wingsdreamt-m

[wingsdreamt-m]

just moved zack over to his own blog, so if anyone here is still interested in interacting with him, feel free to follow me there!

https://wingsdreamt.tumblr.com

[wingsdreamt-m]

livingxxlegacy​:

Most folks that made it past their teens didn’t have the pleasure of experiencing growing up on Earth. 

Overcrowded, stifled, suffocated by smog and pollution - that was the world Cloud knew. The highest of the upper-class lived in clean little bubbles, high above the rest of the rotting population that inhabited landfills, dilapidated buildings, crumbling skyscrapers and polluted waterways. They lived up there in bliss, completely uncaring of how the rest of the world was disintegrating beneath their feet. 

Those fortunate to book passage on the ships carrying colonists out to Mars and beyond, they got to scrounge out a living on a desolate wasteland. At least there was no smog, no mercury and cadmium in the water, but it wasn’t exactly a luxury.

Cloud enlisted in the galactic navy as soon as he turned 18. His mother passed away only two years ago, he was suffocating under the slums of the largest remaining city on the rotting out planet. Gangs were virtually everywhere, and you had to be skilled with hand-to-hand combat if you didn’t want to get mugged every time you left the house. He didn’t know if it was less oppressive elsewhere, and he didn’t care. All he knew was he wanted to get the hell off this godforsaken rock that was circling the drain before his own eyes. 

Become SOLDIER. Yeah, that was the best goal of anyone that came from a place that he did. Prove he was worth something, and he wasn’t just a dirty slum rat with a single coin to his name. Cloud wanted that more than anything, having grown up scrawny, pale, and too pretty for the slums. You’d think that would gain him privilege, but no, it only got him leers, taunting remarks, and several black eyes because Cloud just didn’t know how to let it go. 

Big blue eyes and bright blond hair, fair complexion and a lanky figure. It wasn’t a common sight, and it seemed that compared to all the others fleeing from a doomed future that had crowded into the recruitment ship along with him, it still wasn’t. He got stares. Stares from men much bigger than him, and from officers, too. He had to figure that being assigned to recruitment wasn’t exactly a promotion, given the myriad of other, much more useful combat and technician jobs that the navy offered. 

He’d adopted a much less attractive facial expression as a default. Lips curled into a frown, brow furrowed, a permanent glare fixed to his visage that could be aimed in any direction to get attention off of himself. Usually it worked. Around here, it might take a little more than that. 

Basic training, skill assesment… he breezed through it all. Any logic puzzle he could fly through faster than anyone else in his training group, but when it came to the physical combat, that was where he started to fall short. Frustrated, he’d charge his opponents, slipping up in every way he possibly could. And when it came down to it, he just wasn’t very physically strong. Malnourished with his mother’s poverty status, he never had the chance to build up a considerable amount of muscle. He was hoping he’d have the chance once he joined up with the navy, and got proper food in his stomach.

Regardless, when the month had finally passed, his physique hadn’t improved much compared to when he started, despite feeling leaps and bounds better than when he’d been living on Earth. 

When the time came for his assignment, he wasn’t really given a clear designation. Everything was held in secrecy, but one thing he did notice was that when he reported for duty, he was only among another handful of men that looked similar to him - shorter, scrawnier, but all had high IQ results and had been neck-and-neck with him in the logic assessments. 

So, they were a group of nerds. What now? Clearly, they hadn’t made it into SOLDIER - Cloud had noticed every man in that program looked like nothing more than a glorified jarhead. IQ high enough, but did they really need to be that tall and buff if all they were doing was flying a fighter corvette?

The NAVIGATOR program. Something they seemed to have tacked onto SOLDIER when they found out, one jarhead stuffed into a corvette just wouldn’t cut it. Nice to know you’re just a support class to the brass’s latest precious experiment. Turns out you really need the brains part too in order to really be effective in combat… figures they couldn’t think of that in the first place.

Ah, yes, more exams. Just what Cloud seemed to be good at. He’d been hooked into a variety of apparatuses that hovered above and around his head, asked questions, put through all sorts of tests and simulations to measure his reflexes, cognitive function, problem solving skills and critical thinking - until finally, he was set free, to sit down and wait. 

Ten minutes passed, then twenty. Thirty. Until finally, he was taken alone down another hallway, and he was told he would be meeting his hand-picked SOLDIER partner.

