Disclaimer: I make no claim whatsoever to the characters or world of Final Fantasy VIII, which is the property of Squaresoft/Square Enix.

Chapter V

The room swam and blurred a few times before it snapped into focus, and when it did, Irvine thanked his lucky stars: he was in the Garden's Infirmary. He registered the sharp drag of a needle in his flesh when he tried to move his arm. On a drip. Ouch. Got it. Irvine felt a smile creep across his face when he saw that his stetson had been placed carefully on the table next to the bed. If he still had his hat, the world was still anchored. Things couldn't be that bad. Why was he here, anyway..?

Then it came to him: Selphie's contorted face and the field of flowers that had almost choked the life from his body, and he let out a long groan of despair.

That was enough to bring Doctor Kadowaki into the room, with a diminutive young woman hot at her heels, the last face Irvine had expected to see, and his mouth fell open.

"Elle?" he struggled to say around the tongue depressor that the doctor had inserted in his mouth, and she tutted down at him.

"You know the drill, Mr. Kinneas. I take your vitals first, then you can descend into chit-chat."

Irvine acquiesced and blinked weakly at the light she shone into his pupils. Ellone pulled a chair up next to the bed and watched him, her hands clasped together under her chin.

"Feeling okay?"

Kadowaki gave him a warning look, so he nodded wordlessly.

"Glad to hear it. Squall'll be along in a minute. You're in a whole heap of trouble, Irvy."

Great, he thought. Kadowaki stood back, checked the reading on the bedside monitor, and gently pulled out the drip.

"I'm impressed, Mr. Kinneas. You've bounced back faster than any of us thought. That doesn't give you a license to walk out of here just yet, though." She turned to Ellone. "I'll let the Commander know our patient is well enough for a dressing-down. You stay and make sure he doesn't try to get out of bed, please."

"Understood," replied Ellone. She adjusted the shawl around her shoulders and gave Irvine a mocking half-glare.

He ignored her expression, and stared at her in bafflement as Kadowaki left. "I don't get it. Why are you here?"

"How d'you think we worked out where you were? You didn't let anyone know where you were sneaking off to. Squall had to ask me to use my... you know. My ability."

"But how'd you get from Esthar so quickly?"

"I didn't get here 'quickly'. Squall called me after you went missing, and I sent him to your mind while we were on the phone. As soon as we figured out where you were heading, he sent SeeDs to get you out of there. I took a transport from Esthar later that day. I've been here since yesterday morning."

Irvine tried to count up the days in his head, and gave up in a muddle of confusion. "So... when did I..."

"You've been unconscious for two days, Irvine," said Squall from the doorway, his arms folded, his eyes hard.

The heavy clump of the Commander's boots rang out against the Infirmary floor as he crossed over to the bedside and looked down at Irvine, stern-faced. "You should have told us where you were going. If it hadn't been for Elle, you'd be dead by now."

"Yeah." Irvine fumbled a quick salute. "I mean, apologies, Commander. I thought you'd order me not to go. Tell me to let Selphie figure things out for herself. Somethin' like that."

Squall closed his eyes for a brief moment, as if struggling to keep on top of his composure. "'I didn't tell you because I wanted to break orders' is not the kind of defense I should be hearing from a SeeD. Don't go AWOL on me again. Ever."

Irvine was about to offer a more sincere apology, when his brain started to protest, dredging up a particular memory in Irvine's defense."Hold up one second. You ain't really got a leg to stand on here, Squall."

Squall's eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?"

Irvine pulled himself up to a sitting position in the bed, ignoring the screams of his stiff muscles. "Said the guy who went AWOL, as frickin' Commandermay I add,to abduct a patient from the Infirmary and piggyback her across the world's longest bridge. It's fine when it's your darlin', but not when it's mine, huh?"

Two faint pink spots appeared on Squall's cheeks. "I like to think I've matured a little since then."

"Well, I haven't. And I sure as hell don't intend to."

Squall returned Irvine's defiant glare with a fierce one of his own, and they were locked into a stare-off for however many seconds passed until a loud chair scrape and noise of frustration from Ellone cut the silence. Irvine was fairly sure he was winning, for what it was worth.

She reached forward and gently pushed on Irvine's shoulder until he relented and lay down again. "You're supposed to stay horizontal, remember, coma boy. And stop it, the pair of you. We need to work out how to help Selphie, not waste time bickering with each other."

Squall turned the brunt of his glare onto the bedside monitor, and Irvine, feeling that the tension had been lifted, sunk his head back onto the pillow and let Selphie fill his mind. Selphie, as he had last seen her. Terrifying and terrified all at once.

