C I V I L W A R

-irishais-


come and conquer and drop your bombs

cross my borders and kill the calm

bare your fangs and burn my wings

I hear bullets singing

-The Cardigans, "You're The Storm"


one

(Click your heels three times, and say, "There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home."

Funny how that doesn't work, isn't it?)

The riots are the worst they've been since Rinoa Leonhart's verdict was announced, so bad that even the SeeD team is forced to admit defeat, making a hasty retreat to the relative sanctum of Balamb Garden, leaving Dollet to its own ruin.

Quistis beats him to the shower, her hair and skin caked in dust and ash from a nearly-failed car bomb, and Seifer follows the trail of discarded clothing to the bathroom door. His ribs ache; he wonders if perhaps he's re-fractured something. With a grimace, he pulls his filthy shirt over his head and tosses it on top of Quistis' pants. It'll all end up in the same load of laundry tonight, anyway, washed in gigantic machines with hundreds of other gore-spattered uniforms.

Quistis has the water on full-blast and the shower curtain already closed when he walks into the bathroom, so he takes a moment to examine the damage in the mirror. There's a fresh bruise in the shape of someone's boot right above his waist, which explains a lot of the pain, although he doesn't remember being kicked. Pretty much everything from when those assholes with the honest-to-god torches breached their defensive perimeter onward is a blur.

He's got one more pill in the bottle of heavy-duty stuff Kadowaki prescribed him, and he knocks the pill back, swallowing it with a handful of water from the tap. The empty orange bottle is pitched into the trash can.

"Hey," Quistis says, in mild annoyance, when he pulls back the shower curtain and steps into the narrow stall, but she doesn't throw him out, just resumes scrubbing a massive quantity of shampoo into her hair, a process that will take her forever. He takes the opportunity to duck under the hot water, reaching up to adjust the faucet to a height for normal people- if he leaves it alone, the water hits him in the general vicinity of his lungs.

Standing under the scalding flow of water is possibly the best thing he's done in weeks, and so Seifer does it for as long as he can, until Quistis nudges him out of the way to rinse out her hair; the water that flows down the drain as she works is clouded and ash-brown. He runs his hands over her scalp, checking for bits of glass and debris she might've missed. There isn't any that he can find, but when she turns around, he sees that the short cut over her eye has reopened.

"You okay?" she asks, giving him the same once-over treatment. Her fingers skate across the bruise on his ribs, and he inhales. She drops her hands, resting them at his hips. "Sorry."

"It's fine. Just banged up. You're bleeding again."

She touches her forehead, glances at the streak of red on her fingers, and sighs. "Do we have any bandages left?"

"I don't know. It's not that bad, though."

She lifts her forehead to the spray of water; the blood rinses off easily, but she keeps her eyes closed for a few minutes, luxuriating in the feel of the water.

He touches her face, tracing his fingers along the blue streaks near her eyes, and Quistis leans her head into his hand, the water cascading from her forehead along his thumb. There is always this, the moment after battle and the euphoria of it has faded, the time when all he cares about is that they are alive.

It is so much more now than it was before, because he knows what it feels like to lose her now, not just the idea of it. To go through that again will kill him.

He pulls her toward him. She encircles her arms around his waist, her head against his chest, and they stand like that until the water runs cold against his spine.

xx

Seifer has long since passed out, sprawled across the bed with his mission report half completed, and Quistis plucks the datapad out of his fingers, saving the document and putting the device to sleep before setting it aside. Her own report is done, double checked and sent in. There isn't much to say; tomorrow, another team will sweep through after the riots have settled. Cleanup is someone else's problem.

Unconsciously, he rolls toward her, flopping his arm across her stomach, and Quistis smooths his hair back from where it hangs in his eyes; he needs it cut, she notes absently, running her fingers through the strands.

She leaves him to his dreams, sliding out from under his arm and slipping on her shoes, picking up Save the Queen in its case by the door.

