Enter the Lion! Prepare for a lot of word exercise, Squall… XD
Bah, for some reason half of the italics in my chapter uploads are going down the dust chute… *grumble* -__-;; Parts in bold are where those italics were, in case you start wondering about the change in format! Ranting aside, carry on, dear reader! ^^
CHAPTER 2 - Shadow sparring:
Normally, any manner of silence would not have fazed the stoic commander of Balamb Garden who might as well have written ten volumes on the topic, but the awkward silence that was ticking by with increasingly uncomfortable seconds was positively stifling, even for him. All previous thoughts of his lecturing of Selphie slipping away from his priorities, Squall struggled to hold the gaze of Laguna Loire, whose calm liquid eyes looked to be casually assessing the son who stood before him, waiting for him to speak.
'The hell? Why is he turning up… now? No calls, no notification, no contact of any kind from Esthar for the past fortnight and now suddenly, the President just walks straight into Garden like a commoner off the street? Why didn't anyone tell me? Hasn't anyone seen him yet? Is this even a publicised visit? Hyne, I don't know how the hell he's made it this far without any commotion… what's going on?
Jolting himself out of his erratic train of thought, Squall realised that too much time had passed for him to be able to cloak the undisguised shock that he had felt upon laying eyes on Laguna, seemingly materialising out of nowhere before the elevator of the Commander's office with a silence Squall couldn't quite believe possible of the highly talkative, energetic man. He looked more subdued than usual, the muscles tense around the neck and a vague twitch of a vein disturbing the peace of the smooth, flawless facial features. Mouth set in a firm line, eyes dark and unreadable with no hint of their usual warm humour.
With a soft clearing of his throat, Squall rediscovered his means of speech. "Lagu…." he fumbled, then abruptly reconsidered. "Father," he worded slowly, as though still unfamiliar with an understanding of the syllables, "I'm sorry for not receiving you sooner, no one informed me of your visit, so forgive me for being… somewhat surprised. As it is, we might not have suitable accommodations for you and anyone else you might have brought, but we should be able to fix that up in short notice… Is there anyone else with you actually, or are you here alone?"
He hated the way he sounded so stiff and formal, as though he were addressing any old Garden missionary or official from a careful rehearsed place card. He hated the way he was feeling, so torn up inside between the relief of seeing his father in the flesh again, the relief of discovering he even had a father…. And yet the distance between them was still as unbridged as ever; an unassailable yawning gulf called time had been forcing them apart upon contrary poles for so many years, and the damage…. It seemed to be irreversible, the situation so pointless and wasted… Squall felt a clutch at his stomach as prickling sensations of anger skipped through his veins and travelled towards his cheeks, making them burn with inner fire. He was angry, yes. Not at time, not at his father. Rather, he was angry at himself.
You're a fool. But then again, you've always known that, haven't you? Couldn't take the bait… couldn't hook the initiative… what have you been trying to do to keep the flame alive? It's your own fault that your own father is still the stranger he was when you didn't even know he existed… maybe it would have been better if you'd never known. Maybe I hate him for telling me. Maybe I hate him for trying. It was too late for anything old man, why did you have to bother? Why… did Ellone have to bother? Dearest Hyne… it just doesn't make sense anymore… don't want to think about it.
Squall snapped out of his reverie as he realised that Laguna was finally speaking.
"I've come alone," Laguna replied in an oddly cool voice. There was something hollow and toneless about the timbre of the words, as though the meaning and emotion behind them had shrivelled away even before being uttered.
Squall frowned in annoyance, not trying to feign what he was feeling and letting his emotions display themselves clearly upon his face. No word of greeting? No hello? Nothing at all? What's stuck up his ass? It's like the past year never happened at all – is this what he wants? Or… am I responsible for making him like this…?
Previously lounging against the wood panelling of the walls of the Squall's office, Laguna suddenly tensed and straightened, his eyes seemingly not staring at Squall but through him. His arms uncrossed and fell to his sides, but his fingers remained bunched in viciously enclosed fists.
