Thank you so much for the Reviews, the Favourites, the Follows. This is for you.
.
There were only two people who ever wrote me letters. One of them was Joanna, because her new shifts were complicated. The other was him, because talking on the phone was useless. He didn't do it on a weekly basis or anything of the sort. Hell, it was hard enough to get him to write me once a month. I never demanded him to, of course. Embarrassing, was it?
They were always pretty much the same. The greeting was short, with my name only, and he constantly wished for everything to be going well. He talked about his time with Cid too, how it was to help out the guy's old man in his car repair workshop. Once or twice he would say he missed the Graveyard, but the words slithered in and out quite shortly, unimportantly.
In every letter, there were always some scratched out words in the middle of the compact text, which began to bother me after a while…
And even though I knew I wasn't supposed to, one day I tried to read them.
As I held the front of the letter against the window, against the sunlight, some of those words could nearly talk to me. Kiss you. Touch you. Hold you. I could easily picture him writing those down, cringe at their sound and scratch them out. I would have done it myself, if I never thought it through before writing down my replying letters – the result was always an half-detailed and formally boring inventory of my days in Vane.
Reading the hidden words, I nearly gave up halfway until I met with the last paragraph. He was describing a dream – a nightmare that he had a couple of days before writing me, where I died and died, time and time again. At first it was messy and made little to no sense at all, but I knew Zack was enjoying himself as he described every sordid detail. He made himself quite clear about that.
However, after reading the words – the words that he scratched out over and over, like a blade cursing through a beating heart – the whole paragraph suddenly made sense. I doubt I even understood, back then, how much sense he made…
I want to make love to you, he said.
I want to… Make love to you, he said again.
I didn't recognise the sound of those words, but reading them under Zack's handwriting, no matter how fidgety, filled me with a warmth I had never experienced before. Almost instantly, I clutched the thin paper sheet in my hand and reduced it almost entirely.
I wanted those words to be my words. And I wanted them to be mine. Franticly and nearly without thinking, I left my small wooden desk at the corner of the room and run to the door, locking it with no sound. It was mad and I could almost laugh now at how desperate I must have looked. But those words, the hidden words… I needed to make them disappear before Zack even tried to take them back. He was unstable, he could try anything.
In the end, was I really a drug? Were I true to myself more often and I would swear I was addicted.
I had been addicted for so long I couldn't breathe anything else.
Kadaj pointed that out quite frequently, actually. He poked me between my eyebrows and complained at my brooding face. You're hooked – he would say, not knowing half of it.
One day, I asked him to stop.
"Well, I'm sorry if it annoys you but you are hooked." he said, stressing the words like he owned every purpose of reason.
I squinted. "What can you possibly know about my life to keep saying things like that?" I asked, upset.
He shrugged, playing with his bubblegum around his fingertip, and resumed his reading.
In order to keep my scholarship, I knew I needed to work twice as hard as anyone. Every spare time I had on my hands was, therefore, put to good use in the local library or it the park, where I had learnt to improve my landscape paintings and portraits.
This was where I came to meet Kadaj, a lonesome figure I was never sure how to deal with. I didn't know where he lived, if he studied or how old he ever was, but he did take a sudden interest in my drawings and I didn't push him away.
Playing the drag queen wasn't the fashionable hit of the nineties, but Kadaj could still pull it off quite well. I assumed it was only normal, in such a big city and all. If felt eerie at times, but I never blamed him for it. He wore velvet leggings and pointy oxford shoes, his silver hair usually adorned with a couple of hairpins or feathers. I guessed Grace would've read a lot of herself in him…
But Kadaj knew nothing of Grace, or Traverse, or Zack. He always talked a lot, mostly to himself, but he never asked about my life.
Every sunny afternoon, if I had no work waiting at the coffeehouse, I could find him outside in the local park, always on the same stone bench. He would be reading Wilde – a skeletal leg dangling in the air –, or flirting with the girls across the gravel path.
An intriguing creature, I always thought, and it came to me quite as a shock when Squall said he had no idea who he was.
"Really? He really stands out, that's why I asked." I explained, very briefly.
Squall scratched his head, biting the end of his scalpel. Recently, he had been playing with clay a lot.
"Nope, doesn't ring a bell." he said, short and simply, after giving it some thought.
"Hum. Alright." I let the subject die as I tried to focus on the Pre-Raphaelites. I never cared, particularly, about people, no matter how flamboyant they looked.
Little did I know then, Kadaj was reserved to do very interesting things in the future.
Little did I know then, that in five years or little more I would turn on the TV to learn of his death, in a motel room, where he had been found by an old gatekeeper, naked and with a bullet to his head. TV itself must have grown a little taste after that, for I don't recall ever seeing another silverhead recoiled before his bathtub, emotionless green eyes open – in his left temple, a dark scarlet hole exhaling blood from within. So much for Marylyn's overdose.
"Gentlemen prefer Blondes wasn't a very good picture," was Edea's response every time I used that analogy. And I would smile, even to myself, each time I heard her voice inside my head.
