Pleasantly Depressed Ch 21 – "Of Footprints and Violins"
by Skandranon
The guards at the Quarantine gates wanted to stop him from going in. They didn't stop him.
Once inside, he checked out the map he'd "borrowed" from the Border Customs. Timber was a decent sized town, and seemed larger without its inhabitants. The map was marked in pen where the Border patrol thought the rebels were staying, but he didn't trust them to be accurate.
First step, find Irvine. Second step, kill Rebels. Simple enough.
He navigated around the wreck of a car, and the bodies littered behind it. There was a lot of debris near the barricade, probably from attempts to get out. It lessened as he moved further into town, until the only thing scattered on the streets was trash and bloodstains.
He paused at a dry fountain to get his bearings. I'm Irvine. I'm possibly injured, borderline starving and in a hostile situation. Where do I hide.
Irvine wasn't in the first apartment building he checked, or the second. Nor was he in the police station, nor the hotel. By the time he exited the third apartment building, he wasn't alone. A young child stood tense in the street, gripping a dagger with trembling hands.
"I'm a SeeD Officer of Balamb Garden. I'm not going to hu-"
He parried the lunge in annoyance. "Knock it off. I need to know whe-"
He blocked the attack and swatted the kid on the rear, sending him sprawling onto the road. "Would you just listen. I'm not going to hurt yo-"
The blow came from behind, and the sharp lancing stabs told that the baseball bat had nails driven through it. "Gittem gittem!" shouted the kid, as the new arrival swung again.
Squall sliced him through and turned back to the kid with a snarl. "Would you fucking listen! No, don't… come back here! Dammit!"
He gave chase, but the brat must've gone to ground, because there was no sign of him around the corner. "Dammit," he muttered, and hauled out his map again.
"Prit?" his pocket mewed.
"What tha- Grrface! I told you that you couldn't come!" He dug the large limbed kitten out of his satchel and glared it in its big almond eyes. "Bad moomba. No stowing away."
"Nyanyegosrkt"
"Well, stay in the bag and keep your head down."
"Yegar." It scrambled back inside and pulled the lid shut.
Some more walking led him to a church. No one inside. The light beamed down through a thousand colored shards of what had been the main window. Shadows flitted around the roof and feathers occasionally drifted down.
He was about to leave when his instinct told him to look down. Footprints in the dust, not his own. Squall crouched to examine them, tracing a finger over the outline. Not Irvine's shoes, the same size though… but there, over there by the seats, a scraping line along the edge like a coat would make when a person stood up. It could be him. Why would he change his shoes, though? Whoever it was, they'd been here frequently in past weeks.
He followed the trail to where it ended at the front door, and then continued on his trek. After a quarter hour he ended up at a library, and decided it was as good a place as any. A search through the main level didn't turn up any clues, but checking the lower levels revealed that someone had been living in the archives section, very recently from the look of it. Jerky meat in plastic bags littered the top of a reading desk, and below it sat jugs of water. Ha! Irvine's shoes were in the corner, the sole of one worn completely through.
He'd found him. Now he just had to wait for Irvine to get back.
After waiting eight long, tedious hours, he admitted that maybe Irvine had moved on. Maybe the library's privacy had been interrupted and the cowboy didn't feel safe to return. Or worse, maybe it was Squall's presence that had caused the abandonment. He sure as wouldn't return to a safehouse if he learned someone had moved in while he was gone.
Growling, he nudged a napping Grrface back into his satchel and headed for the exit. He took a shortcut through the fiction section this time and tripped over Irvine.
He shoved down the attack mode that had sprung to life, put away the gunblade and checked for a pulse. Alive, breathing, but unconscious. Looks like he collapsed for some reason. Famine, perhaps. No, Irvine had meat downstairs. Scurvy?
Dragging the cowboy over to a reading circle of chairs, Squall checked him over for injuries. Gash to the cheek, mostly healed. Bad bruising alone one leg, a bullet wound on the other. There, a stab wound to the arm, horribly infected. That was the reason.
He rushed for the water downstairs and brought up a jug. Stripping Irvine's dead weight of his jacket was a chore, but he got it off. And now the wound was exposed in all its grisly glory. Looks like Irvine had tried to cauterize it and hadn't burned out the infection well enough. Blood poisoning for sure. He tore the scab off and flicked it aside, and started hunting through his bag for his medical supplies.
Washing out the wound allowed him to get a good view of the problem areas. A few tiny lead fragments had dug their way in deep, probably too deep for Irvine to remove with his available supplies. But Squall had come prepared, and pulled them out with surgical tweezers. A heavy smearing of antibiotic cream was next, and a clean bandage, and an injection of penicillin.
A motion caught his attention, and he realized it to be Irvine dazedly blinking himself awake.
"Hey you."
Glazed eyes drifted in his direction, and the lips quirked in an almost-smile. "…ey."
"Do they not teach G-Garden SeeDs proper field medicine?"
"…fkyu." Rapid, shallow blinking said that Irvine was about to go under again.
"Hey, stay with me. Need you to drink some stuff." But Irvine just slipped deeper. Squall slapped him over the head. "Hey! Stay with me. Don't make me bite you."
"…prmsis prmsis."
Promises promises, Shiva translated.
"You better believe it. I need you to drink this." He angled the cowboy's head so that gravity would do most of the work in getting the vitamin shake down, and all he had to do was swallow. "Come on, it's good for you. Tastes like dead blobra, but that's how you know it's work… Irvine, wake up." Whap. "Irvine. Dammit!"
"Come in."
