Immortality on the Timber Line (FF8 [PG-13])
Title: Immortality on the Timber Line
Fandom: Final Fantasy VIII
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Irvine/Selphie
Summary: Sometimes the good guys and gals don't win the fight.
Notes: I started this (gosh, way back in March, I'm slow) for Twilightsrain's Irvine fanwork-a-thon, but at the time I couldn't figure out where I was going with it. All this time later I gave it another look, still didn't really know where I was going with it, but decided to finish it anyways.
Blood dribbles, less than sweet, less than pleasant, down his chin from his stained lips and he coughs weakly. He gives a slight groan. The electricity of magic fills him and sets his blood crackling with lightning, makes his eyes glow uncomfortably. He rolls over onto his back and stares at the bright sky. Selphie is shouting, shouting, shouting. He thinks she is shouting "cure", but he can't be sure. His ears hear only a sound like the buzz of electricity from the flimsy walls of cheap motels. He sees a white butterfly, or maybe that's just spots on his vision. Everything's a little hazy and he waves his hand vaguely across his vision, trying to sweep the darkness away.
"What happened?"
This is what Squall says when Irvine wakes up in the infirmary of Balamb Garden. What happened? As if it's so easy, as if he can just reach into the recesses of his dumb, frazzled mind back to that sky with the fake butterflies and dancing sunlight and remember. He wants to say no, to tell Squall to fuck off, to just go back to sleep and maybe turn comatose. What happened is what Squall says when he wakes up and he wishes the man had asked anything else from "Did you break my chair with the wheels" (which he completely had, but would not admit to, liking his ass un-kicked) to "Did you drink Dr. Kadowaki's sickening medicine that does not taste like cherries no matter what the hell the bottle says".
Squall does not ask these things. He does not even ask how Irvine is feeling. Instead he asks, "What happened," and leans back into the visitor chair, waiting for an answer. Irvine has to dredge it up from the recesses of his mind and even then he's not sure what happened himself. All he can think is that everything was fine one moment and the next he was coughing his pretty, red blood out all over the ground, nice and sanguine and sanguine was a vocabulary word he’d had in a class once, such a stupid word he could have sworn he'd never use it, but he always remembered it for no reason afterwards.
Irvine finds he doesn't want to remember what happened, to go back to that bright afternoon in the wild country outside Timber. It all reeks of something he can't abide, hasn't tasted since the Second Sorceress war, as they call the murder of the Galbadian president and Time Compression. What he tastes is failure and it is more than bitter, worse than Dr. Kadowaki's artificial cherry flavored medicine. It tastes like choking on his own blood and that's where all his memories pick up.
He rolls over and blood is pooling at the back of his throat, choking him. He turns his head, coughs weakly and there's Selphie. He thinks she's saying "Cure", but he can't be sure. He feels high, as if he's drunk one too many (which he's underage for, but no one would deprive a hero of a little alcohol), or as if he's charged with magic. He can't tell and if he had any drinks he doesn't remember them. Life's a bitch, hunh. Only he likes to think of life as a voluptuous bitch, or at least that's what he tells people. Frankly he thinks life's the asshole sitting in the corner that has a tab the size of a train wreck and is calling insults along the lines of "yo mama--!". He's glad he's never had a mama.
Squall doesn't want to know about life philosophies though; he's not the kind of guy to get intellectual. So Irvine tries to pull it all back even farther, farther than choking on his blood. He remembers being on fire and all he can think is stop, drop and roll, stop, drop and roll. Damn it Kinneas! Stop, drop and roll! He wants to do that, follow the well known drill, but he can't because, because, because... Selphie is shouting at him, shouting his name, shouting in horror and he can't let Selphie scream like that. Can't let her worry like that. But he can't drop and roll, he can't.
Cause...cause...the man! The man! And the man is screaming and Irvine is trying to put him out, stop the fire, just put it all out, but the man is beating at himself frantically and runs, runs, runs right into... And here Irvine stops because he doesn't want to remember it, remember the way the man, a soldier, was jumped by a pair of dogs and torn apart. Blood and limbs and screams and he could smell it, smell the burnt flesh, smell the cooked human meat.
He wants Squall to say it's okay, that he can stop, that he doesn't have to continue. Squall says no such thing, merely sits and waits for Irvine to piece it all together for him. Irvine takes a deep, shuddering breath that hurts his lungs and makes his ribs pop. He tries to remember how it all went.
He and Selphie got their mission from Squall, went out to the Timber countryside to protect the rail line from bandits. Sometimes they rode the train, sometimes they guarded the station at Timber, sometimes they walked up and down one side of the track or the other as a train came in or went out. There were soldiers too, Timber soldiers who were former resistance fighters; civilians, all of them. They hadn't turned into a real army, not yet. He remembered laughing, joking, with Selphie. They'd both been taking the duty lightly. Honestly, bandits? Who robbed trains anymore? Most valuables were escorted by armored cars and any trains with such were usually specially made and heavily guarded.
So he'd been taking the whole thing as time alone with Selphie. Laugh and joke and she was so pretty and damn it! Damn it all! Just fucking damn it!
He wants to rage and scream and throw things because he'd been so stupid, had screwed up, but Squall is sitting there waiting, waiting for him to get all the way through it, tell him what happened. What happened, what happened, what the hell happened...
And he remembers what the hell happened when he doesn't want to
It started out sort of like this and he doesn’t want to say it, but he does, cause that’s what Squall’s waiting for with his Commander look that demands prompt answer. Irvine finds it a bit of a hassle to piece everything together coherently; he thinks maybe he might have hit his head and then he laughs because he knows he hit his head. He can feel the massive bump throbbing like a hornets’ nest on the back of his skull and part of his face is under anesthetic he guesses, because it’s all numb and cold and if he could see it he bets the skin probably shows all piss yellow and frostbite black.
