the hollow | The Memories, Fire

Was it his fault? All it would have taken was a tiny little spell. A potion. A bird’s fucking feather and she wouldn’t have ... They could have talked about it. They should have been able to talk about it.

Anyone else, and she would’ve had support, and love, and someone to confide in.

He was useless. At emotions, anyway. There was always the Garden, always the young students and SeeD. The children he would never have.

The children she would never have.

Why did it have to hurt so much?

It had never hurt this badly when Shiva lived in him.

Why was living this fucking painful?

Why wasn’t he good en ...

Why didn’t she stay?

He was trapped, bug in a jar, beating his wings to tatters on memories of her. It hadn’t been so very much, had it? Except she’d been there, and he’d opened up, and even Zell thought he was becoming downright cheerful.

Stupid to think that could last.

That she would stay.

He stomped, whirled, slung his sword around in imitation of Seifer’s favorite move, shaking the sweat from his eyes and the ache from his soul. His arms burned, bright and hot, his reserves burned down to nothing, stomach more than empty, even Shiva a cold, tired weight in his mind. He wasn’t junctioned. Not yet.

He wanted to feel this burn just a little longer.

It all came down to control, after all. Lionheart described a perfect, luminescing curve, and he bared his teeth in a painful grin. This was all he had. This was all he could control. Just himself.

She was singing to him. Through his hands, humming up his arms to his heart, begging for a kill. Just one, Shiva whispered. Only one, Lionheart murmured. They hungered. Echoes of Eden, worse cravings than he remembered from before.

Not that he remembered much.

His leather jeans clung to his thighs, moved with him, a second skin as he poured everything he had into the sword and the sky and the melding of the two. Everything. And let everything else melt away.

He didn’t look like he should be able to move at all, much less like this. He was so fucking thin ...

Oh Hyne, he was just skin and bone.

His arm twined a rope of sinew and bare muscle shifting beneath fading scars. Lionheart danced a shimmering web in the still, close air of the Training Center, and Hyne if Irvine knew how the Commander had gotten here unnoticed. Irvine was leaning against the wall, Exeter over his shoulder in case of intrusion. Squall didn’t seem to notice.

His hair hadn’t been brushed in days, not since Irvine had found them, him curled in a puddle of her blood, streaked with it, not noticing, too out of it to notice when Irvine checked his teeth to make damn sure he hadn’t done this. It hung too-long in his eyes and down his back, knotted, tangled, wet. Soaked. Sweat slung from his out-flung arms, and soaked the thin white cotton tee that clung to his bird-like shoulders, fragile in their revealed musculature.

He’d been beautiful. His skin glimmered pale beneath the overhead arclights, and his damp hair stuck in odd directions with his efforts. He was too thin. Too thin, and he still wouldn’t eat. Irvine couldn’t make him eat, not any significant amount, no one could. He still was beautiful.

He wasn’t training. Not in the usual sense. This was a dance, an exercise. Lionheart shone. Squall gleamed, with bitter sweat that ran into his cold eyes and dripped in the dust. He wasn’t killing anything. Just dancing.

It was almost enough to worry him.

Irvine hadn’t seen him kill anything since her death

But Irvine knew, somehow, that he had.

Squall looked up, and an odd gleam began in his eyes, and he let Lionheart’s elaborations slow, and then stop. He should’ve been out of breath.

He met Irvine’s eyes, and the cowboy almost smiled.

Squall’s teeth bared in Irvine’s direction, but it was not a happy motion. Squall wavered, and Lionheart’s tip dropped to the earth.

“Squall?”

He didn’t speak. Irvine pushed off the wall, approached him on steady feet with a non-threatening air.

“How many times is this?” Irvine asked quietly, watching his silvering eyes carefully. Squall shifted, glanced away.

“Go away, Irvine,” he whispered. Irvine smiled grimly.

“I don’t think so,” Irvine said, placing a firm hand on Squall’s shoulder, ignoring his flinch. “I told you, I’m not leaving.”