Immediately assuming the worst, Squall subconsciously took a step backwards, his forehead creased in puzzlement. "Father? What's…"
"Where's Raine?" Laguna thundered, thoroughly cutting up the remnants of Squall's posed question. No longer still, Laguna surged forward with a soldier's steps, his features radiating nothing but malice and arms swinging menacingly in rhythm with his purposeful stride. Battle reflexes seized control of Squall's instincts, and he expertly leapt backwards out of striking range with one hand darting for the revolver strapped in its harness across his back. Contact. With a sluicing motion, Squall clenched his fingers around the solid leather handle and drew the revolver out of its sheath with a professional speedy action, the wicked edge of the polished blade catching a glancing beam of evening sunlight pouring in from the skylight above. Unfazed, Laguna was still advancing with no check in his movements, as though he had failed to acknowledge the young SeeD before him and the glinting vector of the Gunblade's point, behind which two foreboding barrels were aimed directly at the space between his eyes. Squall permitted himself time to blink, and that split second space of time witnessed Laguna's right hand whipping around his hip and swinging back to the front without a break in momentum, re-emerging gripping a thoroughly nasty looking sawn off shotgun, and the arm attached to the hand was rapidly raising the ugly chunk of metal at the human target poised in front of him with an accuracy too unsettling to be a jest…
"Raine! Where the hell is she?!" Laguna's voice had erupted in a molten explosion of pure rage, his usually ivory cheeks flaring with two ferociously swelling spots of red. "Ellone!!" He waved the gun wildly from side to side as though emphasising a hidden point or unable to decide what target to choose, his index finger jammed dangerously against the trigger.
"Laguna! Stop!" Squall yelled, half in fear, half in astonishment and with one hundred percent desperation. Half crouching in his familiar battle stance, he could feel the sweat trickling between the crevices of his fingers within the contained heat of his leather gloves where they were curled tightly around the revolver's solid handle, and against his own accord, Squall could feel his arms trembling as his heart threw its muscled walls against the solidness of his ribs in a hysterical frenzy. He's mad. He's stark, raving mad! What.. am I supposed to do?! I have to stop him… before he starts shooting! No! How can I attack my own father..?! Do it! You fought matron to save yourself, what difference is there between then and now?!
In what felt like slow motion, like a movement being performed within the muggy resistance of deep water, Laguna extended his firing arm and looked down the barrel of the vicious weapon, lining it along an invisible itinerary with an eye that spoke of years of countless experience, and a fluid grace that alluded to the action having been repeated and perfected to the simplicity of drawing breath. His finger jerked down hard against the concave curve of the trigger with a lethal finality that seemed to signify… the end. Termination of the highest degree. Cessation, eradication and then some.
BANG!
The Gunblade bucked up with a violent motion as the tremendous kinetic energy of the blast sent shock waves reverberating through the weapon's complex inner frame. Squall leaned back with the explosion, absorbing some of the backlash and keeping a choking reign on the skittering weapon as it threatened to bounce around riotously in his grip. The twin bullets spun through the air with lethal velocity, accelerating along a tight narrow trajectory towards Laguna's furious face, intent on carving a destructive passage through the barrier of blood and bone barring their way, which would rip Laguna's features asunder…
… but instead passed straight through Laguna's form, materialising behind him and imbedding themselves in the mahogany framing the elevator entrance, crunching brutally into the toughened wood which warped inwardly with a protesting, splintering shriek followed by a storm of dust and debris. The clatter of broken, weeping wood upon the marble tiles was drowned out by the marrow-freezing blast of a raging shotgun whose voice was all it took to signify to any in the vicinity that it definitely meant business. With a final yell of defiance and not bothering to check where the gun had been aimed, Squall dove out of range and executed an impressive leap for the furthest end of the office which was interrupted by a dramatic log-roll across his desk, ploughing through a cluttering flurry of papers, files and stationary until he flew off the edge with a tumble and a thump. A shockingly loud 'ker-chank' signalled the reload and imminent second attack of a less than calm firearm not too far away – breathing hard, Squall braced himself, crouched behind the solid wall of wood that served as his working space, listening for any hint of advancement upon his makeshift barricade. Even from where the Gunblade's length was hovering in anticipation over the carpet, held pointedly away from Squall's body, the heat emanating from the charge of the first blast was wafting upwards in lazy currents from the pulsing weapon, stirring the scattered papers drooping forlornly over the desktop and filling the surrounding area with the pungent aroma of cooked copper. Squall irritably brushed the smell away, narrowing his attention to the paternal threat that couldn't have been more than three metres away.
Curiously, nothing happened.
Squall counted the seconds inwardly, timing them to the rhythm of his rapid breathing. Silence, previously chased unceremoniously away by explosive battle-fuelled chaos, proceeded to make a subtle re-entrance, sweeping her damming, blank cloak around the dormant action settling within the cavernous room. Ten seconds, then fifteen. Frowning, and with adrenaline still pumping steadily through his veins which was making him feel slightly light-headed, Squall ducked his head so that he was level with the small leg space hollowed through the middle of the desk. Blowing his wayward fringe out of his eyes, he peered cautiously out through the opening.
Crumpled in a dejected heap upon the plush woollen carpet, Laguna's hunched body rocked to and fro as he cradled his down-turned head in his hands. He seemed to be saying something… but his voice was smothered by the curtain of dark hair that had fallen in tangled clumps across his face. The man had so suddenly transformed from a snarling, spitting mercenary into a paragon of complete and utter despair… fingers splayed at torturous angles through his scalp, his back arched in what looked to be an almost painful rendition of an archer's bow… this couldn't be the same person.
