In the end there was relatively little fuss, Squall whisked away by Kadowaki for a transfusion and a Cure, Seifer left to pace nervously in the waiting room with Irvine glowering in a molded plastic chair in the corner. Seifer was streaked with Squall's blood, which he supposed accounted for the glare.

"'A little on edge', Kinneas?" Seifer began, finding himself as always on the defensive.

"And whose brilliant idea was it to get him shit-faced?" Irvine shot back, eyes half-lidded gleaming beneath the brim of that ridiculous hat, and Seifer suddenly remembered that he'd never seen the cowboy truly angry, didn't even know what that looked like. "Yeah, let's all go mix alcohol with depression," Irvine drawled in that lazy-sleepy killing voice of his. "Good to see you haven't lost your touch."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Trying a low kind of dangerous that was all his own, looming up to the still-seated cowboy.

"You were always the best at 'getting under his skin', right?" Irvine smiled, bitter and kind of wistful like an opiate. "Like what you uncovered this time?"

"No, you stupid fuck," Seifer returned, seeming to lose some feeling, some drive with the words. He fell back into a chair across from Irvine, scowled down at his hands. "I wasn't trying to hurt him. I never tried to hurt him."

"Well then," Irvine said, leaning back and sounding mock-amazed, country-amazed, gullible hick-amazed. "Hurting him must just come real easy to you."

Easy. Time stopped again, and this time Seifer let it continue on without him. Easy.

The same damn word he'd thrown in Squall's face, trying to force a crack in his armor when the man had already been clawing the inside to pieces. Their argument, mild by older standards, had ripped Squall open.

Irvine said something more, but Seifer didn't hear the words. Levered up on unsteady legs and wound through the plastic chairs to fall onto the marginally softer couch cushions. He was floundering in a darkness of his own making, in which he could see only Squall's eyes, heartbroken silver, as he told the boy again and again how easy his life had been.

A split of scotch was hardly an excuse for the words.

"What I have done," Seifer whispered, staring at his hands. They were still sticky with Squall's blood, and he rubbed at the flaking crimson absently.

Irvine stopped his slow silver-tongued words and seemed to see the other man for the first time since he'd carried a bleeding Squall down the elevator core stairs, looking as unconcerned as a day far in their past stained in a sorceress' blood.

He pushed himself out of the back-tangling chair, sauntered tiredly across the small waiting room, spurs clinking with each step, and collapsed on the bright aqua couch beside Seifer. The older man was slumped, elbows braced on his knees, staring at his hands. Irvine glared at him for a moment, then sighed, and looked down at his own hands. They were slender, long-fingered and muscled, with odd tan-lines from his fingerless gloves. They were also spattered with Squall's blood, he knew.

"It's not easy," he sighed, eyes caught in the lifelines of his hands, speaking directly from thought almost out-of-body. "None of this has been easy, and you're no more to blame than anyone."

"Aren't I?" Seifer managed, glancing up quickly only to look away.

"No." Said with defeat. Said with every fiber wishing there were someone to blame. "He was falling before she ever was. It was just one blow after another, his father, her, you."

"Of course it's all about him," Seifer laughed, low. Irvine smacked him with the back of one hand, and Seifer sat up abruptly, almost a flinch, watching Irvine warily.

"That's not what I'm saying, asshole." Irvine sighed, went back to staring at his own hands. "I'm sorry you lost her. I know you lost her, too. And I'm sorry for that."

Seifer's fingers clenched into a fist, unclenched. Came to rest palm-up fingers slightly curled on his lap. "That hard to say?" he asked, low voice, hearing his own words like an echo.

"Yeah," Irvine said, not moving.

"Well, thanks." And to his surprise it was genuine. He looked up at Irvine's profile, looked quickly down again. "I know you didn't mean. It's just habit," he explained, excused. "I'll try to cut it out while he's, you know."

"I'd appreciate it." Irvine met his eyes, watched him for a moment until Seifer fidgeted, nodded at something he found there.

Seifer ducked his head away from that steady gaze, flexed his hands to watch the play of tendons beneath scar-traced skin. "So what do we do now?" he asked, trying for idle with tension slipping through.

"Wait, of course." Irvine sighed, leaned back against the couch and splayed his legs in his accustomed slouch. "Then Kadowaki will fix him, and he'll be fine again, for a while, and then we wait some more for the next thing to run him over."

