celes chere is an independent woman. (runeknight) wrote in missions, @ 2012-08-05 01:42:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! thread, celes chere, squall leonhart |
WHO: Squall Leonhart and Celes Chere.
WHAT: Night meetings.
WHEN: Backdated to some random night during summer break.
WHERE: Cafeteria.
Celes Chere could not sleep. After her very brief vacation with Terra – a meager, sad trip, done on what was left of their allowance from Cid’s widow and whatever gil they could pull together from Terra’s earnings – she had been relieved to go back to Balamb. Vacations weren’t things she liked: they were too brief for her to enjoy, nothing more than a disruption in her carefully-constructed routine. She preferred the days when she could wake up and follow a schedule. Eat breakfast, go to class, train, and then sleep. Occasionally, she went out, but she always had to shake off a feeling of unease, like she had disrupted the careful order of her life. Vacations were disorienting. Too much free time, not enough activity. She spent her day puttering around Balamb, feeling useless – one could only train for so long, and the monsters in the center had ceased being challenges a long, long time ago.
(Celes didn’t know it, but it was the MAKO pulsing in her blood – and that was why, at times, her eyes seemed especially chilly. But she didn’t know.)
But sleep. It was evading her tonight. Celes tossed and turned in her bed, staring at the green numbers blinking at her from the alarm clock on her nightstand. It was already two in the morning. She contemplated going to see Ashe, but she was probably already asleep, in all honesty. She moved onto her back to stare at the ceiling. Maybe Terra was awake – no, Terra would be long-gone into the tides of slumber. There was nothing to do but go back to sleep or walk around the empty, sleeping Garden.
The last thought was surprisingly appealing. Celes mused on it a bit. Perhaps she would go to the cafeteria. Maybe it was time for a post-midnight snack. A glass of warm milk might help her ease back into sleep. She had nothing else to do tomorrow, so staying up for a little bit could only help her get some shut-eye eventually. Perhaps the tiredness would seep into her bones and she would finally fall asleep – and no dreams, please, since every dream had always rotated around a certain memory of hers, hazy with time and even more difficult to decipher...
It took her about ten minutes to pull her long blonde hair back into a ponytail and grab a cardigan to pull over her sleeping clothes – a pair of shorts and a tank-top. She slipped on a pair of flats and in about twenty minutes in total, she was in the cafeteria holding a mug of warm milk sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, waiting patiently for her cookies to warm up in the microwave.
Elsewhere, Squall just could not get to sleep either. He tossed and turned in bed for a good hour, flipping the blankets under him, over him, until he looked like he had gotten into a fist fight with the covers. He stood up in bed, hands at his sides holding him up so he did not fall back into bed. He sighed heavily. It was quiet. Not too quiet though, it was never too quiet for Squall. With everyone else gone, Squall basked in the glory of not having to deal with anyone and not having to speak. Speech took energy. Squall was, after all, blindingly efficient -- he didn’t want to waste his time with such trivial things. Pivoting his body so that his feet were planted on the cool carpet inside his room, Squall fidgeted with the Griever necklace around his neck for a brief moment before looking back towards his pillows, now deflated and looking completely unappetizing to sleep on.
With a grumble under his breath, Squall got up and stretched for a few moments. This was what he needed, he thought, to spend some pent-up energy. He did a few push-ups followed by sit-ups and then, finally, a couple of pull-ups. He put his hands on his hips and hung his head down in shame. He didn’t feel any different. Was Zell around? Maybe Selphie was awake and would let him sit quietly with her in her room. He shook his head. No, they were probably both asleep. Useless to him as they are while they are awake, he thought with a scowl.
Maybe he could take a walk. That sounded like a good idea. The Garden was completely empty, everyone was on vacation. Who could he possibly run into? Squall moved across to his closet, quickly slipping on a pair of black training shorts and a gray tanktop. With one final look around his room, Squall grabbed his favorite leather jacket — the one with the feather trim on the collar — slipping both arms in since there was probably a draft outside. He then quietly opened the door and made his way into the hallway. It really was quiet in Balamb Garden. Yuffie and Cater were nowhere to be seen, which was a good sign to him. There was no telling what they would do if they spotted Squall alone in the middle of the night.
