Chance or Choice?
And what do you think you'd understand?
I'm a boy no, I'm a man
you can take me and throw me away
and how can you learn what's never shown
yeah, you stand here and you're alone
They don't know me, cause I'm not here
-Goo Goo Dolls "I'm Still Here"
Chapter XI
The cold bit at my exposed skin. I tried in vain to pull my hood up over my face tighter, but the wind kept blowing it back. The snow collected in the pockets of my jacket, my hair, the hood and collected as a bundle at my feet. I refused to move for fear of breaking the sustained warmth I had created by simply…standing there. I could faintly see a glimpse of raven hair flash past my vision, throughout the many pieces of frozen rock that poked up from the ground in front of me. As I tried to look more closely, I heard the distinct cries of a certain someone.
"Kweh! Kweh!" My ears began to ring from the constant screeching.
"Hey! Come back here!" She yelled after it, from next to me. I turned, clenching my teeth from the bitter cold, and tried to point at where I had heard the chocobo yelling from.
"T-There" I stuttered. Rinoa nodded and ran around the corner of a few icicles. We were in the middle of a frozen canyon. Looking for a rogue chocobo that held all our gear: Our clothes, our tests, our equipment, our dignity…
I waited for at least another fifteen minutes until I built up the courage to look for Rinoa. Second missing subject. It wasn't too long before I had slipped over ten times, practically given up altogether on the warmth idea and ended up scrambling around holding onto the edges of rocks to guide my way through the canyon. The wind had picked up speed dramatically and I could hardly keep my eyes open. Panic rose in the back of my mind.
"Where are you!" I called. The wind carried my voice away behind me. I shook my head angrily and continued on, trying desperately to call out for her along the way. It turned serious when I fell down into a small crevasse and got my leg stuck. My entire leg was covered in frozen snow and rock. I tried frantically to pull it out, melt it out with a lighter (The lighter wouldn't work anyway) but nothing worked. I was completely stuck. Lost in the middle of a frozen wasteland/canyon with a chocobo on the loose and a missing girlfriend. Could things get any worse? Indeed they could.
My leg had gone numb and I lost my voice. I was shaking all over from the cold and couldn't open my eyes at all. What an honorable way to go! Found dead on a routine mission, frozen with a leg stuck in the ice! All because of chocobo that no one had time to even toilet train. My arms finally gave in and I lay down on the soft, yet deathly freezing snow and waited for the final blow to come. At that time I lost consciousness and knew no more. The next sensation I felt was a warm feeling on my cheek. When my tired eyes opened, all they saw were yellow and two black eyes. The chocobo had returned. I was too cold to do anything so I decided to go back to sleep.
"Squall!"
Or not.
"Ri…" I gasped. My final thought was the fact that she safe and alive, well maybe not safe, but alive. And for the second time that day I saw only darkness.
So many memories.
So many times together. Nearly every month Rinoa would go with me on a minor mission and we have a ball. Even
So many days that I walked the entire space of my house, our house, looking for something that could never be found or was not even there in the first place. I could not remember what it was or what it looked like. I could only wander with no hope and an empty mind needing some sort of peace.
I had almost given up…but something changed my mind. Garden needs me. Amy needs me. Cindy needs me too. I can't waste my time thinking about the past and dwelling on old feelings that are long gone and never to be felt ever again.
Who would have guessed moving on would be so hard.
October 27th
Diary of Cindy Clease
Dear Journal,
BalambGarden. What an achievement! To be here really helps me to define just how far I've come since being a washed up cadet, come from the Galbadian countryside. How many times have I read about such a glorious place, where the finest military SeeD are trained and the greatest soldiers in the world's history have originated from? Everything is so perfect, from the painted ceramics to the discipline and 'no running in the halls' rule. I'm loving it here, even if I haven't been here long. And I just know I won't ever be able to stay long enough to get the full experience of the place, because I'm dreading my return to Trabia every single day.
Quistis has been wonderful. She's shown me the entire Garden and given me so many tours. I'm glad to have a made a friend on the very first day I arrived.
