[Ficbit] FFVIII - Quistis has complicated feelings about Squall having emotions

[spindizzy]

She had wanted to know Squall better -- as an instructor and as a friend. She hadn't wanted this though. He looked like he'd bruise if she touched him, like he'd forgotten anything that wasn't Rinoa's weight on his back and the slow process of putting one foot in front of the other.

She reached out to him, slowly, and he actually let her rest a hand on his shoulder. That was when Quistis knew she should really start to worry.

He made a soft, wounded noise when they took Rinoa away from him, then looked away as though he hadn't known he could make that noise. A part of Quistis wanted to shield him from the others, take away the knowledge that Squall was vulnerable -- but the rest of her knew that she needed that. The parts of her that had thrown themselves at the wall of Squall's indifference over and over again until she'd worn down her own edges and dented his not a bit? There was exultation there. The certain knowledge that Squall could care, did care, that there was something beneath the ice that could be hurt.

She was finally getting to know her student, and it only took travelling the entire world and almost everyone they knew turning against them to get there. That probably said something about both of them, didn't it?