Chapter 5: Indoor Fireworks

"Rinoa, please open the door."

"I said I was sorry," she said. "I can't look at you."

"You can't look at me?"

"Whenever you look at me now, that's going to be the first thing you think about… That it was Seifer."

"I don't care who it was—"

The sobbing on the other side of the door spiked in volume. Damn it, he mumbled to himself.

"That's not what I meant," he said. "What I meant is that it's none of my business, what you did before we met… You don't have to apologize."

He stood in the silent after-curfew hall, and turned his back to the door. He leaned against it. "It's just…unfortunate that it had to come out like that. You don't have to be ashamed of anything."

"Please just go away," she pleaded. "I just need some time alone."

Squall groaned. He had no talent for this. "Rinoa," he said, looking up and closing his eyes. He prayed that no one walked by and saw him out there. Not too long ago, I would do just that, he thought. I'd go away. Hell, I wouldn't have been out here in the first place. I would have thought someone in this position was pathetic – begging her to open the door and talk to me so she wouldn't go to sleep doubting my…love for her. And I must love her, he thought, I can't imagine acting so damn foolish for anyone else. Squall wasn't sure when he'd be ready to tell her that he loved her, but in the meantime he could at least be honest with her.

"Rinoa, when I look at you, I think about… Space," he began.

"What?"

"I meant the Ragnarok, when we were together up there in the cockpit… Do you remember when I said you should go back to your seat?"

"I was glad you didn't," he said.

"Then why'd you say it?"

He opened his eyes. "It's a reflex, I guess. I'd never been that…close to someone before," he said. "Scared the hell out of me."

There was a small laugh in between the sniffles on the other side of the door.

"But that's what I wanted, Rinoa. That's why I took you to Esthar, went up into space, jumped out into space… And I was a real jerk to just about everyone in my way, too," he added quietly, as if realizing it for the first time.

"That's what I always wanted. The difference with you is that you made me realize it was worth the risk. Any time you get close to someone, you can lose them. But if you never take a chance, you spend your life alone and miserable."

"And it's what I still want," he concluded, leaning his head back against the door. "Would you please open the door?"

To Squall's surprise, she did. The door slid open and he tumbled backwards into his room, grunting once in surprise and again as she caught him. She held him up under his upper arms. Squall tilted his head back and looked up at her.

"You're stronger than you look," he said.

She smiled. "I'm a sorceress, remember?" Rinoa gestured with her head toward the ceiling, and demonstrated her powers with a tiny fireworks display in one corner of the room.

"You've been practicing," Squall observed as he stood up and turned to face her.

"And you're awfully talkative," she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

"Sorry."

"Don't apologize," she said, pulling him into a hug. "It's a good thing."

They kissed, and the tiny fireworks display launched as grand a finale as it could.

"Did you still want to go out with everyone tomorrow night?" he asked to break the silence after their lips parted and they had sat down on a couch in the instructor's apartment that Rinoa had recently moved into.

"Of course," she said.

"I was afraid you'd say that."

"Uh-oh," she said with a mischievous smile. "Here comes the old Squall. Do I have to cry to make you be nice?"

"I guess so."

She backhanded him playfully in his shoulder. "Wrong answer."

"All right, all right… I'm working on it. How's that?"

"Better."

Matthew's mind reeled as he walked the empty dormitory hallways after curfew. A memory he had tried to lock away and forgot brought to the surface by his sister's own lips. He was so wrapped up in thoughts of Rinoa and Seifer and Quistis this morning and his throbbing hands that he never heard the footsteps behind him. They came like an orchestra's crescendo, culminating in a blow to the back of his head that filled his mind with white. When his eyes focused, he had stumbled forward and fallen to his hands and knees. He stood and stumbled backwards into a wall. Seifer approached him slowly.

"This is twice," he said, holding two fingers in the air. "This is twice that you've screwed things up for me, you sulking little bastard."

Seifer threw a punch at his head, and Matthew ducked under it with little effort. He was a good nine inches shorter than his assailant. Matthew came back with a right cross at Seifer's jaw, but the tall blond man swatted it aside. Matthew's bandaged hands could barely make a fist. He sidestepped away from the wall, and faced Seifer in the middle of the hallway. They circled each other, the cadet with his hands up in a wary boxer's guard, and the former cadet merely removing his gloves.

