Zack was walking back to the Shinra Building at dusk when a postman approached him at the steps.

"Excuse me sir. A 1st. Are you…Angeal Hewley?"

Zack stopped. He had no idea what came over him at that moment, what malignant influence possessed him to answer like he did. Zack turned to the postman with conviction.

"Yes."

A grave expression crossed the courier's face.

"I'm very sorry sir, but I'm afraid I have terrible news. Your wife is dead."

Zack froze. The man removed his cap, rubbing his brow with a slim wrist.

"The Sorceress War in the North. Oh, so many people are losing their lives over who knows what. I have this letter for you, undeliverable I'm afraid."

The man handed a stamped envelope to Zack. He recognized his own handwriting, the letter he'd written to Angeal's wife after tracking her down in Winhil. Three pages, both sides. He hadn't written essays in school that long, he'd had to make himself stop. Now it had returned to his hand, unopened, unread, a syntax error that couldn't compute in his shocked mind at the moment.

Zack swallowed hard at the ground, getting his bearing, and he remembered something.

"Um…there was a baby."

The postman gazed into his eyes, and didn't answer for a long moment.

"I'm sorry sir."

And Zack's hand flew over his mouth. That's when he almost lost it, fighting to hold it in. He had to close his eyes for a long few seconds, shaking his head in awe.

The courier rubbed the back of his neck, empathizing with the young man he'd destroyed.

"Oh, what is this world coming to?"

Zack pursed his lips hard, gazing up at the sky. "Anything but an end."

The postman nodded and extended his hand. "Good luck to you, sir."

Zack shook it, and the man went away, leaving him alone on the steps with an unopened letter in his hand. Zack stared at it for a long time, Angeal's last penance, all the proof that he ever existed was gone.

What if something happened to him, Zack wondered. Was this how they were going to tell Aerith? With a succinct letter from Kunsel or Luxiere and a sincere apology from a postman? He wouldn't die, Zack could never die, but what if he got hurt, severely wounded, broke a pinky toe or something? It occurred to him then that she wouldn't be the first to find out, that his blood-relatives back in Gongaga would be priority by default…and that killed him.

He ripped the letter into even squared pieces and put it in his pocket, then he whipped out his phone dialing Aerith. It rang longer than usual.

"Hi. This is Aerith with Sector 5 Youth in Crisis. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 5-1-1. I can't come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message I'll get back to you as soon as I can!"

Zack hung up. A heavy sigh. He continued on into the Shinra Building holding his head as high as he could manage.

In the lobby, Cissnei strolled down the second-story stairs in casual-wear, and stopped when she saw Zack. He straightened up when he saw her, and his mouth hung open a little.

The incantation of office-chic, she sported lightwash Gap jeans that formed to her curvy thighs, a star-studded belt around her waist. She was a Sketchers girl with a denim messenger bag slung over her shoulder, the strap falling cross-chest over her frilled white button-down. Cissnei looked crimped up in her michrocheck suit with formal makeup, but once she washed that stuff off, her freckles poked through on her nose and cheeks like cherry ice-cream sprinkles, and something about them made Zack's heart flutter.

"Yo!"

"Hey!"

They went to each other like a pleasant surprise. Zack had never seen her out of uniform before, she looked like a completely different girl. It seemed like once her clothes relaxed her personality relaxed as well.

"How you doing Zack?"

When she asked that question, he knew it meant a little more to them. He rubbed the back of his head with a shrugging smile.

"Ngh…I'm hanging in there."

And she laughed like she knew what he meant. But her smile, her smile was contagious under strawberry lip balm, a shining luster that Zack noticed—meaning he was looking at her lips.

"What about you? You have a date or something? Wow, he's a really lucky guy."

She giggled.

"No, I'm actually going to see Loveless. I won some tickets through a fan club thing, so I figure I might as well use them."

She'd said tickets. Plural. He wanted to ask who she was going with, a couple girlfriends maybe? He didn't know how though, and didn't want to come off as too forward. He really didn't know what he wanted at that moment.

Something on her bag caught his eye.

A patch…of his name!?

He cocked an eyebrow at her, and she held in a wry grin.

"What's this?" he asked with his own grin sneaking its way across his face.

"You should check your Facebook more often. Wouldn't want to disappoint your fans."

WHAAAA?

"Wait…I have a…really?"

And she laughed again. "It's actually pretty well-informed, they know things from your hometown all the way to your favorite movie, apparently all thanks to some informant named Black Suit."

"Friend of yours maybe?"

She looked around like she didn't know what he was talking about, rocking on her heels to hold in a smile. A beaming excitement welled up in him, he got the urge to pick her up and spin around with her. A flash of an alternate universe crossed his mind, where he would be going with her to see this play. They'd hang out after work at the coffee shop sipping those girly overpriced white-chocolate raspberry mochas and commiserating about their jobs. Jogging together on the boardwalk, hiking by the reservoir, and rock climbing! She could go rock climbing with him! And maybe, someday, they'd go back to Costa del Sol and do it right this time.

