E M P T Y H O U S E S
-irishais-
i.
Seventy-six, seventy-seven, seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eighty, eighty-one. Eighty-one steps in a square of white, white up, white down, white all around and glowing in bright, bright white light. Eighty-one, eighty, seventy-nine, seventy-eight.
If he goes backwards, he ends up with negative one steps, and isn't sure how that happens, so he sits dead center in the middle of an eighty-one step square and stares at the door.
The door hasn't opened in days or hours or minutes. Instead, they slide food through a slit in the door, dry meals-ready-to-eat. They don't give him the wrapper; maybe they think he'll commit suicide with it.
He could kill himself using the paper hospital gown they give him, but they don't know that. Sometimes, he considers it in silence. He wants to rage and yell, like he did in the beginning, but he gave up yelling days
weeks?
months?
years ago.
ii.
Sometimes they pipe in classical music, expecting him to hum along or tap his fingers or something. Perhaps they want him to pretend to conduct an orchestra, to egg on the violins and bring the wind instruments in at just the right moment.
Squall memorizes the melodies, and plays them back in his head hours later. It gives his synapses something to fire about.
When his feet go numb, he walks eighty-one steps forward and eighty-two steps backward until the pins and needles fade. The music echoes on in his brain.
iii.
Squall thinks about how it ended, sometimes. Not too deeply, not too dramatically as to make him furrow his brow or clench his fists or do anything that would register as rage. They want him docile as a kitten. That is the promise that gets him an hour in the sunshine once a week.
He thinks about the queen on her throne with her horns and her scrap-of-velvet dress. Her black wings stir up a cloud of darkness, reaching out to suck them all down into her hell. He remembers leaping forward to slash at her, and he thinks that he rents open her flesh and sends her guts spilling to the ground. Or did he miss? Did she win?
Did we all die?
Is Seifer laughing at him from somewhere, seated at the right hand of a goddess that wears Rinoa's face?
iv.
The camera has been trained on him for... forever. There isn't any point in trying to figure out how long he's been in here-- he counts the seconds every so often just to know that time is still passing somewhere, even if it's not in here. The hair on his face feels like a month. He vaguely remembers having to grow a beard for a mission. He forgot how much it itches.
The camera has a tiny red light on the top right corner, no more than a centimeter's worth of space taken up with color. He watches it, the black eye of the lens watches him, unwavering.
He wonders what they see when he's asleep, what twitches he makes, what he says, what he does.
The dreams are a patchwork of pictures, anyway, all edged in red and blue and red again. They flicker, a poorly-filmed movie in a subconscious cinema. Nine seconds, he knows. Nine seconds is all he gets per snapshot.
Squall walks to the center of the cube, and drops to the ground, his palms smacking against the plastic floor. He positions his feet so that he's balancing on his toes, and does a hundred and seventeen push ups just to break the monotony. Seventeen. His age. Is it eighteen now?
He is pretty sure they don't celebrate birthdays in here.
v.
Something about the room has changed while he's been asleep. He sits up, leaning against the wall and blinking away a sandman's crust from his vision. The picture in front of him resolves itself, gaining sharp clarity. He knows every inch of this room now, and something has changed.
The light above him flickers, just once, just for a fraction of a second, and he sees it.
The door is open, an inch of dark space between it and the frame.
He lunges for it, digging his fingers in the small crack and pulling hard. The door glides open silently, easily, revealing a dark, gaping maw of a hallway. He hesitates-- this is almost certainly the lamb's path to slaughter.
Whatever, he thinks, and for some reason, this makes him smile, just the tiniest bit, as he steps out into the void.
vi.
Someone is calling his name.
Someone is calling his name.
Squall licks his lips and tries to come up with spit to swallow, to ease his parched throat.
Hello?
It floats out of his lips, a whisper that goes no more than an inch or two away.
Hello? Is anyone there?
He stumbles forward into the darkness.
They cry out for him again, his name, the sound of it enough to form a tiny lump in his throat.
Hello! I'm over here!
He shouts and shouts and his words get swallowed up by the darkness all around him.
vii.
When he trips and falls, he expects to fall forever, except something metal clatters directly beneath him, skittering backwards as his knees hit the ground. There is tile under his touch, plain, cold, grooved tile exactly like the ones at--
He wheels around on his knees, scrabbling out in the blackness, trying to find the source of the noise. Something cold, sleek, metal, sharp-- his palms slip against it quite by accident, and an edge bites deep into his hand. Warmth bubbles out and he bites the inside of his cheek hard against the pain, clenching his hand into a fist against the hem of his paper hospital gown.
He reaches out again with his left hand this time, slowly, lowering his fingers until they brush against the object, his touch feather light. The metal stretches out on either side, he discovers, a flat, tapered expanse exactly the same shape and width and length...
He doesn't even need to feel the engraving for more than a second when it registers, but he does, tracing the familiar etched lines with awe.
Squall uncurls his right hand from the gown and reaches for the hilt, feeling guilty as blood drips down over the rough grip. He tightens his fingers and rises to his feet.
Salvation.
He stands, slowly, turning a careful half circle to face the way he thinks he was going, raises the gunblade, and fires.
The light is blinding and he can only make out blurred shapes, people, he thinks. People running through clouds.
He stumbles after them, but the floor disappears three steps later. He reaches out desperately for something to grab onto.
There is nothing.
He plummets.
viii.
Squall?
Squall!
He feels himself being lifted, his upper body rising off of the ground. His name.
Someone is calling his name.
Squall... you promised.
Her words are the howling wind.
Promised what?
He cannot make his mouth form the words. His tongue is a limp muscle.
What did I promise?
Why can't he open his eyes?
Her lips are warm against the corner of his mouth. Her name is there, at the edge of his mind; he wants to say R--
Phoenix down, she breathes...
...and Squall inhales.