A/N: Taking a pit stop from CT to invade the FF8 fandom. Hell, I love Squall, and I love summon monsters, to boot. And you know what I do to characters I love, right?
That's right-I give them hell.
And credit where it's due: this was greatly inspired by Luc Court's "Remains of You: Forms," which is on this site and definitely worth a read.
1. Flood Gate
Shiva told him, once. Said it was a gift from birth and a privilege. Said that the other Guardian Forces called it makana.
That was the only warning Squall Leonhart ever got.
Shiva told him lots of things behind everyone's backs and beneath his mind, where the GFs dwelled like tenants in a crowded dorm and human privacy was overrated. She always had a snip or two about her 'other host,' that 'blonde shell everyone calls a bombshell,' although Squall wouldn't stand to hear much of it. He didn't want to bolster dissent between the GFs and his teammates, especially when the bond between man and guardian could become a critical lifeline in the heat of battle.
Shiva would tell him anyway, whether he wanted to hear it or not. She said that while Quistis was the prettier host, his mind was the jewel more coveted. He never really knew what that meant, that makana, and he never asked. Growing up, Squall never afforded himself much curiosity when it came to his work, classes, girls, or... well, anything. His life functioned on a need-to-know basis. He could make demands and gather information as was necessary, but he hated asking questions and being nosy, and he wasn't going to waste time asking what a random GF thought of him. He already knew that too many things about his job, his studies, women and his life in general defied explanation, and it was safer not to question it all. Some things just happened—good things, bad things, time compression, whatever—for no good reason at all. That was life. No point asking. Just do your job and get on with it.
There was only one girl (and one GF) whose opinion of him mattered, anyway.
The guards at the front gate didn't ask where Squall was going, first and last because of his stony, intimidating silence as he pushed through the turnstiles, and not least because he was their Commander and could come and go as he pleased. He practically ran the Garden when Cid wasn't around to poke and prod it like a turtle in a tank, admiring his pet project with a fatherly detachment that was somehow endearing to the student body. Cid's humble charms never really swayed Squall, but then again when he was asked to take charge of Balamb Garden, he couldn't refuse the headmaster. It was hard to believe that wasn't even a year ago, and yet back then, Squall didn't feel like he had much choice in anything.
That was probably why he was taking a walk outside at 2200 hours without the slightest pretext. It was just to get out to some place where there weren't any choices to be made for him. Since the fields behind the Garden weren't exactly picnic grounds—and Squall preferred it that way, to discourage any followers—he took Shiva with him. He always chose her for a number of reasons, some of them more petty than practical. Shiva wasn't very powerful, but she didn't make his hair frizz like Quetzacoatl did, and she took up an old, small, familiar void in his mind, unlike the others that treated the surface of his brain like a field to be burned and plowed to make fallow for fresh growth—and those were just what Garden would call "low-rank GFs." When it came to the higher classes and the more powerful forces, they entrenched themselves in deep tunnels, mining for precious memories buried far beneath the surface. Shiva was much more gracious with her host, and could be easily handled—the only problem is she talked too much.
'...don't see why...'
'He does. I've seen... with the successor.'
Ironically, it only really bothered Squall when she wasn't talking to him. Lately, there was someone else—some one or thing he had never met, much less junctioned—and at times he could hear her (a feminine voice, soft yet distant) talking with his GF in hushed, conspiratorial tones, like a couple of gossips. He couldn't say he was comfortable with Shiva's new acquaintance, chatting around his thoughts like his brain was a coffee table, and the mystery behind the stranger's identity was enough to nag his latent curiosity. Whenever he found the nerve to ask, however, Shiva danced around it, dismissing the visitor as unimportant (if she even acknowledged her at all).
As soon as the phenomenon grew more irritating than disquieting, Squall consulted Doctor Kadowaki about it. She called it an aural hallucination, a documented side effect of heavy GF-usage, and counseled him to "take it easy," an ambiguous prescription that only nonplussed the busy commander. Squall then made up his mind to take care of Shiva himself, until he figured out what—or whom—was truly bothering him.
It was summer, and the night was simmering cool and full of cricket-song. After walking for half an hour, so determined to put distance between himself and the sloping neon spires of the Garden that his feet got ahead of himself, he stopped atop a wide knoll. The grass stood up to his knees and was combed in all directions around him, their smooth stalks glistening like frozen waves in the breezeless night, and the moon was a far-flung saucer over the dark mountains. There was nothing but placid green hills for a mile around, and there Squall finally settled down and took some of the doctor's advice. He folded his arms behind his head and lay back in the grass, immersed in perfect solitude, and cleared his mind of everything but the countless stars. All Squall had to do was wait, and then he would find him.