His stomach grumbled as soon as his feet landed on the rotunda that led to other parts of the Garden. He stood there with an eyebrow raised, half in shock, wondering if anyone heard just how loud it was. A midnight run to the cafeteria wouldn’t be out of the question. Squall moved across the circular walkway, the only sound accompanying his footfalls was the sound of gushing water. He made his way into the cafeteria.
Apparently, almost everyone was gone. Celes hadn’t seen him yet, which was good since Squall noticed his mouth was hanging open for a good ten seconds. He cleared his throat quietly before making his presence known to her, walking in front of her but not actually acknowledging her existence. It took him only a couple of minutes to finish in back, but Squall busted out — literally, the door slammed the sides of the kitchen counter unceremoniously, loudly — with food and drink in hand. Milk with vanilla extract and egg yellow, and now handling a veritable bundle of cookies. Squall put his drink down at the far end of the table, shuffled over to Celes and set her warm cookies down in front of her. He moved down a couple of seats and sat down, only looking at Celes as he planted himself in the chair. At least he knew he liked to snack alone. Celes seemed the same way.
One moment she was alone; the next, she was anything but. Celes bristled the very second she saw Squall, still wearing his stupid leather jacket over what looked like his sleeping clothes or work-out clothes or something (he probably slept in his underwear or something else blindingly personal – she couldn’t remember what it had been the nights she slept over, mostly skin-on-skin, but from what she knew of him...). Couldn’t he take that off? The sleeves of her cardigan were rolled up, but she rolled them down now, an extra protective layer should Squall’s presence simply prove too much for her.
How could his cursory glance make her feel so naked?
She stared at the cookies when he placed them in front of her, surprised by the small gesture. She could have gotten those herself. Celes was tempted to say as much – not the type of young woman who wanted to be coddled, having these small favors done for her. The words were biting on the tip of her tongue. She wanted to say them. But instead, she murmured a grudging (she couldn’t remove that out of her voice) thank you, fingers interlaced on the tabletop. She wouldn’t look at him, would pretend his presence was not there, even though she could feel him as if he was right next to her.
She reached for a cookie, still melty-warm, and broke off a chunk. Chocolate chip. Perfect. She dipped it into the milk and took a bite, focusing on chewing, not on the fact that her heart had somehow had swollen in size so that it felt like it was fluttering and pressing against her rib cage, beating so hard it might fly out of her chest. No, nothing was wrong at all.
Squall didn’t even say ‘you’re welcome’ when she said thank you. Really, he wasn’t really good with talking anyway, so Squall hoped he was good enough at implication. He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. Cardigan, sleeping clothes. She looked disarmingly beautiful — she always did to Squall but again, Squall and his feelings were never quite the best of friends. So instead, he looked on silently, intermittently, taking a bite of one cookie and followed by a gulp of warm milk concoction he had brewed. Silence is louder than words.
He finished one cookie, wiping his hands on the napkin he had grabbed. Squall slid down the table, food and drink now in both hands, and took the seat across from Celes. He continued snacking, hair falling across his forehead and face as he bit down on the cookie. Was she looking at him now? Was he being weird? Squall didn’t really know what to say, silence was the only way he knew how to communicate. For so long, it seemed like silence would be his only friend. How little Squall knew.
Squall breathed a heavy sigh after he took another sip of milk. She hated him, didn’t she? It was only natural. The defense mechanism, the one he knew so well, was slowly rearing its ugly head. Squall held it back, reined it in, clearing his throat to finally speak.
“Hi.” he said. No pomp. No circumstance. The word cut through the silence like a Meteor spell parting the atmosphere. It was quiet enough to barely be heard but in the silence, in the empty cafeteria, it was deafening.