But the Commander…
Never, in any Garden, have I met such a unique authority figure. He's smart, practical and has such a strong mind. He knows what he's doing and what he wants done, when he wants it done. (Not to mention very good looking!) Everyone looks up to him and the amount of achievements he has made here alone, is all I could ever dream of being compared to. It's amazing to think I'm working with him now, and in three days, we'll be working side by side at B-Garden's SeeD Exam!
I confessed my past to him a few days ago, and he accepted it. I've never had someone just sit there and…listen to me. He didn't criticize or blame me, he just listened and assured me. I felt so welcome…so real, so human. Why has no one else ever made me feel the way I do when I'm around him? I hardly know him.
At Garden I've been watching over some of the classes, speaking to junior cadets and hanging around with Squall, helping him with his basic duties. He has a little girl in the medical office to look after, Amy, as well so he has a lot of work to get through each day. I'm always trying as hard as I can to help him out. Amy is a good kid though, so he doesn't get stressed whenever he visits her. Infact, being around her calms him. Who would have ever known the Commander had a soft spot for kids?
"Here's my timetable. It's a copy of my plans for next week after the exams. I should have got this to you a lot earlier but things are hectic" I passed a few sheets enclosed in a yellow folder over to Cindy, sitting opposite me.
"I know what you mean" Cindy smiled. It was our second meeting in the cafeteria for lunch. Only if lunch means a milkshake and a handful of paperwork. Neither of us were believers in plenty of meals regularly. She shuffled her papers and yawned.
"Don't we have a Garden Festival Committee meeting soon?" She asked.
"Yes. Selphie wants to choose the color theme for the ball and an overall theme, like a dress-up of some sort" I replied, my heart down in the pits and my voice exploiting every ounce of sleep I missed the previous night.
We both groaned.
"Let us pray we won't be turning up to an official Inauguration ball dressed as a bunch of pink bunnies and sunflowers" She whispered. I smiled back and looked at my watch. It had been a few hours since I last seen Amy. I had personally signed her bright pink cast and spent three hours enduring episodes of 'Sponge Bob Square Pants' and that damned suicidal octopus. Guilt had been weighing down on me a lot lately and so my way of repaying her back for letting her be hurt, was to double the time I would normally spend with her. Maybe triple would be more like it. Even though she didn't know it. She didn't realize a lot things but deep down I could always tell that she understood some of the things I would normally have to voice, by just looking at me.
"Come back Squall. I don't think I can handle talking to these papers anymore. They never give the answers required"
I jumped back to reality and nodded to acknowledge her. Her smile faulted slightly and her voice softened to a more soothing tone.
"Hey…what's on your mind?" She asked attentively, tilting her head to the side.
I hesitated and despite my normal reaction, I let down my guard and rested my head in my hands. My cool demeanor slipped away and I was left suddenly bare, sitting at the almost vacant cafeteria with a weight on my shoulders big enough to pull me to ground and bury me.
"I'm hating this" I mumbled. "I'm falling to pieces just thinking about how miserable I've become"
She rested a hand on my shoulder. "Squall…we all have our bad days" She whispered.
"For me, I think it's my bad year. Everything has gone wrong, and the worst part about it is that I can't seem figure out what I've done to make things so wrong. There always has to be a damned cause. Things don't happen like this without any reason!" I stopped to lower my voice. "I don't know how long I can keep going like this" She closed her eyes in thought for a minute. She thought I was talking about the stress of working, the exam and looking after Amy. All the responsibilities suddenly thrust upon me. But my mind had drifted to a completely different subject.
"It may not make you feel any better, but to try to list the things down in your head and mentally assess each one as they come to you. The more you take care of these things in your mind, the better you can cope with them when they reach reality"
She sounded like my councilor, but it was good advice.
"Thanks…I'll do that. I'm sorry I can't be too open, but I'm not ready for that yet. I already had a crack-job making me do that already"
She smiled and tidied up her papers. "Don't we all?"
I lifted my head and took out my wallet. I handed it to her and stood. "I need to be alone for a while. Can you pay the drinks and I'll meet you up in Xu's office soon so we can go through the last paperwork for the exam?"
"You sure?" She asked, motioning to the wallet.
"Of course, and thanks for listening to me babble"
"Anytime" She grinned.
