Disclaimer: Final Fantasy 8 and all the characters therein are property of
Squaresoft. I don't own 'em, although I do wish I owned Quistis. And Rinoa.
And Selphie. But especially Quistis *Wistful grin*
A/N: Anyway, we now return to "Return to Grace". This is a calmer chapter than the last two, mainly intended to develop some of the characters and advance the plot. Let me know how successful it is (Read: R&R!!!!!) And many MANY thanks for the great reviews!
CHAPTER THREE
"Hyne.what's taking so long?"
That particular question, voiced for the fourteenth time with no discernible variation in word order by Zell as he paced back and forth in the spacious room outside of the office of their commander, echoed briefly back and forth They found no answer from Irvine, who sat on a nearby couch still clutching his Stetson and occasionally glancing anxiously at the door to the office.
"Aaargh!" Zell growled, flailing at the air with his fists. "Why's he taking so long with her? We were only in there for fifteen minutes!"
Still Irvine made no response. Exasperated, more at the suspense of the wait than due to the grilling he'd just undergone, he had no answer for Zell. He closed his eyes, briefly, and let out a heavy, shaky sigh. Then he jerked them open again, frightened by the memories brought forth from the darkness behind their lids. He and Zell had indeed been in the chamber for only a few minutes each. But they were the ones who'd been.too late. Selphie had been the one who'd seen the deed done.
She'd been distraught. Distraught. The word couldn't even begin to describe how Selphie was when they had finally arrived at the scene. He'd had to physically pull her away from their fallen comrade, although she thrashed and screamed the entire time. In the end, he'd had to put her to sleep with a spell. It was the only way.
And then, of course, there'd been the debriefing for her to look forward to when she awoke.
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He couldn't get the image out of his head, eyes open or shut. When he'd quit the chamber, and that terrible, dead voice had bade Selphie enter, he expected her to falter. Or refuse to go. Or else ask him to go in with her. Him! He'd been a fool. Selphie'd simply risen to her feet and moved passed him to take his place in front of their commander. He'd even tried to whisper reassurances to her, but she'd shut the door behind her without acknowledging a single one of his utterances. As much a ghost as the man whose office she'd entered.
He was afraid. Not that their interrogator would harm her. No. But there'd been something in her eyes when he'd made one of his usual flirtatious remarks to Quistis, before she and Selphie had run to the house where the fateful encounter had occurred. Something he couldn't quite get. Jealousy? Disappointment?
Now he was afraid he would never understand. That the person that Selphie had been was irrevocably shattered, and the pieces reassembled into a new person, virtually identical to the first, but missing the spark he'd been.
Been what? Attracted to? Fascinated and puzzled by?
In love with?
He frowned, and opened his eyes again. What did he want with her? From her? What?!
The door to the office slid open. Irvine scrambled to his feet in the same instant that Zell jerked around, ending his pacing abruptly.
Selphie glided past them without a word. So quick in fact, that he hadn't been able to catch her face. She simply strode forward without a word to either of them and moved toward the open elevator at the far end of the room.
"Selphie!" he called out. But his greeting elicited no response from the girl, and any move he'd been about to make to go after her was abandoned as a new, quiet voice thundered behind him, its chill menace freezing him in its place.
"Let her go." He turned around, slowly and with no small amount of dread, as did Zell.
Squall Leonhart, commander of Balamb garden and, the man to whom its inhabitants looked up to, despite his flaws, stood at the threshold of the doorway to his office, arms clasped behind his back. The light filtering in from the large windows outlined his frame in a golden halo, like a demon framed in flames. The sun beyond the windows had long since passed its zenith and its late afternoon rays reflected just as brightly off of the ocean beyond and below the thick glass as from their source. So bright was the glare from the office, in fact, that the two men stood no chance of even seeing his face, let alone reading the expression on it.
He regarded them in silence for awhile and they, him. But the dead silence was broken by the low chime of the lift as its doors slid shut. By the time Irvine and Zell had torn their gazes away from Squall, the car had already begun its descent to the first level of Garden and Squall coolly strode past them to touch a hand to the button that would summon it again. For the short eternity it took for the car to arrive, the commander kept his back to them, waves of emotional nothing radiating off of him. The other two men could only stare past him at the red gauge above the doors, counting the floors remaining before the car returned to ferry their commander away and free them from the terror of his wordless presence.
The blurred walls of the elevator shaft were visible through glass of the lift doors as the car plummeted downward to Balamb Garden's "first floor". Squall Leonhart focussed squarely on them with narrowed eyes, this time allowing his expressionless face to contort itself into what could have passed for a thoughtful frown. But even in that brief moment alone in the lift, he maintained his sharp focus, never allowing his thoughts to wander, so that when the car finally reached its destination, his legs were already conveying him outside of the car and into the brightly lit first level before the doors had even finished hissing open.
