Well, here we are folks, the final chapter in this fic. It's been a long time coming but I finally managed to finish it. I sincerely apologize for the lengthy wait. A LOT of not so wonderful things happened in the past six years that took me away from fan fiction altogether. Things like the diagnosis, years of chemotherapy, and eventual death of my mother from breast cancer to a less than amicable deal with a small press for my debut series that could not have happened at a worst time in my life. Truthfully, I was severely burnt out on all ends. Mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally. Burnt out on writing, burnt out on motivation, burnt out on everything and it's taken months to recover. Things have improved and I'm finally able to write again, both fan fiction and my other projects.

I want to tell you that you are all so amazing. Your kindness and dedication to reading this fic for over a decade at this point is something that I cannot find enough words in any language to thank you enough for. I could not ask for better readers and fans. Because I'm asked regularly about it, I'll answer this question now: Yes, there will be a sequel to this fic in the upcoming new year. (And I promise, it won't take a decade this time to finish.) Look for it sometime in the next few months.

And the answer to the other question I get frequently: No, I'm not going to be rewriting this particular series of fics to account for the upcoming Final Fantasy 7 Remake's events. This began as a fun what-if, non-canon story when FF7 Remake didn't even exist. At this time, I have no way of knowing which, if any, of the prequel and sequel games in the Final Fantasy 7 universe will still be considered canon in the remake, so I'm just going to continue onward with the story arc I originally had planned. (Which involves Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus.) That doesn't mean I won't write new stuff for the Remake's version of events, but let's get one thing at a time handled first.

That said, enjoy this final chapter to this particular fic, folks. And thank you. See ya'll in the next part of the adventure!

Chapter Ninety Eight - Under a Steel Gray Sky

Despite the imminent dangers posed by the wastelands, for a late afternoon they're oddly peaceful. Then again, it's not hard to see Meteor's influence over the landscape. Most of it is in ashes, the ground blackened from the molten rain that fell out here mere days ago. What little wasn't touched by the rains, was shifted around by the Life Stream. Canyons have collapsed in on one another in some places, new canyons have appeared in others. Almost nothing looks familiar out here anymore.

Ardun trots across the charred earth, chirping with contentment. I ease up on the reins and chance a look behind me. Midgar is even worse from this angle. A mere husk of what it used to be. The smoke rises high against the horizon, much of the city still smoldering where plates came crashing down. A shiver creeps through me. So many memories lie buried in those ruins.

"They can stay there."

I squeeze my heels against the chocobo's sides to make him pick up the pace a little bit. Night will be falling out here soon and even though it's quiet now, there's no telling what Meteor flushed out of hiding or even what the Life Stream did to the local wildlife. Kalm fangs I can deal with. Anything bigger though will be a problem.

I ride for miles, the city growing smaller in the distance as the cloud-laden sky threatens more rain. Part of me wants to turn back, deal with this another day. The Turk in me forces me to keep going. I have to do this even though I really don't want to.

About a mile and a half from my destination, I see footprints in the ashes. Heavy ones not too unlike those of a SOLDIER's combat boots. Good. At least he's going in the right direction and I won't have to track him down elsewhere. The irony is bitter that I'd end up back here on my own free will. And like that day, it's going to end up pissing rain on me.

I sigh. This better be worth the trouble.

Ardun cranes his neck toward a ridge in the distance and slows his pace. I let him, trying to make out the figure standing on its slope. He looks different from when I last saw him, and yet, that's definitely Cloud. The Buster Sword is still slung across his back. It's got a few more gashes than I remember it having and a thin layer of rust along the edge, but aside from that, he's taken reasonable care of the weapon from what I can see anyway.

I cue the chocobo toward the ridge, watching as Cloud scales it with ease, none the wiser to my presence. Ardun gives me a questioning look when I halt him a little ways from the ridge's base and drop the reins to the ground.

"Stay here," I scratch his feathers under his chin and watch him shuffle around for anything to eat. Shifting Rekka over my shoulder, I make my way to the ridge and follow the path Cloud took.