“I thought maybe that was metaphorical.”

Irvine paused, feeling a half-smile begin to form. He forgot too often that Squall even had a sense of humor.

“Look, come on back to bed, okay?” Irvine prompted, tugging gently with one hand. Squall shook his head decisively.

“No.”

“Why not?” Irvine sighed. Squall could be so fucking stubborn.

“I need,” he began, fingers flexing on Lionheart’s hilt, eyes narrowed. “I need something ...”

“You’re restless,” Irvine said slowly. Realization began to dawn in violet eyes, and he almost smiled. “You need something to do.” It was actually a good sign, wanting something. Even something so obvious as a distraction.

“Yeah,” Squall agreed slowly, staring up at him, shifting Lionheart’s tip in the earth.

“Come on, then,” Irvine said brightly, turning to leave, dragging Squall after him in his enthusiasm. “I have an idea.”

“What?” Squall demanded, digging in his heels to little result, quickly becoming appalled at his weakened state as Irvine pulled him into the first airlock, the cowboy practically humming with excitement.

“You’ll see,” Irvine said mysteriously, Exeter forgotten in his hand as he gestured expansively with the rifle through the opening doors. “You’ll love it, this’ll be perfect.”

Irvine strode quickly down the long corridor and through into Garden proper, and Squall bit down on his protests as he was hauled along, not wanting to look like some erring cadet in front of the actual students. Who were staring at him as he passed, and whispering once his back was turned, and one girl pointed and there was sympathy and pain and fear and suspicion in almost every eye and he pressed closer to Irvine, not putting Lionheart away and not caring that everyone kept their distance from the bared weapons.

“Irvine, where are we going?” he hissed, fingering Lionheart’s trigger nervously as several children ran by, laughing.

“It’ll be fine,” Irvine soothed absently, eyes on a distant target as he led them past the curve of the central fountain to the Dormitories.

“Where?”

“My room,” the cowboy said easily. “Just gotta pick something up.”

“Okay,” Squall said slowly. It couldn’t be so bad. Irvine had a Single. There couldn’t possibly be people waiting for them.

“Now, I’ll need your word on something,” Irvine began as they walked through the corridor that led to the dorms, sunlight dappling through the trees in the courtyard to light his auburn hair to bright copper and gild his enthusiastic eyes. Squall nodded hesitantly, and Irvine took this as agreement. “You’ll have to treat her right, she’d been my baby for years ...”

“Kinneas, what are you talking about?”

“You’ll see,” Irvine grinned mysteriously, slowing as they approached his door. He stopped, and turned to face Squall with unaccustomed solemnity. “You promise?”

“Yeah,” Squall muttered. “Promise.”

“Great.” Irvine was grinning again, and the light blazed in his eyes and across his skin, striped, like warm clear honey. “Wait right here for a second,” he said quickly, palming open the door and ducking inside. After a moment, he called, “C’mon in!” Squall stepped through the door, letting his slide closed behind him. Irvine was standing by his bed, open case laid out behind him, holding out--

“A guitar?” Squall asked incredulously, staring at the instrument in Irvine’s broad hands. Irvine grinned.

“Yeah, a guitar. She’s my baby,” he said fondly, running gentle fingers over the lacquered wood. “It’s just a loan, understand. But you can borrow her until we get you one of your own.”

“How did you even know that I play?” he asked, still feeling somewhat dazed. Lionheart slipped in his hand, and he sheathed the blade quickly, reaching out to take the guitar and cradle it to him.

“You let slip in Centra,” Irvine said, tilting back his hat to watch Squall’s hands stroke down the smooth maple neck, trying hard not to remember that the curve of the silky-hard wood beneath his fingers always reminded him of a really nice cock. “Something about Seifer and an old grudge and that prick breaking your old one.”

