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Taste of Thai, Sunday, Midday

Even with no school, this had been a ridiculously busy week for Rinoa, what with ~~fighting with~~ breaking up with Squall since he was being a jerk, and then finding out Seifer was coming here, now, and letting him take her out to lunch. Which may or may not be a date, depending. It was a little soon to be dating but she could totally date if she wanted to, thank you very much.

This probably wasn't a date, and that was why she had a very casual sort of dress on. Nice, but not fancy or anything. So!

So. Here they were, at Taste of Thai. She should not be nervous about being on a not-a-date with her ex-boyfriend, should she?

"The sesame delight is good," she said, helpfully.

(for the ex, but open for anyone else who wants Thai!)

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"I know," she said, easily. "But I never knew how much was which, you know?"

Dammit. This was supposed to be the kind of hot date that made Squall jealous, and instead they were commiserating over their break-up. So much for that.

"So," she said, squaring her shoulders. "We need a new topic of conversation."

He usually couldn't tell her either.

"We do. Tell me about the crazy shit that my roommate and big sib didn't get too. Also, how do I catch a gremlin?"

She squeezed his hand before letting go. Not because she didn't like holding on to his hand -- she did -- but because she needed to eat.

"You don't," she laughed, answering the latter part first. "Why would you even want to? I've never actually seen one, close up, but generally seeing one leads to people acting like idiots in public."

She picked up her knife and fork and considered his question. "I was a boy for a day," she said. "And an eight-year-old for a weekend, where I got married to a girl with pretty pink hair. And then I was thirty-something, back here for a reunion."

And ... there was something he needed to see, but she wanted to see how he took the rest of that, first.

"I was planning to send it to Zell."

Seifer pulled back to poke at his food again, and to let what she said sink in.

"The boy thing confuses me a little, mostly because of you being a hot chick. The rest, I'll just have to see it to believe it."

A disturbed look crossed his face, and then he looked up, horrified. "I'm not going to turn into a girl, am I?"

Okay, really, she couldn't object to sending it to Zell. It was kind of funny.

"I have pictures," she said. "Me as a boy. I was a very cute boy. Christian said so." She flushed, before explaining: "Another ex."

She did seem to go through them, didn't she?

She giggled, stabbing a piece of chicken with her fork. "I bet you'll be beautiful," she said. "Long blonde hair, those big blue eyes ..."

"So, basically I'd want to fuck myself? Sounds like fun," he replied with a big grin. He was going to let that ex thing just slide right on by. "I want to see the pictures though."

"So far, I have to worry about acting like a moron, losing my dick and reclaiming my childhood. I think this place may actually be more fun that back at Garden."

Hey, he'd had his share of girls since her; she figured that didn't give him the right to object.

"It actually is pretty fun," she admitted, setting her fork down so she could dig around in her purse for her phone. "I've also seen two completely different visions of my future. And there's ... there's something I need to show you, too."

She pulled up a picture and handed the phone over to him.

"Not this," she added quickly. "That's just me as a boy."

"You as a guy," he muttered as he looked the photo over. "You know, I don't swing that way, but I would totally make an exception for you."

He handed the phone back and then stabbed at his food, not actually eating any of it. "Is it a regular thing around here?"

"I'll take that as a compliment," she said. "And no. I've been here a year, and it happened once. And I was an eight-year-old once, and who knows if those things will ever happen again? But people don't seem all that fazed by it, when you wake up as a different-you."

And she was starting to be pretty blase herself. About some things. Other things ...

She handed the phone back to him, this time with a different picture.

"A-and I got to meet her," she said.

Seifer was beginning to think that there wasn't a whole lot left for the students here to be fazed by, judging by what he heard.

He was beginning to think he'd had to get a wedding invite about Selphie marrying a tonberry to actually freak anymore.

"Cute kid. Who is she?"

Seifer might be about to be wrong, on that point.

"Sylvie Julianne Almasy," Rinoa said, very carefully. Mostly so that she didn't tear up, dammit.

The 'Almasy' was obvious, and Seifer might remember Julianne as being her middle name, after her own mother, Julia.

"Her mommy's a Sorceress, and her daddy's a Knight. She seems to be spoiled rotten, by the way."

She was going to blame that on him.

The phone slipped from his fingers, but he caught it before it hit the table. Now that he knew what to look for, the similarities were so damn obvious. It was so hard to wrap his mind around, because kids were never really in the picture for him.

Even less now.

"...how?"

In any other setting, Rinoa might have teased him, for 'how.' Pointed out that he knew how, as he'd been practicing with every girl who'd let him for the past few years.

