Disclaimer: (See Part I.)
A/N: Chayn is a character that I made up; I own nothing else but the plot of this story.
-.-.-.-.-
Irvine burst into the Infirmary ahead of Chayn faster than one can say 'chocobo' and moved to Zell's bedside.
Zell was lying in the white bed with only his head and arms showing above the white sheet over him. His arms were wrapped up and bloody, and his face was purple and bruised in patches.
"Zell..." Irvine said his name through a lump in his throat.
"It appears that he has fallen asleep again," Chayn informed.
Irvine looked at Chayn and was about to ask him what had happened, when Chayn began to speak. "He was found in the Training Center by group of students."
A girl walked into the room where Zell was. Her right arm was in a sling and she had a bandage wrapped around her head. "It was horrible!" she exclaimed. "We were going to go in for some training when saw a Grat above him." She indicated Zell. "It looked like it was sucking all the life out of him. One of my friends screamed and the Grat looked over at us. The next thing we know it's chasing us. We ran as fast as we could but it was right behind us!"
Irvine thought that the girl was about to cry. "Then what happened?" he asked, wanting to know more.
"Then we thought that we had lost it, but it had just chased us toward a whole bunch of Grats. There were so many! Luckily one of my friends managed to get back to the entrance and she came here to the Infirmary to get help." The girl took Irvine's jacket sleeve and pulled him to another room in the Infirmary. "That's Shelly."
Irvine looked at the girl in the Infirmary bed. Her face was purple and puffy, and made her look like she had been on the receiving end of a fist fight.
"Shelly got it twice as bad as that boy in the other room did."
Irvine was speechless. The Grats in the Training Center weren't supposed to be this vicious. Irvine went back into Zell's room. "Did a Grat really do all this?" he asked Chayn.
"It appears that way, sir," said Chayn.
Irvine sat down in a chair beside Zell's bed. Previously, he had been disappointed in Zell for not showing up to study, but now he felt terrible. He had no idea that Zell had been taken to the Infirmary with injuries.
-.-.-.-.-
Irvine stayed by Zell's side until late that evening when Ma Dincht showed up in the Infirmary.
"What's happened to my boy?" asked Ma, walking into the room where Irvine sat. "Oh," she was startled when she realized that Irvine was in the room. "Hello there."
Irvine smiled slightly.
Dr. Kadowaki walked into the room behind Ma. "Irvine, are you still here? You should go back to your dorm now and get some sleep." She moved behind Irvine and pushed him gently toward the door. "You need to be well rested so that you can stay awake in your classes tomorrow."
Irvine didn't want to leave his friend's side yet, but Ma had come to take his place so he didn't feel too bad leaving.
The hallways in the Dormitory were silent by the time Irvine got to his room.
He went into his room, changed his clothes, brushed his teeth, and finally settled into bed for the night. The blankets were cold against his skin, but he didn't give them a second thought because he was already worrying about Zell again.
There was nothing that Irvine could have done to avoid Zell's injury from happening, but he wished that there had been. Maybe if he had been with Zell at the time he could have helped him, but he hadn't been.
Irvine cursed his lack of good timing. He was too late to stop Selphie from seeing Seifer, and now he had been too late to stop Zell from being injured.
Irvine curled up under his cold blanket and hoped that Zell would be awake in the morning.
-.-.-.-.-
Zell's eyes fluttered open. He stared up at a white ceiling and waited for it to come into focus before looking around. Where was he? He attempted to sit up and find out, but instead found that the pain in his head was too unbearable to sit up yet.
"Zell, you awake?" asked a voice from his bedside.
Zell looked to the right of where he was laying to see that Irvine was sitting beside him. "Yeah." Zell assumed that he was in the Infirmary from the white blankets that he was wrapped in. "How did I get here?"
"Apparently there was an accident in the Training Center and the Grats got out of control," Irvine informed Zell as best he could with only the information that he had heard from random people. "Do you remember what happened?"
Zell thought for a moment. He remembered what had happened all right. He had been in the Training Center because he had been avoiding his study session with Irvine, but he wasn't going to tell him about that part. "I had finished my training and was about to leave, but a Grat was blocking the way."
Irvine listened with interest.
"I had already defeated twenty-six, so I figured I'd just fight that one as well, but then..." Zell squinted up at the ceiling, remembering what had happened. "There were more of them. Too many." He looked over at Irvine, who was waiting to hear the rest of the story. "I remember running, but I can't remember anything else."
Zell rolled his head to the left to see a rather large pile of gifts. "Whoa! What's all this stuff?"
"It seems that a lot of people brought you get-well gifts while you were asleep," said Irvine.
"How do they know what happened?" asked Zell.
"The Headmaster made an announcement this morning warning people to stay out of the Training Center until they find out what caused the Grats to loose control, and he mentioned the names of people who were injured," said Irvine.
"How many people were hurt?" asked Zell.
"Quite a few actually."
Zell picked out a box of chocolates from his pile of gifts. "Oh! I love this kind!" he exclaimed. He read the attached note out loud. " 'To Zell, You'd better get better soon you knucklehead! Hugs. Rinoa.' " Zell shook his head. "She's insane." He popped a chocolate into his mouth.
"Hey!" yelled an angered Dr. Kadowaki from the other room. "Don't eat too many of those. We want you to recover, not get a stomachache!"
Zell hid the box of chocolates. "Eat what?" he asked through his mouthful of chocolate.
