FFVIII - Quistis x Irvine, G, for solitaryjane
Title: There and Back Again
For: solitaryjane
Medium: Fanfiction
Request: An FFVIII Irvine/Quistis story. Preferably takes place after the end of the game, or if you like, AU.
Fandom: FFVIII
Characters/Pairings: Quistis x Irvine
Rating/Warnings: G, no warnings
Feedback: I would really appreciate concrit for this.
Spoilers: for major plot events of FFVIII
Word Count: 1960
Summary: Three years after the Sorceress War, Quistis has fallen into a comfortable routine, leaving her years as a SeeD behind her. Unfortunately for her, Irvine is not about to let her forget in peace.
There and Back Again
I'm only a woman
Of flesh and bone
And I wept much
We all do
I thought I might die alone
But I had never met you
-- Rilo Kiley, "I Never"
The weather forecast said it was going to be another hot day. Quistis turned off the TV and finished the last of her morning coffee. She bustled around in a diligent pace, trying to find something to clean up. Cleaning was therapeutic for her, and her room was kept spotless, every object in its rightful place and not a crumb to be found on the floor. The apartment was small, with a kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. A single window shed some light on clean white sheets. A stuffed rabbit lay against the pillow, the only personal item in the room. A photograph was hung on the wall next to a small round mirror, showing a group of smiling teenagers. Quistis glanced at it as she walked by. She tried not to smile at how young everyone looked, happy that the sorceress had been defeated and the world was peaceful once more.
She straightened the books on her bookshelf--which contained mostly fiction--and checked the digital clock on her desk. She had forty-five minutes to get to class, and traffic could be terrible this early in Deling City. She grabbed her purse from its place hung over her chair and checked her make-up in the mirror. The young woman who looked back at her was hardly different than the one in the photo, although her hair was shorter and she wore glasses now full-time. She straightened her blouse and walked out the door.
She was greeted by a gust of hot air as she left her apartment building. As she walked down Third Street toward the bus stop she squinted against bright spring sunlight. Residents of the city walked by her, hurrying to some unknown destination as they chatted on cell phones. She listened to a few conversations taking place around her: business proposals, hushed arguments, quick peals of laughter. Teenage couples with too much body jewelry (she thought, sniffing indignantly) stood outside of the music store, arm in arm. She felt something deep in her stomach twinge in a way that felt too much like jealousy. She tried not to think of Squall and Rinoa, married and living in Winhill. There was a reason she moved to the largest city on the continent. It was easy to get lost among the crowded streets and gray buildings, and to become a nameless face among so many people. After growing up in a small place like Balamb, where every neighbor knew each other's name, the privacy that city life lent to Quistis was refreshing. She didn't have to worry about past memories showing up to create disorder in her routine existence.
She paid the bus fare and slid into a seat by the window. No one showed her any attention; not that she would have noticed if they had. Twenty-something women were common in Deling City, and Quistis was not the type to stand out. She much preferred it that way.
She was a regular commuter of City Bus 27, and the twenty-minute ride was a normal part of her day, although she remembered being disconcerted by the crowd the first time she had ridden it, three years before when she had been in Deling as a soldier, not a citizen. SeeD had been disbanded and its various members had scattered across the world. It was the beginning of a new age, where military power was a thing of the past and magic was forgotten in favor of technology. Sometimes, she still missed the thrill of ice magic on her fingertips.
Deling University, if its name was any indication, was incurably bland. The jaded instructors who made up its staff seemed to have missed the memo about Galbadia's new age, and as a result, the university seemed left behind in the confusion after the War. Quistis sat through hours of lectures about the fundamentals of para-magic (when the practice had been made illegal in Galbadia six months prior) and historical studies of the First Sorceress War. She felt old in a freshman class where most of the newcomers were fresh from secondary school. The girls giggled at nothing and seemed to regard college as a means of widening their social circles. Quistis had been considered an adult by Balamb standards when she had passed the SeeD exam at fifteen, and she felt like a strange laboratory specimen among the glitter and bubbliness of her classmates. The boys were equally disappointing, strutting around in jeans that looked like they would be brought down with a good dose of gravity, seeming to have nothing inside their skulls except commentaries of sports games the night before. As a conservatively-dressed, glasses-wearing, intelligent woman, she was ignored by the majority of the male student body. It was a change from her popularity at Garden, and she wasn't sure if she was glad at her obscurity or missed the attention.