I stood, nodded my head briefly and walked out of the cafeteria. I was careful to avert my eyes from the oncoming hoard of cadets running to grab their early dinner. My first intention was to go to my old dorm. I had secretly kept my dorm, even though Rinoa and I bought our house nearly half a year ago…before she left. I thought that it held some sort of a connection to myself, having spent a good while surrounded by its walls and finding the same comfort that I found when I was always alone. Also it was also a good way to stay up late to finish off work and spend the night at Garden. I was careful not to let Xu know that I had kept it, for she would immediately have me clean it out and let one of the SeeD's in waiting have it. But one of the perks of this job is the wonderful ability to keep secrets, and keep them secrets.
But then my mind drifted to Amy who, by now, I knew would be sleeping. It would be pointless to visit her if she was sleeping but I still had the urge to go and see her anyway. My practical mind took backseat for once. So when I reach the infirmary, I hid from the Doctor Kadowaki and sat silently next to her bed. Amy's bright pink cast was so fluorescent that it nearly brought a small light into the dark room, added by the glow of an actual 'glow in the dark' pen that Selphie had used to write a message on the cast. With each day Amy welcomed more people into her little 'peer group', and although she still hated the medical staff, she didn't seem too worried to have more than two people in the room at one time. But three is crowd, and she tends to get teary if a crowd takes up her personal space.
She had her head turned to face me, sleeping soundly, amongst four different colored feather pillows. A lumpy quilt and three pink sheets draped across her tiny figure and onto the floor. Her short but shiny thin blonde hair flowed like a river across the pillow behind her. I lifted my hand to her face and tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear. She didn't stir. I wanted her to wake up so that I could tell her all about my day, as I always did, and have her listen in awe of the fantastic adventure of how I yet again, signed another contract with the Esthar public and welcomed two new cadets to Garden. Or how I wrote up my timetable and gave the SeeD permission to begin setting up the scaffolding at the Lunar Base for the exam. She would always sit and stare so intently and giggle at the most slightest things. I admired her for the way she was so innocent in every aspect.
From that moment on I vowed to protect that innocence for as long as I could, and as I long I would ever know her. Because I knew that very soon, Garden wouldn't be able to harbor her any longer, and she would be sent off to an orphanage to be in a new home and very soon, new loving parents.
I dreaded that day now.
I rested my head on the cabinet and closed my eyes. Amy would wake up in precisely half an hour for her dinner; have a play, a bath and then go back to sleep. I pitied the way she had a such a scheduled life, and then felt sorry for her even more because when she would become an adult her life would become all the more harder and muddled, having things happen completely out of the blue for no reason what so ever.
"Agee?" A tiny voice yawned.
I quickly turned my head to face her. Her eyes were half open and she hadn't moved yet. I was careful to place my hand on her cheek and lean close, whispering; "Go back to sleep Amy, it's not time to wake up. Go back to sleep" She weakly shook her head and started to sit up.
"No Agee, Amy wake now" She pouted.
"Okay, you're the boss"
She pulled a pillow out from behind her and started to wriggle around and make herself more comfortable. I watched her for while until she had settled down and pulled the covers up to her chin. The quilt was covered in colorful chocobo's and cactuars: courtesy of Selphie.
"Warta" She yawned. I nodded and slowly stood. I slipped past the nurses yet again and got Amy a small cup of water. Once I had returned, she was asleep again, with her head to the side and a pillow resting on the ground. I smiled and placed the cup on the cabinet.
"See you tomorrow" I whispered, and left.
Author's Scribbles: Personal crisis and poor health got in the way of my writing this time. But then, we all know what a slack updater I am anyway. Thanks for reading, and remember to check my profile to find out why I haven't updated or what's going on in my writing in general. I sent out emails to some of the reviews I thought were very helpful. Some of you I couldn't get in contact with though.
Thankyou:
UltraBeing, bakashinji01, KiLL-Lil-ChiBi-person, TaRe-ChiBi, Maverick Point, Lady Nova the White Mage, Dark Lulu , silver-nex, Chris, Seth8, Graywords-girl, emina, annjirika, lazy shatteredjade, Verdanii, DBH