His mind drifts back, back, like pushing a rental car out of a ditch back and it sucks and it’s hard work, but you don’t get the easy life in an army, even a mercenary army. He remembers being on fire and before that he recalls killing a man who remains faceless, characterless, and way back before all that he remembers kissing Selphie underneath a tree on the edge of one of Timber’s random forests and that’s not where it all started.
He and Selphie left the Timber Station at fourteen hundred hours to watch for a train that was supposed to be coming in before dark. Three soldiers were with them, three soldiers that used to be part of a resistance group called the Forest Badgers. All the resistance groups seem to have been named Forest something or other. He guesses that’s what happens when all you’ve got to fight for it a bunch of scrubland trees and monsters that beat you up for lunch money. Timber is a hard land and he and Selphie were walking across it at fourteen hundred hours with three Timber soldiers.
He remembers, remembers it was a nice sort of day, the kind of day were the sun dances warm and bright with a few clouds to keep things from being too hot. The kind of day he would have taken Selphie down to the Balamb wharf to eat ice cream and talk about nothing that meant all sorts of things. They hadn’t been in Balamb though, they had been in Timber. He remembers being in Timber walking next to the train tracks.
Selphie is on one side of the tracks, he’s on the other and the three guards are continually crossing back and forth across the rails, eyes out for dynamite and anything else left in inconvenient places. They all talk about meaningless things; the mayor’s celebrity daughter, what they plan to do when they get back in to Timber for the night, the latest issue of Weapons Monthly.
No one really expects to find anything, for anything to happen. After all, they’ve been up and down these tracks thousands of times and they’ve yet to find a single damning thing. No train has even been so much as accosted by anything that isn’t part of Timber’s wild countryside since SeeD arrived; since Selphie and he arrived.
It is as they’re passing a particular patch of forest, one with a lot of silly ghost stories that nobody really believes, that everything sort of falls apart. He’d been working Selphie towards a heavy, distracting kiss for the past half hour to make up for the one the soldiers interrupted earlier and it seemed all his hard efforts were going to pay off soon. Everything was silent. Just sparse wind and their voices.
That should have been their first clue. Nothing is ever silent near a forest. Birds, squirrels, cockatrices, fungi; they’re always making noise, always watching to see who, precisely, is walking through their well unkempt front yard. They don’t notice though. That’s how they walk right into the trap, weapons down, backs turned, eyes looking in all the wrong places.
The fight doesn’t start real slow, but bursts out of the bushes in perfect time with the soldier next to him bursting into flames. Men are streaming out from behind the trees and these must be the bandits they have been looking for. Instinct kicks in and he levels his rifle, firing off a shot without a single pause. One bandit goes down and the soldier next to him is screaming, screaming, screaming.
Irvine moves to help him and his foot steps on something hidden and metallic: a mine, one of those cheap magical ones that go off at the slightest touch. The mine activates beneath him and he finds himself in a personal firestorm similar to the soldier. Selphie is across the tracks and she’s got this look on her face like he maybe just told her the Garden Festival Committee was merging with the Library Committee. He’s trying not to panic as his skin starts to crack and fry. He thinks he smells himself cooking and this is not a pleasant thought, one of many thoughts that fly through his head like darts, just every which way.
Stop, drop and roll, he’s thinking, just stop, drop and roll. The soldier next to him isn’t thinking though. He’s screaming and running and screaming, screaming, screaming for the mama he was privileged to have. Irvine tries to grab him, shove him to the dusty summer ground that’ll put him out. He misses though and the soldier runs right into the trees, right into the trap.
The screams are torn into silence right along with the soldier’s throat. Two more dogs leap from the woods to join the first one in finishing off the man. Raw is not raw enough for these animals. A water spell hits Irvine as he stares and he can feel the stinging pain of third degree burns. There is the hiss of steam and the bark of dogs while Selphie shouts his name, shouts for him. His body still feels aflame and it is a struggle to think.
They’re outnumbered. It’s five-now four-to twelve people with six guns and three dogs who begin to spread out in an entrapping circle. He starts to raise his hands, but the Timber soldiers do not understand the concept of strategic surrender. They charge the bandits as if the incoming train holds crown jewels for their non-existent monarchy rather than a shipment of hi-potions and remedies along with maybe five hundred gil cold cash nuzzled warm in individual wallets and purses.
Irvine’s trying to think, think of what to do. His fingers aren’t thinking and his hands fire off his gun automatically. A man goes down. That leaves eleven. He can’t take on eleven men with just him and Selphie and some resistance fighters used to playing pranks on Galbadians. That’s not even counting the dogs.
There’s a shout and a sickening crunch. A second man falls to the ground, eyes wide and glazed. The imprint of Selphie’s nunchuks is all over his face. That leaves ten. And no way out. They’re surrounded.
A Cure washes over Irvine, blessedly cold and soothing. It floods into his skin, healing the burns to the point where they don’t ouch so much. Where firing his gun doesn’t make him yelp like a kicked puppy. He’s left no time to contemplate how his skin may never be baby smooth again. One of the Timber soldiers has taken a bandit down through sheer force of superior weight. Nine. The other Timber soldier’s trying to keep a dog at bay. Irvine quickly reloads his gun and fires. The dog goes down.
And now-“Irvine!” Selphie shouts-at least he thinks Selphie’s shouting. Something connects with the back of his head, knocking off his hat and sending him face first into the dirt. He tastes blood.
And then the dogs are on him, teeth ripping into his jacket, paws trying to claw through to his tender flesh. He tries to roll over, get up, get away-the weight of the dogs keeps him down. There’s shouting and gunfire-he thinks someone’s cursing, but it’s hard to tell over the snarl of the dogs. Then he realizes that it’s him swearing and he’s two seconds away from screaming.
Electricity jolts through his body and Irvine can’t even yell, momentarily paralyzed as the smell of scorched fur fills his senses. The dogs lay limp atop him and it’s painful to move. His head is swimming and at some distant level he realizes he just got hit with friendly fire. That was para-magic-had to be Selphie. He’s sure it was the only way to get the damn dogs, but it still hurts like hell.
