Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VIII's characters, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind's plot, my words.
Note: Sections in Italics are memories or past events.
Prologue
"So.. Miss Heartilly, please could you tell me what you want freeing from your mind and why." Questioned the somewhat elderly doctor as he placed down the young woman's medical records and pressed the red 'record' button on the diminutive Dictaphone that would document the entire speech she was about to give. Rinoa leant back in the large and comfortable leather clad chair in the confined space of the bland coloured consultation room.
"I want Squall Leonhart rid from my memory…" She paused and watched the doctor scribbled something down on a yellowed piece of paper in his perfect and spiralled handwriting.
"Please, continue."
"I…I hate him, he's so infuriating and passive, you know? I have to challenge him all the time just to check he's still alive in that shell of his. He doesn't interact, he used to always distance himself from me… he'd spend all of his time inside that head of his, probably trying to figure out what he ever saw in me. He's dull, proud, mean spirited and I feel he doesn't deserve a place in my mind anymore." She informed, letting an exasperated sigh escape her full lips and began fiddling with strands of her beautifully silken hair, twirling it around the forefinger of her pale delicate hand.
"I see.. Are these feelings of resentment a result of a break-up in your relation ship with Squall?"
"Yeah…"
"Very well. It's understandable. Many of our clients partake in this procedure after such unpleasant situations." He said, still continuously jotting things of interest down on the paper.
"So.. How does this work?" she asked, shifting nervously in her seat, she had never undergone an operation in her lifetime and you must have to have some serious work done to erase something as compulsory as a memory. It wasn't like they were going to give you a bottle of pills labelled '2 to be taken daily', ironically, what happened if you forgot to take them? "Is it dangerous?"
"Not at all!" The white laboratory coat wearing man reassured, ceasing in his writing. "The procedure to this is built in three stages. The first is simple and requires your co-operation. I want you to go home and collect up all of the objects and items that remind you or that you associate with this man and bring them to your next consultation. With the use of these items we will be able to identify your mind map that you've created for Squall and your memories of him, once this is found the rest is easy going from there."
"So you can't accidentally delete anything else?" She quizzed in a concerned tone, she was a skilled drummer of the up coming local band 'Silent Riot' and didn't want to lose such a valuable talent by having unintentionally obliterated when she was trying to rid her mind of this man. Squall would love that! Her memory would still be branded with him and she'd lose the ability for the one thing she succeed at, well, barring being able to string continuous insults in to one fluent sentence.
"No I assure you once a mind map is located we will be able to delete this one and nothing else."
"Oh, okay."
"Is there any other questions you want to ask?"
"Erm.. Nope don't think so." She felt more relaxed now.
"Well I think you're an ideal candidate for this procedure, Miss Heartilly and I will look forward to seeing you again at our second consultation. If you give this to the receptionist at the desk on your way out, she'll arrange a date for your next consultation." He smiled warmly outstretching his hand over the desk between them, holding a small piece of paper.
"Sure. Thank you Doctor Cid" She returned the smile and retrieved the item from his hands before leaving the stuffy aired room. Strolling down the grey shaded narrow corridor to the waiting room she couldn't help feeling slightly relieved, all those awkward moments, blazing verbal fights, sarcastic comments and that horrible feeling of being worthless whenever she was around him would fade and disappear and she would be her joyful, fun loving self again. After all ignorance was bliss right?
"Can I help you?" chimed the attractive auburn haired woman perched behind the vast entrance desk.
"Erm Doctor Cid told me to give you this." She mumbled handing over the piece of paper, slightly intimidated by this woman's beauty and positive persona, she envied her. The receptionist kindly took the document and scanned her brown eyes along the words the doctor had written.
"Okay then. Let's see when I can next fit you in shall we?" She said picking up a large black book and thumbed through its pages, which were engraved with names dates, some had been scribbled out in thick black ink. "Is Friday the 6th okay for you?" She asked looking back up at Rinoa.
"Sure." She answered flatly, rummaging around in her shoulder bag. She grasped a pen and yanked it from the cluttered innards of her bag. She wrote:
'ShinRa Inc. – Friday 6th' on the back of her left hand, the black ink instantly drying on her skin.
"Oh you don't have to do that! I'll give you a card with the date on."
"It's okay, I always lose those things." Replied Rinoa as she stuffed the pen back in it's home.
"Well, we'll see you on Friday 6th then." She beamed.
"Yeah sure."
She stuffed he hands into her coat's pockets and paced off. She had quite a peculiar yet unique sense of style about her that could be described as somewhat bohemian. Her clothes that she was clad in consisted of a dark, thick material short pleated skirt that she wore black tights under, a thin strapped top, that had a v-neck quality to it as well as an intricate pattern design in blue printed on it, while she wore a short khaki jacket over this due to the bitter weather as well as wore and incredibility long indigo scarf that nearly trailed on the ground. Her shoes were an old and worn pair of blue Keds sneakers that she loved so much she never wished to throw them away even if they did have a small tear on her right heel that caused the stray threads to stick out like a cat's whiskers. Her lengthy, dark, glossy hair was partly scraped back into a lose braid. She was an undoubtedly attractive young woman, but unfortunately she didn't see this beauty that everyone commented on.
Rinoa slid the small golden key to her apartment into its counterpart and turned it clockwise, hearing a soft click she jolted the door open, it was a pain, it got jammed whenever it had been locked and so needed a good bashing just so that you get into the small apartment. Her noticeably dark eyes surveyed the cramped area like it was a foreign land to her before she set about doing the task the doctor had requested and began to gather random items. It was mainly old photographs that she stuffed into the black bin liner bag, train ticket stubs from when they had gone to the beach that blustery winter's day, doodles Squall had done while the two of the lazed around in this very apartment (He was fairly artistic for someone so dreary) and her own journal entries about him. She loosely tied the bag and dumped it in the corner of her tiny living room where it would dwell there, abandoned for a week before finally being pick-up again.
