Baby Blocks

Day 2: Tuesday

Squall woke up early, before the alarm went off. Hazed out of his sleep, he had no remnants of dreams or inclination to get back to bed - fortunate for him, as he usually strived to stay under the covers as long as possible. Then he remembered what had happened yesterday. Selphie and Irvine were still getting married. Selphie was still pregnant. Great. There was this to deal with, and he still had a full day of work ahead of him.

It was still dark as he pulled off the sheets, just before sunrise. Probably six in the morning. He put on the clean clothes he found in the dresser and walked out to the bubbling coffee pot in the kitchen. Trying not to think as he pulled a ceramic mug from the cupboard, he peered through the darkness at the level of the coffee. Still not done yet. He was surprisingly awake for having gotten very little sleep that night. Only about three or four hours, he calculated. He would have a ton of work to do today, just having come back from a week away from his duties. It's not that there weren't people to do his work, they just had a lack of applied knowledge that was the killer. If they didn't know the subtleties of how he liked things done, or the most efficient way, they got screwed up. So they'd sooner put off the thing rather than make a potentially consequential mistake. So he'd be swamped today, probably work late. Just as well, anything to get his mind off the current events.

Agh, that's just what he didn't want to think about. Every time he thought about it there was a twinge of something in his stomach, like he had just drank a shot of some emotion. And it was something everyone was going to be talking about today. And he just wanted to avoid it. How was he supposed to cope with something like this? It felt like Selphie had just died.

The coffee machine's burbling slowed to a few sporadic pops and Squall turned it off. Holding his cup out, he took the pot and poured it close to the rim. Finished with this, he took a collection of papers he had set out on the counter the night before and quietly exited the room.

Garden at six in the morning was deader than dead. Disconcertingly silent. Hallways were big enough that they were supposed to have an abundance of students wandering between sections of garden. Classes didn't start until 7:30. Students didn't wake up until 7:29.

Logically, people were going to want to see how he was going to react, what his treatment on the Selphie situation would be. He was the figurehead of Garden and his view might affect how a lot of people thought on the matter. That was the last thing he wanted, for people to take his opinion just because it was his own, trying to emulate him because he was in power. The best way to treat the situation would be professionally, not personally. A good leader had to remain emotionless and opinionless, just like he had been doing in the beginning. This was to show he was not vulnerable to little things affecting him. Just as on the battlefield, being emotionally swayed during the heat of the moment was a nasty weakness, potentially devastating. It was better if he just treated it rationally and logically. Since Selphie and Irvine had nothing to do with his immediate job, it was a non-issue as far as he was concerned. He had no opinion.

The elevator dinged as it reached the third floor. At one point he needed special permission to come up here. Now he did it everyday. This floor had been renovated as well, especially to accommodate the piloting mechanism for mobile Garden. Now, Xu's secretary desk was the first thing one saw once they got off the lift. Beyond that was Cid's office. Squall's was to the left.

Xu was apparently an early riser as well. She was working busily at her desk as if it was the middle of the day.

"Morning, Squall," she said politely.

"Morning. Here's my report from the mission," he said, handing her the folder full of paper.

"Oof, already?" she said as she took it and put it on her desk.