Selphie: I have to get a glass of water to clear the taste of gin from my mouth before I can rejoin the others. Honestly, Irvine is impossible sometimes. I get another drink from the bar, a real gin and tonic this time, and then walk back to the others.
Squall is hunched in on himself off to one side, brooding again. Rinoa said he was having trouble letting us go. That's Squall. Spends the present moment worrying about the next one, until it's too late and the present becomes the past. I'll have to see about getting him to cut loose a little tonight.
I feel a little trippy this evening, a little sad, a little happy. Mostly I feel a kind of excited apprehension, that feeling you get when you're looking forward to something big, but aren't quite sure what will happen. Tomorrow I'm going to be seeing friends I haven't spoken to in nearly a year. I'm going home, and not alone. Irvine is coming with me, and he's being shown off to everyone, whether he likes it or not. I'm looking forward to that bit as I sit down again.
I do get a pang of sadness when I think about home the way it was when I last saw it, but it gets brushed away when I think of all the new projects we'll be starting up there. Some of Laguna's Estharian architects have come up with some breath-taking designs. I can hardly wait to get the committees organised. I'm going to try to rope in some of the others tonight. Well, it's as good an excuse as any for a visit, isn't it?
I've been chatting to the others for about ten minutes, trying to think of some way to bring the topic up, when Quistis leans towards me a little unsteadily, and catches my hand. I look up and get a jolt of surprise when I see how dishevelled she looks. Her hair, normally so stylishly arranged, has come undone where one of her pins has fallen- been pulled?- out.
"Selphie, can I speak to you? Outside?" she murmurs quietly into my ear.
Instantly I'm curious as to what she wants to say. Quisty is so completely unlike me in some ways. She bottles up her feelings somewhere inside herself until she can't hold them in any more, and then she just lets them come bubbling up and into the ears of whoever happens to be nearby.
We make our excuses and stand up. Irvine starts up with us, but I wave him away. This is going to be girl talk. Strictly no men allowed. I follow Quisty through the bar's clientele. The crowd certainly has thinned since we got here.
Quistis leads me out to the bar's side doors. The automatic door slides open soundlessly, and we step outside onto the hotel balcony. Blue crystal towers are silhouetted against a pitch black sky. You can't see many stars from Esthar City- too much light pollution. It's still a beautiful sight.
We lean against the balcony wall in silence. Despite the blackness, or maybe because of it, we crane our heads back looking at the stars that have managed to struggle through it. Quistis hasn't said a word since asking me out here. She just wraps a shawl pensively round and round her hands, staring out across the horizon.
"You know," she says suddenly, making me jump, "When we were kids, you were always the bubbly bouncy one, at the centre of everything that was going on. Whatever scrapes the boys got into, you had to go along."
I don't quite know how to reply to that one. Quistis lapses back into silence.
"What kind of kid were you then?" I ask eventually, more to get her to speak, then out of any curiosity.
"Oh," she says with an odd smile "The one with the sticking plasters and the spare tissue wipes."
"Oh," I say quietly.
I sense she wants to talk now, in her own time. Instead of speaking any further, I reach up and unclip the second coil of her hair. Humming, I begin to fashion a braid from the blond tangle. I wish I'd remembered to bring my bag out with me now. There's a good comb inside it.
Quistis tilts her head up to help me with the front strands and carries on talking.
"You're still like that now," she sighs "I mean, you don't know anything about architecture, but the idea of going back to Trabia doesn't even faze you. You're so enthusiastic about it… Oh Selphie, I just wish I had your confidence!"
"I'm not really in charge of the rebuilding project Quist," I remind her gently "I'm just the administrator, the chairperson in some committees-"
"Selphie, I don't want to do this," Quistis tells me abruptly, forcefully "I loved and hated being an Instructor. Oh, I was so proud of it when I got it! I was the youngest ever. It was a position of responsibility, it meant I was trusted. It hurt when I lost it, it hurt me a lot. But… in a way I was relieved as well. It made me, well, more normal I guess, one of the crowd again. I only had to worry about myself and my friends, not constantly about Garden, my reputation, my job…"
She falls silent again, waiting till I fix her new braid with a hair band. Then she turns to look me in the eye. She's been crying a little.
"They'll expect me to give them a miracle, Selphie. What if I can't do that? What if I fail again?"
"Don't take the job then," I say baldly.
"I can't do that either," she laughs a little shakily "I'm Quistis Trepe, the responsible one that everyone sends for when they've got a problem they want solved. I've been watching out for everyone since Sis left, and now I can't stop. I won't let me! It's who I am."
"Quistis," I ask "Why did you ask me out here? What do you want?"
"For someone to talk to," she replies "I wanted to talk to a friend."
I feel a warm glow creep over me at her words, a sudden sense of being trusted and loved. I feel priorities shifting in my head. Thoughts about travel plans and packing slide down the list. Quistis was right. I am the energetic one.
"Thank you. Nobody ever said that to me before," I say quietly.
I settle back against the balcony railing. Listening. I wonder if this is how Quistis always feels.
"Tell me," I say "Everything."