Seifer swallowed, felt his mouth twist in a grimace. Thinking. "He's not getting any better than he was today. That wasn't anything near well."

"Bang on the nose," Irvine admitted wearily. "I'm hoping he'll get some kind of closure from the funeral. Something."

"And then what?"

"I don't know." Irvine laughed. "Not sure I can think that far ahead."

"Yeah." Smiled a little, felt a little more sober. "I think I want to. I'd like to stay. Try to help."

The cowboy was quiet for a good minute, the seconds stretching out longer than they'd any right to until Seifer felt ready to announce it a joke, grab up his things and hightail it out of there but then Irvine said,

"Alright." Smiled at him crookedly without looking over. "You can bunk in one of the empty dorms for a while."

Seifer looked down at his hands, smiled a little to himself, just a bitter twist of lips unused to the act. "Thanks."

"No need," Irvine said, still not looking. "Hurt him again," he continued, and Seifer looked up, reflexively. "And you know I'll kill you."

"Yeah. I gathered as much."

"Thought you might." Only then did the cowboy meet his eyes, and Seifer caught an unexpected lightening of Irvine's mood. He nodded, and Irvine returned the motion with a dip of his hat brim, and they sat there companionably enough until an alarm in the corridor began to blare and Kadowaki ran out covered in Squall's blood her eyes wide and a bruise at one temple to tell them that Squall had broken free.

And they didn't speak again through the hours of searching and Seifer finally settling into his borrowed room with that same distinct sense of failure that had always shadowed his relationship with Squall until the all-clear finally sounded just after the sun fell and Seifer felt his guilt lift a little.

The service would be the next day. Service. That's what they were calling it, but fancy names had never made anything easier in his experience. A prettier name wouldn't make this any more bearable. Tomorrow. His father had RSVP'd by special courier. The letter was tearstained, as if he'd known her. As if he'd known either of them well enough to cry for the loss. Squall couldn't cry. Alone in his new rooms with his father's tears in his injured fist and he couldn't cry. Had possibly cried all of his tears while Irvine had still been speaking to him. And wasn't that just another relationship he'd managed to fuck all to hell.

Didn't matter. His rooms were too fucking still, that was the problem, just a warm body and its absence, Zell would do as well in a pinch, somebody. Anybody. She'd been that for him, at least, and how was he to cope with being alone again after having had that? He shivered, pushed away from the bed, letter clenched in one fist. Hadn't even read the words. Didn't need to read them to know what that man had wanted to say. Squall had been in Laguna's mind. Could feel the well-meaning blunders and gaffes between his fingers. Tears dried to salt-crust. It was just dark, no light of moon or sun at the single window. Couldn't stay here. No one to chase her away.

He'd never run from something this hard before, forehead pressed to the Plexiglas, eyes staring at the gray fens reaching to blue mountains without seeing any of it. Had she ever even mentioned children?

He pushed from the window, mask firmly in place but desperation beating frantic wings in his heart, his limbs, carrying him outside, down the wide halls past the moon-spangled fountain, to the Infirmary. Garden had never precisely required a viewing parlor, and most funerals occurred in the field, or at sea, or were quietly shuffled along to the incinerator before the younger cadets could raise much of a fuss.

It was early yet, though it seemed that the scattered cadets paid him little mind, ignoring his sweat-soaked undershirt and the crumpled letter in his fist. If they noticed him at all, or rather if he noticed them noticing, which logic was becoming too circular even for him. Kadowaki's surprise (a dropped scalpel and a lunge for the panic button beneath her desk) didn't register, lost beyond his tunneling perception, and he staggered through to Rinoa's body without significant interruption. And stopped.

A cliché would have been nice right then. She should have been in her favorite clothes; hair brushed smooth, makeup in place to cover the livid wounds and pallor like river-clay. Nothing had been done. A makeup specialist would be flown in the next morning, on his order. A few hours. A few hours and she would look as she always had. Pretty, in that obvious way some women have. Innocent. As though nothing had happened.

Squall was glad. Knees cold on the tiled floor, he was glad. This was her. This was exactly what he remembered of her before they'd dragged her from his arms. Stiff. Cold. No. Stronger words were needed. Rigid. Fucking glacial. There weren't really words for it. His hands still remembered, felt her in his desperate clutch at Irvine in the night. Nothing he could've done, they said, even if he had been junctioned. Sorceress magic. Nothing to be done.

"Squall?" said Irvine. And Squall didn't jerk at his voice but felt as though he did, one hand going to his heart.

