Author's Note: A brief explanation before we begin: I started working on the 50lyricsfanfic challenge at livejournal, with the intention of doing Zack/Aerith/Cloud. However, I didn't make a claim at the community because I'm not sure I could stick to canon scenarios and the rule of having each person mentioned in every piece: this is a threesome with the rare distinction of having three strong relationships and being unaware of how they're connected until two of them are dead. (Sigh.) If someone gets left out, there'll be a second piece to cover them. At the beginning of each chapter will be the lyrics from the challenge. The challenges are not being done in order. I'm lazy like that.

- "Blackened Page", by Boiled in Lead

He's twenty-one and a psychotic child. His hands are as empty as the pit they stand in (the same thing missing from both, temple of black materia), and the only way he knows to fill their void is by curling shaking fingers into fists.

Not your fault, she says. Not your fault but he just gave Sephiroth his goddamn victory, handed the materia over like it was nothing, how is that not his fault? She should be angry at him—she should scream at him—he screams at himself—there aren't words for this hate boiling in him, just vocal cords shredding themselves—

She's twenty-two and carries this aura of childlike innocence, purity, fragility. She takes the punches on shielding arms that threaten to break, backs away but doesn't stop him, and that inflames his rage because she has always been merciful until now, when he needs mercy most. He doesn't want to hurt her, doesn't want—

But he's cracking like eggshells, and it hurts, and he has to hurt something, and something needs to hurt him shatter him back so the pain'll be over—and she won't retaliate, even when the hits crash down on her like hail in a storm—even though she needs to—even though he's crying out for righteous vengeance—

As it turns out (as it always turns out), the end socks him from behind, hard. Not hard enough.

Encore - No More Heroes

In the end, there aren't really heroes; not the kind he dreamed of as a child. There's soldiers and snipers, Turks and troopers, an army against two men and they all have loved ones too, just following orders, and he tears through them like paper as they puncture him with bullets—

But he still clings to that idea of heroes, to the notion that people can be saved, because he's needed saving for the last five years.