After an unusually interesting chemistry lab, Quistis checked her schedule and found that she had two hours before her next class. Down the street was a small café that she had passed on her rare walks around the city, and she thought it might give her some peace from the noise of the campus. Most students had lunch at a popular hang-out on-campus, and she was looking forward to some time alone and in quiet.
A bell hanging on the door jingled as she walked into the café. The room was dimly-lit, and only a few middle-aged people occupied the circular tables around the room. The interior was comfortable compared to the white, air-conditioned classrooms of the university. She ordered at the counter and sat down in a corner to enjoy her tea and turkey wrap. She ate most of her meals alone since she had moved to Deling City. She had no friends to go out with, although she wasn't particularly lonely. She felt that she had needed to get away from Garden for awhile. Rinoa had e-mailed her once, asking how she was doing, and Selphie called her once in awhile. But Quistis didn't have any plans on going back.
There was a burst of warm air into the room as the door was opened, and then, "Quisty!"
She tensed. Only two people had ever called her that. She looked up as someone slid into the seat across from her. Irvine Kinneas--cowboy-hat-wearing, ponytailed, gray-eyed--regarded her with the same cocky grin she'd seen him wear while flirting and shooting things (often at the same time). One of the last people she wanted to see in this place (see her like this). It was as though one of the specters she had tried to forget had walked right back into her life.
"Irvine," she said, trying to hide her anxiety. "What are you doing here?" He looked the same as ever--although he was wearing a t-shirt instead of his coat--as though a day hadn't passed since he had stood beside her watching the sorceress fall. She had never been alone with him before, and she didn't know whether he would try to hook up or talk about old times. She wasn't sure which one she would have preferred.
"The last time I saw you," he said, clearly oblivious to her question, "it was at Squall and Rinoa's wedding." Quistis felt like she had swallowed a lemon. So it was the second choice, then. "Then you just left, and no one knew where you had gone until Sefy tracked you down."
She sighed. He'd come to ask questions, and she wasn't sure she was ready to answer them.
"I wanted a change of scenery," she replied, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear. "I got sick of Garden."
"Yeah, I can understand that," he said, and she wondered if he had been feeling restless, too. "But why didn't you tell us?"
I didn't want any of you to try to stop me. Or to follow me. "I had things I wanted to think about, I guess. I wanted to start over: get a degree, a nice job. I didn't want people to associate me with Quistis Who Helped Defeat the Sorceress."
Irvine idly swirled his coffee cup. His expression had grown more serious. "Cid was going to give your instructor's license back, he said. Guess you don't need it now."
She took a sip of tea, mustering up her courage. "How--how are they? Squall and the others?" How is he? Is Rinoa a good wife?
He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. "Well, Squall's the same as ever. I think I've actually seen him smile a few times, now that he and his dream girl are married. Zell teaches martial-arts classes at the school--"
"Zell Dincht?" Quistis smiled at the thought of the energetic young man being an instructor.
"Yeah, and supposedly all the girls love him. He has his own fan-club now." She really did laugh at that. "Anyway, Sefy went back to Trabia to help in the rebuilding effort. We, uh, took a break, I guess." For the first time since she'd known him, Irvine looked awkward. So they had started dating. Apparently it hadn't worked out. Quistis couldn't exactly blame him; Selphie's restlessness couldn't keep her tied down for long.
