Selphie held her books close to her chest, "Sooooo …."
"Yeah," Quistis said, standing with her on the first landing. They had just come from Cid's office. It was a day like any other day – Tuesday, just before lunch, 11 a.m., and the walkways below were busy. Students were walking to the cafeteria or heading outside. Down below Zell was heading toward the cafeteria all by himself.
"There's really nothing else to do," the words drifted out as she watched Zell walk along, happy and oblivious. As Selphie turned to see, Zell looked up, startled, aware somehow that he was being secretly watched. He waved cheerfully and kept on toward the cafeteria.
"I don't think we need to involve him," Selphie said.
"Yes," Quistis shook her head, "no! No, better not to. This is going to be hard enough as it is."
"Yeah …," Selphie said wearily, still watching.
They were both tired of talking and worrying and talking some more. Cid, also tired of it all, had just finished discussing the matter with both of them. Zell had been called in to see Cid a few times but … and this was the mystery to Quistis – Zell wasn't as concerned about the whole mess as Selphie and she were. Fujin and Raijin were more upset about the incident than Zell. So Selphie and Quisty made a pact to leave Zell out of it … for now.
"Are you sure you …," Selphie said, looking up at her blonde friend. The horrible thing that had happened made her feel old, as if she were 18 already.
"Yeah," Quistis said, nodding and watching all of the students. She hoped she would get lucky and see him. "Let me go alone. We don't want to piss him off."
"Good idea," Selphie said, "um, I guess I'll wait to hear from you. Call me like RIGHT AFTER you …."
Quisty had books of her own to hold, almost as a defense of sorts. She held onto them with one arm crooked. With her free hand she pulled her dark blue skirt down under her butt and smoothed her jacket down around her waist so that it didn't look bunchy. She wanted to look official.
"All right," was all she said, heading down the stairs to the first floor walkway. She blended in with the crowd heading for the cafeteria, everyone saying Hey, Quistis … heading for lunch? … what's up? … wassup? … what up, teach? She smiled and went along with it until she saw just the right person. His name was ...
"Sayu!" She called out. He was a small, intense kid, like Squall had been back in the day, and even looked a little like Squall – messy brown hair, blue eyes, but Sayu's face was a little chubbier than Squall's had been at 14. Sayu glanced at her over his shoulder, every bit as humorless as Squall. They were both friends.
"Have you seen Squall?" She said as casually as possible.
"Yeah, he said he was gonna kill himself," Sayu said with a straight face.
The blonde teacher gasped and stopped in her tracks. A few of the kids heard the exchange between the two and gasped in shock, stopping to hear more.
Quistis ran up on him, "Sayu …!"
Sayu looked back at her and smiled, "Just kidding. He wants you to leave him the hell alone."
Real funny. She almost stomped her foot but stopped herself. She was making a serious effort here to be a little more grown up. Doing so, she didn't notice that she had come to a complete standstill while the children continued to move around her, heading onward, ever onward toward lunch.
Selphie had called for Squall from Cid's office, hoping he would answer a call from Cid. But he hadn't answered. That only meant he wasn't in his room, so they crossed that off their list. Selphie promised to keep an eye out for him from her vantage point while Quisty hunted him from the ground. So now, what – he was avoiding them on purpose? That kind of stuff made her even more determined.
"Um, instructor," a tiny voice came from behind. It was a 7th grade student from the phys basics class Squall was teaching part-time, the way Quisty had started out, just two days a week. The little girl's name was Ava and she was probably as small and thin as Selphie had once been.
Quisty scooted quickly out of the lane of travel, "Yes, Ava?"
She knew where Squall was, and it was pretty much as Quisty had thought. He'd found the perfect place to brood. Quistis thanked Ava for informing on the subject beast and stalked off in the direction of the cafeteria.
But she didn't go to the cafeteria. Instead she took the next right after the library. The hallway in this direction was long, quiet and peaceful. Behind her the dull roar of the lunchtime crowd was quickly replaced by the sound of her boots on the concrete that led to the Training Center as she hurried along with renewed purpose. Sure, he wasn't going anywhere, if he was still here. She just wanted to get this taken care of, the way she always took care of things on her To Do list. She was known for taking care of things now.
Up ahead the concrete broke away to squares of grass and then the rocks and dirt of the outer area of the training center. It was lunchtime here, too, and all was quiet. All she had to do was pick Right or Left and hope she was right or she'd be hunting down the elusive Squall all afternoon.
She chose Right.
At that exact moment the doors to the left slammed open and who should come blazing through but …
Quisty called out to him, "Squall!"
