"I know it's just a Spring Haze
But I don't much like the looks of it
And all we do is circle..."
--Tori Amos
"For When You Return"
Part XV
"What do you mean, -gone-?!" Rinoa cried. There was a strange sort of warble forming in the back of her throat, as if she had just spent a great amount of time singing two octaves higher than what her voice could handle. This was almost true -- inside, she was still screaming.
Zell, Quistis, Irvine, and Selphie stood tensely against the wall in Xu's small office. They were silent -- and had been that way as well on the ride back from Balamb. Zell, especially, was surprised by this... there was so much to say, so much to talk about... At first it had been a tizzy of words and explanations, but like a firecracker the burst went quick. Soon every question that Rinoa shot at them was reflected with a brief answer, an 'I don't know, I really don't.' And, as the girl got more and more distressed, their replies got shorter and shorter. It had been a painful ride.
What could they have said?
Xu, however, brought herself up to answer the best that she could. She looked just as bashful--if not more--than the rest, and found it difficult to meet Rinoa's eyes. But she did so, and with iron rods in her heart she said,
"We've made a mistake. No one really had a -reason- to eject a Guardian Force before, this was the first time that we..."
At first Rinoa had looked accusing, almost pointed in her stare. The glossiness to her eyes betrayed her, however, and that blank look slipped steadily down into dank mournfulness, disbelief... She felt very alone all of a sudden, to the point where she could sense the chilled air currents against the flesh of her arms, feel the carpet beneath the soles of her shoes, the tickle of her hair against her neck like a ghost's breath...
She felt like a pillar, the hand of a weathered stone sun-dial. The muscles of her arms where she crossed them over her chest were taut, and her fingers gripped to the point of pain. Rinoa noticed, but she didn't release her hold.
(If...If Guardian Forces...) She thought.
"I...Rinoa, I don't know what to say quite yet." Xu continued, too wrapped up in her own distress to take much note of the expression on Rinoa's face. The others saw, however, and the sight was something that drove their hearts into their toes. Rinoa was more than stricken -- she seemed almost like a different person for a moment. The way that she stood there, silent. Still. She had gotten surprised, questioning, and even angry... but had hardly shed a tear once the news had come. Her eyes were glazed, but did not yet overflow. Not even close.
(If Guardian Forces could entwine with a mind...)
(...Was that what Odine was talking about?)
"We've searched the Garden. Nothing. Whatever happened, it happened in that room -- and something -did- happen, Rinoa. I can't say what, not yet...."
(Is that why...)
(....Is that why he called them dangerous....?)
"We have a lead, though," Xu was saying. "It involves the Guardian Force, obviously, and with that we can at least get a start... We can talk to--"
"People don't just -disappear-!" Rinoa exclaimed. Everyone in the room started; Zell nearly jumped. Xu's tense eyes grew wide and clear for a moment, as the dark-haired girl broke into outburst. "It's impossible!" Rinoa cried again, looking around at each and every one of them. This time, she added firm pointed-ness to her words. "You don't...just...disappear!!"
"Rinoa, calm down," Selphie said.
"And this is coming from Selphie," Zell added. Irvine pushed a dull elbow into his ribs. Zell's face was a little too clay-like to wince much, especially the way that Rinoa didn't seem to respond. The lanky young woman simply stood stoop shouldered, staring at him with a mixture of anger and defeat.
"Look, we just need to think about what Odine said," Quistis added, looking between the two. Rinoa's eyes lifted and settled on her own, and Quistis felt her heart skip a little as if she had been caught in a trap. She suddenly realized just what Xu was going through. The prim woman was a blurry form in the background, something that she couldn't quite focus on with her gaze upon Rinoa. Everything seemed blurred for a moment, except for Rinoa.
...That look on her face.
"That's right," Irvine said. His voice was by far the most -normal- of the group. Everyone was forced into dull, partially-rational calm... but it was only Irvine who seemed fully casual. One look at the lines on his face, however, and he was just as exposed as the rest of them. "You said that GFs can be entwined with a mind, right?"
