Layer ???:
REM Dreams



































...this isn't just some recurring nightmare, is it?









"Every one of us has nightmares. Being mercenaries, you will of course have nightmares of a different

being mercenaries

nightmares
of a different sort
more potent
than the average person

all of this is inconsequential--"

(Waitaminnit waitaminnit this is not)

"No nightmares at all?" At all.

(I've been here before now haven't I--or I never left--but this isn't just the same nightmare one more time it's more than that I know it I can feel it)

Memory boy.

"I'm not--"

NIGHTMARE. "Rookie."

(Can't be a recurring dream because I saw back then things I couldn't have seen things I shouldn't have known)

Mercenary. Mercenary mercenary blue dragon SeeD scandals Tanker Drake

Siobhan.

Siobhan twisted and Zell followed, swinging in with his other hand and catching her squarely just below the ribs, fueled by

a heartbeat, central and quintessential and pure unblemished by any slight shadow of doubt or indecision or regret

a fact that was met with some disinterest by Zell

not sure what he should expect

Please, direct your attention to the

Pain.



Pain was the one recognizable thing in the universe about him. It racked him, a throbbing agony that flooded his brain and drove him to the brink of madness and back. It was implacable and omnipresent, and he writhed in a futile attempt to be rid of it. He was aware of a great darkness, as if he had gone suddenly blind--all he could see was black, all he could hear was silence, and all he could feel--

He was nauseated. He didn't know where he was or how he had gotten there--he didn't know what was happening to him, or what had happened to make this happen. In short, he didn't know anything.

He couldn't say why, but it felt as if that was becoming a familiar experience.

Everything seemed jumbled--memories he couldn't place, voices he didn't recognize, words he didn't remember. He lashed out blindly, trying to find something--some solid purchase, inside his mind or outside it, a GF, a wall, anything--but he came in contact with nothing. The universe had been cut down to himself and his confusion.

And, of course, the pain.

He had no memory. All he was left with was speculations--each one more nightmarish, each one more incredible than the last. Maybe he was sick--could fevers inspire dreams like this? Or maybe he was going insane, and just now realizing it--maybe this was some new kind of torture, some GF too powerful for him to junction--

Maybe it was Hell.

Maybe it was Hell, and he was condemned to it. Maybe he was stuck here for eternity, waiting while some divine immortal extracted payment for whatever sins--

(Whatever sins.)

In the span of a second, it came back to him with the force of a Lunar Cry. And, in an instant, he found himself in the midst of a jumble of information--far too much, instead of far too little.

And it only made him understand things less.



He remembered everything.

He remembered being assigned the mission, carrying it out, being captured. He remembered the Ward, and his return to Balamb. He remembered the murders, and the fight, and how he had come to this.

He remembered, in fact, a bit more than everything--little impossibilities that he couldn't reconcile. He remembered Tanker saving him in the storage room, he remembered making it out on his own--he remembered Cid saying that three was one more than he would have preferred to send on this type of a mission, he remembered Cid introducing them to Drake--

He remembered counting seven lights. He remembered seeing eight.

And, somewhere in the confused line between leaving for Esthar and coming back home, he remembered talking with Drake on the docks, looking out over the sea by moonlight. He remembered watching the smoke from Drake's cigarette float up against the moon. He remembered exactly why he had done what he had done, and why it had seemed so right. But he couldn't understand it, any more.

It was like some kind of a nightmare, looking back and finding himself unable to cope with what he had done--anything that he had done. Nothing seemed natural any more--not taking orders from SeeD, not acting on his own will. It was like the past days and weeks had gone by in a dream, something no one could explain--as if he was on the verge of waking, and the world would make sense again.

Then he came to the realization. He was on the verge of waking--but entirely backwards from what he wanted. This, his moment of clearheadedness, of objective wonder, was the dream. The senseless thing was reality.

He opened his eyes.