Author's note: I am going to begin to seriously drop hints as to what is going on. It's... a little complex to figure, but, I really sincerely hope I'm not wasting your time with all this. It does have a point, it's all just quite obscure. Maybe, if you hang on 'til the end, you'll be glad you stuck around... Maybe...? Hopefully...?

If you're wonderful enough to lend me a review, I'd very, very much appreciate it. I have been extremely ill as of late, and… reviews make me smile, they really do. They let me know you enjoy what I do, and I feel loved and motivated to update. Because, really, if I'm going to drag my fevered, sick ass off the couch to type… it's gotta be worth it. Catch my drift? All those that do review, you make my day brighter. I heart you.

Aces of Asphyxiation

'Don't Know When but a Day is Gonna Come'

If I have to choose... If I'm going to...

Know what I'm doing...

Heh...

What am I doing?

What in hell am I doing...?

xxx

"Hey, you--you know that kid is destined for the corpse pile, right?"

"Gonna put him out of his misery..."

"Shut up!"

"You... shut up..." It was the first time his mouth moved in days.

xxx

Zack's fingers brushed against the folds of his clothes, eyes hanging half a lid open and half a lid closed, unfocused and aimlessly somber. He'd lost them both, hadn't he? He'd broken his promises, hadn't he? All the sweet tumbles and curious kisses, precious whispers in the blackness of night... words spoken of devotion and protection and... love. It hadn't been a lie... nothing he had ever licked into Cloud's memory could be quantified as vows he meant to break. I'll guard you, forever and ever, he told him. Over and over, he spoke those words. And Cloud warned, still, so many times more, that the brunet would have to protect him... only from himself. From his own body. And maybe... in a roundabout way, his words stung in ironic honesty. Zack couldn't will himself to believe... it was no longer Sephiroth that stepped in and shoved him to the cold and moist floor. It couldn't have been. It was always... It...

Cloud carried too much influence on the misguided, mako-eyed beauty's already troubled shoulders. And, Zack knew... No. Something about the man made his knees buckle. Had he still... hadn't Sephiroth been cured? Ugh, fuck. Anxiety, worry, nausea... dread crawled like creepy crawling maggots inside his stomach, and the most he could do to soothe the sickly feeling was to drudge, always meandering, foward. Where had they gone? Where had they disappeared to?

The darkhaired male's sanity, to himself, seemed to be flaking, even as he could have been considered... always the stable man. The smiling, determined, strong and faithful, problem solver Zack. He'd had to put on the big boy pants, nurturing Cloud on the dusty bowels of their hiding places, dashing from place to place and always considering his health before they set foot anywhere. But they were safe, always safe, even when they had to sprint through the sewers and hide in the slums. Zack's arms promised the blond boy safety. And those ambitious blue eyes... they would keep on shining.

Sephiroth dug them a dangerous, thoughtless hole. A trap built of spit and quicksand, conglomerated ideals of overall happiness... happiness that Zack knew could only exist in their minds as a fantasy. But those hands... if he hadn't been so fast, so quick and blunt with the blow... The wind urged him to forget, eased him into a cool mindset of calming memories. The tangle of white threads of light, of life... skin against skin... the glowing feeling of lips... kissing, meeting, hearts melded into a milky, pulsating feeling of unity. The memories refused, outrageously vivid within the space of his own body, to corrode or melt away. Cloud...

And everywhere his feet dragged him--everywhere his boots wandered--he could only manage to be half a ghost behind. A murmur, a rumor--gossip on the streets, dew dripping from the heavy street lamps. Every inquiry left him turning in circles, a confused resident leading him this direction and that direction; constant argumentation as to where the man with the floating silver hair and the 'sick child' in his arms had really gone. It was to divert those that chased them, Zack knew, but the fact did not lessen the agitation in his eyes, nor the near manic twitch in his lip from the sheer... sheer... astronomical amount of frustration clogging his pores. He wanted to know, had to know... were they already dead? Captured? Worse? Were their captors chasing him now...?

His fingers fumbled clumsily with the note tucked in his pants. The paper was smooth, rubbed over so many times with the oils of his hands. Crumpled, uncrumpled, folded and unfolded. The words... so simple. Saddeningly, maddeningly simple. Call me, it said. Call me. Call me, call me, call me. Call me, and a little scratchy, scrawled name. Call me.

Reno.

It was just starting to rain.

xxx

"Se…"

He woke with fistfuls of damp sheets, dirt under his fingernails, head lolled in lazy catastrophe. Flashes of nudity rang in his mind, the sound of the ocean, cracking seashells under clammy pale toes. The whistling, haunting cry of gulls, again in his ears, the lull of foam on the shore. No Sephiroth, no Zack… nobody in sight. Just an old home, a home full of beds and blankets and stuffy air. A home full of… the sounds of distant memories.

A home where he sat, bound, to a chair… captive, slave, captive… No. A chair with wheels. A chair with…

A wheelchair?

Cloud's head pushed forward again, eyes closed, chin to chest. Involuntary. So tired.

Opened eyelids revealed snatches of red, fluttering through and above and intersecting his vision. Sometimes it filled it completely, to the brim, and others… a soft glow, effervescent in nature, dim and warm, spreading about his pallid cheeks. There existed little sensation in his body but for the tingling when he glimpsed that solid, raging color. Red. A red so red Cloud struggled to remember any other shade—a red that not even the blue of the ocean could combat.

"Clooo-oouuuddd…? You in there buddy?" A soft rap on the head, repeated—he responded with a groan built from the denseness of his chest. The voice sounded familiar, quaint… and Cloud fuzzily equated it to salmon. The color, the fish… the color.

