Chapter 20
In the morning, they are escorted out of the cell by Galbaldian soldiers in the local green uniforms. Rinoa feels uncomfortably exposed being led between the rows of inmates with no HS shield, no weapon, and her wallet and items pouch in custody. (I hate feeling so helpless. If I'm separated from the others, I'll be completely defenseless).
An hour's drive later, Rinoa, Quistis, Selphie and Zell are led onto another train, hands cuffed behind their backs, with one escorting guard each. (They don't know I'm not a SeeD…they think I need my own guard.) Instead of entering at the side doorways, they go through the back door to a plain, tin-walled compartment. Selphie's face falls when she sees that there are only two doors, and no windows. Two green-clad soldiers stand on either side of the door connecting the tin room to the rest of the train.
Zell leans against a wall and slides to the ground. Quistis and Rinoa seat themselves as comfortably as possible with their hands behind their backs, but Selphie stays standing, eyes closed. Rinoa looks up curiously, but the other two seem disinterested. One soldier, then the other, slumps limply against the door frame. They lie on the floor, limbs sprawled at awkward angles.
Rinoa jumps up, eyes wide, backs away from the dead bodies. (Well…I guess we're already being tried for murder, but that was so heartless.)
"Why did you kill them? What's wrong with you!"
"They aren't dead, sit down Rinoa" says Quistis soothingly. Selphie kneels, for once looking tired. "She put them to sleep." The guards are, indeed, breathing steadily.
"She cast…you cast sleep on them without using your hands."
"Yeah. You'll learn to do it soon enough, but it's really ineffective." To prove her point, one of the soldiers stirs in his sleep and shifts position.
Rinoa sits back, suddenly exhausted. (I'm going to die. Probably going to die. I feel…alive enough…I won't die. The SeeDs will protect me…Squall.)
Squall's face swims in her minds eye. Pale skin glowing orange in torch-light. Glassy, blue-eyed. A trickle of brown blood on his gray fur collar. She wipes her nose on her knit arm warmer – the clothes are filthy anyway. (Squall…you're dead too aren't you? I felt…like this when Seifer died…but he came back.)
Rinoa tucks her head between her knees and rocks back and forth. (Why do people have to die for this woman? Squall…and soon Quistis and Zell and Selphie. I guess they've been prepared for it most of their lives. But I'm not. I don't want to die yet).
Rinoa: When I was a little kid, I remember I felt like nothing could hurt me if my dad was around. My mom too, but after she died I got even more attached to my dad. That was before he decided he couldn't be a dad. He's a big guy, over 6', and I always thought he could fight off the monsters on T.V. or the bad guys in stories.
It wasn't until several years later that I realized dad couldn't even reign in his own daughter, but I wasn't emotionally damaged or anything. The teachers at Timber Academy became my parental figures, and I could always count on Shiro, Kemy, my friends at school, and later Watts, Zone, Bill, everyone.
Things had been crazy for a few weeks, but looking back, I'd had a great life. I'd seen a lot of the world – two continents total – and learned three languages. And one of us was already gone. I wondered if he felt short-changed by life; if he felt bitter in the last few seconds before he hit the ground. I started crying again, even though I'd promised myself I wouldn't.
I'd figured that, like me, Selphie and Quistis hadn't talked about Squall because it was too painful. In fact, they hadn't talked about it because they were too worried. Selphie put my head on her shoulder and rocked me back and forth and said she was sure my father would be able to get me out. Zell traced a circle on the ground in my blurry field of vision. I couldn't explain to her that it wasn't my life so much as the futility of everything…the wasted lives. I was got very existential.
"Even if I l-live through it, w-what kind of life will I be able t-t-to have? Life in p-prison. B-Better that I'd d-d-died too!"
Quistis spoke up, "Too? We aren't sure anyone's going to be executed yet…"
"N-No, but Squall…Squall's…"
"He should be okay!" Selphie said quickly.
"Yeah, they got to him right away; I'm sure he'll be fine." Said Zell
Clearly they hadn't seen his face when he fell off the float with a spear of ice in his chest. I remembered the glassy eyes again, this time with bloodshot whites and half-fallen lids I might have been imagining I remembered.
Selphie was talking again. "Field medicine has improved sooo much in the last 50 years, and the soldiers got to him practically before he hit the ground."
"I saw him on a stretcher, no white sheet." Zell volunteered.
That made me cry harder.