'Don't want... ask?'
'I've seen him... the lion... same way.'
If only Shiva would give him a minute of peace. Sometimes he didn't show up at all, and Squall was tempted to blame his loquacious GF. He couldn't get angry at his guardian force, however; he only had himself to blame for bringing her along. He was adept at tuning out unwanted chatter, anyway, after a lifetime of practice. He closed his eyes and let the soporific starlight and chirping insects lull him into a doze, where his dark dreams percolated to the surface.
Black ice; black blood; inkblot recollections where blade met flesh and severed bone, bleeding like hot tar that stung the eyes—he learned to treasure all the sticky, nasty things a man conditioned to kill shouldn't keep stowed away in his mind. SeeDs were encouraged to take regular counseling to bolster their mental health; those professionals knew that even a soldier of fortune had to find a way to vent such darkness, lest it consume him. Any sane man would seek a way to let it all out and put it behind him.
Squall saved it all for Griever. He would lay still in the thick of night like a piece of bait, luring the lion to the heady scent of his dreams. Griever loved nightmares best, and whatever Squall lacked in imagination while awake, those he always had in choice supply. With never a word he invited those quiet cat paws to his bedside and let himself get smothered by ethereal fur and a raspy tongue, licking clean the sweat and pain and leaving him cool and empty. Only then could he ever sleep deeply. It was a tradition of sorts, a secret bond they had kept ever since Squall was a child. He couldn't remember how or when it started, anymore. Surely Griever wouldn't take that memory, something so significant as their first meeting. Maybe one of the other ones took it, like Bahamut. Bahamut was always grudging him one poignant memory or another, especially the ones about other GFs. The dragon king coveted those encounters with a hunger that almost looked like jealousy.
At any rate, Griever made him remember why he liked to be alone—one of the kinder reasons, at least. He didn't know that beast Ultimecia corrupted, far in the future that doesn't know him back. Here and now, the lion was pure and admirable, a true king of the beasts. That was why he always carried his favorite fur-lined jacket; when the world felt too dreary, he could lay his head on his desk and imagine himself wearing the lion's mantle—and sometimes after a long day, he could walk outside and truly relax, knowing his old companion was just a few paces behind. Griever was as good and loyal to him as any lifelong pet; he never asked questions, made demands or judged him. Griever took him as he was, silent and uncompromising, a wall of strength and solace.
He could feel it again now—the lion coming to rest with him, its subtle heat permeating the grass as its breath tickled his brow. He never opened his eyes for fear of turning the guardian invisible and breaking the spell. He only clung to those fickle, dreamlike sensations and savored their time together, until the lion grew heavy and sated and Squall was overwhelmed by sleep.
When he did open his eyes again, the sky seemed inverted, the moon hanging upside-down on the other side of the heavens. Griever was long gone. Hours must have passed in slumber, yet he wasn't wearing a watch, so he couldn't be sure. Hopefully nobody missed him in the middle of the night, although if Rinoa got a mind to look for him he was probably in trouble already—no sense worrying about it. Squall rubbed the drowsy numbness from his eyes, got up and trudged back to the Garden.
Once he finally checked back into his room at some small hour (and found the note on his table that read 'Missed you!' in loopy handwriting signed with a heart), he briefly wondered about the little white hairs on his black pants before getting undressed, crawling into bed and forgetting everything.
-1-
Squall was playing a match with the Queen of Cards, except all of a sudden she wasn't.
Card games were one of his favorite (and one of his only) diversions because they required a sort of reasoning that was as basic and irrefutable as arithmetic. It permitted his mind to set aside everything else and focus on an objective that was actually obtainable, as opposed to the subjective and often inscrutable quagmire that was the rest of Squall's life. He liked having a mission laid in front of him in terms as simple and clear as possible (e.g., 'Beat this guy at cards and loot his deck until it's broken,' and not, 'Hang around a group of disorganized rebel wannabies and help them pull increasingly wild and asinine stunts until their home country is liberated according to a very vague and frustratingly irrevocable contract.') Perhaps his approach to card games was a little harsh, but nobody ever accused him of playing unfair—just hard.