The only sounds had been their quiet, thoughtful chewing, the crisp snap of each cookie as Celes broke hers into sections. She tried not to look up at Squall when he slid down to sit across from her – though she couldn’t help but think what he was doing. After all, she had come here expressly to be alone – and she could have retreated to her room in all honesty, glass and plate in hands, if it weren’t for the fact that his presence was glueing her to her seat. Completely aggravating, like the majority of the relationships in her life.
It was hard not to look at him. Desperately so. The seconds were tiny battles, exercises in will where Celes kept her eyes trained over his shoulder as if he were not there at all. She was trying her best to stare right through him, but every moment he made – even the rise and fall of his chest – commanded her attention. Was it absurd to be so aware of another human being? Wasn’t this precisely what she wanted to avoid – this inane desperation and want to know he was there, to see him, to be near him?
It had always been complicated, but now, she wanted to cut down the bridge that made him come to her – and she to him.
“I couldn’t sleep.” An offer, something to smooth out the abrupt break in silence. His single spoken word almost jarred her. She wondered if there was something else she should say, this play at everything between them being fine (as if she had not shut down on him before, as if he had not tread the dangerous ground and landscape of her heart that she could not bear to face) – it seemed like something they were always doing, had been doing for the past three years. She finally let herself look at him, and it was like a tiny bolt hit her spine – she tried her best not to shiver. “You?”
Of course. He couldn’t sleep either. The smallest sliver of a smile bolted across his lips, discernible to no one. No one was around anyway, so Celes, the girl he knew well, the girl who knew him so well, probably noticed just as quick as he had realized the break in his stern demeanor. He collected himself quickly, knitting his brow in mock anger, in mock worry that she had suddenly see his defenses falter. Squall wasn’t used to this, how could she — sitting there innocuously across from him — suddenly complicate his head with such nonsense? He tried to tell himself that he didn’t need anyone, again, so that his mind could be at peace. It didn’t work. At all.
He cleared his throat before arching a brow in feigned ambivalence. “I couldn’t sleep either.” he said, taking another piece of his cookie and biting into it softly. Warm enough that it still melted in his mouth. To think, they were likely the only ones around the Garden while everyone else was off on vacation. What fucking luck, Squall thought to himself, although it wasn’t as negative a thought as he wanted it to be. Celes could never be called unwanted company. Squall shuffled his feet underneath the table, his bare feet were freezing. Squall tilted his head slightly as another piece of hair falling across his eyes. He was still looking at Celes, silently.
Squall ripped his eyes away from her, adjusting his vision so that they fell on a green plant in the far corner of the cafeteria. “Listen.” Squall finally said, voice raspy, looking down at the table for any kind of solace, for any kind of comfort. He found none. He always found the words so difficult to muster, it was so difficult to form a coherent response to the girl in front of him. Squall was beside himself, he could hardly think properly. He cleared his throat one more time, this time determined to get his thoughts out in the open. “I think I—” He cut himself off abruptly. He still loved her? He still had feelings for her? Was he stupid, was he crazy? He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the thought.
“I’m sorry. For how it happened.” He was sorry for how it happened. That it happened, however? Squall couldn’t be sure. His emotions were betraying him and Squall, so in control of his body and his mind, would never be able to get a hold on them. No amount of training would ever allow him to control such a primal set of instincts. He looked up towards Celes once more.
If Celes noticed anything strange about the way Squall was his behaving -- his lingering gazes, his false starts -- she didn’t show it. Inside, she was carefully assessing everything and becoming more and more confused by him, but on the outside, she was smooth as a still pond, not even deigning to look at him as she finished her first cookie. If she wanted, she could probably figure out his thought pattern, but thinking about it would mean she cared, and she most certainly did not. But she knew Squall better than most people did, and his actions were as familiar to her as her own. He wasn’t as complex as he fancied himself, she knew that, and at the core of his bristly, stoic public persona, there was another Squall.
One that she knew.
One that she was pointedly ignoring.