He paused at the threshold and swept his eyes over the main atrium of his Garden. His and Cid's anyway. Cid ran it, Squall commanded it. It was a generally informal relationship, and one into which he'd been unwillingly thrust months ago during a rare crisis. It wasn't everyday that entire Gardens went about trying to shoot each other out of the sky, and extraordinary situations such as those bred extraordinary men. He just hadn't been aware he was one himself.
And right now, he certainly didn't feel particularly extraordinary.
He made his way down the circular walkway which shaped the atrium into its characteristic hive-like form, hands clasped behind his back, the sound of his feet drowned out by the chatter of the numerous SeeD cadets leaving their classes or merely bumming around with little else to do. A fragment of a fragment of an emotion - Black fury at the giggling fools, totally ignorant of the tragedy that had turned the last two days into a hell - threatened to show its face, before being carefully jerked back beneath his usual bleak veneer. It was a simple thing to suppress. Hadn't he had years of practice, after all?
Instead, he squared his shoulders once again - discretely.the students could NOT be made aware of how much Quistis' fall had effected him - And coolly stalked the rest of the way to the passageway leading into the sickbay. Only when he was alone in the deserted passageway did he allow himself enough human frailty to bow his head, close his eyes and take a deep breath before knocking. He did not wait for an answer from within before entering.
The medical centre seemed warm and inviting, as always, the rays of the setting sun diffusing through the blinds half-drawn across the window and playing upon the opposite wall as the wind sent sporadic, gentle gusts through them. He'd come to in that place more than once, especially in the days when he and Seifer would face-off periodically over the unofficial title of master Gunblade-wielder. But now, as then, the sunlit atmosphere failed to calm him.
Rising from her desk, Doctor Kadowaki shuffled briskly over to him. Her stern, matronly demeanour softened slightly when she saw who it was that had entered. She seemed to have been expecting some student who'd nicked his ear with his own knife, or something equally silly. Certainly, those were usually the sort of cases that found their way into her sickbay.
"How is she?" he inquired softly, his voice sounding surprisingly hoarse.
The doctor glanced behind her toward the compartment that held Squall's unwavering gaze and sighed. She seemed tired. "No change. We've stabilised her condition and dealt with the internal damage." She touched a hand to a spot slightly above her own abdomen. "The Hyperion pierced this spot, missing most vital organs, but still caused massive trauma and blood loss. Even with the Stop spell Zell used to keep her in stasis until she could be transported back here, her body suffered a tremendous shock."
"You said you healed her," Squall said tersely, a new edge creeping into his tone. "You said she got here in time. Why hasn't she woken up?"
"As I said, the trauma was-"
"And spare me whatever complicated medical speech you have prepared. She's in a coma, she ain't waking up and I want to know why! You're supposed to be a doctor! Why can't you wake her?!?"
Kadowaki's face contorted briefly, but when she opened her mouth to offer rebuke, Squall silenced her with an outstretched hand. He screwed his eyes shut for just a few seconds, arm still raised as if to ward off something only he could see, before visibly calming. The mask slid back into place as he said simply, woodenly; "No. I'm sorry. You're doing the best you can. I shouldn't have snapped at you. You're as tired as I am. I'm sorry."
Shock replaced the outrage on the doctor's features. But this softened into her characteristic bleak, yet somehow warm smile when, after a brief silence, he said; "Can I see her now?"
She waved him on, commenting in her mind that Squall was indeed as changed a man as she had heard. He nodded, smiled a smile wane and coloured with embarrassment and moved past her into the part of the sickbay reserved for long-term patients.
Long-term patients. Hyne, no---
He brushed aside the curtain surrounding Quistis' bed after a moment's hesitation at the thought of what he might find.
Quistis Trepe seemed quite peaceful. Pretty. Beautiful. Her hair was loose and splayed on her pillow in a cascade of dull gold. Her lips were parted slightly, but they were blurred by the plastic of the oxygen mask whose steady hiss drowned out her shallow breaths. Her eyes were, of course, closed, but occasionally he could see them jerk spasmodically beneath their lids. That, and the steady rise and fall of her chest seemed to be the only movement about her. The only life. Always so pale, her face seemed even more waxen after her ordeal, although her medical tunic and the pristine sheet pulled up to her chest well hid the scar of her wound.
His eyes moved away from her face to the woman slumped forward in the chair beside the bed, hand gently grasping Quistis own, head resting just on the bed, next to Quistis' body but with its forehead balancing just on the edge. Raven hair framed her face, brushed back behind her ear. Rinoa Heartilly. If he ever felt up to the task of describing her, he would have failed for certain to express exactly what she was. And what she meant to him. There was his existence before she came. And then there was his LIFE after she literally waltzed into his world and proceeded to turn it upside down. That was all he cared to say. All he was capable of saying. Language can only do so much.
He knelt down, next to her, and reached out a gloved hand to brush her temple. Startled, she straightened with a jerk, he found himself looking into her face. Her hair was dishevelled. Her eyes were red - whether from sorrow or lack of sleep, he could not say - and her characteristic soft smile was absent from her lips.