"Irvine," he whispered, swaying a little in place. He hadn't heard the cowboy enter, hadn't even heard Kadowaki leave to get help. "What are you doing here?"

"Could ask you the same thing," Irvine began, stepping closer, slowly, as though approaching something gone feral. "But then, I think I already know the answer."

"What are you doing here, Irvine?" Couldn't look at him. Wouldn't look at him. Wanted it too badly for the looking. Didn't deserve it. Didn't deserve any of it.

"Let's just get you back to your rooms, ok?" Irvine said softly, coaxingly, creeping forward again. Now Squall noticed the others beyond the curtained observation windows, pressing against the glass, distorted by it, surreal.

"I'm fine," Squall whispered, fiercely ignoring the fact that he was not fine, not close to fine, might never be fine again. Unaware that he was crying.

Hands on his shoulders, Irvine's soft voice drawing him to his feet, away from the open leaves of the body bag and the ruin of her breast. He stared at her, clutching Irvine he stared at her as he was drawn away, moving woodenly in a toy-soldier march, staring at her until Irvine pulled him through the door. And still staring, blankly, not seeing anything anymore as he was led through the halls, crowded with cadets and his friends and nothing that he saw. Just her. Blood dried to black gum, flesh pink in the rents, too bled out to show a darker stain.

It was all he could see, and the rising whispers echoed like the surf, flash of Selphie-yellow echoed in Zell's hair and Seifer's dimly recognized voice demanding an explanation and Irvine eventually just shoving his way through it all. Nothing. Tears coursed unheeded down his hollowed cheeks, and Irvine led him back to his room, his quiet, gray room, and cradled him down to the bed still warm with the memory of her.

She'd never seen this bed, but memory didn't care. Let him shudder out in Irvine's arms in a night of her creation. It was full dark, and Irvine's voice a quiet murmur, when he came back to himself. Worn thin from crying, and with a sick resolve to shed no more tears. He didn't deserve the release. Irvine's arms tightened around him, as he shook with a sob that he couldn't fight.

And at the last, as he fell into an exhausted sleep, all he could think was that he didn't deserve Irvine any more than he deserved the rest. But, Irvine was there. Irvine had promised. Even after Squall had driven him away, done everything he knew to freeze the other man out, he'd stayed.

Irvine wasn't leaving.

It was the night before his first lover's funeral. And he allowed himself to believe.

The day of her funeral dawned bright behind a pearl-gray bank of clouds. The sea rolled in slate-blue, and for a long moment Squall couldn't dismiss the vision of her withered husk burning on its byre. But there would be no cremation. Irvine had promised.

He turned from the window slowly, checking his uniform in the full-length mirror fixed to the bathroom door. The uniform was still perfect. He hadn't really expected that to change in seconds, but the mindless repetition of the task was comforting in some way. (Maybe because it was a routine from before he even knew her, maybe just because it was familiar, maybe just because it was easier to feel something about a uniform, which couldn't lie and couldn't leave and even if it did you wouldn't feel the loss. Not like this.) Lionheart rode easy in her sheath, Shiva purring contentedly in one corner of his brain. He was almost glad she couldn't sense his agitation, didn't want the aggravation of dealing with a protective god; another part of him wanted a partner in suffering.

Irvine was gone. He had volunteered to be one of the ushers, he'd confessed before dawn, while he and Squall weren't speaking. Squall's stomach rolled, and he glanced again to the window; the iron sky stretched endless, featureless, and was more than large enough to contain his pain.

That was where he would spend this day, if given the choice. Beneath the indifferent sky, too cold to weep. Brushed down for stray lint, buttons shined and gleaming. Only his eyes betrayed that this day was anything unusual. He bit his lip on a flux of pain, clenched his torn fist ruthlessly to stop the tears before they could come. He would get through this. He would get through this if he had to and he fucking well had to. Irvine was right. He had to be there. She needed to know. He had to be there.

Laguna came. Nearly everyone had, in a macabre echo of the Celebration. The Funeral. They would probably memorialize this day as well, capitalize it and hold anniversary parties. The day the Sorceress was put into the ground. The power would just pass on to another, but Irvine supposed most civilians weren't privy to such details. Not on Squall's watch.

