A/N: This very elaborate description of narrating the story is a temporary thing...just bear with it for this chapter.


Purgatory is Rehab

Chapter 2


Quistis woke up with a throbbing headache. Apparently, her brain was getting cramps from last night's drinks. The pain was beating her skull like a jackhammer that it rendered her immobile for a good long time. Her eyes shut and her body was just about ready to go back into hibernation when all of a sudden her clock began into a beeping frenzy, making that most irritating sound in the morning, the kind of sound that says: it's time to get up for work. AAAaaaaRGH! That was the irony of having a hangover on a weekday, no law has made it into a rational excuse for nonattendance at work. All she could do was delay another thirty minutes before blasting herself with a nice hot shower.

Water fell like drops of acid rain upon the first contact, but as the steam rose and her wretched body adjusted to the heat, it was bliss.

The shower had certainly made her mind focus and her body geared up for work. She walked out the bathroom and stared at her full-length mirror, twisting her body from side to side, watching if her new diet was showing any results around her waist. She held her belly and felt that same bump which began forming three months ago. Apparently, not so much could be said about her diet, except that it has proven itself ineffective. Another AAAaaaaRGH! for that. The only thing she could do was cover up that mess with black polyester. Making her fashion choice for today's work, she buttoned down her blouse then immediately began her makeup ritual when she saw the clock's minute hand had struck six.

She quietly meditated on her face as she applied a soft foundation to clog and even down her pores. Applying makeup was something she had just recently began taking seriously. It started when she received enlightenment from a facial guru about the importance of proper handling of ones most noticeable asset, the face. But that's another story. That was the thing with Quistis, she seldom used makeup, but when she did, it would be something that she'd take the time to polish until her face met with her own standard of beauty, perfection. Her brows had been flawlessly lined, her eyes beautifully shadowed, her cheeks brilliantly blushed, and now, only the lips was to be painted rose orange before she attains ethereal beauty. She was inches close to achieving the goddess state when...

PUKE!

She made her head hang loose on the sink, spewing out what could only be described as undigested food. Not only was she dealing with a hangover, but morning sickness as well...one that smelled like rubbing alcohol.

She was still bonding with her bathroom sink when the door swung open along with a statement that was just as rude as barging in without knocking, "Hey Quis, I feel kinda fat today so can I borrow some of your clothes?"

She didn't even bother to look at the person she was talking to, she simply went on with hugging the hollow enamelled ceramic. "Very funny, but may I remind you that my clothes will make you look like a walking hanger. You do realize my shirt will look like a gown on you." She stared at the reflection of a petite girl with short russet hair, and a nice chinky set of dark brown irises looking back at her on the mirror with a rather mordant expression.

"Ha-HA! And you say you weren't pregnant, talk about mood swings and morning sickness."

"Hey you started it. And besides, my dearest Jessica, this tiny bulge in no more than a temporary baby fat."

"Baby fats my ass! Man I've never seen you gain so much weight! Has it been your 10th pound gained this week?"

"I'm not even gonna answer that," she said, irate and frowning.

"Hey, you know I'm only kidding. What's up? You seem real upset today."

"I don't know...I guess I was expecting him to come. He said he'd already be here for my birthday."

"Oh yeah, the very man who's been making you eat depression, or was it depression eating—oh whatever! Just cheer up okay? He's probably stuck in some asteroid. So what if he's been three weeks late? It's not very easy to hitch ride from outer space ya know!"

"I suppose...but the wait is really putting on weight." She kidded with a rhyme.

"See, now that wasn't so bad was it? The world is a better place with your corny jokes around. Now let's go out and celebrate your remaining 364 days of being twenty-six."

"No thank you, I really can't afford another surprise party. Seriously, I spent my month's pay check for last night's celebration."

"Don't be silly! There's no party," she snickered, then handed her a piece of paper along with a bundle of tip. "You're gonna be celebrating today under the freezing autumn street doing boss's errand!"

"Why don't you do it yourself? I'm sure he asked you and not me." Quistis complained, pushing back the money away from her face.

"Oh c'mon! I've got my hands full. He's making me build a fucking contraption that will make him fly to outer space today! I'm sure that tip will compensate for the cold." She pleaded, adding another roll of cash in the bundle.

"Where do you get all this cash! You know, for a nanny, you're certainly better off than most of the world's population." Quistis couldn't help but comment as she shoved the cash in her pocket. She was getting a 4000 Gil tip from a nanny! Jessica was giving her a tip only millionaires could afford to give.

"Oh, you know exactly where I get it!" she retorted, then quickly clung on her friend's shoulder as they made their way out of her bedroom. "Now c'mon, because I've got the hottest new gossip to tell..."


o O o


They were walking down the hallway towards the exit when she noticed the man sitting at the lobby. He looked oddly familiar, but she could not place him immediately. Her memory banks were pretty efficient when it came to faces; she could clearly recall every student that passed by her class, and they didn't have to be her student to be remembered, just pass by her classroom. The man sitting rang no bells: he was rather masculine, self-assured, and beautifully blonde.