"Oh, I almost forgot," he continued, fixing his hat where it sat lop-sided on his brown hair. "Seifer was pardoned for his actions during the War. I think Matron had a lot to do with it. You should have seen the reunion between him and Squall. Hyne, I thought one of them would pull out a gunblade at any minute." She laughed. It was so typical of them, her two problem students.
"And me, then." He grinned. "I just got sick of the whole damn lot of 'em and thought I would try my luck at going to college. Deling U, home sweet home. I've always wanted to get into law enforcement. Transferring tomorrow, actually. I heard that this café had the prettiest hostess around." He cast a slightly lecherous gaze in the direction of the curvy red-head behind the counter.
Irvine clearly hadn't changed in the two years since she had seen him. He still liked the girls as much as ever, apparently.
"But then I saw you, Quisty," he continued. "You look the same, but--different, too. More confident, maybe. Everyone's changed, I guess."
"You haven't," Quistis said, and they laughed. And she realized that she had never laughed with Squall like that.
When she had paid for her meal, Irvine accompanied her out of the café. She squinted against the bright sunlight, and waited for the traffic to clear to cross the street. She stood for a minute, aware of how tall Irvine was next to her, aware of a feeling that two years away from home needed to make clear. Irvine was the one who had made her remember, made her face her past fears. His appearance had made her realize that she didn't have to cast her memories away to begin again.
"Thank you," she said, looking into his eyes shaded by the cowboy hat. He didn't ask what she meant. She turned away, smiling inside because she suddenly understood that she didn't have to run away anymore. He called to her from across the street.
"Would you maybe want to, like, go to dinner sometime, or something?" She'd always thought him a consummate ladies'-man, although this time he actually seemed nervous.
"That would be great!" she called back. He took off his hat and bowed, then disappeared in the crowd. As Quistis walked back to the university, she thought that she might consider giving Rinoa a call. In time, every broken heart could be mended. All it took was the right kind of laughter.
---------------------------------------
Notes: I hope this is what you were looking for, solitaryjane. I wanted to do something a little different with the pairing here. Mostly I wanted to delve into Quistis's character and the way Irvine changes her outlook.
For: solitaryjane
Medium: Fanfiction
Request: An FFVIII Irvine/Quistis story. Preferably takes place after the end of the game, or if you like, AU.
Fandom: FFVIII
Characters/Pairings: Quistis x Irvine
Rating/Warnings: G, no warnings
Feedback: I would really appreciate concrit for this.
Spoilers: for major plot events of FFVIII
Word Count: 1960
Summary: Three years after the Sorceress War, Quistis has fallen into a comfortable routine, leaving her years as a SeeD behind her. Unfortunately for her, Irvine is not about to let her forget in peace.
There and Back Again
I'm only a woman
Of flesh and bone
And I wept much
We all do
I thought I might die alone
But I had never met you
-- Rilo Kiley, "I Never"
The weather forecast said it was going to be another hot day. Quistis turned off the TV and finished the last of her morning coffee. She bustled around in a diligent pace, trying to find something to clean up. Cleaning was therapeutic for her, and her room was kept spotless, every object in its rightful place and not a crumb to be found on the floor. The apartment was small, with a kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. A single window shed some light on clean white sheets. A stuffed rabbit lay against the pillow, the only personal item in the room. A photograph was hung on the wall next to a small round mirror, showing a group of smiling teenagers. Quistis glanced at it as she walked by. She tried not to smile at how young everyone looked, happy that the sorceress had been defeated and the world was peaceful once more.
She straightened the books on her bookshelf--which contained mostly fiction--and checked the digital clock on her desk. She had forty-five minutes to get to class, and traffic could be terrible this early in Deling City. She grabbed her purse from its place hung over her chair and checked her make-up in the mirror. The young woman who looked back at her was hardly different than the one in the photo, although her hair was shorter and she wore glasses now full-time. She straightened her blouse and walked out the door.
