Prior Note: Inspiration for this chapter goes to the song ‘Pathfinder’ by ‘The Unguided’, and the fact I wanted to show Zack in a more emotional way (also spoiler alert for those who haven’t played crisis core).
Chapter 8: Matters of Heart pt.1- Scars and Memories
“What do you think of him?” Princess Celestia asked, not looking back at her intended receiver; her eyes instead lay affixed on the two beings who proceeded to leave the castle grounds via the pathway below her balcony, neither of which realizing they were being watched.
One being was a golden pegasus Wonderbolt, and the other a tall, black haired biped, with a huge sword across his back.
“I know he’s a little rough around the edges princess, and... has a habit of getting carried away during fights,” Shining Armor replied with a shrug from the balcony doorway. “But he doesn’t seem all that bad to me personally… plus his devotion to his honour, and his sense of protecting those he cares about is admirable in my opinion.”
The princess of the sun sighed and shook her head before turning to the stallion, their white coats both shimmering in the light of the moon that washed over the Equestrian capital.
“That, Shining Armour, is what bothers me,” Celestia replied with closed eyes, her front hoof scraping at the stone flooring while she thought. “The fact of just how devoted he is… it is not normal.”
“Princess?” The stallion asked with a confused tilt of his head.
“His need to protect those he cares for captain, is admirable, yes, but the source and extent of that devotion... it haunts my mind with distress for some reason that alludes me… and I fear Zack may be… somewhat over-devoted, and unstable in such regards, perhaps dangerously more so than even you are.”
“P-Princess?!”
Her eyes at last opened, and met his own stunned blue ones, but now the loving motherly glow that they always shone with had dulled to a darkness nigh as cold as stone, the stallion taking an uneasy step backwards in response to her stare.
“When you realized the changelings had returned, you charged into the fray with your horn lowered, Captain, without thinking and without knowing the odds against you as a wise captain would… and I believe that is because of what Chrysalis did to your wife and sister during the events of your wedding. No doubt you are still angry about what happened back then… and if I am right the very mention of Chrysalis’s name makes you angry, yes?”
At first the captain of the royal guard just looked on in surprise at her statement, but quickly found that, without noticing, his jaw had clenched tight like a vice and his nostrils were flaring in frustration and anger.
“I… yes, the very mentioning of that… thing…” he snorted in admittance, resisting the urge to buck something out of pure rage. “…and what she did to my family… makes my blood boil.”
“So let me ask you this… even if you knew there were hundreds of changelings in that hall, would you still have charged in there without thinking of the what could happen… in order to prevent Cadence and Twilight being harmed by Chrysalis again?”
“Without a second thought,” the stallion stated firmly.
“Then I have been proved right, your hatred of Chrysalis, and your need to protect those you love, clouds your judgement, and makes you reckless at times, especially when it comes to protecting your family… hence a case of being overly protective as it were,” Celestia stated bluntly, turning around, and returning her eyes to the shadow flooded streets of Canterlot, the two forms she had been watching earlier now gone from sight. “But my unease does not lie with you, Shining Armor… rather with Zack, somepony who, as we have both learned, has great amounts of power at his disposal, and in my opinion is even more reckless then you are.”
Something clicked in the stallions mind as he realized just what she was insinuating.
“So, just like my hatred of Chrysalis, and my want to protect Cadence and Twily affected my actions last night… you believe some part of Zack’s past affected his?” Shining Armor asked a little hesitantly, slowly advancing across the balcony until he was standing beside his ruler and liege. “Or the actions of somepony he knew caused him to… slaughter… all those changelings like he did…”
The princess of the sun nodded to show her affirmation.
“It is only a thought captain, but yes… I believe he has experienced something far darker than either of us can imagine in his life, something that changed the way he saw, and valued, those he cares about, and hence the extents he is willing to go to protect them.”
The stallion’s eyebrow rose a little at his ruler’s words, the scenes of what Zack had done the night before flooding his mind.