She was so beautiful.
Wordlessly, she rose, and he with her, and took his hands in her own. They remained that way for awhile, neither saying anything to the other, not with words, anyway. Then they folded into each other's embrace, To some, it must have looked like an emotionally drained girl collapsing into the arms of her stoic lover. To others, it may have seemed that a tired, strung out young man sought comfort in the silent grace of his woman. It was, in fact, a bit of both.
Finally, they broke the embrace, simultaneously, and turned to their fallen comrade, but the distance between them couldn't be measured, it was so infinitesimal.
"I've been.gently probing her with my powers," Rinoa said, softly, as if afraid to wake Quistis at all. "Nothing. No response. I don't dare probe deeper. She's---too delicate for that, now."
He smiled, wanly. "I think you need to give it a rest anyway." He gave her hand a squeeze, allowing her to rest her head on his shoulder. "I just asked you to look in on her---not spend the whole day by her side."
"I can't believe you said that," she said, accompanied by a forced giggle. "She's like a sister to me. And who else will? You were debriefing the others and running Garden. Zell and Irvine.I guess they think its somehow their fault. And Selphie---" She frowned. "Selphie---how is she?"
He frowned as he gazed down at his childhood friend and listened to her breaths, listening hard for any irregularities, and said nothing. Sensing his sudden tenseness, Rinoa pulled away from him, took his hands again and looked up at his face as he deliberately looked away from her.
"Squall---what did you say to them?" When he didn't answer, she shook her head and sighed worriedly. Worried for him. "Squall---it wasn't their fault, you know that."
He hissed exasperatedly and tossed his head like an irritated stallion, baring his teeth in frustration. "I know. I know! I didn't yell at them or anything, but." He sighed and hung his head. "There must have been a way. They should have got to her quicker---they should have---aargh! They should have DONE something!"
"They did, Squall," she answered softly. "She's here, isn't she? She's alive. She'll recover. Maybe there wasn't a way to prevent what happened, but they saved her life." No answer from the man who couldn't meet her gaze. She let go of his hands, cupped his face between them and all but forced his head up to look her. "Squall, they saved her life! Zell, Irvine, Selphie.without them she would have died. They're not to blame." She paused, as he looked at her, fighting back her shock at seeing what she thought might have been the beginnings of tears in his eyes. But it was just an illusion. Even now, after six months with her, he still didn't know how to weep. "HE is."
"I.I." he started, before pulling away from her. Now it was his turn to kneel down beside his childhood friend, who hadn't stirred even through their exchange, and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. "I---I should have been ther-"
"And neither are you. Do you understand me?" No answer from Squall, so she raised him gently to his feet and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, hugging him from behind. "Its not your fault either. Don't be angry at yourself. Or at the others. If you were there, it wouldn't have made a difference. Don't do this to yourself, or to them." She held him ever tighter, raising herself up on the tips of her toes so that she could rest her chin on his shoulder and whisper in his ear. "Or to me."
When he didn't reply, she asked, tentatively, "Squall?"
He shook her off, gently, touched Quistis' hand with his own, briefly, and turned to go. She didn't try to keep him back, but found herself asking, in a voice of dread at the change; "Squall? Where---?"
He made is if to go, then paused in the act of leaving the compartment. When he turned to answer her, the façade was back, his eyes blazed with a passion that frightened her and his voice was flat and frank.
"I'm going to kill him."
Then he turned and made good his departure, leaving Rinoa to stare blankly after him before sitting back down, taking Quistis' hand once again and thoughtfully regarding her sleeping friend. And of the prayers she offered up to the gods, not quite all of them were for Quistis.
"Selphie?"
As before, there was no answer. He tried again, louder. "Selphie! It's Irvine! Open the door! Please."
As before, he pressed his ear even closer to the cool wood of the door, straining for any sound from within. Still he heard nothing beyond his own breathing and desperate heartbeat. He glanced around him at the empty corridor, searching for someone who would help him, anyone. But he was alone. Alone at the door of someone who'd become a walking ghost and who refused to talk to neither him nor anyone else.
"Selphie!" he cried, pounding the door again. Not too hard, though. He knew, on some unconscious level, how bloody irritating that sort of thing was, and that in her present state she was unlikely to open if he pounded too often.
But---
He pressed both hands on the door again and smacked his forehead against it, exasperated.
"Selphie, please. It wasn't your fault. No one blames you. I don't," he pleaded, his words echoing down the empty corridor. Most of the students were in their classes, and the silence in the corridor matched the one within Selphie's room. "Neither does Squall, I'm sure, or Quisty." He tried to sound convincing. Sincere. Although he was bitterly aware of how seldom sincerity featured in his interactions with her.
"Sefie?"
