"The Third Sorceress War, Act III: Terra Rossa"
2. Lucid Espionage
1 (Selphie's Room)
Quistis limped towards Selphie's door, her cane supporting most of her weight. Every step made her leg ache from the ankle up, and every single inch forward reminded her of exactly how many different muscles were used in rotating which portion of the foot into which positions needed for walking. She felt every single requirement of a single step in painstaking detail.
Quistis rose her hand to knock, and the still-black fist gave her pause. She didn't get much use out of her right hand these days, and remembered every time she reflexively tried to grab something with it that she never would get much use out of it again. She used it for small things, one of them knocking, and every time, she could feel her arm moving and her skin vibrating with the impact, but not her hand striking the vertical surface.
Still, she knocked.
Selphie opened the door with worried eyes and a full bottle of gin, unopened, in her hands. She was wearing jeans and an oversized black t-shirt (Quistis thought it belonged to Squall.) She was barefoot. Quistis felt overdressed, standing there in full uniform.
"Morning Quisty, thanks for coming." Selphie said.
Quistis got inside and closed the door behind her. She made her way to one of the armchairs by the balcony and sat down. Selphie threw herself onto the other one, tucked one leg under herself and put the bottle down.
"Selphie, are you..?"
"No. Not drinking that. Just having it there makes me feel better."
"Okay. Why don't you tell me what happened?"
"Do you know where Squall is?"
Quistis was surprised at the question.
"Is that why you called me here?" she asked Selphie, "To ask me if I knew?"
"No, Quisty... Quistis, no. He just... left the room in the middle of the night."
"He has been doing that."
"But he'd turn up somewhere by now, he'd have fallen asleep somewhere in the Palace, nothing! I... What if he did something to himself?"
Quistis reached out with her right hand, saw that she couldn't extend her fingers enough to gently grab her friend's shoulder, and opted to put her whole fist there, instead.
"Biblis Tactica. Advisor Kiros' chapter on the principles of war. What does it say about making assumptions?"
"I don't... I don't know, I didn't memorize the damn thing..."
"In war, there is no room for assumptions, only inferences. Once you start assuming without basis, you lose – you are only as good as your ability to turn bits and pieces of information into coherent wholes. An educated guess defeats an assumption any day of the week."
"I shouldn't assume, I know... it's just..."
"We still don't know what exactly they did to him." Quistis said, "We don't know what he went through. He's acting as we would have acted after the Second War..." something clicked in her mind and silenced her.
"...he won't even touch me, Quistis."
Quistis didn't say anything to that.
"And that's not the only thing... even before all this, after the Second War, he always... he'd always talk to me. Before Rinoa fucked off to become Ms. President Evil, weeks before, he had told me what he was feeling, what he was thinking..."
"Squall? Squall Leonhart?"
"After the Second War, yeah... always... but now he won't say word one to me." She sighed, "I don't know what to do. I feel like... I feel like he's punishing me."
"Selph, that's ridiculous. What would he punish you for?"
"For abandoning him. For letting Rinoa take him."
"You didn't let her take him."
"But still, I-"
The phone ringing interrupted them. They exchanged curious glances, and Selphie got up and took the call. In her head, she was already having one of the conversations she'd had with Palace staff or random SeeDs for the past week.
"Yes, hello?"
"Lieutenant General Tilmitt?"
Selphie's attention piqued.
"Brea?"
"Yes, sir, it's me. I just wanted to let you know that the General is with me."
Selphie felt her grip on the phone tighten.
"What... the fuck... is he doing there?"
"He spent the night, sir."
Selphie swallowed her anger. Not now. Maybe later.
"Why didn't you call me, Brea?"
"I thought you might have been asleep, sir. I still don't know why he came, but I don't believe he intended to come here specifically."
"Oh? And what gave you that impression?"
Silence.
"Sir, he just knocked on my door, asked me if he could sleep in this room, then went in and slept. He didn't even look at me, or showed any signs of recognizing me."
Don't make assumptions, just inferences.
"He's still asleep. What do you want me to do, sir?"
"Stay put." Selphie said, "We'll bring some clothes."
"I'm sorry, sir, it wasn't my intent to-"
"No. Not your fault, Brea. Not your fault at all."
Selphie placed the phone down. Quistis, leaning on her cane, rose to her feet. She pushed a stray strand of hair away from her face with her frustratingly crude fist. Selphie seemed to be stuck on the conversation itself, and though Quistis had gotten the gist of it, she was now witnessing the gears turning. She could see anger, confusion, frustration, and a bit of despair reflecting onto her friend's face.
"Selph..."
"He spent the night with Brea." Selphie snarled, "With Brea."
"Nothing happened, and you know it."
"That's not the point."
"I hope not."
"Let's just go." She said, walking to the wardrobe, "He's gonna need some clothes. He's in his underwear."
2 (Brea's Head, Brea's Bed)
Brea placed the phone down. Behind her, her General, wearing only in his boxer shorts, was sitting at the foot of the bed, staring into nothing. She, herself, was down to only a loose white t-shirt and panties. She was partially glad that her General's attention was focused on anything but her. Having him there, wearing almost nothing was beyond strange for her – it was almost surreal. Brea found that she had only ever observed or had spent time with Squall in their professional setting: her, aide, him, General.
Unsure what to do, but feeling more and more distressed the longer she stood there, Brea resolved to get to the bed and sit down next to him. He didn't react at all to her presence, so she focused onto him. There was some hair on his head now, but barely enough to color his scalp, and a few of the runes' afterimages lingered. There were tan lines left of the machine around his head, but they weren't noticeable enough unless you were specifically looking for them.
As for the rest of him, he had been kept in incredible shape. In fact, judging by what Brea had seen from his training sessions, he was a bit larger, more muscular than before.
But beyond all else, Brea noticed his eyes. She had seen them, yes, and they were captivating no matter what your rank was, and that wasn't the point. She had seen his razor-sharp military wit reflected in them, his passionate, boiling blood for combat revealed. His face had many times been betrayed by the undistilled, clear emotion in his eyes.
Looking at him now, Brea didn't see anything. No thought, no pain, no joy, no reason, nothing. Just empty blue.
"Thank you." Squall said suddenly, without looking at her.
"S-sir?"
"Drop the sir. I'm nobody's sir."
"...I can't do that."
"You just did."
"Is that an order, sir?"
"Fuck it, yes, whatever."
"Thanks for what, sir?"
"Letting me stay."
Brea bit her lower lip.
"You shouldn'tve chosen me."
"I didn't choose you." Squall said, turning to Brea. His eyes made her shiver, "I found you. There's a difference."
Squall drew closer to her, making her instinctively back up a little. She felt slightly flushed, as the eyes she had seen vacant were now looking into hers, focused and alive.
"But back then as it is now, I'm glad it's you." He said, without moving away. The longer he lingered, the more flushed she grew, and his words let her draw her own meanings and lucid estimations.
Squall reached for her, and Brea tensed up, but his fingers softly brushed on the chain of her necklace and pulled at it until he acquired the Hyne Cross. He looked at her, as if demanding an explanation or just asking a question. She hesitated, but none of this was appropriate anyway, nothing was as it was supposed to have been.
"A gift from my valentine."
"Where is he?"
"He's dead, sir."
"Tell me about him."
Before she could answer, a knock on the door interrupted them. Brea practically jumped out of the bed. She opened the door and let her superiors in with a rather clumsy salute. Selphie stomped past her and Quistis slowly made her way into the room.
Squall looked at them, and while Selphie bit her tongue not to speak in anger, and Quistis simply stood by and watched, Brea saw something in him that neither could have recognized: he was shirking from them, as if ashamed.