“…and you think his over-devotion to protecting his friends... makes him dangerous? Given his abilities?”
“If the current state of my palace is anything to go by, I believe so… but… I have nothing against him personally, nor his want to protect my little ponies, I simply believe we should be wary of him, and what he is capable of because of it, Shining Armour… perhaps in time we will learn why he is the way he is.”
The white stallion put a hoof to his chin as he tried to make sense of what Celestia was saying, and yet strangely it now made sense in his head, even more so when something Zack had said the night prior began bouncing around his skull
“I just kind of lost control of myself in the heat of the moment,” the stallion whispered aloud as the words haunted his mind, the princess of the sun smiling as she too recalled the SOLDIER’s words. “It’s hard not to when everyone you care about is in danger.”
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
The normally bustling streets of Canterlot were, in Zack’s opinion, much nicer after the sun set and Luna’s night took its rule, especially since there were now very few ponies around and hence very few ponies to gawk at him and his Buster Sword as he explored the city, Spitfire walking at his side.
As he looked around, he realized it was a totally different place under the stars. The ponies they met who by day dressed in the most formal attire possible, seemed to an extent abandon their need for higher grace, opting instead for a more casual approach to the night life, in the form of either plain clothes or none at all, other than the patrolling night guard squads of course.
The city itself was also different in such regards, the white stone buildings now seemed more inviting, and in a way friendly under the moon's white shine and the golden glow of the street lights, and the tables and chairs that lined the sidewalks just about beckoned for the SOLDIER and his golden counterpart to join them. The night itself was similarly calm, the sky was cloudless and filled with millions of shining stars, and a light breeze ran through the heart of the white city like it was actually breathing, all up providing a pleasing prospect for a night out on the town.
It wasn’t so much a ‘date’ that Zack had asked Spitfire for in his opinion, in his mind he was merely casually repaying her for the meal they had shared in Cloudsdale, but both of them in the end had wound up trying to look their formal best; Spitfire had decided to spoil herself with her performance payment, and bought a flowing full length golden dress with red and amber lining, while Zack had secretly approached the palace groomers to style his black hair into neat locks and neaten up his facial presentation.
Despite all the makeup and whatnot, the scar that ran across his face was still evident, serving to most as an impression of strength, while to Zack it simply served as a painful reminder.
“It’s a nice night tonight,” Zack said softly as he walked and breathed out a puff of mist, his gloved hands buried in his pockets to keep them warm in the cold mountain air. “Still, personally I’d prefer to be in Cloudsdale right now.”
“Same here,” Spitfire replied with a smirk as she trotted along beside him, giving a flick of her mane to remove the dangling fiery strands that hung around her face. “But this is the life I live, Zack, when you’re a Wonderbolt traveling comes with the title, and down time isn’t something you get a lot of.”
“I know how that feels; when I was in SOLDIER I was always away on missions and dealing with Shinra’s problems, heh, my only downtime usually came after I got injured.”
“Didn’t you ever get lonely though?” Spitfire asked with an inquiring glance, trotting along in order to keep up with his rapid pace. “I mean… I’ve always had my team for company…”
“I didn’t have a lot, but I still had friends Spitfire,” The SOLDIER said a little defensively, as a sudden gust took hold of his black locks and caused them to dance across his face. “My mentor Angeal, my best friend Cloud, Tseng, Genesis-ish, Cissnei, Tifa and… Aerith.”
Aerith, the very thought of her name bringing back a wave of formerly silent, and highly suppressed memories, including ones of events and nights not unlike the one he was experiencing at that very moment.
“Zack, are you…” she started, her mouth closing shut the moment she saw his expression.
The golden pegasus mare didn’t really want to ask, and risk causing him pain, but she didn’t have too in order to know the last name meant much more than the others did. Ss he had spoken it, Zack had stared at his boots and avoided her gaze, like having the name rebound inside his skull brought with it physical torture, his face twisted in a look of distress and agony.
