Chapter Text
Zack hung in a tank of nutrient fluid, suspended and kept motionless by a pair of chains with hooks embedded in the meat of his shoulders. His flesh crawled, cycling from inside to out, reconfiguring skeleton and organs into muscles, connective tissues, and fat. Old viscera morphed into brand new skin, while the old skin was absorbed and internalized, changing to organs and calcifying into bone. His very brain cycled as well, but the old memories and mental patterns remained. He had no idea how it worked, but was grateful it did, lest he lose himself entirely.
His nerves operated under his control, and he configured them so they no longer transmitted any pain signals. A blessing. When the sensor pads that dotted his entire body itched due to the never-ending tissue renewal, he simply turned the irritating sensations off. The pores of his constantly refreshed skin multitasked, eagerly siphoning in nutrients like microscopic mouths slurping on infinite straws. Others excreted waste products. He did his best to ignore those very necessary, vital functions.
His body used the unending supply of nourishment to rejuvenate itself in many more ways than just recycling and reconstructing his tissues. His missing appendages were beginning to regenerate. A flipper grew from one limbless shoulder, soon to become a new arm, and a brand new stub had emerged from his other shoulder. His missing eye and lower body should follow, he knew. Another blessing, that he would again become whole, but also a curse. At any time Hojo could, and probably would, remove them again.
After so long under Hojo's control and experimentation, he no longer knew his own body. It had become foreign to him. Alien.
In the background, he sensed his amputated arms and legs, his excised organs and veins, his wings. A lone eye, constantly scanning its surroundings and providing him with remote vision. They all glowed in his mind, living independently and, like him, confined to nutrient baths in the lab. They were sentient, living and feeling, and yet connected to him, able to function alone or in concert with one another. He always knew when someone moved about near them, or worse, cut a sample from them for experimental purposes.
He was aware of his copies in the same way, as Hojo injected his cells into ordinary monsters and created A-copies one by one. Poor creatures traumatized by being utterly remade, their genetic patterns overwritten by his own, their cells reshaped, their flesh growing into unnatural patterns at accelerated rates. They were kept isolated from him, but he knew them. He knew them, and they knew him. He felt their pain, fear, and confusion as they transformed and lost themselves. Like his amputated body parts, they were one with him.
So many different, independent points of view, and yet he reconciled and integrated them perfectly, without loss of any perspective or identity. He was everywhere they were, and yet also alone in his nutrient tank. It was normal for what he had become.
All his isolated parts wanted to join with him; they yearned for it, cried futilely for it, just as he did. They all were one, but kept separate, and that separation was an agony of loss and emptiness. They desired, they needed, reaching out impotently in their hunger to become one, just one, just one.
Just one.
Was that sane? Was it sane for many to want to be a single, united being? He wasn't sure. It wasn't human, or was it?
When he relaxed and stilled his mind to a clear pool of thoughtlessness, the strange changes to his tissues, the multiple selves, the all-encompassing awareness--it all felt natural, as it always did when he simply accepted it and didn't fight against it. The emptiness and loss retreated, but were never gone; they lingered in the firmament of his soul. Someday, someday, his many selves would all join together, of course they would, and the Reunion would be glorious and perfect.
He was what he was.
Everything that shared even the tiniest of the Jenova components in his biology was one with him. Hojo often gloated that it was all Jenova, no matter how mutated and altered from its original forms. He was like Jenova, Hojo claimed with obscene satisfaction. A new Jenova. All parts of Jenova were one.
Alienalienalienalienalienalienalien...
Through his multitude of new abilities, beyond even the perceptions of his isolated parts, he sensed them. He sensed them long before his remote vision actually saw them, long before his wings felt their body heat, long before cultures of his cells drifted across growth media in the newcomers' direction. His...friends.
One a brilliant beacon, so strong and vibrant, radiating like a sun. So easy to locate, to follow.
The other glowing also, but much less. Not dim, never that, but without the overwhelming Presence that marked the other.
One sought to join with burning obsession: magnetic and undeniable and indomitable. The linkages between them were of steel and titanium, unbreakable. Separate yet bound together forever by their fundamental, shared nature. The threads spun between them sang of completion, of the joy of blending into new oneness.
Sephiroth, Zack's broken memories provided. Always the strongest, the most dominant, even now. It was the nature of things.