Irvine wasn't even certain why he had come. He was basically a glorified doorman, guiding the guests to the appropriate hall, accepting condolences as if for fallen royalty, worrying over the decorations. Everything had been done at the last minute, to lessen the chances of Squall walking too early through a black-draped hall. Irvine still wasn't sure why they were holding Rinoa's funeral here, still thought her father might object, wasn't certain yet what they were planning to do with the body but Squall had seemed so certain. Of this, if nothing else.

There was a banquet, for after. Irvine wasn't as sure about that. The entire funeral seemed … Off. Even beyond that priest from Rinoa's screwy little cult (after a life-time of using the servants of Gods to kill Their mistakes, he'd lost any desire or claim to religion) were the decorations, the guest list, the gilded program. The food. Who served brunch after a funeral? The entire collective membership of the Forest Owls was huddled into one corner, crying together like professional mourners. Rinoa's father still hadn't shown up. The entire day was just waiting for disaster. And still all Irvine could see, the image burned irrevocably into the space behind his retinas, was Squall. Huddled before her body, as alone as he'd ever been, a lost little boy looking out through his eyes. Irvine shivered. Forced a smile for some Colonel from Trabia.

Squall himself was already seated, near the front, in the family row, stone-still like the earth itself would move around him before he would be moved. Selphie and Quistis stood near Irvine, the three of them watching Squall's straight back, squared shoulders, Laguna's dance of uncertainty on the seat beside him.

"I don't understand," Selphie whispered to Quistis, the words carrying easily to Irvine's ears but not much farther. The crowd was a bit noisy for the occasion. "Why would she? I don't understand how she could want children that bad."

"I don't know, sweetie," Quistis whispered back. Her hand crept out to touch the smaller woman's shoulder. "Different people just need different things. When I was fired, before I found you all again, I think I felt the same way." Her voice went even lower, and Irvine, edging subtly nearer, could barely hear her admission. "I really didn't think there was anything else, you know? And not having anyone to talk to, it just makes it worse."

"Didn't you have anyone?" Selphie asked, alarmed, it seemed, in retrospect. Irvine felt a bolt of fear at the thought, just the thought that he could have lost Quisty, too, before he'd even found her.

Quistis gave a kind of wounded laugh, squeezed Selphie's shoulder. "I couldn't talk to Seifer, or Zell. They wouldn't have understood. And Squall …" She sighed, sort of closed in on herself, and Irvine almost stepped forward but she continued, "He was too hurt, still, to even really hear what I was telling him." Another laugh, softer, just slightly broken at the edges. "It's never a good idea to try for true confession with someone so burdened."

"I guess." Selphie ducked her head, turned her bright eyes to Squall's unmoving back. "She could've talked to us, though," Selphie decided, voice hard and rather unforgiving. "You were alone and you didn't do anything stupid. She could have talked to us. Squall can't be there for anybody, but she had us."

And Irvine wanted to say something, say anything, tell them that they were wrong, that Rinoa was feeling isolated and alone and it wasn't her fault, that they shouldn't say such things about the dead, not at her own damn funeral, but. Selphie was crying. Angry as she sounded, little as she acknowledged it there were tears spilling messily down her cheeks, not pretty little showy tears but grief. Grief is never pretty, Irvine knew. And sometimes, he supposed, it could make you say funny things, or do horrible things, like Squall had. Like Seifer had. So he eased back into the crowd, left Selphie crying bravely in Quistis's arms, and made his way (threaded through green-padded, walnut-backed benches) to a seat next to Squall.

Laguna's arm was around Squall's shoulders, though Irvine couldn't tell if Squall had even noticed the gesture. Irvine heard Quistis and Selphie sliding into their seats, very quiet now, very aware of what Squall might overhear. Irvine just glanced at the open casket, took in the light blue lining, the ice-pale profile, then looked away. It was too real, and Squall was staring at the tableau fixedly like that would change something.

The sermon, not a religiously-affiliated sermon in spite of the presence of Rinoa's priest, but one of those rambling talks about the virtues of the deceased, began slowly, with one of the Forest Owls playing Rin's favorite song on a saxophone of all things, and some woman Irvine had never seen before gave the eulogy and Selphie was crying behind him, sobbing, an ugly, choking sound and Irvine had a moment to wish he'd remembered a handkerchief. Squall remained still throughout. Through the priest's talk about how wonderful Rinoa had been, how lovely, how perfect, how untroubled and how at peace, how loved, how surrounded by lovers in this place of the dead where no one would talk to her except the man burying his sorrows in her willing flesh, Irvine knew that Squall wouldn't be crying for his part in this. He should be. Irvine didn't like to admit it, but some part of him blamed Squall. It was just that the bigger part of him wanted to wrap Squall in cotton batting and never let anything else hurt him.