She was greeted by a gust of hot air as she left her apartment building. As she walked down Third Street toward the bus stop she squinted against bright spring sunlight. Residents of the city walked by her, hurrying to some unknown destination as they chatted on cell phones. She listened to a few conversations taking place around her: business proposals, hushed arguments, quick peals of laughter. Teenage couples with too much body jewelry (she thought, sniffing indignantly) stood outside of the music store, arm in arm. She felt something deep in her stomach twinge in a way that felt too much like jealousy. She tried not to think of Squall and Rinoa, married and living in Winhill. There was a reason she moved to the largest city on the continent. It was easy to get lost among the crowded streets and gray buildings, and to become a nameless face among so many people. After growing up in a small place like Balamb, where every neighbor knew each other's name, the privacy that city life lent to Quistis was refreshing. She didn't have to worry about past memories showing up to create disorder in her routine existence.
She paid the bus fare and slid into a seat by the window. No one showed her any attention; not that she would have noticed if they had. Twenty-something women were common in Deling City, and Quistis was not the type to stand out. She much preferred it that way.
She was a regular commuter of City Bus 27, and the twenty-minute ride was a normal part of her day, although she remembered being disconcerted by the crowd the first time she had ridden it, three years before when she had been in Deling as a soldier, not a citizen. SeeD had been disbanded and its various members had scattered across the world. It was the beginning of a new age, where military power was a thing of the past and magic was forgotten in favor of technology. Sometimes, she still missed the thrill of ice magic on her fingertips.
Deling University, if its name was any indication, was incurably bland. The jaded instructors who made up its staff seemed to have missed the memo about Galbadia's new age, and as a result, the university seemed left behind in the confusion after the War. Quistis sat through hours of lectures about the fundamentals of para-magic (when the practice had been made illegal in Galbadia six months prior) and historical studies of the First Sorceress War. She felt old in a freshman class where most of the newcomers were fresh from secondary school. The girls giggled at nothing and seemed to regard college as a means of widening their social circles. Quistis had been considered an adult by Balamb standards when she had passed the SeeD exam at fifteen, and she felt like a strange laboratory specimen among the glitter and bubbliness of her classmates. The boys were equally disappointing, strutting around in jeans that looked like they would be brought down with a good dose of gravity, seeming to have nothing inside their skulls except commentaries of sports games the night before. As a conservatively-dressed, glasses-wearing, intelligent woman, she was ignored by the majority of the male student body. It was a change from her popularity at Garden, and she wasn't sure if she was glad at her obscurity or missed the attention.
After an unusually interesting chemistry lab, Quistis checked her schedule and found that she had two hours before her next class. Down the street was a small café that she had passed on her rare walks around the city, and she thought it might give her some peace from the noise of the campus. Most students had lunch at a popular hang-out on-campus, and she was looking forward to some time alone and in quiet.
A bell hanging on the door jingled as she walked into the café. The room was dimly-lit, and only a few middle-aged people occupied the circular tables around the room. The interior was comfortable compared to the white, air-conditioned classrooms of the university. She ordered at the counter and sat down in a corner to enjoy her tea and turkey wrap. She ate most of her meals alone since she had moved to Deling City. She had no friends to go out with, although she wasn't particularly lonely. She felt that she had needed to get away from Garden for awhile. Rinoa had e-mailed her once, asking how she was doing, and Selphie called her once in awhile. But Quistis didn't have any plans on going back.
There was a burst of warm air into the room as the door was opened, and then, "Quisty!"
She tensed. Only two people had ever called her that. She looked up as someone slid into the seat across from her. Irvine Kinneas--cowboy-hat-wearing, ponytailed, gray-eyed--regarded her with the same cocky grin she'd seen him wear while flirting and shooting things (often at the same time). One of the last people she wanted to see in this place (see her like this). It was as though one of the specters she had tried to forget had walked right back into her life.
"Irvine," she said, trying to hide her anxiety. "What are you doing here?" He looked the same as ever--although he was wearing a t-shirt instead of his coat--as though a day hadn't passed since he had stood beside her watching the sorceress fall. She had never been alone with him before, and she didn't know whether he would try to hook up or talk about old times. She wasn't sure which one she would have preferred.
