Phoenixcadet
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Seifer had changed clothes at the Dincht's and was wearing blue jeans and a black T-shirt. Pa Dincht had found some clothes for him to borrow in the bottom of his closet. For Raijin, on the other hand, he had no clothes that would fit. Raijin was simply too big; Seifer just barely fit in the clothes that he had borrowed. Raijin instead sat with only a pair of black boxer shorts on in the laundry room, waiting for his clothes to dry again.
They were in the small dining room of the Dincht's house talking amongst themselves around the small table; they had been there for about an hour. Ma and Pa Dincht were in their bedroom talking about Zell. Irvine had called Garden's infirmary and talked to Nida, saying that they had gotten held up in town and would be back as soon as they could.
"Seifer, you can't go with us back to Garden......" Selphie said, sitting next to him.
"Why can't I?" Seifer answered.
Irvine leaned forward on the table and pointed a finger at him. "You know good and well the answer to that question, Seifer. For one, Squall would ballistic. Two, the rest of Garden would have a fit. You'd have 50 Garden students all over you like white on rice, you set foot in that place. And I'm liable to be one of them. And Zell, too, even in the condition *he's* in right now."
"You'll just have to sneak me in, then won't you?"he said.
Irvine slapped his forehead. "*Sneak you in*??? Whaddaya mean *sneak you in*? How? When? How would we sneak you in Garden? And if anyone found out you were there, what would we do then? Selphie and I would get killed by a bunch of angry students that got an obsession for putting you in the ground at an early age. There are a lot of students that would gladly take your head off, put it on a pike and stick it in their front yard!"
Selphie snorted and started to giggle. All heads turned to look at her.
"What's funny, messenger girl?"Seifer snapped.
She snorted again and covered her mouth and nose with her hands, giggling again. "Nothing....!"
"What's so funny, girl?!" he said, slapping her in the back of the head.
"....Your head...on a pike... in someone's front yard.....," she managed through a fit of giggles. Irvine rolled his eyes and dropped his head down on the table with a thud.
"Stupid......I have got to learn to watch what I say around her......"
"She do this all the time?"Seifer asked. Fujin shook her head at Selphie in annoyance.
Irvine looked up seriously. "If you say something that's supposed to be serious, yet can be funny if you think about it, this is what happens. Once you've set her off, she doesn't stop until she can manage to stop thinking about it. Selphie, *please* shut up. We have more important things to do than sit around and listen to you giggle."
"Okay....Okay, hold on...." Her laughter slowed until finally she was only breathing hard with her eyes closed, a large smile on her face.
Seifer looked her up and down and then at Irvine. "You ever get tired of her, send her my way, huh?"
Selphie stopped and slapped Seifer in the back of the head hard enough to make it fly foreward, almost hitting the tabletop. "Whaddaya thinkin' about?! I am not a piece of meat to be traded!!"
"Nobody said that, Selphie," Irvine said, placing his hand on his forehead.
Seifer rubbed the back of his head looking at Selphie again and then Irvine. "On second thought, you keep her. One Fujin's all I can handle. And I am going to Garden."
Irvine sighed, looking down at the table. "Selphie.....what do you think...?"
The smile had finally disappeared from her face once and for all as she met the eyes under the hat. "I....don't know, Irvine. Squall would go ballistic, like you said....."
"I don't care what pubery boy thinks. If he has an issue with me, we'll settle it. I'm not going for the purpose of starting a fight this time. But if Squall wants a fight, it's a fight he'll get," Seifer said standing up. He looked in the direction of the laundry room. "Raijin!! Your clothes dry yet?!"
"I'm gettin' dressed right now, ya know!!"came his voice from the small room down the hall.
"Hurry it up, Raijin!!" Seifer called to him. "We're leavin' here in a few minutes!" He looked over at Irvine. "For Garden!!"
Irvine scowled at him from under his hat. "You're putting us in a spot, Seifer. Squall will kill us for bringing you back to Balamb Garden."
