Chapter Text
Several months before Cloud assaults two SOLDIERs in broad daylight:
Angeal was worried about Zack.
Just three days ago, his protege had been...well, normal, or at least as normal as Zack ever was. Bright and happy and distractible. And then, like a switch being flipped, he’d suddenly become different. Not entirely different—he was still Zack —but now he seemed like a mirror image of himself. Zack, but slightly warped.
Angeal still didn’t know what exactly had caused it. Theoretically, it was a concussion Zack had sustained while training alone in the VR room, but Angeal was starting to have his doubts about that. A concussion might have explained why Zack had unexpectedly teared up at the sight of Angeal when he came to get him out of the Infirmary, and why he seemed so disoriented. It might have explained Zack’s odd questions and apparent short-term memory loss.
A concussion did not explain why his youthful distractibility had warped into a battle-scarred veteran’s twitchy wariness. It didn’t explain why he was suddenly so much more subdued—or why his exuberance seemed almost fake, when it appeared. Like it was just an act.
A concussion did not explain why Zack suddenly had an old, silvery scar on his jaw that Angeal was very certain hadn’t been there three days ago. Even with SOLDIER healing and skilled materia usage, scars didn’t look like that in less than three days.
“Zack,” Angeal started, very casually. He didn’t want to spook his suddenly twitchy protégé. “I’ve never noticed that scar on your jaw. Where’d you get it?”
Zack froze—guiltily, to Angeal’s eye. His hand jerked up to cover the scar, as if he could make his mentor un-see it. “Oh, uh, I,” he stuttered, eyes darting around. “I um...I cut myself?”
Angeal frowned. “You...cut yourself? Doing what?”
“...shaving? I mean—shaving. I cut myself while shaving.” He threw his shoulders back and smiled, dropping his hand, and the ‘exuberant’ Zack returned. “No big deal, really. Not even worth mentioning!” He laughed nervously.
If anything, this just made Angeal’s frown deepen. He examined his protégé's face closely. Zack was just sixteen—his hair flopped in his big, puppy-like eyes, and his cheeks were still soft with youth, and his jaw hadn’t yet become as broad or sharp as Angeal suspected it would. There were certainly no signs of a five o’clock shadow.
“Since when do you need to shave?” he asked, keeping the skepticism from his voice. If Zack was shaving at all, then he was barely taking off peach fuzz.
“Since…you know, recently!” Zack replied, just a touch too loud. “That’s why I’m so bad at it. Hey!” He reached forward and grabbed Angeal’s wrist. “You know how to shave! Why don’t you help me out, show me how to do it so I don’t cut myself again?”
Angeal was taken aback. “Oh, I—” Teaching someone to shave for the first time was a father’s duty, generally. It was familial. Intimate, in a way, and it felt oddly presumptive to even consider. But, then again, it wasn’t like Angeal could send Zack back to Gongaga for a quick lesson from his father. And if Mr. Fair was anything like his son, he wouldn’t be offended.
“Sure, Zack,” Angeal conceded, feeling weirdly touched and also thoroughly distracted from his efforts to coax answers out of his student.
“Great!” Zack chirped, and promptly dragged him along by the wrist. “Let’s go now!”
Zack towed him all the way back to his apartment, chattering away a mile a minute, and it was so...so Zack that Angeal wondered if he’d just been imagining things. Was he being too paranoid? Too sensitive? The teenage years were hard. He remembered that. Considering he’d survived the absolute chaos that was Genesis’s teenage years too, he probably knew better than anyone. Maybe Zack was just being a little ornery as he grew up.
Still, as they stood next to each other in front of Angeal’s bathroom sink, something felt a little off. A little off. But for the life of him, he still couldn’t figure out why Zack was behaving so oddly. As he talked Zack through the steps of shaving his (nonexistent) five-o’clock shadow, the teenager was starting to look a little bit... teary-eyed. And Angeal was pretty sure that, as unpleasant as aftershave was to use for the first time, it wasn’t enough to make a SOLDIER like Zack sniffle and scrub the back of his wrist over his eyes.
His bewilderment only increased when Zack turned and pressed his forehead against Angeal’s shoulder, still sniffling. At a loss, Angeal set down his razor and pulled him into a hug. It was returned fiercely, accompanied by even more sniffling. Suddenly, it dawned on him. Hadn’t he just been thinking about Zack’s parents himself? Zack was getting emotional while Angeal was teaching him something that usually fell within the purview of fathers.