The other was a mere tug of elastic cord. It promised fulfillment, but such a joining would always be tainted with regret. Yet there was no way to resist; no matter how either he or the other pulled away, the connection would spring back and drag them both to the inevitable. His student.
Himself.
Zack sensed the pair most strongly as they entered Hojo's cavernous lab, as they came deeper into the torn, dark realm of nightmare. He tried so hard, so desperately, to get their attention; he tried to warn them away. Organs and loose veins pulsed. The feathers of his largest wing rippled, the fingers on his hand clenched and relaxed. None of the distant viscera and appendages could speak.
His own features suddenly filled his remote vision. Through ripples of nutrient liquid, Zack saw his own face press close. He focused his swimming eye and sought a better view. He saw himself cry out and jump back.
Zack watched himself join Sephiroth to stare at the wings, his own wings. He fluttered the white feathers again, but the two men didn't understand the warnings.
They shouldn't have come. They shouldn't have, but they did.
He loved them both. So much, so much. He wanted them with him, so desperately. He wanted them to join with him and be part of him. He wanted to save them: save them from Hojo's plans, and from the overpowering instincts of his alien body. He wanted them to escape, to be free of the remorseless spider's ensnaring web, but it was too late.
It was too late.
Sephiroth fixed his gaze down the length of the shadowy lab and walked towards him as though in a trance. Zack--himself--trailed behind. They both stopped and stared up at him.
Through his one remaining eye, Zack saw his own horrified reaction, saw himself turn away and fall to his knees. His ears, his alien ears, heard gurgling liquid and the wretched sound of himself crying out in abject despair. Sephiroth stayed impassive, but Zack felt his friend's anguished emotions through the multitudes of chains that linked them. His two friends wavered as the fluid holding him circulated, swirling and supplying his alien, mutilated body with fresh nutrients. Sephiroth pressed a hand to the transparent walls of the tank that separated them.
Sephiroth said, "He's alive," and Zack saw himself fall to pieces.
He couldn't blame himself. It was a natural, normal, human reaction to the mangled, limbless, alien creature hanging before them. Their physical humanity was something he no longer shared, but he still felt some shreds of human emotions. Their visible trauma tore at what remained of his heart--his imitation, nonhuman heart--and he wanted to hug them both. He wanted to save them both. His flipper twitched where it sprouted from his damaged shoulder. His guts, dangling from the torn remains of his torso, curled around his naked spine and pelvic bones with disturbing independence. Every part of him, every cell, every organ, had a life of its own, and they were all connected, all joined, all individual yet working together as a cooperative being.
He tried to speak, to utter warnings that Hojo was waiting and watching, that Hojo wanted them all exactly as they were now, but no sound emerged from his ravaged, still healing throat. He couldn't bear what would happen next, what Hojo had planned for the three of them. He couldn't bear it.
He would do anything to change it. Anything to save them. Even surrender to his new existence, become the alien horror his body craved, and finally satisfy Hojo, giving the mad scientist everything he wanted.
Sephiroth's next words brought relief and trepidation: "I will put him out of his misery. You needn't watch, Zack."
He saw himself react with protest then back down in defeat. He saw Sephiroth gazing at him, forlorn, devastated.
"I will make it quick, my friend," Sephiroth said with heartbreaking resolution. He unsheathed his sword.
Yes, Zack thought, closing his single eye. Yes, remove the central shackle and lock, the source of the irresistible Reunion Call, and you will be free. Zack was certain that his friends could escape if they didn't have him to burden them.
Was it possible, though? What would it take to end his life, now that he was forever altered, forever an alien Thing that refused to die? Hojo hadn't managed to kill him even with all the grotesque experiments, the chemical and mako procedures, the amputations and surgeries. But then, he had wanted Zack to stay alive. Sephiroth wanted him dead, quickly and humanely.
Do it now, he thought. Quickly. It would be a relief. It would save him, and them. He wished Sephiroth every success--
Zack jolted awake when a blood-curdling scream split the night. He shoved himself upright in his cot. "What the fuck--?"
"Genesis," Sephiroth said, already standing next to his own cot. He flicked on a lamp.
Zack flinched aside, suddenly fearful of this person who'd been his traveling companion for several months. Sephiroth had just been about to kill him, hadn't he? "What? Genesis?"