"Yeah," Selphie added. "Maybe Shiva took him with her!"
Zell opened his mouth, closed it, and then looked around before speaking. "Um...Into the ...canister?" He asked hesitantly.
Irvine shot him a glare.
"It's a perfectly legit question!" Zell snapped.
Quistis rolled her eyes flatly and scratched at the side of her head. Xu, however, lifted her shoulders in a shrug and wet her thin lips warily. "That's the thing, though. It worked. Shiva ejected just fine. No flaws, no complications..."
"...We should still get it checked out," Irvine said. "Odine should see it."
Zell put on a little grin, in spite of himself. "What was that, Irvy? What are you checking for...? Hmmm?"
"He...is...not...in....the...freaking...canister!" Irvine cried. He threw up his gangly arms in punctuation to his statement.
"That's all great," Rinoa said dryly from where she had been quietly standing amidst the melee. Her arms slid up and folded over her chest a little. One hand idly graced an elbow, worried and irritated. "But that doesn't fix anything."
"We need to talk to Odine." Xu said. "It's as simple as that. He's our best chance, and our most easily accessible one--"
"No, wait," Rinoa interrupted. There was a strange sheen to her words. "I've already spoken to Odine!" There was something firm and desperate in her voice, something that made Xu hesitate to respond. The room was silent for a long and drawn out moment.
"We have different questions, now." Xu finally said.
For a moment Rinoa simply stared at her. There was something tense, rough, and childish about the way she looked, something that congealed in the air around them. Xu, in contrast, did not stand down in her contrasting maturity; a determination that seemed better aged than Rinoa's stubbornness. And, for that heart-wrenching moment, the room was dead silent. Zell, especially, who was quite sensitive to this sort of thing, felt his lungs suck in and draw into a tight fist in his chest.
The two women continued to hold each other's gazes. Rinoa was the one to finally break, and she did so in a crisp one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn. On her heels, flat to her feet, and angrily out the door.
Everyone in the room exchanged a glance, and a shudder ran down every spine when the door closed with an angry and reverberating slam. Xu was the first to make a sound -- she pressed a hand into her forehead and let out a rattling breath.
("We have different questions now.")
Across the red carpet, to the elevator.
(You didn't help us.)
A fist against the panel. It didn't matter which floor, whether the cylinder moved or not. The door closed her in, and the elevator's carpet beneath her feet bounced a little, jolting up a fraction before plummeting. Her forehead against the cold steel wall.
(You didn't help him.)
(You didn't help anything.)
(Again.)
(You didn't help anything again.)
Her chest rose and fell in constricted little gasps. The closed elevator doors were like ice under her hand, almost freezing it there -- lucky for her, on account that it was this hand that kept her supported enough to stay on her feet. Her legs wanted to crumple and drag her into a fetal position, and her stomach twisted in desperate agony. Curl up, curl up, curl up! But her muscles were too rigid.
She didn't quite know where she was going, but she was moving. Eventually the door opened up under her, and she was moving down the sunlit hallway that led to the second-floor classrooms. When she moved, her legs gave up their fight. That brief instant of agony shifted into pain, frustration, and fury. Her knuckles were popping, her elbows stiff, and her head low. How her teeth ground!
(This is your fault!)
"Rinoa!"
And before she could recognize the voice, before she could bring herself to move faster and away from it, there was the swish of the elevator doors closing and the firm grip of a hand against her bicep, tight and almost masculine in its firmness.
"Leave me alone!" She cried.
Quistis Trepe's eyes widened for a moment at the intensity in Rinoa's eyes. Her grip loosened, but just a little and briefly so. In an instant, the blonde's gaze hardened and her strong hold returned. "Just what do you think you're doing? Do you think these games are going to do us -any- sort of good? Do you? What is this, Rinoa?"
