Fathers And Sons
by NightsDawne


Chapter 5: Pride And Prejudice

Ellone walked up to the nurses' station and smiled to the pretty blond nurse behind it. "Excuse me, I'm looking for Squall Leonhart."

Jax looked up from her charting. "Visitors are restricted for Commander Leonhart, I'm sorry. Only Garden members and family."

Ellone nodded. "I'm his sister. Ellone Loire."

"Oh, sorry Ms. Loire. I didn't know."

"Dr. Loire." Ellone tapped her resident's badge. "I'm doing my rotation in psychiatry."

"Sorry again, Dr. Loire. He's in room 703. I'm not sure if he's awake."

Ellone nodded, looking to see which way it was. "I'll leave him alone if he is." She walked quietly to the door of the room and leaned in. The curtain was drawn between the bed and the door, but the channels on the tv were flipping. "Squall?"

The channel surfing stopped. "Sis?"

Ellone stepped around the curtain, smiling at Squall. "Why do I keep finding you in hospital beds?"

Squall sat up, tossing the remote onto the table. "Don't blame me. It's either Seifer or Irvine, do it to me every time."

Ellone laughed, pulling a chair over so she could sit close to him. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine. Getting out of here tomorrow."

"Good to hear. ... That is a 'I'm really feeling fine' and not a 'I'm not fine, just don't want to talk', right?"

Squall rolled his eyes. "Why does everyone always ask me that?"

Ellone leaned on her elbow on the edge of the bed. "Because you could be lying in a pool of your own blood with a ruby dragon sitting on your chest and you would reach out your finger and write in the dirt F-I-N-E. I can see it on your tombstone. Squall Leonhart, SeeD Commander. I'm fine."

"Whatever."

"We have got to extend your vocabulary."

Squall flopped back down on the pillow. "Did you come in here to visit or pretend you're Quistis?"

"I came in to see my little brother." Ellone pulled the blanket up over Squall's chest.

"You made a mistake."

Ellone looked over to his face. "What?"

Squall turned his eyes to the tv. "I'm not your little brother. Not really. I'm not Laguna's son."

"Yes, you are. We were the only two there at the orphanage for the first year. You came with me."

Squall pushed the blanket back down to his waist. "I'm not related to Laguna Loire, Sis."

"What would be so terrible about it if you were, Squall?" Ellone took his hand in hers. "He's a wonderful man."

"He's an airhead."

Ellone rolled her eyes. "And you're stubborn, anti-social, and arrogant. He manages to see past that."

Squall turned stormy grey eyes on her. "I'm not like that."

"Oh really? You're acting like it. You stubbornly refuse to accept that you could have a real father that could care about you. You push him away because you have a paranoia about letting anyone get close. And your excuse for it? You're too good for him because you think differently than he does." Ellone squeezed Squall's hand as he tried to pull it away. "You're my brother. I'm not going to let you get away with retreating into your little silent world."

"Don't psychoanalyze me."

Ellone shook her head. "I'm not here as your psychiatrist. I'm here as your sister, Squall. Your sister who cares a lot about you. As much as I care about Laguna."

"I don't need a father, Ellone!" Squall yanked his hand away from her, rolling onto his side and facing away from her.

"You think eighteen year olds don't need fathers?" Ellone stroked Squall's hair softly. "I'm twenty-two. I need my father. That's why I looked for him so hard. To find him again."

"Good for you."

"Maybe you do need a psychiatrist. You won't even give him a chance."

"Why should I?"

Ellone sighed softly. "Because no man is an island, Squall. I thought you'd learned that from finally having friends. We all need people in our lives. Laguna isn't asking to run your life. All he wants is to be in it."

"It's my life. I don't have to let anyone be in it if I don't want to."

"Is that really it? You don't want to? Or is it that you've wanted it for so long and never had it so you've learned to just push it away and convinced yourself that you never wanted it to begin with?" Ellone waited patiently for a response, then squeezed Squall's shoulder lightly. "Can you even answer that?"

"Whatever." It was a mere whisper. "I'm tired."

Ellone stood, leaning over to kiss Squall's temple. "I'll let you rest, then. I just want to say one more thing. You grew up making your father into a faceless ogre who didn't care about you or a dead man who never could. You can't run away from this, though. Your father has a face, he's not an ogre, he does care, and he's very much alive. You can't hold onto your childhood fantasies forever, Squall. You're old enough to start letting some of them go." She smoothed his ash-brown hair from his cheek. "Take a second look at the man. You might see why everyone else loves him."

