The Complete SeeD for Life

by An old librarian

Squall and Quistis five years after FF8.

SeeD For Life

A Story by Jules MM

Dedicated to Stephanie
Who would not let me give up:

This story is for you.

Part 1
The Lion and the Queen

Squall's eyelids drooped, closed, then immediately snapped open again. Cursing himself for his tiredness, he turned his head back to the glow of the computer screen. The harsh black and white SeeD logo stared back at him, taunting his tiredness.

Squall coughed, pulled his chair closer to the desk, and began typing again. "...directly results in SeeD's inability to restore order in the Esthar province. While SeeD troops have managed to suppress the rebellion in the outskirts of Esthar, the city of Esthar itself is still in chaos. Patrols of SeeD troops, working in conjunction with Esthar soldiers still loyal to the republic, have managed to evacuate most of the civilian population. Though SeeD is significantly better trained than the rebellion forces, they outnumber us by almost three to one. With a stalemate in fighting practically imminent, it is my recommendation that the council vote..."

Squall broke off typing. What the hell was he thinking? Retreat?

"Oh no..." He muttered sarcastically. "Can't have the great sorceress killer retreat..." Squall deleted the last few lines of the report, then began typing again. "While SeeD troops have managed to suppress the rebellion in the outskirts of Esthar, the city of Esthar itself is still in chaos. Patrols of SeeD troops, working in conjunction with Esthar soldiers still loyal to the republic, have managed to evacuate most of the civilian population. However, rebellious forces outnumber SeeD by almost three to one. By concentrating our forces along the Esthar airstation skyway, SeeD may be able to suppress incoming support..."

Squall angrily deleted the lines again. This was stupid. There would be no way the SeeD council would approve any course of action short of immediate and severe destruction of the rebel forces. Squall frowned, then began typing again. "While SeeD troops have managed to suppress the rebellion in the outskirts of Esthar, the city of Esthar itself is still in chaos. Patrols of SeeD troops, working in conjunction with Esthar soldiers still loyal to the republic, have managed to evacuate most of the civilian population. So now that the civilians are safe, have every SeeD and soldier take to their weapons and fight until the rebel forces are destroyed!"

Squall frowned at the sarcastic words. "Fuck this, I'll finish it in the morning." Squall closed the text window on the computer.

"SAVE CHANGES TO SEED0178? Y/N" The computer prompt flashed. Squall tapped the keyboard angrily. "No, no, a thousand frigging times no!" Squall shouted. The computer responded and shut off.

Squall skulked away from the computer and into the small kitchen area. He opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of water. He shut the door and drank deeply from the bottle. Draining the bottle, he threw it in the trash and went to his bedroom. Falling onto his mattress, Squall frowned as he tried to clear his mind and sleep. He couldn't clear the angry thoughts from his minds. "Damn stupid war." He opened his eyes and walked to the dark window. "Damn stupid report. What the hell do they expect from me? Squall pulled the blinds down, so the morning sun wouldn't strike his face. He went back to the bed, and managed to close his eyes. "Damn stupid SeeD. I should just quit, this is getting too hard."

General Quistis Trepe sat in her car outside Squall's apartment building. Quistis took another sip of her coffee. She noticed a speck of lint on her impeccable SeeD uniform and carelessly flicked it off. She checked her watch again. Ten past nine. She and Squall were going to miss their ride to Dollet if he didn't hurry up.

She didn't even look at Squall when the passenger door to the car opened and slammed shut. She simply turned on the car and stomped on the gas. Squall threw his overnight bag in the back of the car, next to Quistis' bag.

Her eyes still on the road; Quistis handed Squall a steaming cup of coffee. He took it from her with mumbled thanks, and drank the hot liquid.

After driving halfway into the heart of Deling City, Quistis turned to look at Squall. Scrub would not be a strong enough word to describe Squall's appearance. His usually perfect uniform was rumpled, and left unbuttoned in many places. His hair, normally controlled and neat, was all over the place. It reminded her of their Balamb years together. There were large circles under his eyes, suggesting Squall hadn't slept very well in the past few days.

"Rough night?" She finally asked. "You could say that." Squall mumbled, speaking to his coffee. Quistis didn't say anything more. She had known Squall long enough to know when he didn't feel like talking about his feelings. Squall put his coffee in one of the car's beverage cup holders and leaned back in the seat. "Did you get the tactical data?"