For a moment she struggled, pulling plaintively with a sharpness in her mouth. Her look flared and burst into flame, but it was a quick burst, and within an instant she had relented. The glare shifted into a pathetic little drooping shift of her face, and her shoulders lost their firmness. Quistis felt her breath shake, and then she was tugging the dark-haired girl into a tight embrace. Rinoa didn't fight it -- in fact, she clung so tightly that the woman's breath was forced from her lungs. This was partially a good thing. It kept Quistis in check, and kept her from breaking down.
"Oh, Quisty!" Rinoa cried. Her voice was strangled, garbling in the fabric that ran down the slope of Quistis' shoulder. "He warned me, he warned me and I couldn't do anything!" Her words cracked and warbled, so stressed was her throat.
Quistis pressed her lips together and set her hand to the back of Rinoa's head. Putting her face down a little, she found herself unable to do much more than hold her -- and even Quistis knew that this would do nothing. Comfort was as far away as their answers were.
"Quistis, he told me to talk to Odine! And I got so mad at him, I didn't even think...I never even asked him why! This is my fault, everything is my fault!"
"It's not your fault," Quistis said. With her dry personality, there was no question that she would be the last person to go to in need of reassurance. However, when she spoke in that casual, albeit softened tone of voice... It was so nonchalant, flat, and professional... It was Quistis Trepe, and it was genuine. Honest, bare-bones, and without any sort of fancy adornment. "It wasn't any of our fault, Rinoa. It just...happened. And we don't even know quite what 'it' is, yet. But we can't let ourselves get into finger-pointing right now. We need to think about Squall and what happened, and those things only. Otherwise... what chance would we have? Right?"
Rinoa looked up at her. Her face was streaked, but that strange and flat look hadn't left her eyes. Quistis looked down at her for a moment and felt the blood drain from her pinched lips again... And despite the fact that she knew there would be no reply, she still listened for a very long time before speaking again.
"It was between Squall and I," She said. "He had insisted to go first. I didn't want him to, but he insisted and I let him." Her eyes, which had suddenly shifted into a much clearer shade of blue, rolled up to the ceiling for a moment in a gesture that was fragile enough to draw Rinoa's tension, even through her own stress. For a moment Quistis simply held her lips, and then her eyelids began to tremble downwards. Rinoa averted her gaze. To see someone like Quistis Trepe break down would have been too much.
Her voice was startlingly calm. If Rinoa hadn't gotten that phantom-like glimpse of her face, she would have thought the woman completely unfazed. "I think it was because I was afraid. Xu told us that there was nothing to worry about, that our fear was the GFs working against us... But I hardly fought him. I watched it happen, knowing that it could have been me..."
(It should have been me.)
"It's a terrible feeling," Quistis said, more quietly this time.
(His eyes...)
(...I was the last one to look into his eyes.)
(That should have been Rinoa.)
For a moment Quistis felt a shudder of reproach twist through her. It was not only because of her thoughts, however -- it was also due to the smugness that had filtered in with them. Had she, for a brief instant, been proud? Had she been -glad- that it was she who had gotten that final connection, and not Rinoa? For a moment, had she actually been -glad-?
A chill shuddered across her spine at the prospect.
"Headmaster Trepe!"
Both Rinoa and Quistis turned around at the interruption. Quistis was glad that her face was hidden, the guilt on it felt thick, like a plastic mask. They had disengaged soundlessly, Quistis bashfully and Rinoa without shame -- without much of anything, actually. Her eyes were still blank and glazed. Quistis could feel the girl standing behind her, radiating a chilled sort of heat... If that sort of combination were possible.
Headmaster.
("Look, I made you Headmaster behind your back, didn't I? I think I deserve this.")
Squall's voice echoed in her mind, along with that terrible image of his wide-open eyes. Her eyelashes squeezed shut, and a moment of tense silence passed. When she finally opened them, they were moist, but calm. Composed. Perfection in a shroud of tears.
Nida was standing uncomfortably before her. His hands clasped tensely behind his back, and he wet his lips as he looked from Quistis to Rinoa, and then finally to Quistis again. When their eyes met, he twittered open his mouth and said as steadily as he possibly could,
"We have bad news from Esthar. The Galbadian army is gathering. I think that they may have something planned."
End Part 15/?