Squall sighed, pulling the blanket up over his shoulder as he heard her footsteps fade away. She was wrong, wasn't she? He had never wanted a father. He had even kept his distance from Cid, the closest thing he could identify as a father figure in his life. Since the day that Ellone had been adopted by a couple that only wanted one child he'd never wanted anyone else to be that close to him. He'd refused to even be friends with the other kids at the orphanage. That didn't make him anti-social, did it? It wasn't like it was the first time anyone had used that label on him, but he was more complex than a label. Labels were for soup cans, not people.

As far as arrogance, well, that was just plain stupid. He wasn't arrogant. He'd never asked to be made a hero, or SeeD commander. He was good at what he did, he always aced his exams, and unlike Laguna, he could walk across an entire stage without tripping on anything. Plenty of people had called him stuck-up, but it wasn't true, was it? He didn't think he was better than anyone else. Well, maybe better than some. He groaned, pulling the blanket up over his head, wishing that Ellone had just left him alone. He wished even more that he could honestly deny any truth in what she said.

Quistis dropped the paper bag of clothes on the chair. "Okay, time to get dressed. I'm not having you wander around the halls in one of those backside baring gowns."

"Not much of a fashion statement, maybe, but ain't like it'd be an unattractive view, is it, darlin'?" Irvine sat up, swinging his uncasted leg over the edge of the bed.

"A view I want to spare all the poor girls who can't have you." Quistis tossed him some boxers and a tee shirt, then pulled out a pair of jeans and some scissors.

Irvine put his left foot through the boxers, then thought about it for a minute as he looked at his cast before sighing and pulling it out again, then working on getting his underwear over the cast. "What's that for?"

Quistis laid the jeans next to his cast. "Your jeans won't fit over your cast, so I'm going to have to cut them."

"I ain't gonna have no clothes left by the time this is over."

"Oh hush. We'll buy you new clothes when you get the cast off. It's not like these were new anyhow." Quistis surveyed the location of some of the holes. "... You actually wear these?"

"Chaps cover a multitude of sins, darlin'. They're still good. I hate clothes shoppin'."

"When's the last time you did it? When you were sixteen?" Quistis sighed and cut off the right leg of the jeans as close as she could figure to the top of Irvine's cast.

"Fifteen." Irvine pulled the tee shirt on and reached for his jeans mournfully. "These were just gettin' comfy."

"They have holes in both back pockets. One of them that goes all the way through."

"Yet another reason to make sure your boxers are always clean." Irvine worked his jeans on with a sigh. "I miss my chaps."

"We'll get you new ones. You know, your clothes can be replaced. You can't." Quistis leaned over the bed to give him a kiss. "At least I don't have to worry about you driving for a month."

Irvine grinned, pulling her back for another kiss, this time deeper. "Course, this means I'm gonna be needin' your tender care."

"You have crutches, Irvine."

Irvine pouted. "A poor substitute for the lovin' attentions of a beautiful woman."

Quistis laughed. "I never said I wouldn't give you attention. After all, I don't want you looking for it from some other girl."

Irvine grinned. "There's other girls besides you? I forgot ta notice."

Quistis pushed him back against the pillow, turning to pull out the last items from the bag. She tossed his hat to him. "Found that thing in the back seat of the car. It's like a recurring nightmare. The hat came back."

Irvine settled his favorite accessory on his head. "It's a good hat."

"I don't see how you can manage to lose every pair of sunglasses I buy you within two days but we can't lose that thing." Quistis turned and set a new pair of anaconda boots on the bed. "You'll have to break them in all over again."

Irvine stared at the boots, then picked them up, hugging them to his chest. "Thanks, darlin'! I don't mind breakin' 'em in. Just gotta go on a good hike through a river."

"Don't thank me. They're from Cid. He took the train all the way out to Galbadia City to pick up a pair for you."

Irvine looked down at the boots. "... Oh."

Quistis sat on the bed. "I think it might be a nice gesture if you thanked him for them. Without being drugged up."

Irvine took a deep breath and let it out, then nodded. "Yeah, I will."

Quistis took the right boot. "Well, you can only wear one of them for now, but go ahead and try it on."

Irvine pulled his knee up to his chest and slid the boot on. "Hey, they're padded. These are like 400 gil boots."

"600 gil, actually. I saw the receipt."

Irvine chewed his lip for a bit. "He ain't tryna buy me, now."

Quistis shook her head. "I don't think that's it at all. I think he just wanted you to have the best. You were crying over your old pair." She reached over to pull his hair back into a ponytail. "I think he feels really badly about the past. I talked to him about it. He never wanted it to be the way it turned out. When he found out you were hurt he was so worried."

"I don't want his worry."

Quistis turned Irvine's face to hers. "What do you want, Irvine?"

Irvine closed his eyes. It was a question he'd asked himself enough that he didn't need to think to answer it, but it took him several moments to work up the courage to say it out loud. "I want to know why I wasn't good enough." He leaned into Quistis as she put her arms around him, dropping his head on her shoulder.