“And I never got the chance to replace it,” Squall finished slowly. He looked up, already fingering out a chord, and smiled that tiny, crooked little smile that had almost died in the past few days. “Thank you,” he said, and Irvine nodded, unable to speak as Squall dropped to sit cross-legged on the floor and begin to play right there, eyes closing on a swell of music, and Irvine realized several facts in quick succession.

Anyone really is sexier behind a guitar.

Squall wasn’t just a dabbler, he was really talented.

Irvine wanted more than anything to play with him.

He’d need to buy another guitar.

13 days AR

Squall lay in bed, wide awake, staring at the water-damaged ceiling of his new dorm. The one they’d forced him into after Rinoa blew herself to pieces in his old room. Like a change of scenery would help. He blinked. The waterstain didn’t move.

Irvine shifted beside him, murmuring softly in his sleep what sounded like contentment. Squall tilted his head on the pillow so that he could see the cowboy’s closed profile, lips slightly parted, lashes dark against the copper-tinted skin of his cheek, skin that was beginning to bleed pale from too many days indoors. Too many days with Squall.

Squall felt a bolt of regret twinge through him. Like caging a wild animal, to ask this of him. To ask him to stay. Squall tugged his lower lip between his teeth, chewing thoughtfully until he tasted blood. Secure in the knowledge that it was his own.

She was gone.

Really, really gone. No Phoenix in the world to cure this one.

He rolled onto his side, shoving one arm beneath his pillow to cradle his aching head. Irvine’s flesh would bleach to a spotty pale, the freckles already visible beneath the tan, pores almost too small to see in satin-textured skin. It would be smooth to the touch, he knew.

The sun would rise soon. The sky bled gray through his single window, barring the ceiling in shades of darkness. Irvine’s hair seemed almost brown in this light, dulled by the absent sun. Squall raised his head on a sore neck to peer over Irvine’s form, locating the half-open door to the bathroom. He let his head fall back against the pillow with a little thoomping sound.

Almost too far to want to bother.

He flexed his fingers against the pillow-case, against the dull-green sheets, and thought briefly of taking Irvine’s guitar into the front room to play. But then Irvine shifted at his side, snuffling a little and burrowing into his pillow, and Squall blinked. Looked away. Rolled onto his back and sighed. His fingers worked and clenched into fists, aching for something more than music.

Lionheart called from its case. Her hilt would be sweet in his hand, and while they killed he wouldn’t have to think about ... anything, really. Nothing at all. He never had to think when they were together.

Then, it was just the dance. Steel-song and bitter blood. Nothing else.

He was almost jittering; his toes curled, and finally he sat up, easing the sheet aside so that part of it still covered Irvine. He got one foot out into the open without letting in a draft, then the other; he wriggled to the edge of the bed, and stretched until his toes touched cold tile. He began to shift his weight onto his feet, and--

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Squall stopped in mid-movement, his attempted sneak abandoned. He sat back down on the bed, sighed.

“The Training Center, then to work,” he said quietly. Irvine levered himself up onto one elbow, propping his temple on his fist as he stared up at Squall’s closed profile.

“No,” Irvine said after a moment. Squall stiffened, then turned silvering eyes on the cowboy. Who was stretching lazily, and to all appearances preparing to go back to sleep.

Squall glared at him for a moment. He moved to leave. Irvine’s hand shot out and caught his wrist in a crushing grip, and Squall snarled. Irvine hadn’t even opened his eyes.

Stalemate. Squall growled.

“What did you mean, no?” Squall finally asked, grudging the words. Irvine chuckled, a smile forming beneath closed eyes.

“You’re not going anywhere unless it involves food, Commander.” The title said with a gently mocking twist. “You need food, and sleep, in that order. No training for a while yet, and you certainly don’t need to go to work.”

“It’s been two weeks, Irvine,” Squall growled, laying down as slowly and begrudgingly as possible to take the strain off his shoulder. That bit of weakness alone only firmed his resolve to escape back to the Training Center. “Two weeks is too long to be away from anything. They’ll need--”

“They don’t need anything,” Irvine said quickly, his eyes snapping open to pin Squall’s wavering attention. Squall scowled, and looked away.

