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FFVIII - Origins (2)
Pairing: Irvine/Selphie, implied eventual Seifer/Squall
Warnings: None
Chapter: Two
Rating: PG
Summary: Strategy meetings over coffee.
“What are you doing in here, mister? There's a strategy meeting in the cafeteria right now!”
Squall looks up and smiles just the slightest bit at Selphie, almost unable to avoid it. She's like that, he's noticed, and not just with him. Everybody becomes that little bit more open under Selphie's influence, whether it's a tough nut like him or possibly Seifer, or someone like Quistis who isn't quite that closed up, but is a little more restrained.
He's just waiting for the day when Selphie really makes Quistis let go.
“I'm busy, Sel. You can do that without me, right?”
She's pouting. God, he hates it when she does that. He runs his hand through his hair and shifts a pile of paper restlessly, hoping she'll take the point about how busy he is. She huffs softly, putting a hand on her hip and tapping her foot. “Squall, the purpose of a vacation is to actually, you know, relax. And you can start now. Leave Xu plenty of work to do. She wouldn't like to have nothing, after all.”
“I doubt that'd be possible,” Squall murmurs, looking away from the pout and the huffing and trying to ignore the foot tapping. “And it wouldn't be fair even if it was.”
“It'll be fun.”
“More fun if I'm not there, I'm sure.”
Selphie laughs softly, perching on the edge of his desk. He starts to protest and then shuts his mouth, thinking he couldn't care less if Galbadia get back a stack of forms with creases in the shape of Selphie's skinny butt. They deserve worse, really. “Oh, Squall, don't be silly. Of course we can't talk tactics without you there! We've even made Seifer agree to join the discussion.”
Squall bites his lip. “Sel, I really can't...”
“C'mon!”
He takes another look at the piles of work he has to do. There's nothing that important, and he has to admit that the idea of leaving a lot of paperwork for the conscientious Xu – with her rather shorter signature, too – is kind of appealing. “Oh, alright then.”
Selphie grins and jumps up. “Alright! Everyone's already waiting, they sent me to get you. They figured my charms might be best in the matter.”
“Your charms?”
She sticks her tongue out at him. “You know, sometimes I'm almost sorry we got you to talk more. You can be really mean. You should be more like Sir Laguna.”
Squall smiles slightly, remembering his initial evaluation – and underestimation – of Laguna. A moron he'd thought him then, and though he still thinks he's a bit less professional than he should be, he knows what a stupid prejudgement that was. There is a reason Laguna runs a country, even if it’s mostly hard to fathom.
“Hello in there?”
Squall blinks slightly and then rolls his eyes at Selphie, in front of him and waving a hand vigorously in front of his face. “You’ll fall over, walking backwards like that.”
“Of course I – ow, hey, watch where you’re going, mister!”
He rolls his eyes again as Selphie grins at the student she just tripped over. He’s amused by the way she deals with the situation, light-heartedly accusing him of trying to attack a SeeD, while making him smile after the embarrassment of making a fool of himself in front of the commander. All the same, Squall thinks, the poor boy isn’t going to be able to forget the situation anytime soon. Even he wouldn’t have been able to shake it off completely when he was a student, and he knows now that then he was unbelievably cold and detached.
Sometimes, he misses being able to do that.
Sometimes, like when Selphie grins at him and actually takes his arm to drag him along to the cafeteria, he’s just glad for his friends and glad that they won’t let him shut them out and that he can’t quite close his heart to them, even when he thinks he needs to. He blames Rinoa for that – or honours her with acknowledging that she did it; it’s a close call, most days.
“I’m really surprised,” Selphie says, her arm still linked through his, “that we actually got leave.”
“Don’t expect any more for a year or so.”
“Meanie.”
“A SeeD has to be in Garden on active duty with the possibility of being sent on a mission for ten months out of every twelve, barring health problems,” Squall says, shrugging. “It’s just the rules, nothing I’m making up to be mean.”
“Still! You’re the one that’ll enforce it!”
He shrugs again. “Maybe.”