"Mm hmm, it's all ready for the council." Quistis said with a nod.

Squall sighed, then seemed to notice the entire top half of his uniform had been left unbuttoned. As he went to fix his uniform, he looked in the car's mirror and saw his appearance.

"Damn." He said with a sigh. "You don't look so good. Is anything bothering you?" Quistis said, looking over at Squall. She didn't expect an answer, so was rather surprised when he said, "Haven't been sleeping too well." "Are you nervous about the council hearing?" She asked, pulling into the train station parking lot. "No. Are you?" He asked, getting out of the car and retrieving his bag from the backseat. "I guess not." She said with a sigh.

The two SeeD Generals walked out of the parking lot and into the main station. This time in the morning, there were hundreds of people in the station, milling about like so many ants in a colony. Quistis noticed there were more soldiers around than usual this morning. "Probably worried about people going into Dollet." Quistis thought. It was true too. The entire world had been on edge since the most powerful nation in the world had been overthrown.

The Worldwide Garden Council Alliance, commonly called the Council, had organized the meeting in Dollet to discuss the world's: more specifically SeeD's action to the rebels who assassinated President Laguna Loire. Security in Dollet had been extraordinarily tight. No citizens had been allowed to leave, and only SeeD officials, such as Quistis and Squall, would be allowed to enter the city. All radio communications had been cut off, reminding older citizens of the radio signal interference that ended eight years ago.

The two SeeDs came to a train that looked just about ready to leave. It was surrounded with blue Galbadian soldiers, and instead of an attendant, a red soldier was taking tickets and guarding the entrance. Squall and Quistis came in front of the guard and saluted Galbadian style. He saluted back, and asked for their SeeD identification.

He scrutinized their plastic cards, then handed the ID's back. He saluted one more time and said, "Enjoy your journey sirs."

The SeeD cabin, located on all trains in the world, seemed more luxurious now then ever to Quistis. She dropped her bag in the middle of the floor and went to the bottom bunk to lie down. She felt more tired than she would like to admit. Squall came in a few seconds later. He carried two bottles of water and a bag with some bagels. He pulled one out, offered it to Quistis. She shook her head and closed her eyes. Squall took a seat on the sofa just as the train began to move. He put the bagel back in the bag. He didn't feel much like eating either.

"Huh, what?" Squall asked, suddenly awake. He jerked his head up. Quistis lay on the bunk, dozing quietly. Squall shook his head. Nothing was amiss. The only sound was that of the train moving steadily across the terrain. He allowed his head to rest on the soft cushion. He closed his eyes. Immediately, he started to think. "No, stop thinking. Just sleep. Stop thinking." Squall opened his eyes and looked at Quistis again. Somehow, watching her sleep made him feel better. He closed his eyes again and leaned back. "I'll just rest for a while, get prepared for the council." He surprised himself by falling into a deep sleep almost immediately.

Quistis slowly opened her eyes. The soft movement of the train was almost enough for her to close her eyes and go back to sleep again. A quick glance at her watch forced her to get up from the soft bed. She looked over to Squall. The afternoon light coming from the windows cast shadows in the cabin. Quistis rubbed her eyes, stretched, and went over to wake up Squall. She regarded his sleeping form. He looked so peaceful; she hadn't seen him look so peaceful since their childhood. She leaned over, and spoke softly into his ear.

"Wake up, my lion." She said, remembering the pet name she used to have for Squall. Squall blinked, moved forward, and looked at Quistis. "You haven't called me that in a long time... my queen." He said, smiling slightly. Quistis laughed a little, holding a hand over her mouth. "So, you do remember."

"I don't think I ever forgot out nicknames." Squall said, standing up. Quistis smiled her calm, serene smile. Suddenly, Squall felt very close to Quistis. He shook his head to remove the feeling from his mind. "What time is it?" Asked Squall, the slight smile fading from his face. "We're almost there. Are you ready? She asked, checking her bag to make sure her whip was inside. Squall looked troubled. "I guess so." He said, grabbing his bag.

Quistis walked out of the cabin. The train was already beginning to slow down, nearing Dollet station. Squall followed close behind, pausing to close and lock the SeeD cabin. He was no longer thinking of Quistis. Instead, he was thinking of how he was going to present to the council the idea of temporary retreat. He had poured through the data many times, and was sure that he would be backed up by Quistis; though he couldn't imagine what some of the other members of the councils would take such an idea. Squall and Quistis were the youngest Generals in the council. Almost every other member was part of the first and second generation SeeDs. How would they take the idea that some "kid" thought retreat to be the best course of action?