"I done told you I don't care *what* Squall thinks. If he has an issue with you and Selphie bringing me there, he can take it up with me. End of discussion," he said, leaning foreward on the table, looking Irvine in the eyes.
Irvine growled and then averted his eyes. "Fine. But if Squall impales you on his gunblade, it's your own fault."
"If Squall impales me on his gunblade, I've got two people here that'll gladly avenge my death," he said, gesturing toward Fujin and down the hall to Raijin as he came out of the laundry room fully dressed with quarterstaff in hand. Fujin only nodded.
"We'd better go, then," Selphie said, standing up. She walked down the hall to Mr. and Mrs. Dincht's bedroom and knocked. "...Ma...? We're leaving to go back to Garden now. We'll bring back the clothes we borrowed.
"Alright, Selphie," Ma called through the door. "You be careful, now, you hear? That road's real bad slick outside. Don't be drivin' too fast."
"We'll be alright, Mrs. Dincht," Seifer said from behind Selphie. He looked down at her. "Let's get going."
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Garden......
Quistis and Squall sat in the room with Zell. The silence seemed so fragile Quistis thought it might break if anything was said between them. She glanced over to Zell, who sat on the bed seemingly staring into infinity, curled up as he had been in the past few days. She had always worried about him. Why? She didn't know. She had always had a feeling that there was more to him than there seemed. She wished in that moment, as she watched him sitting on the bed, she had been wrong, that there had been no more to him than a temper and clumsiness that couldn't be controlled. Her soul ached to see him in this state of confusion and pain. She had also always known that underneath the temper and brashness that Zell had an unconditionally gentle and loyal heart. She knew without a doubt that his heart was as loyal as they could come.
And that they, his so-called friends, had ravaged it. She knew that she couldn't expect him to forgive them; only to let them help repair what damage they had done. They only wished to help him now, whether he wanted it or not. Squall had heard his stomach growl earlier and again asked if he was hungry. He said 'no', even after Squall had offered him hot dogs from the cafeteria. He'd been trying to starve himself. Only after Rinoa had broken down into tears, he chose to eat. She had yelled at him that he had to eat something while tears flowed down her cheeks. She was taken out of the room by Nida and into the hallway. Zell then did eat a small amount of two hotdogs, but only to make Rinoa stop crying, not because he wanted them. 'My stomach says 'yes', my mouth says 'no'' as he put it.
Squall sat by the bed in the chair that had become his place of residence in the past few days. It was a typical hospital chair: a small wood chair with very little padding in the back or on the seat with a green cover. He decided that he would have slept on a bed of nails, would it help the figure curled up on the bed. He was one of the ones who had caused this: he would help Zell out of this if it killed him. Whether Zell wanted the help or not wasn't the issue at hand. He needed help, whether he admitted it or not.
"Four."
Squall and Quistis jumped at hearing Zell speak without being spoken to. He hadn't said anything in his time in the infirmary that wasn't a response to something someone said to him. Squall stood up and sat on the bed next to him. He placed an arm around him, putting a hand on his other shoulder.
"Four?? What do you mean 'four', Zell??" he asked, puzzled. Zell stared on at the wall as if there was no one in the room, that it was just himself he was talking to. Quistis thought his stare would bore a hole into the wall if he stared long enough. Zell bit his bottom lip.
"Before my parents in Balamb. Four," he said plainly, with no emotion in his voice. "I was adopted four times.... and returned four times."
Squall got down and looked Zell in the eyes. "We're listening, Zell. You can tell us anything."
Zell closed his eyes tightly and swallowed hard. "My second foster parents......They took me to live with them in Deling City. Down in the run down section of the outskirts of town....It was okay for the first few weeks.