A slow roll onto his back and his nose is bleeding, he can tell. The way it hurts to breath and the feel of blood as it trickles slowly back up his nose to continue down his throat. He tries to collect himself. Stop the lights in his vision from flashing, focus on the world. He’s got to stand up, got to move. Got to pick up his gun and shoot down some bandits.
He’s choking on his own blood.
“Cure!” Magic hits him like a punch, sinks into the bruises, the internal damage. A rib pops back into place and he feels nauseas. He coughs, splutters, tries to keep breathing. “Cure!” He turns his head and sees Selphie through overly bright vision. She’s shouting, glowing with para-magic. There’s a blur behind her that he can’t make out. He sweeps his hand across his eyes, trying to brush away the darkness creeping in on the corners of his sight.
When Irvine looks again the blur is just a little clearer. And it’s got Selphie from behind, a vaguely distinctive arm wrapped around her throat. He tries to stand up-his bones protest and a muscle throbs like it’s been torn. He tries to grab his gun-he doesn’t have the strength to lift it. He coughs out a curse and tries to grab a spell, any spell, from the back of his mind and barbeque the son of a bitch touching his girl.
The para-magic comes to his fingers, little scorching tingles shuddering down his arm. He’s going to do this, he’s going to-
An unforgiving foot connects with his side and he loses his grip on the spell. A second foot kicks him in the face and he’s not certain, but it feels like a tooth’s come loose. Something connects with his knee and pain flares sharp. His vision’s going dark, it’s hard to breathe, the bruises and the pain are endless and-
When Irvine wakes up it’s dark, so very dark. His face feels swollen and simply being alive is excruciating. He tries to assess the situation. Quick, cursory glances left and right-just dark shapes that might be trees and bushes. If he looks up there’s a sliver of moon.
It’s a long time before he can steel himself for the pain that comes with taking a real look around. When he does he grits his teeth and shifts so he can look in all directions. Pain washes over him and he has to stop for a moment and try and keep his last meal down. He’s still by the train tracks. There’s bodies. Looks around ten, maybe more he’s missing in the shadows. Two he recognizes as Timber soldiers, the ones on duty with him. He crawls over to them, biting his jacket to stifle his yelps. One has three bullet holes in the chest. The other bears bite marks and signs of heavy blood loss. They’re both dead. Eight feet away another corpse wears what looks like it could have once been a Timber uniform. The third soldier-the first casualty.
Then there’s the dogs and five men. Not bad for a group taken by surprise. The last one is Selphie and Irvine pulls her head into his lap, trying not to get the blood welling from his aggravated wounds on her pretty face. She’s so pale-“Come on Selph’, you can’t go dying on me now sweetheart,” he whispers through bruised lips. He wants to cry. It’s too painful to even try.
When he checks her pulse he finds she’s breathing, barely. He’s not sure for how much longer though. Not if they stay out here with the beasts and the bandits and no doctors to be found. He draws a few Cures from Selphie with a murmured apology. Then he picks her up and starts walking. It’s hard to think, but he vaguely recalls being around forty-five minutes out from Timber.
He takes a few steps and falls to his knees. His right leg throbs painfully-it’s broken, it won’t support his weight. He checks Selphie. Her wrist is broken, she has a black eye, there’s a bullet wound in her shoulder and heavy bruising outlines her throat like she’s been choked. He knows there’s more-he’s afraid to give a proper examination with his hands and not just his sight. Afraid he’ll make the pain she’s in worse. He casts one of the Cures-that leaves him with two-on Selphie. Her breathing evens out a little, sounds a bit stronger.
Then he drapes her over his back and starts crawling. Cause that distance isn’t going to shorten itself. Only forty-five minutes to go.
Things don’t go as smoothly as Irvine hopes. He wanders in a land of delusion and ends up having to keep one hand on the tracks to make sure he’s not off course. The fear that a train might come and take his arm clear off is not a comforting one. What’s even more frightening is how he drifts in and out of consciousness. He wakes up several times to find himself splayed out spread eagle on the ground. He can never remember drifting off.
He tries to keep going as much as he can, but rests are frequent and long. The more time passes, the longer the rests get. He casts another Cure on Selphie when her shoulder starts bleeding heavily again. Now he’s only got one and he’s afraid to use it because he doesn’t think Selphie has anymore to draw.
Time seems to stretch on forever and he swears he’s been going for more than forty-five minutes, but surely he’d have hit Timber by now if he had. The thought that he’s been going in the wrong direction the whole time is more than he can cope with. He tries to not think about the passing of time, that every minute is another minute something could go even more wrong. The bandits could catch up, a monster could get hungry, a train could come down the tracks-he could succumb to the blood loss that’s making his head spin and never wake up again.
The sun has risen by the time Irvine runs into a solid, concrete wall. His hands, chapped and torn bloody through his gloves, probe the thing, trying to ascertain if it’s real or not. He’s had several hallucinations over the past three hours-no if this is Timber it could only have been forty-five minutes. He’s sure it’s been at least three hours though since he started crawling. Maybe this is one of the lonely stations strung out along the Timber line in the wilderness. That explains the time. He must have been going the wrong way.
Well there should be a phone. He doesn’t think he has any gil, but Garden can handle a collect call. Just…it’s really not much after all he’s been through, but the thought of hauling himself up onto the station platform is more than he thinks he can handle. He wraps Selphie’s arms around him tightly and forces himself to stand. His knees buckle. It takes five tries.
For a long time he rests with his forehead on the concrete, hands on the platform. Then he starts pulling himself up. It’s like pull-ups from hell and his muscles scream-he thinks maybe he’s screaming. Can’t tell, can’t be sure. He lost all sense of self somewhere around half an hour ago and he feels like he’s floating outside his own body. It’s a very strange feeling. Maybe he’s halfway to Heaven or something. If he gets to go to Heaven.