"Wake up Squall." Quistis said. Squall was broken from his thoughts by the sudden stop of the train. He shook his head and shouldered his bag. "No sense in worrying. We're only two of five from Balamb. And then there's Trabia and Galbadia. Maybe they saw something I didn't. Maybe they have a better course of action."

"Welcome to Dollet General Trepe." Said the hotel secretary to Quistis. "On behalf of everyone in the inn, I would just like you to know, if there is anything we can do to make the duration of the conference more enjoyable, please let us know."

Quistis gave a fake smile while she listened to the hotel manager's bullshit. She, along with every other member of SeeD, knew very well that the citizens of Dollet didn'like military forces occupying their city. Quistis could hardly blame them though, considering Dollet's past with outside military forces. The manager spouted some more inane small talk before he finally opened his ledger and searched for the reservation Quistis had made for Squall and herself.

"Ah! Here we are. General Quistis Trepe, room thirteen. Staying for the duration of...three days, two nights?" "That is correct." Quistis said coolly. "Oh come, General! Certainly you would wish to stay with us for a few-"

"-That won't be necessary sir. My colleagues and I are only here for the duration of the Council meeting." She said quickly. "However I do believe I asked for a separate room, under the name of General Leonhart."

The manager looked back to his ledger. "I'm sorry sir, but that name does not appear to be in the ledger."

Quistis was irritated, but it didn't show. Her only reaction was a slightly cooler look. "There are no more rooms available." Spoken unlike a question.

"I am sorry sir, but you and General Leonhart are the last to arrive. Every other room is booked up by your, ah, colleagues."

Quistis gave a small sigh. "Do not trouble yourself. As long as there are two beds in the room, it should be fine."

"Oh, of course sir! All our rooms have at least two beds." With that, the manager held out a key in his hand. Quistis grabbed it and headed outside. It was getting onto sunset in Dollet. Squall was sitting on the rim of the fountain in the central square, his bag and revolver gunblade at his feet. He rarely bothered to carry around the Lionheart, except on SeeD missions.

"They screwed up our reservations. Looks like we'll be sharing a room." Quistis said when she reached Squall. Squall lifted his head and looked Quistis in the eyes. He frowned, then said "Alright." He got up and picked up his belongings. Quistis walked next to him back to the hotel. "When did you get rid of your glasses?" He asked, not looking at Quistis. Quistis glanced at him, surprise showing in her cool blue eyes. "It got to be too much trouble to wear them on SeeD missions. I went to a clinic last week and got the surgery."

Squall nodded. "Didn't I tell you about it?"

He sighed. "Maybe. I can't remember. I've been really wrapped up inside myself these last few weeks." Quistis looked at him, the coolness fading from her eyes, replaced by sympathy. "Then tell me." Squall sighed and closed his eyes. "Not now Quisty. Later." He opened his eyes and turned to look at Quistis. "Not now, my Queen. We'll talk later." Quistis nodded, and the cool look returned to her eyes. "What did you expect?" She scolded herself. "You can't force anyone, especially him."

Squall scanned the room with his eyes. Quistis brushed past him, a black box in her hand. She moved it around the room. Little beeps emitted from the box. After a minute, Quistis turned off the device and slipped it back into her bag. "It's clean." She said simply. Squall nodded and moved to the window. He still couldn't believe he had forgotten about her surgery. Of course, now he remembered. Last Monday, he received a call from Quistis. She had said she was getting eye surgery, and that he should continue the surveillance work on their target without her. He had to finish the job himself that day; the target discovered Squall, and he had no choice but to follow through on the last part of the mission without the information he was supposed to gather.

Squall looked to the mountains looming over Dollet. Not that it mattered now anyway. With practically all SeeDs in the world in Esthar right now, no one could have cared less if Squall had failed that mission. He turned around to face Quistis, who was taking her change of clothes out of her bag. The whip she carried was on the bed.

"I feel like having dinner." He said nonchalantly. "Feel like having dinner with me?" Quistis did not look up. "Alright. Why don't we get changed first? I don't think getting a table would be possible wearing our uniforms."

Squall took his bag into the bathroom. Locking the door behind him, he quickly stripped off his uniform and pulled on his black pants and jacket. He picked up the SeeD pants and pulled out his wallet. He moved to put it in his back pocket, but then he stopped. He opened the wallet.

