Written for the Trick or Treat meme at bottle_of_shine's LJ.
Prompt: Irvine, Ellone, dinner with family
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"Selphie would be there," Ellone says, remembering. "And Seifer and Zell—""—probably kicking each other underneath the table," Irvine interjects.
"And Quistis would be talking to Matron, with Cid at the other end."
"And Squall would be next to you, of course," Irvine says with a grin. "Hogging all your attention."
Ellone smiles, and for a moment it's as if everyone is together again, talking and laughing—she misses it all, even the spills and the not-infrequent arguments. But the moment fades, and when she blinks her eyes to clear them she can see it's just the two of them sitting across this table from each other, connected by a thread of memory that has never seemed so fragile.
"He never really forgot about you," Irvine says, after a moment. "After you left...from what I hear, even at Garden, he was never the same."
She thinks about Squall, the way he is now: her heart had done a strange flip inside her chest when she'd seen him; so beautiful, but cold and distant; not at all the boy she'd known. If only she'd been there for him, if only—
But she can't- she can't change the past, she knows that now, and she smiles across the table at Irvine, who knows what it's like to be forgotten, and finishes her dinner, which is really very nice, and which he insists on paying for. He's grown into quite a handsome young man, she thinks, with easy manners and a ready smile; she's proud of him. And when he walks her back to her room and kisses her breathless just inside the door, she thinks it might not be so bad to forget, at least for a while.
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