To Be Continued.
But I don't much like the looks of it
And all we do is circle..."
--Tori Amos
"For When You Return"
Part XV
"What do you mean, -gone-?!" Rinoa cried. There was a strange sort of warble forming in the back of her throat, as if she had just spent a great amount of time singing two octaves higher than what her voice could handle. This was almost true -- inside, she was still screaming.
Zell, Quistis, Irvine, and Selphie stood tensely against the wall in Xu's small office. They were silent -- and had been that way as well on the ride back from Balamb. Zell, especially, was surprised by this... there was so much to say, so much to talk about... At first it had been a tizzy of words and explanations, but like a firecracker the burst went quick. Soon every question that Rinoa shot at them was reflected with a brief answer, an 'I don't know, I really don't.' And, as the girl got more and more distressed, their replies got shorter and shorter. It had been a painful ride.
What could they have said?
Xu, however, brought herself up to answer the best that she could. She looked just as bashful--if not more--than the rest, and found it difficult to meet Rinoa's eyes. But she did so, and with iron rods in her heart she said,
"We've made a mistake. No one really had a -reason- to eject a Guardian Force before, this was the first time that we..."
At first Rinoa had looked accusing, almost pointed in her stare. The glossiness to her eyes betrayed her, however, and that blank look slipped steadily down into dank mournfulness, disbelief... She felt very alone all of a sudden, to the point where she could sense the chilled air currents against the flesh of her arms, feel the carpet beneath the soles of her shoes, the tickle of her hair against her neck like a ghost's breath...
She felt like a pillar, the hand of a weathered stone sun-dial. The muscles of her arms where she crossed them over her chest were taut, and her fingers gripped to the point of pain. Rinoa noticed, but she didn't release her hold.
(If...If Guardian Forces...) She thought.
"I...Rinoa, I don't know what to say quite yet." Xu continued, too wrapped up in her own distress to take much note of the expression on Rinoa's face. The others saw, however, and the sight was something that drove their hearts into their toes. Rinoa was more than stricken -- she seemed almost like a different person for a moment. The way that she stood there, silent. Still. She had gotten surprised, questioning, and even angry... but had hardly shed a tear once the news had come. Her eyes were glazed, but did not yet overflow. Not even close.
(If Guardian Forces could entwine with a mind...)
(...Was that what Odine was talking about?)
"We've searched the Garden. Nothing. Whatever happened, it happened in that room -- and something -did- happen, Rinoa. I can't say what, not yet...."
(Is that why...)
(....Is that why he called them dangerous....?)
"We have a lead, though," Xu was saying. "It involves the Guardian Force, obviously, and with that we can at least get a start... We can talk to--"
"People don't just -disappear-!" Rinoa exclaimed. Everyone in the room started; Zell nearly jumped. Xu's tense eyes grew wide and clear for a moment, as the dark-haired girl broke into outburst. "It's impossible!" Rinoa cried again, looking around at each and every one of them. This time, she added firm pointed-ness to her words. "You don't...just...disappear!!"
"Rinoa, calm down," Selphie said.
"And this is coming from Selphie," Zell added. Irvine pushed a dull elbow into his ribs. Zell's face was a little too clay-like to wince much, especially the way that Rinoa didn't seem to respond. The lanky young woman simply stood stoop shouldered, staring at him with a mixture of anger and defeat.
"Look, we just need to think about what Odine said," Quistis added, looking between the two. Rinoa's eyes lifted and settled on her own, and Quistis felt her heart skip a little as if she had been caught in a trap. She suddenly realized just what Xu was going through. The prim woman was a blurry form in the background, something that she couldn't quite focus on with her gaze upon Rinoa. Everything seemed blurred for a moment, except for Rinoa.
...That look on her face.
"That's right," Irvine said. His voice was by far the most -normal- of the group. Everyone was forced into dull, partially-rational calm... but it was only Irvine who seemed fully casual. One look at the lines on his face, however, and he was just as exposed as the rest of them. "You said that GFs can be entwined with a mind, right?"