"He has, as you might say, joined the party." He turned his face away, hiding it behind his shaggy, brown-dyed hair, but not before a tiny, satisfied smile flicked over his features. It was gone just as quickly as it had appeared.
"Joined--?" Zack immediately thought of Reunion, but that couldn't be right. He shook away the dream's insistence of reality, attempting to free himself from its strong chains. He almost succeeded, but it lurked at the outskirts of his awareness, clawing for attention. He coughed, telling himself that this was reality, the here and now, and not Hojo's lab. With that bracing thought, he pushed aside his blanket and stood up, straightening his pajamas.
Just in time, too. The door to their small, repurposed office slammed open and a half-naked madman in sweatpants rushed in.
Genesis wildly swung his fists. Zack staggered back out of the way, hitting his legs against his cot. "Hey, wait--"
Genesis lurched around, eyes wide and starting, taking in the room, then Zack, then Sephiroth. "Keep away from us!" he shrieked, striking out again. "Keep away, you bastard!"
Sephiroth stayed carefully out of range. "Genesis," he said in a low, soothing tone. "Stop it, Genesis, wake up."
Zack thought Genesis must still be dreaming. He seemed crazed and barely aware of anything except panic and the desire to fight.
"You tried to kill us!" Genesis shouted, his eyes again darting erratically around the tiny space. "You cut off our head and burned our body! You did it twice!" His fevered gaze lit on Angeal's container where it rested on a crate between the two cots.
Ah. That was what he'd dreamed. Zack hadn't lived through those parts of Angeal's experiences yet. He hoped he never did. He almost had, though, just a few minutes ago. He probably ought to thank Genesis for waking him before that first beheading had taken place.
Genesis stumbled over to Angeal and dropped to the ground. He put both hands on the cylinder. "You cut off our head," he whimpered. A single tear leaked from his left eye. His whole body shuddered as though he were having a seizure.
Sephiroth slowly edged forward. "Genesis, settle down. It was a dream. You already know it happened. We already explained. Angeal is alive."
"It happened to me," Genesis moaned. "How could it happen? Oh, Goddess, Angeal..."
"This is a rough start," Zack muttered. He stayed back, willing to let Sephiroth handle his distraught friend. Sephiroth had a lot more experience with Angeal's memories, anyway.
Sephiroth flashed him glare that plainly said "Shut the fuck up."
Genesis shook his head and put one hand to his throat. "Is that what it feels like to be decapitated?"
"That's what it felt like to Angeal," Sephiroth said softly and knowingly, like he'd experienced it himself.
He probably had, Zack reflected.
Sephiroth said in a tone that one might use to calm a wounded animal, "His perceptions of such things are different now. He's different now. He has control over pain, sensory experiences, and awareness. It wasn't like how it would be for ordinary humans. But you and I can understand."
Genesis jerked his head around to stare at Sephiroth. "Ordinary humans? Understand? Are you kidding? What does that even mean? That we're--"
"He survives, and so do we. It's over now, and we'll take care of him. We'll help him recover. We're all three together again. We're together. That's what matters."
Genesis drew a deep, shaky breath, but turned his eyes back onto Angeal's comatose features. "You're mad," he whispered. "Utterly mad."
Sephiroth didn't reply to that accusation. Instead, he held out a hand. "Genesis, calm down. The dream is over."
"It will never be over, will it? Never."
Zack feared Genesis wasn't only talking about his nightmare.
Sephiroth continued to speak soothingly. His words and voice took on a dreamy quality. "Of course not. Be at ease, Genesis. You're with us now. We're all three together again, as we always should have been." He gazed at Angeal's head. "We'll always be together," he murmured, very quietly, yet sounding absolutely certain.
"And these shared memories are the price?"
"They're not a price. They're a blessing. Your Goddess truly loves us." With this statement, Sephiroth put a hand under Genesis's arm and lifted him to his feet. "We are blessed, not cursed. We shall come together more every day. It's natural for us."
Genesis stared at him, looking as alarmed by that statement as Zack felt. Sephiroth rested his hands on Genesis's shoulders and stared into his eyes, and the other man's anxiety faded. Calmly, unnaturally so, Genesis nodded twice, his head moving slowly as though through viscous oil.
