"Estranged"
8. The Thought that Counts
1
Selphie sighed in relief as she settled into her usual hiding place in the wall of the Quad. She knew this opening like she knew herself – she knew exactly how her body could fit. Knew all the combinations of limbs. Sometimes she wished she knew her thoughts like this, it'd make it easier, so much easier to think if she did. But, as things were, she had to make do with only physical comfort.
She listened to the sounds the cadets were making. Somebody was playing guitar. The strings ringing in her ears, she tried to distinguish voices. Sentences, dissipating into the air without coherence soothed her. In the distance, distinguishable by their intensity, two girls were busy jumping all over each other's sentences to patch together a judgment of sorts. Selphie, interested slightly, or perhaps just welcoming the distraction, looked on. Huh. Hadn't she seen those three on the day Squall and Rinoa had broken up..? Oh yeah, Zell's girlfriend and her two friends.
Their conversations seemed to involved and besides, Selphie hadn't come there to socialize.
She just didn't know how to even begin, so she took the thread of her own thoughts from wherever it may come.
2
Squall Leonhart.
What a thought. That was partially the reason why she couldn't actually think in a linear fashion, from beginning to end. It was impossible to shape Squall Leonhart as an idea in a non-complicated manner. So best start, Selphie thought, with the connotations of the concept and work from there.
Gunblade. Scar. Blue. Black. SeeD. General. Leather. Orphan. Quiet. Introverted. Drunk. Gin. Vodka. Passed out on the couch. Functional wreck. Coming apart at the seams.
And therein was the problem: he was functional, yes, but Selphie could see a spiral gradually forming. Every night he drank himself to sleep and when he slept, he often woke up (and woke her up) with his screaming.
Selphie didn't need to know what he saw in his dreams. Hell, she didn't think he even registered dreaming, or waking up and going back to sleep. But she knew his dreams.
Every night, she dreamt the same thing.
3
Time Compression.
The very fabric of reality, as basic as it was, slowly unraveling. Past, present, future, possible pasts, presents and futures all melding into one, becoming irrelevant, becoming meaningless, dissipating, disappearing. But all that had been a distraction, an aside. What had happened was so much more horrible than everything she took for granted slowly falling to pieces.
Selphie knew she had played her part, went through the motions to do what she was supposed to do: act as the field medic, the protector; keep the others safe while they gave all they had to Ultimecia. A Protect spell here, a Shell spell there, maybe the occasional offensive take on her nearly-impenetrable shield...
But all that had been just sideshows to what she was feeling, years of drill and training allowing her to run on automatic. Inside, she had been absolutely terrified. The very concept of Time Compression had, from the start of the battle to the end of it, picked at her mind, had driven all of her thoughts in one direction. The incomprehensible, incomprehensive, dissolving, intangible, illogical, impossible truth of Time Compression – that there was just here and now, nothing before and certainly nothing after.
The moment without past or future, the isolated, context-free moment was what she kept coming back to.
4
One and two and four and seven nights in the past two weeks, she had found Squall occupying the couch, once with the quarter-full glass still in hand. She had curled up next to him and had slept there. It had comforted her, to know that he was there. She hadn't dreamt in those nights. Come morning, he'd wake her up and they'd have breakfast in total silence, he'd pop some painkillers and go work his way through the day while she tried to shake off the dreams and the anxiety.
Selphie knew, even when the night off from the couch seemed too cold, that his presence gave her what she needed. Something that wasn't made of plush to keep her company.
It didn't, however, take her mind off of the strange concept of Irvine.
5
Irvine Kinneas.
Anxious wasn't quite the word Selphie'd use, but it had been the case that morning when, right after Squall had left, Irvine had called. She hadn't been ready for that, at all.
What confused her was... no. Time for that later. Stick to the line.
6
"...Selph?"
Silence on her end, silence not because she didn't know what to or had too little to say, but because she had too much to.
"Selphie..? Are you there?"
"Yeah. I'm here." Mostly.
"What's up, how are you?"
"...what do you really want to talk about?"
"Oh come on, I just-"
"Don't I just me. I know this isn't a social call."
"Actually, it is. I was thinking about coming by a couple of days, y'know, get away from this place. Hang out. So I was thinking that we could, y'know, get together."
"No."
Selphie felt in that moment that the world was on fire – everything was burning down around her. She felt that she was the one who set it ablaze.
"...what?"
That something so simple (no), so little (no) should have such an impact was fascinating, yes, but this fascination wasn't as strong as her insistence.
"Said no, Irvine. I don't want to get together."
"Why not?"
Think like Squall.
"Because you can still ask me that. Goodbye."
Selphie slammed the phone down and silenced Irvine's protests. Selphie listened to the silence of the room and remembered that he was gone.
7
And faded as the feeling was, traces of it still remained. Loneliness. It wasn't just tied to being in her hiding place, the shell she had found in the wall. It wasn't alone – loneliness went deeper than that.
The strangest of all, maybe, was that this concept –loneliness- brought her to how it could be eased. It all looked to a man who preferred watering down his loneliness with alcohol every night, a man that was a functional wreck at best. He chased the bottle and she chased him.
Did she want to catch him, in the end..? Not if he fell, she knew that they were all falling.
Irvine was clinging to what he had made out of the war. Quistis and Seifer were both finding each other, holding onto their reasons to feel fulfilled and guilty all the same. Zell wasn't anywhere near anything, he kept his head down, and was barely around anyway. He was keeping it simple.
Selphie couldn't deny the simple thought, the very seed of a thought: would it be so bad if she and Squall chose not to hold onto anything and just fall with the rest of the pieces..? Lie where they'd fall?
Selphie didn't know.
All she knew was that every night since, despite the alcohol, Squall had woken up screaming. His body had sprung, and Selphie had had to wrap her arms around him to keep him steady. She had held him as tight as she could in the dark and had whispered to him that it was all okay, that it would all be alright... and hadn't believed one word of it.