“I accept your apology,” she said. Her voice was almost a bark, but she tried to feign softness, apathy. In truth, she was still recovering. Every step towards Squall was a step she didn’t want to make, but they came anyways, one foot after the other. She wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she was staring elsewhere, refusing to move her fixed gaze from the same green potted plant that Squall had been looking at for similar reasons. Her anger and embarrassment were long-gone and she was more tired than anything. “It won’t happen again under the same circumstances.”
He nodded his head softly as she accepted his apology. It was hard for him to even apologize. He didn’t need to back up anything he did. To him, he had his reasons and no one really needed to know but what happened with Celes? It changed him, ever so slightly, like sand eroding the sharp edges of a rock. And Hyne knew Squall Leonhart still had sharp edges. Squall shifted uncomfortably in the seat, bringing his legs underneath so that the cold air wouldn’t linger. He took a long swig from the drink he had prepared and set it down again, looking towards her again. Squall opened his mouth to speak, stumbled for a second, and then finally spoke.
“No. It won’t.” he said, with a firm, almost commanding tone and with a finality that belied how he truly felt. She could probably move on from it. Maybe he would just forget his feelings one day and that would be the end of it. He wouldn’t have to put up with these stupid emotions. They made him feel vulnerable, they made him feel like he was a child again, crying for his baby sister, crying for someone to hold him. Squall hated feeling like he was at her mercy, like her beautiful eyes could sway him from his self-imposed stoicism. But they did, which only made him cast his gaze away from her for what seemed like the tenth time in their conversation.
Squall stirred, getting up from the seat quickly as if he had somewhere to be. “See you later.” It was an awkward farewell but he couldn’t think of anything else. I’ll see you at the ball? I love you, Celes? No, it wasn’t going to happen, not now. But, as soon as he took a step, he turned towards her again. What was he doing?
“I’d still like to take you.” He swallowed the gigantic lump in his throat. “To the ball.”
She was mid-bite of the last section of her cookie and when he spoke and the words he spoke, it caught her so off-guard that she turned her head to him automatically, the triangle of cookie still in her mouth. She broke it off, chewed, swallowed, setting that last piece down on the plate and trying to wipe the surefire look of absolute surprise off of her face. Celes was never surprised: Celes was always in-control in front of the student population, always had that cold demeanor that had earned her the campuswide title of “Ice Queen,” a title not abated by her preternatural talent for blizzard and its brethren spells. She quickly slipped into her usual nonplussed face, though as always, Squall was bringing out the cracks in her armor, the thin slices of space where light threatened to expose her once and for all.
Damn him.
“Oh,” she said, and she knew that was hardly the right thing to say, but she had never been good at saying the right thing. Terra was the earnest, nice Chere sister, and Celes was the one who struggled to keep them together, who knew everything and tried her best to take care of them when she knew she was the only one she could. What did she need of other people? Everyone at Garden was superfluous, even her best friends, though actions always spoke louder than words. There was a tense, awkward silence as Celes tried to think of what to say, what she even wanted to say, but she couldn’t really pick out any words that made sense in the jumbled mess that was her mind.
Double damn you, Squall Leonhart.
“I’d like that,” was what came out of her mouth, and it was far more earnest than she wanted it to sound. But there was something changing here -- for once, Celes looked at Squall softly, openly. A door had opened. “Good night, Squall.”
He shifted his weight onto one foot as she answered him. For the first time in a while, his demeanor finally relaxed and, for a brief moment, he wasn’t trying to hide any of his feelings or hide behind a stoic face. The forced scowl had been wiped away and it was replaced with a small, if somewhat hesitant, smile. Squall grabbed his glass of milk, still three-quarters of the way full, and dragged a napkin over in front of her. It still had one cookie, untouched. Squall stooped onto one knee, kneeling on the stool before he leaned in to plant a soft kiss on her cheek. He doubled back as quickly as he had come forward, gathering himself and walking towards the exit with his glass in one hand. Squall stopped right before arriving at the door and turned around to face her again. He was still half-smiling (as awkward as it still felt to him) and he finally achieved a sort of calm. He would finally be able to get some sleep, he thought to himself.
“Good night, Celes.” he said, softly. And with that, he turned around and walked out of the cafeteria.