Selphie shuffled in with a small salute and took the seat opposite of Quistis' desk. She'd scrubbed off the tear streaks admirably, but it left her cheeks red from the friction. The bounce from her step was replaced with a steadiness that could only be a wall holding back the storm. She no sooner settled into the chair before she was staring the assistant Headmistress down.
"They found his body didn't they."
"What? No. No no no. Oh Selphie, no, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you think that. I should've told you, but this is confidential, so it had to wait until we were alone."
The posture relaxed a bit, but her eyes still held the same seriousness. "Then what."
"Well…" Quistis chewed her lip and steepled her fingers. "…you are aware about the situation with Squall."
"Yeah, about him and Shiva. Why?"
"Squall… escaped."
They sat together for a moment contemplating what this meant. "He's going to Timber isn't he."
"That's our guess. He took medical supplies and rations, and for some reason, his moomba. If he truly wanted to get into the Quarantine zone, I've no doubt he'd be capable of doing so, despite all the defenses."
"So he thinks Irvine is alive."
"Selphie…" she sighed. "Even if he were… now both Squall and Irvine will be stuck in there, and there's nothing we can do about it. Any attempt to help them could risk letting the Rebels spread the biochemicals. And we know what that would mean." She shuddered as she remembered the footage from Timber. Thousands dying in minutes. Shaking it off, she offered her hand with a sad smile. "Irvine would understand."
Her hand was taken and squeezed gently. "I know," the brunette whispered.
"We can only hope the Quarantine can stand up to Squall in a determined mindset. I would rather not lose both of them."
Selphie frowned. "He took the moomba? It doesn't make sense, but it could help him stay calm. Pets do that, you know. I heard from some magazine that they add years to your life, but it wasn't a good magazine so it might have… been wrong…" She deflated and dropped her gaze. It wasn't worth the effort these days.
"Him staying calm isn't exactly what's worrying me."
It was said in a quiet tone of foreboding, or resignation, and it caught Selphie's gut immediately. "But wasn't that what was the problem? His emotions are all out of whack and really strong?"
"That was the problem, yes."
"Was?"
"May still be, but it's not the possibility we're concerned about. He…do you know what an amygdala is?"
"A company that makes electric violins?"
Quistis chuckled, and seemed relieved that she could. "No, it's a part of the brain. One I've been learning too much about recently. The problem with Squall's is that it's working twice as hard as usual. And picking up speed, according to the latest x-rays."
"So it's going to get faster and faster until… pop?" Selphie winced.
"That's one possibility. One we were trying to prevent with heavy sedatives and other medication. Which he didn't take with him," she snorted bitterly. "But there is another possibility. His mind was shutting down parts of the amygdala to lessen the strain, and it was helping somewhat. We were considering… we were discussing the idea of maybe attempting to shut it down completely."
"Um… what does the amidala do?"
"Amygdala. It registers emotions. If you heard a good joke, the amygdala would be the part of you that realized it was funny."
Selphie groaned. "So shutting it off would make Squall even more broody angst boy."
"Without the angst." Quistis smiled, and let her friend's fake enthusiasm relax both of them. "Depression is an emotion too, and if his amygdala stopped working, he wouldn't feel that either."
"So what would he feel?"
"Well… nothing."
"Wow…" but as much as she cared about her Commander, this was straying from the point. "What does this have to do with me? Why are you telling me this?"
"It… doesn't have to do with you, it has to do with…"
"…Irvine."
"Yes. See, all our knowledge dictates that if Squall does somehow get into the Barricade, he won't be coming out. The defenses are ten times stronger against things exiting than entering, for obvious reason." She sighed and collapsed back against her chair, causing it to squeak in protest. "But Squall has been known to pull miracles out of… thin air, before." She censored herself at the last moment, but it still earned her a smile. "We need to keep in mind the very unlikely, but still possible, idea that Irvine could be alive, and Squall could find him, and could get both of them out of the Quarantine unharmed.
"But if he did…" She closed her eyes. "The last x-rays picked up something. It's likely that the strain of him blocking his amygdala over and over is going to cause it to collapse and shut down completely on its own, at least temporarily."
"But… wasn't that what you said you were going to do anyway? Turn it off?"
"As a last resort. If there was no other way to help him. It's not… a pleasant option."
"…why? Wouldn't him being okay but boring be better than… pop?"
"Not by much." Quistis flicked through the folders on her desk until she found the one she wanted, but she didn't open. Just looked at it. "There have been cases in the past where people had brain damage in the same areas as Squall is afflicted. There are studies even, of people who are hindered emotionally and in reasoning skills. Who have those areas of their brain functioning at lower levels than normal, or not functioning at all.
"What kind of people?"
"…Sociopaths."
Selphie was very still for a long time. Then her face went blank and she nodded. "I understand… thank you for telling me this. If you don't mind, I need some time to think."
"Of course." Quistis made to get up and help her to the door, but the shorter female walked out on her own and closed the door behind her. Sitting back down, Quistis folded her head into her hands.
"How did I end up having to make these kinds of decisions."
Thirteen seconds later, she realized it and slammed her hand down on the intercom button. "Xu! Stop Selphie before she gets to the Rag! She's going after him!"
Do you ever get those really odd dreams? Mine last night included this line : "And the A team maketh a sign, and it doth say, 'Thanks for not making us the B team'. And the B team maketh a sign, and it doth say, 'Thanks for not making us the C team'. And the C team maketh a sign, and it doth say, 'You really hate us, don't you'. And the DM maketh a sign, and it doth say 'C team, roll initiative,' and on the back for easy access, 'Bwahaha'."