Garden is quiet tonight, and stays that way for her journey to the Training Center. She deposits the case in the locker room, and nods to the night-shift SeeD as she enters the center itself. inside, it is still daylight, and the monsters are out in full force, eager for fresh meat.

The lesser foes aren't even worth her time, and Quistis takes the shortcut to the far end, Save the Queen quickly gaining a coat of gore on its barbs and coils. The Rexaurs are this way, weaker than she would've liked, but she hasn't really got a choice without having to go through the hassle of renting a Garden car and getting somewhere far away. Garden Council regulations only allow for a certain rank of monster, for the safety of the cadets. Full SeeDs have been protesting the regulation for years.

Her fingers are getting cold, and she tightens the grip on her weapon as she approaches the clearing.

Hm. Convenient.

There is a T-Rexaur just beyond the edge of the clearing- she can see its monstrous speckled body peeking through the trees. It's eating something, the tearing of flesh and sinew audible from here. It's distracted. Good.

Quistis takes a mental inventory, and then a deep breath before coiling up Save the Queen and clipping the whip to its hook on her belt. She closes her eyes (a mistake, years of training tell her, but her instincts say yes, yes, yes). She slips into the trees, away from the prying eyes of security cameras. She does not want this on film, not yet.

The first spell comes bubbling up out of her fingers, when she finally gets within firing distance of the beast, a howling of wind and ice, something she doesn't have a name for, yet.

It hits the T-Rexaur square on the side of its head, and the monster roars, hauling itself to its feet, flinging its head from side to side from the blast. The sound of its scream sends a shiver running down her spine.

The ground shakes under her feet as the Rex advances. Quistis reaches for her whip out of reflex, but clenches a fist to keep from completing the maneuver.

Closer. Just a bit closer.

She can hear the jungle noise behind her, a bevy of beasts all waiting to eat her whole.

The spell surges up out of her, exploding from her palms, massive shards of ice and lightning coalescing in the air, aiming straight for the dinosaur. The recoil of the magic nearly knocks her on her feet, but she holds her ground.

The tremors stop and the spell fades, and Quistis drops her hands.

Where there was a T-Rexaur, there is now only the smoking ruin of one, a crater and the shadow of its existence the only things left in the Training Center.

xx

She is sitting in her office, staring out the window, when Seifer finds her early the next morning.

"I killed a Rexaur," Quistis says without preamble, glancing over at him. "Last night."

"Congratulations." Seifer yawns. "Or am I missing something?"

"I annihilated a Rex," she corrects. "The spell I used- Seifer, it was incredible. It brought a monster that size down to-it's like it took the whole thing apart on a molecular level. There wasn't even any blood left."

He raises an eyebrow at her, and Quistis can tell he doesn't quite get it. "One hit," she clarifies. "Well, two. One to get its attention and the other-" Her voice trails off. "I should tell Xu."

"That's probably not the best idea," Seifer says. "Something like that- for all we know, she'll have you in chains as fast as Rinoa. Maybe faster."

The words are implied, hanging heavy between them: You're more dangerous.

But he doesn't know how it feels, this great rushing current through her veins. How she is unstoppable- how she hasn't junctioned a new GF in weeks, how she knows it won't work. The reports she submitted to Xu after the incident say that there is an accelerated shift in her abilities as a blue mage, and Quistis deliberately leaves out the word, "succession." If she doesn't think about it too hard, she can almost believe what she wrote. Almost.

"I know. I know. I just thought you should be... aware." The high from her discovery is wearing off, and Quistis stretches, feeling the muscles stretch and pop in her back and shoulders. How long has she been sitting here, anyway, recording notes and data, thinking about all the implications this could have on the blue mage classification? On her? On Seifer?

-the succession always kontinues.

She stands abruptly. "I'm starving," she announces, and doesn't give him room to argue the change in conversation before walking out of the room. She can hear him sigh behind her, but he follows (he will always follow), and when he catches up, he takes her hand, squeezing it once.

"Be careful," he murmurs, so quietly that she thinks she might have just been imagining it.