Layer ???:
REM Nightmares


Every one of us has nightmares, the counselor was saying, tapping a metal pointer against his thigh. Being mercenaries, you will of course have nightmares of a different and more potent sort than the average person. Now, there is a considerable amount of speculation as to what nightmares are, how they originate, what they mean... all of this is inconsequential. Over the next few days, my job is to teach you methods of coping and controlling your nightmares so that they need not run the risk of encroaching upon your personal or professional lives."

Zell wasn't listening.

He had had enough of this--this twining on about the same subjects, the same useless words. Did this man think that one short lecture would pass, and everything was going to be fine forever and ever? It was ridiculous, and he was getting angry.

This time, he decided to say it.

"It's stupid," he said.

The counselor stopped talking immediately, fixing Zell with a baleful glare. "Oh, Mr. Dincht?" he asked.

"You're gonna tell us all this GF crap to do so we don't have nightmares any more," Zell accused. "It's fucking stupid. You don't even know what nightmares are."

The counselor glared. The room was staring at Zell as he rose from his chair, planting both fists on the desks in a tacit challenge. "Well, Mr. Dincht," the counselor said. "Why don't you enlighten us out of your extensive knowledge."

"You don't ignore them," Zell snarled. "Nightmares aren't things that you can just forget about. Sometimes they mean something. You don't ignore them."

"They don't mean anything," the counselor argued back.

Zell raised a fist, and a hand closed around it. "Zell," Siobhan warned.

The back of his head hurt, and the stuffy heat of South Side was only making it worse. "What?"

"Don't you trust us?" Siobhan's face was earnest. "Trust us."

It was hard to think. "I--"

(We can deal with our big, bad dreams.)

"I don't think so."

"Listen to your team leader, rookie," Tanker sneered.

Throwing a punch felt like the best thing that he had ever done. Force. Momentum. Control--

His fist plowed through the faceplate and into the soft skin beyond, shutting the man off like a switch before he had a chance to get any shots off. His gun clattered to the ground, unused. One down.

One more down.

"The thing about SeeDs," Drake was saying, smiling in that half-smiling way he had, green eyes glistening, "is that they're easy to understand. Once you figure them out, it's all clockwork. Orders, choice, money, pleasure, it doesn't matter what they're doing it for in the end. It's all the same, really."

(At least I didn't join SeeD to kill for fun. But if it's all the same in the end, then--)

You'd think from all the novels and all the movies that you would know if any given someone could kill, that there would be an aura of danger about them, an edge to their eyes, but that wasn't the case--Quistis Trepe, SeeD at age fifteen; Selphie Tilmitt, cherubic emblem of gleeful destruction; Zell Dincht, who everyone in Balamb thought was such a nice kid and the list went on and on and on....

This wasn't right.

...it wasn't right.

It wasn't even a secret. SeeD was Garden's elite mercenary force--the youngest such force in the world. And he was a member of said force.

SeeD, the most dangerous independent organization in the world.

The most dangerous.

"A nightmare," continued the counselor unmercifully, "can produce an extremely strong effect upon the body. Unlike imagination--what some would term its closest relative--a nightmare can raise levels of adrenaline, increase heart rate and blood pressure, induce sweating--indeed, these are all fairly common occurrences. In fact, nightmares have been known to be such powerful physical cues that--"

He felt as if he wanted to vomit. He shook, sweat beading and rolling down his skin. He wanted to hit something--as if the violence was a drug, one he needed to make sense of the world. He needed to be able to take one punch, feel the adrenaline, the motion and the power--he needed to figure where to plant every step, how to bend, when to swing--he needed something that he could understand, or he was going to--

Suddenly the straps on his wrists seemed like a comfort more than an annoyance. At least they kept him from falling apart.

"You can't run from them," he spat into the counselor's face. "Sooner or later you have to own up to them. Get it?"

The man was flustered now. Zell had him on the defensive, and was pressing his advantage.

"If you don't go back and face what's wrong, it's never going to stop being wrong. And the longer you run from it, the worse it gets. You can't get away that way."

"So?" Siobhan raised an eyebrow. "What are you going to do?"

"The last time he made a decision, it wiped half his memory," Tanker sneered. "He's a rookie. Think he knows what to do?"

Zell glowered. "At least I'm not a" (murderer asshole mad dog rabid mutt) "killer like you."

(I think.)

"You don't know anything, memory boy."

(That was never the argument. I don't remember everything, but I remember... enough. I remembered enough to let me fight. I remembered enough to know what I was fighting for.)

(Waitaminnit.)

(But nothing I remembered was--)


"Real. Nothing is real." Drake brought a cigarette up to his lips, staring off at the night-black sea. "Nothing is complete. It's heads or tails, and you can't see the full picture. The best gamblers make sure that the competition never notices when the deck is stacked."

The smoke, thin and hazy against the gibbous moon, was fascinating. "You're not supposed to smoke, you know that?"

Drake turned to him, blowing a long stream of smoke directly into his eyes. "Screw it. Do you always follow orders exactly as they're given?" (Nothing more, nothing less?)

His fists were tightening. "...no."

Drake smiled, falsely-white teeth glimmering in the starlight. "What are you going to do, Zell?"

The moon silently waned away to almost nothing, a razor-thin sliver in the sky. (Nothing is... complete. You really don't get to see anything if somebody else doesn't want you to.)

"What are you going to do?"

He looked up. (You can't run from nightmares. They just get worse if you do.)

"So?"

(So I'm not going to run.) "I think... I think I'm going...."

(What is it?)

"...home."