Still no answer. He rested his back against the wall opposite her door and let himself slide the floor with a groan. He opened his moth to say something, but there was nothing he could say that he hadn't already said twice, with no answer from within. His exasperation and despair rested in his stomach like a stone. The exasperation stemmed from trying to get Selphie to see how little blame she shared. The despair came from.
What?
He was worried about her. Of course he was! But.it wasn't like before. Not like he was worried about Zell.he'd been just as effected by all of this. Or like he was worried about Quisty.he was wracked with guilt about what had happened, but not worried. The Stop spell that Zell had cast had kept her in stasis until doctor Kadowaki could treat her, after which her survival was assured.
No, this was something different.
Exasperated at Selphie, numb inside from the memory of his and Zell's failure and more than a little confused with what he was feeling, Irvine pulled his knees to his chest and rested his head on them with a sigh, ears still straining for any sound from within Selphie's quarters.
"So you're saying that there was no sign of him?" Squall enquired, leaning forward across the conference table which had been set up in the Headmaster's office. "At all?"
Across the medium sized table, Xu nodded from her place in front of the viewscreen. The image displayed thereon was a 3D model of Fisherman's Horizon. The mayor's house was highlighted in red, whilst all the docks and helipads pulsed green. "When the second team arrived, we sealed the place off immediately. Even in the time between our arrival and the medevac called by Irvine, the locals swore that no one got in or out."
Squall's eyes narrowed. "How do we know they weren't lying?" he growled. "What assurances do we have?"
Xu drew her lips back in a taut cross between a frown and a humourless smile. "None. Except that mayor Dobe did everything he could to help us out. Quistis and Selphie saved his wife's life and Zell and Irvine saved the rest of his town."
Seated next to Squall, Cid Kramer, headmaster of Balamb Garden, chuckled and said: "I think he understands us a little better now, don't you think? Or at least realised that we weren't the enemy, for once."
Squall made no reply to this. Instead, he looked to Xu once more and stated, plainly, "So there's no way he could have got off out of that town without your team knowing about it?"
"That's it."
"But he did it anyway."
"Yessir. I'm afraid so."
He swore, pushed his chair back, rose and stalked over to the window taking up most of the wall space to the right of the desk. He crossed his arms behind his back and peered out across the short patch of ocean that separated the sea borne garden from the sleepy town of Balamb. The sun had set, but its dying rays still peaked over the tips of the distant mountains, providing just enough illumination to make out the more prominent structures of the Balamb waterfront.
He swore again, and turned. Still seated, the others awaited his input. But he could still see how apprehensive they were. Did they question his leadership?
He grunted, and sat back down. "What about Raijin and Fujin? Have they given any indication of where he might be now? Where he could be headed?"
Xu shook her head "No, Squall. But." She paused at the look of sudden interest in his face. "But.that's the thing. Neither of them remember a thing from yesterday." For this revelation, she was rewarded with a gold, albeit attentive stare. "Its like their minds are a blank. According to them, they're missing several days' worth of memories. We're still holding them, until Rinoa can probe them a little further to see if they're telling the truth. But until then, we can't rule out---"
"---Mind control," Squall finished for her. The fury he'd held checked threatened to emerge. Mind control? Mind control?!?!
Cid spoke up. "If they really were being controlled, we can also conceivably assume the same of Seifer, Squall."
Mind control!!!
No. No fucking way. After all his crimes against garden, all the deaths at his hands and now Quistis---Squall would be damned if he'd let Seifer use that as an excuse this time. Not again. Never again!
He narrowed his eyes and forced his anger back down. When he looked up again and glanced at the assembled faces around him, some expectant, some apprehensive, he spoke in as calm and cool a tone as he could muster.
"Well, then." He pressed the intercom button on his desk, his heart and mind swimming with newfound resolution. "Bridge, this is Commander Leonheart. Nida? You there?"
"Here," came the tinny response. "Go ahead."
"Nida, I want you to set us on a course to Centra. The orphanage."
"Right on it. Standby. ETA should be about thirty-six hours, if the weather holds clear. Bridge out."
No sooner had his voice signed off than Cid rose to his feet, in outrage. "Squall, for Hyne's sake," he began, angrily. "Its been months since Ultimecia! How can you suspect."
"How 'bout you calm down?" Squall barked, rising to his feet and leaning forward across the table. His height, at a foot taller than Cid, seemed all the more prominent when combined with the sharpness of his voice, But Cid bristled nonetheless. "I'm not accusing anyone of anything. Except for that bastard Almasy."
He turned, and looked out again over the darkening ocean. Across the distance, he could make out the lights of Balamb flicking on one by one, as the city made its own transition from day to night. His own office was still dark, the lights not yet activated, so when he turned again, the meagre light emanating from outside the horizon was insufficient to illuminate his expression. "But if anyone knows anything about mind control, and how to find Seifer, it'll be Edea."
And as the titanic engines of Balamb Garden began their ominous whine, deep within the bowels of the mobile fortress-academy, he whispered, as if to remind himself of the fact: "Matron."