My view on our situation was much different after finding out that Squall was alive. Instead of mourning how we were going to die, I started thinking of ways we might live. The door to the train was locked from the inside, but even we could have broken through it somehow, jumping from a moving train probably wasn't a way we might live. This didn't stop Zell from trying to pick the lock with the aglets of his shoelaces and kicking the hinges to break them. Selphie had to put the soldiers back to sleep periodically, and we all drew all the magical energy they'd stored and tried all the keys on their belts until we found the ones to open our handcuffs (though trying to unlock the first pair reminded me of teamwork games from summer camp where teams have to cross a field standing on only a certain number of feet, or pass an orange around a circle using only their chins).
When the train stopped, we half closed the handcuffs and held our wrists behind our backs. Zell "gently" woke the soldiers, and haggled 500 gil out of them in exchange for our silence about them falling asleep on duty.
We were ushered into another car, blindfolded (if you've never ridden along a windy road blind, you cannot imagine how unpleasant it is) and driven for what seemed like hours to our home for the few weeks: D-District Prison.
The prison has three divisions: minimum and maximum security, and maintenance and medical facilities building. Maximum security is also called "helvete", as Rinoa quickly learns on their arrival. An authoritative, female voice with a heavy eastern accent:
"Welcome to helvete, ladies. Oh, and gentleman."
After the hot, dry car ride, being indoors is heaven. Now the air circulation system makes wherever they are cold, dry and noisy.
"In a minute your restraints," (Restraints? The handcuffs?) "and blindfolds will be removed. If you run, if you cast, if you talk to each other, we will shoot you."
The threat sounded strange; borrowed from a historical drama about another time. But the lightness at Rinoa's hip reminds her of the absence of her HS shield. Gloved hands grabbed her wrist, pulled off the loose cuffs, and slid her blindfold over her forehead with an efficient tug. Light flooded Rinoa's eyes. Beside her, Selphie was covering hers with her palms. Rinoa squinted at the floor – smooth cement – as the female voice continued without comment on the open handcuffs, though she must have seen them.
"I don't tolerate any bullshit. Judging from your backgrounds, SeeDs, you have some practice in following orders? Use it. You're gonna be here a while. It's in your best interests not to piss me off. My name is Mechtilde Hildegarde."
Zell snorts, then coughs, but too late. A guard in blue cuffs him on the head with what looks like a tiny, dense baseball bat and he drops to his knees.
"But you can call me ma'am. Raise your hand if you can read."
Hildegarde proceeds to read the rules of prison conduct to the SeeDs, and gives them each a condensed, one page copy. The edges of each piece of paper are wrinkled, as though dipped in water and then dried. No sharp edges.
"This is a maximum security facility, meaning no contraband, period. Your guardian forces will be removed next week; the specialists we use are currently unavailable. In the meantime you will be under observation 24/7. Any attempt to cast magic will land you in isolation, and will not delay your meetings with Mister Almasy."
"Almasy!"
The SeeDs are similarly surprised; Zell quickly gets to his feet.
"You've heard of him. Good news travels fast I suppose." Rinoa thinks she detects irony, especially when Hildegarde says "Good news".
"The Sorceress Edea's personal bodyguard. He's taken a special interest in your case…for obvious reasons."
(Personal bodyguard…that's right. He's Edea's…knight?)
The next few days are marked by food and sleep, the most exciting events at D-District Prison. Rinoa keeps track of them with her loose-fitting, orange clothes, making a tiny tear in the ankle every time the bell rings for lights out.
Because there are no windows in the SeeDs shared cell, a cement floored room the size of a small bedroom with a plastic-curtain-hidden toilet and two sets of cots on bunk beds, like in Deling City Jail, no one knows at what time the morning bell rings for them to get up, accompanied by a blue-clad guard banging a small, baseball bat shaped club (a "Grendel stick") along the bars of the cell. Then breakfast, brought by moomba's – furry orange animals of great intelligence - bearing trays: diluted juice or water and oatmeal with mushy grapes, and once, canned peaches swimming in peach-flavored goo. All the dishes are plastic, including the spoons. No forks. Then showers – girls to the left, Zell to the right. The bathrooms have mold in the corners and the shower water is either boiling or ice cold, but it feels good to scrub away what feels like years worth of dirt, and see bruises and scratches start to heal. Then calisthenics for Zell – dips pull-ups on the edge of the bunk beds, push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks. Quistis stretches, and sometimes she and Selphie meditate together, even though they can't cast with the tiny camera in the corner of the room trained on them at all times. Rinoa is impressed with their commitment to exercise and routine, considering the circumstances, but knowing they all survived, that Squall was not dead yet, cheers her up as well.