But the alternate universe faded to the actual universe, reality hitting him like a gold needle. Earth to Zack, there was already a girl in his life, and she wouldn't even move above the Plate for him.

Zack and Cissnei stared at each other for a moment, almost as if they both shared the same thought, like the way they both seemed to slump just a little wasn't a coincidence.

"Listen," Zack started. "…about at the beach."

"Oh, it's okay Zack," she waved those bad thoughts off for him.

"No. No, it's not okay…" he stopped her, firm, serious, and looked her dead in the eye. "I was a mess. I didn't care about anything or anyone, least of all myself. You took care of me. Heck, you picked me up off the floor…thank you."

And they shared a dazzle-eyed moment. That's it, this was getting painful, he really wanted to give her a quick hug, but he couldn't just go for it right in the middle of the lobby! They fidgeted around for a minute, shifting their hands in their pockets as if they'd find something to say in them.

"Well, you let me know how the play is," Zack shrugged.

She nodded, her expectant smile fading to a forced grin. They went about their ways, looking back at each other at different times.

He took the elevator up with a reminiscent smile on his face. But by the time he got to SOLDIER wing, the butterflies had flown, leaving him with his hand in his pocket on torn up bits of paper. So, he had his own fan club now, but only one thought ran through his head…

Why?

He continued up to barracks, down the hall past doors that were left open like a college dorm. Walking all the way to the end, he swiped his ID card at his door and went in.

Inside was a warm dark, a subtle tinted-blue glow emanating from the digital interface of his stereo. He went to his dresser, put the pieces of the letter in his top drawer, and closed it carefully, gingerly, like he was closing a casket. Sitting cross-legged on his mattress, intent as an acolyte in meditation, he stared out into an abyss that stared back.

Someone had been there to pick Zack up when he was scared, but who had been there for Angeal? The nights where he'd been alone, the distance of his soul assailed by chaos, he'd ridden out his meltdowns like a personal battle, a private perfect storm. How he'd survived that long, with no one to pull him out of his darkness, was nothing short of a miracle to Zack.

He could do it now, Zack could pick Angeal up off the ground, now he'd be stronger than him if he had to, stronger for him. At the end of everything, being stronger for anyone meant Zack was being stronger for himself. Remembering how he had let Zack misjudge him, the realization dawned on him like nightfall…That was Angeal's aim all along.

Children have a right to be wrong, to grow up on their own terms, to learn the lessons that shape who they are and become who they're meant to be.

Alone now, and strong now, Zack bared his soul to the darkness and spoke to the walls of his room.

"Hi Angeal," he sighed out into nowhere. "I don't know if you can hear me. I never do this. Just want to let you know that I'm doing okay. I've been reading Musashi like you told me to, and keeping up with my field training. Heh, I leveled up and everything. I've been thinking about what you said about finding out what honor means to me, and I think I've figured it out. I don't think honor is something we have, I think it's something we strive for, something we'll never quite get all the way because we're only human. But those parts of us that are human, I think those are the dishonorable parts; the parts that make us monsters, where we weigh our need for love against our need for sex. Even though we know which one is stronger, we're supposed to do the right thing anyway, and usually we fail. But when we succeed in spite of ourselves, that's honor, standing up for what's right even if you're afraid, even if you have every reason not to, even if you're going to die doing so. A warrior can leave his body, but he must protect his honor, always. I think there's a monster inside all of us though. Your idea of honor was to try to overcome these dishonorable things, to defeat them, to purify yourself from them, but I don't think that's what we should do to gain honor. I think we should talk about them, accept them as part of ourselves, and make it so they're not scary. We should shine the light on them so that they're not dark anymore, and by doing that we can take away their power over us, we can make it so they can't hurt us anymore. But when you found the monster in yourself, I don't think you could square it with your honor. You couldn't accept those terrible things you'd worked your whole life to push down, and when they finally came out, they came like daemon's wings. I think, seeing it thrown out in front of you, not being prepared for it, and with no way to deny it, is what made you take your own life."

Zack froze at those last words, he'd never said them out loud. The truth of what he'd gone through with his mentor blared with such soft reverence like the blue light from his stereo, a truth he didn't want to accept, wrapped in the steel-wool comfort of denial. Angeal had killed himself…using Zack's hand.

He fell on his bed then, curling onto his side with his knees bent like he used to do back when he was twelve years old, back when he would lock himself in his room and cry until he was out of tears. But Zack couldn't cry yet, he knew that if he cried now, he'd be crying for himself.

He held himself and whispered out into blue harmonic dark.

"Those wings…"

.

[Received Dark Matter]