In the darkness of three am, the white lines on the General Francis "Fury" Caraway Memorial Highway blurred into each other. They were a pulse, a dull rhythm underneath the low music playing, leading him into the dots of red and white of cars far in the distance. Irvine Kinneas felt his eye lids start to droop, hypnotized, and after the second time he started to drift off the road, he reached for the knob on the air conditioner and turned it to high.

"Nnnnggh." Beside him, Selphie shifted, and tugged his sweatshirt tighter around her shoulders in her sleep. He felt the urge to smile, although it was quickly tempered by the sucker punch feeling in his gut that had moved in as soon as she called him a week ago and asked if he still lived in DC, and if he did, would he mind giving her a ride.

Ten years.

It was an age, and it was a moment.

"'S cold," Selphie muttered, and pulled her legs closer to her in the seat, and he heard her move again, saw the sickly green glow of the stereo face reflected in her eyes. "Where are we?"

"We just crossed into Monterosa time. You were out for almost an hour."

When's the last time you slept, anyway? he wanted to ask, but it wasn't not his place to. Not anymore.

"Guess I needed it. Are you still okay driving? I can, you know."

"I'm good," he lied. "I know you don't like driving at night—"

"—Didn't."

"What?"

"I didn't like driving at night. I've got a few years of practice in since the last time you and I went on a road trip together."

He chose not to respond, save for a soft, "I'm sorry," several minutes after her words stopped hanging in the air, although he couldn't say what he was apologizing for. Nothing. Or everything. He may have been the one to leave, but it's not like any of them weren't to blame.

"Is there anywhere to stop soon? I'm hungry, and really need a bathroom."

"I've been looking. The next town is still almost fifty miles away, but we may get lucky." And even luckier if any place we find is open.

"You'd think there would be more here now. It's not like people don't drive this highway all the time now."

"'Guess there's just not enough people who live out here to bother putting anything between the towns."

She leaned back in her seat again, and the pit in his stomach returned. How was it, he wondered, that this was the same person he could spend days with doing absolutely nothing, and now they were reduced to awkward small talk about rural development?

"Look." Around the next curve they took a blue sign flashed their headlights back at them, a neon sign jutting up above the trees a mile or so behind it, red blinking numbers indicating the cost of fuel.

"Oh thank goodness," she said, and he sped up, the song on the radio beating just out of sync with the pulse of the lines rushing beneath them. Five minutes later, he pulled up to an ancient gas pump and frowned at it.

"I know I don't remember this place being here, but these pumps are older than we are."

Selphie kept her head turned away, looking at the small store attached to the gas pumps, and pointed to the side of the building. "Looks like the bathrooms are out there." She opened the car door and got out without another word, and he watched her disappear into the shadows on the edge of the bright fluorescent glow of the overhang.

He wanted to call out of her, to tell her not to go back there alone, but shook his head, and opened his car door instead. She could take care of herself. She always could, and he always let her. So why did the sight of her walking back there fill him such such a sense of dread?

Because this place is freaky, he told himself. The pumps, the fading paint on the building, and the bathrooms around the outside of the building—those weren't new designs. Definitely not within the last decade, and he'd be surprised if they were newer than half a century. Pre-war, he thought. Pre-Adel.

In front of him, the analogue numbers crept up on the gas pump, and Irvine fought a growing fear, ignoring the hairs that stood up on the back of his neck.

He finished pumping and walked inside, and was greeted by the same withered old woman in a denim button-up shirt and straw hat that worked at every gas station in central Galbadia. Irvine tipped his hat at her and walked towards dusty shelves full of food with labels so old they might as well be vintage. He grabbed two candy bars and a bag of salted peanuts, and walked back to the counter, his eyes trained on the parking lot, waiting for Selphie to return.

"You mus' not be plannin' on stoppin' anywhere for th' night, if you're here at this hour."

"Naw," Irvine replied, dredging up an accent he lost when he was he was still mostly a boy. He opened his wallet and thumbed through the few bills inside with feigned indifference. "Though I do seem to recall there bein' a half-decent motel a few miles off the highway. Or is that somewhere else I'm thinkin' of?"

"You're thinkin' of the cross into Eastern, unless it's been a long time since you been here. And you don't look that old, young man."

"I thank you for that, ma'am, but I'm surely older than you. I just coulda sworn there weren't nothing off of that stretch of highway, is all. But you're right, it's been a few years since I' been out this way."

She raised a disapproving eyebrow at him from under her hat and Irvine gave her a wink she promptly ignored. "You best be gettin' back on your way, son. The way you're eying that door you look like you're expectin' trouble."

"Just waitin' on my lady friend. She went around back a few minutes ago."

"Not without a key, she didn't." The clerk reached behind the counter and produced something just a little smaller than a baseball bat, with a hole drilled through one end and a key tied to it. "This's the only key we got to those doors, and ain't nobody out here stupid enough to keep 'em unlocked. Especially after dark. If your friend went around this building, you might want to go check on her. Unless she got reason to want to be rid of you?"

"No ma'am. And thank you."

Irvine dropped both the accent and flirtatious tone at the woman's implication, and walked through the door, his change and his purchases forgotten to the worry he could not longer push aside.

"Selph?"

No response. Not even an echo.

"Shit," he hissed, and half jogged back to the car and grabbed the sidearm he kept stowed under the passenger seat, along with a flashlight, and a flare, just in case.

Behind him, he heard a woman laughing. Two women, actually, and if one of them sounded like Selphie, the other definitely sounded like—

…Rinoa?

But that was impossible.

"Come on, Selph. This ain't funny."

This time he saw movement, heading towards the side of the building, and he snapped his hands together, flashlight clasped tightly against the gun. He raised his arms, but the beam shone only onto a few overgrown bushes, and a phone booth, empty of even the phone.

He started towards the side of the building, unsure if he was more angry or more afraid, but froze just before his feet moved out of the light, overtaken by a sense of deja vu so strong he doubled over with nausea.

The laughter again. Followed by the same movement. Always on the edge of his vision, always of people he'd said goodbye to so long ago he'd nearly forgotten what their voices even sounded like. He took a few deep breaths, his knuckles white against his gun, and when he felt composed enough to stand up again he did so, slowly, and turned around—

"Don't go back there, Irvy. Just…just get in the car. Now."

—And found himself looking at Selphie, leaning out of the window of a convertible they rented the summer after the war, looking every bit as terrified as he felt.