A scarred, hostile looking teen face looked back at him. He flipped through the wallet. Twenty five hundred gil, key to his apartment, a half dozen photographs. He pulled the photos out. There was one of him and Seifer, taken nearly ten years ago. One of him, Zell, and Selphie, taken outside Trabia Garden. One of Irvine and Selphie, one of Edea and Cid, Quistis and Rinoa, and one of himself with Quistis, arm over arm, dancing at the celebration in Balamb garden after the defeat of the sorceress.

Squall smiled, then frowned. There was supposed to be another picture. He turned the wallet upside down, dropping his key, ID, and gil. He shook it again. This time, something dropped out, hitting the floor with a metallic clang. He bent over and picked up the torn photo. His ring was taped on the back, along with the amulet he had broken during a mission. He stared at the photo. It was one of Rinoa, smiling in a field of flowers, holding a hand gloved in black leather. The owner of the hand had been ripped out of the photo. Squall did not need the other half to know who the owner of the hand was.

Squall swore and tightly closed his eyes. The words he had spoken last night came unbidden into his mind. "This is getting too hard." He opened his eyes again. A hard, icy glaze came over his face as he ripped off the ring, jamming it back onto his finger. He tossed the photo and amulet into the trash. He picked the contents of his wallet off the floor, stuffing them into his wallet before he opened the door into the room.

Quistis had her naked back to the door. Squall stared for a moment, then turned away. Quistis turned around also, pulling her pink vest over her head. She looked at Squall. He looked back, not saying a word. Sharing that one uncomfortable moment, both basked in the other's eyes, before Squall finally broke the spell. "Are you ready to go?"

The two SeeDs walked down the main street of Dollet, looking for a restaurant that wasn't packed with people. They did not speak; instead, they shared silence. This silence was welcome to both of them. Finally, they stopped in front of a café that had a pleasant view of the beach and ocean. An outside dining area was jammed with people, chattering and staring at the red sky reflected on the calm water. "How much of a wait?" Quistis asked. "Oh, no more than twenty minutes. If you would like to wait, may I suggest you sit on the beach? It is very lovely at this time of day. Especially with such a handsome young man..." The hostess pointed to Squall, who was standing some distance away. "Indeed." Quistis said softly.

"Do you remember this place?" Quistis asked Squall as she lowered herself onto the sand.

Squall nodded, taking a seat next to Quistis. "Lapin beach. The SeeD test." He looked over to his friend. "You saved my life that day." Quistis looked down. "I couldn't let some uncoordinated robot take the life of my best student." Squall looked back to the ocean. "I never did ... thank you. I didn't even speak to you until that night. Then I just acted like a jerk." "Yes, you did." Quistis said, smiling to the ocean. Neither said anything for a while. Soon, Quistis asked "How long have we been working together?" She finally asked. Squall looked to the quickly departing sun. "We were both stationed in Deling City five years ago."

"Five years ... And in all this time..."

"What?"

"I said your table is ready sir." Said a black haired waitress.

"Oh, alright then." Quistis said, standing up quickly and dusting the sand off of her skirt. Squall looked at her departing figure then he too got up and followed the waitress to their table.

Quistis sipped the glass of wine, her eyes on Squall. The wine tasted bitter on her tongue. "Are you ready to order?" Said the same waitress that had gotten them from the beach. "Yes." Said Quistis, handing the waitress the menu. "I'll have the seared trout, with a side of risotto."

"Excellent choice ma'am; and for you sir?" "Grilled Balamb, also with risotto."

"Okay, be right out."

Squall twisted the stem of the wineglass in his fingers. The sun had gone down, replaced by the impossibly bright moon. There was a candle on the table, its flame in a futile struggle against the wind coming off of the ocean. Quistis looked up at the moon, her eyes twinkling in the light. She then looked at Squall. He was a million miles away. Quistis finally spoke. "You said that we would talk later..." Why do I always start the conversation? Was it that way with Rinoa? "Well, it's later."

Squall stopped twisting the glass. "I guess I owe you an explanation. You are my partner after all." He sighed. "I don't think... I want to be a SeeD anymore."

Quistis was silent for a moment, before the weight of what he had just said sank in. "You can't be serious..." She said slowly.