"Before we had to spill that little story," Seifer said, "Cid was thinking about letting me come back to Garden. I could have had a second chance. And then you came along and ruined it, just like you did a year ago."

He had tossed his gloves aside, and came at Matthew with another punch, this one aimed at his stomach. The cadet twisted outside of it and threw his elbow at Seifer's lower back. Before it could connect, the taller man had drilled Matthew in the temple with his own elbow. The cadet fell to his knees again in the dark hallway. He crawled forward a couple feet before his head cleared and he could stand. Matthew heard the dull thud of Seifer's boots behind him. He heard the footsteps echoed in a higher register, a click that could only be produced by high-heeled shoes.

"Seifer," a female voice said.

The blonde man jerked his head around to see Quistis standing behind him. Her honey hair shined in the darkness, spilling over the front of her shoulders. Her whip was coiled in her hands.

"Leave now, and Cid doesn't have to hear a word of this."

He turned slowly to face her. "What makes you think I give a—"

"Save it," she said. "You may not give a damn about what the rest of the world thinks, but you care about Cid. You made it your business to put down everyone here whenever you could, but not Cid."

Quistis crossed her arms. "He's like a father to you, isn't he?"

"Shut your mouth, Trepe."

"Get out."

He looked back and forth from instructor to cadet, then chuckled and picked up his gloves.

"You're lucky," Seifer said to Matthew, pointing at him. "Real lucky." The blond man walked slowly toward Quistis, stepped around her, but stopped and stood next to her.

"Another student?" He glanced at the cadet over his shoulder. "Couldn't get Squall, so you go after Rinoa's sorry-ass brother?"

Seifer shook his head. "You're pretty screwed up, Trepe, you know that? An instructor that goes after her stu—"

"You don't belong here, Seifer," she said. "Get out."

He walked away slowly, and Quistis turned to watch him until he was out of sight. When Seifer was gone, she looked back to Matthew.

"You all right?" she asked, walking toward him. Click, click, click went her heels. He was grateful for that click. Seifer didn't have much to lose, Matthew figured. He could have killed him if he wanted to. He glared down at his useless hands, then looked up to Quistis.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just hit me in the head a couple times."

She nodded. "Good. Come with me."

"All right." They moved down the hallway in the opposite direction of where Seifer had gone.

"Thank you," he said after a moment. He shook his head. "I couldn't even touch him."

Quistis stopped in front of a door. "Give yourself some credit," she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. Matthew found himself trembling a little at her touch. He wondered what the hell was wrong with him.

"You're not in any shape to fight." She punched a six-digit code into a number pad on the wall and the door slid open. The instructor stepped inside, but Matthew hesitated at the threshold.

She looked over her shoulder at him and laughed. "Come in," she said. "I didn't bring you all the way here so you could walk me to my door."

"All right." He followed her in and the door slid shut behind him. The lights were already on, and Matthew immediately realized one perk of being an instructor. Quistis's quarters weren't the cramped dorms that students often shared, but an apartment, and one that lacked even the subtle military aesthetic of the dormitories. The walls were white and the floor was light-colored hardwood. It was clean, with small, full bookshelves and a modest television and a couch in the living room. It smelled clean, too, small potted plants scattered around, green and fresh.

"Have a seat," she said. "I figured you've seen enough of the infirmary. I'll get you some aspirin."

Matthew nodded and sat down. He looked at her bookshelves while she went into the bathroom. One was stocked with large, rigid volumes – textbooks, and the other filled with small, thick paperback novels. A chest-high bar separated the kitchen from the living room, and he glanced over it as she moved into view. When she came and sat down next to him on the couch, she placed a couple of pills in his hand and he tossed them into his mouth and swallowed them before she could hand him the glass of water she held.

She shuddered and he blushed a little.

"How can you do that?" Quistis asked, a girlish grimace on her face. "Even with water, I have to take them one at a time."

He looked down at his hands and half-smiled, almost fondly. "My father wouldn't let me take anything with water after I was five. 'You can never count on having water on the battlefield,' he said."

She laughed and shook her head and handed him the glass of water. He took a sip. "Thanks," Matthew said.

"What about Rinoa?" Quistis asked. "Does she share your talent?"

