She is nine when Garden takes her in. They only take the difficult ones; there's plenty of parents waiting for the good children. (The ones who don't fight and scratch and bite, or scream wordlessly for hours, or steal things and hide them).
She's a little thing with a running nose and sores around her mouth. She pukes after the first test; she wasn't built to run. They send her back to the dormitory and she lies on the bare mattress crying, with her sleeve stuffed in her mouth for silence.
She wants to fight with knives, but they dismiss that without even speaking to her. She's fast all right, but she doesn't have the reach to rush a man before he breaks her arm. They send her back to choose another weapon, and when she won't choose, they choose for her. They measure her clavicles and upper arms, test her eyesight, and decide that some day she will have the body to throw things.
She could have told them that if she had the words. Half of her case file is photographs of broken windows.
Eventually Galbadia has had enough of her, and as soon as she's old enough they give her the written test and send her away to be a SeeD. Some aptitude for para-magic, they say, maybe Balamb can make something of you.
She loses an eye failing her SeeD exam, and sinks silently into cadet life at Balamb; no words of comfort can soothe a loss that was never really felt. So she can't throw like she used to. There are other things.
She reads books and maintains discipline. If they mock her, her blind eye stares them down. On her free days, she watches the sky.
It comes to her sideways, striding through the quad on a Friday sunny enough to make her skin flush. Spinning from the left on her blind side, her arm is moving to catch the frisbee before she knows it's there. This is something new.
She practises throwing and catching her shuriken every night wrapped in padding that she doesn't need, because she can feel the movements in the air. She learns how to coax her weapon back to her with a crook of one finger. The instructors imagine this as the result of hard work and careful practice, and praise her for it. She wants to laugh. Nothing in her life has ever been this easy.
While Almasy is in Dollet, she waits at Balamb docks. The calm sea is like a seer's pool. The quiet amplifies the movements that, perhaps, only she can see.
The stirring in her mind grows quicker now – the air is whipping around her with force strong enough to snap her head back when she senses that it is near and there it is, rushing in and seizing her.
Take me, she says, take me with you, and she doesn't think it says anything, but she feels it call back – you will be my avatar, girl, I will make you rise up like the Furies and you will break the world – that's all well and good but she is not going to be taken. She is going to take. So she grasps and holds and pulls.
The fullness is like the heft of a beach stone, rough and greasy with salt, and how it fits in her hand so perfectly that it must be cast away. The sound of breaking glass is nothing to this. Her teeth ache with it. She feels it bellow out to her, gladly: I am Pandemona. I am chaos. I am yours.
She wants to whoop and scream and steal a car, her skin feels too small to hold her, but instead of doing any of these things she raises one hand up and feels the breeze swirl in greeting.
The disciplinary committee has commandeered the secret area. Fujin has studied in-groups and out-groups; Seifer is his own sociology, but she knows why they are drinking. It's his last hurrah - something is going to happen, and soon. She can't bring herself to mind too much.
She and Raijin are his hands. Lady fortune smiles at Raijin, and tosses him coins that always land heads up; he's always ready with a laugh and an open hand for whatever life may bring him. She has always been the grim one, and she's never sought power, but it finds her.
They stand at Seifer's back, dexter and sinister, and let him drink himself quiet while the celebration lurches on inside. Half a bottle later in his dorm room he's too heavy to lift and too sick to move, so they leave him on the floor.
They slip out, and go their separate ways. Fujin can't find it in herself to rest, though – something about spring air and distant music makes her agitated and want to – not dance, not her, but move correctly through these rushing streams of excited laughter, the debutantes with blood-streaked faces and their beaux with battle-dirt still under their nails.
Away from the cadets bathing in their reflected glory, away from the noise, there is quiet at the side balcony. The faculty that should be there waiting for curfew to begin have long gone to bed, because tonight is for celebration; the soldiers have come home.
There's fresh air and open sky, blooming with fireworks, and she is copying another of Seifer's bad habits. She inhales deeply, making it a game with herself – this is your cigarette smoke against your skin, this is cool clean wind, this is the dying kiss from a catherine wheel – this is blood and animal stink – she snaps her head around sharply, and sees the girl slumped in the lee of the wall, head lolling to one side. There's the smell, a bloody rent in a leather sleeve, and that taste of salt isn't coming from the sea because Fujin can see the pale streaks cutting through the dirt on her face.
Fujin's first instinct isn't usually to help, but she reaches a hand out and the chaos tears out from her.
Everything is white.
When the world spins back into sight, they have traded places; the stink of blood lingers, but it's old and stale, and as the girl grasps Fujin's chin and turns her head from side to side, through half-open eyes Fujin sees that where there was a gaping wound, there is only clean white skin under the torn leather. Something catches in her throat and she stumbles, then rises, knocking the girl's hand out of the way, remembering white wind -
The girl is watching her, suddenly arch, with one arm folded over her breasts and her other hand to her lips. An eyebrow raised, she is suddenly familiar, yes – an instructor. But that light behind her eyes-
"Put that cigarette out and go to bed."
But Fujin can't; she's half drunk and half crazy with a new kind of knowing; a weight in her belly maybe, a worm in her heart crying joyfully as it devours: yes, yes, this is why you are here. She can feel the fog curling up from the coast and the foam being whipped from the waves. It feels like a hand reaching out in welcome.
She runs back to her room as the child she was once, laughing and innocent and half-mad.
She feels fierce and proud that night. The hard mattress is at her back and the wind is crying to get in, but she is inside guarding her fortress and outside is a wilderness of monsters and magic waiting for her to reach out and take.
-do you remember using enemy skill?
stupid blue magic. who needs items anyway. raubahn is probably annoyed at me right now, but hey, serves him right for being a julia heartilly fan.
i like the idea of personal guardians. it explains the fire cavern test, anyway. i always imagined that quistis gave squall her own GFs for that run as a little boost for her favourite student.
i also like the idea that maybe fujin is actually only really herself right at the end of disc 3 when she bawls seifer out, after pandemona has eaten most of her awful childhood. of course, that only works if your squall was a dipshit like mine and forgot to draw from her previously. Or maybe she got another gf to keep pandy company. idk. -