By the funeral's showier end, Selphie had stopped crying, or at least had worn herself out with crying, and Irvine heard just the occasional sniffle from her place on the bench behind his, and the sound of cloth rubbing against flesh which he decided must be Quistis comforting the younger girl. Irvine wished that he could offer Squall the same comfort, but Squall looked like a kind touch would shatter him, face strained thin with clenching his teeth and his shoulders rigid beneath Laguna's arm.

There wasn't fanfare, exactly, but an open mike night for friends of the deceased, and every jackass who'd ever heard her name formed a line to the left of the stage, and one by one described a woman they'd never really known to the five people who'd known her best, none of whom had the life left in them to stand before these strangers and tell the truth about Rinoa and her death. At least, that was Irvine's reason for not leaving his seat. Squall he knew would never speak voluntarily before a crowd, even a crowd whose words clenched his jaw tighter and tighter until Irvine became convinced one more platitude would shatter Squall's teeth with the pressure. Selphie would speak before a crowd, except she'd started crying again, the same noisy sobs that were louder because she was trying to be quiet and was choking on them, and Quistis obviously was busy with her. Seifer hadn't even come to the front of the hall, but was instead lurking in the shadows near the entrance, and that left no one to tell Rinoa's story. And Irvine was okay with that, mostly. Maybe the truth didn't really matter, and maybe it would be better if only a few people knew how confused and lonely and desperate she'd been, how needy and how imperfect and how human she'd really been. It was easier to say goodbye to an image.

After the funeral, after the banquet, Irvine was staring at Squall's back where he was leaning on the second-floor railing. Staring at the back of his t-shirt, watching the shifting shadows of ribs beneath fabric that rustled gently with each breath. It was one of Irvine's sleep shirts, the green of summer grass (faded in the wash) with a worn Johnny collar, buttons missing from the front placket, one corner pointing stubbornly toward the ceiling. The dress slacks and still-shined shoes seemed incongruous, and maybe the shirt should have seemed out of place, but instead Squall held himself like the shirt was the only thing that belonged.

Irvine slid up to the railing and said, "Hey," leaning against the railing close enough to bump shoulders.

Squall shrugged dully in response. "It's done?" Voice hoarse, lower than usual, like he'd been crying.

"Yeah." Irvine swayed a touch closer. "It's over." Squall leaned against him.

"What did you do with Laguna?" Squall asked, for once without rancor.

"He's in one of the empty cadet dorms," Irvine admitted. "He really wants to try, Squall."

Squall just nodded.

"You'll talk to him?" Irvine risked pushing.

"I will," Squall murmured.

"Really?" Irvine brightened for a moment. "When?"

"Tomorrow," Squall said easily. Doors opened on the Quad, light spilling across the square and lighting the fountain in stripes.

"Alright." Nudged the shoulder supported by his. "Tomorrow."

"Irvine?"

"Yeah?"

"… nothing," Squall muttered, turning away.

"What?" Irvine said playfully.

"Nothing," he insisted, irritated now.

"You can say anything." Gently.

"Would you. Tonight. I, ah…"

"Want me to stay?"

"Please." Relieved breath. "Didn't mean to -"

"I know." Gently, gently. Brushed his cheek with one thumb. "It's alright."

Later that night. In bed, asleep. Irvine dreamed that Squall was happy, and even the dream was out of focus and melancholy, like even a dream couldn't imagine Squall getting over this, and Irvine thought this while dreaming, in that way you sometimes think about a dream while dreaming it, and -

Irvine started awake when Squall began to shake in his arms. He fumbled muzzily with the sheets for a moment, getting Squall turned around and rolling onto his back with Squall curled partly on top of him.

"Squall?"

"Rinoa's dead," he whispered, and Irvine tightened his hold on the fragile-feeling bones. And after a little while Squall was drifting into sleep, still clinging to Irvine's shoulders, head tucked under Irvine's chin, and when he was in that state between waking and sleep he felt Irvine tighten his hold just a little, and heard him whisper "I'm not going to leave," and felt himself relax completely, utterly, feeling surrounded and warm and finally feeling safe.

A/N Chapter title taken from "Goodnight Elizabeth" by the Counting Crows.