A cold chill nips at the air, the phantoms of the past prowling for souls to steal. Last time I was here the ground was stained crimson with blood. The closer I look at the soil, it still holds the faintest hints of a battle well fought. The rains will never wash the blood completely out of this ridge. It's a permanent reminder of what occurred here. The last stand of a hero who never made it home.

Cloud stands on the ridge near Zack's unmarked grave, facing the remnants of Sector Five, one hand on his hip, the other wiping sweat from his brow. His shoulders slump ever so slightly, as if he's carrying the weight of the world on them. In a way he kind of is. He remembers what happened here. He witnessed it firsthand.

My foot disturbs several stones as I haul myself the remainder of the way up the ridge, regretting every second of it. Cloud glances over his shoulder, one hand going to the Buster Sword's hilt.

"This is a little out of the way for Turks," he says, his voice less-than-enthused about the situation.

"I could say the same about a member of AVALANCHE," I pretend not to even notice the threat in his tone. I keep a wary eye on the sword though. That weapon had the chance to kill me once before and this time I'm not exactly capable of fending it off.

"Why are you here?" a light, defensive snarl curls on his lips.

"I thought it was an ideal, albeit long overdue time to pay my respects to an old friend." I fold my arms across my chest and lean my weight onto my left leg in an effort to offset the discomfort in the right.

Cloud raises an eyebrow and turns to face me. For a brief moment a mixture of haunted recognition and genuine surprise wrestles deep within those mako blue eyes. He studies me, his eyes drifting to Rekka before they widen like he's seeing a restless spirit for the first time.

"That's… not possible." Confusion reigns in his tone. "You're the one who helped us that night on the plains. Zack's friend. You were hurt in a helicopter crash the night he died. But that's Jessie's weapon and she's dead. She died fighting for Sector Seven."

His eyes narrow, no doubt reaching the same conclusion Tifa did about my weapon. He draws the Buster Sword a few more inches, caught somewhere between really wanting to swing it at me and thinking about the consequences. "How do you know this is where Zack was killed? I never told you where he died."

"Who do you think buried him, Cloud?" I can't help the humorless sarcasm in my tone. I know he's not that stupid. "Unlike Reno, I don't fly helicopters over the wastelands for the fun of it."

A soft pink hue creeps across his face. "Ah, right. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," I make no move to step closer. "What happened that night is best left in the past where it belongs."

He nods. "That doesn't explain how you have Jessie's weapon though."

I hold a hand up casually to show I don't want a fight tonight, least of all at Zack's grave. "That's a little more complicated to explain."

"Really?" his tone turns flat, tinged with hostile accusation, not believing me. "You're going to try to tell me you didn't scavenge that weapon from Sector Seven? I wouldn't put it past the Turks given all the—"

"Turks don't scavenge," I grit my teeth and resist the urge to curl my lip into a snarl. "We hunt. And never have they hunted harder than the day Sector Seven fell."

The bite to my words actually makes him inch his heel back slightly. His eyes narrow and his grip tightens on the Buster Sword's hilt but he still makes no move to draw it completely.

I slip Rekka from its strap across my shoulder and study it. My fingers walk over the cold titanium and steel almost with a fondness to them, the frustration and anger fading into sadness.

"They never hunted harder," the words soften. "Even though… every one of them knew the odds that day. People don't survive something like that. Reno knew those odds better than anyone else. He knew how injured I was before the plate even fell. I wasn't going to be the exception."

I close my eyes, the burning tears refusing to fall. "And yet, they still went hunting for me. It didn't matter if I was Jessie of AVALANCHE or Cissnei of the Turks. I wasn't a terrorist or an employee at that moment, I was their family."

Cloud draws a long, slow breath and shuffles a hesitant step closer, the weight of my words making him let go of the sword hilt and drop his arm to his side. He says nothing. He doesn't need to.

"They, like so many other grieving families that day, wanted to find and bring their loved ones home. To find some measure of closure. To know." My hand trembles as I tighten my grip on Rekka and open my eyes to watch the first drops of rain cascade across the wastelands. "And unlike so many, mine would get their answer, they just wouldn't accept it."