As soon as he saw her he turned and went back through the left side doors, letting them slam behind him. She wanted to kick herself for alerting him –
It's not like he wouldn't have seen me anyway, she thought to herself and went after her childhood friend. She hurried through the left doors,
"Wait a minute, dammit!"
His black figure walked quickly over the electrified bridge above the trickle of water that ran through the Training Center. On the other side was the giant foliage area. All was quiet and peaceful, the fronds of the giant ferns waving gently in the faux breeze. Or almost peaceful save for Squall's heavy footfalls followed by Quisty's delicate shuffling.
"Squall, stop for just a second!" She called out, keeping her voice low. Just then a trio of grats came out from under the bridge, poisonous arms waving. Squall did stop, of course not because Quisty wanted him to. He watched the pesky critters move along the stream of drinking water. They weren't even smart enough to realize two victims were handy.
She took advantage and crept up on Squall. He noticed immediately, watching her over his shoulder, and continued on to the giant foliage area. On the other side he took a left down the abbreviated wooden walkway that went nowhere. Now she had him.
He didn't turn toward her at all, "So, what do you think you need to say?"
She was used to that. There were a lot of times when Squall didn't look at her during their conversations.
"I …," she got closer to him, "well, I want to know if you're ready to take jobs again. We … I … you …."
Now he did look at her. He looked at Quistis over his shoulder, his blue eyes hard and cold. Instead of a white t-shirt he had on a dark red t-shirt with the SeeD logo above the left breast. His plain leather jacket was in his hand. She inched one step closer.
Her subtle advance was not lost on him, "Oh, you're not gonna hug me, are you?"
"Squall …," she said quietly, "you've got to know that it wasn't your fault."
And it was out. The past few weeks had been so hard for all of them, but particularly Squall. True to form, he didn't want to talk about it. He'd said very little to Cid and refused to set foot into Dr. Kadowaki's office at all. Quistis and Selphie suspected that maybe he had talked to Xu but she was all the way in Deiling City at meetings with General Caraway. And she wasn't answering her phone. If Squall had talked it all out with Xu … he still wasn't getting back to work. That wasn't good.
He went out on the wooden dock, "I know that." He sat down at the end.
Quistis left her books on the grass and sat down out of his reach in case he decided to push her in, "Do you want to tell me what happened?"
Squall gave her the evil eye over his shoulder, "You already know what happened."
"How could I know what happened when you never talk to anyone?" She said evenly. It was a fact. He couldn't dispute that. "Cid's not allowed to discuss jobs with me after the fact, jobs that I'm not a part of."
Well, that part wasn't fact. It was an out and out lie. But she wanted him to let it out. What happened was eating him alive.
He sighed, "She explained the job to us. We began our objectives. Our end, the SeeD end, was smooth, and then … she …."
Quistis went to touch his shoulder.
He caught her, "Don't! Don't … you … dare."
She snatched her hand back, "All right. I'm sorry. Won't happen again."
"I think you know what happened, Quisty," he eyed her with suspicion.
"How often do I actually know something, Squall? Everyone keeps me in the dark."
That part was almost too true to be comfortable.
His voice became quiet, "She slipped and fell off the train."
"Miss Heartilly," Quistis said. She knew that. She knew all of it.
Rinoa Heartilly, their client. General Caraway's daughter. She had hired SeeD to assist her rebel faction with the liberation of Timber from Galbadian forces. Unfortunately, she had died as the operation commenced with the team uncoupling two moving train cars. Selphie and Zell had been mid-car, monitoring Galbadian soldiers. They saw everything; both had made their report. Squall had been down below entering numbers when Miss Heartilly lost her footing and fell to her death under the train. All three SeeDs had abandoned the moving train at that point and were picked up by the rebel faction and returned to Dollet. There were rumors that Miss Heartilly's body had been recovered by Galbadian soldiers and cremated in Deiling City without further word. As far as Balamb Garden was concerned, that was the end.
Such a tragedy. Quistis remembered the girl from the SeeD ball, dancing with Squall. He had been down in the dumps ever since, blaming himself for her death. He hadn't taken a job since.
"Squall, it's not your fault. Her own footing caused her to fall. There's nothing you could've done," Quistis said without touching him.
He looked at her over his shoulder, "So then you do know all about it."
"No, I don't," she lied, "I'm just saying based on what you said – she slipped and fell off the train." She wanted to hear about it from him, what was going on in his head. "You had nothing to do with her death."
"Oh, I know that," he went back to watching the slow movement of the fake stream.
"Do you think you can start doing jobs again?"
"Well, hell yeah," he said, looking more like the old Squall.