He played his Shiva card when she played Siren, and when he looked up again the woman's gypsy-like apparel had turned from red and gold to white and silver—she became a completely alien person in the bat of an eye. Her skin was as pale and fine as chalk, her lips were tinged a ghostly blue, her eyes were slender and sharp and her hair fell in long streaks of platinum. He looked away before he was caught staring, yet when Squall turned his hand over, he was holding her visage in a card, only all the symbols were blank—it was effectively useless. What was the point of this card? How did it get in his deck? Although he had never seen this woman before, he was plagued by familiarity, yet he couldn't think to ask her name. He was concentrating solely on the game.
His trance was broken once she fixed him with quicksilver eyes, her coquettish smile peering over a flushed hand. 'Your makana is calling.'
A felt a tick in the back of his head like something he ought to know better, yet before he could ask, a more pressing urge overcame him. Squall abruptly stood up (what was a table doing in the middle of the second floor walkway?), excused himself and headed for the nearest restroom. He found one across from a classroom, yet the door was blocked with a janitor's broom that was lodged so firmly across the jamb it wouldn't let him pass. Squall decided to not expend too much effort on it and find another way.
It was strange; the elevator only went down, so he had to scour the bottom floor for the next restroom. Every route was barricaded off except one, and that took Squall to the training center—except it didn't anymore. When he pushed through the gate, he was suddenly outside the Garden, and there he spotted it straight ahead, in the middle of a field in plain sight: a naked toilet.
Squall had to go almost desperately now, yet he just couldn't in the open right there. Anyone could look out of the Garden and see him. He never felt so close yet so far from relief at the same time. What could he do—perhaps move the toilet somewhere private? Absurdly enough he tried to do that, kneeling on the ground and taking hold of the porcelain bowl by the base. One, two, three—with a great heave he plucked the cumbersome thing off the ground, amazed at the way it ripped out of the earth like a giant weed. When he looked down, fibrous tendrils and clumps of dirt were littered at his feet.
Then the ground erupted, water gushing out of the hole left behind, and Squall jumped back, still holding the uprooted toilet. Mud and grass rained all around him, turning the field into sludge, and Squall didn't have a single decent explanation for himself by the time the next person arrived on the scene. He heard her voice above, below and before anything, like the toll of a bell.
'The flood gate is opened.' There she was again, that woman in white, standing back and regarding him with coy amusement. 'You can't stop it, now.'
Squall woke up. He was back in his room; his disturbed consciousness would say he never left. The sun was stabbing through the slats of the window blinds and into his eyes, beaming him an instant headache. Squall groaned and sat up, shaking off the shameful dregs of the most ridiculous dream he had in ages. He then realized that his stupid dream had been fueled by a very real need to relieve himself, and he threw off the covers and rolled out of bed in a fit.
He took two long strides across the room towards his (thankfully) private bathroom and then stopped short. The floor was wet. His gaze fell to the running puddle on the mint-green tiled floor and then flowed upstream to the bathroom, where clear water was profusely spilling beneath the door. Squall gripped the doorknob and set his jaw, steeling himself for what he was about to find on the other side (it has to be a dream I must still be dreaming.)
The door swung open and Squall took himself back—he wasn't prepared. At all. It took a full five seconds for his brain to even scratch the surface.
His toilet had been torn away at the bolts, leaving jagged white shards protruding from the floor. The busted plumbing gurgled around its remains like a sordid fountain, flooding the room with an inch of water that sluiced about the feet—no, hooves, cloven hooves—of the monster that almost entirely filled the enclosed space. Its hide was dark and matted with stiff violet fur, and it stood upright on two stout legs, its muscle-bound girth hunched over the strange bundle in its arms: the misplaced toilet.
It was a GF. It was Sacred—a GF that Squall had never junctioned in his life, yet it somehow manifested in the flesh without his consent and with just enough intuition to wreck the most vital component of his bathroom at the very moment he needed it. The way Squall's jaw fell slack, his brow creased angrily and his hand froze on the door was just shy of catatonic disdain. If it were an ordinary monster, he might have reacted with shock and then an appropriate amount of violence, but he knew this hulking purple brute, and that somehow made it worse.
There was a GF in his bathroom. Holding his broken toilet. Sacred turned its blunt cougar countenance towards Squall, shrugged and held out the shattered bowl like a cat offering a dead bird to its master. The frown that molded around its tusks was oddly apologetic. Squall did the only possible thing he could think to do that would make this insane spectacle go away.
He shut the door.