Of course Zack was homesick.
Angeal softened, patting the back of his student’s head. “Zack, why don’t you call your dad? Catch up for a bit?”
The teenager went stiff. Angeal barely had time to feel confused again before Zack whispered, muffled and horrified, “I forgot about my parents.”
...what?
"What?"
Zack pulled away, clutching two handfuls of his hair. His eyes were huge. "Oh Shiva I forgot about my parents! I've gotta— I've gotta write a letter or— "
Angeal grabbed Zack's shoulders before he could bolt out of the bathroom. "Okay, slow down. Breathe. You forgot to contact your parents recently?"
"Uh." Zack hesitated. "Yes."
Lie. But Angeal set that aside for later, sensing he wouldn't get anywhere with that at the moment. "Okay. It's not the end of the world. And listen, letters are great and you should definitely send some, but how about we split the difference right now and you just use this?" He pulled his PHS out of his pocket.
Zack stared at it for a long moment. Then, he laughed, and it was watery. "Oh."
"Oh," Angeal agreed, soft and worried as he pressed the PHS into his student's palm.
Zack punched in a number with slow, almost hesitant fingers, and held the PHS up to his ear. He stared off to the side, expression fragile as he waited until—
“Hello?”
Zack laughed, and it sounded like a sob. It was a sob, Angeal noted with alarm. Tears spilled down over his student’s cheeks and he sniffled into the PHS. “Hi Momma,” he said thickly.
“Zack! My baby, what’s wrong?” Mama Fair sounded frantic. “David! David, it’s Zack!” There was a distant cry, barely picked up by the PHS, of a man shouting “Zack!” in response.
“I’m sorry, mom,” Zack said, wiping at his eyes. He sat down hard, leaning back against the cabinet and drawing his knees up to his chest. “Nothing’s wrong. Just been… a rough few years.”
Angeal looked at his protégé sharply, though he guessed that Zack had completely forgotten he was there already. A rough few years? Did Zack mean the whole time he’d been at Shinra? Had things been going on that Angeal had completely missed? It didn’t make any sense. Zack was always so happy to gush about how wonderful his life was and how much he enjoyed being a SOLDIER.
So why was he crying over a rough few years?
“My baby,” Mama Fair crooned. “Do you need to come home? You can always come home!” Her words were nearly drowned out when a man yelled “ZACK!” much closer to the PHS this time. Angeal could practically see it: two exuberant, black-haired adults, pressed together over their phone as they anxiously tried to hear their son’s voice.
Zack laughed again, and it sounded a lot less watery this time. “Hey, Pop. Hey. Sorry. I miss you guys so much, but I’ve…” He licked his lips nervously, free hand touching the scar on his jaw that had sparked this entire situation in the first place. “I’ve got important work to do. I need to be a hero.”
“My boy! Zack, you’re going to be the greatest hero. I can feel it!” That was Papa Fair, and Zack sniffled again, but he was smiling.
“I will be. I have to be. For everyone’s sake. Sorry, I didn’t mean to...react like this. I just wanted to hear your voices again.” He teared up again at the end of his statement, ducking his head down to rest it against his drawn-up knees.
“Zack, you can call whenever you want! Whenever your Pops is off work, okay? And send lots of letters! And come visit, and bring all your friends!”
“I will,” Zack promised. He sniffled. “I’ll bring Cloud! You’re going to love him, he’s...he’s so amazing. And Angeal, and… I’ll bring everyone I can.”
Angeal blinked. Cloud? Who was Cloud? He knew about Kunsel and Luxiere and a dozen others, but he’d never heard the name ‘Cloud.’
“We can’t wait to meet them, Zack. We love you.”
“Love you too,” Zack said softly. “Bye, Mom. Bye, Pop.”
“Goodbye, baby,” overlapped with “bye, son.”
Zack hung up the PHS, put his face back in his knees, and burst into tears. Bewildered yet again, Angeal gave up and just sat down, wrapping an arm around his student’s shoulders. Zack’s only acknowledgment was to lean into his side as he worked through...whatever the hell he was working through.
Angeal scrubbed a hand over his face as he waited, feeling blank with confusion. So much information, yet he had come away with more questions than answers.
This was probably what he got for thinking Zack was such a wonderfully uncomplicated teenager.