“So, they don’t need me?” he asked, his voice split equally between relief and perceived rejection. Irvine grred low in his throat.

“Yes, they need you,” he admitted. “But not in your condition. Give it some more time,” he continued, his voice low and persuasive as he tugged Squall a little bit closer into the sphere of his sleepy warmth. “Get better, then take care of everything once you’re well.”

Squall sighed, his body relaxing bit by bit as Irvine’s warmth seeped into him. Perhaps it wouldn’t do any harm to sleep a while longer.

“There,” Irvine said, snuggling Squall into the curve of his body. “This is much nicer than paperwork,” he mumbled, already slipping back into unconsciousness.

But she was still gone.

He lay quietly, trying harder than usual not to disturb Irvine, who’d begun looking a bit frayed around the edges. His fingers flexed, stilled. No help for it, no distraction to be found here. If ... His mind wheeled on a wistful dream of Rinoa’s warm flesh, white breasts beneath his darker hands, and his cock stirred.

But only for a moment, the dream falling beneath the weight of her death. So absolute, so final. It was, it shouldn’t have been this way.

The room brightened. If he could sleep. Irvine moved beside him, snuffled into the pillow, flung an arm across Squall’s face. It didn’t stay, slid down to rest uneasily on his neck, pulses mated. The positioning made it difficult to breathe, but he made no effort to move. Just stared up at the ceiling, running statistics through his restless mind, beginning calculations on the next term’s budget. His first full term as Commander, and he lay in bed, redoing a job better suited to Quistis, or better yet, Xu, who had at least been doing this for a few years.

Cid had left him in charge. Better they’d all died. He didn’t know what he was doing, or have a gift for command, or a head for numbers or anything else that might’ve proven useful. What did he know? How to fight. How to kill.

He closed his eyes. Killed a sob before it could form. Decided to distract himself with another topic altogether. Knew he didn’t really deserve distraction.

But Hyne, couldn’t Cid have found someone better? Commander at seventeen. Couldn’t Cid have found someone older, anyway? Squall snorted, amused at his own bitter thoughts. Too young for this or any other world.

Although. Who was there? He blinked, watched a streamer of light creep across the plaster ceiling. Cid was old enough, certainly, and the Commander of Trabia Garden had been an older man, Cid’s peer, if he recalled correctly. Which was, as always, in doubt. But Galbadia Garden had certainly been similar to Balamb. In every Garden, an older man ruled over several hundred SeeD. And of the SeeD ... Squall had never met a SeeD in his thirties. Or late twenties, he decided, furrowing his brow over the memory.

Young.

All of them so young. There must be older SeeD, he’d known older classmates, they’d graduated, and the casualty list hadn’t seemed out of order. Of course, he’d gone through the entire filing system in a matter of days, absorbing as much knowledge as possible after the confirmation of his appointment. Commander. Of what? Boys and girls, teenagers.

Why?

“What’re you worrying over now?” Irvine asked sleepily, moving his arm from Squall’s throat without crushing anything irreparably. Squall started out of his thoughts, facing Irvine with wide eyes and clear. The daze of sleep cleared out of Irvine’s eyes slowly as Squall watched, and the cowboy took in Squall’s expression, smiled, and settled back down to rest. “I thought we agreed on sleep,” he grumbled good-naturedly, tugging Squall to rest against him as though full body contact would ensure Squall’s compliance.

“You agreed on sleep,” Squall murmured. The heat did feel good; he’d been so cold, lately. “I just didn’t argue.”

“Well, then,” Irvine nodded. “Sleep it is. Planning to fight me on this one?” he demanded, any remaining seriousness stolen by a satisfied yawn. Squall felt a laugh build, released it as a chuckle. Irvine stiffened against him, obviously surprised, and Squall nearly laughed again.