Selphie slips and he frantically grabs her arm, holding her with desperate strength that’s fading fast. He’s got to get up. He’s got to. It takes the last of everything he has to get the two of them up onto the platform. He collapses, Selphie still on his back and he’s drifting out of consciousness again. He should use that last Cure. Still has to make that call… The last thing he hears is the chime of a bell and the recorded voice of the train announcer. “Five o’clock train from Balamb to Timber now arriving. Please step back from the edge of the platform. Five o’clock train from….”
Next time Irvine wakes up it’s to searing pain and he imagines he’s on fire again. He tries to sit up, beat out the flames. Hands hold him back. He almost sobs. It was a dream, the bandits must have him, they must be sadistic bastards and decided to torture him for information. He’s going to die.
But he isn’t going to die nicely, that’s for sure.
The first kick catches someone in the face. The second hits a stomach and there’s a gasp and the sound of dropping metal. More hands restrain his feet and a weight comes down heavily on his broken leg, dragging a strangled scream from his throat. The pain-and he has to do something-use a spell-call a GF-something is jammed into his arm and pumps him full of what’s got to be sedatives. The world-already hazy and overly bright-bends and distorts like some trippy drug abuse ride. He thinks he’s going to be sick. All the lights go out.
Next time Irvine wakes up it’s a little more pleasantly. When he opens his eyes his surroundings come into focus, if a little slowly and reluctantly. He recognizes Balamb Garden’s infirmary. He’s visited, but he’s never actually enjoyed its hospitality before. It’s the first time he’s found himself in an infirmary bed. He’s got to be in a bad way if he’s not allowed to rest in his own room.
He thinks he’s alone, but a hazy form shifts and draws his attention. “Awake?” Dr. Kadowaki asks, peeling back his eyelids and shining a light in his face. He tries to say something, emits a painful croak, stops. He’s thirsty. His throat’s dry as paper and dead leaves.
“No kicking this time,” Dr. Kadowaki says and this has got to be a dream. But the infirmary looks so real and he can feel Dr. Kadowaki’s hand on his forehead checking for a fever. He wants to ask how he’s still alive. It’s a struggle to stay awake. His eyes close.
It isn’t till much later, when he’s a little better that he learns about the aftermath. He and Selphie being found at the station, the calls, SeeD arriving. Xu, Quistis and Zell hunting down the bandits and bringing them to justice. Contract fulfilled, no need to stick around listening to the Timber mayor complain about the screw up of the first team. Back to Garden and a prolonged stay in the infirmary.
He wasn’t awake for any of this, so he hears it second hand. Quistis visits, sometimes Zell. Rinoa comes a lot, talks about all sorts of things, keeps his mind occupied. He’s not allowed to see Selphie. Dr. Kadowaki says he can when he can walk under his own power. Till then he can sit in bed and feel sorry for himself.
He doesn’t feel sorry for himself. At least not much. He feels angry. He hates himself.
Four weeks and he’s doing pretty good. Squall comes in, his second visit, the first being sometime in the beginning when Irvine was unconscious. Squall doesn’t say little nice things, ask how he’s doing, talk about what’s going on around Garden like everyone else does. He sits down and waits with his Commander face.
He asks what happened.
It takes Irvine forty minutes to work his way through the muddled confusion of his mind and give a decent report. After he does Squall stands. Irvine feels worse than ever. He wants to apologize, say he knows he fucked up, promise it’ll never happen again. He can’t make that promise and he knows it. He can’t win the fight every time. He just wishes he could.
“Your gun’s in your room. We recovered it for you,” Squall says, pausing at the door. “Selphie’s back in the dorms. She’s confined to her room for bed rest. You can go see her tonight. If Dr. Kadowaki complains say I said it’s okay.”
Then Squall’s gone and Irvine’s left to himself for the rest of the day. Thoughts run through his head and he’s not sure what to do. When twenty hundred hours rolls around he gets up stiffly out of bed. Though he knows his bones are going to ache sharply tomorrow for this, he shrugs on his battered coat hanging on the back of a chair, puts on his singed hat and makes his way out of the infirmary. He has to grip furniture as he passes, this being the first time he’s walked in over a month.
His muscles jump with the motions and he feels unstable. He walks down the hall with a hand on the wall, afraid he’ll fall over without that steadying factor. It’s a long way to the dorms. He gets there eventually.
When he knocks on the door to Selphie’s room he hears something drop on the other side. The door opens and he slips in. It closes behind him and he leans against it for support, knees aching and tired.
Selphie looks at him with a face as battered as his own feels. He touches her cheek softly, but even that makes her wince in pain. For a long time they say nothing. Then his legs give out and he slides down to the floor. She joins him, takes his hand. Her wrist is in a cast, two of her fingers in splints.
“Still as pretty as ever, princess,” Irvine says, breaking the silence. Selphie grins and tugs lightly on the brim of his hat. “Still kicking, hunh?” She asks and then the smile fades. She squeezes his fingers. They both share the fear of what might have happened. Neither wants to die, not this early in life.
“We didn’t pick the smart career, that’s for sure,” Irvine jokes and flashes Selphie a shaky grin that she returns. Tears come to Irvine’s eyes; he tries to hide them, but it doesn’t help. Selphie pulls his head to her until he’s crying silently into her shoulder.
“Shh, it’s okay,” She whispers, holding him like he might disappear. She’s quivering. Tears are streaking down her face too. “I screwed up,” Irvine mumbles into her shoulder and she rests her head atop his.
“You did not,” she says, but her voice isn’t as firm as they’d both like it to be. “We couldn’t have known. It could have happened to anyone, it-”
Selphie breaks off with a hiccup that’s half a sob. “I never want to be caught off guard like that again,” Irvine breathes, shifting so he can wrap an arm around Selphie.
“Me neither,” she agrees. They’d thought maybe they were a bit invincible. They’d taken on Ultimecia, they’d come back alive from Time Compression. They were heroes. What could hurt them?
They’d forgotten all it took was a bullet and some luck.
