Disclaimer: In no way, shape or form do I own Final Fantasy VIII. I'm just borrowing the characters temporarily, just like I did when I beat the game . . . three times . . .
Oh, and I'm not Jennifer Charles either.
Author's Notes - Yeah, sorry guys. It's been a hell of a ride. I got accepted into all of my schools, including University of Chicago (my dream school and Ivy League rival). However, I was not brave enough to be in debt until I'm 50. Therefore, state school for me. I hate to sound spoilt, but it's very depressing. They always tell you to keep up your grades and work hard and you will get into the school of your dreams. I guess I never really considered that even though I could get in, I would never be able to actually attend the school of my dreams. Sigh.
This chapter turned out to be over 10,000 words when I was still working on it, so I thought eh what the hell, why don't I just dish out a bit as it is? The next chapter is going to include some SERIOUS flashbacks (not the lsd kind), and also the part of supreme cuteness that has been in my head for ages.
Please enjoy!
Fool's Gold
By giggleplex
Chapter 6: Shrinking Heads in the Sunset
Don't you wish you were
Tired of retiring in your mousetrap mind
Don't you wish you were
Making it through the moment
When you were my kind
Had a look at your soul
And it caught you off guard
And you can never take that back
And it's making it hard
Oh you wish you could hate me
But it's not in your nature
You'd rather debate me
And to me that's absurd
Don't you wish you were
Tired of conspiring with your mousetrap mind
- Elysian Fields "Shrinking Heads in the Sunset"
Dr. Marshall barely caught him before he was swept with such overwhelming panic that he did not realize that he had no idea where the hospital was. They exchanged a few horrified words that had nothing to do with emotions, and managed to throw themselves into her nondescript car before setting off at a speed consistently twenty miles per hour above the speed limit.
His mind was a swirl of uncertainty. He felt himself go pale, and he forgot to breathe at times until he realized his own dizziness. He was still not well, but he managed to ignore it as best he could. His mouth was dry and his eyes were red, but he did not swallow or blink. He had little to think about, but panic has a tendency to take up far more room in one's mind than could ever be assumed.
Dr. Marshall knew that conversation would not help the matters of their concern. She herself was an extraordinarily empathetic woman. Without realizing it, she was adopting his concerns into her heart, and became just as perturbed.
She drove, but her hands trembled on the steering wheel.
He stared ahead, but was absolutely horrified.
They did not comment on the expected sight of solemn policemen attempting to distort the traffic to avoid the sizable group of protestors. The hospital was designed in a large "c" shape, with a large loop of road in the center for safe and rapid drop-offs. The entire loop and center courtyard was congested with angry demonstrators. Their fluorescent signs bobbed in a crowd of muted Timber browns and grays.
Dr. Marshall showed her impatience through rapid accelerations and decelerations between the start-and-stop of the traffic. She wondered if the number of people present at a place where time was vital for the lives of injured people, would unintentionally kill people that otherwise would not have died. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel, and gritted her teeth—there was really nothing she could do about that. Acceptance had always been the hardest part of being in the medical profession: there were times and places where one simply could not save everyone.
But she'd be damned if she wouldn't save at least one person that day.
"I'm going to the doctor's entrance on the west side." She said shortly "I can give you my ID card to get in, but I'm sorry I can't help you any more than that." She looked noticeably at the crowd with a deep frown "I am needed elsewhere."
"Alright."
He poised his posture forward, and his hand was already ghosting over the door-handle. At least he was certain that no one had gotten to the Fool yet; the protest would have had a wildly different aura if they had.
"In the second door to your right, there will be the linen room. Get a lab-coat or something that looks official or you'll warrant suspicion."
"They should be suspicious." He replied.
"They won't be suspicious enough for long," she countered "he's really more trouble than the hospital can handle right now."
It was with great maturity that the Wanderer was able to accept such a dismal reality. His hands closed over the handle.
"Go!"
The car came to an abrupt halt, and he bounded out of the vehicle. He quickly swiped the card across the entrance lock and jerked the heavy handle forward as if it were feather light.
Dr. Marshall breathed deeply, and parked with questionable legality. She would need to siphon people who actually needed care into the hospital, because she knew they were already short-handed as it was. She had more important things to worry about.
But she hoped he found him in time. She shook her head: no, saved him in time.
Whenever he felt disoriented, he thought of her. Time seemed to be passing—too fast—
She was untouchable. Unstoppable. Unflappable.
She was above staring, however, he noticed her staring resolutely ahead when she walked down the hallway. Her eyes were misty and quirked half-shut, the set of her head slightly to the left. Her mouth was distinct and set small with curves and sharp points at the top. She needed no cosmetics to achieve beauty.
Something had changed her. It was beyond the obvious effect of the absence of hair, because it had been months since he had acted as a witness to that event. Set determination that looked remarkably like a constant seethe had sharpened her features and adorned her aura like a musky perfume. The curve of her neck and the shape of her bald head was a minimalist beauty. He never knew that such a stark contrast could leave to an image that beautiful.