“No,” Squall said, turning his head to rest against Irvine’s arm, commandeering the cowboy as a pillow as his tangled line of reasoning faded inevitably away. He yawned, reflected for a moment that the condition was truly contagious, and settled further into Irvine’s warmth.

“Well, then,” Irvine said, voice still faint with surprise. His arms tightened around Squall, and he smiled. “That’s more like it.”

“Go to sleep, Irvine,” Squall murmured, letting the rising lethargy steal over him and drag him down. Warm. And Irvine’s fading chuckle followed him into the dark. His last thought was a wish for dreamless sleep.

14 days AR

Squall’s fingers stilled over the sound board, eyes closed as though in thought, and he almost whispered “The light in my darkest hour is fear ...” He swept through a tangled chord, stopped. Irvine cleared his throat.

“Why don’t you write some of this down?” he said quietly. “It’s good stuff.”

“What for?” Squall asked frankly, looking up from the still vibrating strings.

“Because,” Irvine said blankly. “Because it’s good, because it’s worth keeping.”

“For what?”

“For ... I don’t know. Don’t you ever think of, I don’t know, starting a band ...”

“A band?” Squall said, his incredulity almost lost beneath Irvine’s voice.

“Yeah, something normal,” Irvine said defensively, running a hand over the curving belly of his own guitar, staring at the polished wood. “It’s not such a wild idea, is it?” he said, his voice almost wistful. “Doing something else?”

“Something other than this?” Squall pulled his knees up, almost cradling the guitar to his chest.

“Yes, something ... doing something different with our lives.” Irvine raked one hand through his auburn hair. “I mean, was it meant to be like this?” he continued, tossing a glance to the bare, soulless walls. “It doesn’t make you happy.”

“It’s not about my feelings,” Squall said. “What do you want us to do? This is what we do. We kill, Irvine. We kill. For money.” There were tears in his eyes, but he didn’t blink, didn’t move. “A fucking song or two isn’t going to change that.”

“Is that all you’re doing?” Irvine growled, rising up on one knee to peer into Squall’s eyes. “Can you sit there and tell me that you aren’t doing your best in that office up there? That we aren’t saving people’s lives by killing monsters? That you don’t worry about us, tear your heart out for ever casualty?”

“Yes.”

“What in Hyne’s name is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. It’s just death,” he said, his voice emptier than his eyes, too empty to bear. “It doesn’t mean anything greater.”’

“Then why not leave? Why not do something better with your life?”

“Like start a band?” he returned, doubt heavy in his voice.

“Yes, like start a fucking band! Why not? You like to play, and it might be good for you ...” he ended tentatively.

“Good?”

“Yeah. They say that talking about it can ...” Irvine paused, looking away from Squall’s glare. “It can, you can use the music to sort of work through it. The stuff you can’t talk about.”

Squall shifted, letting his eyes drift to stare blankly at the wall behind Irvine. “So sing it to strangers who wouldn’t even care?”

“They’d care,” Irvine muttered, the words almost ominous. “Besides,” he continued, raising his voice a bit. “Who cares if anyone listens? It’s not like money’s an issue. We could probably retire today and live comfortably off the back-salary we’re still owed from the War.”

“I’m not collecting that,” Squall said quickly. “Garden needs it.”

Irvine’s lips twisted into a frown. “Fine, whatever, we can live off mine, that’s not really the point ...”

“What is, then?” Squall said. Irvine almost snapped at him, but caught the teasing glint that was beginning to lighten his eyes, and couldn’t help grinning back.

“The point is that we don’t have to stay,” he said gently. “We're not orphans anymore, we’re not lost little kids with nowhere else to go. We don’t need the money. We could just go. Find something else we want to do and go. Live.”

“But I,” Squall began, stopping on a flash of remembered pain that stole any humor from his eyes. “I don’t think I can do anything else.”

“Won’t know till you try.”

“Yes, but ... sometimes I feel like I need ...” He stopped, staring into Irvine’s eyes like a lost man.