NEXT: A meeting with Matron.
A/N: Anyway, we now return to "Return to Grace". This is a calmer chapter than the last two, mainly intended to develop some of the characters and advance the plot. Let me know how successful it is (Read: R&R!!!!!) And many MANY thanks for the great reviews!
CHAPTER THREE
"Hyne.what's taking so long?"
That particular question, voiced for the fourteenth time with no discernible variation in word order by Zell as he paced back and forth in the spacious room outside of the office of their commander, echoed briefly back and forth They found no answer from Irvine, who sat on a nearby couch still clutching his Stetson and occasionally glancing anxiously at the door to the office.
"Aaargh!" Zell growled, flailing at the air with his fists. "Why's he taking so long with her? We were only in there for fifteen minutes!"
Still Irvine made no response. Exasperated, more at the suspense of the wait than due to the grilling he'd just undergone, he had no answer for Zell. He closed his eyes, briefly, and let out a heavy, shaky sigh. Then he jerked them open again, frightened by the memories brought forth from the darkness behind their lids. He and Zell had indeed been in the chamber for only a few minutes each. But they were the ones who'd been.too late. Selphie had been the one who'd seen the deed done.
She'd been distraught. Distraught. The word couldn't even begin to describe how Selphie was when they had finally arrived at the scene. He'd had to physically pull her away from their fallen comrade, although she thrashed and screamed the entire time. In the end, he'd had to put her to sleep with a spell. It was the only way.
And then, of course, there'd been the debriefing for her to look forward to when she awoke.
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He couldn't get the image out of his head, eyes open or shut. When he'd quit the chamber, and that terrible, dead voice had bade Selphie enter, he expected her to falter. Or refuse to go. Or else ask him to go in with her. Him! He'd been a fool. Selphie'd simply risen to her feet and moved passed him to take his place in front of their commander. He'd even tried to whisper reassurances to her, but she'd shut the door behind her without acknowledging a single one of his utterances. As much a ghost as the man whose office she'd entered.
He was afraid. Not that their interrogator would harm her. No. But there'd been something in her eyes when he'd made one of his usual flirtatious remarks to Quistis, before she and Selphie had run to the house where the fateful encounter had occurred. Something he couldn't quite get. Jealousy? Disappointment?
Now he was afraid he would never understand. That the person that Selphie had been was irrevocably shattered, and the pieces reassembled into a new person, virtually identical to the first, but missing the spark he'd been.
Been what? Attracted to? Fascinated and puzzled by?
In love with?
He frowned, and opened his eyes again. What did he want with her? From her? What?!
The door to the office slid open. Irvine scrambled to his feet in the same instant that Zell jerked around, ending his pacing abruptly.
Selphie glided past them without a word. So quick in fact, that he hadn't been able to catch her face. She simply strode forward without a word to either of them and moved toward the open elevator at the far end of the room.
"Selphie!" he called out. But his greeting elicited no response from the girl, and any move he'd been about to make to go after her was abandoned as a new, quiet voice thundered behind him, its chill menace freezing him in its place.
"Let her go." He turned around, slowly and with no small amount of dread, as did Zell.
Squall Leonhart, commander of Balamb garden and, the man to whom its inhabitants looked up to, despite his flaws, stood at the threshold of the doorway to his office, arms clasped behind his back. The light filtering in from the large windows outlined his frame in a golden halo, like a demon framed in flames. The sun beyond the windows had long since passed its zenith and its late afternoon rays reflected just as brightly off of the ocean beyond and below the thick glass as from their source. So bright was the glare from the office, in fact, that the two men stood no chance of even seeing his face, let alone reading the expression on it.
He regarded them in silence for awhile and they, him. But the dead silence was broken by the low chime of the lift as its doors slid shut. By the time Irvine and Zell had torn their gazes away from Squall, the car had already begun its descent to the first level of Garden and Squall coolly strode past them to touch a hand to the button that would summon it again. For the short eternity it took for the car to arrive, the commander kept his back to them, waves of emotional nothing radiating off of him. The other two men could only stare past him at the red gauge above the doors, counting the floors remaining before the car returned to ferry their commander away and free them from the terror of his wordless presence.
The blurred walls of the elevator shaft were visible through glass of the lift doors as the car plummeted downward to Balamb Garden's "first floor". Squall Leonhart focussed squarely on them with narrowed eyes, this time allowing his expressionless face to contort itself into what could have passed for a thoughtful frown. But even in that brief moment alone in the lift, he maintained his sharp focus, never allowing his thoughts to wander, so that when the car finally reached its destination, his legs were already conveying him outside of the car and into the brightly lit first level before the doors had even finished hissing open.
