but came in the appealing shades of violet and blue. Materia collectors generally used materia only as trophies, and many didn't even know what they did.

"He seemed pretty sure he was getting what he came here for," Cloud said softly, leaning sideways on the counter, an unused coaster sliding between his fingers. "He'll probably come back tomorrow with piles of gil. I don't know, maybe we should give him a few. He might leave you alone then."

She turned, taking an empty glass from the bar where someone had left it and leaned back against the counter, studying the dirty mug as she did so. "Yeah...I don't know, he just sort of gave me the willies, you know?" she was talking more to the object in her hands than him, it seemed like. "It's probably just my imagination. You think he'll leave us alone if we sell him some?"

"It's worth a try." The coaster was made of some cork-like materia and left his fingertips tingling slightly each time he ran them over the surface. "We still have most of what we had...before, and we really don't need all of it. Just give him something underleveled and say that's all we have," he suggested.

She nodded, just as someone across the room managed to spill his drink all over his table and over about half of the table next to him. The brunette bartender quickly excused herself and rushed over before a fight could break out.

-------

He was still mostly immersed in sleep when he first noticed something was wrong. A wrong feeling, in a way he couldn't quite figure out, maybe something to do with the tightness in his lungs and the film of bitterness lining his mouth and throat that, no matter how many times he swallowed, did not go away.

Regardless of what it was, he was quickly knocked conscious by the fact that he was coughing rather violently.

He sat up quickly upon this realization, perhaps a little too quickly, as he doubled over again with a coughing fit. But the cause of this was clear enough. Upon slight inspection of the dimmed, moonlit room, he could see that fine wisps of gray smoke were curling up through the cracks that separated the bedroom door from the wall and floor.

There were voices from the hallway, shouting, and footsteps pounding past. He lost no time in getting out of bed and was at the door in no time, opening it quickly and immediately closing it most of the way again after being bombarded with a wave of smoke. He coughed again, pressing his arm against his nose and mouth to try and block the column of the acrid fumes. It didn't take a genius to figure out that the building was on fire and he, on the second floor, needed to get out of there. The window was too high up to safely jump from, he knew, though that was always a last resort.

More yelling. He thought he heard his name. Bracing himself, his bare arm still protectively covering his face, he shoved the door open again and pushed his way out. The haze of smoke immediately took him down coughing again, this time accompanied by rapidly tearing eyes. Realizing he had no other option, he pushed out into the hallway--

--and almost tripped over something on the floor. Thoughts rushed past the gathering mist in his mind--oh god, it's a body...the inn was full...oh god--and he found himself kneeling next to the fallen person. It was a girl, maybe a bit younger than him, her blond hair smudged with ash and her body limp from the strain of breathing the airless smoke. Not knowing if she was even still alive, he snaked an arm about her waist and pulled her up, dragging her along with him toward the stairs.

The smoke was getting more dense as he went, and he fought to ignore the white spots dancing in front of his eyes. The girl was like a dead weight on his arm and he wondered if she was even still alive, if his effort was in vain. Where were the stairs? The hall had never been this long before. More than once, he stumbled to a halt against the wall, attempting unsuccessfully to find a clean breath.

Finally, the spots dancing in front of him had grown to the point where it didn't seem to matter if his eyes were open or not and he really couldn't tell anyway. Still, he pressed forward, leaning heavily against the wall, still dragging the girl along with him. He had to get out of here, he had to get outside, he needed air, god, there was so much smoke....

The next thing he remembered was a vague sensation of hands on his shoulder and back, and then a tugging on his pants. Someone was cursing...someone was...he recognized the voice, but couldn't place it in the impenetrable mist in his mind.

"...you stupid....come on....oh, fuck, come on....get up...."

There was something intensely foreign and surreal about the whole situation, but he felt himself settle into a strangely familiar pattern of trying to suck in air around the shooting ache in his chest and not being very productive in doing so. The hands were there again, pulling him up, he thought, but he couldn't see and he couldn't think and when he felt his head lean up against something solid, he allowed himself to slip into darkness.

-------

The inn had been quite full that night and Zack had offered to set up a cot in the bar itself to allow an extra person a room for the night. He had been the first to smell the acrid smoke billowing from the dish room and notice the angry orange flames leaping up from the doorway. He had been the one to dash up the stairs to sound the alarm, and the one to start trying to save anything of value he saw.

He had been the one to notice that Cloud had not come out.

There was a mob gathering outside the little building, people crying, wrapped in blankets, hugging children and looking on as the inn burned. The injured were hovered around with bandages and ointments, and soon the people stopped coming from the building. No one else could have made it, they murmured amongst themselves and others started wailing when a loved one wasn't found.

He had just found Cloud back. He was not about to lose him again.

The collar of his shirt made for an excellent filter against the smoke, but he still ducked under the fumes as much as he could. He literally slid up the stairs, grateful that they hadn't already been burned to cinders, and tried to ignore the heat from the flames that had already begun to sear the upper level. The second floor of the inn was simple enough. There were two rows of rooms separated down the center with a long hallway. Cloud stayed in the room second farthest away from the stairs, and probably one of the first on the upper floor to catch fire.