Irvine felt his own smile fade as he began to understand. “Oh,” he said faintly. Then he nodded. “Right, well, you could always ... stay on staff,” he said slowly, thinking aloud. “As a consultant, and come back whenever you need, whenever they ...”

“Part-time assassin?” Squall raised one brow at him, and Irvine smiled back nervously.

“Why not? I’ve heard of stranger things,” he said. “And I think it’d be good, to get away from this. If it just weren’t every day, all the time ...”

“Give up the Headmaster post?”

“You hate that job,” Irvine said dryly.

Squall nodded. “Replacement.”

“Easily trained,” Irvine grinned. “Well,” he paused. “Not easily. But it could be done.”

“Lighter duties?” Squall offered.

“Hyne, I’d settle for you getting an apartment in town,” Irvine said. “It’s this place, the atmosphere, it’s ...”

“Stifling,” Squall finished, thrumming a discordant handful of strings. Irvine grimaced, and nodded.

“If you could just get out of here, if we could get out, before you get lost in it again.”

“Lost?”

Irvine was still for a moment, weighing his words. Finally he said “Like when you were ...” His voice died. He seemed to steel himself, and continued, “During the War, after Eden, when you were mainlining Aura and hoarding every GF you could get your hands on ... Squall, I watched you eat a man,” he said, voice a whisper because some things are too horrifying to be truly spoken aloud, and he cried “I watched you tear a man into fucking bite-sized pieces, and I held you all night long after you realized what you’d done. You were ... You were not in control, Squall. You were. Hyne, you were elsewhere and do you even remember this?” he said desperately.

Squall wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t speak, and Irvine set his guitar aside to inch closer.

“Squall?” he whispered. “Squall, I just don’t. You scare me sometimes, you know that, man?”

Squall blinked, fingers scratching lightly at the lacquered surface of his guitar. He drew a shaky breath.

“I remember,” he said, voice almost too quiet to hear, almost startling Irvine with its clarity. “I remember every second of it and do you seriously think I need to be anywhere but here?” He finally met Irvine’s gaze, his eyes hopeless and very blue. “I’m dangerous, Irvine. I crave ... things, sometimes, still.”

“I know,” Irvine said, feeling the words useless on his tongue. Squall’s pain was bright in those blue eyes, lost for a hint of silver. “But ... I trust you.”

“I don’t.”

“If you did, I might start to worry.” Irvine tried to grin, failed. “You’re not dangerous, Squall,” he said seriously. “Not like you think.”

Squall just shook his head, frustration pain in his lost eyes. “Can’t leave. If I don’t ... I need ...”

“I know you have Shiva,” Irvine said, taking pity on Squall’s fumbling attempts at an explanation. Squall stared at him, eyes silvering, not so lost now. Irvine held up his hands quickly, a placating gesture. “We all know. Well, suspected. But it’s okay,” he said, too brightly. “We understand. We worry, but we understand.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Well, me, Selphie ... Zell and Quisty, and your father,” he said, rushing through the last few words.

“My father?”

“He worries about you,” Irvine explained. “We don’t tell him everything. He’s a good man, Squall ...”

“Don’t,” Squall said shortly, letting his guitar slide to the floor as he climbed to his feet. Irvine winced as the strings hummed in protest, and started after Squall.

“Squall, we didn’t, I just want you to be well.”

Squall ignored his cry, stalking into his bedroom and letting the door slide shut behind him. Irvine watched the light turn red, and cursed. He took a step toward the locked door, stopped. He knew the passcode, but.

“It’s not the end of the world,” Irvine said quietly, eyeing his discarded hat on the sofa. “Just a setback.” He clapped the hat to his auburn hair, paused again. “And anyway, he can’t be that mad.”

A/N Title taken from Jeff Buckley’s “Mojo Pin”, Squall's 'original' lyrics taken from silverchair's "tuna in the brine".

Thanks to Scribblemoose for her work as first-reader and beta.