Circles in the Dirt
Sapphire Blue

-
"Are you really in love with him?" Paine, as logical as ever, did not stop at a chance to ask Yuna herself after Rikku had bounced off to the snack line to get something.

"Yes. No. Maybe...?" Yuna put her head in her arms. "I don't know!" She felt like crying again. It was very irritating how she felt this constant sense of danger, even when there was no one around. Or perhaps it was because there was no one around.

"Give me a straight answer." Once started, Paine would not leave her alone. She stared into the blank shadow between Yuna's forearms and her face and said sharply, "Tell me what's really bothering you about this."

"He's... he's..." Too intimidating. Too handsome. Too cold. Too much like me! "He's twenty-five," she settled weakly. "Paine! Do you know what that means?!"

Paine shrugged. "If it means an eight year age gap, I don't see why you're so stressed. My parents are--"

"But I'm eighteen! What..." Yuna took a deep breath. "If this goes around the school, then what will people think of me? I don't want anyone to think I'm... a..."

"Yuna, you've already had a boyfriend before. And even though everyone was surprised, it wasn't like they--"

"He was the same age. That was different. That was okay!" She shivered and kept breathing hard. Paine gave her a bottle of water and she drank it readily, which helped a lot. She no longer felt on the edge of tears. "Th-thanks."

But Paine was thinking of other things. "Plus seven..." she mumbled. Yuna tilted her head.

"What?"

"Half his age plus seven. That's generally how people decide."

"...Nineteen," Yuna told her, after doing some quick mental math.

"It's a year off," Paine said, rather reassuringly for someone who was so antisocial. "It's fine."

"It doesn't matter." Yuna took out her lunch and started eating it morosely. "He's a policeman. He'll probably be too honorable to do anything if I do say something to him. Which I won't."

Paine sighed. "There's no talking to you now."

"Okay, chickies!" Rikku came back from the lunch line laden with small bags and cookies. "What'd I miss?!"

"Yuna got weepy again," Paine said. "But I guess she's all right now?"

"Yes," Yuna answered glumly. "Fine."

-
Leon felt extremely annoyed. Was every teenager having a moral crisis lately? So far he'd run into several students in a corner of the school smoking marijuana, which while not being the most heinous crime ever committed was definitely not fun. When he'd come across Roxas and Namine, the two appeared to be shadows of themselves, clinging to each other and barely noting the presence of anyone else.

Also the silverhaired boy Riku had been muttering to himself, something like "can't go back into the darkness" and the names of his two best friends over and over. It sounded uncomfortably like symptoms of withdrawal. Or insanity. Though he had snapped out of it when Leon had made his presence known--disturbingly quickly.

But now, it was the end--the only good part of a horrible day. Leon sighed in relief as the final bell rang and students poured out by the dozens through every available exit. Then he caught sight of a familiar brown-haired profile walking away from the crowd with two others conspicuously absent.

He frowned. Yuna wasn't the sort to habitually separate herself from people, even if she never interacted with them. Her head was bowed more firmly than usual, gaze lasered tightly to the ground. Leon cautiously got a little closer, noting that her shoulders were very slightly shaking.

This was odd. "Yuna?"

She turned, then quickly turned back. "Oh, hello..."

"Are you... all right?"

She nodded. Quickly. "I'm just stressed. A bit."

He wondered if this had anything to do with the day before and made a mental note to kill Reno Kinneas someday. "Are you sure?" he pressed. He didn't like seeing women cry. It made him feel helpless, especially when he didn't know the reason.

"Yes." Yuna started walking faster as her shoulders hitched. "But thank you anyway..."

Leon watched her leave, chin tucked firmly into her collarbone and shoulders slumped. It was uncomfortably familiar and he swam in his own confusion before realizing with a horrible jolt that this was exactly what Ellone would have done. Only once had he ever seen his older sister cry, and that was when for the fourth time (or the fortieth), she had urged him to call Laguna his father and recieved a scathing reply in return. She'd left, shoulders shaking, despite his immediate and desperate apologies, pushing him away politely as if he'd done nothing wrong.

Now he felt the strangest instinctual urge to protect her. He was about to say something else to make her stop before a blonde flash raced past him, towing a black-clad figure along.

"Yunie! Wait for us!"

Oh. So she wouldn't be alone.

Leon felt slightly hurt.

-
"Hi, Ellone."

"Hey." Ellone hugged him and this time it felt awkward. "What's up, Squall? You never come visit me on Mondays."

"Ah... it was a bad day..."

"I'll make some tea or something. Liz got me hooked on the stuff." Quietly Leon watched as Ellone brewed some Earl Grey tea, then set the resulting cup in his hands. "Be careful. It's hot."

She sat down across the table in her immaculately kept kitchen. Ellone had a white tablecloth over her table, which had not one speck on it. Leon thought about his kitchen and how sparse it was, then felt acutely uncivilized in uniform.

"So, what's wrong?"

I've found the younger, more vulnerable version of you, Leon felt like saying. But he did not. "I'm pretty sure everyone's crazy today," he said finally. "Except you."

"That's nice." Ellone was not impressed. "What's really on your mind?"

In addition to trying too hard, Ellone knew him too well. That was a strike--Yuna did not know him at all, and vice versa. He didn't know if she tried too hard.

"There are these kids... and, I never know what to do when there's a child abuse case being worked," Leon said. "Laguna always takes the first step. And there's another student who's an orphan and it bothers me."

"Oh." He was glad Ellone didn't ask him why, like a therapist. She knew he had issues with bad parents and simply accepted it. It was what he'd always appreciated about her. He wondered if Yuna just accepted things like that and thought that she probably did. Maybe a little too much, like Ellone once more.

If he tried, Leon could definitely see an older Yuna sitting in front of him, with white shirt, lighter hair, and different colored eyes, and wondered if she knew she had the potential to be as strong and well-adjusted as his older sister was. And, Leon decided, she probably didn't.

That made him sad.