They spend the rest of the night together, reassuring one another that they’re both still alive.
Fandom: Final Fantasy VIII
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Irvine/Selphie
Summary: Sometimes the good guys and gals don't win the fight.
Notes: I started this (gosh, way back in March, I'm slow) for Twilightsrain's Irvine fanwork-a-thon, but at the time I couldn't figure out where I was going with it. All this time later I gave it another look, still didn't really know where I was going with it, but decided to finish it anyways.
Blood dribbles, less than sweet, less than pleasant, down his chin from his stained lips and he coughs weakly. He gives a slight groan. The electricity of magic fills him and sets his blood crackling with lightning, makes his eyes glow uncomfortably. He rolls over onto his back and stares at the bright sky. Selphie is shouting, shouting, shouting. He thinks she is shouting "cure", but he can't be sure. His ears hear only a sound like the buzz of electricity from the flimsy walls of cheap motels. He sees a white butterfly, or maybe that's just spots on his vision. Everything's a little hazy and he waves his hand vaguely across his vision, trying to sweep the darkness away.
"What happened?"
This is what Squall says when Irvine wakes up in the infirmary of Balamb Garden. What happened? As if it's so easy, as if he can just reach into the recesses of his dumb, frazzled mind back to that sky with the fake butterflies and dancing sunlight and remember. He wants to say no, to tell Squall to fuck off, to just go back to sleep and maybe turn comatose. What happened is what Squall says when he wakes up and he wishes the man had asked anything else from "Did you break my chair with the wheels" (which he completely had, but would not admit to, liking his ass un-kicked) to "Did you drink Dr. Kadowaki's sickening medicine that does not taste like cherries no matter what the hell the bottle says".
Squall does not ask these things. He does not even ask how Irvine is feeling. Instead he asks, "What happened," and leans back into the visitor chair, waiting for an answer. Irvine has to dredge it up from the recesses of his mind and even then he's not sure what happened himself. All he can think is that everything was fine one moment and the next he was coughing his pretty, red blood out all over the ground, nice and sanguine and sanguine was a vocabulary word he’d had in a class once, such a stupid word he could have sworn he'd never use it, but he always remembered it for no reason afterwards.
Irvine finds he doesn't want to remember what happened, to go back to that bright afternoon in the wild country outside Timber. It all reeks of something he can't abide, hasn't tasted since the Second Sorceress war, as they call the murder of the Galbadian president and Time Compression. What he tastes is failure and it is more than bitter, worse than Dr. Kadowaki's artificial cherry flavored medicine. It tastes like choking on his own blood and that's where all his memories pick up.
He rolls over and blood is pooling at the back of his throat, choking him. He turns his head, coughs weakly and there's Selphie. He thinks she's saying "Cure", but he can't be sure. He feels high, as if he's drunk one too many (which he's underage for, but no one would deprive a hero of a little alcohol), or as if he's charged with magic. He can't tell and if he had any drinks he doesn't remember them. Life's a bitch, hunh. Only he likes to think of life as a voluptuous bitch, or at least that's what he tells people. Frankly he thinks life's the asshole sitting in the corner that has a tab the size of a train wreck and is calling insults along the lines of "yo mama--!". He's glad he's never had a mama.
Squall doesn't want to know about life philosophies though; he's not the kind of guy to get intellectual. So Irvine tries to pull it all back even farther, farther than choking on his blood. He remembers being on fire and all he can think is stop, drop and roll, stop, drop and roll. Damn it Kinneas! Stop, drop and roll! He wants to do that, follow the well known drill, but he can't because, because, because... Selphie is shouting at him, shouting his name, shouting in horror and he can't let Selphie scream like that. Can't let her worry like that. But he can't drop and roll, he can't.
Cause...cause...the man! The man! And the man is screaming and Irvine is trying to put him out, stop the fire, just put it all out, but the man is beating at himself frantically and runs, runs, runs right into... And here Irvine stops because he doesn't want to remember it, remember the way the man, a soldier, was jumped by a pair of dogs and torn apart. Blood and limbs and screams and he could smell it, smell the burnt flesh, smell the cooked human meat.
He wants Squall to say it's okay, that he can stop, that he doesn't have to continue. Squall says no such thing, merely sits and waits for Irvine to piece it all together for him. Irvine takes a deep, shuddering breath that hurts his lungs and makes his ribs pop. He tries to remember how it all went.
He and Selphie got their mission from Squall, went out to the Timber countryside to protect the rail line from bandits. Sometimes they rode the train, sometimes they guarded the station at Timber, sometimes they walked up and down one side of the track or the other as a train came in or went out. There were soldiers too, Timber soldiers who were former resistance fighters; civilians, all of them. They hadn't turned into a real army, not yet. He remembered laughing, joking, with Selphie. They'd both been taking the duty lightly. Honestly, bandits? Who robbed trains anymore? Most valuables were escorted by armored cars and any trains with such were usually specially made and heavily guarded.
So he'd been taking the whole thing as time alone with Selphie. Laugh and joke and she was so pretty and damn it! Damn it all! Just fucking damn it!
He wants to rage and scream and throw things because he'd been so stupid, had screwed up, but Squall is sitting there waiting, waiting for him to get all the way through it, tell him what happened. What happened, what happened, what the hell happened...
And he remembers what the hell happened when he doesn't want to
It started out sort of like this and he doesn’t want to say it, but he does, cause that’s what Squall’s waiting for with his Commander look that demands prompt answer. Irvine finds it a bit of a hassle to piece everything together coherently; he thinks maybe he might have hit his head and then he laughs because he knows he hit his head. He can feel the massive bump throbbing like a hornets’ nest on the back of his skull and part of his face is under anesthetic he guesses, because it’s all numb and cold and if he could see it he bets the skin probably shows all piss yellow and frostbite black.