Well, that was fast, at least. The one thing he wasn’t looking forward to was the synchronicity training. If only they’d let him get into the pilot’s seat and prove that you don’t need some guy juiced up on mako stims to fly your damn plane and still kick ass. 

Was he bitter that it turned out, the most fearsome and prided operatives in the Navy were nothing but buff guys with egos? Yeah.

The metal door opened with a hiss of steam, and he stepped forward behind the training officer, and introduced to his new partner. 

SOLDIER uniforms were nearly all black, while NAVI ones were white. Cloud couldn’t figure what the purpose of that was, but it certainly made this SOLDIER look… well. He was certainly tall, broad, and had striking blue eyes along with inky black locks swept back from his face. A very interesting scar intersected just at the corner of his jawbone, and Cloud could take three guesses where he got that from, considering the amount of energy these stims gave SOLDIERs in between missions. 

Before Cloud could stop it, a frown curled his lips, but he just as quickly wiped it away, not wanting to make a bad impression if the two were supposed to work together, somehow. 

“Cloud.” Offering a single ungloved hand as an offer to shake, and begin their partnership. 

“Zack,” he replies, bouncing up to his feet and clapping his hand into the mold of Cloud’s open palm in one smooth motion. Fresh-faced, almost doe-eyed. Cloud stands out about as much as a pale lily in a garden of gnarled thorns. To his credit, the kid doesn’t buckle, doesn’t so much as flinch.

Not bad.

Cloud is already busy sizing him up, trying to figure out what makes one SOLDIER different from the next. All that whopping skepticism, professionally veiled behind a pretty face. The blond has probably dealt with a fair amount of trouble on that basis alone-- a stiff lip earns disparaging comments and jeers, but open acrimony is often the best defense...especially in the dog eat dog world of Shinra’s military.

Superficially, the two of them couldn’t have seemed more different. If Cloud’s marks were good enough to get him this far and the rest is just chemistry...even he has to admit that the Shinra techs know how to fucking pick ‘em.

All that talk about synchronization, using JENOVA’s own strategies against it-- maybe he’ll finally understand how it comes into practice now.

“Welcome aboard, Cloud. Let’s see what you got!” Zack squeezes the blond’s hand one last time with a wolfish grin before making his way over to the platform at the center of the room.

His gaze lingers on the pace of Cloud’s stride and the stubborn set of the blond’s jaw before remembering to play with and release the clasps of his own headset and slide it on over his unruly black hair. “How do I look? Like I’m ready to take on space beasties?”

#livingxxlegacy #cloud. #ffs of course i do the wrong blog thing

[wingsdreamt-m]

@wingsandsteel from x --

The sound of silence.

Zack pretends to know it the few times that Angeal has convinced him to kneel on little navy square cushions. Neatly folded hands, head tilted back, slow, methodical inhales and exhales. Focus on breathing, on the breath, but without direct thought to actually doing so. Ultimate passivity, folding consciousness into the core of one’s self, the steady lava flow that rumbles deep within as the mechanics of flesh, muscle, and living come to surface.

Angeal might never know it, but meditation is not a forgotten lesson. Zack holds it precious for his hardest days: when the world’s hard truths loom too greatly, when he cannot thread the needle, and when he finds himself unable to live up to his own expectations.

But meditation does not happen during the day, and certainly not around Angeal.

“Ang--mmmf!”

A breakfast sandwich-shaped obstruction.

Munching sounds.

Zack slides down adjacent, cross-legged, sandwich in hand, crumbs gathered up in the corners of his mouth turned impish grin. “Only if you check the clock! Did I ever tell you that you’re the best mentor ever?”

#this is so cute isldkfjalksj #angeal.

[wingsdreamt-m]

@livingxxlegacy

Unstoppable. That’s how he felt, for a long time. Now he feels a different kind of unstoppable. The kind that a person feels when they can’t stem the flow of blood from their open wounds, when their limbs won’t work anymore, when they sink to their knees from exhaustion, when the pain fades and everything sounds so far away…

Sunlight fades, his hands feel cold, and Zack wants nothing more than to rest. 

Except the pain doesn’t stop. Except the pain rises into an ear-splitting crescendo that eclipses anything he’s ever experienced before. More than the bullet holes and scratches, more than the first dose of mako injected like searing acid into his veins. He even forgets to scream. Tearing flesh and snapped muscles fibers. An eruption of blood and gristle, flung out from his back in a wide semi-circle and stained white feathers.