"Yeah," Selphie added. "Maybe Shiva took him with her!"
Zell opened his mouth, closed it, and then looked around before speaking. "Um...Into the ...canister?" He asked hesitantly.
Irvine shot him a glare.
"It's a perfectly legit question!" Zell snapped.
Quistis rolled her eyes flatly and scratched at the side of her head. Xu, however, lifted her shoulders in a shrug and wet her thin lips warily. "That's the thing, though. It worked. Shiva ejected just fine. No flaws, no complications..."
"...We should still get it checked out," Irvine said. "Odine should see it."
Zell put on a little grin, in spite of himself. "What was that, Irvy? What are you checking for...? Hmmm?"
"He...is...not...in....the...freaking...canister!" Irvine cried. He threw up his gangly arms in punctuation to his statement.
"That's all great," Rinoa said dryly from where she had been quietly standing amidst the melee. Her arms slid up and folded over her chest a little. One hand idly graced an elbow, worried and irritated. "But that doesn't fix anything."
"We need to talk to Odine." Xu said. "It's as simple as that. He's our best chance, and our most easily accessible one--"
"No, wait," Rinoa interrupted. There was a strange sheen to her words. "I've already spoken to Odine!" There was something firm and desperate in her voice, something that made Xu hesitate to respond. The room was silent for a long and drawn out moment.
"We have different questions, now." Xu finally said.
For a moment Rinoa simply stared at her. There was something tense, rough, and childish about the way she looked, something that congealed in the air around them. Xu, in contrast, did not stand down in her contrasting maturity; a determination that seemed better aged than Rinoa's stubbornness. And, for that heart-wrenching moment, the room was dead silent. Zell, especially, who was quite sensitive to this sort of thing, felt his lungs suck in and draw into a tight fist in his chest.
The two women continued to hold each other's gazes. Rinoa was the one to finally break, and she did so in a crisp one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn. On her heels, flat to her feet, and angrily out the door.
Everyone in the room exchanged a glance, and a shudder ran down every spine when the door closed with an angry and reverberating slam. Xu was the first to make a sound -- she pressed a hand into her forehead and let out a rattling breath.
("We have different questions now.")
Across the red carpet, to the elevator.
(You didn't help us.)
A fist against the panel. It didn't matter which floor, whether the cylinder moved or not. The door closed her in, and the elevator's carpet beneath her feet bounced a little, jolting up a fraction before plummeting. Her forehead against the cold steel wall.
(You didn't help him.)
(You didn't help anything.)
(Again.)
(You didn't help anything again.)
Her chest rose and fell in constricted little gasps. The closed elevator doors were like ice under her hand, almost freezing it there -- lucky for her, on account that it was this hand that kept her supported enough to stay on her feet. Her legs wanted to crumple and drag her into a fetal position, and her stomach twisted in desperate agony. Curl up, curl up, curl up! But her muscles were too rigid.
She didn't quite know where she was going, but she was moving. Eventually the door opened up under her, and she was moving down the sunlit hallway that led to the second-floor classrooms. When she moved, her legs gave up their fight. That brief instant of agony shifted into pain, frustration, and fury. Her knuckles were popping, her elbows stiff, and her head low. How her teeth ground!
(This is your fault!)
"Rinoa!"
And before she could recognize the voice, before she could bring herself to move faster and away from it, there was the swish of the elevator doors closing and the firm grip of a hand against her bicep, tight and almost masculine in its firmness.
"Leave me alone!" She cried.
Quistis Trepe's eyes widened for a moment at the intensity in Rinoa's eyes. Her grip loosened, but just a little and briefly so. In an instant, the blonde's gaze hardened and her strong hold returned. "Just what do you think you're doing? Do you think these games are going to do us -any- sort of good? Do you? What is this, Rinoa?"
For a moment she struggled, pulling plaintively with a sharpness in her mouth. Her look flared and burst into flame, but it was a quick burst, and within an instant she had relented. The glare shifted into a pathetic little drooping shift of her face, and her shoulders lost their firmness. Quistis felt her breath shake, and then she was tugging the dark-haired girl into a tight embrace. Rinoa didn't fight it -- in fact, she clung so tightly that the woman's breath was forced from her lungs. This was partially a good thing. It kept Quistis in check, and kept her from breaking down.
