Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy, it's all Squaresoft's honest!

Warnings: Umm, thoughts of meagre violence...

The Night Before – Mistake Part III

(Back to the night of the SeeD ball…)

I hated to admit it, but on the night of the SeeD ball, on the way to find Squall who was reportedly in Seifer Almasy's room, I was dragging my feet. It was as if, after being so energetic all night as I usually am, my limbs were slowly shutting down, turning to lead. Each footstep felt as if I were lifting ten tonnes from the ground only to crash it back down a few feet away. Well, okay, a slight over exaggeration there but I felt it was justified.

Champagne does funny things to me. Okay so it does the usual stuff like making my mouth feel like a dry sock after drinking too much of it and also giving me a horrendous hangover the next day, but it has other side effects too. Like making me abnormally paranoid over the smallest of things. Someone can walk past me in the corridor and look at me just out of instinct and I'll take it the wrong way, letting the seed of paranoia build in my brain from that one glance until I'm ready to lock myself in my room and hide there until it's gone. Pretty harsh I know, but hell I've never been able to hold my drink, and I usually steer clear of champagne…well that is if Selphie isn't pouring down you're throat like she's filling an empty car with petrol. Well I was pretty far into my easily paranoid stage by now. I wasn't really drunk because the cool air and my walk had sobered me up, but I was still rather anxious. So, anyway, well as you can imagine, as anything could send me into flights of paranoid delusion at the drop of a hat, the thought of Squall still being in Seifer's room after all this time was sending me a little frantic. Frantic enough to drag my feet along the well polished corridor floors while trying hastily to dismiss every ludicrous yet, in my state, easily believable outcomes.

The hallway lights shone brightly onto the floor making an odd parody of daylight in juxtaposition to the pitch darkness outside the windows. A soft breeze blew from one dark hole in the wall to another, ruffling my hair but not shifting the uneasiness growing in my mind. I stuffed my hands into my pockets and ground my teeth, wishing to all hell that I didn't have to be the one to do this. God, look at me, I had been so eager five minutes ago to find him and now I was wishing that I could just crawl back to my own corridor, into my room and under the covers. I wanted to go to sleep more than anything, what with my sudden lethargy and my need to rid myself of this horrible paranoia. However sleep wasn't the cure for that, it never was, I only had nightmares if I slept in this state. What I needed was to unfound my claims, show myself that I was being stupid, idiotic in thinking whatever absurd thing I was thinking.

And this was where I would do that.

I looked up at the bland grey door that held two names in black writing on white board. Almasy, Seifer and Tressman, Jay. I could feel my fingers twisting round themselves in anxiousness, grabbing at the silky lining of my pockets and picking at it meanly, shifting my feet and biting my lip. I blinked as another suspicion driven scene flicked into my mind only to flit away again. The air I heaved into my lungs was suddenly bitingly cold and the proximity of the door was too close. I closed my eyes and told myself to shut up and stop being stupid, but the drink had other ideas. It took all of my slowly dwindling willpower to reach out and press the buzzer in the middle of the door panel.

-I mean Squall and Seifer hate each other,- I reassured myself as another delusion tried to take hold of my train of thought, -everyone knows it, they always show it off, always arguing…hell even if they can work together civilly when it's necessary that doesn't mean a thing!-

Nothing was happening. I didn't hear footsteps or the opening of the inner doors to answer my call. Perhaps Quistis was wrong and he had already left, I mean it was possible, but then where would he have gone? I mean shit it was half past one in the morning, trust Xu to have left this to the last minute to arrange. But, well, I mean he could still be here I guess, maybe…better safe than sorry. I rang the buzzer again, a little more forcefully this time, and was relieved to hear the sound of movement from within, the grumpy sound of a door opening followed by groggy footsteps. I wasn't at all sure who exactly was going to answer the door so I stood up straight, pulled my hands out my pockets and tried to look reasonable, but then if it was Seifer who answered then I would want t look angry so I scowled, but if it was Squall then…

…hell, what would I do?

Thankfully it was neither Squall nor Seifer but the dilapidated face of Jay Tressman, Seifer's roommate. His short dark hair was mussed the beginnings of bags forming under his misted eyes. He was wearing his standard issue pyjamas and a half thrown on white terry towel dressing gown.

"Oh, uh," I stalled, scratching the back of my head while I tried to scrape out something appropriate, "Sorry Jay, I thought you'd still be out at the party."

"Oh, Zell, hey," he said a little huffily despite his words, "that's alright, I wasn't asleep anyway. What do you want?"

"Uh, well, I was wondering if you had seen Squall? Quistis said that…"

"Yeah I know where he is," Tressman cut me off, a strange look in his eyes, "that stupid bastard scared the shit out of me, sneaking up on me like that."

I felt my eyes narrow almost instinctually at Tressman's words but I kept my mouth shut. I wasn't here for a fight, I was here to find Squall, deliver my message and get the hell out of here.

"So…" I started after a slight pause, my eyes looking anywhere but at Tressman; however he already knew what I was going to ask it seemed as he cut me off once more.

"He's in Seifer's room," he said shortly, turning from the doorway and slumping back through the dark shared area towards his own door, waving lazily to me over his shoulder, "and if you're here to take Squall away somewhere I'd ask you to please hurry up about. I can't sleep with those couple of filthy faggots next door."

Now, I know that I'm hardly fames for my self control, so it really was a miracle that I didn't run an leap over that little table sitting between us, hit Tressman at the pressure spot exposed at the top of his spine and send him straight to La La Land for a couple of hours. It was mostly a mix of sudden anger and sheer shock at what he'd said, combined with my revamped paranoia feeding desperately from his statement. Instead I just glared open mouthed at his closing door, pushing all of my excess energy into striding towards the other rather ominously closed door. As I walked swiftly toward it I knocked one of the chairs sitting at the table, dislodging what looked like a jacket which fell into a heap at my feet. I bent instinctively to pick it up, even in my fervour, but froze as I brought it up tin o the faint light and realized what it was. Squall's SeeD jacket, he'd left it out here…

I dropped it back onto the chair, shoving my hand ruthlessly into my abused pocket and pulling out the small scrap of paper I had scribbled Squall's new room number onto. I shoved it into one of the pockets of Squall's jacket and dropped it languidly over the back of the chair once more.

I could leave now. I had delivered my message, I could leave now. But no, of course not, my insane sense of curiosity and need to destroy this stupid thought in my head…

Of course after I'd opened the door I wished I had never even gone near it in the first place. I wished I had never even thought about coming here, that letting Squall freeze out in the corridors would have been a much better idea than coming here. Of course, Squall wasn't going to freeze out in the corridors, that wasn't really and option. I stared at the bed for a whole shocked five seconds before turning on my heel, again knocking the jacket to the floor in my hurry to leave, and didn't stop running until I was back at the SeeD ball with several drinks in my hand and several more down my throat.

AN: Hey again people, I'm sorry this took so long and that I'm not updating as fast as I'd hoped. I'm finding that I don't have that much spare time at the moment, and that I have things needing done that are pilling slowly up on top of me; soon I won't be able to reach the keyboard to type for the mountain of stuff needing done! However, hopefully this will satisfy you until I get the next one out, sorry again for the wait.

This chapter is really just a small explanation of what happened between the last two chapters, and I hope it all fits okay and that it makes sense! Right, now, I'm off to write some more, hopefully…see you next chapter, and please R&R!