Somewhere between the probable mistake and possibility, she did not flinch, just waited and stared.

She resumed the conversation with her friend, but part of her brain was already running a search on the man's identity. It distressed her not to remember things instantly—she began to worry about Alzheimer's disease. Without thinking, she kept turning to the direction of the unidentified man. Her behaviour bordered on rudeness; it was with some effort that she restrained herself from staring.

Halfway through the hallway the scent of fresh roses must have kicked some dormant nerve into action, because she suddenly remembered who it was. The man was the 'mysterious blonde guy', upon whom she was madly fixated a few years ago. The term was derived from the fact that she knew the silhouette of his façade, yet she could never make out his face, just his broad figure and blonde locks beneath the blur memory. There was a time she that was so deranged that she could not think of him without bringing up the concept of destiny two seconds later.

Her obsession was such that she began to see the blonde-haired person's face everywhere—in shops, cafes, street corners—and as she approached him with her brain on fire she would realize that it wasn't him at all. The person would bear no resemblance to him whatsoever. It was as if she had projected her desire onto the nearest blank space.

Amazing how one minute she was ready to vivisect herself for what she presumed to be love, and not long afterwards, she could not remember why. Not long ago she would've carved his name on her arm with a dull bread knife; now she didn't even recall his name.

She walked pass the man, who had no idea what had just transpired.

"You okay?"

"Uhhh...yeah."

"You were totally spacing out in the middle of our conversation!"

"Sorry, I just thought I knew him." She explained pointing with her thumb at the person that they just walked past without looking back.

Jessica on the other hand was forced to stare at the man she never noticed sitting when they passed by. The man was a stout man probably in his thirties. "Oh, him?" she shrugged, "His name is Stranger, for acting stranger than you—who the heck comes in this hotel wearing shorts in the dead of a chilly autumn morning!"

Quistis giggled, "That guy, apparently."

"Let's not talk about him, okay? Anyway, got the errand from boss?"

"It's here." Her smile was followed by a quick sigh.

"Hey, cheer up." She comforted, holding Quistis' chin and forcibly stretching her lips with her thumb, reshaping her lips into an odd-looking smile. "You should be happy you're now 26, in fact, let me ask you, how does it feel being twenty-six?"

"Honestly...just like being twenty-five." She smirked, and just as she was about to extend the conversation, she heard impatient screams.

"Good for you—now get going or he'll kill me!" Jessica's face became pale with panic that she didn't realize that violently pushing Quistis out the door could hurt.

"This is gonna cost you!" She churlishly warned before the door swept shut on her face.

She shook her head at what just happened, and began with what she was tasked to do: buy balloons. She began walking down the frozen steps. Although the snow was yet to fall, the freezing temperature was enough to convince anyone that it was the dead of winter in the middle of autumn. It was really cold, and there was barely a soul out that day. The neighbourhood was so quiet, she could hear the blood sloshing in her veins. She quietly made her way along the street, tucking her hands inside her pocket, she stopped in her track to properly dispose a piece of water bottle rolling on the alley. It was one of those few times she saw litter on the perfectly clean street, and naturally her obsessive compulsiveness acted up for it was a shame to let a supposed empty street be left with a piece of un-disposed garbage. Admittedly, Dollet was a victim of its own boot camp reputation. People weren't ordered to stand straight or keep their mouths shut, they did it in their own free will. Nobody told them to behave themselves. They were never reprimanded. The rules weren't spelled out: they simply assumed that everything was forbidden. That was a paradox, but it worked.

Five party shops and two speciality shops later, not one damn balloon. Now where the hell has all the freakin' balloons gone to! Another step, and that's when she remembered Jessica coming in to the hotel yesterday with a couple of thousand balloons for their bored boss who wanted to fly on a string of helium balloons. Well, they didn't really achieve flight yesterday, just a whole lot of inflated rubber in the lobby. That Jessica was smarter than she looked, she managed to trick Quistis into finding something she knew was already out of stock in the entire city.

Quistis sat on the bench when she found herself tired. Gaining all those excess weight from the last couple of months was really taking a toll on her. She used to sweat out all her anger and frustration back at Balamb, but now that she was in Dollet with the greatest chef known to man running her hotel's restaurant, easing the pain with food was her new alternative to dealing with emotional setbacks. At first, it didn't seem like a bad idea, but it turned out to be terrible one when she began tipping the scale. ROOOOAR! Not good. She stood up and briskly walked around to find the next supply shop she could ask. She was making sure that this errand also turns into a good exercise that could lose her a few extra calories.