Squall blinked several times, as though trying to disperse his confusion through rapid eye-fire or at least attempting to dispel the astonishing display of mood change that was filling his vision to the brim. He could feel his thrashing heart starting to slow, his heated breath cooling as it passed between his gritted teeth. …'the Hell…?
"Raine…" The soft moan was barely audible, but there was no mistaking that name. Squall's eyes clicked back to the front and he tensed, in lieu of another assault. None came.
There was a pause, in which the vacant interval was filled with nothing but the gradually slowing breathing of the SeeD concealed behind the desk. Without the insistent roaring of blood thundering through his ears, concentrating had become less than a tedious task. Then Squall realised that a… different sort of silence entered the picture, as though Laguna was… listening.
"If she's… gone…" Laguna's voice had gained a newfound strength after his first unsuccessful attempts, but his words were still being strangled within his throat until they eventually fractured into unsalvageable shards of speechlessness. Suddenly, he wrenched his chin skyward, his glittering eyes seemingly focusing intently on something towering above his level of vision. Squall followed Laguna's gaze. There was nothing fascinating about the side lamp jutting out of the left office wall.
"Where's Ellone?" Laguna croaked. "Where did those bastards take her…?" As though regaining some measure of his previous resolve, he pulled himself to his feet, swaying unsteadily as though weighed down with burdensome emotion.
"Hyne's ass," Squall cursed in whispered amazement as he suddenly registered cropped fragments of colour drifting in time with Laguna's movements, suspended with invisible threads as they swung away from their body of origin before rearranging themselves seamlessly in the empty slots left behind. The sagging figure of Laguna flickered momentarily, mouth still formulating speech, but uttering no measure of sound. For the first time in the duration of their encounter, it dawned with startling clarity on Squall that he could actually see the hazy outline of the elevator doors… directly through Laguna! It was as though he were looking through a murky panel of rapidly splitting stained glass, an experience which was heightened as Laguna's form suddenly jerked violently, as though in reaction to something unexpected, a movement which saw the image of Laguna buckle and flicker multiple times as though the energy generating the apparition had chosen to dip at an alarming rate. More flecks of colour were thrown from Laguna's thrashing form, sailing through the air in perfect arcs before struggling in a jarred flight back whence they came in a stubborn bid to keep the puzzle complete. Beneath the swimming colours, Laguna's features were still only barely recognisable but already beginning to blend into a mosaic of creamy black strands and soggy textured flesh. Muffled words… striving to escape the yawning, melting pot that remained in place of a mouth, squeezing out of the collapsing mushy pillar of neck and throat and leaking weakly into the air with the poor velocity of a near stagnant stream…
"Kirosss…. Ge..tt… ovvv… I'm nooot… crasssee…!" Like a bad recording, the words scratched themselves into bare comprehension just as the liquefying image of Laguna seemed to seize up catatonically. It hung suspended in the air for a fraction of time as though, with childish obstinacy, it still refused to release the hair-thin thread of control binding its components together… before finally submitting to its imminent implosion in a mute display of cut up colours and blaring light, gathering strength in the centre before expanding outwards in disorientating shower of slivered pieces of insubstantial glass. Squall hurriedly buried his face in the crook of his free arm as a soaring wave of effervescent light broke over him and every three-dimensional object in the room, staining the walls and floor with blankets of thick ebony shadows while a silent roar swept forwards in the backwash before just as suddenly as it had begun, the calamity was over.
Hesitantly, Squall raised his head and glanced around his surroundings. The intense light show had faded away into nothingness, taking the image of Laguna with it and leaving nothing but a bottomless barrel of questions, a soft bath of golden evening glow dripping through the encompassing windows…
… and an increasingly burning swell of undeniable horror.
I… I don't… believe this. Squall felt his limbs stiffen as unbridled repulsion wrapped icy fingers of guilt around his frame. The Gunblade had suddenly taken on the weight of a two hundred kilogram dumbbell, and with a shudder, Squall permitted the now lukewarm weapon to slide from his leather-enclosed hand. He hardly noted the heavy thump as it plopped ungraciously into the dense mattress of carpet – all of Squall's senses had converged in one attacking body on the singular manifestation that at the moment was flashing through his muddled mind with the recklessness of a freight train…
I… I'd have… shot my own father. To save my worthless ass. Oh Hyne… Hyne Hyne Hyne… I… what type of bastard am I?! What's wrong with me?! 'Didn't try to even… reason with him for Hyne's sake…! One shot was all it took… that's all it takes… in a spur of the moment decision…
Squall felt weak. Extremely weak. He was vaguely aware of his knees buckling from where they were tucked underneath him, mildly conscious of the bones in his feet cracking as his physical resistance crumbled and his body slumped backwards in a careless slouch. A pool of burning panic was scrabbling with frantic claws against the walls of his stomach while his voice of Reasoning clamoured to be heard over the high pitched shrieks of his provoked Conscience.