He walks closer until he's a few feet away from me. There's sympathy in his eyes, regret even, as he glances at me and then to Midgar in the distance, no doubt remembering that day far too well. "I'm sorry."

As am I, I hold back a defeated sigh, unable to say the words aloud. In more ways than one.

I couldn't save Zack the night he was murdered any more than I could stop Sector Seven from collapsing. The invisible phantoms of those days haunt the back of mind, breathing over my shoulder and reminding me of the things I didn't, no, couldn't do in those moments. My gaze travels to the spot where Zack is buried. Even though he's gone, I still see him lying there, bleeding, mutilated to the point where he was almost too unrecognizable to identify. But I knew it was him. He died fighting for his life, the mere sliver of a chance that maybe, just maybe he would make it home to Aerith, if only to say goodbye one last time.

"It is what it is, Cloud." The toe of my shoe dislodges a loose stone, sending it tumbling down the ridge. "I can't change the past any more than you can at this point."

He looks at me, a sadness about him that reminds me of how he used to be when I knew him in AVALANCHE. "You would if you could though."

I cast him a half-glance in response before once again fixing my attention on the smoldering ruins of what used to be 'home.' "You of all people can't honestly look me the eyes and tell me that if you had the chance, you wouldn't take it."

His visible flinch is the mo st honest answer I'll ever get. There's no doubt in my mind that he's thinking about Aerith right now and what he couldn't do that day in the City of the Ancients to save her. He mourns for her like I mourn for Zack.

"Not a day goes by where I'm not haunted by Zack, Biggs, and Wedge and what happened to them." A sigh passes through my lips before he can snap at me in defense. The rainstorm's gentle breeze toys with a few strands of my hair as if to dry tears that will never be shed. "No matter how far I run or how hard I try, I will never not see their faces in my nightmares. Sometimes I'm able to save them, most times though, there's nothing I can do but watch them die all over again. And it's hell, Cloud, absolute hell. Because at the end of the day, I'm left with the cold, cruel reality that they're dead and I'm still somehow not."

My shoulder bristles at a hand's sudden rest atop it.

"But you're still here," Cloud's words are gentle. "And can remember them. I'd give anything to remember a lot of things I still don't about Zack. He saved my life and we were friends but some days I can barely recall what he even looked like, who he even was, because of the mako poisoning. There's a lot of things I can't remember."

It's impossible to miss the unease in his voice and I can't fault him for that. Not being able to remember is terrifying and I feel sorry for the poor guy. He's had years of his life stripped away from him by those bastards. Years he will never get back no matter how hard he tries to remember them.

"You… were friends with him," Cloud stares out over the wastelands, his words both filled with hesitation and yet seeking an answer to a question he needs answered for his own peace of mind.

"It was an extremely complicated relationship," I glance up at him. "But yes, we were friends."

"Complicated?" He raises an eyebrow. "How so?"

"I'm a Turk, Cloud," I reply before he can get the wrong idea. "Part of my job at the time revolved around keeping an eye on people to make sure they didn't jeopardize Shinra's agenda. Zack was no exception since he was in SOLDIER. He was supposed to be just another generic target, some stupid name on a folder that would eventually be forgotten once the assignment was over, a nobody and nothing more to a Turk. But by some cruel fate we ended up becoming friends despite the fact that Verdot was not at all happy about it. It only created more problems in the long run."

"Being friends? Or being friends with a SOLDIER?" He asks, the curiosity evident in his voice.

"Both," I shake my head and bite back the bitterness in my voice. "Having any kind of emotional attachment to your assigned target is one of the things you simply didn't do in my line of work. It was one of the core rules that could get you easily killed if you chose to ignore it for any reason. The fact that Zack was a SOLDIER First Class didn't help my case here."

"That's a stupid rule," Cloud deadpans.

"Stupid is an understatement, but as I had to hear the lecture multiple times, each with increasingly harsher degrees of warning, Turks who get attached to their targets, Holy forbid befriend them, make really questionable judgment calls that don't 'align' with Shinra's agenda. To put it plainly, that was Verdot's way of saying in the nicest manner possible that if I didn't start seeing Zack as a target instead of a friend, I could reflect on my mistakes in an unmarked grave."

