"Estranged"
1. The Grind
[SIX MONTHS LATER]
1
Squall took in the view of the ocean stretching out in all directions, seemingly into infinity. It was a thought threatening and serene at the same time, moving him closer to and away from the comfort he sought. He sighed. This was the exact same thing he came to this balcony to avoid, and it seemed that all he wanted to do was to return to it.
He leaned against the railing, content in his loneliness as he seldom was. He could feel the grind in his mind, the grind of thoughts pushing forward their clenched-teeth, white-knuckle-tight agenda, their compulsive projection. It mirrored yet another grind, of him grinding it out, grinding on.
It had been six months since the end of Ultimecia and the celebration of their victory. An endless parade of presentation of honors, medals, speeches, cocktails, booze, long nights that had followed a battle he had no intention of visiting. They were all on mild mood stabilizers ever since, their bodies being managed for the inevitable settling in of trauma and depression.
It had been a month since he had first felt a crack in his relationship to Rinoa. The very texture of what he thought he had, someone to share himself with, seeming perfect, now seemed to be slowly unraveling. It hadn't been anything specific, or anything at all.
The wine. It had been the wine.
2
"Squall?"
"Yes?"
"You wanna go for a bottle of wine and a quiet night in?"
He looked up from the documents on his lap. He looked at her, standing there, wearing one of his t-shirts, grey, and waiting for an answer to a very simple, very irrelevant, and very small question. Did he, indeed, want to go for a bottle of wine and a quiet night in?
No, he thought, that's not the question. That's not the question at all.
He, in turn, found himself waiting for the answer to a very complicated, very relevant, and very big question.
The question is, he thought, what the hell are you doing in my room, in my life?
3
Squall thought that in the one month interim between this little ritualistic contemplation and his complicated, relevant, big question, he had mastered going through the motions. It wasn't very complicated. Walk here, joke there, breakfast, lunch, dinner, nights in, nights out, hell, even sex once or twice or four or six times, two of which while utterly and shamelessly drunk.
He had felt, during every move, the grind of it all – things grinding slowly to a halt, grinding on in strife against the grain, grinding down his supposed contentment. And there he was, grinding it out.
Squall didn't know how much more he could take it.
But that wasn't just it, that was never just it. Before the wine, there had been something else. This time, it had been the words.
4
"Selphie?"
The petite brunette went visibly rigid. Squall couldn't blame her for her surprise – the small crevice behind the Quad, after all, wasn't known by many. It was a leftover of their battle with Galbadia Garden, a hole big enough for someone of her size to fit inside (he himself could sit in it, but couldn't disappear due to the radius of the opening.)
She looked up, both hands hastily brushing against her eyes, and Squall saw that she had been crying. His turn to turn rigid. Human emotion, especially sadness, he had no idea how to handle. He didn't quite know his way around feelings at all.
And besides, this was Selphie.
"H-hey there, General." Selphie said, flashing him the same fake smile he often used, the very same one that Rinoa had informed him, rather bluntly, wasn't fooling anyone, "What's up?"
Something pushed him to choose not to act like he was just passing by. The same thing drove him to speak, and so be it, but what would he say?
C'mon, he told himself, you're supposed to be good at improvising during missions. This is the same ballpark. Think of this as reconnaissance – you have to learn what's making her sad. Having cleared that primary objective, you can move on to your secondary objective of doing something about it. Failing the primary isn't an automatic fail condition for the secondary objective.
Go.
5
"Nothing." He said, "I was just passing by. What's wrong?"
"Whuh?" Selphie sniffed, "What do you mean?"
Evasion. Counter-maneuver: change angle of approach. Be less intrusive.
"I mean, I didn't expect to find you here, much less crying."
"I wasn't-"
Aggressive thrust forward. Take a jab.
"You can't con a con artist, Selphie. I use that same smile on people every day."
Selphie glared at him for a second, and Squall witnessed the smile draining from her face, to make way for an expression that Squall had seen only once before. It looked more unsuited for her face now than then.
It looked so... wrong.
He sat down in front of her, and cradled his chin in one hand.
One move left. Now, how did it go, what did the others always say? Ah, yes. They all said:
"Want to tell me about it?"