“So you are a meanie. A big meanie.”
Squall sighs and surrenders to the inevitable. “Fine, yes, I’m a big meanie. Anyway, I don’t know what you’re so excited about. No doubt while we’re gone and not communicating with Garden, something bad will happen and we’ll come back to a crater in the earth.”
“Garden can move.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Huff, huff, huff,” Selphie says, grinning at him, stopping and mimicking his way of huffing, one hand on her hip. Squall isn’t sure if he’s more amused or embarrassed: his mannerisms are well known and everyone who passes knows exactly who she’s making fun of and about what.
“Sel…”
“Garden won’t need us. You’re too pessimistic.”
He sighs. “Everybody says that.”
“Because it’s true.”
With that, however, Selphie drags him into the cafeteria and any attempt at rebuttal is very much overwhelmed by the noisy lunchtime crowd; the clatter of trays, the chatter of people waiting in the queue – and, of course, the sound of Zell choking on a hotdog while Quistis scolds him for eating too quickly and Seifer simply laughs his ass off. Even Squall has to smile as he joins the table, avoiding Seifer’s eyes and sitting down as far from him as possible.
“I got ‘im!” Selphie announces cheerfully, even though they’ve already noticed (and greeted) him. She takes a curtsey when Quistis compliments her on her cleverness, and then grins. “I’ve got someone else to go get. You guys start the strategy meeting without me, okay?”
She exchanges a wink with
“Someone else?”
“Use your head,” Seifer says, rolling his eyes. He stretches his legs out with a yawn and glances around at everybody. “So, what the fuck does Selphie want us to do? Or is just an excuse to be social and get everyone together? 'Cause if so, she's paying for the rest of my coffee to make up for the waste of time.”
“If you're coming with us, you really should act more friendly, Seifer,” Quistis says, somewhat reprovingly. She softens it, though, with a smile, realising suddenly how uncomfortable he must feel, surrounded by former enemies. And he barely displays a sign of it; not really. She finds it amazing enough that he said he'd come along.
“I'll act however I like,” he says with a smirk reminiscent of the guy who used to make her teaching days hell. She rolls her eyes at him, pushing her hair back and hoping Selphie will be back soon with the mysterious last person.
“You always do, man,” Zell says, glaring a little at Seifer. Quistis rolls her eyes, leaning back in her seat.
“So... has anyone got any ideas on where to start?”
Squall shrugs. “I thought the logical place to start would be going to see Matron.
Even if she doesn't know your real last names or where you actually come from, she might know something about it. She can't have just found all of you wandering around. And if she didn't find you, maybe she knows who did, or who sent you to the Orphanage...”
Quistis laughs a little. “See, this is why we really want you along, with your superior grasp of tactics.”
“I'm not that good.”
“Yeah, you just spend too much time thinking, Leonhart,” Seifer says, rolling his eyes. “Face it, you're Garden's top tactician, and for good reason.”
Squall shrugs, a little surprised by the almost-admission that he might be better than Seifer at anything. “Maybe. It’s just an idea.”
“Squall!”
Quistis laughs at the way Squall’s eyes go wide, and at the easy smile that comes over his face when he sees Rinoa – they’d never made a good couple but friends, yes. Squall gets up quickly, well-prepared for the clinging hug Rinoa has been planning since she knew all of this was happening. “Hey, Rinny.”
“Hey, you,” she says, and then pulls away to hug Zell, and then
“You’re just looking for adventure,” Seifer says, a hint of teasing in his voice. Zell glances at him, surprised by the gentleness there, too, but Rinoa just smiles at him, putting a hand on his arm.
“Maybe; I’ve been bored without you lot.”
“Where’s Selphie?”
“Getting me a coffee,” Rinoa says, shrugging slightly. “Have you guys decided on any plans of action yet?”
“Squall had some ideas for us, of course,”
“I’m not sure how that helps with planning.”
“It doesn’t, Zell, but it always pays to flatter the ladies,”
“An unfair amount of luck.”