Zack bodily slumps against the Buster Sword, its tip driven deep into the earth and his hands knuckle-white underneath his gloves from gripping the handle hard enough to keep him upright by sheer force of will alone. He can see the tips of long primary feathers on either side of him, an artistic blend of both pristine white and bloodied, brushing against the ground from his peripheral vision.

Silence descends again, wraps him up like a comforting blanket, but not because he thinks he’s dying. 

Awe-shock-disgust-horror. 

Gun tips are lowered, mouths hang open. Zack is on his feet...and then in the air. Diving and cutting through them like paper soldiers, ripping them apart. Tossing dismembered limbs aside. They aren’t silent anymore. Screams, whirring gunfire, and a torrent of emptied shells clattering to the ground in a symphony of chaos and death.

He understands now– how Angeal felt. Peregrine. Monstrous. Zack looks out to a sea of corpses. His arms are bathed red all the way up to his elbows. 

With my bare hands…I killed them…all of them…  

Blood everywhere. His. Theirs. Knocking on the other side of a door he is too tired to answer, disbelief.  

Zack sinks to the ground a second time. He’s upright, wavering on his knees for less than a second before falling forward face-first  and landing in a rusty cloud of dust. The dirt is magnetic, sticking to the side of his face. His hair. His mouth. His feathers...

He closes his eyes, finds himself mouthing the name even if he can’t be sure any sound escapes him at all. “Cloud…” 

#livingxxlegacy #cloud. #queued.

[wingsdreamt-m]

legacylivcd​:

     He’s certain in that moment if he closes his eyes, if that hand connects, there will be a white ceiling above him and an annoyingly persistent sun shining through his window. He’ll drag himself out of bed the way he does every afternoon and before anyone else can catch him, he’ll be out making rounds looking for work. Making deliveries.

     Still…life is fleeting, any moment could be his last and if this is a dream let him enjoy it. Cloud expects the same revulsion to the ruffle but it never comes. It’s instead replaced with a deep and unyielding sadness that wells up in his throat like a geyser and he grits is teeth against the strength of it, turns into the palm to savor the weight of it. His scalp tingles and his brows furrow. The dam is cracking and he’s losing the strength to hold it in place.

     So he doesn’t. He caves and he lurches forward, colliding chest to chest as his arms turn into vices locked around the SOLDIER’s waist. He’s never held on to anyone so tight.

     “It really is you.” The breath leaves his lungs at a lurch and no matter how hard he tries he can’t…he feels light as a feather, the world’s suddenly sharper, his lungs can’t take it anymore. It’s Zack! Real and in the flesh and-

     As if the body he’d been holding had burst into flames, he takes a good step back to size him up and…dark blonde brows furrow and past the rivers pouring down his cheeks he swings for the man’s jaw.

     “What the hell were you thinkin’?!” Another swing and it loses strength considerably, aimless and the crowd disperses like flies hoping to watch or avoid the fight. “Who the hell asked you to…” Shoulders sag and the third swing never happens. It dies at the tips of his fingers and he sinks to his knees, face buried in gloved palms.

     “Not for me… I never asked you to…” 

Pain explodes like a fire cracker on his face.

His jaw snaps back with the resounding crack of leather-backed knuckles on bone. Fractures and cracks that spread from the bottom edge of his jaw, bright and sharp with a knife’s edge until it fades into a dull ache. He can spot the second punch coming miles away. Zack watches the blond’s balled fist sail through the air, waits for it to connect-- but finds that it never does.

Their pain is two sides of one coin. Whatever it takes for one to live, even if the other dies. Zack knows the choice he would make every time. Cloud, left behind to pick up the pieces. To rise and face every morning in a world that has become that much smaller without Zack in it. 

Cloud had never been given a chance to make his choice.

A powerful ache in his jaw, a purple flower of a bruise blooming underneath olive skin. Zack knows he deserves it, in a way. He had tried and fought for so long, clawing for air, for freedom to fill his lungs, for freedom to finally arrive in the form of lead bullets that he could not refuse. Didn’t he deserve a break? He never asked for death, but death had made a home out of the bullet holes that riddled his body by the end of it all. He wasn’t strong enough to save himself back then, but it was enough that he could save Cloud.

Until the Turks, and the scientists under whom they’d entrusted his care, managed to restart his dead heart.

