Note: Schoolwork and personal problems aside, I'd like to know exactly why such a vital chapter as the previous one was virtually ignored.
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Circles in the Dirt
Emerald Green
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It was Tuesday.
The worst Tuesday of my life! Yuna thought. She stared at her half of the closet and saw only sensible blues, whites, and blacks. She wondered if that had contributed to her depression of yesterday, and knew that it had not. But she felt like blaming something. She was not really in love, she thought fiercely: she only felt horribly sorry for Leon, and she had been thinking irrationally. She hadn't cried that much since Tidus left for Germany.
She had been alone in the house--but now she was securely in the midst of other people's background noises, sounds of Cid cooking something for breakfast and Rikku's bouncing around.
When Yuna got to school, she felt a little better. When she was very upset, Rikku would know not to tell anyone, besides possibly Paine, and Paine was close-mouthed about everything. So she was safe on those fronts. Still, she felt a bit queasy when she saw Leon at the gate, monitoring the stream of people walking into school.
She tried not to meet his gaze, and she could see his surprised twitch out of the corner of her eye. Then Rikku waved goodbye and went to class, as did Paine. Yuna felt safely anonymous in the crowd that swilled a little closer once her two best friends had gone, so she chanced a look back.
Leon was looking straight back at her.
So she fidgeted and went quickly to English.
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Right before lunch, Yuna had made the wrong decision entirely to stay behind after class to give an excuse for the homework she had not finished. A plausible excuse--her math teacher Mr. Geraldine found it unusual for her to turn in something unfinished or even late, but she deliberately substituted something very vague, yet plausible. He decided to give her half credit instead of no credit.
When she walked into the hallway, it was completely empty. She minced through the corridor along the very edges, half expecting to see Leon any second. But she turned a corner and sighed when she didn't, so she continued with much more of a confident stride and then bumped into a solid black-clad figure.
"Paine?" she asked, feeling optimistic.
The figure turned around. "Leon," he corrected.
Yuna's stomach churned. She couldn't quite move until he said, "I need to talk to you."
It seemed all of her hopes were being dashed lately. She made a mental note to never expect that anything would go the way she wanted to, ever again, then she gingerly followed Leon.
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He stopped at a completely unoccupied corner behind the library and sat on the bench outside, at the very end of it. Yuna sat down so there was another person's worth of space between them.
"I just realized that I may have bothered you when I said you didn't deserve to be an orphan yesterday."
He was right, Yuna thought, and then some. But admirably, Leon had cut right to the chase. Obviously he had thought a lot about this as well, because it sounded planned; but it didn't sound routinely memorized or fake. He sounded like he was being careful about his words.
"And... when I was your age, I wouldn't have wanted to hear that, either. Not from a normal person. So I'll just tell you this now--I was an orphan, too."
Yuna couldn't help staring at him. "You--you were?"
"Yes. I was." He turned his head away from her and stared uncomfortably into the distance, fidgeting with his hands. Yuna noticed there was a very irritated pink spot spreading across his wrist like a long, shallow bruise, only red. Then she noticed he was not fidgeting with his hands but rubbing them, like they itched severely.
"What's wrong with your hands?" Yuna asked, before she could stop herself. Leon sighed.
"I need longer gloves."
His came only to his wrist; he pulled off his left glove and Yuna exclaimed, "Oh--that looks like a burn!"
"It's not. It's an allergenic rash." He took off the other glove and that hand was similarly red. "I'm somewhat allergic to basil."
"Oh..." Yuna struggled, then reached out hesitantly. "Can I see?"
He frowned at the sudden forwardness, then shrugged and said, "Go ahead."
His hands were alarmingly hot. Yuna thought it was very strange that the rash along his wrist was simply an abnormal shade of pink while his hands were blazing red and rather swollen.
"Why are your hands so red? The rest of your arms aren't so glaring."
"I don't know. It's always been like this."
In fact, the two different shades of red were distinctly separated by a line. Yuna looked up at Leon's face.
"Maybe your skin is sensitive..."
"What?" He sounded affronted at the thought.
Yuna stretched so she could look a bit more closely at his scar. It was a straight, long gash that made him look rather dashing, but it must have been murderous to keep clean and she doubted there had been a bandage, as it was right across his nose and any wrapping would have blinded him, partially or completely. She steeled herself, then asked very professionally, "When you got that scar, was the skin around it raised for a while after?"
"Well... yes. But the swelling went down after a few days."
"When you get a scratch, is it the same? Does it swell, even if it's small?"
Leon thought for a moment. "Yes."
"Oh." Now she knew the problem. "Okay then. Your hands are so red because you're wearing gloves and it irritates the skin. Normally it's not enough to really do anything, but since you're having an allergic reaction you're probably more sensitive, so they get even redder. If you leave them off, the swelling will probably go down."
"How do you know?"
"Er... first-hand experience. Only I have problems with sunburns, too." Rikku and Isaac and Uncle Cid were quite tan, so Yuna supposed she'd gotten it from her father. It made her feel even more conspicuous, especially in summer.
She let go of Leon's hand and he did not put his gloves back on. There was an uncomfortable silence in which Yuna's nerves screamed; then to assauge her anxiety, she asked, "Leon?"
"Yes?"
"How were you an orphan?"
He did not look back at her either. He just spoke.
"My mother died when I was born. Then somehow, my sister Ellone and I were separated from my father. I don't remember what happened and Ellone never talks about it. I don't think even she understands. I grew up, and I got to be a policeman. When I was twenty-two, a new officer transferred in, with the same last name as me and Ellone. It was Laguna. At first I couldn't believe he was even related to me because he seemed so... so... trivial. Then Ellone saw him and she knew. One thing led to another, and I guess I found my father."
"How old are you now?" Yuna asked.
"Twenty-five."
That was sad. He was probably still not comfortable with the thought.
"So you still feel like an orphan," Yuna said.
"Yes... Yes, I do." He looked straight at her then, watching her face. Now Yuna felt more comfortable handling his pity. At least she knew it was built on empathy instead of a vague preconception. "Do you understand now?"
"Yes," Yuna said. "I understand completely."
People were never the same when they came back. Not the way you remembered. Yuna was still wondering, even though she was over it, if Tidus would be Tidus once he got back from Europe. He probably would be, but...
Yuna pressed her back into the reassuringly solid wall behind her and let her gaze drift from Leon. She kept expecting someone to pass by and startle them, but no one ever did. It was probably because they were right behind the library. No one ever bothered to take the back exit while Quistis was there.
Then Leon said something else, and it stuck with her for the rest of the day.
"I didn't want you to think that I pitied you because you were an orphan. I wanted you to know that I felt sorry for you because I was an orphan."
