Images of Smiles and Tears
He practiced every day now.
Smiling did not come easily at first. It felt fake, different, and he didn't like it. But he kept on trying. He wasn't going to give up easily. He had to do it.
He wanted it to feel as good as it did that night, alone with Rinoa under the stars. He wanted to be able to show how he felt when he was with his friends. Friends? More than colleagues, more than comrades, brothers and sisters that made his heart soar.
He had learned everything to learn about them, every detail that made them. Rinoa's black ribbon and love of sewing. Quistis's designer boots and chocolate addiction. Zell's first gloves and five tattoos. Selphie's shell necklace and prized essay. Irvine's moth-eaten stuffed wolf and onyx earring. Sweet, silly details he carefully filed in his memory, away from his GF's reach.
The others didn't know that he kept a journal, had done so since that day in Trabia. He hadn't told them that he did. He also hadn't told them that his greatest fear was to lose them again. That he wouldn't rest during (or was it inside?) time compression, afraid of waking up and finding them gone. Afraid of waking up without his friends, without his family.
He kept thinking about that word these days: family. He loved his sister. That he was sure of. She had been his reason to live when he was young and she still kept a special place in his heart. From what he knew, he would have also loved his mother: calm, kind, collected. She certainly was a lot like him. He could not have hoped for someone better. He didn't know how he felt about his father, but his last visit to Esthar had been nice, and he found himself wishing for another.
Matron, Headmaster Cid, Seifer, the students of Garden. He felt fondness for them, a terrible, wonderful fondness that filled him and terrified him. He could not imagine being ripped from them. He would not lose them. He would keep them safe.
It was too much sometimes. It made him feel like crying and laughing, terrible and wonderful and that feeling was always there, always his. He often felt overwhelmed, and something inside of him just seemed to scream and explode, and he loved and hated so much more…
His reflection was smiling, but his tear-blurred eyes didn't see it.