Zack spares a short glare for the few audience members that stray too close. This isn’t a damn show, but he doesn’t have the energy to spare and drive them away. It would be a pointless endeavor, like trying to scare off a flock of pigeons pecking for bread crumbs in the city center. He sinks down to the ground beside Cloud, takes gentle hold of his wrists. Zack pries them apart, a slow parting of trembling iron curtains, pulls Cloud to him, holds the blond so tightly that he might even find it a struggle to draw breath.

“Sorry...I’m sorry. Cloud, I’m sorry,” Zack murmurs, taut words drawn into repetitive little circles while a hand at the nape of Cloud’s neck tips the blond’s head forward into Zack’s shoulder.

#zack: ok so i kinda know i fucked up by dying and all but forgive me?? 🥺 #legacylivcd #cloud.

[wingsdreamt-m]

@strywoven -- ❛  02 .   a  kiss  for  the  first  time .  || zack/verona, perhaps? (@valhyr) 

Fireworks at the penthouse. Up on the top floor, the floor-to-ceiling glass windows are truly put to the test. He hopes Verona got her gil’s worth. Up close, the shower of lights is almost blinding. Needle-point pupils, constricting as long shadows are cast into the room behind them and explosive thunder rocks the room. He can see the way the light burns the air. Metal salts lending their color in the resulting chemical light show that leaves brightly colored spots in his vision as they fade away. Close, blinding, like Zack need only reach out with one hand to touch the tendrils of light as they carve their path through the dark.

It’s beautiful in the same way Verona’s golden hair reflects the myriad of colors in the night sky. She’s probably seen spectacles like this countless times before. Echelons above everyone else, above the Shinra middle-managers in their cookie cutter houses, above the scavengers prowling the slums for their next mark. Worlds away from a backwater boy like him, seeing fireworks for the first time.

Zack realizes, belatedly, that Verona has not been looking at the fireworks display this whole time, but at him. He sees her out of the corner of his eye, appraising with all the intent of a silversmith and their finest handiwork.

Granted mysterious boldness by this observation, Zack turns towards her, holds the gaze of those silver, glimmering gold eyes for a moment-- a silent question, a bid for permission, before leaning forward and pressing their lips together.

#valhyr #answered. #queued.

[wingsdreamt-m]

@firxga--

"Fair." There it was, an acknowledgement in passing. He hadn't pretended to not see Angeal's protege, nor did he result to any degrading nicknames.

"Rhapsodos.” Nothing more than a verbal handshake. Angeal had a rather firm policy on off-topic chatter in the middle of whatever life-altering lesson or advice he was in the middle of giving, so Zack perhaps knew less than he ought to about his mentor’s friends.

Even so, it can’t hurt to make nice. “Checking out the cantina later? I heard they’re offering wet burritos today!”

#firxga #genesis.

[wingsdreamt-m]

@iyashinokaze --

❛ maybe i love you. ❜

“Hmm...!” Zack thoughtfully grabs the top of his thighs as he rocks back and forth on top of the vaguely animal-shaped dome that they’re sitting on.

From this part of Sector 6, they can look up through the spindly, twisted fingers of rebar, crumbling concrete cliffs, and bolted sheet metal along the underside of the unfinished plate above them.

The space between the silhouettes is almost equally dark and indistinct. A sky the color of dying orchids. Purple and hazy, without a single star to be found. Light pollution, smog, machinery exhaling their rancid mako fumes.

Zack leans over, touches their shoulders together and laces his fingers with hers. “Maybe I love you, too.”

#iyashinokaze #aerith.

[wingsdreamt-m]

livingxxlegacy​:

Here. Right here. 

This was everything. 

Blond lashes fluttered a fraction as his gaze was pulled upwards, and a dark crown of hair starkly contrasted against the blue halo that fit around him like a jigsaw piece. Looking into his eyes was like looking straight through his body, the color a match too perfect aside from the whispering green tendrils that sprouted from his pupils. 

The melding of soft lips; sharing their heat as the cool ocean breeze fit itself in between the hollows and gaps that their bodies formed, pressed together. Perilously close to being narrowed, and then sealed entirely. Rough pads of digits smoothed over the gentle curve of a shoulder, palm cupping nape as fingers found their home curled in inky locks, still damp from their excursion into the watery depths only minutes ago. 

His shirt clung in places, outlining darker shapes and laying flush to muscle, the rest of his garments billowing softly in the breeze. 

If he could freeze time and live in this moment, he would, without a moment’s hesitation. 

Lips separated, but bodies did not, and the tips of their noses brushed together for half a moment as Cloud shifted his head, tilting to the other side. Pressing forward again. 

