Midgar High School

He'd been decent at math, a life with checkbooks and disability stipends and making ends meet providing inescapable experience; but one could only be so strong in a subject with below 50% attendance. Sometimes he wanted to ask why they bothered with the notes stating in Ma's neat hand, "Zack was ill again today"; the nurse knew the truth and so did everyone else. Somehow he was sure he owed somebody for never making a big deal out of it. He'd find that person and cook them dinner, someday.

He hadn't been decent at Chem at all, ever; and he'd never really seriously thought about going to college because he knew it was useless. He couldn't go to college. It was a fact. 2.6 < 3.5: the ratio that had declared what he'd thought was a truth. He'd never thought otherwise.

It came in the guise of a sprightly little girl who had offered to help him out in Chem and then, in some strange speedy course of events that Zack would relive at night over and over for months, sliced his life neatly in two. Before vs After. Just Dreams vs Real Possibilities. Neverthought vs Thought. He wanted to call Shera an angel but he'd seen the hurt in her eyes too: angels didn't fill their eyes with tears and then blink them away to save them, to cry later when no one was looking.

He hated debt. The restaurant had been theirs until Da's accident and Ma had remortgaged it without a second thought because what else was there to do? but it still hurt like demons to know that they owed someone else. The company owed Da a disability check every month but Zack hated that too: why couldn't they just be left alone, wasn't a wheelchair reminder enough? He hated that they needed the money. He even hated when Aeris, lovely and kind and never really there, slipped money in his pocket. He hated to owe because he felt chained to repay. Zack was a giver by nature and he was happiest when the world was in balance.

He'd been angry, at first, that he'd grasped on to the thought of college without thinking of the debt it would put him in. Shera's time and knowledge, her notes, her perfect attendance: how could he ever repay something like that? Repaying in food was a joke, but it was all he had to offer for something worth far more than money. He'd be in debt for life, he'd thought.

And well, yeah he would, but he'd thought it was a bad thing.

He'd found another way to repay Shera: he and Elena working, secretly, with pilfered lab reports and essays and recommendations from every teacher in the school, working in the library while Shera attended her full schedule of APs. He found that Elena was stunning: strong and determined, full of protective force, a grounding wire for everyone around her. And then he realized he'd owe Elena, so he'd tried to repay that: Elena was support for so many people (Shera, Reno, Tseng) so Zack had just tried to line himself up to be a support for her.

Somehow the debt had become friendship, where you owed nothing more than your entire self, and you gave it because you wanted to.

And now, something had gone wrong: he saw Shera's gritty determination and Elena's worry, and he felt bound to them: he owed friendship, he owed protection. And it was not the ball and chain he'd expected. It was more like a hug, an embrace. He could help. He'd give them food and a safe place to be.

Yes, he owed them. But it was less like debt and more like -- like he'd taken the girls by the hand, or in each arm, like he had done at the football game. He wanted to protect them, to heal them, to feed them and nurture them. They were two halves of a whole and Zack wanted to swallow them somehow, to keep them always close and always together. He'd give anything for it, make any kind of bargain.

Yes, it was debt. But it was the best debt he'd ever been in. He owed them, and he wanted to owe them forever.