"No." He looked at her apologetically. "My father never thought women belonged on the battlefield. That's why the G-Army is almost entirely male."

Matthew looked away from her and she watched him, her elbow on the back of the small couch and her head propped up on her hand.

"I mean, I don't agree with it or anything…"

"I heard what Rinoa said in the lobby."

"You what?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "I came out of the library and I was going to go up to the second floor… And I saw Seifer, and Rinoa crying, Squall just standing there, and you… You looked so angry."

He covered his face with his hands and leaned his head back.

"The two of you haven't…talked about it, have you?"

"What? Of course not," he said, dropping his hands into his lap and shaking his head. "You don't talk about that kind of stuff."

Quistis exhaled a sharp breath in disbelief. She crossed her arms and looked over at him. "What do you do, then?" she asked. "Keep it bottled up inside? Really?"

"How's that working out for you?" she persisted, in that demanding tone that he found himself on the receiving end of for the first time since he'd been to Balamb.

His head throbbed in a steady, unrelenting rhythm. It was the kind of headache that ran down your neck and made you sick to your stomach. He pressed his bandaged palms to his forehead and dropped his head between his knees.

"Why do you care?" he asked, his voice muffled by the position in which he spoke. "Aren't you just supposed to make sure I become a SeeD?"

She didn't reply.

When he brought his head up, he found his eyes were watering from the pounding in his skull, and he wiped them dry with the backs of his hands.

"Thank you for getting rid of Seifer," he said. "I'm pretty sure he was going to kill me. And thank you for the aspirin. If there's anything I can do to repay you, please let me know."

He stood up. "I'm going to go now. Good night, instructor," he said.

"Wait," she said, and he froze at the door. "There is something you can do."

Quistis was standing with her hands clasped in front of her waist when he turned around. "Go out with me tomorrow night," she said.

"What?"

"My friends and I – everyone who was at dinner Monday night, I mean – are going out tomorrow night... And I'm the only one without a date."

"Instructor," he said, "I'm not very good at... I don't know..." He shrugged. "I'm not a whole lot of fun."

"That's okay," she said. Her voice had returned to the tone that made him glad someone cared. He marveled at the extremes of this woman and wondered if all women had such a range of emotions, all equally effective at tearing your guts out (although her whip did a decent job of that in the literal sense, he thought). This was the first time he could remember talking extensively with anyone about something other than school or the military, never mind a woman. When Quistis had kissed him on the cheek this morning, it had been the first time anyone had kissed him since his mother died.

"Let me give you some advice," his father had said once, when Matthew was young enough to take it to heart, "about women. Don't bother. Wait until you've risen up to a respectable rank - to major, or captain at the very least, and I'll find you a marriage that will be mutually beneficial. But love? Don't bother. It's a distraction, the biggest distraction there is, from one's work." The general had turned to the window, gloved hands joined behind his back. "And when your work is done on the battlefield, distractions can kill."

"Just go with me," Quistis said. "And we'll figure it out."

"Okay," Matthew said. His voice sounded foreign to his own ears, firm and comforting, as if those two syllables that he'd spoken so often had become a promise. He wondered, again, what the hell was wrong with him.

She smiled. "See you tomorrow, then."

"Good night," he said. His headache had receded entirely in the last few minutes, but almost as soon as the door closed behind him and he stepped into the hall, it came back. It came back like all the knowledge in the world being packed into his head at once.

Squall reached the door to his dorm and yawned as he punched in the code that sent the door sliding open. The lights were all on, and his roommate was not alone. Irvine, Selphie, Zell, and Zell's girlfriend (What was her name? Pam? Patricia? Petra, that was it) were all gathered around a board game on the floor. Squall folded his arms as he stood in the doorway.

"Wanna play?" Zell asked, patting the floor beside him.

"Could someone tell me what time it is?" Squall asked, ignoring him.

Irvine shook his long sleeve down from his wrist and looked down at his watch. "Little after midnight," he said.

"Which means you're all in violation of protocol," Squall said as he walked past them. There was a collective groan from the floor.

"Just try and keep it down," he said, disappearing behind the partition that separated his side of the dorm from Irvine's. "It's been a hell of a day."

His friends looked at each other for a moment, and then erupted into cheering and applause that directly contradicted Squall's request.