Nails with the faintest bit of dirt stuck underneath pressed themselves into tanned skin, embedding little welts that would soon recover and return to smoothness. Much like these fleeting moments of peace, where they were alone, and the world couldn’t touch them. Little imprints of gentleness that didn’t seem like they belonged anywhere near here, maybe not even at all. But Cloud would continue to seek them out, no matter how hard he’d have to try. 

It was what living was meant for, after all. 

What a strange thing, to find himself hoping for so long and to finally have it all. Everything he’d wanted and more. Zack’s hands traced along the silhouette of Cloud’s upper thighs, over his hips and the dripping hem of his shirt, under that wet fabric, squeezing Cloud’s hips and warming pale, ocean-chilled skin with his own body heat.

Hypersonic metabolisms, burning energy that dissipates through skin in the form of heat, white hot warmth seeping through his finger tips.

Saltwater making trails over the marble column of Cloud’s throat, pooling in the divot of the blond’s clavicle before spilling over and slipping under the neckline of his shirt. Mesmerizing-- salty too, when Zack leans down to kiss the away the runaway droplets and bury his face against the crook of the other man’s neck.

A pair of runaways at the edge of their own world.

Zack sweeps his tongue along his bottom lip to catch the last bits of salty-sweet off his skin and pushes away the wet blond fringe sticking to Cloud’s forehead with a smile.

“Feeling cold, yet? We can go inside,” Zack suggests, even if he already knows the answer. It would take quite a bit more than a quick dip in the ocean for either of them to feel a chill. This is his play for normalcy, for a period of time that has long since come and gone.

Neither of them fit into the mold of normal. He doesn’t mind.

#livingxxlegacy #cloud.

[wingsdreamt-m]

@livingxxlegacy--

❛ tell me what your heart wants. ❜

As he spoke, his hand drifted down with his gaze, settling on the valley between pectoral muscles, over his sternum. Standing in the sunlight together like this, his whole body felt cocooned in warmth. Rays at his back, and Zack at his front. He watched as the shadow of his hair blowing gently in the breeze, fluttered a blue-grey veil over Zack's shoulder, licking at the border between tan skin and dark, woven fabric.

Well, the answer to that one’s easy.

The distant crashing of waves, scents of sea brine and sand, gulls crying for food far in the sky over their heads. Cloud, his cheeks dusted with tiny glittering specks of sand carried on by the wind. Those bright blue eyes, shying just out of sight when Cloud’s gaze follows his hand on Zack’s chest.

Flawless, beautiful. His.

“I have everything my heart wants right here.” Zack pulls Cloud’s head back up by the chin, admiring the reflective, deep blue of mako-flecked eyes that stare back at his own before sealing their lips together in a kiss.

#vaguely costa del sol lmao #livingxxlegacy #cloud. #answered.

[wingsdreamt-m]

which fairy tale archetype are you?

the boy king

The boy king has a huge burden placed on his shoulders. With a dead father who perished in battle or was poisoned, a shrewd and scheming mother, an abundance of homicidal relations, and a nation to rule, he can either become a puppet or the most formidable ruler a nation has seen.

tagged by: @heavensfists

tagging: anyone who wants to! :)

#memes.

[wingsdreamt-m]

legacylivcd​:

     The rush of bodies separating him and the man he’s hunting down thickens and, frustrated beyond belief, he wades through them like a waist deep ocean until- The man stopped. They never stop. Delusions don’t listen to reason they don’t listen at all but this one responds like it’s living. Breathing. Real.

     He stops too.

     Just long enough to hear his name in a familiar voice. The same cadence, the same baritone. Cloud’s chest constricts and he swears this heat will kill him too. It’s a perfect storm and he can’t breathe.

          Zack!

     He wants to cry out, scream the name until he’s hoarse just to see if those eyes will still be there. Looking at him. If he acknowledges… It’s impossible. And yet…and yet here he is, staring at a man who looks identical. Down to the way that nose wrinkles as he squints in the sunlight.

     Cloud’s been staring so long his eyes have begun to water, the sun’s blinding and the dust cakes in his nostrils, coats the back of his throat. It feels like time has slowed to a near stop the faces passing him blurry and unimportant. More than anything he wanted-

     He knows it’s not real. Plenty of times before he’s followed apparitions down deserted streets, darkened alleyways and always they’ve led him into trouble. He hasn’t learned his lesson, however. Hoping beyond hope that one day he’d reach out and touch something real. Solid and warm. 

