Author's Notes – Sorry for the delay, my muse has been out to sea lately (probably didn't help that Animal Crossing New Leaf came out this month either). I'm heading into territory I no longer have mostly planned out so it got a little tougher than usual. Hopefully this isn't a trend that continues.

Chapter XXIV – Drifting

My initial thought was to be thankful he had the foresight to seat me on the toilet.

My second thought was to be as equally not-thankful because this blocked access to the toilet itself to promptly puke my brains out. But somewhere within my whirlwind of thoughts and nausea, I was able to let a few words escape the confines of my mouth safely.

"…How…why…when?" I murmured like a crazed woman. His gaze faltered and I honestly couldn't blame him.

'Today when you were out cold.'

I blinked. Between moments of said blinking, I noticed that he finally decided to look at me again.

'After being questioned ad nauseam, I went to my room and closed the curtains around my bed to try to sleep. When I woke up, Remy was standing there by my bed.' he began to explain. 'I told her that unless if she had an explanation for the other night, she might as well leave now. She tossed me the first part of Bear's letter and asked if we had any connected symptoms instead.'

'…So you spilled the beans about the telepathy and she just straight up told you I'm a sorceress?'

'No. I played stupid and asked how that was possible and why it mattered.' he clarified. 'She explained that transition symptoms owe to the vaccine's synthetic paramagic, not the curse itself. Human bodies aren't made to host or transfer active magic and can never adapt to it - how shitty you feel correlates to how strong the magic's presence is and how fast it tapers off. Considering those facts, what happened to the both of us made no sense – I shouldn't have been feeling better off-and-on and you shouldn't have had a magic-related blackout when they're typically limited to CET cases.'

'…but it made sense together if our conditions were linked because…of this.'

Squall curtly nodded. 'She probably asked you to cut this out because we had been previously-suspected to be unique cases individually, not because our symptoms were intertwined – and according to her, even Bear had thought this as well. To her knowledge, no one else has put two and two together like this yet though…it might owe more to the farfetched nature of this theory in general.'

'Ok.'

I pinched the bridge of my nose, closed my eyes and lowered my head a little, trying to process this all. What he said made sense in a cause-and-effect kind of way and yet…there was still at least one glaring question still left unanswered and it was giving me a headache. I wasn't sure if I should just get it off my chest and ask or hold my tongue and/or brainwaves and take his presence as my proof instead.

But then I heard the click of the stall door lock and I found myself moving my fingers away from my nose, opening my eyes, tilting my head up and starting to reconsider that first option; he must have noticed that my eyes weren't closed anymore as his hand was extended in my direction.

The moment I caught his gaze dead on, I blurted, "You're being awfully nice to someone you should probably be fearing with every fiber of your being."

To his credit, his extended hand did not drift back to his side. "If this was some secret you deliberately hid from me and not something you learned just now, maybe I would. But as it stands, I'll take my chances."

He must have taken notice of the dumbfounded look on my face because he made a point of crouching back down to my level.

"You're no different than you were a day ago." he quietly stated.

I blinked. "So…no insidious undue influence or cosmic balance sheet balancing at work here?"

He shook his head. "None." he answered without an ounce of hesitation. "I still think you're mostly irritating and strange."

…Well, if there was any conclusive proof that I wasn't brainwashing him to carry out my currently-undecided nefarious plans, I think this unabashedly-backhanded comment would have been a serious contender.

Still, the less than complimentary words didn't exactly stop me from lunging forward into yet another probably-unwanted full-tilt hug…especially since the momentum of it all and the awkward angle caused me to fall forward and him to fall back from his crouched position. This made him nearly hit his head against the stall's metal partition though that probably mattered very little since, well, I'd imagine that being sandwiched between the cold floor and my damp t-shirt wasn't very pleasant experience to say the least.

"…You need to…stop hugging…me on a whim…like this." he wheezed.

"…Sorry. Had to prove you really meant it when you said you still thought I was annoying and weird." I weakly tried to josh. "I'd ask about that tattoo I'd never seen before to be extra annoying on principle but I think washing up's probably higher on the to-do list right now."

"You're right…it is."

I unceremoniously peeled myself off of him a few seconds later. Waiting for him to follow suit, I took a few steps back to avoid hindering things further. As expected, he got up and immediately reached for the door handle to swing it open. The only problem was that I'd heard another door swing open first.

After exchanging the briefest of looks, I sent, 'Go sit on the toilet seat with your feet up now so whoever that is can't see you.'

'There's no point.' he shot back as he relocked the door and stepped back. 'It's not going to be some stranger going to the bathroom at god knows what hour this is.'