Seifer laughs. “I bet you got in trouble for that, huh, Dincht? You’ve always been such a mummy’s boy.”
“Actually,” he replies, huffily, “Ma didn’t mind. I’m a big boy, she says, after all. She is kind of annoyed about all this though. I think she thinks I don’t ‘ppreciate her or something, just ‘cause I want to find out about my real family. Of course, I do appreciate her, but I still want to know, you know?”
“Mummy’s boy,” Seifer says again, with the air of one proving a long-held opinion to be true. Squall rolls his eyes.
“Are we really just going to sit here insulting each other?”
Seifer raises an eyebrow. “Impatient, Leonhart?”
“I do have work to be doing.”
“So get on and do it, spoilsport,” Selphie says, too brightly to be really hurt, as she returns and hands Rinoa a cup of something very, very hot. “I can have your chair if you do, so there’s good in everything.”
Squall gets up, rolling his eyes. “I’ll see you all later. Keep me informed of anything you decide – so I can veto it, if nothing else.”
“Veto it?”
“I know what you’re like, Selphie.”
He turns to go at that and leaves the others staring after him with expressions varying from amusement to faint annoyance. Rinoa takes careful note of Seifer’s expression: regretful, somehow, almost fragile. She knows exactly what she’s going to do about that. She stands up and cups her hands around her mouth to help make her voice heard across the cafeteria. “Squall! I’ll come and see you in your office once we’re done plotting!”
He looks up for a moment and gives her the briefest smile and a tiny wave before leaving the cafeteria. Rinoa sits back down again, looking pleased with herself and stretching her legs out.
Selphie clears her throat. “So, what do we have so far by way of plans?”
---
“Still terribly busy working yourself to death?”
“You could knock,” Squall says, only a hint of real peevishness in his voice. Rinoa laughs and closes the door behind her, commandeering a chair from a corner of the room and dragging it up close to Squall’s. She squeezes in beside him and snatches a pen and a stack of paperwork.
“I’m going to help you out a bit,” she says, cheerfully. “It doesn’t matter if the signature doesn’t look anything like yours, right?”
“By this point, I don’t care, and since they’ve been waiting three months for a response, nor do they. Just make sure you’re not signing anything stupid, and if there’re any requests for SeeD aid, stick them on that pile over there,” Squall says, huffing softly and waving his hand in the vague direction of a pile. “What’re you doing in here?”
“You’re acting like you’re not pleased to see me.”
Squall huffs softly. “You know I am. I shouldn’t have to say it.”
Rinoa pauses a little at that, surprised by Squall actually voicing that feeling. She smiles and reaches up to put an arm over his shoulders in a quick hug that makes him roll his eyes at her. “You don’t have to say it, not really. But sometimes it is nice to hear. Sometimes you give the impression that you hate the world and the world hates you, all the time.”
“Only some of the time,” he says, with a glimmer of a smile.
She rolls her eyes again. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about Seifer,” she pauses when Squall groans and pokes him gently. “I haven’t spoken to him yet, but the way he looks at you, you can tell he wants to be friends, or –”
“Rinoa, please don’t.”
She huffs softly. “Why not? Ever since I figured out that our relationship was going nowhere, you've been on your own. It's not healthy for a guy, not even a guy like you.”
“I'm fine,” he says, focusing on his work again, trying to block out the things she's saying. Things that hit uncomfortably true, because, friends aside, he has been lonely. Partly because of work, but partly, yes, because there are all kinds of things he wants and never seems to be getting. He sighs softly and she catches the sound, inching her chair closer to his.
“You need somebody, Squall. You know you do.”
“I don't need anybody.”
“We went through this before.”
“Then can we talk about something else for once? Just as a novelty thing? My love life is really none of your business, not since you left me.”
For a moment, there's silence, and even Squall winces at the harshness of his words. He closes his eyes and waits for her to say something, knowing she won't retaliate, not now, not with these things in mind. Once, she would've, when she still had hopes she could spur him to passion for her, but she's been resigned to the fact that it won't ever happen for a long time.