Then magic lessons. No casting, but Rinoa and Selphie can sit cross-legged pretending to meditate and draw magic energy back and forth. Rinoa learns some group exercises that Quistis, and sometimes Zell participate in. "Train" involves passing magic energy around a circle, each person drawing it from the next, without completely assimilating it into his body. Rinoa is almost as good as Selphie when she begins, and with Quistis and Zell playing they manage to move energy around the circle five times without anyone breaking concentration. When Selphie and Rinoa play, they can pass energy back and forth 427 times, thus far, without getting tired. By the end of a week, Rinoa can name the magical elements and branches of magic, hold magical energy in different parts of her body ("My teacher at Trabia garden used to have us try to cast with our legs or hips instead of our hands."), and communicate with Leviathan almost at will.
To talk to him, Rinoa speaks to herself as though reading a book in her head. Leviathan talks back, mostly at night when she lies awake, listening to the whir of the air circulation system, footsteps and chatter down the hall, and feels the invisible eye of the camera on her, hidden in the dark. As she gets used to his archaic speech, Rinoa begins to think of "Levi" as a friend who's always with her, rather than a strange, foreign presence in her mind. Instead of one-way communications, she now had conversations with her avatar.
(What do you look like; your physical manifestation?)
When I come to you, I appear as you.
(Alright…well…are you an elemental?)
A water snake.
(So your physical manifestation is a snake?)
Silence.
(What did you do before I junctioned you? Did you live in that Wendigo? Did you junction with it?)
I am the guardian of the dragon goddess.
Rinoa sighs, sits up. It's late at night, at least several hours after lights out. Assuming the lights go out in the evening. She sits up, leans over the side of the side of her top bunk bed. The red eye of the camera blinks menacingly in the dark.
"Zell!"
Silence from the bunk below.
"Zell, wake up!" Bending double over the bunk bed, she shakes Zell's shoulder.
Despite his occasional childishness, Zell is a soldier, and a light sleeper. She gives his limp body a sharp shake, and he slips partway off the cot.
"Zell's unconscious! Selphie, Quistis! Something's wrong with Zell!"
Quistis is at their bedside in a moment, checking Zell's pulse and forehead in the dark. Selphie shuffles sleepily behind her. The bed creaks as Rinoa slides to the floor.
"He's breathing." Quistis reports.
"You guys…"
Rinoa interrupts "It's so shallow though; what's wrong with him?"
"Guys, I-"
"Should we make noise? Does he need a doctor?"
"No, he's-"
"Yes. Selphie, can you go bang on the bars?"
"No, I…"
"It's okay, I'll go."
"No! You guys, I think he's gone to the 'dream world'."
"Where?"
"It's just…it's what we called the dream we all had…with Sir Laguna."
"Why do you think that?"
"I just had one too…"
Laguna, Kiros and Ward had been stationed in Esthar, according to Selphie and Quistis, in a strange, crystal structure inside a machinery lined box.
"In a what!"
"It was like some kind of strange…mining site. In the middle of a forest. They were being pursued – by Estharian soldiers."
(Maybe this is something that happens to SeeDs. Irvine and I have never been to the "dreamworld"…)
"Before I woke up, Ward was injured and taken onto a Galbaldian vessel…"
"Yeah, I remember, we all jumped over a cliff into the water."
(I'm so lost.)
"So what happened to Kiros?"
"He recovered in a few months from the fight…on that cliff…"
Theories involving brain implants and SeeD-based conspiracies…
"Then in the dream I just had, he found Sir Laguna in this little Galbaldian country town, Winhill. He was living there with a little girl named Ellone and her mom, Raine."
"Didn't he want to become a journalist?"
(I feel kind of…left out.)
"Yeah, he was recovering in Winhill and just kind of stayed on afterwards, keeping monsters out of the village."
Zell stirs.
"I think he's waking up."
A/N: I have only sketchy second hand accounts of what jail is like. This is what prison is like in this fantasy world, okay? Also, the Laguna story isn't well-described because Rinoa doesn't participate in it. Since you've played the game before, you know what happens. No need for me to repeat it. Trivia: Hildegarde means "battle enclosure" in German. All the characters in this story, minus Eddie, have unusual names, in imitation of the game. Thanks for reading and please review! Devil May Care