His mind drifts back, back, like pushing a rental car out of a ditch back and it sucks and it’s hard work, but you don’t get the easy life in an army, even a mercenary army. He remembers being on fire and before that he recalls killing a man who remains faceless, characterless, and way back before all that he remembers kissing Selphie underneath a tree on the edge of one of Timber’s random forests and that’s not where it all started.
He and Selphie left the Timber Station at fourteen hundred hours to watch for a train that was supposed to be coming in before dark. Three soldiers were with them, three soldiers that used to be part of a resistance group called the Forest Badgers. All the resistance groups seem to have been named Forest something or other. He guesses that’s what happens when all you’ve got to fight for it a bunch of scrubland trees and monsters that beat you up for lunch money. Timber is a hard land and he and Selphie were walking across it at fourteen hundred hours with three Timber soldiers.
He remembers, remembers it was a nice sort of day, the kind of day were the sun dances warm and bright with a few clouds to keep things from being too hot. The kind of day he would have taken Selphie down to the Balamb wharf to eat ice cream and talk about nothing that meant all sorts of things. They hadn’t been in Balamb though, they had been in Timber. He remembers being in Timber walking next to the train tracks.
Selphie is on one side of the tracks, he’s on the other and the three guards are continually crossing back and forth across the rails, eyes out for dynamite and anything else left in inconvenient places. They all talk about meaningless things; the mayor’s celebrity daughter, what they plan to do when they get back in to Timber for the night, the latest issue of Weapons Monthly.
No one really expects to find anything, for anything to happen. After all, they’ve been up and down these tracks thousands of times and they’ve yet to find a single damning thing. No train has even been so much as accosted by anything that isn’t part of Timber’s wild countryside since SeeD arrived; since Selphie and he arrived.
It is as they’re passing a particular patch of forest, one with a lot of silly ghost stories that nobody really believes, that everything sort of falls apart. He’d been working Selphie towards a heavy, distracting kiss for the past half hour to make up for the one the soldiers interrupted earlier and it seemed all his hard efforts were going to pay off soon. Everything was silent. Just sparse wind and their voices.
That should have been their first clue. Nothing is ever silent near a forest. Birds, squirrels, cockatrices, fungi; they’re always making noise, always watching to see who, precisely, is walking through their well unkempt front yard. They don’t notice though. That’s how they walk right into the trap, weapons down, backs turned, eyes looking in all the wrong places.
The fight doesn’t start real slow, but bursts out of the bushes in perfect time with the soldier next to him bursting into flames. Men are streaming out from behind the trees and these must be the bandits they have been looking for. Instinct kicks in and he levels his rifle, firing off a shot without a single pause. One bandit goes down and the soldier next to him is screaming, screaming, screaming.
Irvine moves to help him and his foot steps on something hidden and metallic: a mine, one of those cheap magical ones that go off at the slightest touch. The mine activates beneath him and he finds himself in a personal firestorm similar to the soldier. Selphie is across the tracks and she’s got this look on her face like he maybe just told her the Garden Festival Committee was merging with the Library Committee. He’s trying not to panic as his skin starts to crack and fry. He thinks he smells himself cooking and this is not a pleasant thought, one of many thoughts that fly through his head like darts, just every which way.
Stop, drop and roll, he’s thinking, just stop, drop and roll. The soldier next to him isn’t thinking though. He’s screaming and running and screaming, screaming, screaming for the mama he was privileged to have. Irvine tries to grab him, shove him to the dusty summer ground that’ll put him out. He misses though and the soldier runs right into the trees, right into the trap.
The screams are torn into silence right along with the soldier’s throat. Two more dogs leap from the woods to join the first one in finishing off the man. Raw is not raw enough for these animals. A water spell hits Irvine as he stares and he can feel the stinging pain of third degree burns. There is the hiss of steam and the bark of dogs while Selphie shouts his name, shouts for him. His body still feels aflame and it is a struggle to think.
They’re outnumbered. It’s five-now four-to twelve people with six guns and three dogs who begin to spread out in an entrapping circle. He starts to raise his hands, but the Timber soldiers do not understand the concept of strategic surrender. They charge the bandits as if the incoming train holds crown jewels for their non-existent monarchy rather than a shipment of hi-potions and remedies along with maybe five hundred gil cold cash nuzzled warm in individual wallets and purses.
Irvine’s trying to think, think of what to do. His fingers aren’t thinking and his hands fire off his gun automatically. A man goes down. That leaves eleven. He can’t take on eleven men with just him and Selphie and some resistance fighters used to playing pranks on Galbadians. That’s not even counting the dogs.
There’s a shout and a sickening crunch. A second man falls to the ground, eyes wide and glazed. The imprint of Selphie’s nunchuks is all over his face. That leaves ten. And no way out. They’re surrounded.
A Cure washes over Irvine, blessedly cold and soothing. It floods into his skin, healing the burns to the point where they don’t ouch so much. Where firing his gun doesn’t make him yelp like a kicked puppy. He’s left no time to contemplate how his skin may never be baby smooth again. One of the Timber soldiers has taken a bandit down through sheer force of superior weight. Nine. The other Timber soldier’s trying to keep a dog at bay. Irvine quickly reloads his gun and fires. The dog goes down.
And now-“Irvine!” Selphie shouts-at least he thinks Selphie’s shouting. Something connects with the back of his head, knocking off his hat and sending him face first into the dirt. He tastes blood.
And then the dogs are on him, teeth ripping into his jacket, paws trying to claw through to his tender flesh. He tries to roll over, get up, get away-the weight of the dogs keeps him down. There’s shouting and gunfire-he thinks someone’s cursing, but it’s hard to tell over the snarl of the dogs. Then he realizes that it’s him swearing and he’s two seconds away from screaming.
Electricity jolts through his body and Irvine can’t even yell, momentarily paralyzed as the smell of scorched fur fills his senses. The dogs lay limp atop him and it’s painful to move. His head is swimming and at some distant level he realizes he just got hit with friendly fire. That was para-magic-had to be Selphie. He’s sure it was the only way to get the damn dogs, but it still hurts like hell.