He pointed at the toilet seat as if he wanted me to sit on it once more right before walking over to the right of the base so his feet would be out of sight. This particular action sorta…contradicted what he just said but maybe there was a point I was missing here so I just did what he asked. That much became super-obvious when he awkwardly turned and crouched a little so our eyes met once more.

'Crouch on the lid as if zombie wandered in here and you didn't want to be spotted.'

Oh. Well, that made more sense. After bringing up my legs slowly so my feet could rest on the lid, I tightly gripped the back of the toilet with my fingers and rose into a crouched position that way. Soon after that, Squall straightened himself somewhat to match my newfound height.

With bated and hushed breath, I waited with Squall for the other shoe to drop. Admittedly, I wished he would have just said 'crouch on the lid' without bothering to tack on a scenario for colour though – now I was wondering if Remy really was dead and still where we left her.

A few more footsteps echoed in the distance and then the room was suddenly overwhelmed by an unnatural silence. The only good thing about this was that it told me that it sure as hell wasn't a zombie walking in here – all the other things were driving me to intensely regret the fact that I was blocking my own access to the toilet bowl once more. I felt a reassuring hand on my shoulder but could not spare a moment to even blink with my eyes trained on the door; the battle of good and bad nerves duking it out in my stomach continued on without fanfare or acknowledgement.

More steps echoed in the distance, punctuated by yet another silence.

Through the sliver of space I could see through the stall door, a flash of white passed by. Was this person a researcher in a lab coat? A lost patient? Something completely different?

"Please tell me you two weren't trying to get lucky in a bathroom stall."

I finally made time to blink – definitely hadn't been expecting that flash of white to belong to a ghost.

Against my better judgement, I leapt off my seat and hastily unlocked and opened the door. The face staring back at me was indeed who I thought it was despite the harsh peroxide-blonde dye job and half-frame glasses she was currently sporting – I'd recognize those warm brown eyes anywhere…even despite the tiredness which dulled them significantly and the aforementioned glasses she was trying to hide them behind.

"Told you I'd find a way to keep in touch. Well, it's minus the whole chicobo element…unless you count the one that clearly served as my inspiration for this new 'do." she tried to joke. The slight chuckle to her tone sobered immediately upon taking a peek into the stall, however. "Ok, if I may be serious for a moment. I'll answer any questions you two will probably have later but for now, we need to get out of here before anyone else finds us. I've bought us a little time by shorting some of the ancient cameras on this floor."

She looked down and quickly dug through the large white canvas tote at her side, proceeding to throw thick charcoal-grey polar fleece sweaters at both me and Squall. After fishing through the bag a second time, she pulled out two pairs of winter boots in different sizes and set them in front of us.

"I'm sorry if the boots or sweaters don't fit well – they're mine and my husband's. And before you ask, yes, there are badgers on the sweaters and yes, we like matching like dorks." she admitted after pre-emptively apologizing.

Just as I put the sweater over my head and picked up the smaller pair of boots for myself, I heard Squall's voice echo right behind me. "…So I assume that there is no hope for us if we stay here?"

I looked back at him for a second before shifting my gaze back onto Allison. Without much hesitation, she nodded.

"Remy's last text before she must have been infected changed everything." she solemnly answered. "I admit that this is a risk on multiple levels but as it stands, if you stay here, you'll become a plaything for Odine - it's not a question of 'if' anymore. I'll elaborate on this more later but if you don't feel comfortable, by all means, feel free to stay."

'Do you trust her?' I felt Squall's sent thought nigh-instantaneously after Allison stopped talking. My gaze shifted again.

'Yes. Yes, I do.'

'Good enough for me.'

The next thing I knew, he had his own badger sweater slipped over his head and was walking forward to collect his boots. It wasn't long after we both slipped on our respective pairs when the three of us walked out of the bathroom altogether with Allison leading the way. We took a right and things…something didn't feel right. We weren't using any amount of secrecy, stealth or…pretty much anything associated with trying to escape undetected. Maybe it was because of the cameras Nurse Bear had mentioned she'd shorted but it just felt wrong all the same. We passed by Nurse Remy only to find her still lying there but no longer covered by Squall's gown; I knew I wouldn't be able to ask about why this was until later but I couldn't seem to look away and try to work out a plausible hypothetical scenario in any event. Naturally, it was only when I'd nearly walked into Squall's back and tripped that I decided to start looking forward and watching where I was going. Now that I was doing just that, I could see that not even one person seemed to be at the front counter which was a rarity in itself – even considering the hour, this generally never happened. Sure, you might find a said counter person half (or fully) asleep – I knew this much from my occasional impromptu strolls down here when I really couldn't sleep in the past – but there was always a body or two there, no questions asked. I guess this was going to be another question I'd have to save for Allison once it was ok to waste time with questions because this was just way too convenient.

