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Like Ice in the Sunshine
I can't walk this road without you, The first thing she becomes aware of is red. Just red, everywhere, encompassing her entire existence. Then a throbbing, like aftershocks of a terrible earthquake, occuring with gruesome exactness and frequency. Now the almost unbearable pain, permeating her consciousness in quick stabs that wrest throughout her slight frame and drive the air out of her lungs. She remains in this state for an eternity of seconds, her mind too anguished to form a sensical thought, the acrid redness flowing into her nostrils and stealing her breath while her broken body wrenches pitifully every half-second. Finally, in one strangely terrifying instant, the smothering red shatters and lays her mind bare to merciful blackness. Irrational panic grips her mind with its icy fingers. Who is she? Where is she? Why can't she see? She is blind! She is blind, or the world has turned dark. Is this her world at all? At last a coherent idea drifts to the surface of her mind. Jessie. She is Jessie. But why can't she see? She knows she isn't blind. Experimentally, she tries moving. Mistake. She wants to scream out in agony, but all that will come out is a whimper. Tears fill her eyes and at last she becomes aware of the crushing weight on her left arm. Now her mind is clearing for real, with vague impressions becoming legitimate memories and the old weariness settling back into her bones. Of course, remembering where she must be doesn't clarify anything for her. Naturally, she must be under the plate. The last thing she can remember is lying on the metal staircase to the pillar, waiting to die, gunshot wounds reeking in her shoulder, leg, and right side. She remembers seeing, as her vision clouded over, three familiar shapes gliding off the platform and disappearing into safety. She remembers the knowledge that she would never see them again, and the almost peaceful awareness of her own impending doom. Then, as the pillar crumbled, she can remember the staircase twisting and collapsing and carrying her down to ground level. And she can remember watching the Sector 7 plate as it rushed towards her. And then.... Nothing. That is her last memory. But if she was crushed by the plate.... either her memory is flawed, or the Lifestream isn't all as great as her mother used to tell her. Jessie closes her eyes and tries to make sense of where she is. The pain is seeping slowly away now, just enough to allow freedom of movement and no more. To remind her of its authority, it courses through her again every ten seconds or so. The plate must have folded or cracked as it fell, she decides at length. And somehow she ended up under the slight cavity that would allow. The roof of the pillar's platform must have been additional protection. Slowly, carefully, she raises her right arm to reach above her. With her fingertips fully extended, and bolts of alarmed pain screaming down her arm in protest to this unexpected position, she can feel cold steel. Her left arm was not as lucky as the rest of her, she realises. She can't feel it, and when she reaches over with her right arm, she finds that it's underneath the plate. Crushed. Like she thought all of her would be-- like she felt all of her had earned the right to be. She worked so hard. And she was challenged by much more than she should have been, grew so much older than she should have in her nineteen years. When she was faced with it, it seemed a luxury to die. To go to sleep and never wake up again, to leave the hellish existence she called life behind forever. But she had been denied even that. She will die, eventually; trapped under the plate, she will starve or she will bleed to death. But those deaths are long and agonising. She'd welcomed the quick way out it seemed she was being offered. She had even thought her gunshot wounds were fatal. Mockingly enough, none of them seems to have damaged any vital organs whatsoever, and the bleeding is minimal. It must be her penance for the deaths she caused. It wasn't satisfactory to just kill her, no, they had to draw it out... The people her bombs killed had quick deaths, didn't they? ...Didn't they?! Or can she add giving hundreds slow, torturous deaths to her list of crimes against everything pure and right? A sudden thought comes to her. What of Biggs and Wedge? Wedge... no, he was out in the open, had no protection from the falling plate. And he was probably dead from his fall before it even came down. She shuts her eyes again, bitter tears finding their way out. Wedge had wanted so badly to live. He had been so passionate and enthusiastic... So, she realises with a shock, had she. She'd thrown herself into everything she had ever done with unmatched energy. Her insatiable will to survive had been with her until what she believed was the end, and then it had seemed to trickle away in preparation for what was coming. Could she ever get it back? If she could, would there even be a point? She knows she'll die here in the darkness. No one will mourn her, no one will talk about her. Barret and Tifa might have, but they're doing so many more important things now that she doubts they will ever have occasion to think of her again. If her body is ever discovered, the falsified