Pleasantly Depressed – Ch 22 "Of Silence"
by Skandranon
Most of the moments in his life that he dwelled upon were of the dramatic, life changing variety. Loved ones dying, apocalypses, that sort of thing. This is normal. After all, dramatic moments tend to leave an impression. But sometimes a dramatic moment could be very small and simple.
He'd been driving down the road headed home from town. He was about midway, where the road dipped into a forest for awhile and the turns grew sharp and hair raising. At that time of the night, the only light came from the phosphorescent lines on the road, the faint gleam of asphalt, the occasional tree limb popping into view, and the glow of the radio. He could still remember some of the lyrics… "If I don't need you, then why does this distance maim my life?" It stayed with him because Rinoa had broken up with him just that afternoon, over lunch. She'd ordered tortellini and salad. That evening, he would curl up in an empty and echoing ballroom, get shitfaced, and sob his drunken woes over a mental link to a deity.
The radio wouldn't shut the hell up, and he was clinging fiercely to denial mode so that ruled out changing the channel.
As one of the turns came up, a thought came with it. What if I don't turn. What if I just keep going straight, don't brake, don't turn, and just let what happens happen.
He turned anyway, but afterwards had that same thought everytime he drove by that turn. How badly injured would I get at this speed? Should I slow down to avoid a broken spinal cord and permanent coma, or speed up to avoid an embarrassing call and trying to explain why I need a ride?
He'd never really labeled it as suicidal thoughts. Suicidal thoughts were where you tried to jump off a balcony or bleed yourself dry to escape the pain. Suicide had nothing to do with that dreary, exhausted blankness he'd felt that night. How could you be suicidal unless you're depressed? He'd never mentioned it to anyone, and never considered it very important. But that night on the ride home stayed with him, a subtle memory, with undefined importance, but vital nonetheless.
This was one of those subtle moments.
They couldn't really be defined or explained. He knew what it was, but he would be lost if he had to describe it to another, or even to himself. Some things are too potent for a conscious mind to handle. The duty then falls to the subconscious, which has always been worryingly competent at handling such things.
In this moment, between these dusty library stacks, curled up in an armchair with the second largest blanket, waiting for Irvine to either die or wake up, Squall knew something was about to happen. And he would never see the world in exactly the same colors again.
It would be a lot more dramatic if there was some heartbreaking music or a fight scene or something. But one of life's ironies is that the best stuff happens in the shower, or in the car, or in some other place where your subconscious brain is doing most of the movement control, leaving you to stare down all the secrets you pushed into your subconscious so you wouldn't have to think about them.
As it was, Squall was bored to tears. He'd read everything worth reading, which was surprisingly little, considering. If he polished his gunblade anymore the blade would slip off the handle. There weren't any clothes to darn, and for better or worse he'd done all he could for the sniper.
He'd distracted himself with exercising until he collapsed, and that had been his first mistake. Exercising is purely automatic motions. Then he'd tried alphabetizing the books on hand. That would have been his second mistake except that he couldn't decide whether to organize by author, title, or genre, and in the end decided to build a book castle. That was his second mistake instead, because not only was it an action heavily repeated in his childhood until it was purely automatic, but it also unearthed memories best left six feet under with a charming epitaph.
He'd glance over at Irvine occasionally, to make sure he was still breathing. He tried to remember how Irvine looked as a child, since he was doing the whole reminiscing bit anyway, but all he could see was the nutshell that was Irvine Kinneas. Not just body features, and not even primarily body features. Mostly it involved wavery half-feelings, labels like "Galbadian" and "tall", and an overall sense of existence. The whole thing was painted over an out-of-focus picture of the cowboy smiling, with eyes a brighter purple than he knew they actually were. It couldn't really be described better than that.
That was his third mistake, because a lot of his thought had centered around Irvine lately, and whenever your thoughts tend to center around something, it's probably going to involve frustration, euphoria, and/or tears. And now his brain was perfectly prepared to do some deep subconscious ruminating, with just the right balance of emotion and lack thereof.