     Staggering through the work hour rush he prays that once he reaches his destination the man will still be there. Still be smiling. Calling his name like he used to. That he’ll grab hold of those shoulders and shake him!

     “Z-…” His mouth’s too dry, throat caked with dust. It’s all he can muster to croak out a single syllable and he fails at even that. But he’s close enough now. Close enough to…to… A hand reaches out and he touches flesh. Real and warm and he can feel the pulse beating beneath the skin! Bright eyes go wide as a coin of gil and his grip tightens of its own accord.

     “Zack?!”

Picture perfect. As blue and wide-eyed as he remembers.

Zack’s breath all but catches in his throat when Cloud comes into full view. His feet are like concrete shoes, threatening to drag him down through an undertow of wild emotion. He can’t seem to do anything but marvel and wonder.

Too afraid to blink. To look away. Keep Cloud in his sights, lest the crowd wash over and swallow him up like a monster of the deep.

What sort of life did he lead now? Was he happy? There’s a certain weary confidence in the gait of his walk, even with all his apparent urgency--the way a person walks when they have spent time in the trenches. When, with aching bones, they grow used to shaking the blood off their blade at the end of a hard fought battle. When they have lost count with the number of times they’ve looked Death in the eye and shaved off a few stray hairs under its scythe.

And hardship shows in Cloud’s eyes, in the lean angles and lines of his face. A man who has come into his own with or without whose story that stretches on in  the past few years. Erstwhile years that may as well have just been yesterday for Zack.

I should have been there for you.

“That’s me.” His voice is a hush, too low to tempt the hoarse notes tugging at his vocal chords.

Cloud’s hand over his forearm feels almost like an anchor. Holding onto him tightly, as though a riptide might find them at any moment.

Almost instinct, programmed while loops of the same motion; one of Zack’s hands is halfway in the air, hovering just over those blond spikes that flutter in the wake of another warm breeze. The hesitation lasts less than a second-- how could he not? To ruffle Cloud’s hair one more time, like he’s done countless occasions before.

#zack: :D #also zack: D: #legacylivcd #cloud. #queued.

[wingsdreamt-m]

iyashinokaze​:

“You’re not a dummy,” she says as she gently cards her fingers through his jet-black hair. Throughout her life, she’s not had many friends. Those who were considered friends never stayed because they were kids who got to go home back to actual houses and didn’t live in a ShinRa laboratory. At some point, they just stopped coming because she figured that her life and theirs were on completely different trajectories and that they weren’t among the last of an ancient race.

There is a bitterness in her that has taken root from a seed that she keeps locked away on days when the grief and anger become too much. And while she should hate all those who she comes into contact with, because they are affiliated with ShinRa, one way or the other, she’s aware enough to know that sometimes joining such a side is not by choice.

Zack may be a SOLDIER but she knows he’s not a bad person. She doesn’t think there’s a single bad bone in his body.

Leaning into him, she places her lips on his brow and kisses him there. What had just happened was not something she could ever consider herself prepared for, but she knew the instant that when Zack needed someone, just to be there, Aerith wasn’t going to walk away.

“You wanna take a walk or just stay here? I’ll be with you, no matter what you choose.”

‘No matter what you choose.’

A part of him wonders how long that might stay true, how far Aerith might be pushed before she realizes she’s picked the wrong person. A part of him he wishes would shut the hell up. He’s never had any illusions about what he’s done. In the end, it was all ordered by Shinra to better humanity...wasn’t it?

The events of the past few months have thrown that perception into jeopardy.

If he had told his past self that Shinra would one day order him to chase down and eliminate his own mentor...Zack probably would have laughed and thought it a poor joke.

Shinra cared only about cleaning up its messes. To hammer down the nails that chose to stick out.

Relying on Aerith feels so selfish. He hates it. If he were stronger, if he had learned the truth in time...Some hero. The kiss on his brow feels almost like an undeserved blessing. Sitting and stagnating has never sat well with him.

He sits up ruler-straight, sucks in a breath until his chest sticks out, then exhales before sliding off the pew and taking Aerith’s hand in his to gently pull her up with him. Zack’s other hand rubs sheepishly at the back of his neck. “Let’s walk. Maybe you can give me a problem to solve...since I can’t seem to solve my own at the moment.”

#iyashinokaze #aerith. #queued.