"Then things started to go downhill. My foster father drank a lot. He was an okay guy as long as he wasn't drinking. But when he asked for a beer, I went to my room that I shared with my foster sister, Amber. She had blond hair, green eyes, short for her age.... She was really nice to me, no matter what happened and I liked her. I was about 8 years old and she was 13. She always brought me home cookies, candy, lollipops, if she went to someone's birthday party or if there was a party at school...
"When my foster father, Ray, got drunk, the whole house turned upside down. Me and Amber would go back in the bedroom and turn the radio up as loud as it would go, listening to whatever hard rock or rap we could find, just to drown out the noise down the hall. They threw things, glasses, lamps, pictures, anything they could find... Ray'd.....he'd beat my foster mother, Diane, he'd beat her....." Zell closed his eyes and shuddered. "She was screaming so loud.....We heard her over the music and Amber opened the bedroom door and looked down the hall. I looked, too. He had her by her throat, beating her up against the refridgerator. He threw her down on the floor and kicked her in the stomach five times before Amber ran out the door screaming at him. 'Stop it!! Stop it!!' she screamed. She started hitting him and I stayed in the doorway of our bedroom yelling for her to come back."
Squall and Quistis listened attentively as Zell spewed out what he had seen that night. Squall remembered seeing the couple in the orphanage and they had all said goodbye to him and congradulated him because he then had a family. If they had only known what was going to happen, they would have kept him at the orphanage.
"He picked her up by her neck," Zell continued, still staring straight ahead," and threw her against the wall so hard the pictures on the wall fell off. There were beer bottles and cans everywhere.... Amber picked one up and threw it at him. It missed and he picked her up again, strangling her. Her face turned blue and she looked over at me in the doorway. I thought he was going to kill her, so I ran out and jumped on his back from the couch, pulling his hair, hitting, kicking, anything that would make him let her go. He threw me off his back, but I got up and ran over to him and bit his ankle as hard as I could. He kicked me with his other foot. I kept on hitting him, and hitting him, but he wouldn't let her go. He finally let go of Amber and she dropped to the floor."
Zell's voice shook as he tried to keep from crying. ".....she....she was dead..." he cried, putting his head down on his knees. He took in air, gasping as he tried to control himself. He finally looked back up at the bed. "About that time, the police came in and arrested him. They......they declared Amber dead on the scene. I was put back in another orphanage after that, not Matron's. I didn't even get to go to her funeral.... They said it wouldn't be 'good' for me.
"I went up to a woman after they told me she was dead, one of the social services people or something and I said to her 'I wanna go to Amber's funeral'," Zell said, shutting his eyes once more. ".....She stared at me like I was stupid, Squall. She told me I couldn't. Just like that. 'You can't go'. It was like she had stuck me with a knife. I started to tell her that I wasn't stupid, that I knew what death was and what a funeral was, but she wouldn't listen. The only thing I have left of Amber is the ribbon she had in her hair that night and her diary. And that was it. I was put in with another family after that. I never went to her funeral."
Zell looked at Squall, the light glinting off of his wet eyes. "I just wanted to see my sister, Squall. Was that too much? Even if she was dead, I wanted to see her so bad...."
Quistis put her arms around him. "It's okay, Zell. Do you know where she's buried?"
Zell pushed her away from him gently, wiping his eyes. "In Darryfield Cemetary, outside Deling City. I don't know where in the cemetary, though."
"You've never been to her grave?" Quistis asked.
"I tried to get away when we were in Deling City on our mission to....assasinate Matron, but I couldn't. I couldn't get time to do it."
"We could go and take some flowers to her grave tomorrow, if you want to go, Zell. We could take the Ragnarok," Squall said to him. Zell looked up eagerly.
"W'we can....?"
"Of course, we can. We'll go get some flowers from the best flower shop in Deling City and we'll go find her grave if it takes us all day," Quistis said.
Squall's eyes widened. Zell had turned 18 a few weeks before. That would mean it had been almost 10 years since Amber's death. "Zell," he said softly, "what day did Amber die?"