“I really am happy to be with you guys again, you know,” she says, quietly. “This is an important quest, to all of you, even though you won't let yourselves hope that everything will come off. Not even Selphie does, not really. When I was with you guys, fighting Ultimecia, I felt... strong. I felt like I could do anything. You still make me feel like that, Squall. It has nothing to do with love, though I used to say it had everything to do with love. You've given that to me, and I want to give that back to you. Somehow.”
“Interfering in my love life isn't the way,” he says, before he can stop himself. He hears her huff in frustration but she doesn't pull away, placing her hand on his shoulder gently.
“I want to make you happy, and I know that if you let me, I can help you find happiness.”
“With my former enemy?”
“I've seen the way you look at each other. I know you both. I know it'll work out, even if you don't. Seifer is... Seifer would be the right choice for you. He's passionate and strong and your equal. You don't have to protect him, he won't rely on you, and he won't take a day when you snap at him as an invitation to fight like I did.”
“Rinoa...”
She leans in and kisses him, softly, barely brushing her lips over his. “I won't say anything about it anymore, okay? Not much, anyway. But you'll have to forgive me if I don't stop trying.”
He opens his eyes and looks at her, and finds himself smiling just because it's her. “I think I can live with that. If you're not too obvious about it, anyway.”
“That's good,” she says, smiling in something akin to relief.
There's a moment of silence and then they both return to signing the bits of paper. Squall sighs softly, pushing his hair back, and after a few more minutes of almost comfortable quiet, speaks softly. “Why are you so worried about this quest of Selphie's, anyway? No offence, but... you don't know anything about how it feels not to know who you are, where you come from, whether your parents would be proud or horrified at how you turned out...”
Rinoa shrugs slightly. “I do know what it feels like to not really know my mother. She died when I was young, I'll never know what she thinks of me now unless there is an afterlife. But... it's important to me because I remember the way you looked when you found out Laguna was your father. You were... really happy. I almost suggested we try and find everyone else's parents then, but they all seemed content enough...”
“Probably because they'd never even thought about it.”
“Hadn't you ever thought about finding your father and mother?”
Squall wonders, for a moment, if he ever did. He gropes back to the few scattered memories of his childhood; his loves, his joys, his fears, his dreams. Did he ever wonder if his father would come for him? Did he ever think about the softness of his mother's hands, wonder whether once she'd held him with joy and delight, whether she'd comforted him when he cried? Or had he never thought about it? He remembers Seifer saying that his father was a soldier, that his father would be coming back for him. He remembers Quistis – just plain Quissy or Bossy Boots back then – telling Seifer that he was stupid, that he couldn't even remember his father.
He can't remember ever, himself, wondering about his parents. But maybe the Guardian Forces took that, like they take everything in time as their rightful payment for the gift they give.
“Not since I went to Garden, at least,” he says, finally. Rinoa puts her hand on his arm again and he shrugs it off, rolling his eyes. “It's okay. I never really thought about it, so I never really got sad about it, either.”
“Still...”
Squall shakes his head and, once again, returns to his work. Rinoa works quietly for a moment longer and then bundles the stuff together, hunting for a rubber band and snapping it over the pile, throwing it into his 'finished' tray.
“I hope I get to see the others find their families.”
“It seems unlikely,” Squall says, wondering what the odds are against it. A hundred to one? More? Probably more. There was Adel, after all, and then their own sorceress war, fought across time, bitter and confusing and heartbreaking. And then there was the sheer likelihood of their parents just not wanting them at all, leaving them at the Orphanage to get on with their own lives. It didn't have to be the Sorceress who'd caused such chaos and loss in their lives, though that would be a handy, easy explanation.
“It's possible, though. You found Laguna.”
“Yes,” Squall says, and finds himself smiling, as he always does, at the thought of his father, so like him, so unlike him. “I suppose I did. But maybe that just makes the odds for them finding their families again worse.”
