FicWad

The silence wasn't normal quiet, but the soundless noise of Time Compression. It ate conversation, swallowed the whisper of cloth and the clink of chain, leaving them to wonder if they were all going deaf. They couldn't count on sound to alert them to danger any longer, and had begun to use touches - very light brushes against arms or hands - to gain a companion's attention. The only guarantee beyond that was to shout, and they didn't need the horrors of the Castle hunting them down as well.

Squall found his hearing sharpened - noises that would have gone unheeded normally now invariably caught his attention. The faintest chatter of rock falling on rock, a slither of pebbles on stone, echoed to Squall's Compression-deafened ears. He turned his head from the faintly lit gloom of the corridor to the dark corner they'd chosen for a camp. He bit back a little sigh when he saw Zell coming from the shadows. "You need rest. Sleep."

"Can't." It was impossible to say where the dullness came from; from depression, from exhaustion, from the sound-devouring silence...

Squall just waited. Time Compression or not, Zell was terrible with silence. He returned his attention to his watch-post, keeping an eye out for enemies.

"I'm running out," Zell blurted all at once, agitated. "This place, it's.."

"Hard on everyone," Squall interrupted flatly. "It's doing this to all of us. There's no choice left."

"I /know/," Zell replied, if anything edgier than before. He looked away, the admission grudging and hated. "I'm just...I'm losing it, Squall."

The loathing could not even be swallowed by Ultimecia's sorcery, and Squall didn't have it in him to deny it. He waved Zell to a seat on a shattered statue a few feet away; there were many such. Whether Ultimecia had once had an appreciation for art that had been lost with her sanity, or had always hated it and let her creatures deliberately destroy it, he neither knew nor cared, any more. "What do you need?"

The question was an invitation as well as a request for information, and Zell knew enough to take it that way, but he continued to hesitate. "I shouldn't have come," he said quietly, so that if Squall hadn't been listening the words would have been eaten by the silence. "I should've...known."

Squall had no patience for drama, or foreshadowing, or whatever Zell though he was doing. "/Zell/," he insisted. "Tell me."

"It's fucking...with my memory." Zell had his back firmly against the wall now, his fists clenched. "T-time. When is /now/, Squall? When's now? What's happening now?"

/Shit/. It was the only word that would do. Squall's eyes widened slightly as he saw what Zell was both aiming at - and avoiding. "Now you are here," he insisted. "Now is this castle."

One fist was steadily punching the wall. "Are you /sure/?" he asked, strained. "It's all - it's all one time now, isn't it? S'what they said it was going to be...all times to one time, forever..."

"Look at your hands," Squall ordered. "Look. Are they broken? Are they bare?" He reached over and caught the swinging fist, pulling the fingers out of their curl as no one else dared to do any more. "Your eyes tell you. Now is not /then/. It can't be."

Zell jerked his hand away, fingers flexing unconsciously, unheeded, and his other hand rubbed at where Squall's grip had been. "I know...and I don't. I'm losing it."

Squall couldn't argue with that, but neither could he afford it. The time was gone, now, too late to go back. And if he really did lose it, in this place, it'd blow the whole team apart. They'd had no more adequate a briefing for this mission than they had for the initial assassination attempt on Edea. He could not risk failure a second time. This now was too unbearable to let continue. He knew exactly what Zell was talking about. Memory, in this place, was unreliable - not because it was too absent, but because it was too immediate. Events of months ago felt blood-fresh in the mind, if you only let yourself think about it...

"Focus on this now," Squall said, his tongue almost tripping. He'd wanted to say /focus on me/, but that wouldn't help. Might make it worse, even. He held out his hand. "Lie down, and hold my hand. Try to sleep."

It was, at best, a temporary solution. Zell didn't control his mind any longer. He was flinching, twitching as he obeyed, lying down near enough to Squall to be almost touching, and raised a hand that trembled only slightly. Squall took it, squeezed firmly but not to cause pain. "Focus on this," he said. "This is now. It wasn't then. Can you?"

Fingers tightened around Squall's, loosened. "Y-yeah..." he said, and both of them knew it was at best a half truth, but there was nothing else.

"Then sleep."

Zell's breathing was lost in the oppressive silence and Squall could not use it to judge the state of his alertness, but Zell closed his eyes and lay still. Squall returned his attention to the distant lights in the corridors, and knew sleep wasn't sound by the occasional squeezing of his fingers.