"Angeal brings us together," Sephiroth said with a soft, gentle smile. "I told you about this, about how it worked. Last night, when we were by ourselves, remember? It's the nature of things."
Zack started to hear those last words, Angeal's reluctant acceptance, echoed by Sephiroth's voice. He covered his mouth with his palm.
Before more could be said, Lazard rushed into the room, disheveled, without his glasses and clutching a bathrobe over his sleep clothes. "What's happening? Is everyone all right? Genesis screamed!"
Zack moved forward. "Yeah, he had, well, he had a nightmare."
Lazard paused and looked uncomfortable. "A nightmare caused all that yelling?"
"It's nothing to be worried about," Sephiroth put in smoothly, slipping an arm around Genesis's shoulders. "It's as I explained last night, after we arrived here. We expected this to happen to him, but unfortunately his first experience was about some...unpleasantness. He just needs to calm down and settle in."
"Settle in?" Lazard edged back toward the doorway. "Look, if this is like the nightmares and memory sharing you guys talked about--"
"He needs to go back to bed. Could you see to it, Lazard?" Sephiroth gently nudged Genesis forward.
"Genesis? Are you all right?" Lazard inspected his former subordinate.
Zack had the same question, but at that moment Genesis snapped out of whatever trance his dream and Sephiroth's soothing words had induced in him. He shook himself free of Sephiroth's guiding hands. "I'm fine," he snarled, biting out his words like an angry Coeurl. "I just hope I never have a dream like that again."
Sephiroth raised a knowing eyebrow, and Zack muttered, "Good luck with that."
"Is it always like that?" Genesis sounded desperate. "What I felt?"
"Not always. It gets better," said Sephiroth. "Much better."
Genesis stared at him, mouth hanging open just a little.
"If you're all okay..." Lazard suggested, clearly wary and out of his depth.
"I'm done," Genesis announced. He pushed past Sephiroth and Lazard and headed out the door.
"He's not," Sephiroth stated with confidence.
Lazard gave him a funny look, but said only, "Well, goodnight, then," and also left. The door hung open behind him.
Zack fidgeted. Things were getting super weird again. But then, nothing had been normal since Sephiroth had appeared with Angeal's head in a jar, back on the Eastern Continent. "I wasn't like that when I started having my dreams," Zack stated. He had been upset, certainly, and sometimes had trouble breaking free, but he had never been so completely ensnared that he couldn't recognize reality.
Had he?
"You had your moments, but I've never seen you as caught up in Angeal's memories and spirit as Genesis was," Sephiroth said. "Remember what I said about Angeal's psychic field. Genesis is part of it, just as I predicted." He moved to Angeal and sat down on the floor before the crate holding the specimen container. "He'll grow accustomed."
"It's only the first night, and this is already going on?" Zack protested. And what of Sephiroth? Zack rubbed one foot against an imaginary itch on his other leg. He clutched his forearms, clenching his fingers tightly on his own flesh. Sephiroth sometimes seemed so...otherworldly? Was that the right word? Was he so enmeshed in the telepathic field that he was always interacting with it on some level? He was downright creepy tonight.
"It's not that odd. Remember, it happened quickly for me, too," Sephiroth said, staring at Angeal. "Like me, he has been attuned and primed for this since before birth, so it hit him hard and fast. It's natural."
Natural? Yeah, right, Zack thought.
"I don't think I can sleep now. I need to take a walk to clear my head," he announced. Anything to get away for a while. Between his own dream, Genesis's intrusion, and Sephiroth's weirdness, he had to escape.
He couldn't leave Centralia. There was nowhere to go, not now, not with Shin-Ra combing the entire Planet for him. Hells, most of the Planet believed he should be executed. He simply couldn't run away from the measure of safety afforded by two other former SOLDIERs and Genesis's copies, but he could at least get a break from the current insanity.
"An excellent idea." Sephiroth's gaze never strayed from Angeal's face.
Zack thought it was a great idea, too. He padded barefoot to the door, and almost made it out before Sephiroth started talking to Angeal.
"We're safe here. You're safe here, Angeal," Sephiroth murmured softly. "We have what we need. You can start growing again. You can start becoming."
Zack shivered at the choice of words.
Becoming what?
He quietly shut the door behind him, and ran as fast as he could down the hall.