“It shows it's possible,” she says, with a true optimistic brightness. She gets up, leaning down to kiss him on the cheek. “I'm going to go now. I have people to talk to, and all that, and another ex-boyfriend I really owe a visit.”
“Have fun.”
“By the way,” she says, turning as she reaches the door. “There's another reason for me to come with you all.”
“Oh?”
“Self interest. It's been so boring without you all.”
---
Selphie snuggles closer to
He shifts slightly, running his hand over her back. “Still awake, darlin'?”
“Yeah,” she says, quietly, squirming closer to him – tangling their legs, pressing herself closer to him. The skin of his hands is rough, from his guns, but his touch so soft, so gentle, so soothing, that she could almost believe that he had never killed a person in his life, if she hadn't seen him do it – if she hadn't been there beside him when he did it, if she hadn't, of all things, helped him do it. More than once. She feels she deserves this – they deserve this. The warmth and the comfort after a lifetime of making the best of it, of being alone.
She's so glad they found each other again.
“Can’t sleep?”
She shrugs and he hums softly, bumping his nose against hers. “We’ll be off tomorrow. Squall will want to go early, I expect, he always does. And we’ll have to go and wake Zell up. He won’t want to stir before mid day, unless there’re hot dogs involved.”
Selphie laughs. “Maybe that could be arranged. If I go and get some and you go to wake him, and you promise that I’ll meet him in the car park with hot dogs?”
“I think it sounds like a grand idea.”
“Then let’s go with it,” she says, shrugging slightly. She squirms into a more comfortable position, tucking her head under his chin so her skinny body is pressed to his; surrounded, comforted, soothed. It quiets the worries in her, the little insecurities and the uncertainties, the feeling that not all is going to go to plan – that nothing can go according to plan, because it never has before.
“I was surprised Squall even managed to get hold of a car for us, let alone two.”
She hums softly, smiles. “He’s getting into the whole idea, even if he acts like he isn’t sometimes. He’ll come around and enjoy it just as much as the rest of us do.”
“I’m sure of it,”
“What do you want?” she asks, suspiciously, looking up at him.
“Can’t I just flatter you?”
“Usually you have ulterior motives.”
Her eyes twinkle with fun. “Well… I’d say it’s a good one. Excusable. It’s not worth me blowing you to smithereens with a rocket launcher, anyway.”
“Gee, thanks,” he says, drawling the words. And then he kisses her again, concentrates on nothing but, on the softness of her and the strength, how small and fragile he can think she is and how she proves him wrong every time. He smiles and tightens his arms around her, letting himself squeeze that tiniest bit tighter than he thinks he should. And she just smiles.
“Do you think it’ll all be… okay?”
He pets her hair, then, feeling it bounce up against his fingers as he smoothes it down. He isn’t sure what to say, whether what he has to say will help. Whether pessimism or optimism is right, or whether simply waiting, not really hoping, is the best way. It takes him a while to say anything, and when he does, it’s quiet.
“I don’t know what could go wrong. We might not find anything, or we might find something we don’t like, but in the end, we’ll have no less than we already have and maybe more.”
“You don’t really think we’ll find anything, do you?”
“Still, you don’t think we’ll find anything.”
“It’s worth trying anyway,” he says, and she grins.
“That’s supposed to be my line.”
He kisses her again by way of giving it back, tucking himself against her, her against himself, so that they fit like bowls stacked together, like they always have. “It’s true all the same.”
She nods slightly, closing her eyes. “You suggested it. Will you be horribly unhappy if you don’t find anything?”
“I don’t know,” she says, surprisingly brittle. He runs his fingers through her hair again, kisses her again, comforting and soothing and meaningful, meaningless, whatever it needs to be.
“We’ll always have what we have now.”
“We’ll always have each other,” she agrees, kissing his cheek lightly and closing her eyes again. All of a sudden her voice snaps from dreamy, hopeful, fearful, to a brisker tone, her ‘on a quest’ tone. The sound of her voice like that always makes him smile. “It’s time for us to go to sleep, now.”
They’d said that they’d never lose each other.
Quietly,