71.

Zell awakes to the appealing smell of something frying somewhere. Seifer is still in bed (although he doesn't cook in any case) and it's a fairly chilly morning for mid-August, so the house must not be on fire. Zell makes his way downstairs to find Selphie making bacon and humming cheerfully to herself.

"What are you doing here?"

"I brought bacon," she announces with a sunny smile, flipping pieces deftly with a fork.

"Yeah, but…" Zell trails off, checking the clock on the wall. He was going to say it's a bit early for her to be barging into his place like she owns it, but it's actually rather late in the morning; not that she has any qualms about barging into anywhere at any given time - since Zell moved back into the house in Balamb, Selphie has taken the liberty of treating his home as her own, and since her own flat is just up the street, it was quite an easy task to accomplish.

Not that Zell would complain. Selphie might have no sense of boundaries, but at least she's not intrusive. She only tries to badger Zell into going to the beach or the boardwalk or the marina or out shopping maybe once a week. And she likes to cook, which is a godsend, because neither he nor Seifer have the skill or inclination, and they don't have the Garden cafeteria to rely on anymore.

"Where's Luka?" Zell asks, because Selphie rarely shows up without the toddler in tow.

"Downstairs, coloring. I told him he has to be quiet so not to wake you guys up," she explains, putting the kettle on the back burner and taking a mug and a tin of tea from the cupboard above the stove. Zell is impressed - not that she'd have the foresight to stow Luka downstairs to keep from waking him, but that the toddler is heeding her words and actually staying pretty quiet down there. Squall and Rinoa's son is notoriously obnoxious, although he does seem to have enough respect for Selphie to mind her most of the time. "We're going to the beach today. I'm making sandwiches and we're gonna have a picnic and it's gonna be loads of fun! You should definitely come with!"

Zell tries to smile. Has it been a whole week already since she came round to pester him into going out with her? "I don't really…"

"Oh, come onnn. You like never leave the house and Luka loves to play with you. It's not like you have plans, right?"

"You just don't want to have to deal with him by yourself all day," Zell says as she hands him a cup of tea, though he's mostly teasing. He wonders if it would be tactless to remind her that he's still kind of in mourning, but it probably wouldn't help his cause anyway; Selphie is a firm believer in the cure-all of sunshine and rainbows. She pouts aggressively at him and Zell decides to give in. "Alright, alright. What kind of sandwiches are you making?"

"I'm doing BLTs and I got some turkey from the deli that'll be really good. And some veggie sandwiches for me. Oh, what kind of sandwiches does Seifer like?" Selphie's grin is bright enough to light up the room at Zell's agreement, which is enough to turn the little bit of annoyance he feels into affection. It's not like a day on the beach will kill him, after all.

72.

Zell thought filling his days without SeeD would be hard, but time moves by pretty quickly.

Summer comes and goes in a flash, and before he knows it, the days start cooling down. The kids and teenagers who have been ever-present in Balamb's streets are gone for the school year. And Zell faces the crippling realization that he has no idea what he's going to do with himself.

It's not exactly that he misses SeeD or anything, but he's just not hardwired to sit around all the time with nothing to do. He needs to be occupied. As the weeks after the funeral turn into months, he starts to feel less and less like he's justified in having no motivation to do anything with himself and more like he's just simply lost. He never put any thought into what he would do without SeeD; he had never had any idea of doing anything else - not necessarily because that's what he wanted, though there was a time when that was all he wanted. But he didn't stick with SeeD for the last five years because he liked it. The question is, what would he prefer to be doing?

73.

"Good morning, Dincht," Mr. Halverson says as Zell opens the door to the junk shop, a little bell jingling to announce his entrance.

"Morning."

"What can I do for you?"

"I'm just meeting Selphie for lunch," Zell says, pointing up at the ceiling; Selphie lives in the flat above the shop. The owner shakes his head, smiling a little.

"Haven't heard a peep out of her yet today."

"I texted her," Zell says, checking his watch, "twenty minutes ago to tell her I was coming."

"Better go wake the girl up," Mr. Halverson says, chuckling. Shaking his head, yet not surprised in the least, Zell goes through the back of the shop and upstairs to knock on Selphie's door. Sure enough, from inside the apartment comes the distinctive sound of Selphie falling out of bed, and then scrabbling as she hurries to the door.

"Oh, gosh, Zell, I'm sorry! I fell back asleep!" she cries, peeking through the door. Zell can see a strip of pink flannel pajamas with moombas printed on them. "I'll be down in five minutes, okay? Just give me five minutes!"

Zell goes back down into the shop; since he's got at least fifteen minutes to spare, he thinks about going back home, but it's cold and drizzly outside and the walk here was bad enough. He loiters about the small store for a while, staring aimlessly at the walls. He used to spend more time in this store than he did at home, back in his cadet days at Garden, but he doesn't remember the last time he came in here before Selphie moved in upstairs.