He paused at the threshold and swept his eyes over the main atrium of his Garden. His and Cid's anyway. Cid ran it, Squall commanded it. It was a generally informal relationship, and one into which he'd been unwillingly thrust months ago during a rare crisis. It wasn't everyday that entire Gardens went about trying to shoot each other out of the sky, and extraordinary situations such as those bred extraordinary men. He just hadn't been aware he was one himself.
And right now, he certainly didn't feel particularly extraordinary.
He made his way down the circular walkway which shaped the atrium into its characteristic hive-like form, hands clasped behind his back, the sound of his feet drowned out by the chatter of the numerous SeeD cadets leaving their classes or merely bumming around with little else to do. A fragment of a fragment of an emotion - Black fury at the giggling fools, totally ignorant of the tragedy that had turned the last two days into a hell - threatened to show its face, before being carefully jerked back beneath his usual bleak veneer. It was a simple thing to suppress. Hadn't he had years of practice, after all?
Instead, he squared his shoulders once again - discretely.the students could NOT be made aware of how much Quistis' fall had effected him - And coolly stalked the rest of the way to the passageway leading into the sickbay. Only when he was alone in the deserted passageway did he allow himself enough human frailty to bow his head, close his eyes and take a deep breath before knocking. He did not wait for an answer from within before entering.
The medical centre seemed warm and inviting, as always, the rays of the setting sun diffusing through the blinds half-drawn across the window and playing upon the opposite wall as the wind sent sporadic, gentle gusts through them. He'd come to in that place more than once, especially in the days when he and Seifer would face-off periodically over the unofficial title of master Gunblade-wielder. But now, as then, the sunlit atmosphere failed to calm him.
Rising from her desk, Doctor Kadowaki shuffled briskly over to him. Her stern, matronly demeanour softened slightly when she saw who it was that had entered. She seemed to have been expecting some student who'd nicked his ear with his own knife, or something equally silly. Certainly, those were usually the sort of cases that found their way into her sickbay.
"How is she?" he inquired softly, his voice sounding surprisingly hoarse.
The doctor glanced behind her toward the compartment that held Squall's unwavering gaze and sighed. She seemed tired. "No change. We've stabilised her condition and dealt with the internal damage." She touched a hand to a spot slightly above her own abdomen. "The Hyperion pierced this spot, missing most vital organs, but still caused massive trauma and blood loss. Even with the Stop spell Zell used to keep her in stasis until she could be transported back here, her body suffered a tremendous shock."
"You said you healed her," Squall said tersely, a new edge creeping into his tone. "You said she got here in time. Why hasn't she woken up?"
"As I said, the trauma was-"
"And spare me whatever complicated medical speech you have prepared. She's in a coma, she ain't waking up and I want to know why! You're supposed to be a doctor! Why can't you wake her?!?"
Kadowaki's face contorted briefly, but when she opened her mouth to offer rebuke, Squall silenced her with an outstretched hand. He screwed his eyes shut for just a few seconds, arm still raised as if to ward off something only he could see, before visibly calming. The mask slid back into place as he said simply, woodenly; "No. I'm sorry. You're doing the best you can. I shouldn't have snapped at you. You're as tired as I am. I'm sorry."
Shock replaced the outrage on the doctor's features. But this softened into her characteristic bleak, yet somehow warm smile when, after a brief silence, he said; "Can I see her now?"
She waved him on, commenting in her mind that Squall was indeed as changed a man as she had heard. He nodded, smiled a smile wane and coloured with embarrassment and moved past her into the part of the sickbay reserved for long-term patients.
Long-term patients. Hyne, no---
He brushed aside the curtain surrounding Quistis' bed after a moment's hesitation at the thought of what he might find.
Quistis Trepe seemed quite peaceful. Pretty. Beautiful. Her hair was loose and splayed on her pillow in a cascade of dull gold. Her lips were parted slightly, but they were blurred by the plastic of the oxygen mask whose steady hiss drowned out her shallow breaths. Her eyes were, of course, closed, but occasionally he could see them jerk spasmodically beneath their lids. That, and the steady rise and fall of her chest seemed to be the only movement about her. The only life. Always so pale, her face seemed even more waxen after her ordeal, although her medical tunic and the pristine sheet pulled up to her chest well hid the scar of her wound.
His eyes moved away from her face to the woman slumped forward in the chair beside the bed, hand gently grasping Quistis own, head resting just on the bed, next to Quistis' body but with its forehead balancing just on the edge. Raven hair framed her face, brushed back behind her ear. Rinoa Heartilly. If he ever felt up to the task of describing her, he would have failed for certain to express exactly what she was. And what she meant to him. There was his existence before she came. And then there was his LIFE after she literally waltzed into his world and proceeded to turn it upside down. That was all he cared to say. All he was capable of saying. Language can only do so much.
He knelt down, next to her, and reached out a gloved hand to brush her temple. Startled, she straightened with a jerk, he found himself looking into her face. Her hair was dishevelled. Her eyes were red - whether from sorrow or lack of sleep, he could not say - and her characteristic soft smile was absent from her lips.
