Trapdoor (Part 26)

by anza (26.12.05)

He remembered the taste of peanut butter cookies in his mouth. He remembered Kadaj's smile that night, an expression with a happiness that rippled through him like waves. Cloud had lived the first of his childhood in uncertainty, and the second in cool detachment. The time between the end of that and now was a soupy mess of colors and comments that looked like he'd lived them before, but felt as if he'd never been there. Where had it all go wrong?, he wanted to ask, to scream to the sky, but the question remained festering in cavity where his heart should be. Acidic and poisonous, he poked at it when he felt particularly masochistic (which, alarmingly, was quite often), twisting away at the pain, burying himself deeper in his work.

Kadaj, the sweetest glint of release at the end of the tunnel. His hand holding his brother's every night without fail, no matter if Cloud was turned away from him, crushed by the weight of his own helplessness, or quietly watched him in the dark that glowed with shared remembrances between them. His youngest brother, the closest to him and yet so far from what Cloud wanted him to be, so far from what he knew would be the completion of their hearts and minds and bodies. He knew it wasn't the time to give in to the lure of that trapdoor, and that even if they somehow emerged from this alive, he would have to fight to keep that wall between them.

But his youngest brother, the star attraction of Cloud's most feverish dreams, haunted him during the day. His silence coupled with his sympathetic eyes followed him everywhere, eyeing him protectively. Cloud knew in this endeavor, Kadaj wasn't his little brother - he was Kane Snape, unrelated to him, a fugitive from the mafia like Cloud was. In the barest sense, Cloud could trust Kane, a desperate man as much as he was, to take to his instincts and flee if the blond was ever caught.

Kadaj would escape, even if it cost Cloud his life.

He had a promise to give to Kadaj, like the one his mother gave him.

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As a child, he had stared up at adults with the eyes of a saint.

Before any other lesson, he knew what a gun sounded like. All of its sounds: when it was dropped, when the safety was turned off, when the safety was turned off, when the trigger was pulled, when it struck flesh, when it broke a bone. The room his mother and him occupied was right next to one of the interrogation rooms. He didn't remember it in images, but words and feelings, knowing it happened though he couldn't see it anymore. Sometimes the tortured agony reached deep into the night. At first Cloud was scared, and then once the room began to be used more frequently, he found he could sleep through them.

She rarely had time for him, his mother. During the day he flipped through the books and puzzled out the words. Things he didn't understand, he read over until he did. When his mother brought a blank book and pencils, he wrote in it hesitantly, and then eagerly. There was a story about a goat who lost its way that he never finished, and one about a four-leaf clover a girl wished on that brought her the exact opposite of what she wanted, and about a blanket that ate little kids. Sometimes he copied just words into the book, especially the words he didn't understand. It wasn't until later that he realized all the passages he didn't understand were the sex scenes in the romances.

Takecarers were few and far in between. There was a woman who didn't speak Continental with a plump face and frightened eyes, another woman who slapped his cheeks when he cried, another woman who was shot the third day she was there caught looking through his mother's jewelry box. He had told her to stop because there were cameras, but she hadn't listened, just shoved him away. Two minutes later, she was backed up against the opposite wall from where she'd pushed him. Nobody thought to cover Cloud's eyes when they shot her.

He was scared at first, especially when his mother told him one night that death was forever, that it was a blackness beyond imagination, unescapable and inevitable. Guns and knives and old age can cause it, his mother had told him. But after he saw his takecarer killed before him, he realized it was ordinary, and that people died every day. It was a normal occurence. From the shootings on the street below him to the shots ringing out next door, death couldn't possibly be more empty than his own life.

Sometimes he talked to himself, had imaginary conversations. His mother was worried in her own detached way, but he didn't realize until later that some of his habits weren't normal. Every word he spoke and read had come out of books. He didn't arrange his books neatly because he didn't know he had to. He didn't know he was easily reading books for people three or four times his age. He didn't know much of anything except for four gray walls, a chipped wooden dresser tilting to the right because it was missing two legs, and the creaky bed of two mattresses stacked on top of each other. Most nights he slept alone. Other times his mother staggered in so late the top of the horizon was turning pale yellow with the rising sun. When he tried to ask her why she was so late, she slapped him.

He had only seen one godfather before, the one his mother later betrayed, the one that loved her. Dimly he remembered it had been late, and the moon had soared high in the sky when he barged into their room drunk, his mother clinging helplessly to his arm. Cloud retreated to the corner of the room, farthest from them. Words were said, but in the end he pushed her down onto the mattresses. Calmly he stopped panicking and settled down in his corner. The moonlight streamed down right onto the godfather's sweaty back as he pushed and twisted and writhed. His mother's gasped sounded pained, but she hadn't called for him, so he remained there in the shadows.

It looked painful and altogether too messy. In his mind, Cloud told himself to stay away from love if it was that painful and messy.

Later he would know love was painful and messy, but for completely different reasons.

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The search came up blank. There was simply no such thing as "Item 523" anywhere on the net.

Cloud had even checked the company policy, but everything in there was a "rule", not an "item". Simply put, all the combing of the net wouldn't provide him with anything. And unless he resharpened his hacking skills, he probably wasn't going to find out anything from his computer. Not to mention it was too easily tracked - which mean if Zack was looking over his cookies, he would realize Cloud had found nothing.

But the problem was, other than within the company itself, Cloud had no leads. Something had to come from inside SOLDIER Jeans Co. itself. He still had the bank account numbers, but he was loathe to pry that deeply into someone's privacy - not to mention he was afraid of what he might find. He was pretty sure there wouldn't be a direct path to Zack's door...but all the same, he didn't want to look, didn't want to know the truth if that WAS the truth.

He steeled himself and thought of Kadaj. But his hand still hovered over the mouse, hesitating, deliberating: Is there no other way?

No, the calm, practical voice of survival told him. It was the same voice that told him to run to the other house, to follow his mother's promise, to keep Kadaj at arm's length, and to throw Seph away when he became a Turk. It was the only voice that had ever been completely right. Who cared if Zack was a nice guy? Who cared if he made Cloud laugh? Who cared if he held Cloud when he broke down?

You don't, that voice told him. If he turns out to be a Turk, you'll have to get Kadaj out of here.

It was a voice that only spoke truth.

And like all his previous misfortunes, Cloud swallowed its bitterness.