Mr. Halverson waves him over to the counter, where the old man is leaning over the newest issue of Weapons Monthly. "Check this out, Dincht," he says, flipping the magazine over to show Zell a two-page spread of flashy-looking gloves. "Brand new from Esthar, supposed to be top of the line. They're taking pre-orders for these babies already."

"I don't really… I'm not SeeD anymore," Zell says a bit awkwardly. Mr. Halverson gives him a skeptical look.

"What's being SeeD got to do with appreciating good weapon craftsmanship?" the old man replies, shrugging. "Supposedly they're using some high-tech lab-created materials nowadays. We'll see how this new-fangled technological stuff holds up, I guess. I still prefer monster parts, myself," he goes on, flipping through the article.

"Yeah, me too," Zell agrees, studying the picture more closely. He still has his old gloves; they've held up well enough that he hasn't had to upgrade over the past few years, although now that he's out of Garden they don't get much use. He goes out into the plains a few times a week maybe to train, but he's definitely not what he was six years ago, or even six months ago. The Estharian gloves in the magazine are kind of garish; does everything that comes out of that country have to be neon-colored? "Bit showy for my tastes," he remarks with some distaste. His sixteen-year-old self would have gone for them, but he prefers something a little less ostentatious these days.

"True, you're not really a showy guy, are you?"

"Guess not," Zell says, feeling somewhat uncomfortable; it's not like it's an insult, but he doesn't like the way the old man says it, anyway. Relief comes in the form of Selphie bounding downstairs and dragging him out of the shop before he has to force his way through more smalltalk with the owner.

74.

Winters in Balamb are generally kind of dismal and wet, but this winter seems to be coming on particularly cold and dreary. Zell sits at the kitchen table with a mug of tea, staring out the window at the rain, which has been alternating between a chilly drizzle and heavy downpour since the night before. He was planning to walk up to the cemetery today to visit Ma's grave, but it's too wet; he'll have to wait.

Seifer wanders downstairs around mid-afternoon. Zell watches him move around the kitchen, looking for food, obviously just got out of bed. His hair is mussed from sleeping and he looks so cozy in his pajamas and the fluffy, oversized hoodie he's wearing that Zell wants to just drag Seifer back up to bed and snuggle into the other man's warmth and sleep the day away. Not that he would do that. He just might want to.

"Zell. Hey. Chicken wuss. What are you staring at?"

"Hmm?" Zell says, jarred from his thoughts. Seifer is giving him a strange look.

"What the hell are you daydreaming about so hard?"

"I was not…" Zell pauses. "Thinking, that's all. You haven't called me that in a long time."

Seifer gives him another long look as Zell goes to the sink to dump out his drink. "You haven't been a wuss in a long time," he replies, like that's the obvious answer, and Zell is struck with a thought: Seifer only just remembered. Which is a good thing, probably. Memories of tormenting Zell during their school days are probably among the best ones he's got to remember.

Seifer is still staring at him, and he doesn't move when Zell reaches up to put his mug, cleaned and dried, back into the cupboard, which brings them within inches of each other. Seifer reaches forward and brushes his fingers across Zell's forehead, sweeping his hair out of his eyes. "Not so much a chicken, either," he mutters, playing with the ends of Zell's hair.

"I guess that's debatable," Zell murmurs back, looking away. Seifer's hand drops away, his thumb brushing over Zell's chin.

"Selphie leave any food when she was over yesterday?" the other man asks, going to the fridge.

"I think there's some muffins or something in the drawer."

Seifer pulls out a bag of round brown things and looks at them with disdain. "Bran muffins? The fuck is wrong with her?" he grumbles.

Zell only shrugs. "They're healthy," he offers; Seifer scowls.

"Don't let her shop for us anymore."

"Well, then, do it yourself," Zell says, but Seifer isn't listening. He leaves the muffins on the counter and disappears back upstairs, and Zell thinks about following, but doesn't. He is still a chicken, after all.

75.

"Fiona learned a new word today," Quistis remarks. "'Robot'. She's been going around all day asking the other kids if they're real people or not."

"Who taught her that one?"

"Who do you think?" She laughs. "Then she got the other kids to start poking each other with sticks to see which ones bled, and that's when Matron had to step in."

Zell laughs too, and Quistis goes on with her story. Even though they chat weekly, sometimes daily, on the phone, she never runs out of things to talk about where it concerns her daughter. Rather than becoming bored, it actually makes Zell happy to listen to her go on; he remembers worrying that Quistis was going to find motherhood a burden, and he's never been happier to be wrong about something.

