Chapter III - You're a Big Girl Now
Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast
Oh, but what a shame if all we've shared can't last
I can change, I swear
See what you can do
I can make it through
You can make it too
"Irvy!" Selphie exclaimed as the door slammed behind her.
"Mamaaa!" Little Irvy yelled, running with his usual waddling gait to hug his mother. When he got there she wrapped him up and hoisted him high in the air - or what would seem high to him anyway.
Despite his name, the boy favored his mother. He was short for his age and slight of build even for the baby fat. His hair was brown and his eyes green like his mother's. Today he wore a high-waisted pair of jeans, little Velcro sneakers, and a plaid button-up neatly tucked into his waistband.
"My little man!" Selphie kissed his cheek, and he squirmed away before smiling and plopping his head down on her shoulder. "Where's your daddy?" she asked, even though she could hear Big Irvy in the kitchen. The faucet was running and the sound of pots and pans shifting in a half-filled sink was a dead giveaway.
"Daddy, he's in the kitchen ok? He said come say hi and tell you I love you. I love youuu! Daddy said he making the spaghetti for you," Little Irvy rambled.
"Spaghetti?" Selphie shook with excitement and spun Little Irvy around. She was only halfway putting on a show. Big Irvy's spaghetti was her favorite.
"Yeah spaghetti!" Little Irvy continued. "Daddy said his spaghetti is HOT SHIT!" he laughed.
"Irvy!" Selphie scolded. "How many times have I told you not to listen when daddy teaches you no-no words?" She put him down and did her best to look disapproving.
"Aw damnit!" Little Irvy yelled, and turned to run away. Before Selphie could catch him though, Big Irvy stepped into the doorway from the kitchen and caught the boy. He yanked the kid up, spinning him around and sitting him on one shoulder. Irvine was tall enough that from his shoulder Little Irvy could reach the low ceiling with his hands, and he braced them both there for stability. "Hi Sefie," he said.
"Hi Big Irvy," Selphie muttered, her eyes narrowing.
"Uh oh," Irvine scratched the back of his neck with his one free hand. "Irvy, I think mama's mad."
"Yeah she mad, I said the no-no word," Little Irvy answered.
"Did you tell mama what I said?" Irvine asked.
Selphie cut-in. "Stop teaching him no-no words!"
"Uh, well, uhm... too late," Irvine stammered.
"What do you lean too late?" Selphie stomped. "Don't tell me you already taught him ALL the no-no words!"
"Well..." Big Irvy paused, then looked at his son. "Little Irvy, what'a ya say we get all the way in trouble now instead of later!"
Little Irvy nodded, then took a deep breath and bellowed. "Fuck shit ass bitch hell SEIFER ALMASY!" He emphasized the last two words especially.
"IRVINE KINNEAS!" Selphie roared. It was not immediately clear as to which Irvine she was referring, but it may as well have been both. Before she had finished though, both Irvines had run away laughing.
Selphie chased the pair around their spacious seaside Balamb house for nearly half an hour before they got tired. It was in a fairly new development north of what had been the old town - before it expanded after the Galbadian occupation and Ultimecia. It had been decided then that while Balamb probably didn't need much of a standing army with Garden protecting it, its existence as a small seaside town wasn't sustainable and it would need to grow if it intended to project any political or economic power in a growingly globalized world. As such, the Balamb leadership made the decision to levy a tax on its richest citizens and invest the revenue in improved and expanded infrastructure. The results of the program were still developing and its success still up for debate, but without a doubt it *had* created growth. The city had expanded north along the coastline, and the Kinneas-Tilmitt residence was one of many that had been built as a result. The expansion wasn't just residential of course - further inland a swanky commercial arts and foods district had also sprung up to serve the new relatively upper-class denizens of North Balamb.
As the chase continued Big Irvy did most of the escaping, running from room to room in long strides, juking left and right with Little Irvy in his arms before slipping away just when it seemed that Mama had them cornered. Then he would trip and tumble, gently depositing his son on the floor and urging him to "Run! Run Irvy, run for your life!" as Selphie caught up and captured the cuff of his pant leg to hold him in place where she could do her worst. "You're next Little Irvy!" she would growl, loudly enough for the child to hear from the next room where he had scurried off to but dared not go further as he couldn't totally abandon his dad. Finally Big Irvy would break free unseen, and come bounding into the room to scoop Little Irvy up again, with Selphie hot on his heels, and the cycle would start again.
Then they laughed and ate dinner. Selphie and Little Irvy took turns slurping a single noodle at a time, mouths so tight around the pasta that the red sauce would cake on their lips and leave a faint red stain even after it was gone. Big Irvy engaged in no such hijinks, and was in fact just as upset by Selphie teaching his son poor table manners as she was by him teaching her son all the bad words. But it was okay, on both counts.