"No, I'm serious Quisty." He looked into her eyes. The pain she saw in Squall's eyes made her want to look away, but her compassion for her oldest friend kept her staring back at him. "What are we doing with our lives now?" Squall continued. "We go from mission to mission; blindly following orders. We kill people for no other reason than our superiors told us to kill. Last week, I shot a man and I didn't know why." He paused abruptly. Quistis was shocked by how open he was being. She had never seen him like this.

"And now this with Esthar. I can't see any way to win. I know you'll back me, you said so yourself, but it doesn't matter. The council will not listen to the idea of retreat. They will just keep sending SeeDs like you and me to fight and die in a futile war. A war that should have meaning to me, but it just doesn't."

Quistis took a sip of wine, her hand shaking. He was scaring her now. "I guess that's what scares me the most. My father is dead, and I don't feel anything..." He finally broke his eyes away from Quistis. She saw then that he had no defense left. "He is... vulnerable." "I...I...its just getting too hard." Squall choked out. He shut his eyes tightly, closed his mouth. Quistis couldn't think, she couldn't breathe.

Quistis looked at the dark and empty hotel room. She still couldn't get over the emotional shock of Squall's breakdown. It scared her, hearing all of his built up emotions and frustrations spilling out at once. She wondered where Squall went. After a deathly silent dinner, he had walked her back to the room, picked up his gunblade, and then he left without another word. Quistis didn't know what to do. She doubted if she would ever see him again. Quistis began to undress, for it was late and the council would be meeting at nine am. "What could cause a man like Squall to snap?"

Squall walked up the broken path, his mind blank. He didn't think. He just knew that he had to get away. Where, or for what purpose, he was not sure. He just knew that if he went with Quistis back to the hotel, he would not be there when she woke up. So he walked, farther and farther up the broken brick path up to the antenna. The place, he thought, where all his troubles had begun. Staring at the technological monolith, quietly sending its signals into space, Squall's head began to clear. An idea formed. An idea so terrible, Squall began to think he would lose his mind. He walked forward, the moon guiding his footsteps. He knew what he had to do. It was all there was left for him.

Quistis sighed, and went into the bathroom. She was intent on showering, going to sleep, and letting Squall take care of himself. She knew she was being foolish in worrying about him. She turned on the shower. The water was ice cold, as she expected. She took off her vest and boots. A piece of gil fell out of the vest pocket and into the small garbage pail. Quistis bent to retrieve it then noticed there was something else in the trash. She took both items out, and left the gil on the counter. She took one look at the photo, then hurriedly got dressed, all thoughts of a shower gone.

Squall breathed in the night air. It was gloriously cool and fresh tasting. He walked to the edge of the dish, looking across the ocean. The moon reflected off of the water's glassy surface. Memories came to him then. He remembered six years ago; the last time he saw Rinoa. Things had been going well for a long time. Squall was more human than he had been then in his entire life. "Yeah, things had been good." He thought, sitting down on the edge of the dish. But then, General Caraway died. And things turned bad. "Rinoa..."

She was sitting in front of the Caraway mansion, her head pressed against her knees. Squall could remember the sound of a hornet in the garden nearby.

"Are...are you okay?" He had asked slowly, cursing himself for asking the obvious. "No Squall...I'm pretty far from okay." Rinoa had said, not moving her head up. The next thing he knew, the hornet landed on him and stung him in the neck. He had to ignore the momentary pain. The venom flowed into his neck, coursing through his veins. Rinoa didn't even look up. Squall knew then that Rinoa was not the one for him. He felt it, as plainly as he felt the dead hornet being crushed in his hand.

"Ah, Rinoa... where did we go wrong?" Squall thought, legs dangling in the stiff wind. From that point, things had gone steadily downhill. The two got into arguments. Most of the time, the couple would patch things up immediately, without any real damage being done. But the love that was once between them was fading fast. Squall remembered one thing she said quite clearly. "People change Squall. It hurts, but you can't stop it. You can only hope to move on." From then on, they spoke less and less. Squall buried himself in SeeD work and Rinoa went and did whatever she did, "I sure as hell didn't have a clue."

The end came on a hot day in June. Rinoa had asked Squall to meet her in the Caraway mansion's garden. Squall remembered that she had her back to him, her blue dress undisturbed in the stagnant summer air. Squall had come straight from the ready room at Galbadia garden. His hair was still wet from the hasty shower he had taken. When Squall was behind her he stopped, not going to kiss her neck like he usually did. She turned, holding something in her clenched hand. "I think we both know what's happening Squall." She said, her eyes tearing.