name on the fake ID will be recorded. Not her own. Her name, her life, everything she ever accomplished, it all dies with her here. Now. ...Or does it? She feels her will creeping back into her charred soul and illuminating its dark chambers once again; life is flowing back through her. May it not have returned in vain, she says silently to whoever may be listening to her prayers. Then she turns her mind to thoughts of survival. She briefly entertains the thought that she could dig a tunnel out from underneath. After all, the dirt is soft and she's fairly near the edge. The extreme absurdity of the idea strikes her a moment later and she almost laughs. Almost. Another idea now. If the plate buckled directly above where she is, there may be a crack she can pull herself out of. She has pathetically little strength left, but it is enough to get her to a place where someone can help her. A sound nearly causes her to have a heart attack. Something moved. Something close to her. Then another faint noise. It's a moan. Feeble, heartbreaking, but definitely human. Biggs! Could he possibly be alive, too? Now that she thinks about it, his location on the staircase was almost directly below her own. He would have ended up in the same cavity she's in. But no. He's probably dead from the gunshot wounds. After all, the odds of three gunshots all missing vital organs and causing only minor wounds to her were impossibly unlikely. As much as she wishes he could be alive, too, there's no way Biggs had been granted the same wild luck. But then... what had the noise been? She tries to speak. Her voice will not come out, and she makes a hoarse rasping sound, then coughs violently. "H... hullo?" she finally croaks. She prays someone will respond. Seconds pass. Jessie's body, which had tensed up in giddy anticipation, slumps again. How could she have been stupid enough to ever think that-- "Juh...je..." Her heart begins to pound. Beads of icy sweat appear on her face. She's imagining things, she knows it. "Jessie, is that you?" "Biggs?" she cries, her face distorting as she bursts into tears. "Yes," he croaks. "Yes, it's me. I thought you were dead..." As he says the last part, his voice cracks. Jessie has never heard Biggs do anything so close to crying, but at the moment her thoughts are anywhere else. "You're alive...." Jessie's sobbing violently now. Most of her tears are for joy. As for the others, who can tell? "Well, you know," he says, trying to sound cocky and failing, "it isn't all that easy to get rid of me." She doesn't respond. She can't. "Where are you?" he says at length, his voice still unsteady. "Are you... okay?" "Kind of a stupid question, don't you think?" she says weakly, her tongue thick in her mouth, tears still running freely down the sides of her face. "Gimme a break," he murmurs, again trying unsuccessfully to put some vitality into his voice. "You know I've never been the sharpest crayon in the box." "How are your wounds?" she asks uncertainly as she gains the upper hand in the battle to quell her tears. "Bad," he responds hoarsely. "But not worse." "Me, too," she answers quietly. A new feeling of helplessness washes over her as she lies on her back in the dirt. "I wonder when it is," Biggs remarks, making a valiant effort to be conversational and nonchalant. "What do you mean?" she says, then coughs violently. "You don't have to get sick, it was just a question," he mutters sulkily. She calms her burning throat as best she can. "You're.... stupid." "Yeah, I know." "Well, what DID you mean?" "I meant I wonder when it is. How long we've been unconcsious, and whether it's night or day." "Why does it matter?" "Well," he says carefully, "if there's a crack above us, and it's night, then we'll be able to see it when morning comes, and maybe get out of here. But if it's day now..." his voice trails off. "Then we might as well reserve a place in hell right now," she finishes. "Geez, you're bitter. You never used to say things like that." "Well, I've never been bleeding to death under four hundred tons of steel before." He doesn't respond for a long time and she wonders if maybe he's died. The horror of the idea is something new to experience, so she entertains the thought for quite a while until his voice comes again. "You should really try to be optimistic about this, Jess." He doesn't speak at all abruptly, but it startles her nonetheless. "And how do you recommend I do..." she coughs again, "..that?" "Weeeeeeeell," he says, sounding thoughtful, "best case scenario, it's six in the morning and in a few minutes the sun-lamps will come on and we'll see a crack and get out of here. Worst case scenario, at least we can die together, right?" "Thanks for setting my mind at ease," she grumbles, and coughs again. "But it won't be the sun-lamps," she hears him murmur. It's so quiet she wonders if she imagined it. "Did you..." she pauses to breathe. Who would have thought talking would ever take so much out of her... "...say something?" "It won't be the sun-lamps that come on if the plate fell. The sun-lamps were ON the plate. What we'll see if there's a crack is the sky." Suddenly the dirt and grime feel softer underneath her. "The sky..." she utters lightly, lips parted. "Man, it's been forever since I've seen the real sun. I remember