Squall cursed his miserable scrap of blanket and the wretched position of the chair springs. Not really cursing, per se, because he was too tired to bother. Mostly he just lay there and thought about how annoyed he would be if he had the energy.
Irvine twitched in his sleep.
Squall was checking pulse and respiration rate while the second largest blanket was still floating to the floor. The result was the same as the last time he checked, slow but steady, so he returned to his brooding spot and dragged the cover back over his feet. His thoughts strayed from Irvine for the moment and he brooded on the barricade.
He was confidant in his ability to plow through it as he pleased, but that wouldn't make it an easy maneuver, with an injured partner. He could break it down and come back to fetch Irvine, but that would leave the cowboy defenseless, not to mention giving the troops time to regroup. A full frontal assault while dragging his partner would be cumbersome. As far as he knew, the barricade didn't really have any weak points to focus on, and it went all the way around. Underground travel was out, since one of the first prevention steps had been the demolition or filling of every sewer and subway tunnel. Sky travel was severely limited due to lack of sky vehicles. Stashing Irvine near the barricade while he took it down would be difficult, since just inside the wall was thirty feet of used-to-be-buildings, now flat exposed rubble fields. Didn't leave much cover.
He briefly considered tying a grenade to Grrface and tossing him over, but dismissed moombas as not very aerodynamic.
Irvine mumbled something, and Squall twitched. It was too soon for the denial mode to allow another "routine" pulse check, so he reluctantly stayed put.
He still had sand stuck in the edges of his shoes, from that blasted trip to Esthar. The tiny little grains were tenaciously refusing to come out of the corners. They didn't really bother his feet any, but just the fact that they were there was a bit annoying.
The blood had soaked out of his collar just fine. His socks were a different matter.
There was a chunk taken out of the rim of Irvine's hat. Probably from a bullet. It looked innocent enough on its own, sitting on the table missing a little piece of itself, but the sight made Squall's stomach knot.
The boots were pretty much done for, unless Irvine was attached to them enough to get them resoled. The other shoes were little more than scraps of leather, and would be tossed the moment they got home.
The coat was matted with dirt and flaked with red copper. A thread on the hem had come loose and its end was fraying. The seam on one arm had popped and was slowly unraveling. Irvine would be furious. He'd whine and moan about it for days. His poor coat. His precious baby. No, it couldn't be replaced. What, did you toss out a beloved pet once it got old and a little worn around the edges?
Bullets and blood. Holes where bullets whipped through. Near misses that were shrugged off and ignored. Not so near misses. A matter of inches between laughing and decaying.
He was shivering and it wasn't even cold.
It was a miracle Irvine had survived this long, he told himself, and it was a lie. It was no act of faith, just fact. He signed the papers to send off SeeDs on similar missions every week. He would've signed the paper for this one. And then he could've flipped a coin to predict the outcome. Would he be sending someone to victory, or to a promotion and a grave? A few inches were all it took.
He wondered how many inches it was between Irvine waking up, grinning, cracking cheesy jokes, following him on some daredevil escape plan where everything would go perfectly wrong, and the fever stopping his heart.
He wanted nothing more in the world right now than to be held. And it hurt, oh, it hurt. A sweet simple pain that made the world so much clearer. He was across the room, and he set his weight against the side of the sofa. Lay his head on a broad shoulder. Traced bandages with numb fingers. Matched his breath to the pace that lifted and lowered against his cheek.
It was all the right kinds of wrong, and for that moment, he could simply close his eyes and let things be.
The head next to his shifted a few inches to the right. Glazed purple eyes fluttered open and frowned at him.
"Bought damn time you woke up."
"…rr y'uggin' meh?"
"Yeah."
"…nngh…"
"Go back to sleep."
"…"
"…Love you."
"…"
The sun set over a hollow, weary city, and in a library basement two men finally got some rest.
Authors Notes : (sniff) I think I need a hug.