She was above feminism. She was a force, with blue eyes and black eyebrows. She walked straight ahead, without looking aside at him.
She was above him.
He could not help but stare.
"Who do you think passed as number one for the practical?"
She walked on, but he gained the eerie sense that she knew he was watching. There was a wave of frost that passed with the passing of her presence, and he shivered despite himself.
"Hey, Almasy?"
"What?!" he asked, suddenly aware that he was outside their battle-tactics lecture hall, and that one of his adoring followers had asked him a question.
The boy either resolutely ignored Seifer's annoyance, or had not noticed. He nodded toward the bulletins posted outside of classroom 2-C.
"They've posted them." He said, already moving forward "I wonder how I did. I wonder who did the best."
Not you. Seifer bit back his thoughts. He felt irrationally cheated that the drudge-of-a-trainee had interrupted his private thoughts of Quistis Trepe. Not that he thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Not that he recognized her as somehow tragic. How could she be tragic?
Seifer eventually followed, but with a more leisurely pace and a more self-assured set to his widening shoulders. He was instantly aware of the muscles developing over what had once been a threadbare skeleton. He would not be one of those insufferable pretty boys.
A red-headed girl smiled shyly at him as he walked by. He felt no desire to smile back.
But he followed her, secretly, with his eyes. She skittered down the hallway in a half-skip, before enveloping herself entirely into the semi-crowd mulling about . . .
Seifer looked forward. He frowned. She was never popular before, why now when she had destroyed her beauty, and everything that had made her ordinary?
Maybe it was just the fact that she was anything but ordinary. Some girls gained popularity by wearing their hair and clothes in a way that was "fashionable" and therefore as ordinary as possible. Some of those girls were even considered pretty for the fact that they were exceptionally ordinary. Seifer could deal with this, as he had dealt with in the past. It was so much easier to see a girl as a creature struggling to fit into the magazine mold and the movie-star glide—not as something entirely unusual and consequently unpredictable.
Maybe that's why he was so . . . intrigued.
With a start, he realized that he had stopped moving forward. He blinked, and sauntered toward the bulletin board once more. People were already talking. They were not so much talking between each other, but rather talking to themselves in disgusted or congratulating tones.
Seifer didn't even know why he bothered with checking his marks. He knew that no one could beat him in the physical department, and he did not really care about theoretical knowledge from books and lectures. His dominance in deadliness was enough to get him into SeeD.
A few people did not even notice that they were affected by his aura of self-importance and worldly-indifference. They moved aside, their eyes still straying toward the board as if what they saw could somehow change form at any moment.
His eyes trailed up so that the light caught them like beryl gems. There were a great deal of names, and a large line dividing the passing group, and the failing group. Each name was printed in capital letters, completely impersonal. Seifer smirked a little, his eyes traveling higher without registering the names they passed.
He knew his name was at the top of the physical exam list . . .
But it was not.
He stared, seconds passed. Reality seemed less real than his previous suppositions.
But it was quite clearly real. How—
Seifer felt dread build like a bubble in his stomach. And she had walked by without a word.
He would have felt somehow better if she had leered at him, boasted at him, verbally assured him of her superiority as a human being and a SeeD trainee—but she had passed him by.
He was the one stuck in a dangerous cycle of poisonous thoughts. He was the one who had failed.
For the name at the top of the list was none other than "QUISTIS TREPE."
Seifer felt like he was wading too deep into the waves of the ocean, and they were tugging at him with the strength of elements far greater than his own. He felt embarrassed.
He felt ashamed, but only for a split second.
Then he felt angry—then . . . nothing.
Seifer stared.
The Wanderer faced a few panicked moments of disorientation, but eventually found himself in the main lobby, four card swipes later. He could at least orient himself properly, but could not help but wonder if it was precious time lost.
With a level of self-discipline he learned while killing people rather than saving them, he managed to slow himself to a brisk walking pace through the white-wash corridors. He had never heard of a respectable doctor running through a hospital, and he suspected that any suspicious onlookers hadn't either.
The nurses in the Fool's ward did not even look at him. He took this to be a good sign, but uneasily wondered if it would be as easy for a poor-intentioned protester to sneak through, unnoticed. He increased his pace.
There was a rush of terror when he swept open the stain-resistant curtains to find nothing but a blank stretcher.
His head flipped wildly around, as if a second look to the small room would reveal his presence.
"That patient was moved to room A4,"
He whirled around and stared at the petite nurse behind him, who was whispering uneasily.
"We were worried someone would find him . . . "
The Wanderer took both of her narrow shoulders in his hands and looked deeply into her eyes.
"Please do not tell anyone else where he is: it's not safe anymore."
Her eyes widened, and she muttered an apology before scampering away.
In the far recesses of his mind, he realized that he hadn't thanked her. He set off once more, somehow remembering that the room was nearer toward the ward entrance.