"She tried to 'The End' me," he said out loud. "Almost managed it. It was... worse than anything I've ever... Damn."

Neither Squall nor Ellone spoke, so he carried on. "Y'know, I... Always laughed when I saw her use it in battle. Thought it was cute. No violence, just flowers, 'n fluffy clouds 'n... Goddamn." He stared up at the Infirmary's ceiling. How can a person be so wrong?

The fact that Selphie had always harbored such a devastating power, even pre-sorcery... He remembered what she had said, the pure fear in her eyes.

"Did you hear what she told me?"

"About Ultimecia?" said Squall sharply. "Yes."

"You agree that it's a crock of chocobo shit, right?"

Squall did not seem to miss the note of pleading in Irvine's voice, and his expression softened a little. "Selphie is not Ultimecia. Selphie will never be Ultimecia. Consider the matter closed."

Ellone leaned back in her chair. "I think she really believes it, though. Poor Selphie."

"Can you get in her head?" Irvine asked.

"I already tried. It was... messed up." Ellone blinked into the middle distance, and Irvine wondered what horrors she had seen. "I couldn't stay for more than a few moments. I think Selphie's still in there somewhere, but she's overwhelmed. I don't know how she's going to get out."

"The whole frickin' temple is a Draw point," he said, remembering the whirling black vortex with Selphie at its center.

"I noticed," Squall said shortly.

"Must be the reason they built it there in the first place. I couldn't understand why she'd gone to the middle of nowhere." Irvine shifted uncomfortably in the bed as more memories trickled back. The hands pressing at his chest, the rough lips against his, breathing the life back into his lungs. "Who came and got me? I don't even remember seein' their faces."

"Jiang and Winston. You probably don't know them. Rank 7 and 8, new grads this year. They were the closest SeeDs I could get hold of, stationed in South Timber on a security mission. No-one from Garden would've been able to reach you in time."

"I'll find 'em and thank 'em when Kadowaki lets me out." Irvine's brow creased. "Wait. They didn't go in the temple, did they?"

"Winston wanted to, but I vetoed it. Told him he was twenty pay grades too low for that kind of danger."

"Damn right." Irvine lapsed into silence for a while, until a sly idea popped into his mind.

"So. How was it for you?"

Squall frowned. "What?"

"Being inside me. You're the first guy to have had the privilege, y'know."

Attempting to annoy Squall using well-placed homoerotic innuendo was one of Irvine's minor hobbies. His main goal was to provoke a few curse words or insults, or at least a scowl. So far, Squall had been totally impervious to all his efforts. In fact, the only person ever to react was Selphie, either with loud guffaws or scandalized open-jawed shock.

...Selphie. Goddamn, he missed her.

Squall ignored Irvine's bait as usual. "It was a marginally less stupid experience than being in Laguna's head. And I do mean marginally."

"I'll take that. 'Less stupid than the President of Esthar'. Pretty high praise, all considered." Irvine folded his arms behind his head and grinned, leaning back against the headrest. "So you prefer being inside me to being inside your pops. Good to know."

The side of Squall's mouth twitched. "Glad you're feeling better, Irvine."

As soon as the door closed behind Squall, Ellone smacked Irvine sharply across the knee.

"Ow!"

"You really are disgusting sometimes."

"Got a reaction out of him, though. That's a first." Irvine smiled in self-satisfaction. Cracks were appearing in Commander Leonhart's armor at last. He snickered to himself. Cracks. I could use that one next time.

"I honestly don't know how Selphie tolerates you."

"She doesn't, most of the time."

Ellone clicked her tongue against her teeth. "Have you really not worked out why Squall's so mad? Because he was worried about you, you great big lump of stupid."

"He was?"

"I was inside your mind with him. I could feel how frantic he was. And so was I. We thought we were watching you die."

"Huh. Didn't really think about it like that," Irvine admitted, and realized how very tired Ellone looked. He wondered how many hours she'd spent by his bed, waiting for him to wake up. "Sorry," he added in a quiet voice.

"Mm." Ellone's gaze was directed towards the window.

"Elle," he said with more force. "We're gonna get her back. Right?"

"Right." She met his eyes and gave a firm nod. "Irvy, you know I once took Squall into Rinoa's head, when she was possessed by Ultimecia?"

"Yeah, I heard about that. You showed him Rin beating the crap out of me, right?"

Ellone's lips curved into a smug smile. "It was well-deserved, as I recall."