Zell shut his eyes and hugged his knees. "10 years ago.........the day before yesterday."
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In the hall....
Rinoa watched while the metal door slid open. In walked Irvine and Selphie, back from their trip to Balamb. She stood up from her chair.
"What took you guys so long? We were starting to get worried," she said, walking over to them. Irvine looked around to make sure they were alone.
"Where's Squall?" he asked. He didn't want to let Squall know that Seifer was here just yet. Squall would kill him.
Rinoa pointed to Zell's room. "He's in there with Quistis talking to Zell. Why, what's wrong?"
Selphie took her by the arm and pulled her away from the door and down the hall. She stood up against the wall, surrounded by Irvine and Selphie. She felt like she was about to be interrogated.
"We ran into a problem in Balamb," Irvine said, his voice lowered to just above a whisper. Selphie looked back at Zell's door to make sure Squall or Quistis didn't come out.
"What happened? You didn't see the Dincht's, did you?" she whispered.
"Yeah, we did," Selphie replied.
"You didn't tell them. Tell me you didn't tell them," she pleaded.
Irvine sighed. "We had to, Rinoa. But, Zell won't find out they know. We explained everything and they've agreed not to come down here to see him. But that's only part of the problem." Irvine lowered his voice even more after looking around them once more. "We also ran into Seifer."
Rinoa gasped. "Seifer???!"
"And Raijin. And Fujin," Selphie said.
"And what happened?" Rinoa asked.
"It's a long story, but we ended up having to tell them what happened with Zell. They're here," Irvine whispered.
Rinoa raised an eyebrow. "Here??? You brought them here??" She looked at them both. "You guys, Squall will *murder* you!!!!" she whispered harshly. She didn't believe it. After all the trouble Seifer had caused, they had brought him back into their lives once again. Raijin and Fujin were forgivable, but Seifer?? What were they going to do?
"We know, Rinoa!!" Selphie whispered back to her. "But, he's not here to start a fight. He just came to see about Zell, I suppose. I don't know really but he's here with Raijin and Fujin *in peace*, but he won't leave without a fight, he says. I think it's for the best if we just leave him be for now."
"What'll we do about Squall, Selphie? And Zell, for that matter? They both hate Seifer with a vengeance and you know they do! How are you going to tell him?" Rinoa whispered to them. Irvine and Selphie exchanged glances and looked back at Rinoa. Her eyes widened. "Ohhhh, no. Not me. I'm not gonna tell him!! It has to be one of you guys: you brought him here, you have to tell Squall, not me."
"Rinoa," Irvine said in his low tone, "you said it yourself: he'll murder us. You have to tell him. We'll back you on it because we *did* bring him here, but you have to be the one who tells him. Please, Rinoa."
She considered. She didn't want Squall angry with her over anything, but they were right. Squall would be very angry with them. And Zell? Rinoa didn't even want to think about that. So......
".....Alright. I'll do it." She said it just in time, because Squall had just exited Zell's room. He noticed the group and walked over.
"What's going on? Where've you two been?" he asked, looking at Selphie and Irvine. It was obvious that something had happened. Squall's fists were clenched as he stared them both down.
Selphie backed up without realizing it as she looked down at the floor. "Ummmm....You see, in Balamb....we kinda sorta...."
Squall shut his eyes and sighed deeply. He tilted his head toward the ceiling as he said,"You didn't. You didn't do what I think you did, did you? We told him we wouldn't, Selphie. We *promised* him."
"I know, Squall. I know," Irvine said, stepping in front of her. "She overheard us talking about it."
"You weren't even supposed to be talking about it anywhere where someone could hear you!! How did she overhear you? Where were you?" Squall asked, lowering his voice. He stared Irvine down with his hazel eyes. He had to look up into Irvine's brown eyes, but it made no difference. Squall was every bit as dangerous as Irvine if not more so, and Irvine knew it. He just didn't show off, like Seifer had when he was in Garden.
