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They Said That Man was a Tool but Not for Lack of Trying
Title: They Said That Man was a Tool but Not for Lack of Trying
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Characters/pairing: Zack, Cloud/cellphone
Rating: gen
Word Count: 1000
Notes: This is the start (?!) of an AU series I've had floating around in my head for a while. Some verse where Zack survives and is part of the rebuilding happening in a post-Meteor world, political scheming and all. He fumbles a lot. Hopefully this will be more than just Zack centric as I slowly figure out how to write it. And political intrigue. Ah.
Part 3 of Retired From War, New Career in Circling. Yes, series title is a variation of a Mitski album.
-
It’s not what Zack fantasized about, but necessity says he can’t choose any longer: knowledge of design, those who draw the big blue prints, system builders that know how to make the cabinet drawer flush against the hinges: they’re needed. He’s extra. The truth? Zack’s good at running a band-saw, he can mix concrete faster than a machine, he’s not afraid of demolition work and he knows, moving swiftly from one urgent task to another, how to move onto something more than brute strength. Not like that wasn’t a trade too and Gaia knows there are plenty of beasties he can shovel his disappointments on to with a simple drive from Edge to Kalm, but he tries to reign that occupation in, just a bit. Those places lead him somewhere else.
And he’s doing real good here! Picking up the pieces. He thinks.
It feels good to be needed. It felt better to be needed by Shinra in its former glory. What a tool that guy had been; but he can’t help but feel he’s about to come full circle. He’s not ashamed. He’s mortified.
“It’s just more of the usual,” he says later, tired, hung up on old on dreams, visions, dangers -- and stops. He could articulate it if he wanted to, but he thinks if he does he won’t recover. There was glamour there in being the best in SOLDIER, in pushing forward and laughing about it -- he was a bit crazy too, wasn’t he, for wanting to be the man on the posters dotting Midgar’s polluted and garbage strewn alleyways. Maybe he hasn’t learned a thing.
Cloud raises his head and looks at him a little funny, and Zack supposes he is funny looking, but jeez, was the staring necessary?
He remembers Cloud’s on the other side of the line. So the Cloud in his head is probably consistent enough with the real one, best not to speak that he’s seeing double lately. It’s fine. It’s stress. He’s tired. For a lot of reasons.
“And what is it you think we’re doing now?”
Zack smiles a little, rocking the bottom of the beer bottle against the edge of the table. It’s sweaty enough in his hand that he hopes he doesn’t fumble it. “Helping people, I know, I know. I’m not a carpenter though, you know. I feel like my parents got what they wanted after all this time. It’s ominous to suddenly be doing, well, this.”
“You miss it?” Cloud asks. The open road? He sounds far away. The phone has slid down his ear; Zack readjusts.
“I feel a little tied up some days, I guess.” Like my head isn’t on entirely straight and I’m seeing crooked half the time, but I also hardly sleep and sometimes forget to eat and I chose to do all of this on my own because I deserve this. For leaving. For being taken. For not fighting hard enough to get back sooner.
“You could come with me on the next trip to Kalm. Get out, get some space. See Elmyra,” Cloud adds carefully. Papers shuffle over the line. “She’s been asking about you.” Zack closes his eyes.
“Aw, you’d let me ride double? I wouldn’t mind being a passenger, but you don’t need my heavy weight slowing you down.”
Cloud’s quiet, probably staring into blank space on the other end of the line, shrugging his shoulders at the wall. Zack sinks back in his chair, worries fading like water. “Does it matter,” Cloud says, with the implication that no, it does not.
“I guess not. If Tuesti wants to give me the green light then we’ll make plans.” He traces eyes in the wood with the blunt side of a nail. Curls his fingers in sudden grief.
He’s never felt so absent or dead in his life.
There are still indents in his hands from using a heavy drill all day. There’s an ache in his arms, similar to the burn from swinging a sword that he rolls his shoulders to feel and revel in. He still thinks about being a mercenary, chasing monsters across plains and plateaus, but there’s some serious change out there he can’t account for, that under these circumstances makes him temporarily useless: a world rearranged, reshaped, uplifted by the life stream. Towns swallowed, continents made smaller, technology made useless by the consumption of resources that have left them all in the dark.
And Aerith. Aerith changed things. Literally. Catastrophically.
The world went topsy-turvy and she went with it.
“I can hear you thinking from here,” Cloud says, and it’s funny, coming from him. Zack doesn’t laugh though. He looks at the routes spread across the table, bare bones and topographic only, made by scouts with less muscle and endurance than him, running the kind of work his body’s built for but he doesn’t care for. What the hell’s wrong with him.
“No you can’t,” he fires back, and says just to be mean and teasing, “because I’m about to hang up. Bzzzzt,” he says. “Nice talking with you.”
“Alright, good night,” Cloud says warmly, and the line drops out. Zack presses the cold bottle against his skin. He’s too sensitive, too quick to leap, too quick to want to prove himself, find a purpose, get over the guilt, get over the grief. It’s made him sloppy. He wonders a lot if he hadn’t always had a love for violence; the thought scares him more than he cares to admit. He probably scares other people simply for existing.
But the decision to do better is made for Zack later with an envelope unceremoniously shoved under the room of his temporary quarters that he likes to call a shoe box.
He’s toweling his hair, fresh out of the shower when he tears the letter down the seam with a practiced hand, shuffles out his pension check, old mail from his shelf in the downstairs office, and a letter of termination.