"No, it wasn't." I muttered, alone, like I would have muttered back at her, were she there.
Life in Vane was lonely sometimes…
Squall never introduced me to people, despite Aerith's pleas. He never introduced himself to people, so one could only hope so much.
"He's really useless, isn't he?" she once cried over the phone, her voice slightly more subtle than I remembered.
"Really, it's fine. I talk with enough people already!" I said, unaware of how much of it was true.
"Well, you really have to if you want to survive the following years…" she insisted.
I laughed, "It's ok, I mean it. I may struggle a little bit now, but it will be fine." I said.
The machine asked me for another coin and only then did I try to remember why I had rushed out to call her. Because I missed her, maybe? How lame could that be. I really saw no other reason, though I would never confess it out loud. The old lady behind me, waiting to use the phone booth for nearly ten minutes now, gently tapped her walking-stick on my heel.
It was starting to drizzle again, I noticed…
"I have to head back now. My turn to buy dinner!" I laughed, almost bragging.
She chuckled, genuinely, on the other end of the line. I knew right away that was the reason I called.
"Take care, Cloud. And please forgive Leon's lack of courtesy. You see, he is quite—"
"Please don't say bipolar. One's more than enough!" I interrupted.
"You mean Zack?" she laughed – "Leon is nothing like Zack, sweetie. I just hope—" a rumble of thunder, at the distance, cut off her words.
"What?" I asked. The drizzle was growing stronger. I remember it was only the 5th or 6th of April.
"I said, I just hope you won't find that the hard way!" Aerith nearly screamed now, to be heard, but her voice didn't sound half as threatening as her actual words. Indeed, she could've been smiling.
I only tried to understand it afterwards, a couple of weeks after that phone call. I got no answer though, because for one reason or another Squall wouldn't let go of it.
I, for one, wouldn't think of it twice anyway. It would be tiresome if I did.
It was half-past nine on a wet Wednesday night, and I was soaked to my bones as I threw my scarf, my jacket and anything else I could possibly carry on my bed.
"Fuck this rain! This is not normal!" I yelled, reaching for my ugly old jumper. It smelt like home.
A chuckle rose from the back of the room. "You're unusually late, aren't you?" he asked.
"Hum. Work." I shrugged – "We held a birthday party today. Kids everywhere!" I grumbled, oddly upset.
I ate alone like I usually did, around the small coffee table, making little effort to even taste the cold spaghetti noodles Squall had kindly ordered. Then it was only silence for a while, with him away on his corner rasping and moulding clay.
Only later would he come to me and loose an open envelop on my lap. As I looked up, his fingers played through his brown locks.
"My name came on it too so I read it." he said. Then, very shortly – "Plane tickets."
I frowned at the unexpected surprise. Yes, plane tickets. To Little Traverse. In two weeks it would be Easter break, so it was only normal for me to go home. I never understood why Squall had been invited to come as well, though I figured Aerith to be somewhat involved…
Aerith. That was the very first time I wanted to ask Squall about her, about their relationship, but his eyes ultimately told me not to. Not yet. And thence my doubts died in vain.
As Little Traverse approached, so did Zack – in the most unpredicted way.
"So, you telegraph now?" I asked, during one of the following rainy afternoons, as soon as he picked up.
"Didn't know how to make you call…" he said.
I smiled. "Call this number and ask for me. Someone will get me down here."
"Right." a short pause – "You're really coming?" he asked, very quietly, but in what sounded like a search for breath.
I sat on the metal stool beside the booth. Nodded, – "Yeah. How did you know?"
"Edea told me. I thought… Well, I can pick you up at the train station if you want." he said.
"How?" I asked, my voice denouncing my sudden excitement.
Zack wouldn't answer, of course. When he laughed, I wondered how much time had it been since I last heard such captivating sound. We agreed he would be picking us up then, and I was yet to give him the precise hour upon which we were to arrive.
I didn't tell him right there Squall was coming, partially because it didn't really matter since he was Aerith's problem. I don't think I gave it too much thought then, though maybe I should have.
Until Easter break he would call almost every day. To this day I don't know what changed regarding our communication problem, but at least we didn't spend thirty minutes immersed in absolute silence.
I talked about my school projects and he pretended to care. He talked about life in old Chocobo Street and I laughed, genuinely, at every word he said. I also knew he made up a lot, trying to keep the news fresh for me. Truth being told, Little Traverse was never an interesting place, and my leaving had no impact, made no difference, mattered to no one.
I once felt the need to ask him about those words; the scratched out words in his letters. I postponed the question because it was too late into the night, but Zack never called me back after that, nor bothered to accept my calls.
Only later did I come to understand why.
"It became too hard. You know, boys his age…" – I was twelve all over again and Edea would lecture me likewise, even over the phone.
But I wasn't twelve.
It just happened that one night, when Zack wanted to hear my voice, my dorm was empty. Unwillingly, I broke my silent promise and no one got me down to the lobby to receive his call.
You see, I was sixteen years-old, and one day, finally, Squall Leonhard introduced me to people.
Geez, this was weak! I promise something much much better next time.
Review, please? :)