"The last time I saw you," he said, clearly oblivious to her question, "it was at Squall and Rinoa's wedding." Quistis felt like she had swallowed a lemon. So it was the second choice, then. "Then you just left, and no one knew where you had gone until Sefy tracked you down."
She sighed. He'd come to ask questions, and she wasn't sure she was ready to answer them.
"I wanted a change of scenery," she replied, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear. "I got sick of Garden."
"Yeah, I can understand that," he said, and she wondered if he had been feeling restless, too. "But why didn't you tell us?"
I didn't want any of you to try to stop me. Or to follow me. "I had things I wanted to think about, I guess. I wanted to start over: get a degree, a nice job. I didn't want people to associate me with Quistis Who Helped Defeat the Sorceress."
Irvine idly swirled his coffee cup. His expression had grown more serious. "Cid was going to give your instructor's license back, he said. Guess you don't need it now."
She took a sip of tea, mustering up her courage. "How--how are they? Squall and the others?" How is he? Is Rinoa a good wife?
He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. "Well, Squall's the same as ever. I think I've actually seen him smile a few times, now that he and his dream girl are married. Zell teaches martial-arts classes at the school--"
"Zell Dincht?" Quistis smiled at the thought of the energetic young man being an instructor.
"Yeah, and supposedly all the girls love him. He has his own fan-club now." She really did laugh at that. "Anyway, Sefy went back to Trabia to help in the rebuilding effort. We, uh, took a break, I guess." For the first time since she'd known him, Irvine looked awkward. So they had started dating. Apparently it hadn't worked out. Quistis couldn't exactly blame him; Selphie's restlessness couldn't keep her tied down for long.
"Oh, I almost forgot," he continued, fixing his hat where it sat lop-sided on his brown hair. "Seifer was pardoned for his actions during the War. I think Matron had a lot to do with it. You should have seen the reunion between him and Squall. Hyne, I thought one of them would pull out a gunblade at any minute." She laughed. It was so typical of them, her two problem students.
"And me, then." He grinned. "I just got sick of the whole damn lot of 'em and thought I would try my luck at going to college. Deling U, home sweet home. I've always wanted to get into law enforcement. Transferring tomorrow, actually. I heard that this café had the prettiest hostess around." He cast a slightly lecherous gaze in the direction of the curvy red-head behind the counter.
Irvine clearly hadn't changed in the two years since she had seen him. He still liked the girls as much as ever, apparently.
"But then I saw you, Quisty," he continued. "You look the same, but--different, too. More confident, maybe. Everyone's changed, I guess."
"You haven't," Quistis said, and they laughed. And she realized that she had never laughed with Squall like that.
When she had paid for her meal, Irvine accompanied her out of the café. She squinted against the bright sunlight, and waited for the traffic to clear to cross the street. She stood for a minute, aware of how tall Irvine was next to her, aware of a feeling that two years away from home needed to make clear. Irvine was the one who had made her remember, made her face her past fears. His appearance had made her realize that she didn't have to cast her memories away to begin again.
"Thank you," she said, looking into his eyes shaded by the cowboy hat. He didn't ask what she meant. She turned away, smiling inside because she suddenly understood that she didn't have to run away anymore. He called to her from across the street.
"Would you maybe want to, like, go to dinner sometime, or something?" She'd always thought him a consummate ladies'-man, although this time he actually seemed nervous.
"That would be great!" she called back. He took off his hat and bowed, then disappeared in the crowd. As Quistis walked back to the university, she thought that she might consider giving Rinoa a call. In time, every broken heart could be mended. All it took was the right kind of laughter.
---------------------------------------
Notes: I hope this is what you were looking for, solitaryjane. I wanted to do something a little different with the pairing here. Mostly I wanted to delve into Quistis's character and the way Irvine changes her outlook.