"—no reaction or statements from the Fair family in Gongaga," the man on the news show said calmly. "All requests for interviews are still being denied."
Zack opened his eyes.
He found himself lying on his hotel bed, shaking and soaked in sweat. The same newscast announcer's voice still droned on the television. Everything was as he had left it before he fell asleep.
Asleep? Hah! Nightmare fuel.
He sat up and rubbed his face. His cheeks were wet with tears. He sighed deeply, and looked at the clock. Only twenty minutes had passed. Such a short time for such a terrible dream. His gaze slid to Angeal's container. Within, Angeal's head slept, eyes closed, motionless aside from the way he bobbed in the circulating fluid.
"What's going on?" he asked the comatose head. "Was it real, or just a bad dream? Talk to me, Angeal. Talk to me like you talk to Sephiroth. Even if the you talking is just a..." He paused, remembering. "A construction of your memories and my expectations? A ghost, like you said. It doesn't matter to me, Angeal, really it doesn't. Construct away!"
Angeal's face didn't even twitch.
"—no reaction or statements from the Fair family in Gongaga," the man on the news show said calmly. "All requests for interviews are still being denied."
Zack jerked his attention to the television. It showed an aerial view of his hometown, the main entrance choked with people and vehicles. Barricades had been erected to keep reporters out, but many climbed over anyway. Others navigated the dense forest surrounding the town and entered from the side before they were intercepted by Shin-Ra troopers. Nonetheless, several people had managed to get news cameras deep inside the town. The image on the television panned around, past the small cemetery and into the town proper. It switched to a different camera with a ground view right in front of his parents' house.
The window curtains twitched, but no face peeked out, no one opened the door. The image zoomed closer; either the camera operator had approached the door or they had used a telephoto lens. A woman with a microphone entered the picture, confidently striding up to the house.
Immediately, two large men in black suits appeared, blocking her path.
"Oh, no," Zack groaned. "Turks."
The woman backed off. The Turks shooed her and the camera operator away, back in the general direction of Gongaga's main entrance.
"As you can see, access to the Fair family is restricted by Shin-Ra," the news announcer said. "But rest assured that we will do our best to get their reactions to their son's impending execution. In the next few weeks—"
"Vultures!" Zack grabbed the remote and shut off the television. "Well, at least I know why I dreamed about Gongaga." The news coverage must have leaked into his strange dreams and nightmares, drawing him back to the waking world.
"You were right, Angeal," he said, gritting his teeth. "Sephiroth was right, too. I really can't go back to Gongaga. I can't talk to my mom and dad, not even on the phone. Maybe not ever again."
The place was swarming with reporters and Shin-Ra personnel. Zack hated to imagine what his parents were going through. They were trapped in their own home, unable to leave without being mobbed. That was assuming, of course, that Shin-Ra would even allow them to leave.
Zack buried his face in his hands. "What am I going to do? What are we going to do?"
"You'll find Genesis," came Angeal's voice, from nowhere and yet all around him.
Zack jerked his head up. "Angeal? Are you there?"
There was no answer. In the specimen container, Angeal's comatose head nodded gently as liquid circulated around him.
Zack uttered a choked sob. "I'm hearing things. I don't know what's real anymore." He almost felt a ghostly hand rest briefly on his shoulder, but when he turned no one was there. "Angeal, I know the things I'm hearing are just what I want you to say. That's what you meant in the dream, isn't it? And isn't it crazy that I believe it." He coughed, wrapped his arms around his middle, and rocked back and forth a few times.
"Was our entire conversation just my invention? Was I just talking to myself in a really weird way, or were you there as a spirit? Was my mind your vessel? Is that what you meant when you said I provided scaffolding for you?" Zack stopped rocking and ran a hand through his too-short hair. This was all too esoteric for him. Dreams and nightmares only occurred in people's sleeping minds, and wild things happened in dreams. Of course his dream had been populated by his own creations, but still, Angeal had been so independent, so real...
"Spirits and ghosts—I really am going crazy," he muttered. "I must have dreamed it all up myself. I even know the pieces that went into it, like the way Sephiroth thinks Hojo was trying to turn you into a new version of Jenova. I saw those freaky tendrils for myself, when Sephiroth cut your head off that Ahriman body you grew. I remember the horror show in Hojo's lab. My mind built it all into that nightmare. That must be what happened."
He tried and tried, but he couldn't force himself to really believe his rationalizations. He rubbed hard at his eyes.
"I need a shower," he said firmly, standing up. "Fuck the news, fuck Shin-Ra, and fuck Hojo. Especially fuck Hojo."
Showers, especially ones with scalding water, were the best cure for bad dreams. A shower had cured his last mega bad dream. That one had been about Angeal and Hojo, too, and bad as it was, it hadn't been anywhere near as horrifying as his latest nightmare.
His head felt light and he wobbled on his feet. He touched the nightstand to steady himself.
His stomach growled.
Food would help ground him. That was his real problem. He needed to eat something. Maybe Sephiroth would return soon, so Zack could leave Angeal with him and go find a hot meal. That pair could pass the time by having one of those freaky private conversations that always excluded Zack. He'd be glad to get away from both of them for a while.
For now, though, he couldn't leave Angeal alone. At least there should still be some stale sandwiches left over in the insulated cooler bag they used in the truck. He hoped Sephiroth hadn't finished them off. During their time on the road, Zack had learned that Sephiroth ate like a ravenous Behemoth.
Zack snorted. He recalled how Angeal had always laughed and said that Zack ate that way. Like a ravenous Behemoth, he'd said, and added something about how teenaged SOLDIERs had super-amped-up metabolisms and were hungry all the time. He'd said it was normal.
"Is it normal for adult SOLDIERs like Sephiroth, too?" he asked the room at large. "Was that why you took up cooking as a hobby?"
No one answered.
What else had he expected?
Scowling to mask his disappointment from himself—a futile endeavor, he admitted—Zack stripped off his clothes and headed for the bathroom.