"I'm sorry, Zell," she apologizes after a while, heaving a sigh, "all I ever talk about is Fiona. You must be sick to death of hearing from me."

Zell insists that's not the case, but she demands they change the subject anyway. "It's almost Christmas again," she remarks, and Zell can sympathize with the melancholy in her tone; he doesn't know how another year went by already. "Do you guys have any plans? I was thinking of trying to come in to Balamb around the new year."

"Not really, no. Squall and Rinoa are going to Esthar for the holidays and I think Selphie is going back to Timber," Zell says, contemplating it. He didn't expect to ever be spending Christmas at home, but without Ma there. "It's Seifer's birthday," he adds, thinking about it.

"Oh, that's right. Are you doing anything? Did you get him a gift?"

"We don't really… do that," Zell says.

"You can hang up some mistletoe. There's a gift everyone can enjoy," Quistis says in a teasing tone of voice. Zell doesn't reply, and after a very long moment, she goes on, "Zell… that was a joke. Sorry."

"I know. I just… couldn't laugh."

"Oh, lord," Quistis says, and all the joking is completely gone from her tone. "I didn't realize things were that bad-"

"Nothing's bad," Zell cuts in before she can go making assumptions. "Don't… misunderstand." There is a pregnant pause. Zell goes on, "look, I know what people think about us."

"What people think?" "That we're a couple," he elaborates, and glances at the front door. Seifer went out to run, but he could be back at any time, and Zell would rather not be caught in the middle of this conversation, though he can't particularly say why. Seifer is perfectly aware that Zell shares just about everything with Quistis, including his - relatively limited, granted - understanding of Seifer's still-jumbled mental state.

"You are a couple," Quistis points out.

"Well, yeah, but not like that."

"Like what?" she says, scoffing. "Look, Zell. Whatever kind of couple you are, that's no one's business but yours. Don't feel like you have to define yourself just for other people."

Zell almost laughs. Quistis, as usual, hit the nail right on the head. "I don't," he assures her, feeling relieved. "I don't think that at all. I just, sometimes… wonder. Don't you think we're weird?"

"Weird? Zell, honey. Your and Seifer's relationship isn't even close to the weirdest thing about either of you."

At that, Zell does laugh, and Quistis joins him. When the conversation lags, she remarks, "you know, honestly, sometimes I get jealous of you. I've never in my life been as close to someone as you two are to each other. It's rare to have that kind of intimacy without having a reliance on a sexual relationship."

"Quis, stop. You're making it way more than it is," Zell mutters, feeling richly embarrassed. "We're just… stuck together, that's all."

"Oh, do you think?" she replies in a cool tone. "Really, after everything you know about Seifer? Let me tell you something, Zell. I wasn't planning to ever tell you this, actually I thought Seifer would probably tell you himself if you asked, but obviously you're not going to do that. The only reason he came back to Garden was because you were there. I don't think we could have brought him back to Garden at all if you hadn't come to Deling City with me."

"You can't know that," Zell argues. Quistis scoffs.

"I do know it. I spent a lot of time with Seifer when he first came back, you know. Cid kind of made it my pet project," she says with only a tinge of bitterness. "I was supposed to watch over him and keep him out of trouble, like that. But he kept himself out of trouble… he was freakishly normal, I thought. It scared me, because he had seemed so broken when he first came back. I realized he must be pretending, but I've only recently realized to what extent. And I'm amazed, honestly, Zell. It's terrifying, how good he is at it."

"Where is this going, Quis?"

She sighs, and sounds tired, like she hadn't even realized she had all of this bottled up in her. "I'm sorry," she starts.

"Don't be sorry. If you have something to say, I want to hear it."
"Do you?" she asks, her tone still a bit frosty. "Sometimes it seems like you're trying to close your eyes to everything that goes on around you."

There is a pause, during which Zell says nothing. He wonders how long Quistis has been waiting to say all this to him. She always struggled to seem like she had no opinion on his and Seifer's relationship, but her tone when she speaks next is heavy with emotion.

"Do you know what the only thing Seifer asked me was, when he came back to Garden? If you were still there. And I almost told him no," she says, with an almost panicked-sounding half-laugh. "I couldn't fathom why he might care about that. Can you imagine if I had told him that? Who knows how things might have turned out."

Zell thinks on that for a moment, but doesn't reply; a noise at the front door reminds him that Seifer could be back at any time, and sure enough, seconds later, he comes trudging into the kitchen, looking miserable and dripping wet. Zell covers the mouthpiece of the phone with his hand.

"Is it raining?"

"No, I just thought I'd go for a swim in the middle of December," Seifer replies shortly. Zell gives him a wry look.

"Don't be snarky. You're dripping water all over the place."

