Disclaimer: is not mine
A/N: So this was originally a one-shot, and then I couldn't stop writing it after I posted it as a one-shot. So here is the next installment in what is NOW 'Spiral'.
Chapter 2: Silence
There are different kinds of silence, he muses to himself as he sits alone in his tiny room. There's the silence of an empty room, echoing and vast. And the silence of people trying not to be heard. That one isn't quite as silent as the first; as illogical as it seems, it's almost as though you can hear their heartbeats, their hushed breathing, as they wish for you to go away, not to notice them, to leave them alone.
Then there's the silence that is painfully awkward, because he said something stupid or socially unacceptable. It's his second-least favorite kind of silence, but he used to hear it all the time. Now all he hears is his least favorite kind.
This kind isn't actually silent. It is constantly punctuated by mutters, cackling, sobs, and outcries. It's the silence of the madhouse, of the Loony Bin of which he is King, where he lives now. This silence hurts. It cuts like a knife, and it won't stop.
He misses his favorite kind. In the lab, on a slow day between cases.
When he closes his eyes, he's back there again.
Quiet mutters and muffled music from where Hodgins is listening to his iPod as he messes around with some particulates from Ancient Egypt. Off-key humming drifting out of Angela's office, occasionally broken by soft grumbles as she eyes her current paintings with dissatisfaction. The clicketty-clack of Cam's heels as she passes through the lab, eyes locked on the papers in her hand, missing the hopeful smile he sends her way. Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan, arguing amiably about something absurd in her office.
It might not be traditional silence, or even actual silence, but it's what he thinks of when he hears the word. It's the sound he focuses on every night, when the screams and wails grow near-deafening, threatening to drag him down into genuine madness with the rest of the inmates.
His sound of silence keeps him from killing himself, but every night it grows harder and harder to summon his silence to his ears. Every night, the mutters and humming and clicking and laughter grow fainter as the shrieks grow louder.
Soon, a night will come when he can't hear his silence anymore. He knows that night, he will kill himself.
Illogical as it may be, he can't live here without his own, personal silence.
He needs it, needs to remember them. Her. He needs to remember his old life, and when he was happy.
-*-
A/N: Yay, depressing! But by the end of what I have planned, it will be happy. Or at least, not 'Gahhh I have to die'.