She was so beautiful.
Wordlessly, she rose, and he with her, and took his hands in her own. They remained that way for awhile, neither saying anything to the other, not with words, anyway. Then they folded into each other's embrace, To some, it must have looked like an emotionally drained girl collapsing into the arms of her stoic lover. To others, it may have seemed that a tired, strung out young man sought comfort in the silent grace of his woman. It was, in fact, a bit of both.
Finally, they broke the embrace, simultaneously, and turned to their fallen comrade, but the distance between them couldn't be measured, it was so infinitesimal.
"I've been.gently probing her with my powers," Rinoa said, softly, as if afraid to wake Quistis at all. "Nothing. No response. I don't dare probe deeper. She's---too delicate for that, now."
He smiled, wanly. "I think you need to give it a rest anyway." He gave her hand a squeeze, allowing her to rest her head on his shoulder. "I just asked you to look in on her---not spend the whole day by her side."
"I can't believe you said that," she said, accompanied by a forced giggle. "She's like a sister to me. And who else will? You were debriefing the others and running Garden. Zell and Irvine.I guess they think its somehow their fault. And Selphie---" She frowned. "Selphie---how is she?"
He frowned as he gazed down at his childhood friend and listened to her breaths, listening hard for any irregularities, and said nothing. Sensing his sudden tenseness, Rinoa pulled away from him, took his hands again and looked up at his face as he deliberately looked away from her.
"Squall---what did you say to them?" When he didn't answer, she shook her head and sighed worriedly. Worried for him. "Squall---it wasn't their fault, you know that."
He hissed exasperatedly and tossed his head like an irritated stallion, baring his teeth in frustration. "I know. I know! I didn't yell at them or anything, but." He sighed and hung his head. "There must have been a way. They should have got to her quicker---they should have---aargh! They should have DONE something!"
"They did, Squall," she answered softly. "She's here, isn't she? She's alive. She'll recover. Maybe there wasn't a way to prevent what happened, but they saved her life." No answer from the man who couldn't meet her gaze. She let go of his hands, cupped his face between them and all but forced his head up to look her. "Squall, they saved her life! Zell, Irvine, Selphie.without them she would have died. They're not to blame." She paused, as he looked at her, fighting back her shock at seeing what she thought might have been the beginnings of tears in his eyes. But it was just an illusion. Even now, after six months with her, he still didn't know how to weep. "HE is."
"I.I." he started, before pulling away from her. Now it was his turn to kneel down beside his childhood friend, who hadn't stirred even through their exchange, and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. "I---I should have been ther-"
"And neither are you. Do you understand me?" No answer from Squall, so she raised him gently to his feet and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, hugging him from behind. "Its not your fault either. Don't be angry at yourself. Or at the others. If you were there, it wouldn't have made a difference. Don't do this to yourself, or to them." She held him ever tighter, raising herself up on the tips of her toes so that she could rest her chin on his shoulder and whisper in his ear. "Or to me."
When he didn't reply, she asked, tentatively, "Squall?"
He shook her off, gently, touched Quistis' hand with his own, briefly, and turned to go. She didn't try to keep him back, but found herself asking, in a voice of dread at the change; "Squall? Where---?"
He made is if to go, then paused in the act of leaving the compartment. When he turned to answer her, the façade was back, his eyes blazed with a passion that frightened her and his voice was flat and frank.
"I'm going to kill him."
Then he turned and made good his departure, leaving Rinoa to stare blankly after him before sitting back down, taking Quistis' hand once again and thoughtfully regarding her sleeping friend. And of the prayers she offered up to the gods, not quite all of them were for Quistis.
"Selphie?"
As before, there was no answer. He tried again, louder. "Selphie! It's Irvine! Open the door! Please."
As before, he pressed his ear even closer to the cool wood of the door, straining for any sound from within. Still he heard nothing beyond his own breathing and desperate heartbeat. He glanced around him at the empty corridor, searching for someone who would help him, anyone. But he was alone. Alone at the door of someone who'd become a walking ghost and who refused to talk to neither him nor anyone else.
"Selphie!" he cried, pounding the door again. Not too hard, though. He knew, on some unconscious level, how bloody irritating that sort of thing was, and that in her present state she was unlikely to open if he pounded too often.
But---
He pressed both hands on the door again and smacked his forehead against it, exasperated.
"Selphie, please. It wasn't your fault. No one blames you. I don't," he pleaded, his words echoing down the empty corridor. Most of the students were in their classes, and the silence in the corridor matched the one within Selphie's room. "Neither does Squall, I'm sure, or Quisty." He tried to sound convincing. Sincere. Although he was bitterly aware of how seldom sincerity featured in his interactions with her.
"Sefie?"
Still no answer. He rested his back against the wall opposite her door and let himself slide the floor with a groan. He opened his moth to say something, but there was nothing he could say that he hadn't already said twice, with no answer from within. His exasperation and despair rested in his stomach like a stone. The exasperation stemmed from trying to get Selphie to see how little blame she shared. The despair came from.
