But I'm counting down the hours and I'm counting down the days

[aheartwithwings]

Characters: Rinoa and anyone
Location: Outside, by the lake.
Time: Afternoon-ish sometime, current
Content: Rinoa's still not sure she wants to be back here, she misses Greece. Feel free to stop by for anything really from being another person who's feeling a little out of place after having been in the past for so long to just wanting to bother a

Comments

[steelandsilence]

It wasn't anyone who had been displaced in time, but there was at least someone wondering down to the general vicinity of lake all the same. It was one of the better places to think, and after the most recent round of strangeness that the school had suffered through there was more than enough reason to take a moment to get everything properly categorized.

Was everything here as safe as they said? Or was that just so much noise?

It was a question he didn't really have an answer to. Whatever was going on here was something he couldn't quite reach, and even if he had been able to start puzzling thing out, Rinoa's comment broke his train of thought - or at least, the last few words did.

"What isn't the same?"

[aheartwithwings]

"Greece, the air, people as a whole. Take your pick really." Rinoa didn't turn around straight away, but when she did she actually managed a small smile.

"Squall! Seems you learned how to leave your room without someone dragging you out of it while I was gone. Though I hear it wasn't as long for everyone here as it was for me."

Letting the water still she dried her hand off just by heating the molecules around it slightly, a trick she'd more or less realized thanks to Mr. Mustang and had mastered while in Greece.

"It's a lot to get reused to somehow. I'd figured I was just going to have to live out my life in the past you know? Now here I am back in the present and all I can think about is everything I've left behind. All the friends I'd made, they're nothing but bones and ash now and I'd just talked and laughed with most of them a few days ago!" It was a lot to take in with all the technology to adjust to once again on top of mourning the friends and loved one she'd made back in the past.

[steelandsilence]

A lot to get used to? Well, he supposed that made at least some amount of sense. If you'd lived in one place long enough to get used to it, coming back would take some getting used to again. Especially the further back you'd gone into the past.

How far had Rinoa gone?

It was a question that, regrettably, wouldn't get asked. Why make her think more about something that was clearly already bothering her? It would just make things more melancholy in the long run.

"It was about a week," he answered, choosing to ignore the comment about her friends being nothing but bone and ash. That comment wasn't one there was any easy way to answer and he really didn't feel like trying in the first place.

[aheartwithwings]

"Only a week or so?" She looked downright shocked at this. That couldn't be right. "But I was in Greece for almost two years!"

Ignoring her angsty bits was probably for the best, she'd hopefully get over them eventually on her own fine enough.

[steelandsilence]

Two years? He would have thought that the school had managed to catch on to where people were with greater accuracy than that. Not that he was any sort of expert in the field but it seemed... wrong somehow. Had that really been the best the school was able to do?

"What do you expect from time travel?"

[aheartwithwings]

One would think so, but apparently it just didn't always work like that. Time was a funny thing after all. She wouldn't have traded her time in Greece for anything though so she wasn't particularly bothered by this.

"I don't know really it's not exactly something we know anything about."

[steelandsilence]

But if they'd come for her earlier would she have had that time? Or would she have simply been glad for the rescue? It was an interesting question, if nothing else. Not to mention something that threatened to make his head hurt.

"Someone here probably does."

[aheartwithwings]

That would have depended on how early they'd gotten there. Her first several weeks in the past were super rough and she'd come pretty damn close to starving. Right about then would have been a super time for a rescue. It was also, ironically, right about the time she gave up on ever being rescued.

"Enough to make a time machine anyway I guess, huh?"

[steelandsilence]

"Yeah," Squall answered with a nod. He hadn't really asked who had made the time machines, but what mattered most of all was that they had been made. If someone wanted to ask who had been responsible for them, they could ask themselves.

He wasn't about to bother with it.

[aheartwithwings]

"So... did I miss anything much?" She'd heard a few bits about what had happened while she was gone, but wanted to make sure because it sounded a little too unbelievable even for someplace as fantastic as Xavier's.

[steelandsilence]

"Nothing you would have wanted to be here for."

He hadn't really wanted to be around for it, but there wasn't really anything he could have done about it. He didn't have anywhere else to go, unless he wanted to go back to the Garden, and that would have been far more trouble than it was really worth.

[aheartwithwings]

"You're not actually going to tell me what happened are you?"

He seemed much more tense than normal, not that she probably knew him well enough to know this for sure. It was a hunch though and that's all she needed to question him some more.

"Was it something really bad?"

[steelandsilence]

"It was inconvenient."

And irritating, and it had made it harder to sleep for a while. But he'd heard that other people had had it worse than he had so maybe... it hadn't been quite as bad as it could have been. But either way, he wasn't much interested in mentioning what had happened. It would just sound like something out of a story. Something that couldn't possibly have happened.