A slow roll onto his back and his nose is bleeding, he can tell. The way it hurts to breath and the feel of blood as it trickles slowly back up his nose to continue down his throat. He tries to collect himself. Stop the lights in his vision from flashing, focus on the world. He’s got to stand up, got to move. Got to pick up his gun and shoot down some bandits.
He’s choking on his own blood.
“Cure!” Magic hits him like a punch, sinks into the bruises, the internal damage. A rib pops back into place and he feels nauseas. He coughs, splutters, tries to keep breathing. “Cure!” He turns his head and sees Selphie through overly bright vision. She’s shouting, glowing with para-magic. There’s a blur behind her that he can’t make out. He sweeps his hand across his eyes, trying to brush away the darkness creeping in on the corners of his sight.
When Irvine looks again the blur is just a little clearer. And it’s got Selphie from behind, a vaguely distinctive arm wrapped around her throat. He tries to stand up-his bones protest and a muscle throbs like it’s been torn. He tries to grab his gun-he doesn’t have the strength to lift it. He coughs out a curse and tries to grab a spell, any spell, from the back of his mind and barbeque the son of a bitch touching his girl.
The para-magic comes to his fingers, little scorching tingles shuddering down his arm. He’s going to do this, he’s going to-
An unforgiving foot connects with his side and he loses his grip on the spell. A second foot kicks him in the face and he’s not certain, but it feels like a tooth’s come loose. Something connects with his knee and pain flares sharp. His vision’s going dark, it’s hard to breathe, the bruises and the pain are endless and-
When Irvine wakes up it’s dark, so very dark. His face feels swollen and simply being alive is excruciating. He tries to assess the situation. Quick, cursory glances left and right-just dark shapes that might be trees and bushes. If he looks up there’s a sliver of moon.
It’s a long time before he can steel himself for the pain that comes with taking a real look around. When he does he grits his teeth and shifts so he can look in all directions. Pain washes over him and he has to stop for a moment and try and keep his last meal down. He’s still by the train tracks. There’s bodies. Looks around ten, maybe more he’s missing in the shadows. Two he recognizes as Timber soldiers, the ones on duty with him. He crawls over to them, biting his jacket to stifle his yelps. One has three bullet holes in the chest. The other bears bite marks and signs of heavy blood loss. They’re both dead. Eight feet away another corpse wears what looks like it could have once been a Timber uniform. The third soldier-the first casualty.
Then there’s the dogs and five men. Not bad for a group taken by surprise. The last one is Selphie and Irvine pulls her head into his lap, trying not to get the blood welling from his aggravated wounds on her pretty face. She’s so pale-“Come on Selph’, you can’t go dying on me now sweetheart,” he whispers through bruised lips. He wants to cry. It’s too painful to even try.
When he checks her pulse he finds she’s breathing, barely. He’s not sure for how much longer though. Not if they stay out here with the beasts and the bandits and no doctors to be found. He draws a few Cures from Selphie with a murmured apology. Then he picks her up and starts walking. It’s hard to think, but he vaguely recalls being around forty-five minutes out from Timber.
He takes a few steps and falls to his knees. His right leg throbs painfully-it’s broken, it won’t support his weight. He checks Selphie. Her wrist is broken, she has a black eye, there’s a bullet wound in her shoulder and heavy bruising outlines her throat like she’s been choked. He knows there’s more-he’s afraid to give a proper examination with his hands and not just his sight. Afraid he’ll make the pain she’s in worse. He casts one of the Cures-that leaves him with two-on Selphie. Her breathing evens out a little, sounds a bit stronger.
Then he drapes her over his back and starts crawling. Cause that distance isn’t going to shorten itself. Only forty-five minutes to go.
Things don’t go as smoothly as Irvine hopes. He wanders in a land of delusion and ends up having to keep one hand on the tracks to make sure he’s not off course. The fear that a train might come and take his arm clear off is not a comforting one. What’s even more frightening is how he drifts in and out of consciousness. He wakes up several times to find himself splayed out spread eagle on the ground. He can never remember drifting off.
He tries to keep going as much as he can, but rests are frequent and long. The more time passes, the longer the rests get. He casts another Cure on Selphie when her shoulder starts bleeding heavily again. Now he’s only got one and he’s afraid to use it because he doesn’t think Selphie has anymore to draw.
Time seems to stretch on forever and he swears he’s been going for more than forty-five minutes, but surely he’d have hit Timber by now if he had. The thought that he’s been going in the wrong direction the whole time is more than he can cope with. He tries to not think about the passing of time, that every minute is another minute something could go even more wrong. The bandits could catch up, a monster could get hungry, a train could come down the tracks-he could succumb to the blood loss that’s making his head spin and never wake up again.
The sun has risen by the time Irvine runs into a solid, concrete wall. His hands, chapped and torn bloody through his gloves, probe the thing, trying to ascertain if it’s real or not. He’s had several hallucinations over the past three hours-no if this is Timber it could only have been forty-five minutes. He’s sure it’s been at least three hours though since he started crawling. Maybe this is one of the lonely stations strung out along the Timber line in the wilderness. That explains the time. He must have been going the wrong way.
Well there should be a phone. He doesn’t think he has any gil, but Garden can handle a collect call. Just…it’s really not much after all he’s been through, but the thought of hauling himself up onto the station platform is more than he thinks he can handle. He wraps Selphie’s arms around him tightly and forces himself to stand. His knees buckle. It takes five tries.
For a long time he rests with his forehead on the concrete, hands on the platform. Then he starts pulling himself up. It’s like pull-ups from hell and his muscles scream-he thinks maybe he’s screaming. Can’t tell, can’t be sure. He lost all sense of self somewhere around half an hour ago and he feels like he’s floating outside his own body. It’s a very strange feeling. Maybe he’s halfway to Heaven or something. If he gets to go to Heaven.