"I'll clean it up later," Seifer says, but he makes sure to fling water in Zell's direction as he passes through the kitchen.

"I was gonna say, don't catch cold, but if you want to act like that," Zell mutters as the other man disappears up the stairs. He stares up the empty stairwell for a few moments longer, and tries to remember what small events in his life led up to the final result of this strange life he shares with Seifer. He had never really spent any thought on it before recently, but if Quistis was right, it was more than just random circumstance that they had ended up together like this.

The idea is enough to completely shake his perception of the last five years, and yet, it doesn't. In fact, Zell finds he doesn't really care much at all whatever forces had conspired to put him and Seifer together like they are - whether it was fate or just happenstance. Zell is already in too deep where it concerns Seifer to start thinking about all the things that could have happened differently.

"Zell? Are you there?"

"Quis, why are you telling me any of this?" he asks, bringing the phone back to his ear. She gives a clipped, frustrated sort of sigh.

"I don't think you fully understand how much he needs you," she says.

"You've got it backwards. What I'm afraid of is that he doesn't need me as much as I think he does."

There is another silence, and Zell wanders from the kitchen into the living room, letting Quistis digest that. "I think he's still not sure that any of this is real," Zell says after thinking for a bit.

"What do you mean? Like he's… not all there?"

"No. It's like… I really think he's afraid that any of this, all of it, could disappear at any time. Including me. And I don't know how to convince him that that's not going to happen," Zell finishes, sighing. "Sometimes it really gets to me. Like, how can I even tell that any of this is real? Maybe I'm just as crazy as he is and I'm just dreaming all this up."

"Zell, stop. You're being ridiculous," Quistis says sharply, but her tone isn't entirely steady - Zell's words shook her a little. He remembers suddenly that Quistis, too, went to that place - her experience in the time compressed world was much different from either Zell's or Seifer's, but it was still an experience she could never wholly shake away from the back of her mind. "Do you guys ever talk about that kind of stuff?"

"How can I ask?" Zell replies, and he can hear the defeat in his own voice. Making Seifer recall his experiences once had been close to torturous for Zell; he doesn't know if he can do it again. "Myself, I try to forget any of that ever happened. Don't tell me you don't feel the same way. How can I ask him to drag all that up again?"

"I know, but… I don't think you can do anything for him unless you know what you're dealing with."

"I know what I have to do," Zell says, and it's true; it's suddenly very clear to him what he can to do help Seifer. He lets out a short laugh. "You know, I used to get so pissed when Seifer would call me a chicken. He used to call me that all the time. But he wasn't wrong."

Quistis makes a soft, sympathetic noise. "It's not cowardly to want to spare someone you care about from feeling pain," she says gently. "But I don't think you can help him by just… pretending nothing's wrong. It's not good for you, either."

She sounds so sanctimonious that Zell wants to be irritated, but she's absolutely right, so he can't. What he's been doing up until now - nothing - isn't helpful to Seifer. If he's afraid to do too much, it's because the idea of driving Seifer away scares him to death; he wasn't lying when he voiced his fears to Quistis.

"I'm sorry, Zell," she says again after a few quiet moments. "I'm not trying to lecture you or whatever. But you wanted to hear what I have to say. I just… it's hard, sometimes, for me to be a spectator."

"No, I get it. I'm not mad."

"Listen, I have to let you go. I can hear Fiona pestering Matron and it's time I give her a break. Will you be around later if I give you a ring?" Quistis asks.

"I don't know, maybe. I have a lot of stuff to… think about," is Zell's reply, which is as kind as he can put the fact that he doesn't really want to pursue this conversation again any time soon.

"Well, you just go ahead and think. I'll talk to you… whenever, I guess," she says, and her tone is understanding; she's not trying to pressure him into talking about it, but her intention of being there whenever he decides he is ready to talk about it is clear. Which means more to Zell than he can even say. He lets her go and sits for a while on the couch going back over their conversation.

It's not like Quistis told him anything he didn't already know. Zell always thought he was the type of person to face things head on, but since Seifer entered his life, he's been resolutely ignoring the fact that they're both going to have to face their demons someday, and Seifer's demons definitely involve him. Whatever the version of Zell that existed in Seifer's mind during his possession was like, it scared him - because Zell can see some of that fear sometimes, in quick glances, in the way Seifer never touches him. It's taken years, but Zell feels like he's starting to somewhat understand Seifer, and he almost wishes he could go back to before, to not being able to read the other man's expressions, not knowing when he was pretending and when he wasn't. He'd rather be blissfully ignorant.

He can't go on living in a bubble forever, though. Seifer has done a lot for him, more even than the other man probably realizes. It's time Zell returns the favor. Still, the idea of it scares the life out of him.