The more she made her way through the smaller alleys, the more she saw people walking along with her fast phased strides. However, it was the cold and the resulting mass consumption of cafe latte that probably explained why the natives walk so fast, not to lose disproportionate bulges. The town was alive after all.


o O o


After much balloon hunting, something struck her, if she wasn't getting any rubber balloons in party shops, then she was getting them in a pharmacy. It was something that any city could not possibly risk of running out of. With so many different flavors and textures, she was sure Gabe wouldn't mind if the balloon would be a little slippery upon that first touch. And should things turn for the worst, it would be Jessica who will take the beating. After all, what good is a nanny if she not the child's sacrificial lamb in case of an admonishment? That girl may be smart, but she was still smarter. Her shoulders began to shake, not from the cold, but her fits of giggle at the thought of Gabe and Jessica blowing the slippery strawberry flavoured balloons.

On her way to the nearest pharmacy, she passed by a movie theatre to check on the screenings. She was supposed to watch later that evening for her weekly movie-date with herself. It had been her routine for the past couple of months to keep herself company on her night off on Saturdays to watch a movie or two as a sort of self-indulgence after a week of hard work.

There were three new movies that came out that week, one of them she didn't really like, and two others that she hasn't heard of. The titles weren't catchy, and the posters looked like some cheap collage made by some highschool student. She was getting tired of having to watch bad movies on a Saturday night. It wasn't the price of admission, it was the two wasted hours of her life. Perhaps it was best if she skipped this week's movie and treat herself to a nice dinner instead. Exactly the kind of attitude she needed for losing weight.

She was about to walk away when she caught something interesting out on the corner of her eye. She turned and found herself staring at the poster of star-crossed lovers, a SeeD and her Sorceress Knight lover locked in embrace as the backdrop behind them fade into nothingness, like time being compressed. She held out her hand and touched the cold-flat paper, absorbed in that moment of silence. She looked at the leading man, a handsome valiant knight holding his woman with his golden hair flowing with the wind. Her mind began drifting to the man whom she called the mysterious blonde guy, a man she had known at one time in her life and refused to be a forgotten memory. It was with some effort that she slapped her head back to the reality of the cold cobble street she was standing in before she realized that the man on the poster wasn't blonde at all.

Quistis abandoned the site upon that instance, but her mind was still transfixed onto the subject at hand. She had thought she had seen him on the poster, but again, that wasn't him. It's been years since this mysterious blonde haunted her, and all these years she was yet to remember his name, his face, his voice. Any day now, she might finally come face to face with the man, and then it hit her: What would she actually say him if she found him?

"I think you're my destiny." Yucch. "I think I know you." Ugh. "Have you been stalking me?" Aaargh. "Can we talk?" Dammit...just hold the thought and forget it.

She turned around the street corner and at last reached her destination. She took her hand out her pocket and blew warm air onto her palm before opening the frozen aluminium door. Making the wind chime hanging by the door reverberate clings of steel upon her entry, but she noticed no one seemed to care that she was a paying costumer. It figured, there were only two people in the pharmacy, one redhead pharmacist, and another blonde costumer. He was scanning the shelves when she saw him, a particular blonde with piercing green irises and a long dark scar running across the bridge of his nose.

"Seifer..." It was the first time she had called out that man's name in ages, but it sounded like she had been calling his name too many times, several years ago. There was something different about seeing Seifer's face after so long, and it wasn't because she missed him, it was more of that his name, his face, his voice...him...he was fitting a certain blank space in the puzzle. She could not muster the reality, and clearly doubted the possibility of being that one missing piece to fit that empty space in all of her unanswered questions. Somehow, for that brief instance, in that prelude to seeing his face, she felt something...something.

Unknowingly, she has finally met face to face with the man who had unwittingly inspired her destruction.

"Quis..." he muttered with an impression of a half-smile.

That was the truly hateful part—that he should be unaware of the damage he had wrought.


Sneak Preview:


Rendezvous

Chapter 3

"You know, the night we went out on your 21st birthday."

She was rendered speechless at that point. What the hell happened on her 21st birthday? And what did Seifer have anything to do with it? And why was he giving her a look that says something happened that night? Something...OMG! Her mind blacked out and she didn't know why she was so frantic about what he just said. She stared into space with a shutdown brain activity.

"Hey, you okay?" Seifer clicked his finger in front of her eyes that seemed to be looking at an abyss.

The sound snapped her to reality, and that's when she realized that she just recovered from a state of being in shock. There was something about today that was making her feel all paranoid...probably it was the cold. "Sorry, but you were saying that we spent my 21st birthday together?"

"Yeah...don't you remember?" it was a hurt voice that came out without him knowing.

"I'm sorry, but nothing's coming to mind. Maybe you could freshen my memory? I'm still under the process of recovering from an alcohol overdose." She explained, wondering why he was so affected by that statement.

That came in as a shock. Five years may have taken a toll on their relationship, but that was not the answer he was expecting. How the hell could have she forgotten about losing her virginity to him on the night of her twenty-first birthday! Was she playing him? Was she trying to deny that ever happened? Was she just saying those things to hurt him? WAS SHE NUTS! No one gets laid for the first time in their life and forgets—especially when Seifer Almasy does the job! AAARRRGHH! Time to put on his most servile, obsequious Seifer voice and get himself an explanation.


A/N: Don't worry, next chapter will be less descriptive and fun...heehee...review please!