"Oh, Quisty!" Rinoa cried. Her voice was strangled, garbling in the fabric that ran down the slope of Quistis' shoulder. "He warned me, he warned me and I couldn't do anything!" Her words cracked and warbled, so stressed was her throat.
Quistis pressed her lips together and set her hand to the back of Rinoa's head. Putting her face down a little, she found herself unable to do much more than hold her -- and even Quistis knew that this would do nothing. Comfort was as far away as their answers were.
"Quistis, he told me to talk to Odine! And I got so mad at him, I didn't even think...I never even asked him why! This is my fault, everything is my fault!"
"It's not your fault," Quistis said. With her dry personality, there was no question that she would be the last person to go to in need of reassurance. However, when she spoke in that casual, albeit softened tone of voice... It was so nonchalant, flat, and professional... It was Quistis Trepe, and it was genuine. Honest, bare-bones, and without any sort of fancy adornment. "It wasn't any of our fault, Rinoa. It just...happened. And we don't even know quite what 'it' is, yet. But we can't let ourselves get into finger-pointing right now. We need to think about Squall and what happened, and those things only. Otherwise... what chance would we have? Right?"
Rinoa looked up at her. Her face was streaked, but that strange and flat look hadn't left her eyes. Quistis looked down at her for a moment and felt the blood drain from her pinched lips again... And despite the fact that she knew there would be no reply, she still listened for a very long time before speaking again.
"It was between Squall and I," She said. "He had insisted to go first. I didn't want him to, but he insisted and I let him." Her eyes, which had suddenly shifted into a much clearer shade of blue, rolled up to the ceiling for a moment in a gesture that was fragile enough to draw Rinoa's tension, even through her own stress. For a moment Quistis simply held her lips, and then her eyelids began to tremble downwards. Rinoa averted her gaze. To see someone like Quistis Trepe break down would have been too much.
Her voice was startlingly calm. If Rinoa hadn't gotten that phantom-like glimpse of her face, she would have thought the woman completely unfazed. "I think it was because I was afraid. Xu told us that there was nothing to worry about, that our fear was the GFs working against us... But I hardly fought him. I watched it happen, knowing that it could have been me..."
(It should have been me.)
"It's a terrible feeling," Quistis said, more quietly this time.
(His eyes...)
(...I was the last one to look into his eyes.)
(That should have been Rinoa.)
For a moment Quistis felt a shudder of reproach twist through her. It was not only because of her thoughts, however -- it was also due to the smugness that had filtered in with them. Had she, for a brief instant, been proud? Had she been -glad- that it was she who had gotten that final connection, and not Rinoa? For a moment, had she actually been -glad-?
A chill shuddered across her spine at the prospect.
"Headmaster Trepe!"
Both Rinoa and Quistis turned around at the interruption. Quistis was glad that her face was hidden, the guilt on it felt thick, like a plastic mask. They had disengaged soundlessly, Quistis bashfully and Rinoa without shame -- without much of anything, actually. Her eyes were still blank and glazed. Quistis could feel the girl standing behind her, radiating a chilled sort of heat... If that sort of combination were possible.
Headmaster.
("Look, I made you Headmaster behind your back, didn't I? I think I deserve this.")
Squall's voice echoed in her mind, along with that terrible image of his wide-open eyes. Her eyelashes squeezed shut, and a moment of tense silence passed. When she finally opened them, they were moist, but calm. Composed. Perfection in a shroud of tears.
Nida was standing uncomfortably before her. His hands clasped tensely behind his back, and he wet his lips as he looked from Quistis to Rinoa, and then finally to Quistis again. When their eyes met, he twittered open his mouth and said as steadily as he possibly could,
"We have bad news from Esthar. The Galbadian army is gathering. I think that they may have something planned."
End Part 15/?
To Be Continued.