"Really?" Now she was surprised. "You've been so depressed lately, I thought …."
"Depressed?" He was surprised to hear that word.
"Yeah, well, everyone's been thinking that you're so depressed lately …."
"I haven't been depressed," he said and went back to staring down at the water.
They were all sure that he was mopy and blaming himself over Miss Heartilly's death and … he wasn't? Could it be that they had misinterpreted Squall's usual cloud of gloom? Quistis thought it over, carefully calculating all movements of Squall that they had catalogued – keeping to himself, staying in his room, sulking quietly, not making eye contact.
"But what about the jobs? You're not taking any jobs," she said.
Squall hopped up to a squatting position, "Cid's not giving me any jobs!"
"Ohhhhh," Quisty said.
Cid hadn't mentioned that at all when Selphie and her were in his office earlier that morning, talking about what to do about Squall. Selphie and Zell each had small jobs since the tragedy, escorting, guarding and delivery. It would be like Cid to think Squall was too good for any of those jobs.
"I haven't had any jobs, either," she said. Hopefully Cid was thinking the same about her.
"Well," he stood up and dusted off his jeans, "maybe we'll have a job together."
"Yeah …," she started to say more when she noticed T-Rexaur coming back from the Training Center lunch area, which was probably where the trio of grats were going. He stopped at the palm trees to sample a few leaves, totally not seeing Quistis and Squall. She motioned in his direction with her eyes. Squall, being a SeeD now, knew what was up.
"Oooookaaayyyy …," he said and sprang forward very subtly.
He grabbed Quistis' arm and she grabbed her books. They headed toward the dirt path very carefully, listening to the T-Rexaur munch munch munch behind them. Figures that a normal lunch wouldn't be enough for him. Or her. As they got closer to the metal bridge, T-Rexaur slowly moved in the opposite direction, more toward the dense tropical foliage.
"So you don't blame yourself for Miss Heartilly's death?" She said quietly as the big dinosaur lumbered off.
"No," Squall said simply.
"Okay," she said, "that means you're ready to get back to work."
He sounded bored, "Sure am. Any idea at all what's brewing?"
"Well, Xu's been sending cryptic messages about a sorceress and Galbadia …."
"Really," he said.
Quistis had an idea, "If you let me buy you lunch, I'll tell ya all about it."
Squall laughed, "Buy me lunch …."
"Yeah," she playfully nudged him with her elbow, "I'm touching you."
He smiled his off-kilter smile, "I suppose I'll owe you a favor if you buy me lunch."
She nudged his butt with her hip, "Touch, touch."
He went through the big double doors, "Ooooooo, you're so mature."
Selphie met them on the other side, running and waving at the same time, "Hey, you guys! Look! Look! Check this out!"
She had a poster from Galbadia Garden advertising the upcoming competition. Scattered among the huge words were five or so pictures of the students competing. Squall wasn't interested at all and kept walking, albeit slowly.
"Check out this guy!" Selphie shoved the poster at Quistis, "He's so hawwwwwt!"
Under the picture of a bare-chested guy with long hair tied back in a ponytail it said Irvine Kinneas.
"Aha!" Was all Quisty could think of to say.
Selphie ran up to Squall, "Check it out."
He waved her away, "No thanks. So, Quisty, what are we gonna do about these jobs?"
She liked the sound of that and caught up with him, "Well …."
Quistis mentally checked off one item on her list of things to do: Squall. It was a terrible thing when your client died on your very first job. But it genuinely didn't seem to bother him. Quisty knew him well enough to know when he was being honest. This time when she put her hand on his shoulder, he didn't pull away.
~End~
Okay, this is my take on what goes on in Squall's cute little head: No. 1, he hates people hovering around him, whispering behind his back and/or fussing over him, which is what Quistis, and now Selphie, are good at. If you got something to say, he'd rather have you put it out there no matter what it is. Ever since Rinoa's DEATH due to slipping and falling under a train (^_^), Quisty & Selphie have been sneaking around behind his back, worrying about him and whispering. He hates that. Whenever he looks at them, they look away quickly. When Quistis finally comes out with it, it's a relief of sorts. He was kind of pissed off at her there for a while. She's not always direct with him. What goes on with her is still subject to her moods, which is what got her fired from her teaching job. No. 2, the talk of impending work always cheers him up quite a bit, making him almost happy sometimes ... Remember what Laguna said about him, "Ah, the workaholic SeeD..." My deeper characterizations of these two come from brainstorming I've done in the past for stories I've written like Bedtime Story, Garden in Summer, You Made Me and Ascending Angels. Okay, I'm done. :)