Whoever Aerith was, she could tell Zack had clearly cared for them dearly.
For the rest of their relatively short walk the mare was silent, other than the occasional statement or remark about something they encountered along the desolate street, both of them avoiding, at all costs, anything to do with the prior conversation, or the SOLDIER’s past. She still continued to watch him, however, and made note of how his expression changed, trying her best to figure out what thoughts were hurtling through his head.
Although he didn’t want to talk about it, Zack had to admit the conversation had left him wondering a great many things, one of which being whether or not telling Spitfire about his friends would be such a bad idea. After all, it wasn’t like there was anyone from SOLDIER around to turn him in for treason.
He wondered if it would, perhaps, even help him move on from those he had left behind, because as it was right now whenever he thought about them, and Aerith in particular, he found himself frustrated, angry, and even sad at times.
And although it made him grit his teeth and he hated to admit it, Zack realized that in a way those emotions, and the memories of Aerith, were also part of what was preventing him telling Spitfire that he liked her.
Zack growled, and stamped his boot into the road as his emotions threatened to get the better of him, the impact of his heel causing a decent dent to form in the cobblestone.
Spitfire saw the unusual movements, but kept it to herself. The last thing she wanted to do was to ruin the night by asking Zack touchy questions.
Unbeknown to her, the SOLDIER’s mind was still going in circles no matter how he tried to stop it; he missed them all dearly, Cloud and Aerith especially, but they were now lost to him, and vice-versa, and he knew that if he continued to grasp the memories too tightly, he would never be able to move on and adapt to Equestrian society.
Something which Spitfire was constantly trying to get him to do.
“I can’t keep living like this anyway,” he grumbled mentally as he rubbed his brow in frustration, fighting back the tears that had formed with the rising memories of Aerith. “I’m in another world now, I’ll never see them again, and I can’t keep running from that truth.”
That of all things, he realized, was true. He had been avoiding it ever since he had been forcefully been brought to Equestria; he had never really spoken in depth about those in his past to Spitfire, or anypony else before, because he simply thought that it wasn’t necessary, but now it was dawning on him that perhaps there was another reason.
He didn’t want to admit it was the past. He didn’t want to acknowledge the fact he’d never see Cloud again, not after everything he and the spikey blond haired youth had been through together, and he hated the very idea of never being able to see, or hold, Aerith in his arms again, after everything he had done to return to her. But this time he realized there was nothing he could do, nothing but try to leave them behind... unless he wanted to end up going insane.
“I should just tell her,” he sighed bitterly to himself. “It’s not like I’m going to see any of them ever again… plus if I keep this up, I’m going to end up mental like Sephiroth did.”
His mind once again wandered back to, and floated over Aerith, but this time the vision of her smiling face called forth a very different reaction from him. A sort of peace and calm that resided in his acceptance, that although they would never see each other again, they would never forget each other, and she would always have a place in his heart, as would Cloud and the others.
But it was time for him to let them all go.
Eventually, the two late night wanderers headed left at a turn, and came across the street-side building Zack had been searching for, a rather well lit, quiet place called the 'Sun and Stars'. According to Shining Armor it was a little known corner about Canterlot that served good food for a decent price, plus he also let slip that it was there he had initially proposed to Cadence.
By the time they found the place, Zack had also decided on his course of action; tonight he was going to be honest with Spitfire, and himself.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
It seemed Shining Armor’s recommendation had been worthwhile, if first impressions were anything to go by. The moment he stepped inside Zack actually found himself impressed by the otherwise humble building.
Paintings of Canterlot and Equestria lined the walls, the main source of light were flickering candles that dotted the room and the individual tables, the furnishings were all timber as was the floor, and, just as Shining Armor had promised, there were only a few other diners enjoying the place.
The ordering process was also a lot easier this time around, since Zack by now had a decent grasp of the Equestria language, but the lack of meat was still a minor unvoiced annoyance to him.