"Hey, I had a plan," he protested. "I was gonna take Rin to safety, then bust 'em out of prison myself. I didn't know Rin much yet back then, didn't realize how much she-"

She held out a hand to cut him off. "Never mind about all that. What I'm saying is, I know what Ultimecia's mental presence feels like. I'd know it again in an instant. And Selphie... She's not Ultimecia. I promise."

"You don't need to tell me," he said staunchly, even as a tiny fragment of relief snagged and released somewhere inside him.

"I know, sweetie." Ellone patted his arm, and he was glad she was there.

It was three more days before Doctor Kadowaki signed Irvine out, not for any lack of asking on his part. Kadowaki informed him that he'd given her fifty extra gray hairs by the time he left.

"Glad to be of service, doc," he grinned as he pushed his hat down on his head.

"If I wasn't such a stickler to my oath, I would've used the sedative a lot more liberally, Mr. Kinneas," she said as she tapped away at her keyboard. "Try to be several orders of magnitude less annoying next time."

He barely had the chance to stretch his legs around Garden before being called to a meeting in Squall's office, where Rinoa was standing by the desk, waiting for him.

Squall looked up from the computer monitor and brushed the hair from his eyes. "I've spoken to Edea and Cid," he said by way of greeting. His face was drawn, Irvine noticed.

"It goes without saying that we all want an outcome that doesn't involve terminating Selphie. We know that Edea passed her powers onto Rinoa without dying. I want to find out if there's a way to remove Selphie's sorcery without killing her. Since there's a precedent for it, it stands to reason there's a chance it can be repeated." He glanced at Rinoa. "We need to talk to Odine."

Rinoa wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Ugh. Okay. I'll go to Esthar."

Squall gave a nod in acknowledgment. "Irvine, you'll be going too. I don't trust Odine at all. He is not to be left alone with Rinoa for even a moment, understood? I'd go myself if I could, but I need to stay at Garden. There's always the chance that Selphie might choose to attack us here. So you'll have to protect Rinoa in my place."

Rinoa crossed her arms, offended. "Squall. I can take care of myself."

"I'm well aware of that. I want to avoid the diplomatic consequences of having to scrape bits of dead scientist off the ceiling. There's less likelihood of the situation escalating if you have a third party present. And Irvine has a stake in this too. He needs to be there."

Squall's eyes met Irvine's then, and Irvine had the feeling Squall was trying to give him a meaningful stare, but he couldn't decipher it. He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow.

Squall sighed and raked a hand through his hair. "Rin, could you give us a moment?"

"Of course." She glanced at Irvine, another heavy-laden look that he quite couldn't make sense of, and left the office.

Squall curled his fingers around each other, his face tilted down towards his desk. "You probably know what I'm about to tell you."

"Sure as hell don't, Commander."

"Irvine... I'm sending you with Rinoa because you'll be there when she confronts Selphie. You're the Plan B, if Rin can't... If we can't save Selphie."

"Plan B?"

"You'll be the one to end it."

The seconds ticked by as the full weight of Squall's words hit Irvine, and he leapt out of his chair.

"Me shootin' the woman I love is Plan fuckin' B? What the hell, Squall?" Irvine slammed both palms on the Commander's desk. "I won't hurt her. I can't. How can you even ask me?"

Squall looked back at him solemnly. "You love Selphie. Right?"

"Of course I do. With every last piece of me. I could never-"

"Then this is your burden, Irvine. I don't think it matters that you're not her Knight." Squall pushed back from the desk and crossed to the window, his back to Irvine. "When you love a Sorceress, you have to prepare yourself for the day you might have to... end her suffering. Me and Rinoa, we... We agreed that if she ever turns, it'll be me who... No-one else. She was clear about that. And if it ever comes to that, I'll do it. I will. I have to."

"Squall..." Irvine trailed off, finding no words.

"I could send someone else. If that's what you want. But if it's you, you'll know that you did all you could to make it... quick. Make it the best it can be. If someone else ends it, you'll always wonder. How it happened, how she felt..."

Squall's voice was heavy, and it was clear he was talking about Rinoa as much as Selphie. Irvine wrestled his hat off his head and tossed it onto the empty chair behind him. He understood now, to his disgust. He couldn't let anyone else take Selphie's life. There was only one person who could do it with complete and total love, and it was him.

"Goddamn it all," he said, with feeling.

"Yeah."

"It fuckin' sucks."

"Yeah," Squall's echo was barely audible. "It does."