Selphie didn't mind a few no-no words, really - not when Irvine kept an immaculately clean house, and she rarely had to cook or otherwise help out apart from giving him an occasional night off to unwind, and not when he took care of Little Irvy so well. Every night before bed Big Irvy and Little Irvy went over the letters and the numbers, and Little Irvy already knew more of them than any other little boy in Balamb Town.
For Irvine, too, the table manners were an afterthought. Selphie made the money, and kept track of the money, and paid the bills, and generally did all of the worrying about money that needed to be done. Irvine hated dealing with money, in every aspect.
Later, once Little Irvy was in bed, Big Irvy and Sefie sat together on the couch with the television on but the volume low. They had gotten comfortable now - Irvine was down to jeans and a tank top and Selphie was barefoot, kneading absently with her toes at the denim of Irvine's jeans as they sat with his arm around her. "I'm all sweaty from cooking and I smell like tomato sauce," Irvine complained.
Selphie held him tighter. "And I'm smelly from work and sweaty from chasing you and Lieutenant Foulmouth around this house all evening," she answered.
Big Irvy chuckled, and kissed the side of her head. "Dinner was ok?"
"You know your spaghetti's my favorite," she said. "Of course it was. It was more than ok!"
Irvine didn't say anything else for a minute, and the two just relaxed, zoning out watching the television but not really. "So hey, this vacation," he broke the silence.
"What about it?" Selphie asked.
"Have they convinced Squall to go?" Irvine inquired.
"Hmm," Selphie wondered. "I dunno. Quistis said he told them no but she and Zell had a plan or something, involving Seifer it sounds like.
"Seifer?" Irvine cocked an eyebrow. "Seifer's going on the trip too, right? How would... wait." Gears were turning now, in both their heads. "You don't think... Uh..."
"Oh no," Selphie went pale. "I think we're thinking the same thing."
"Didn't you say Rinoa told you that she kind of still... has feelings for Seifer?" Irvine sounded grave.
"Surely they're not... no. There's no way they're going to try and make Squall jealous so he'll go..." Selphie was thinking out loud.
"But if they do..." Irvine gulped. "Someone's going to get hurt. Either Rinoa's heart gets broken, or Squall breaks Seifer's OTHER leg."
"Or both. Oh noooo we have to stop them!" Selphie covered her face with her hands.
"Well wait, come on, they probably haven't put this plan in motion yet, right? We have time..." Selphie was saying.
"Ambassador, call on line one," came the voice of Rinoa Leonhart's secretary over the intercom from the outer office.
"Name?" The ambassador asked. She had learned not to go blind into a phone call - not as someone important, anyway. It could be a friend, or it could be an enemy, but far more likely it was someone with no intentions good or ill except to get something out of her to their own benefit. This wasn't an entirely new world for Rinoa - her father had been a political figure all her life. It would have been a lie though to say that in her capacity as the ambassador to Galbadia she hadn't come to appreciate some aspects of what must have been his daily struggle.
He was dead now - he had passed away around a year after Ultimecia. The struggle for control of Galbadia - a losing struggle in Fury Caraway's case - had broken him. He had lived out the rest of his time under house arrest courtesy of new Galbadian President Martine, and it often weighed on Rinoa that she hadn't even called him. In fact the last time they spoke was the night of the assassination attempt on Edea, and it wasn't like they were all peaches and cream before that either since she was heading a resistance group in Timber. She got the call at Balamb Garden. It had come through the Headmaster's office and Squall had forwarded it on to her in the dorm without so much as asking what it was about. He didn't ask her afterward either - so absorbed was he in his job as the "hinge of world peace" or whatever he called it. It was the next day over dinner when she finally broke down. He didn't understand why she was so upset.
"You haven't spoken in years right?" he asked.
"He... was my father," Rinoa replied.
"Rinoa, you hated him. You begged me not to leave you alone in that house. Don't you remember? The night of the parade?" Squall set his fork down and brought a hand to his forehead.
Rinoa stared at his non-gaze from across the table. "And you didn't listen," she remembered accurately. "You let him lock me in, just like I was afraid he would do."
"You got out," Squall noted. "And caused a lot of trouble," he added with a smirk.
"Don't flirt with me, not right now," she sighed. "You look like Seifer when you smirk like that."
Squall's face turned cold. "I'm sorry about your father," he said, and picked up his silverware.
"I'm not," she muttered, and started eating again.
"Then why are you so..." Squall searched for what he was trying to say, and then gave up and groaned.
"So...?" She waited.
"Why are you so upset?" He came right out.
Rinoa hesitated.
"Say it," he added, seeing her metaphorically biting her tongue.
"It would hurt you too much, and I don't want that," her eyes glistened.
"Just say it," he replied blankly.
"You don't understand because you didn't have a father," she said. The words tasted bitter in her mouth and she regretted them right away, but Squall didn't recoil as she expected. She thought he would be hurt - that she had prodded at his most tender place. She was ready to feel sorry, but when he kept right on eating the opposite happened and she resolved to go as far as needed until she did.
