It began from what had appeared to be chanced occurrences. An accidental passing along various lone corridors when one was being escorted out of Shin-ra laboratory's chopping block and in, went the other seemed to have grown in frequency that I could not help but question their probability. So scarcely has the professor been without a motive and these, the meetings, seemed designed. Hence, even a mind as gravely haunted by guilt and regret could rarely bring itself to ignore what differed naught from a contingency at first glance. One can always play the game without knowing yet the rules, and we have been at ours far too long. Too tantalizing like the moon colouring the boy's silken tresses is the promising prize that I have simply discovered myself unable to do naught else but, with a distinct sense of effort, to withhold my gaze...
-- saving for that first time when we passed in the corridor
&
...now
So long had it been since the fateful night of my death. So long had it been as well since I lost the path she had so assigned. That a shock of the professor's allowance -- for I could usually read the works of his mind -- was to be experienced with such an intensity really brought no surprise then. All it took was one careless gaze, a rather routinized and trained act to assess my surroundings, to bring my attention to the boy's youthful face, and from that, for recognition to blossom.
Assailed by a rush of dread, betraying limbs plainly refused to move. A solitary word forming the boy's name became the sand that absorbed all the moist in my throat, leaving only their grating selves. So great was the irritation caused by those coastal glebe that I had almost cough out his name.
Still, his game this was recognised to be and I had let my gaze linger far too long already.
So without a word, we had parted. Twin claret pools were kept ahead and direct at the lone empty corridor to my front. To curious observers, the boy, my escorts, his escorts, and the cameras lurking each and every corner of this facility may not very well exist. To me, the void I felt inside was heavier than words could describe.
There is no chain
of greater strength than
possibility
&
...regret.
Came our second encounter, I was more prepared. So was I in our third and our fourth. When an element of surprise is the tool he may not wield, as all Turks' have long learnt, I do know how to be circumspect. An adequate attention was granted as how I would regard my two guards but nothing more. Meanwhile my mind has been reeling, contemplating the possibility of our escape.
As I said,
there was no stronger chain than
possibility
&
...regret.
If I played the game right, I know the professor would reveal his next card soon.
I know what I have in my hand.
Our fifth meeting -- now -- did not happen in just any lone corridor but in one of the chopping blocks when by some convenient incident our guards' attention is demanded elsewhere, leaving only us, their threats and the hovering silence within the enclosed and nearly empty room. Just so that they can be certain, or more so directed by the professor's undisclosed instructions, my right wrist is cuffed to the only bed therein the whitewashed room. Its chromium construction blends perfectly into the steel to which I am chained and roots to the very ground beneath our feet. The screws used to perform the deed have the look of things newly purchased; I can hear it now, the imaginary sound of the recording VCR being turned on.
Only when the last of the soldiers' heels fades into complete silence did I lift my gaze. That I was asked to sit on the floor earlier has compensated perfectly the discrepancy in our height. Tired as the gaze is, claret orbs would still burn with as vivid a shade as the sanguine streak slipping through my raven mane and down the side of my face. The guards had not been gentle in their demand and unlike the boy, one lost number is hardly that important -- all rumours disregarded.