Dr. Kadowaki glared into the room at him. "I'm watching you."
Irvine chuckled.
Zell held out the box of chocolates to Irvine. "Want one?"
"No thanks." Irvine held up a hand and shook his head.
Zell shrugged and chomped down on another chocolate before putting the lid back on and placing it back on top of his pile. "So how long have you been sitting there?" he asked Irvine.
Irvine looked up from the issue of Timber Maniacs that he had just begun to read. "Uh... about 45 minutes. It's lunch, so I just thought I'd come down and see you for a while."
Zell was stunned. "You gave up your lunch for me?" he asked.
Irvine shrugged off the question. "I ate earlier."
"Well, you don't have to stay with me if ya don't wanna. You can go now if you want," said Zell.
"I want to be here. I wouldn't be if I didn't," Irvine assured Zell and grinned. "And why would I leave you now? You've just woken up."
"I dunno" said Zell.
"Okay." Irvine folded up the magazine in his hand and pocketed it into his jacket.
This was it. This was Zell's chance to find out if what Rinoa had said about Irvine was true or not. This may be his only chance and if he didn't take it now it might never come again. "Hey, Irvine..."
Irvine looked to Zell's face just as a ray of sunlight shown down onto him through the window, illuminating his lax body. Irvine squinted a little to block the sun out of his eyes. "Yeah?" he asked.
Zell was temporarily frozen in time. He couldn't believe that he had never noticed it before. The way Irvine's ponytail hung over his shoulder when he wasn't in motion. Or the way that he had little creases around his mouth when he smiled. Or the fact that even though he was only seventeen years old, everyone thought of Irvine as a man – and a gorgeous man at that.
Zell blinked out of his thoughts and realized that Irvine was watching him, waiting for him to say what he was going to say. Zell blushed "Uh... nothin'."
Irvine raised an eyebrow inquisitively with a slight smile "All right."
Zell was about to say something when the bells sounded the end of lunch and the beginning of the next class period.
Irvine stood and moved to the exit. "I'll come by to see you later, okay?"
Zell nodded as best he could from his lying down position.
"Don't miss me," he teased, and Zell wished that he hadn't.
Of course, Zell hadn't told Irvine that he had purposely avoided Irvine the previous day, however, now he felt burdened with the guilt of knowing that Irvine was worried about him, and not mad at all. If he had of just gone straight to the library to study, he wouldn't have been injured in the first place, but maybe it was best that Irvine didn't know the truth.
-.-.-.-.-
Zell had many visitors throughout the day. Currently with him was Rinoa. He wasn't sure what she was talking about anymore because she had just completely switched conversations. First she had been talking about how the instructor of her first class had given them four chapters to read from their text book, and now she was talking about the cafeteria lady's son, who for some reason that Zell was sure Rinoa had mentioned while he wasn't paying attention, liked stuffed pink panda bears.
"And that's all that you've missed since yesterday," Rinoa concluded, not even out of breath from her longwinded speech.
"Oh, that's all, eh?" Zell asked with sarcasm.
"Um..." Rinoa reviewed what she had said in her mind as if she had memorized it before hand. "Yep, that's it! You're so lucky that you have someone like me to fill you in."
"I know..." Zell said in monotone.
Rinoa smiled widely showing her teeth. "I see Irvine has been in here."
"How do you know?" asked Zell, not seeing how she could possibly know that Irvine had been there earlier unless he had told her.
Rinoa motioned her head to a large bouquet that Zell had not realized was there earlier.
Zell reached over from his now sitting position to the card that was attached to the flowers. On the envelope, in Irvine's handwriting, was Zell's name. He opened the envelop to find a small note. 'Zell, I went to the Training Center earlier and saw that you had signed in at 5:00pm last night. We don't have to study together if you really don't want to. Next time, just tell me. Irvine.'
"Busted." Rinoa's loud voice in the silent room caused Zell to jump. She had been reading the note over his shoulder. "Aww! You two were going to study together? How come you blew him off" she demanded.
"Uh..." Zell tried to hide under his sheets, but it was no use, Rinoa was right in his face now.
She sat back down suddenly and brought her hands up to her face and shook her head, her eyes were all misty. "You two would make such a cute couple!" she cooed.
Zell watched the girl nervously.
"Oh, I get it!" she said as if she had just discovered how to work out a complex math equation. "You're too shy to ask for a date." Then she began to talk more to herself than to Zell. "Though he did have a chance to be with Irvine while they 'studied' together, but it's too late for that now, you turned that down. And Irvine isn't very direct in his approach to asking for dates, so..." She turned back to Zell with an evil glint in her eyes. "I know!" she exclaimed. "I'll talk to Irvine for you and set you up with a date!"
"No!" Zell objected. "Don't you dare!"
"Okay..." Rinoa said through her widest smile yet. "I won't." She backed toward the door. "See ya later Zell." She waved before disappearing around the corner.
Zell sighed and seriously thought that Rinoa should pursue the career path of a matchmaker instead of a SeeD.
He looked back to the flowers. They were tiger lilies like the ones that Ma grew in her backyard, and they were luscious and full.
To Zell's surprise, he wasn't even all that upset about what Rinoa had said she was going to do. In fact, he found the whole situation rather exciting and quite scary at the same time. Maybe, in all the time that Zell had spent looking for a girlfriend, he really should have been looking for the opposite.
-.-.-.-.-
End of Part VI.