“I still can’t believe you’re doing this,” Spitfire grinned from her cushion once the waiter had departed, glancing around the restaurant and taking the lavishness that, despite her well-paying occupation, she rarely experienced on her own, let alone with a partner.
“It’s the least I can do, given you're somepony who’s done so much for me,” Zack chuckled in return as he crossed his legs, and tried to get comfortable on his own cushion. His massive Buster Sword was lying on the floor beside their knee high table, and causing the wooden boards to bow slightly. “Uh, trust me when I say this isn’t as easy as it looks.”
The golden mare giggled and snickered behind her hoof as she, and half of the other diners, watched the black haired SOLDIER try to get comfortable on his own cushion... which was obviously not easy, given that his knees banged against the underside of the wooden table with each shifting movement; it seemed whoever the smart pony was who designed the place, hadn’t done so with a multi-race customer group in mind.
Once Zack did get comfortable he faced her directly, with a hand resting on each knee and his glowing blue eyes locked with her own. His expression was stark and, surprisingly, lacking much emotion despite the happy atmosphere.
"Spitfire… there’s something I need to tell you before we go any further, something I should have told you that night in Cloudsdale.”
“I’m all ears,” she replied with a smile and a flutter of her wings.
“I… thought about what you asked me earlier… about my friends and my past, and I think it’s time for me, to tell you the whole truth. I mean… you stuck your neck out for me when I met your team, you’ve told me things you’ve never told anyone else.”
“I was just being honest,” she blushed. “Besides, you’ve always been honest with me Zack... haven’t you?”
The SOLDIER put his folded his arms across his chest, and gingerly shook his head in reply, causing the mares ears to flick back in slight but well hidden annoyance.
“What little I’ve said about them has all been true, but there have also been… things… I never told you, because they’re painful to even think about… and I realized that the only way for me to try and move on from it, is to first get it all off my chest.”
The mare’s mood changed immediately from suspicion, to surprise, and then to a slight amount of pity. The tone in his voice was calm and controlled, but she could hear the faint cracks that signified his hidden nervousness, and she knew that mask well from countless cases of prior experience with speeches and performances.
“Whatever you want to tell me, Zack, I’ll listen.”
He sighed and put his fingers to his temple before starting, his mind and mouth working as one as the words flowed from his tongue like they were rehearsed.
He told her everything there was to know about himself and SOLDIER, starting off with the units’ accidental beginnings when the shape-shifter Jenova remains, used in the first hybrid creation, had been mistaken for those of a cetra. He informed her of how the boy born of the first experiment, project S, had possessed almost godlike potential compared to the humans that made up the military of Shinra, and hence SOLDIER was born.
He didn’t once mention Sephiroth’s name, and nor did he intend to; the last thing he wanted as for it to fill her nightmares as it often did his.
He then moved onto the second experiment, that had opted for a different approach to the hybrid creation, the results of the project known as G being the two powerful SOLDIER’s Genesis, and his mentor Angeal. Spitfire whistled and sat back a little when Zack told her the truth of his mentor, she was all up surprised, impressed, and horrified that Zack’s mentor had, in a way, been artificially created.
The SOLDIER then explained the major aspects of his training but left it at that, there wasn’t after all much interesting material there.
His tone sobered as he went into a more personal level, explaining how one day Genesis abruptly betrayed Shinra, and soon Angeal disappeared as well while they were out at Fort Tamblin, all because Genesis had learnt the truth about who they truly were and how they come to be. He told her about how he himself had only leant the truth about them when he had eventually tracked down both Angeal and Genesis down in Banora, and found out that both were slowly dying for degradation, both having sprouted massive single wings as proof of their condition.
He skipped over most of Genesis’s attack on headquarters, but he told Spitfire that during the attack he had met, and rescued, his friend Cissnei, a young Turk with a fiery personality and equally fiery hair, just like the mare in front of him. For the first time since the beginning of his tale, Spitfire giggled and smiled.