"Yeah, I guess we do." He had said, his eyes on the ground.

Rinoa pressed a small package into Squall's hand. "Goodbye Squall." Rinoa said, before she ran out of the garden.

Squall just stood there, staring at the place where Rinoa ran away. A few minutes, he looked to the tiny package, hastily wrapped in brown paper. Squall took Rinoa's ring out of his pocket, and pulled his own ring off his finger. The moon illuminated the brightly polished silver on both of them. "Something for me to remember her by?" He thought, getting up from his sitting position on the ledge.

"Like I would really need the ring to remember her."

Quistis ran quickly up the broken trail to the antenna. She knew what Squall was planning; and she just couldn't let him destroy his life over an old girlfriend. "Its stupid." Quistis thought, hopping over some boulders that were strewn along the steep path. "Very stupid. He can't change anything by doing this." Her inner voice continued to say. "Oh really?" Another voice inside Quistis called. "You didn't think it was so stupid when he went out into space for her. You thought it was damned near romantic." "Romantic or not." Quistis thought, looking up at the antenna. "I have to stop him."

Squall stood in front of President Loire, his father. The older man looked at him, watching his child so full of anger and despair. "I want you to come with me." Squall's mind remembered his father's words. He could also remember his own response. "You must be crazy. I can't leave now."

Laguna had sighed deeply. "What for? For SeeD? For Garden? You and Rinoa would have a much better life in Esthar. You would be free from worries! You two could get married, have kids! Why won't you just forget about SeeD?" Squall was getting angry at this point. "You have no right to control my life Lagu...father. SeeD is my job. I can't just quit because it would be more convenient."

"Oh Christ, here we go again with whatever is 'convenient.' Son, why do you have to be so stubborn?" Squall was near shouting. "Listen! I made a commitment. I have to follow through. I can't just be like you, always going whenever-"Squall cut himself off when he saw his father's angry look. "What did you say? Like me? Is this about Raine? Listen Squall, like you; I had a choice to make. Either I stayed, and lose Ellone to Adel, or I go to Esthar to get your sister back!" Squall began to speak, stopped, then began again. "You...you shouldn't have left her."

Laguna was beginning to soften a bit. "I didn't know Squall. She didn't know it. Considering my options, I think I did the right thing. If you can't understand that..."

Laguna had turned away, then he pulled his tags off his neck and handed it to Squall. "Goodbye Squall. If you change your mind, you know where to find me."

Quistis reached the doors. She swore when she realized that they were locked. Throwing her shoulder into the door, she tried once, twice, three times before she fell back and cast a powerful ice spell. The door froze, then the heavy steel cracked, and shattered under the intense cold. Quistis ran over the rubble to the elevator.

Squall breathed deeply. He took his gunblade out, and laid it on the floor of the dish. He then took off his ring and jacket. Quistis would know what this meant, when they found his personal effects.

Rinoa's ring, and Laguna's military tags were in Squall's hand. He would take these with him. Squall breathed deeply, then walked to the very edge of the dish. Years ago, a monster had almost sent him off the side, into the ocean hundreds of feet below. This time, Squall would go over the side. He lifted one foot, leaned forward a little. A thought crossed his mind. "I'm sorry Quisty."

"Squall!" Quistis yelled as hard as she could, running over to him. Squall turned. Quistis stood behind him, horror and fear etched across her delicate features. He opened his mouth to say something, but a sudden wind knocked him off balance and over the side of the dish.

Quistis threw herself forward, letting her whip catch on the metal grating, before she too went over the side, clutching the whip with all her strength. Squall seemed to fall slowly. Slowly enough, that Quistis threw out her hand, and prayed that he would hold on to her. "Please Squall."

Squall saw Quistis throwing herself off the side, the whip clutched in her hand. Squall's minds screamed for him to reach up, and hold on to Quistis' hand. His hand moved slowly, connecting with Quistis, before time speeded up, and Quistis yanked Squall out of death's embrace.

Quistis gasped as her arms were stretched by Squall and the whip, their only connection to the living world. She was strong, but right now, Quistis didn't know if she was strong enough to pull both of them upward. Squall was slightly calmer. He knew that he had to pull Quistis out of this. He didn't want her to die. "Quisty...let go...of me..." He said, looking for something to grab on to. "Squall...I'm not gonna let you go..." She managed to say. He saw the metal beam jutting from the side of the antenna. It was less than four meters below him.

