Chapter IV – Idiot Wind

You'll never know the hurt I've suffered, nor the pain I rise above
And I'll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of love
And it makes me feel so sorry
Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats
Blowing through the letters that we wrote
Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves
We're idiots babe, it's a wonder we can even feed ourselves

The door to Squall's office slid open with its usual hiss. The headmaster looked up from his desk and blinked, giving a side eye to Zell as he walked in. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it and furrowed his brow at the commander instead. He had an idea what this was about.

"Yo, Squall!" Zell greeted.

"Hi Zell," Squall said flatly. "I don't think I told Xu to buzz you in, did I? No, I definitely didn't." He reached for the intercom button before realizing the door was still open and he could simply yell. "Xu!" he called into the outer office. "Did we have a meeting that I don't remember? Specifically one about you letting people walk into my office uninvited?"

"She's not there, Squall," Zell shook his head. "She left. I buzzed myself in," he explained. Squall figured this would happen.

"That's great. I'm pretty sure there's something in the Garden rules about trespassing in the Headmaster's office. If you wouldn't mind staying there for a minute while I look it up…" Squall presented an upturned pointer finger with one hand while he opened a desk drawer with the other and started rifling through it. He was looking for the thick tome known as Rules and Bylaws of Balamb Garden, Revision D. It didn't exist. "Don't worry, it's here somewhere. Have a seat and as soon as I find the corresponding passage I'll call Garden Faculty to remove you from the premises…"

"Squall, come on!" Zell was shaking with anger now and clutching his bicep. "I've had it with you! Are you gonna just mope in your office forever?"

"Zell, get out. Get the hell out, go," Squall snapped. He had abandoned the theatrical sarcasm of his search for the nonexistent Rules and Bylaws of Balamb Garden, Revision D, disappointed that Zell hadn't appreciated the subtlety of what he was trying to convey. He thought at the very least there would be some comment about the Garden Faculty not having been a thing for over ten years, since the NORG fiasco.

"I'm not leavin' until you apologize to Rinoa and give Seifer his job back," Zell stomped and postured, flexing his pectorals. "And Xu isn't coming back either. Neither are Selphie and Quistis. Not until you make amends for what happened on vacation!"

"Shit," Squall muttered, and brought a hand to his forehead. He leaned back in his office chair and sighed. "So either I get all of them back, or I'm stuck with just you. Can I maybe trade you for them? That would be a win-win."

Zell scoffed. "Frickin' hell," he muttered, and walked over to the corner where he started to shadow box. He stayed that way for a while, throwing jabs and hooks and uppercuts in pattern while bouncing on the balls of his feet like a practiced boxer, visualizing an opponent in front of his punches instead of just empty air and Squall's bookshelf. Eventually he got bored with that and resorted to throwing full-contact blows and seeing just how close he could come to the bookshelf without actually hitting it. Soon enough the knuckles of his gloves were brushing the book spines at full extension. This went on for a while, and Squall tried to focus on his work until. No good. The swishing of Zell's fists cutting the air, and the brushing of his gloves against the books slowly became an infernal racket like one of those things that annoys you a little bit at first but eventually builds into an inescapable torment.

"Stop it!" Squall finally roared, slamming a fist into his desk.

Zell flinched a little bit. He was pretty sure he could take Squall in a fair fight if it came to that, but he would rather it didn't.

In the world of martial arts which Zell inhabited, it seemed that everything eventually came down to some kind of odd metaphor about animals. Crane, snake, tiger, leopard, and dragon – those were the traditional five animals that embodied the five styles of fighting. Grace, precision, power, and speed comprised the first four, respectively. The last – dragon style – was an idealized combination of all four traits plus wisdom. Only the mightiest fighters were dragons. Zell was a dragon. Squall, though, he was a tiger. Or maybe a lion – basically the same thing and Squall himself would have preferred it. In considering this, it occurred to Zell that the Parable of the Troublesome Tiger might be relevant. The parable dealt with a mighty dragon that was too proud. When crossing paths with a tiger who was protective of his domain, the dragon decided to fight even though he could have pacified the tiger or simply walked away. The dragon knew he could win, but what he hadn't accounted for was the wounds he would be dealt by the tiger's claws. The dragon won and the tiger died outright in the struggle, but as the dragon traveled on his wounds became inflamed and he died too. In the end, dragon and tiger were equal in death. The lesson of the parable was never to fight for pride when the opponent was fighting for something bigger like their life or land or family.

"I may be a dragon," Zell started, "but you're a desperate tiger. Later man. I hope you enjoy being alone and miserable since it's what you always wanted anyway. You got your wish."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Squall asked, oblivious to the extensive internal monologue Zell had just gone through to reach the conclusion he had.

"I'm not gonna die later of my inflamed wounds because you're more desperate than me!" Zell said through clenched teeth, and then turned to leave. He walked out through the still open doorway and then boarded the elevator in what apparently used to be Xu's office. The elevator descended, and Squall sat perplexed. He tried to go back to work but there was some creeping quality in the exchange that wouldn't leave him alone. He got through no more than two or three reports before his denial gave way.

"Fuck!" he yelled, and hurled his pen across the room, followed by a clipboard, and a stapler after that. He finished by sweeping a stack of paper off of the desk into the empty floor space to the right where he usually stepped around the desk to leave. Now he would have to either pick the papers up or leave dusty boot prints on them unless he planned to spend the rest of his life behind his desk. For a minute that didn't seem like such an impossible idea, but slowly he realized Zell had been right. That realization made Squall a little bit sick but it didn't make it any less true. He had to try and fix the mess he'd made – and the mess in question was not the one on the floor next to his desk.