[wingsdreamt-m]

@livingxxlegacy

Fights are over in a fraction of a second. A blink of the eye: fireworks in a hungry void, scattered star light, shearing metal, and neon streaks of plasma. When a single decision, made on a hair’s breadth of time, can decide the outcome of a dogfight, the numbers tell the truth.

Salvaged blackboxes, reducing the contribution of a human life to numbers and sequences of dials and switches. Sometimes there are voices, prayers, screams. Sometimes nothing.

Too much latency.

Signals like molasses and morse code. Physical limitations of the plane in which they inhabit. Time for sound to travel. Time to think about what needs to be said, what needs to be done. Maybe it’s too late by then.

The highest recorded APM by a single human being: 818. That number has stood unchallenged for nearly over a century.

JENOVA, with its great hivemind of conquered races, can simultaneously pilot a fleet of nearly a thousand ships. Corvettes, destroyers, cruisers, battleships…Add to the count every single enslaved mind traipsing through corridors of sticky black resin and scarlet veins, and the count grows exponentially. Tens of millions of actions per minute.

Humanity must forge its own edge, however small.

Reduce latency. Increase human potential for action. Enter the Navigator program.  A SOLDIER and a Navigator. Taking the best of both and drastically increasing the capacity for both together than they could ever hope to achieve separately. Synchronicity.

All decisions that bigwigs tend to make without consulting guys like him.

By this point in his career, Zack had turned down multiple promotions that would have meant pulling him out of the pilot’s seat. Hells, he fucking loved the fight. Baring his teeth. Shredding enemy ships like a dog shaking the stuffing out of a little chew toy.

Self-reliance has gotten him this far. Left his backwater colony in the dust to join the Galactic Navy. To make a name for himself, to join SOLDIER and humanity’s war against a vile threat. And he was damn good at it. To say he was resistant to sharing the Fenrir was an understatement.

How could having another human being sharing the cockpit do him any favors except to slow him down?

A small, saw-toothed pocket knife dances over the top of his fingers while he waits on a metal bench jutting out from the wall. The room he is in can’t be any longer than fifteen feet across. LEDs embedded into the walls at regular intervals throughout grid-steel panels cast a pale, shade of green over his face. At the center, two elevated platforms with a wild array of colorful cabling and tubing overhead. Two headsets with yellow visors, both dangling patiently in the air. Like some sort of Frankenstein machine.

Zack looks up, tunes his senses towards the sound of marching footsteps, the procedural hiss of hydraulics as the doors begin to slide open and the initiation begins.

About time.

Supposedly, Naval Command had taken its sweet time cherry picking the perfect partner for all their little SOLDIERs. Biogenetic screening, behavioral mapping, twitch tests, psyche evaluations. The works.

Curiosity is like a fire lighting a glow in his eyes. Who? Who will it be?

#livingxxlegacy #cloud.

[wingsdreamt-m]

legacylivcd​:

@wingsdreamt​

     “It’s a good thing I don’t mind the heat then.” He retorts, thumbing over a bauble discovered in the new heap of refuse brought in from the outskirts. He hadn’t a clue what it had gone to and asking Tifa she’d said the same. No one knew, but it was pretty to look at. Cloud valued functionality and the sum of the new stock were simply trinkets to decorate with so he left her to her shopping. Outside it was hotter under the sun but at least there was a breeze, constant and polluted but it helped.

     He stood watching the milling crowd detached, wondering in some vague sense where they’d all be going. How the city was coming along with its repairs. Would this one be any different. Edge…appropriately named, it was the edge of civilization. The edge of the cliff they’d made. One wrong step, they’re back to square one. He doesn’t have a lot of faith in humanity as a whole to make it past their ten year mark here before it all goes back to shit.

     Cloud’s eyelids droop heavy, lashes kissing the high hills of his cheeks as he struggles to stay awake waiting, bored out of his mind. It’s pointless, but his attention falls back to the crowd, a blur of raven hair strangely out of place among the throng. Not just- He’s alert again, scanning for the- There!

     He wades out into the sea of faces, driven by curiosity and like a ship at sea he’s tossed about as he struggles against the flow ignoring the echoes of annoyance bouncing from mouth to mouth. They don’t matter. What does is finding out who that was. Why they looked so familiar. Why the felt so familiar.

     “Hey!” 

“What Tseng doesn’t know won’t hurt ‘im. Besides, Strife’ll pick him up in no time flat.” Lips pulled back, a sprezzatura grin and a two-fingered salute. The last thing the Turks said to him before Reno thrust a foot into his chest and threw him out of a moving van.