Selphie slips and he frantically grabs her arm, holding her with desperate strength that’s fading fast. He’s got to get up. He’s got to. It takes the last of everything he has to get the two of them up onto the platform. He collapses, Selphie still on his back and he’s drifting out of consciousness again. He should use that last Cure. Still has to make that call… The last thing he hears is the chime of a bell and the recorded voice of the train announcer. “Five o’clock train from Balamb to Timber now arriving. Please step back from the edge of the platform. Five o’clock train from….”
Next time Irvine wakes up it’s to searing pain and he imagines he’s on fire again. He tries to sit up, beat out the flames. Hands hold him back. He almost sobs. It was a dream, the bandits must have him, they must be sadistic bastards and decided to torture him for information. He’s going to die.
But he isn’t going to die nicely, that’s for sure.
The first kick catches someone in the face. The second hits a stomach and there’s a gasp and the sound of dropping metal. More hands restrain his feet and a weight comes down heavily on his broken leg, dragging a strangled scream from his throat. The pain-and he has to do something-use a spell-call a GF-something is jammed into his arm and pumps him full of what’s got to be sedatives. The world-already hazy and overly bright-bends and distorts like some trippy drug abuse ride. He thinks he’s going to be sick. All the lights go out.
Next time Irvine wakes up it’s a little more pleasantly. When he opens his eyes his surroundings come into focus, if a little slowly and reluctantly. He recognizes Balamb Garden’s infirmary. He’s visited, but he’s never actually enjoyed its hospitality before. It’s the first time he’s found himself in an infirmary bed. He’s got to be in a bad way if he’s not allowed to rest in his own room.
He thinks he’s alone, but a hazy form shifts and draws his attention. “Awake?” Dr. Kadowaki asks, peeling back his eyelids and shining a light in his face. He tries to say something, emits a painful croak, stops. He’s thirsty. His throat’s dry as paper and dead leaves.
“No kicking this time,” Dr. Kadowaki says and this has got to be a dream. But the infirmary looks so real and he can feel Dr. Kadowaki’s hand on his forehead checking for a fever. He wants to ask how he’s still alive. It’s a struggle to stay awake. His eyes close.
It isn’t till much later, when he’s a little better that he learns about the aftermath. He and Selphie being found at the station, the calls, SeeD arriving. Xu, Quistis and Zell hunting down the bandits and bringing them to justice. Contract fulfilled, no need to stick around listening to the Timber mayor complain about the screw up of the first team. Back to Garden and a prolonged stay in the infirmary.
He wasn’t awake for any of this, so he hears it second hand. Quistis visits, sometimes Zell. Rinoa comes a lot, talks about all sorts of things, keeps his mind occupied. He’s not allowed to see Selphie. Dr. Kadowaki says he can when he can walk under his own power. Till then he can sit in bed and feel sorry for himself.
He doesn’t feel sorry for himself. At least not much. He feels angry. He hates himself.
Four weeks and he’s doing pretty good. Squall comes in, his second visit, the first being sometime in the beginning when Irvine was unconscious. Squall doesn’t say little nice things, ask how he’s doing, talk about what’s going on around Garden like everyone else does. He sits down and waits with his Commander face.
He asks what happened.
It takes Irvine forty minutes to work his way through the muddled confusion of his mind and give a decent report. After he does Squall stands. Irvine feels worse than ever. He wants to apologize, say he knows he fucked up, promise it’ll never happen again. He can’t make that promise and he knows it. He can’t win the fight every time. He just wishes he could.
“Your gun’s in your room. We recovered it for you,” Squall says, pausing at the door. “Selphie’s back in the dorms. She’s confined to her room for bed rest. You can go see her tonight. If Dr. Kadowaki complains say I said it’s okay.”
Then Squall’s gone and Irvine’s left to himself for the rest of the day. Thoughts run through his head and he’s not sure what to do. When twenty hundred hours rolls around he gets up stiffly out of bed. Though he knows his bones are going to ache sharply tomorrow for this, he shrugs on his battered coat hanging on the back of a chair, puts on his singed hat and makes his way out of the infirmary. He has to grip furniture as he passes, this being the first time he’s walked in over a month.
His muscles jump with the motions and he feels unstable. He walks down the hall with a hand on the wall, afraid he’ll fall over without that steadying factor. It’s a long way to the dorms. He gets there eventually.
When he knocks on the door to Selphie’s room he hears something drop on the other side. The door opens and he slips in. It closes behind him and he leans against it for support, knees aching and tired.
Selphie looks at him with a face as battered as his own feels. He touches her cheek softly, but even that makes her wince in pain. For a long time they say nothing. Then his legs give out and he slides down to the floor. She joins him, takes his hand. Her wrist is in a cast, two of her fingers in splints.
“Still as pretty as ever, princess,” Irvine says, breaking the silence. Selphie grins and tugs lightly on the brim of his hat. “Still kicking, hunh?” She asks and then the smile fades. She squeezes his fingers. They both share the fear of what might have happened. Neither wants to die, not this early in life.
“We didn’t pick the smart career, that’s for sure,” Irvine jokes and flashes Selphie a shaky grin that she returns. Tears come to Irvine’s eyes; he tries to hide them, but it doesn’t help. Selphie pulls his head to her until he’s crying silently into her shoulder.
“Shh, it’s okay,” She whispers, holding him like he might disappear. She’s quivering. Tears are streaking down her face too. “I screwed up,” Irvine mumbles into her shoulder and she rests her head atop his.
“You did not,” she says, but her voice isn’t as firm as they’d both like it to be. “We couldn’t have known. It could have happened to anyone, it-”
Selphie breaks off with a hiccup that’s half a sob. “I never want to be caught off guard like that again,” Irvine breathes, shifting so he can wrap an arm around Selphie.
“Me neither,” she agrees. They’d thought maybe they were a bit invincible. They’d taken on Ultimecia, they’d come back alive from Time Compression. They were heroes. What could hurt them?
They’d forgotten all it took was a bullet and some luck.
They spend the rest of the night together, reassuring one another that they’re both still alive.