back in Kalm when I was a kid... they had the most beautiful sunrises," he goes on, despairingly garrulous. Maybe he thinks that if he stops talking, they'll both fall asleep and die. He swallows. "What about you?" "I've never seen the real sky," she says quietly. "Gotta be kidding me.... serious?" "Yeah...." "Ugh! Born in Midgar! Lived in Midgar! Never left Midgar! What a life. How did you stay so cheerful?" "It's not as bad as you think.... it's probably worse the way you did it, because you know there's something more, you've felt it, and you can't have it anymore... I could be content in Midgar because I've never known anything better than Midgar." "What about now?" "Does it matter anymore?" "It does if you want to live." "I... I'm not sure I do...." she says, then quickly amends the comment as she hears the beginnings of a choked expletive from Biggs. "I mean, of course I do... I just don't know if I should... if I deserve to." "Hell, Jessie. You deserve life a lot more than some people. The Shinra are still alive. Do they deserve it?" "I don't know... I don't know, dammit! Just... let me be," she finishes as her eyes fill with confused tears again. "I'm not going to let you--" "I just mean for now," she snaps, more harshly than she intended, trying to muffle the sounds of her sobbing. "I want to sleep." And, almost as she says the words, she surprises herself by falling immediately into slumber. * * * Biggs remains still until he hears Jessie's laboured breathing subside into the gentle rhythm of sleep. Then, with no small difficulty, he arches his back and sits up. Surprisingly, it doesn't hurt that badly-- well, it still feels like someone is taking a chainsaw to his gut, but it felt like that when he was lying down, too. He'd been gunned down on the first landing of the staircase up the pillar, and with a clumsy groping movement of his arm, he discovers that his is the only section of the stairs still intact. He'd been shot five times, but all were in the legs, save for one which seems to have hit his collarbone. The wounds will effectively keep him from walking, but it doesn't really matter; there's not space to walk upright anyway. He only has to move his head slightly to feel the metal of the plate brush against his forehead. He carefully maneuvres himself down the remains of the metal steps, wincing with each stair. Finally on the reassuring dirt, he makes the humiliating discovery that he'll have to allow himself a few moments to recover before he can move again. He lies, panting heavily, abstractly making an effort not to wake Jessie while his mind goes through mechanical cycles of cursing: first Reno, next all the Turks, next all of Shinra, then his father, and then back to Reno. It has an ambiguous calming effect. Deciding to establish Jessie's location, he gracelessly rolls onto his stomach and then crawls in the direction of her breathing. Navigating the twisted vestiges of the stairs that he discovers in front of him isn't easy, the only limb of which he has full mobility being his left arm, and the total lack of light coupled with the painful effort of moving at all doesn't help. After about twenty seconds of the mirthless work, he stops again to rest, facedown on the dirt. Being reduced to such a position... he shakes his head, or would if he had the means to do it. He thinks about where he could be right now if he hadn't taken this path. He could be a cigar-chomping executive on the 64th floor of Shinra, Inc. with more money in his bank account than the entire population of the slums put together and more women than Don Corneo. Well, maybe not.... and he wouldn't want THAT many women... he's no pervert. One or two would be fine... and he'd certainly never resort to buying them like Corneo. Not that he'd have to. He smiles at his own idiocy and lets the train of thought run. So he probably wouldn't be an exec, at least not yet. Maybe some kind of office worker... he tries to picture himself wearing a business suit and tapping data into a computer and fails. More likely he'd be a grunt soldier in Shinra's army. Heck, he could probably have joined the real SOLDIER... after all, if that skinny mercenary Cloud had been in it, there's no way they could keep Biggs out! Just give him a six-foot sword and see how much stuff HE could chop up. At length he puts an end to the absurdity. To do such a thing would be betraying himself. But mightn't that be better than where he is now? Why did he do it, anyway? Join a group like AVALANCHE , knowing it probably would eventually cost him his life... now that it effectively has, he has to face his true motives. But he looks deep within himself and can't figure out what they were. It's not that he didn't want to save the planet... of course he did-- does. And he hates Shinra because of what they're doing to it. Yet... was that really why he joined? It's vague, hidden to him. He can't think of why else he would have taken up something like this, but somehow it doesn't seem like those were the real reasons. Maybe he did it as some sort of rebellion against what he's learned to hate all his life... he clears his mind. In any case, there are more important things to think about now, even if he doesn't quite know what they are.
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