When he reached her he found it even harder to fight back the tears, but he held firm and told Spitfire everything about his girlfriend, Aerith, about how they had met under less than likeable circumstances. He explained how they'd been in a relationship with each other until he had to leave, and even then he had at the time hoped to return when he could.
Despite his best efforts, his emotions almost got the better of him when he moved onto what had happened in Modeoheim, of how he had gone there with his old friend, Tseng, and his then new friend, Cloud, in search of Genesis, only to find the red haired SOLDIER mad with anger, and his mentor Angeal on the brink of his own sanity.
“…Angeal… just couldn’t take knowing what he was… because the Jenova was a monster, and because his mother killed herself out of shame for bringing him into the world… he thought he was a monster too,” Zack said bitterly with his fist clenched, Spitfire quivering and trying not to give into her own tears. “So when I confronted him in the bathhouse, he decided the easiest thing to do end it all there and then… so he absorbed the clones around us and attacked me so I’d… end his suffering for him.”
The mare watched wordlessly as the SOLDIER sighed, gingerly he lowered his left hand and picked up his Buster Sword, raising it to a height where the pegasus could see the silvery metal blade, and his blue eyes glint in the flicking candle light as he looked between it and her.
“That was the day I gained this sword, the day Angeal passed his honour, and spirit to me… as long as I have those two things I won’t let anyone hurt you, or anypony else I care about. I just want you to know that,”
It was a strange feeling that blossomed in Spitfire’s chest at the words. It’s exact source and meaning she didn’t know, but she was sure it was a pleasant feeling; ever since they had met she had wondered who he had been in his last life, and although the truth wasn’t pretty, she was glad to know, and more then willing to help him rebuild his shattered life all the same.
After all, she was the reason he was here in the first place.
“I’m glad to hear that… and for the record, you encouraged me to let go of the festering loathing I had for Soarin, Zack, so if you ever need somepony when times get tough, to I’m here for you.”
“So… you’re not… freaked out about what I’ve told you?” he asked in genuine surprise with an incline of his head, the mare shaking her own in return.
“We’ve all got a story Zack, and some are prettier than others, but what we’ve been through doesn’t determine who we are, we make that choice… I mean, look at me. I didn’t grow up in a well off family and nor am I naturally good flyer, but look where I managed to get myself. You’re not a bad guy, Zack, you’ve just been put into some bad situations, and been made to make some hard decisions is all, and I’ve known you long enough to be able to see that.”
A small smile crept across his lips as he put the sword down again. Despite being so young, she seemed to have a lot more experience up her sleeve then he first thought, and if it weren’t for the fact they were in a formal restaurant he probably would have picked the mare up, and hugged her there and then.
“Thanks, it’s been a long time since anyone saw me like that,” he chuckled, remembering the battalion of infantry Shinra had sent after him and Cloud.
“Heh, I’m only being honest,” she winked. “But, can I ask… what happened to the first SOLDIER? Did he betray Shinra as well?”
Zack bit his lip, and shivered as his last memory of Sephiroth came rushing back, the day when the silver haired veteran had betrayed SOLDIER, burned Nibelheim to the ground, slaughtered its population, and tried to kill him and Cloud.
“He also went insane when he leant what he was, and did some terrible things I’d rather not talk about… but he’s dead and gone now, Cloud killed him.”
Spitfire simply nodded, and despite her curiosity pushed the subject no further.
When the meal finally arrived they both enjoyed it, Zack even more so because now he no longer had carry the weight of who he had once been, and the memories of those he had left behind.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Notes:
I am so glad to get that out of the way (or partly anyway, the rest of Zack’s personal story I want to save for later) emotionally fuelled chapters aren’t something I love writing, but I guess every story needs a balance.
Anyway on a brighter note I have a treat for you all, there is now another FF7 crossover on FIM! With Cloud! (don’t lie to me, I can hear your fan-boy squees). Hence without further ado I present Final Fantasy VII: Darkness in Equestria by Axel IV, enjoy!