"No use," the white responded. Yes, the white—the space from which Cloud could faintly make out, but never truly determine. The voice that came from nowhere, that had no mouth, but spoke in tones of all colors. White, the absorption of everything. White, so blanketed and smooth, soft, gradient crimson and egg-shell. It was all he saw for days at a time. Had it really been days? Was his mind just entertaining him with the prospect of time?

The fluffy octave continued, a powder-cloud dream. "He's been like that since he got here. Unresponsive. Poisoned. He can't hear whatever you're saying."

The red portion of the blond's vision removed the sheets settled across his lap in a bundle, tossing them in the hamper. Of course, to Cloud, this action looked entirely vague and ambiguous. Soon, the heavy feeling of cloth over his legs returned like a fresh spring rain. At ease… why were they talking like he couldn't hear? He could hear… just fine.

"I don't believe it," the red snorted. "I'm sorry, but… I don't think he's that far gone, yo. We can still save him, right?"

The white fluctuated, up and down, a bobbing motion. In layman's terms, he shrugged. "There's no way to tell."

xxx

Hey, Cloud? Remember when I told you to choose…?

Leave me alone.

I wasn't kidding, you know. Sephiroth, do you have any idea whatsoever… what hell he's going through?

I'm not… going to listen to you. Everything's… going to be fine. Fine. Fine, fine, fine, fine.

Fine? A million miles away from fine. Nothing even closely resembling it.

Shut up…

Say, you know when you used to play piano for your mother…

Silence.

Did it make you happy?

Silence.

Cloud? Did it make you sad?

Silence.

I could kill her, instead, if you wanted.

You…

Me? Or you?

You would never, I would never…

And so, they'll drop like flies. Unless you choose…

I'll never…!

xxx

"You're making me sick," he whispered, bundled in blankets and tangled in pillows, all mixed up inside the younger man's embrace. Man, ha, he was still yet barely out of boyhood, really.

"I'm sorry," the carelessly soft answer came floating back, kissed on his neck, across his collarbone, up to his lips… "I don't… it's not… It's my fault. Are we going… are they going to make you better?"

"Us," the silver-haired menace promptly corrected, his tone slightly chiding, before rewarding Cloud with a kiss feeling stolen from Zack. Where was he… out in this strange land of Gaia? Did he still pursue, just as the others did? "We're going somewhere to make us better, and you won't have to think about it anymore."

"Oh…" A long, pregnant pause. "Sephiroth…"

Silence to allow the blond to formulate an inquiry.

"Where… is Zack?"

Where is Zack, where is Zack, where is Zack, where is Zack? The question lay violently scrawled against his eyelids. Every blink brought a new prospective answer, and a trail down a land of more falsified information. Hellish confusion graced feverish eyes, so blue, so damn blue they should've just been plucked and sold as gems. Miserable bewilderment pinched his nerves, and amidst a floating shell of unhappy ecstasy he couldn't stop himself from wondering.

Where is Zack?

"He's…"

Dead? Gone? Swallowed? Buried, sick, like us? Caught…?

"He's not here right now."

Right now… right now… when would later, the future, become the present? When could they transcend time, time… to be together? Again, one…

"I want him." Cloud bit his lip. "Need him." Sighed, shuddered an awful, heart-wrenching shiver. "Feels cold without him. Empty. When will he come?"

Few times in history could humans actually taste the dankness of suffering—see the shape of ache stretched across the atoms in the air so clearly their senses stung. Few times in history was sadness like drizzle, or perspiration, sprinkled about boldly naked forms. Of course, this was one of those times… events merited with the clarity of dazzling angels, and either soul chalked it up to dreaming. What they could feel, maybe, was an ounce of death. Beckoning to them, above, beyond, intercepting space…

A time later—an infinite age, broken through the wood panels on the floor—the door rattled. The peace lifted from Cloud's chest and shattered; his heart thudded wildly against a bruised ribcage. The door rattled again, and Sephiroth's arm tugged him back down to the bed.

"Quiet, still," the gravely glass-cut edge voice warned, softened around the syllables of a whisper.

The creak of wood announced a visitor. An intruder, by all means. And the house itself, the old trees shipped for lumber, nailed in place and built so sturdily, sighed and held its breath. The forest groaned in an unwelcoming serenade of displeasure, and feathers whipped strangely in the wind. Tapping against the windows. Begging, eerily, entrance to their hidden domicile. What they were doing was wrong, unlawful… considered inhumane. Punishable by death. Sephiroth didn't care. Cloud didn't know enough to know better.

The door stood solidly, then blew closed. And still, imposing the stillness of sought after calm, footsteps. One, two, three. One, two, boots over panels. Two bodies shuffled between sheets, anxious. Sephiroth knew. Cloud could only imagine. Zack? Zack, Zack, Zack? One, two, three, four. Deep, throaty against the floor, purposeful. One, two… one, three, two, four? The rhythm stopped, pulsated, yawned forward. Out of synchronization. And then there were two. One, two. One, two. Three, four. Three, four. There were two presences looming over the bed in the little hide-out… presences like demons at a wake.

Eyes like shining silver, yet colored, so brightly, so… A book propped open, flat in one hand. A voice, cracking the barriers of their love, their perfect tranquil solitude.

"Will you be taking flight? Towards the planet that hates us."

They had been found.

xxx

Author's note: I hope all of you are beginning to formulate some ideas on what it's all about. If you aren't, never fear, it's… still being developed! This little plot I'm cooking, anyway. Sorry it's so terribly short, but… it's my stopping place. These chapters haven't been horribly long in the first place, so.

Please enjoy, and maybe review? I have a doctor's appointment I'm really not looking forward to tomorrow, and… a review, if only ONE, would make me elated. You literally have NO idea how awesome it'd make me feel.