What?
He was worried about her. Of course he was! But.it wasn't like before. Not like he was worried about Zell.he'd been just as effected by all of this. Or like he was worried about Quisty.he was wracked with guilt about what had happened, but not worried. The Stop spell that Zell had cast had kept her in stasis until doctor Kadowaki could treat her, after which her survival was assured.
No, this was something different.
Exasperated at Selphie, numb inside from the memory of his and Zell's failure and more than a little confused with what he was feeling, Irvine pulled his knees to his chest and rested his head on them with a sigh, ears still straining for any sound from within Selphie's quarters.
"So you're saying that there was no sign of him?" Squall enquired, leaning forward across the conference table which had been set up in the Headmaster's office. "At all?"
Across the medium sized table, Xu nodded from her place in front of the viewscreen. The image displayed thereon was a 3D model of Fisherman's Horizon. The mayor's house was highlighted in red, whilst all the docks and helipads pulsed green. "When the second team arrived, we sealed the place off immediately. Even in the time between our arrival and the medevac called by Irvine, the locals swore that no one got in or out."
Squall's eyes narrowed. "How do we know they weren't lying?" he growled. "What assurances do we have?"
Xu drew her lips back in a taut cross between a frown and a humourless smile. "None. Except that mayor Dobe did everything he could to help us out. Quistis and Selphie saved his wife's life and Zell and Irvine saved the rest of his town."
Seated next to Squall, Cid Kramer, headmaster of Balamb Garden, chuckled and said: "I think he understands us a little better now, don't you think? Or at least realised that we weren't the enemy, for once."
Squall made no reply to this. Instead, he looked to Xu once more and stated, plainly, "So there's no way he could have got off out of that town without your team knowing about it?"
"That's it."
"But he did it anyway."
"Yessir. I'm afraid so."
He swore, pushed his chair back, rose and stalked over to the window taking up most of the wall space to the right of the desk. He crossed his arms behind his back and peered out across the short patch of ocean that separated the sea borne garden from the sleepy town of Balamb. The sun had set, but its dying rays still peaked over the tips of the distant mountains, providing just enough illumination to make out the more prominent structures of the Balamb waterfront.
He swore again, and turned. Still seated, the others awaited his input. But he could still see how apprehensive they were. Did they question his leadership?
He grunted, and sat back down. "What about Raijin and Fujin? Have they given any indication of where he might be now? Where he could be headed?"
Xu shook her head "No, Squall. But." She paused at the look of sudden interest in his face. "But.that's the thing. Neither of them remember a thing from yesterday." For this revelation, she was rewarded with a gold, albeit attentive stare. "Its like their minds are a blank. According to them, they're missing several days' worth of memories. We're still holding them, until Rinoa can probe them a little further to see if they're telling the truth. But until then, we can't rule out---"
"---Mind control," Squall finished for her. The fury he'd held checked threatened to emerge. Mind control? Mind control?!?!
Cid spoke up. "If they really were being controlled, we can also conceivably assume the same of Seifer, Squall."
Mind control!!!
No. No fucking way. After all his crimes against garden, all the deaths at his hands and now Quistis---Squall would be damned if he'd let Seifer use that as an excuse this time. Not again. Never again!
He narrowed his eyes and forced his anger back down. When he looked up again and glanced at the assembled faces around him, some expectant, some apprehensive, he spoke in as calm and cool a tone as he could muster.
"Well, then." He pressed the intercom button on his desk, his heart and mind swimming with newfound resolution. "Bridge, this is Commander Leonheart. Nida? You there?"
"Here," came the tinny response. "Go ahead."
"Nida, I want you to set us on a course to Centra. The orphanage."
"Right on it. Standby. ETA should be about thirty-six hours, if the weather holds clear. Bridge out."
No sooner had his voice signed off than Cid rose to his feet, in outrage. "Squall, for Hyne's sake," he began, angrily. "Its been months since Ultimecia! How can you suspect."
"How 'bout you calm down?" Squall barked, rising to his feet and leaning forward across the table. His height, at a foot taller than Cid, seemed all the more prominent when combined with the sharpness of his voice, But Cid bristled nonetheless. "I'm not accusing anyone of anything. Except for that bastard Almasy."
He turned, and looked out again over the darkening ocean. Across the distance, he could make out the lights of Balamb flicking on one by one, as the city made its own transition from day to night. His own office was still dark, the lights not yet activated, so when he turned again, the meagre light emanating from outside the horizon was insufficient to illuminate his expression. "But if anyone knows anything about mind control, and how to find Seifer, it'll be Edea."
And as the titanic engines of Balamb Garden began their ominous whine, deep within the bowels of the mobile fortress-academy, he whispered, as if to remind himself of the fact: "Matron."
NEXT: A meeting with Matron.