Squall brought his fork to his mouth and took the food skewered on it, chewing politely before swallowing, and finally answering, "I have a father. Laguna is my father."
Rinoa's jaw clenched and the muscles in her cheek rippled with the effort. "He abandoned you. That's why when Raine died you went to an orphanage, because Laguna didn't care. He didn't even know that you existed." Now she was hurting herself too, such was her affection for Laguna as a sort of second father.
"Sure," Squall nodded. "And I talked to him a few days ago about a problem with Dollet, and he gave me some pretty good advice." Squall stopped for a moment and then set down his fork again. "Your dad loved you. I remember every time we went back to Deling in the Ragnarok when I would go to his place to play cards, he said 'Please take care of Rinoa.' You never would come along. Not even to say hi. You never so much as acknowledged his existence and all he could do was sit there under house arrest and miss you. He never complained though. I told him you were ok, that you were happy, that you were safe. That seemed like enough for him. It wasn't really, though. It hurt him a lot. He knew you hated him. But as long as you were okay, that was all that mattered. When did you speak to him last? Doesn't matter now I guess, he's dead."
Rinoa's eyes glistened. She forgot all at once that she had only just then pledged to say whatever was necessary to hurt him - that nothing was off-limits, no wound too tender to poke. Apparently Squall could say worse than she could without even trying. She threw her fork down against the table. It panged into the wood and then skidded, flinging bits of food across its surface as it went and coming to rest against the front of his plate.
"Thanks, Squall," she covered her face with one hand.
"What?" he asked, in mock obliviousness. He knew exactly what he'd done. Exactly what line he'd crossed.
"Fuck you," she sobbed.
"You just threw it in my face that I'm an orphan. Now you're acting like a victim," Squall said flatly, "what do you expect me to say?"
"I don't know," she admitted. "My father's dead."
"I'm sorry," Squall said, and reached out a hand to touch hers. She pulled back. She crossed her arms on the table and rest her face in the cradle they made in front of her, raven hair splayed out like a halo.
Squall got up to leave, and took both plates with him. He didn't say anything. She heard him scraping the plates off into the garbage, and then the hiss of the faucet as he rinsed them off. Then he was gone, and she was alone thinking about her dad.
The last time she could remember actually being on speaking terms with him was when she was sixteen - around the time she met Seifer. That wasn't a coincidence. She had gone with her father to a state dinner with President Deling and the headmasters of Balamb and Galbadia Gardens. Seifer was, curiously now looking back, accompanying Cid Kramer as his personal bodyguard. These dinners weren't an uncommon occurrence - Fury of course never remarried after Julia died, and so Rinoa had become his de facto "date" to many such events starting in her early teens. It was a treat at first. But it was that experience which had planted the seeds that would eventually turn her against her own father. Maybe that was why she came to resent Squall - for how much he had become like Fury. Maybe that was why they couldn't make it work.
By the time of the dinner in question, Rinoa and her father were already on thin ice. Her discontent over the Galbadian occupation of Timber had been simmering for years, gradually coming to a harder boil every time she tried unsuccessfully to change his mind. Now they were all but openly a house at war with itself.
"You're sixteen. You cannot be expected to understand," Fury lamented and admonished all at once.
"You think I haven't been listening, all these years," she said.
"Rinoa, please..." the General sighed.
"I was twelve the first time I had to force a smile while I listened to Deling ply his 'statecraft'," Rinoa stomped. "While I listened to you planning your attack strategies and estimating numbers of 'civilian collateral damage.' Did you think I wouldn't understand what that meant? What the whole thing meant? This might be a game to you, but it's not one to me!"
When the guests arrived and the introductions commenced though, she was all smiles.
"And what do you think about the occupation of Timber?" Seifer asked, smirking. He was seated across from her. They hadn't exchanged so much as a word apart from introductions and a few flirtatious glances up to that point. Now the Timber occupation was the current subject at the table, and Seifer had taken a keen interest in the opinion of young Rinoa Heartilly. She gave a noncommittal answer, hoping he would be satisfied and drop it. He wasn't. He had seen something in her. A discontent. A stiffness.
He leaned in. "Listen, you may have all the others fooled, but I see through this Perfect Little General's Daughter routine you're so obviously unhappy putting on."
Rinoa went pale. She looked to her left - she and Seifer were at the end of the table. Her father, Deling, and the headmasters were at the other end.
"Don't worry, they didn't hear me," Seifer assured. "These old geezers are stuck so far up their own asses we could be making out over here and they wouldn't notice." Rinoa looked to her left again. He was right. The conversation taking place at the table's other end must have been an especially engrossing one. Wits were being matched. The fate of multiple nations hung in the balance and so on. She and Seifer may as well have been invisible.
"M... making out?" She stammered.
"Or, you know, whatever," Seifer waved the comment off.
To Be Continued...