Cloud outright winces at those words because he still has some vague recollection of the night I let him and Zack go. "Is… that how you ended up in AVALANCHE?"

"I wish I could say it was that simple but it isn't. Had Verdot been in charge of the Turks at the time I let you both go, I'd have been dead long before Zack even reached this ridge. But he wasn't and Zack managed to somehow get on Tseng's good side before everything went to hell, so he let what I did for you both slide to some extent."

I shake my head with a scowl, the anger rising even though Scarlet is no longer able to do anything to me or anyone else. "My helicopter wasn't shot out of the sky that night by the Turks, Cloud, but Scarlet and her department. She needed to cover up the fact that her men were the ones who murdered Zack and that meant making damn sure that the last remaining person directly involved with that case who could actually prove her involvement never made it back to Midgar alive."

Cloud draws a long, slow breath and removes his hand from my shoulder. "You wanted revenge."

"I wanted justice," I curl my lip into a light snarl. "And damned if I wasn't going to go out of my way to get it . Obviously once that helicopter crashed, I couldn't go back to Shinra unless I wanted a bullet in my skull, so I became their worst nightmare instead by lending my skills to AVALANCHE. Justice became revenge after they dropped a whole goddamn sector on innocent people though. Our mutual hatred or one another was already extremely volatile between Scarlet and me well before that but this tipped things over the edge. She was not going to get away with her crimes and I was going to make damn sure of that."

The former infantryman remains quiet for several long seconds, brow furrowed, pondering my words with extreme caution. He shifts his heel back a half inch and rubs his chin, understandably wary about the situation.

"I don't get it though. Why hide something like that from the others? You and they had a mutual reason for hating the same group of people."

I rub my fingers against my temple in an effort to stave off a brewing headache. "Cloud, I know for a fact that you are a very intelligent person, but will you please just think about that statement for a few moments and tell me why exactly a senior member of the Turks running from the most powerful company in the world would even consider revealing something of that magnitude in the presence of a group of radical ecological terrorists who not only have guns, but every reason imaginable to hate Shinra and want people like me dead."

"I…" he pauses and I can tell he doesn't have the faintest clue on how to answer that and not look like a complete idiot right now.

"Things weren't as black and white as you think they were at that point. If anything, they're a shade of gray that makes those clouds up there mild in comparison. As I told Tifa earlier, you can't tell me you would have trusted me had you known I was a Turk. The fact that your first response to me even being on this ridge today was to consider drawing your weapon reaffirms that."

He averts his gaze in shame.

"I didn't come out here to pick a fight with you today." I swing Rekka over my shoulder, adjust the strap, and once again fold my arms across my chest, feeling the first raindrops starting to hit the ridge. "Or pass judgment over things that happened in the past. I came out here to pay my respects to an old friend. Nothing more. Nothing less. Take that as you will."

The answer seems to suffice as he once again focuses his attention on Midgar. "What are you going to do now that Shinra is gone?"

"Bold of you to assume something of that magnitude just vanishes overnight," I snort in amusement. "Especially given the damage that's been done by them overall. It's going to take a long time to recover from this and I intend to do whatever I can to help Reeve with the World Regenesis Organization. I'm certain I won't be the only one who 'volunteers' their time to help out."

Cloud allows a brief smile at that. "So, we'll get to see each other more often then?"

"Here and there. After all, there's a lot of catching up to do still."

The raindrops pelt the ridge with greater intensity. I shift my weapon and try not to shiver at how cold they are. Ardun probably isn't too thrilled about it either.

"Hey… uh," Cloud stammers and I can see the question in his eyes on just which name to call me by.

"It's Jessie," I hear the shuffling of my chocobo down below the ridge. "You can call me Jessie."

He nods. "Jessie, about Zack… Do you think you could tell me about him sometime? What kind of person he was?"

I turn toward my chocobo and begin walking, raindrops concealing the tears that mingle with them as a sad smile takes hold. "I'd be honored to, Cloud. Come on, I'll give you a ride back to Kalm. It's a long walk in the rain on foot. We can talk on the way."