This is confusing as all hell.

He doesn’t recognize anything about this place. Not the people, the  signs, even the buildings...Reno, in his typical fashion, seemed to have  taken some sadistic enjoyment out of withholding history from him. A  cryptic statement here and there, apocalypses, and ended legacies. Zack  had wanted to stomp on the redhead’s foot so hard it wasn’t even funny. But only one question had an answer which he cared to know.

‘Strife? Yeah, the little shit made it.’

Zack squints against the searing light of the sun. There are people everywhere, ping pong balls bouncing around in a convection oven. The air blows hot in his face, carrying under its wings tiny stinging particles of fiberglass and dust.

And Shinra HQ, looming like a headstone in the distance. Crumbling and quiet. No thrum of reactors sucking mako from the ground beneath their feet, no metallic aftertaste on the tongue when you breath the nigh-invisible mako exhaust through your mouth. Like a bad dream...

Someone’s voice chases his heels off in the distance. Once, too far away to be quite sure...twice-- oh, they’re definitely calling him.

The best thing to do when lost is to stay put and wait until someone finds you. Zack stops in his tracks, where he becomes the rooted stone which parts the flowing river of warm bodies. Until, peeking through the top of a sea of heads, a shock of spiky blond hair.

“Cloud?”

#poor zack #he comes back and for what #socked #legacylivcd #cloud. #queued.

[wingsdreamt-m]

iyashinokaze​:

“I don’t see you complaining,” she says against his lips as he continues to kiss her. She settles a little more firmly in his lap, an absolute certainty that he’s holding her in such a way that he’d never let her fall. There aren’t that many people in her life that she can trust. Her mother, Elmyra, is at the top of that list, and it’s with the same amount of certainty that Zack is up there too.

“You know what I’ve found out?” She waits a beat to answer her own question, going in for another kiss, and another. “I really like kissing you.”

“Ah-hah! So you admit to your lechery.” Zack snickers under a shower of kisses. His eyes are soft and fond, always teetering on the cusp of disbelief. She is all of his favorite one-liners made real, every cheesy compliment, and every love song he can think of.

But none of that will ever see the light of day. Too many things that can go wrong, too much to ask... All that game and none of the confidence to fully hope. For now, this is enough. Zack closes the loop of his arms by grasping his wrists and angling them inward, until the outer curve of Aerith’s hip is brushing right against his stomach. Another tease to tickle. “Welcome to the modern age. I figured that out last week.”

#mushy stuff mood lmaoo #iyashinokaze #aerith. #queued.

[wingsdreamt-m]

illeiterumveniet​:

     Predator’s eyes trace the dance hungrily, yearning to know what it feels like to walk among them all, to no longer feel alone. To have the barrier lower and run his fingers through life itself and feel its caress as of a mother to her child.

     Lowering his heavy burden to settle in a heap beside the man, Sephiroth drinks in his imagination. What it must taste like.

     “I would. To spare you, I would…” By sheer stubbornness alone he would persist, never to be granted true rebirth as those who had returned to the planet would. New life, new ambitions, new dreams. Angeal…Genesis…would any of them meet again in the next life? Would there be enough of him to make it that far?

     “Ask that of the man who created us. Was it worth the cost of everything. Our futures, our humanity. How much of it was…me?” Sterling lashes flutter closed and if lungs could fill he might sigh.

     “Do you regret your choices?”

Feeling draws Zack in, a semblance of something he thinks he can recognize. His gaze is patent, probing. Maybe there’s not enough left. Maybe they can sit together like this for an eternity and it would fix nothing. Hope is a bygone thing, poisoned. Too late. Way too late, Seph.

Falling flat on the seat of his nonexistent pants, Zack draws up his knees and recalls the catalysts which brought about the SOLDIER program’s existence.

Hojo. A villain in his own right.

You have to take responsibility for your own choices sometime. This, Zack does not say. Some lessons are best learned the hard way...or not at all.

Everyone is already touching his spirit with their distaste, their voiceless doubts and questions. For the time being, Zack ignores them. I’ve made my own mistakes, too.

“Mostly, no.” He turns his head to meet those verdant green eyes with the ghost of blue ones. What should have been the color of life is instead a portent of destruction. “I think...You needed someone more than a friend. And I couldn’t give that to you. At least, not back then.” 

#illeiterumveniet #sephiroth.