Title: Whatever Works
Author: Tiffany Park
Fandoms: Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, Final Fantasy VII Original Game
Description: Zack and Sephiroth wander the Eastern Continent with Angeal's severed head in their quest to find Hollander and Genesis. Sequel to Abomination.
Characters: Zack Fair, Sephiroth, Angeal Hewley
Tags: Intrigue, Horror, Body Horror, Beheading, Mention of Vivisection and Dismemberment, Abominations, Conspiracies, Alternate Universe-Canon Divergence, Explicit Language, No happy endings, At least Sephiroth doesn't think he's an Ancient LOL, Angeal is present but he's a head in a jar, Mention of Genesis Rhapsodos, Mention of Hollander
Notes: This story begins shortly after the events of Abomination. Please read that one first if you don't want to be hopelessly confused as to why Sephiroth and Zack are running around the Eastern Continent with Angeal's head in a jar.
Here be plenty of spoilers for ancient games ranging in age from fifteen to over twenty-five years, assuming anyone cares about spoilers after so long. While there are references to Deepground and Turk activities like kidnapping, torture, and other events from Dirge of Cerberus, Dirge of Cerberus Online, and Before Crisis, they are only used to provide background regarding some of the truly horrific activities of the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company and the amorality of the Turks. No changes from the Remake or Reunion games are taken into account in this story. It only deals with the original Compilation revelations.
Whatever Works
By Tiffany Park
Zack didn't know how long he could continue on this path, but he had to stay strong.
Sephiroth was talking to Angeal again.
Zack burrowed deeper into his sleeping bag and pressed his hands to his ears. It didn't help. His enhanced hearing ensured he heard every word. Not that Angeal made even a single comment in reply.
How could he? A comatose, severed head in a jar would never respond. No matter that Angeal's head was still alive, and no matter how much Sephiroth babbled at him.
Sephiroth's voice was quiet, but the low tones seemed to echo, reflecting off the trees, reaching to the clouds in the night sky, soaking into the earth. He'd started his chatty new habit shortly after he, Zack, and Angeal (Angeal's head—his disembodied head!) had hit the road three weeks ago to search for Hollander and Genesis. It always creeped Zack out, especially when Sephiroth held his one-sided conversations in their campsites during the quiet hours of the night.
Tonight Sephiroth was making elaborate plans to destroy Shin-Ra and using Angeal as his sounding block. That he received no feedback didn't deter him; he just continued and even changed his plans on the fly as though Angeal had commented to disagree or offer critique. Occasionally Sephiroth mentioned Genesis, and how to utilize his superior materia skills best in bringing down the Shin-Ra Headquarters.
Literally. Sephiroth wanted to raze the building to the ground, take out even the slums, and then burn out all the underground complexes beneath it, too.
As long as the innocent could be evacuated, that was a plan Zack heartily agreed with—though he hadn't heard Sephiroth utter a word of concern about casualties. Collateral damage. Zack would have to take care of those details himself, because Sephiroth sure wasn't bothering. But Zack would help him still. The information provided by Cissnei about Deepground had been almost too horrible to bear. Most of the poor bastards trapped and victimized down there probably couldn't be salvaged or saved, but just shutting down the place and annihilating it would do a huge favor to both humanity and the Planet itself.
As far as Zack could tell, Sephiroth rarely slept anymore. He stayed up for at least part of every night with Angeal's head. Not just talking to it, but guarding it like a starving mongrel with an old soup bone. He'd also kept Angeal's head unconscious with extraordinarily strong Sleepel spells. For the present, Angeal wasn't suffering. He didn't even appear to be dreaming, at least as far as Zack could tell. However, all bets were off if Angeal ever became conscious again.
Zack couldn't erase from his mind the horrified look in Angeal's eyes the one time he'd woken up as a head in a jar of nutrient fluid. He kept seeing Angeal's face, the way his jaw and mouth had worked as though attempting to talk. Zack squeezed his eyes shut but he couldn't blank out the images. Angeal had probably been trying to beg them to kill him...
Thank Odin that Sephiroth had put him back to sleep immediately and kept him that way ever since.
Maybe, Zack thought with weak hope, Angeal hadn't realized he was just a head in a jar. But his state in Hojo's lab hadn't been much better—little more than a vivisected torso and head in a mako tank, with a couple stubs for arms that appeared to be regrowing and his amputated body parts in containers throughout the lab. No matter how he finally awoke, he'd be in an unimaginable hell of memories of his past few months in Hojo's lab as well as knowledge of his horrific present.
And who knew if he was experiencing any pain in his current state! His stump of a neck must still be raw from where Sephiroth had severed it from the tortured remains of his body, though Zack refused to look closely enough to verify that. The tendrils Sephiroth had claimed the stump grew were nowhere in evidence. Perhaps Sephiroth had burned or cut them away.
At some point, Sephiroth had added some materia-powered equipment to the base of the container to aerate the fluid. Probably he'd taken the extra gear when he'd taken Angeal's head. He also had a couple of jugs of extra fluid, whatever the stuff was. Nutrients of some sort designed to keep tissue alive, Zack guessed, but had no way of knowing for sure without asking—and he had so far avoided asking.
Zack didn't know how Angeal's head could be alive, but he knew it was something Hojo and the alien Jenova's cellular components had done to his mentor. Angeal had inherited Jenova's full power, Hollander had claimed. This was only part of what that meant. The alien power that Angeal had demonstrated even before becoming Hojo's test subject was abhorrent and incomprehensible.
Zack didn't know how long he could continue on this path, but he had to stay strong. He had to. There was a longshot chance that Angeal's head could regenerate a new body under the right conditions. Hojo had claimed as much, Sephiroth had agreed based on what he had seen in Hojo's lab, and in a rush of despair and yearning Zack had sworn he'd help find that chance. But in the meantime...
Zack shuddered, imagining himself in his former mentor's place. He knew what he'd want, and yet he and Sephiroth denied that simple mercy to Angeal.
Damn. Zack dug deeper into his bedding. He'd never get to sleep now, even if Sephiroth would shut up.
Sephiroth did not shut up for the rest of the night.