Now wasn't the time. Especially not with how ... stricken, he seemed to be.

"Some kind of time loop," she said gently. "Every now and then, you get to see ... possible futures. Apparently, she's one of mine."

And his, and theirs. In some world, they patched it all up and had a beautiful little girl. They seemed happy.

Seifer took a deep breath and carefully set the phone on the table before dropping his head into his hands. It took a few moments to pull himself together, but he finally laughed and looked up.

"Spoiled, huh? Sounds like us. She is probably a terror." He slowly pushed the phone back towards Rinoa, still looking at it. "I bet she has all the adults wrapped around her finger, and the other kids scared to death of her."

Okay. Rinoa was now getting up from her chair and pulling it over to be next to his, so she could wrap an arm around him.

Seifer might never admit that he needed hugs, but he did, so he was getting one.

"She spent most of the weekend terrorizing Squall's kid," she said, fondly. Because, well. She knew very well Seifer would enjoy hearing that.

Seifer was glad for the hug, because this was a pretty big shock.

"Squall's kid? Who did he loosen up to have a kid with besides you?"

He didn't look up from that picture at all, so she was going to have to put it away or something. "I never planned on kids. SeeD was it for me, you know?"

"Quistis," Rinoa said, with a wavery sort of tone in her voice. Dammit. Their stupid fight was raising all of her insecurities all over again. Quistis wasn't irrational, or immature, or whatever the hell else Squall had said.

Maybe in some universe ... ugh.

She didn't want to think about that.

"I kind of hate SeeD, sometimes," she said, softly. She wasn't reaching to take the phone away. And she wasn't letting go, either. "You guys needed ... families. Not ... that."

They were all kind of fantastically broken, in their own ways.

"Quistis?" Seifer loved her like a sister, but that was... "I bet the poor kid had some ridiculous name and a stuck up attitude."

They were awesomely broken, and it was all destiny's fault. "Some of us got families, just not all of us." He was speaking mostly of himself and Squall there.

Rinoa couldn't help giggling.

"Tempest," she said. "He kept ... whining that everything was against regulation."

It wasn't like Quistis or Squall had any idea how to nurture. She could only imagine how messed up that poor kid was.

"And look how well that ended," she said, dryly. Squall and Seifer were really just ... two opposite ways of dealing with the same problem.

"Tempest?" Seifer asked, disgusted. "I should hope that I would have taken the poor kid and corrupted him properly."

They were, really, but that was done and over with. "Seriously. How do you nickname a kid with that name? Pest?" He reached over to poke at the phone. "Sylvie, huh? Sorry I missed her."

"Tem?" she suggested. "Seifer doesn't really lend itself to nicknames, either, you know."

She rubbed one hand over his back. "Maybe she'll come back," she said. "I'm ... sorry you missed her, too."

She hesitated before adding, "I met her ... maybe four days before ... before we got word that Ellone had been taken."

Which really gave all of that mess another twist, didn't it?

"Wow." He didn't want to think about it. While she was meeting their kid, he was brainwashed and...

Seifer sighed, not wanting to think about that. "So, she's possible, but probably not for us?"

"Who knows," Rinoa said, a little flatly. She stood up, suddenly, pulling her arms away from him. She didn't know what to do with them, so she'd use them to pull her chair back to her side of the table. That way, she didn't have to look at him. "You know, I can't ... the whole time we were trying to talk you down, I kept seeing her eyes. And now ..."

It wasn't really fair to ask him about things he'd done while brainwashed, except ... except there was one that had stuck with her. The last bit.

"You said you weren't a damn bit sorry," she said. "You threw me to her, and that was the last thing you said to me."

Seifer shook his head, trying not to cringe at how quickly Rinoa pulled away.

"Do you want me to apologize again? Because I will. I'm sorry I was an idiot, I'm sorry I wasn't able to stop her, I'm sorry it was you." He looked away for a moment and smiled.

"And yeah, I'd love for her to be a reality for us, but you're stupidly in love with Squall, no matter what you say right now." And he couldn't figure out why she would choose him over her knight.

Rinoa shivered. "It's stupid," she admitted. "Because I know that wasn't you, in there. I knew it when you said it. But some part of me thought ... thought maybe that part of it was real. That she'd convinced you, and brainwashed you, but you were just ... saying things you'd thought all along."

She'd spent the next month in inky, paranoid black depths herself, which wasn't helping.

"I ... am, I guess," she allowed. "Right now, I hate that being true."

Taste of Thai, Sunday, Midday

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