Selphie's expression shifted to an almost painful (for him) kind disbelief. It wasn't her disbelief itself that hurt him, but how shocked she was that he would say that.
"Wow, Squall... seriously. Wow. I never thought I'd see the day I'd hear you say that. You don't have a fever or anything, right?"
She leaned forward and put one hand against his forehead. Her fingers were cold, her touch light.
"You seem to be okay." She said.
"So, my request is valid. Talk."
That same look of disbelief, lighter this time. Less painful.
6
Squall found it sort of funny in a very humorless way that after the time and energy Rinoa had angled towards teaching him to hold a conversation for no other reason than holding a conversation, it had taken only Selphie, bright and bubbly Selphie, who wore the fake smile eerily naturally, to teach him.
It was funny, yeah, and sort of pathetic how easy it had been, in the end.
7
"It's nothing earth-shattering." Selphie said, "If anything, it's really fucking stupid. It's stupid and shallow and... you know. Selfish. This is selfish, this whole thing is."
Quistis would know what to say, he thought. Best imitate others now that I'm in the secondary objective.
"Never mind that. Tell me what it is."
"Irvine called yesterday. Said he wasn't going to do the long-distance thing."
Squall bit his tongue on the basic reality that teaching marksmanship in Galbadia Garden as a decorated veteran and a war hero probably gave Irvine enough credibility to spend on women.
"Get it?" Selphie said, "Not couldn't. Wasn't. Said he thought it was a waste of time at this juncture. He said that, he said at this juncture. Said he'd send back some of my stuff that he'd kept, and hoped to see me around."
"That's..." channel Rinoa now, she's good with this, "I'm sorry, Selphie. Sorry it didn't work out."
"You can stop that, you know." Selphie said.
Play the fool. Do the Zell.
"What? Stop what?"
"Squall, you're jumping from impersonation to impersonation. These aren't your words."
"I just-"
She smiled, an honest, genuine smile this time. Squall felt his lips move and mirror that expression, which elicited a small laughter from her.
8
The memory of this moment played back in his mind once more, giving him another, this time simpler, yet sill relevant and considerable question: had that been it? Had that been the split-second instant where everything had shifted? Had that been the beginning of the grind?
The answer was simple. It hadn't been the wine or the words.
It had been honesty.
9
"Was that a smile? Did Squall I'm-Fucking-Impenetrable Leonhart just smile?"
"You can talk."
"I feel like I witnessed a second Lunar Cry, seriously."
"I guess..."
"By the way, and this is related to why I was... you know..."
"Yeah?"
"I need a favor. An administrative favor."
Squall contemplated the request.
"Trabia doesn't want you?"
Again, the disbelief, but this time, not very noticeable.
"H-How did you know?"
"You've been here a few weeks longer than you should have been. Anyway. I can secure you an instructor position. Nobody will object to a veteran automatically becoming an instructor. Any branch in mind?"
"Field Magic." Selphie said, "If beggars can really be choosers."
"I'll get it through to Xu tomorrow, get you on the roster. What did Trabia say, exactly?"
"That the graveyard they were building would be named after me, and that was all they cared for me." Selphie said, "Direct quote." She sighed, "Trabia was my home, Squall. The only proper home I've known, and they think I failed them... maybe I did. Shit, I know I did. The Missile Base – if I had gotten there sooner..."
"You can't change the past." Squall said, "Ellone learned it the hard way, and as she was learning, she taught us that lesson. I thought you had learned it too."
"I still want to." Selphie said, her expression sinking, "I still want to. It just got... a bit overwhelming, I guess."
"I know the feeling."
"...yeah."
"But would it be so bad if you stayed here?" he asked.
10
Squall's hindsight told him that the expression that overwhelmed Selphie to the point where she had the look of absolute gratitude on her face. Of course, at the time, he had had trouble deciphering exactly what the hell that had been.
So there he was, stuck on that moment of honesty, wondering, would it be so bad if she stayed? Would it be so bad if she, the other she, didn't?
Would it be so bad..?
"Not that I mind sharing," Selphie's voice came from behind him, "But a girl's gotta have her own contemplation space."