Irvine looked down at him. "It's a long story. But that's not what we wanted to tell you. We didn't just run into the Dincht's in Balamb."
"Who else did you run into?" Squall asked.
"......Uhhhhh..." Irvine could find no words. Rinoa saw this and stepped in front of him.
"They ran into Raijin, Fujin, and....Seifer," she said uneasily and paused, as if waiting for him to explode. She watched his eyes. Dear Hyne, she didn't want him to be angry at them.
He exhaled. "And...? What happened?"
"Well, that's what we wanted to tell you," Selphie said shakily. She swallowed. "He....he's here."
"What...?! Where? Did you bring him back here? After what he did, did you bring him back here?"
"We tried to tell him he couldn't come back, that you'd get mad, but he wouldn't listen. He asked about everybody and we ended up having to tell him about Zell," Irvine said.
"You told him about-- Wait a minute, how did you run into them in the first place? Did you fight?"
"They were down at the dock fishing, Squall," Selphie said and took a deep breath. She proceeded to ramble off what had happened in Balamb. "They were trying to reel in a big fish and we scared them and made Raijin and Seifer fall into the water and lose the fish. Fujin said that they hadn't eaten in days and I felt kinda bad at making them lose the fish, so I offered to buy them dinner 'cause we made them lose the fish and all." She exhaled and emitted a nervous giggle.
"Tell me the whole story. No, wait. Where are they now?" Squall asked.
"They're in the car in the parking lot. They agreed to stay there until we cleared their coming here with you," Selphie said nervously. Selphie didn't like these kinds of confrontations.
"Why are they here?" he asked.
"I guess it has something to do with Zell," Irvine guessed. "After we told him what Zell.....tried to do, he was insistant on coming here. I don't know why."
Selphie touched Squall's arm. "But what we do know is that he's not here to start a fight. He came here in peace, Squall. But, he did say that he wasn't going to leave without a fight."
Squall's disapproval was evident. He didn't want a fight while Zell was like this. He didn't want Seifer here when Zell was like this. He was torn in half. The only thing he could do was to let him stay as long as he didn't cause any trouble. Then he could stay.
Squall crossed his arms and shut his eyes. ".........he can stay," he said softly. But then added, "Only if he doesn't cause any trouble. And that includes Raijin and Fujin. I mean it, you guys. If Seifer even *looks* at me funny, he's gone."
"Izzat so, pubery boy?" a voice said from behind Selphie. Irvine and Selphie turned around to see Seifer, Raijin, and Fujin standing in the doorway. "Can't say I'll be doin' anything like that. I have no intention of leaving, even if you did think I looked at you funny," Seifer said, the usual smirk on his face. It quickly disappeared. "I'm not here to cause trouble, Squall. Just came to see about the chickenwuss. Heard from a very reliable source that he tried to kill himself," he said, glancing at Irvine and Selphie. "Where is he...?"
"Yeah, where's Zell, ya know? Gotta talk to him," Raijin said and was about to say more, but was cut off by Fujin's stare.
"ZELL, WHERE?"
Glad to avert his attention to someone else, Squall looked at Fujin. He didn't want to talk to Seifer right then. "He's in there," Squall said, pointing to the room behind him. The door to the room was shut, thank goodness. He could only hope that Quistis was talking to Zell and that he couldn't hear what was being said.
"WE SEE HIM," Fujin stated, nodding her head only once, but harshly, showing that it was a demand.
"I don't know if that's a good idea right now, Fujin. He's upset. I think it's best that you wait," Squall answered. Fujin's eyes averted to the floor as she sighed softly. She looked like she understood.
Seifer stepped closer to Squall. "I wanna know exactly what happened the other night."
************************************************************************************************ That's chapter 5. Stay tuned, people, for chapter 6. And as always I have one word for you guys: REVIEW!!!! Until next time,
Phoenixcadet