Passing by the front desk and exiting out the door, my eyes were immediately drawn to the general direction of where the rumble of a car's engine coming to life in the drop-off zone was coming from. The car's headlights didn't come on immediately but considering the night sky was clear tonight – no rain, snow or even clouds to be heard of – I was able to see the driver's silhouette clearly. While I didn't know what Nurse Bear drove car-wise or what her husband even looked like with certainty, I assumed that's who was behind the wheel as we all rushed to the car, taking in consideration that the person appeared to have very short hair.

But when I was close enough to reach for a door handle, I realized that I couldn't have been further from the truth – a familiar face was staring back at me and it wasn't Zell's.

…It was my father's.

It wasn't my intention — namely because I knew that we had to get out of here fast — but, I froze upon catching his gaze. Guess it's the kind of knee-jerk reaction that happens when you don't see someone for three years because they don't see eye to eye on things and suddenly they're there to spring you out of a messy situation like it hadn't happened at all.

Allison must have noticed my frozenness because she snuck a hand in there and opened the door herself, causing me to jump ten feet up and backwards. Thankfully for everyone else, my reaction didn't include some Grade A pathetic yelping.

"Like I said before, we'll explain later." she said as she ushered me inside the car.

What only felt like a nanosecond later, I found myself in the far end of the backseat right behind my father, Squall on the other side with the door slammed shut behind us and Allison plopping herself into the passenger seat before shutting it closed too. That being said, my father waited an extra moment or two for all of us to be buckled up properly before he even considered shifting out of park.

I suppose it was nice to know that some things hadn't changed despite how incredibly messed up this situation was.

'…Rinoa?'

I looked to my right, a sense of dread suddenly forming a cloud over my head as the car started moving. '…Yeah?'

'I'm assuming that's your father?'

Ugh. Damn perceptive boy. Why did I have to be linked with someone who wasn't a dummy?

'Yeah…it is.' I conceded, figuring that there was no point in stalling the inevitable. Even still, I couldn't help but ask about the method to his madness. 'Just curious. How did you figure that one out? Was it because I paused at the door?'

He shook his head. 'Not quite. I only figured it out when saw his eyes in the rear-view mirror. Put two and two together after that.'

'Ah. I see. Well, we'd better cut this out now because he's going to start watching you like a hawk if he doesn't know what the deal is with the staring.' I sent. 'On second thought…scratch that. I don't think knowing that the whole staring thing is because of this weird bond's going to help – maybe if he thought you were gay or a sentient robot from outer space or a sentient gay robot, maybe but…uh, hey, at least he doesn't have access to firearms…that I know of.'

Understandably, Squall gave me a look. 'Sentient gay robot? I wasn't aware that robots had sexual orientations.'

Ok…so maybe it wasn't for what I thought it was. 'Well, I guess they could have it programmed in. You know, with advanced AI or something. I guess my father's imagination's vastly improved by ten million percent since I've been gone.'

'…Right. I'm going to look the other way now so I don't incite this 'vastly-improved' imagination of his further just in case he doesn't think of me as a sentient gay robot.' he sent before he finally broke eye contact.

With little in the way of options at my disposal, my eyes drifted to the window so I could kill time by watching the nighttime scenery pass me by – or rather lack thereof; the hospital was on the outskirts of town, a definite far cry from the gorgeous, well-lit and colourful views of downtown Deling or even the beautiful sights of the pristine suburbs I'd known. With nothing to occupy my brain, my thoughts began to drift once more. I chiefly wondered where we'd be going if it wasn't my old mansion house, and what my father had to do with Nurse Bear's plan, whatever that was.

"…Rinoa."

My head perked up at my father's voice. It wasn't like him to call me anything other than my actual given name, even in spite of the fact that I'd spent so much time and effort trying to get him to call me Rinoa as a teenager when I decided that Elizabeth just felt wrong years after Mom had passed. While younger me would have been pleased at my once-fruitless endeavors bearing actual fruit, older me knew that this victory…couldn't have been good.

"Um…yeah?"

"I would prefer that you keep all communication with your seatmate audible."

I blinked as my mind tried to wrap around that comment.

"So…Remy told Allison about the telepathy and she told you in turn?"

"No."

My face turned beet-red. "Oh god…please don't tell me you have telepathy too and you heard the whole gay robot thing."

"…Gay robot?" Allison interjected with a surprised chuckle, "I think I need to hear more about this. Well…after your father explains the situation."

Without skipping a beat, my father did just that.

"With all due respect, Mrs. Bear...I'd rather save that full answer until we get to the mansion to sufficiently explain everything."

Or not.

"I don't understand why you can't just explain now. It'll be at least 20 minutes before we're home – I'm sure that's plenty of time." I indignantly countered to no response.

I guess things really hadn't changed in three years. That man was still truly as infuriating as ever.