#i love you but i hate you for making me write this asjkhgfdsdfghjhgfHGDTYJFGHKH

[rottenpumpkin13]

Zangst over Zack growing his beard and looking like Angeal?

There's stubble on his jaw. It's not much—just a little more than he usually lets grow before scraping it off with a dull razor in the showers at SOLDIER. But it's that when he looks in the mirror, there's something about it; something about the line of his jaw, the shape of his face, the stress lines on his brow.

Zack presses his fingers to his chin, thumb tracing the shadow along his cheek. He tilts his head. The light catches, and….there—

Angeal.

It's stupid. It's so stupid. He looks nothing like him. Angeal's face was sharper, older, more defined. His eyes weren't this bright, and his mouth didn't do that awkward half-smirk Zack always did. He was taller. He was broader. He was better. He was Angeal.

But still.

Still.

The stubble. That's what does it. That's what makes Zack's chest go tight, what sends his heart slamming into his ribs like a caged bird, rattling its bones against bars it can't break. He should shave. He should shave right now, before—

Zack just stands there.

He stands there and stares.

And he remembers. Angeal had always been so meticulous about shaving, even on missions.

The river babbled at their feet, the cool mist licking at their skin as Angeal ran the razor over his jaw with slow strokes. The scrape of metal against skin was barely audible over the wind threading through the trees, rustling the leaves. The crisp crunch of the apple Angeal had insisted Zack eat cut through the quiet as he aimed his jab.

"You know, for a guy who spends half his life covered in blood and dirt, you're awfully fussy about shaving," Zack said, his grin audible even without looking. The scent of sun-warmed grass and Angeal's ever-present scent of steel and something earthier—like fresh-turned soil after rain—drifted in the breeze as he wiped away the last traces of foam.

Angeal didn't rise to the bait. He never did. He simply rinsed the blade in the river, watching the water carry the lather away, and huffed. "A SOLDIER has to take care of himself," he said. "If you don't look after the little things, the big things fall apart too."

Zack used to roll his eyes at that. Used to argue, arms slung behind his head, that the war didn't care if he had a little stubble. That monsters weren't gonna stop and say "Wow, this guy's well-groomed, let's leave him alone."

But now Zack would give anything to hear Angeal say it again.

Anything.

It's been months. Longer, maybe. Time has stopped making sense. Every second is just before and after. Angeal was here. Now he isn't.

The stubble stays. He doesn't touch it. He doesn't touch it, because it's stupid and it's just hair and it means nothing.

But he knows.

He knows that Angeal died, wounds marring his rotting skin, voice steady even as he told Zack "Protect your honor, always." He knows that he had barely managed to hear him over the roaring in his ears, over the sound of the storm ripping through his mind, over the sick, horrible weight of the sword in Zack's hand, no longer being held by Angeal because he was dead, and it was dead weight, dead dead dead dead.

And now Zack is looking at himself in the mirror, and all he can see is the shadow of a man he's not.

A man he'll never be.

A man who should still be here instead.

The punch happens before he realizes he's thrown it. A sharp crack, an explosion of pain. Glass shatters. Shards pepper the sink, splinters clawing up the mirror like veins, and Zack is still standing there, fist aching, blood dripping between his knuckles, breathing fast, breathing hard, not wanting to breathe at all.

He looks down at the shards. He looks up at his own fractured reflection.

And for a moment—just a second—he swears Angeal is looking back.