For some reason, he's relieved.
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Characters/pairing: Zack, Cloud/cellphone
Rating: gen
Word Count: 1000
Notes: This is the start (?!) of an AU series I've had floating around in my head for a while. Some verse where Zack survives and is part of the rebuilding happening in a post-Meteor world, political scheming and all. He fumbles a lot. Hopefully this will be more than just Zack centric as I slowly figure out how to write it. And political intrigue. Ah.
Part 3 of Retired From War, New Career in Circling. Yes, series title is a variation of a Mitski album.
-
It’s not what Zack fantasized about, but necessity says he can’t choose any longer: knowledge of design, those who draw the big blue prints, system builders that know how to make the cabinet drawer flush against the hinges: they’re needed. He’s extra. The truth? Zack’s good at running a band-saw, he can mix concrete faster than a machine, he’s not afraid of demolition work and he knows, moving swiftly from one urgent task to another, how to move onto something more than brute strength. Not like that wasn’t a trade too and Gaia knows there are plenty of beasties he can shovel his disappointments on to with a simple drive from Edge to Kalm, but he tries to reign that occupation in, just a bit. Those places lead him somewhere else.
And he’s doing real good here! Picking up the pieces. He thinks.
It feels good to be needed. It felt better to be needed by Shinra in its former glory. What a tool that guy had been; but he can’t help but feel he’s about to come full circle. He’s not ashamed. He’s mortified.
“It’s just more of the usual,” he says later, tired, hung up on old on dreams, visions, dangers -- and stops. He could articulate it if he wanted to, but he thinks if he does he won’t recover. There was glamour there in being the best in SOLDIER, in pushing forward and laughing about it -- he was a bit crazy too, wasn’t he, for wanting to be the man on the posters dotting Midgar’s polluted and garbage strewn alleyways. Maybe he hasn’t learned a thing.
Cloud raises his head and looks at him a little funny, and Zack supposes he is funny looking, but jeez, was the staring necessary?
He remembers Cloud’s on the other side of the line. So the Cloud in his head is probably consistent enough with the real one, best not to speak that he’s seeing double lately. It’s fine. It’s stress. He’s tired. For a lot of reasons.
“And what is it you think we’re doing now?”
Zack smiles a little, rocking the bottom of the beer bottle against the edge of the table. It’s sweaty enough in his hand that he hopes he doesn’t fumble it. “Helping people, I know, I know. I’m not a carpenter though, you know. I feel like my parents got what they wanted after all this time. It’s ominous to suddenly be doing, well, this.”
“You miss it?” Cloud asks. The open road? He sounds far away. The phone has slid down his ear; Zack readjusts.
“I feel a little tied up some days, I guess.” Like my head isn’t on entirely straight and I’m seeing crooked half the time, but I also hardly sleep and sometimes forget to eat and I chose to do all of this on my own because I deserve this. For leaving. For being taken. For not fighting hard enough to get back sooner.
“You could come with me on the next trip to Kalm. Get out, get some space. See Elmyra,” Cloud adds carefully. Papers shuffle over the line. “She’s been asking about you.” Zack closes his eyes.
“Aw, you’d let me ride double? I wouldn’t mind being a passenger, but you don’t need my heavy weight slowing you down.”
Cloud’s quiet, probably staring into blank space on the other end of the line, shrugging his shoulders at the wall. Zack sinks back in his chair, worries fading like water. “Does it matter,” Cloud says, with the implication that no, it does not.
“I guess not. If Tuesti wants to give me the green light then we’ll make plans.” He traces eyes in the wood with the blunt side of a nail. Curls his fingers in sudden grief.
He’s never felt so absent or dead in his life.
There are still indents in his hands from using a heavy drill all day. There’s an ache in his arms, similar to the burn from swinging a sword that he rolls his shoulders to feel and revel in. He still thinks about being a mercenary, chasing monsters across plains and plateaus, but there’s some serious change out there he can’t account for, that under these circumstances makes him temporarily useless: a world rearranged, reshaped, uplifted by the life stream. Towns swallowed, continents made smaller, technology made useless by the consumption of resources that have left them all in the dark.
And Aerith. Aerith changed things. Literally. Catastrophically.
The world went topsy-turvy and she went with it.
“I can hear you thinking from here,” Cloud says, and it’s funny, coming from him. Zack doesn’t laugh though. He looks at the routes spread across the table, bare bones and topographic only, made by scouts with less muscle and endurance than him, running the kind of work his body’s built for but he doesn’t care for. What the hell’s wrong with him.
“No you can’t,” he fires back, and says just to be mean and teasing, “because I’m about to hang up. Bzzzzt,” he says. “Nice talking with you.”
“Alright, good night,” Cloud says warmly, and the line drops out. Zack presses the cold bottle against his skin. He’s too sensitive, too quick to leap, too quick to want to prove himself, find a purpose, get over the guilt, get over the grief. It’s made him sloppy. He wonders a lot if he hadn’t always had a love for violence; the thought scares him more than he cares to admit. He probably scares other people simply for existing.
But the decision to do better is made for Zack later with an envelope unceremoniously shoved under the room of his temporary quarters that he likes to call a shoe box.
He’s toweling his hair, fresh out of the shower when he tears the letter down the seam with a practiced hand, shuffles out his pension check, old mail from his shelf in the downstairs office, and a letter of termination.
For some reason, he's relieved.