Behind the glass window, the room was dark. There were only the faint outlines of beeping, life-monitoring devices. He opened the door swiftly, and pulled down the blinds before turning on the lights.
Someone had removed the life-supporting devices that were previously attached to him. He felt a sudden rush of anger that someone had thought him too much trouble to keep him alive through extraordinary means. But he was still alive—and that was what mattered.
His hands trembled as he pulled the machines off of him. For an earth-shattering moment, he did not connect the disconnecting of sensors to the ominous sound of a broken heartbeat. He untidily turned off the machine, and was able to breathe again.
Feeling another premonition of doom, he suddenly widened the gap between two sheets of the blinds and looked back toward the ward. The place was otherwise calm, but he suddenly caught sight of a doctor who looked a bit absent-minded talking to two crisply dressed men in SeeD uniforms.
His eyes widened, and he snapped the blinds shut, breathing heavily.
He was no match for one SeeD much less two. Even when he was in full health it would have been an impossible confrontation to win. For a moment, time stood still.
But that moment passed with the sudden rush of blood to his fingers. All he could hear was his own heartbeat. He knew that he would have to make sure that it did not come to a confrontation.
He spotted a stretcher folded up under the hospital bed. Clumsily, but quickly, he unfolded the creaking structure himself, and did not bother putting a sheet across the top. As carefully as he could with hands shaking like unsettled guitar strings, he lifted up the comatose body and laid it on the stretcher with a sprawl.
He knew that just leaving him like that would be like signing the Fool's death warrant. Like signing the papers that Primrose suggested, or like watching him die in the mud in that ill-favored rebellion.
Again, the Wanderer was determined to save the life that did not seem to want to be saved.
He found a white sheet in one of the cupboards. Not bothering to wonder if it was the real purpose of that gauzy material, he shook out its folds and swept it over the Fool's untidy body and gaunt features. The motion was as unearthly as it was unsettling.
The Wanderer wasted a precious second in bending close to make sure his chest was still showing signs of breath. It was a bare, unnoticeable movement but present all the same.
He pulled down the door-handle and kicked it open with his foot. His façade of professional calm came easily once again, as he wheeled out the stretcher of a seemingly dead man. Out of the corner of his eye, the two men in formal SeeD uniforms looked a bit frustrated for information.
The Wanderer prayed to whatever force resolved for the unshakable resolve for patient confidentiality, in supplication and profound thanks.
He found another door with a lock accessible by card-swipe. His hand was trembling, but there was no other sign of his position as an imposter as he carefully wheeled his charge into a quiet, private hallway.
Had he departed a minute later he would have knocked into a small woman who ran through the ward in a short green dress. The dress matched her large, luminous eyes in color and her flip-dip brown hair in style. She had little sophistication in poise, but a great deal of boundless energy that was haphazardly focused into a mysterious determination.
She stopped at the two SeeDs that were still arguing with the determinately unhelpful surgeon.
With one discreet swipe of her bright green eyes, she noted a matching shape on their sleeves. Her mouth betrayed her distrust for a second, before she smiled hugely and tapped them both on the shoulders.
They turned as one, both frowning deeply.
"Balamb Garden claims jurisdiction over this area." She informed them sweetly. "The Galbadian Garden forces have pulled back to prevent a civilian riot."
Both of them looked at each other with identical faces of distrust.
"We will await orders directly from our superiors." One said.
In a much exaggerated movement more akin to a spoiled little girl than a soldier, she jutted out her hip to the side and placed a hand on the side, considering them with raised eyebrows and a swiftly fading smile.
"Your superiors have transferred control of your unit to me."
The other SeeD's thick eyebrows furrowed.
"Who are you to claim control over our unit. Miss, we are going to have to ask you to leave this sort of thing to us professionals, this is a potentially hazardous situation and—"
"I'm no civilian." The girliness, the giddiness had faded. There were noticeable stress lines in between her eyebrows now, making her appear much wiser and more accomplished. She reached into her bright purple purse, shifted the contents around with one hand, and eventually extracted a standard, SeeD issue ID card. On the back was the picture of light and darkness intertwining into a symbol of ambiguous morality.
The SeeD who first spoke took it from her angrily. It did not take long for him to scan her ID card.
His eyes widened. His partner leaned in, and nearly choked.
"As you can see," she said seriously "your lack of manners and good sense in this situation is enough to get you both demoted."
She smiled again, with just as much sweetness. Her hand trailed up and she struck a pose with a V-for-victory sign.
"Head out of the building and await orders! This is my mission now!"
With that, she skipped away leaving two men completely frazzled in her wake.
Author's End Notes - Okay, so maybe this was the shorter half of the original word salad.
It shouldn't take me much longer to grind out the next chapter, but that depends on several factors. I have AP tests for the next two weeks, and after that, I'm as well as graduated. That should give me a bit of free time (finally!)—and no more worrying about legrange error formulas, free-indirect discourse or angular momentum. Well, maybe some free indirect discourse :D
giggle