"It's your friend Selphie Kinneas," the secretary answered Rinoa. That was odd – Selphie rarely called her directly. That wasn't down to any falling out between the two – much the opposite. They were still thick as thieves but she spoke to Irvine often and he kept her updated on what Selphie was doing. And vice versa – he kept Selphie updated on Rinoa. And usually on the weekends he had her on speakerphone and Selphie was there and they interacted that way. Truth be told she was probably closer to the Kinneases now than the rest of the group. But now Selphie was calling her from her own number. That alone made it feel like an emergency and Rinoa instantly played out a thousand horrible scenarios in her mind – Irvine was dead, little Irvy had an accident, Zell fell off the pier in Balamb and drowned, Quistis finally snapped and went on a killing spree (that lady did have a lot of pent up rage, Rinoa thought), Squall had crippled Seifer's other leg… It could have been any one of those or maybe two or three at once.

"Selphie!" she greeted somewhat frantically when the line connected. "Is everything okay?"

"Don't listen to them!" Selphie shouted. "Don't listen, Rinoa!"

"What?" Rinoa barked, utterly confused.

"They're going to ruin everything! He's gonna hurt Seifer, OHMIGOD!" Selphie was hysterical now. What had been a fairly measured resolve to try and avert a disaster had in short order had become a frenzy of awfulizing anxiety as Irvine and Selphie fed off each other's energies forming a destructive feedback loop of neuroses, but Rinoa had no way to know that.

"Who's hurting Seifer?" Rinoa asked, her heart now thumping in her chest.

"SQUALL! HE'S GOING TO BREAK SEIFER'S OTHER LEG IF THEY GO THROUGH WITH THEIR PLAN!" Irvine shouted from what sounded like half a room away.

"DON'T LET HIM HURT SEIFER!" Selphie yelled.

"OKAY!" Rinoa replied and hung up so that she could ring Squall.

In Balamb town, Selphie was catching her breath. When she had, she looked over to Irvine. "Did we just make things worse? That wasn't over the top, was it?" she asked.

"I don't think so," Irvine replied.

In her Timber office, Rinoa was frantically dialing Squall who had just gone home. When he didn't pick up his office phone she called his suite.

"Uh, hey," he picked up on the third ring, sounding too tired to be breaking any legs or fully crippling any already half-crippled smartass doctors. That alone calmed her down a little bit.

"Squall?" Rinoa responded, still breathing hard.

"Yeah," his voice was softer now. "Who else would it be?" he chuckled absently, and then got serious. "What's wrong? Are you okay? You're out of breath."

"Yeah, I uh…" she trailed off. "Is everything okay with you?"

"As far as I know," he answered. "Do you know something I don't?"

"I… I don't know what I know," she laughed, bringing a hand up to wipe away the beads of sweat that had just formed on her forehead. "Where's Seifer?" she asked.

Squall exhaled. He wanted to ask 'did you call just to ruin my night?' but he didn't. "As far as I know he's in his room coming up with how best to be a pain in my ass tomorrow, why?" he responded instead.

"No reason, I just… I got a weird phone call that freaked me out, that's all. I got worried about you," she said.

"It sounds like you're more worried about Seifer than me," Squall muttered.

"Come on Squall," she sighed.

"Hey, you called me," he replied.

"Yeah. Because you told me to call you if I ever needed anything, right?" she sounded sad now.

Squall felt wrong and slapped himself mentally. "I did, and I meant it. I'm sorry. Hey, are you… with Seifer? I won't get in the way if so."

"No!" she replied, a little too eagerly for Squall's liking. "Why would you think that?"

"Uh…" Squall gave something between a scoff and a laugh, "a lot of reasons, I guess. I don't mind if you are, you know," he added.

"I'm not, Squall," she answered.

"But it's okay if you are. If you were. You could tell me," he said. It was less of a declaration than it was a pleading request that she hurt him all at once.

"Where is this coming from?" she asked gingerly. His voice had sounded just like the first time he told her about Ellone leaving him alone in the orphanage.

"I don't know," he sighed. "I don't know why I'm even worried about it," he said. That meant he did mind, no matter how much he insisted otherwise. "You're going on this vacation to Centra with Seifer and the others, right? I guess that's what got me thinking."

"I thought you were going?" she asked.

"They tried to get me to go. Said that you and Seifer would both be there…" he shook his head as if he was trying to shake out the images of them together. In Centra, and likewise eleven years before, whatever had happened then.

"I wouldn't have agreed to go if I thought you weren't going to be there," she answered.

"Really?" he asked, for a moment entertaining a hope of something.

"It wouldn't be the same without all of my friends there," she smiled, not knowing that what she thought was a kind lie had just crushed him a little bit inside. She thought she was hurting him less by not admitting the truth – not admitting that she had the same hopes, even though they were muddled by whatever this thing was with Seifer.

"Right," he said, and that glimmer of hope was gone now. She only thought of him one way now. And how did she think of Seifer? He didn't want to think about that. "I don't know if I'm going or not…" he admitted.

"I wish you would," she said.

"Yeah," he whispered. "Listen, I need to go. You promise you're ok?" he asked.

"If you promise that you are," she said.

"Of course," he said. "Bye, Rinoa."

"Bye, Squall," and they hung up. "I love you," she said after the line was dead.

"I love you," he said after the line was dead.

To Be Continued...