It wasn't him. It wasn't him, alright?! Hyne knows what the hell that thing was, probably someone's idea of a sick trick… I'll gut the bastard responsible…
Squall closed his eyes, squeezing them together tightly to block out the burning sensation building up behind them that could only signal one thing. He never cried. He didn't want to start now. Especially over some… some lame-ass apparition. Swallowing the rising lump in his throat, he rubbed his temples, trying to alleviate the throbbing that was threatening to spill over into a crippling headache, trying to rub away the filthy grime of guilt…
It was wrong. A mistake. I'm perfectly aware of that. I only struck to save myself. Just like anyone would in my place. I want to survive. Doesn't everyone?
Continuing to massage his temples, Squall concentrated on calming his shallow breathing, watching the fluttering rise and fall of his chest through the damp material of his undershirt.
He wasn't real.
Heart still thrashing like a raging beast, hurling itself within the confines of its bony cage…
Which means…
Drying sweat caking his cheeks and lower arms, a glimmer of rational thought suddenly intercepted the duo of gloom and doom pounding a messy path through Squall's swirling insides.
… we get a second chance.
Squall froze momentarily as he chewed on that thought. Reasoning continued to speak in a matter-of-fact fashion, and he made no move to stop it.
How many people can say that they get a second chance? Are you going to make use of it, or squander the opportunity away?
Rationality chose that moment to sweep Reasoning aside with a heavy, frosty hand.
First – find who did this. Not anybody could just put those names in Laguna's mouth. Who have you told? Nobody… except… for the others But… but why would any of them choose to pull such a sick gag? And would any of them be capable of conjuring such an image? It doesn't seem right – there's definitely the stink of a rat in this. And there'll be hell to pay, Hyne help me.
Squall felt his inner turmoil beginning to settle at last as his usual cold disparity returned to energise his logical, calculating thoughts. This was the self that he was familiar with… Aloof, detached, uncaring. He could only hope for trouble to arise if he dared to stray from this Rational core… the ugly business of the past ten or so minutes had claimed proof of that. You acted on impulse. Where was your head at? You're not Zell, you're not hot-headed. All this administration has stuffed you up bad… 'best to start training again or you'll lose your touch for good. As leader, that's something you can't afford…
With an internal nod of affirmation, Squall levered himself heavily off the floor, gripping the edge of his desk for support as his legs wobbled unsteadily from lack of movement. He turned his ash brown gaze to the mess that greeted him upon him straightening, and the corners of his arched lips arranged themselves into a scowl of disapproval. The surface of his working area was in complete disarray, something that would have to be dealt with soon if upcoming dead lines and commitments were to be met punctually. Squall felt his mood sour at the very thought.
Squall Leonhart… commander, headmaster, leader. Who would have thought? Is this the life you always expected? Is this your one true call to duty?
The unanswerable questions tumbled in a leap-frog fashion through Squall's head as he made an effort to gather the dog-eared sheets of paper scattered across the smooth wooden surface into a manageable pile.
Never given a choice in the matter.
The frown that Squall always sported upon his face as a second skin deepened. He snatched blindly at the nearest document, beyond caring if he happened to crease the expensive parchment, and flicked it onto his growing pile.
It just doesn't feel right, does it?
"Shut up," Squall muttered on impulse, then caught hold of himself. Talking to little inner voices… that just really sweetens your whole mental makeup by a couple of notches.
The paper pile slammed onto the desktop with an abrupt 'thomp' which echoed along the dormant air currents filling the room, guided in its descent by an overly heavy and forceful leather hand. Picking up his Gunblade in mid-stride and sliding it back into its holster, Squall breezed out of his office with an irate and frosty air, cutting a more imposing figure of inapproachability than usual in his black garments and wild, upturned ruffed collar of fur… swirling, stormy eyes focused intently ahead, swimming with curious inner anger. The office doors slammed purposely shut behind the SeeD, the turn of a key in the lock bearing likeness to an abrupt ending of an offensive conversation, accompanied by an angry chorus of clashing belts and the clomping of heeled boots on polished marble fading in the distance.
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Confused? Don't be, all shall be explained in due time… O_- (trust me!) I've gotta say though, this is a challenging task… I hope I'm getting some portion of Squall's character across correctly… =P Coming up next: back to Selphie we go!