Cloud wasn't in his room, though. It didn't take Zack long to find him, as he had made it about a meter from the stairs before collapsing, an ashen blonde girl a few feet behind him. That idiot--trying to play hero again, he thought, ignoring a coughing spasm as the smoke got through his shirt. The girl was probably dead, but his conscious wouldn't let him get away with that assumption. He quickly checked her pulse and found out, with a slight wince, his suspicions had been correct.

Cloud wasn't moving either, but Zack could hear the hoarse gasps as his lungs tried to find a clean breath. The smoke was slowly asphyxiating him. Taking a quick breath, the first man pulled his shirt off completely, and pressed the sleeve across Cloud's nose and mouth, hoping to filter the air the same way he had on himself earlier. However, in response, the blond stopped breathing altogether.

"Goddamn it," he murmured under his breath, pulling the shirt away again. He had to get Cloud out of here, and fast. The problem was that the past year hadn't exactly been kind to him and he wasn't even sure he could lift Cloud. He found himself muttering under his breath as he tried to wake Cloud up, swearing, growling, whatever; just something to keep him busy.

No use. Cloud wasn't moving. Gritting his teeth, Zack took Cloud's arm and slid it around his neck, biting back a taste of bitter nostalgia as he did so. It was not a pleasant experience to be in the exact same position he had been directly preceding the moment that very nearly cost him his life--but it was stupid to dwell on that now. He snaked on arm around Cloud's waist, pulling him up against his chest and began to crawl back down the stairs as fast as he dared to go.

By the time they had escaped the burning building, the younger man's lips had taken a decidedly unnatural tint, something of a light bluish purple color. Zack wasted no time, laying Cloud flat on his back when they got about three meters from the fire and starting mouth-to-mouth immediately.

It took him nearly a half dozen frenzied attempts, but Cloud finally sputtered, coughing violently a few times. Gripping the other man's shoulders, Zack had him sit up, allowing him to double over and gasp in the precious clean oxygen. Zack slowly massaged his shoulders, silently thanking the stars and whatever else was out there. "You okay?" he managed.

More coughing. He didn't want to know how much damage had been done to Cloud's lungs in the ordeal, and he didn't know whether or not to be glad that the Mako flowing inside Cloud's veins would likely take care of the problem.

"I...I think so..." Cloud's voice was slightly weak, and he was still wheezing badly. His face was marked with soot, his bared chest darkened by a fine layer of ash, but he didn't seem to be burned at all. Zack guessed he hadn't even seen the fire.

Until then, anyways. His blue eyes were drawn to the burning building, the orange flames licking high into the blackened night sky. A nearly inaudible curse was uttered half under his breath, a hint of awe mixed in with the striking horror there. The sight was truly worthy of the uttered obscenity too, Zack reflected, as he noted that they were still close enough that he could feel the sultry heat pressed like a cloth over his face, a stark contrast to the cold open air on his back.

Someone was offering them blankets and helping them move to a safer distance, even as the roof began to collapse in on itself, scattering molten red ashes flying into the air for a good meter around the building. A flask of whiskey was being passed around to help ward off the winter chill. Everything else seemed to be blurred together indefinitely in the back of his mind.

He found himself standing behind Cloud, blankets hunched around his shoulders and wishing his feet weren't bare. Tifa had gotten badly burned on one of her legs, it seemed, as he looked on quietly, nodding at the right times and glancing back at the now dying flames as able villagers worked together to put the fire out. Others were offering their houses to the injured, or those too far from home to make it back that night.

They ended up staying in different houses; Cloud had been taken with the injured, as he was still coughing badly an hour after their escape. Zack watched him for a long time, feeling the pinprick of sorrow he couldn't quite squelch growing steadily. The boy he'd fallen in love with seven years ago, the young man he'd dragged around the world ensure the safety of, he wasn't there. Cloud seemed like a completely different person.

Understandable, sure. But damning and....just sad.

He slowly turned, walking slowly to the house he was staying at. Someone was running back, towards him, he could hear them, but he didn't look up until he heard his name. It was Cloud's voice, the still slightly breathless tenor, calling to him. He stopped but he did not turn.

"Zack." Cloud had reached him now, reached up a tentative hand and he heard the other's slight sigh before he placed it on Zack's shoulder. "Zack, I...thanks. For saving me...again." His voice was quiet, laced with something the other couldn't quite identify.

Cloud's touch hurt. It was like a hundred needles in his skin knowing that he couldn't touch Cloud back, that the younger man didn't want him to. His touch was a million times worse than the burn of the fire in the inn and Zack suddenly wanted to get away, as far as he could from this feeling. Instead, he buried the feeling, just like he always did, and he smiled, ruffling the messy blond hair. "You owe me big time, kid," he said jokingly.

And then, he turned and walked away.


Its not a cry you can hear at night
Its not somebody who's seen the light
Its a cold and its a broken hallelujah
- Rufus Wainwright, Hallelujah

Part 2 Part 4