She stupidly felt like an idiotic Santa as Rinoa strolled into the consultant room with the bin liner flung over her right shoulder.
"Good afternoon Miss Heartilly." Greeted Doctor Cid cheerfully.
"Hey, I brought the stuff, like you said." She said handing him the bag.
"Good. Well then let's get to it!"
"Erm, how exactly are you gonna get a mind map of him?" She asked.
"This way," gestured Cid, to a door that was on the left wall of the room. "It's simple really, we have a device that monitors brainwaves, when reflecting upon a certain memory, this wave changes," He opened the door and held it ajar for her she entered into a larger room "And by looking at certain waves we can pinpoint your mind map of Squall." He said closing the door behind him.
Rinoa glanced around, the room though slightly larger accommodated for numerous computer monitors, as well as a chair with a bizarre metallic curve helmet object on it's top. It looked similar to one of those slow drying hair dryers you see at hair salons. This caused a smirk to flicker on her face, what they were going to give her a new hairstyle to go with her new Squall free mind? A man who was roughly the same height as Rinoa (which was incredibility short for a middle-aged man!) entered and greeted them.
"Rinoa this is Hojo, our technician."
'Thank god he didn't say 'mechanic' she mentally scoffed, imagining the diminutive man tightening cogs in her mind with a spanner. She was seated in the space-aged hair dryer chair and Hojo adjusted the helmet section of it so that it would sit on the girl's head snugly.
"This isn't going to do any damage is it?"
"Of course not! It's perfectly safe, after all this machine only reads your brain waves, we use a different one to remove the memories." Informed Doctor Cid as he rummaged in the bin liner and produced the train ticket stubs. "Okay, now what I want you to do is look at these items and reflect on their meaning to you." He said placing the dog-eared pieces of card down on a small table before her.
"Ready when you are." Announced Hojo, who was now seated at one of the monitors and already frivolously tapping away on it's ivory coloured keys.
"Okay.." she mumbled as she placed her focus on the tickets, blocking out everything in the room, both the other two occupants, the soft whirling of the computers, the irritating tapping of the keys and even the distant hum of traffic outside.
"Come on it'll be fun!" she begged, wrapping her arm around his in an attempt to stop him from ignoring her.
"You call stumbling around in wet sand fun?" he scoffed as they strolled down the cracked pavement. "Besides it's too cold to go and stand on some stupid beach."
"It isn't that bad!" She protested playfully.
"Yeah, well you've got a parka on." Squall retorted. She released her grip on his arm and mischievously punched him.
"Wuss! You can wear my scarf." She suggested unravelling it and slinging it around his neck. "See? Look how pretty you look."
"Fine! We'll go." He sighed, yet it was of the light-hearted kind.
Squall had been right, it had been a temperature of sub-zero but it had given her a good excuse to snuggle up to him in order to keep warm. She had suggested going to the beach when the two had been struck down by boredom that day, sometimes it was pleasant to escape the same old scenes of life so the long train ride there hadn't bothered her. She remembered he had fallen over into the wet sand that clumped to his trousers and the two of them had burst out laughing, Squall hardly ever laughed and so it was a rare and once precious memory, which had been the reason she had kept the tickets even though their outing had ended badly. They had got into a fight over something trivial and ended up screaming at each other in a verbal brawl before he had stormed off and caught the earlier train, leaving her alone to furiously mull over what had happened.
"Great! That's great. We're getting a lot of healthy activity." Announced Hojo who gestured at the monitor in order to obtain Doctor Cid's attention. Cid made a contended noise and placed another item in front of Rinoa. This process went on for some time until both Cid and Hojo were happy that they had identified all aspects of her mind map.
"Very well done Miss Heartilly." Praised the doctor as Hojo lifted the hi-tech helmet off her head.
"So what now?"
"Now I will explain to you the other stages of the procedure and we shall book your final consultation." He opened the door yet again and motioned for her to enter the opposite room. Once inside the familiar surroundings of the unventilated consultant room Cid began to explain. "The third and final stage is the actual procedure where we remove the desired element, in this case Squall, from your memory so that you can continue with your life as normal…Now the process is quite simple, you will be put to sleep and we place a similar model of headgear to the hermit you've just worn on you and now that we've obtained your mind map of Squall we can easily identify it and eradicate it."
"..How do you do that exactly?"
"Ultrasonic waves are fed into your brain through two ultra violet beams that will be positioned on each temple section of your head, these waves are strong enough to destroy the required elements yet are impossible of destroying large sections of the brain, they're extremely accurate."
"So they won't cause any brain damage?"
"Well technically this procedure is brain damage" He informed, witnessing the girl's dark eyes widen "But don't let this alarm you, it's only as threatening as a night of drinking."
Great was she going to wake up with a hangover too?
"After the procedure is complete you will awake in a hospital environment and be told that you were suffering from a sever fever and were brought in for overnight observation as a precaution. Also we will dispose of the items you brought in today so that they won't cause confusion with their unexplained presence in your household later on."
Rinoa nodded.
Two days later she was placed under general aesthetic and would never really remember the consultations or her visits to ShinRa Incorporated as these were rid of as well to prevent further confusion. Before the procedure commenced Rinoa had to write down a list of people who she came into contact with on a regular basis as well as their contact information so that the kind people at ShinRa Inc. could send them warnings that she had had a certain element of her memory erased and that they shouldn't mention this subject to her as it will cause confusion and distress to the patient. Rinoa sunk into sleep where her subconscious witnessed the erase of her memories of him like an eerie pantomime.