Quistis couldn't take it anymore. Her grip on the whip began to slip. "I'm not gonna let you go..." She said, before her hand let go of the whip handle, and the two began to fall.

Squall felt the air rush past him as he and Quistis began to fall from the dish. The beam rushed towards him. He did not let go of her hand. The beam flew past his head. His arm shot up, hand outstretched. "Gotcha." He said. Quistis dangled from his hand. "Squall! Don't let me go!" Quistis cried out, looking at the ocean hundreds of feet below her. "Don't be afraid." He said. "I'm not going to let you go." He couldn't be sure if Quistis heard him; the wind seemed to carry his words away. Squall pulled Quistis higher up, until she too could reach the beam. Once she pulled herself up, Squall pulled himself up as well. She sat on the beam, her hands clenching the cold metal. He sat next to her, his eyes darting in the moonlight, searching for a way back up.

Squall bent over and picked up his gunblade and jacket. He took the ring in his hand. "Why?" Quistis asked. She was still shaky from coming so close to dying. Squall pulled on his jacket. "I...don't know. It just...seemed like the only thing left. I mean, what have I to look forward to in life? Day after day, mission after mission...it all melts together..." He stuffed Rinoa's ring and Laguna's tags into a pocket. "And in the end...I have nothing."

Quistis came up behind him. She was so close; Squall could feel her breath on the back of his neck. "You know that's not true." "You have me." She finished in her head. "I know." He turned. "Because I have you." He finished in his head. They stood in silence for a moment, each looking into the other's eyes. Both felt very tired. Quistis broke her gaze with Squall. "Uh...we better go. We have an early start tomorrow." "Yeah..." He said. Quistis began making her way back to the elevator. "Wait, Quistis." He went up to her. "Do me a favor." He took her hand in his, and pressed his ring into her palm. "Hold onto this for me."

Part 2
A Strange Night, and Morning

Quistis entered the bathroom and closed the door. She could hear the sounds of Squall getting ready for bed through the wall. Quistis shook her head, and looked in the mirror. A tired and scared face looked back. She shook her head again; then she noticed the broken pendant on the counter.

Squall took off his boots and jacket and put them on the bureau next to his uniform. He lay down on his bed and took out Laguna's tags. He sighed. "Would I have made a difference?" He thought, staring at the corroded metal. "If I...if Rinoa and I had gone to Esthar, would it have mattered? He could barely make out the words. Could I have stopped it? Loire, Laguna, Corporal. 18427A. Or would I be dead too?" Squall swore. "What hand did fate deal me when I said no to him?"

Quistis picked up the pendant. "So, Squall had the other part the entire time." Her bag lay on the floor next to her feet. She reached in and searched for her compact. There was no makeup inside. Instead, there lay a gold ring, and the other half of Squall's pendant. She took the broken metal out. "Seven years ago..." Quistis took her part of the pendant and the other half, and held them together. "He told me to hold back...that he would go in first." Quistis let her head fall forward. She was so tired. "He took a baseball bat to the chest...cracked practically every rib he had." So tired. "I finished the job. And found that half of the pendant. Even then...like Griever itself was looking into me...saying... saying something..." So tired...

Squall's eyes flitted open. He thought he heard hushed sobbing. He rolled over and realized he was still dressed from the waist down. Then the bathroom door opened. Quistis stood there bathed in the light of the bathroom. He squinted; the light hurt his eyes. Quistis turned off the light. She wore a faded gray tank top and sweatpants. She moved to her bed without another word, and closed her eyes.

"Squall..." Squall felt a hand shaking him gently. He rolled over and saw Quistis kneeling on the floor next to his bed, gently shaking his arm.

"Yeah, what is it?" The drowsiness in his voice proof of the current time, that being two thirty in the morning. "This is gonna sound weird... but can I sleep in your bed?" She looked down. "I don't want to be alone."

Squall was too tired to deny. He scooted over on the small bed, allowing Quistis some room. She got into the bed and pressed herself against him. Squall closed his eyes, trying not to think. "Squall?" Closing her eyes.

"Yeah?" Not opening his eyes. "We're friends, right?" Silence. "Yeah Quistis. We're friends." Silence. "Squall?"

"Yeah?"

"Good night." "Sigh." "Good night."

Part 3
The Ride

"..." "..." "Good coffee." "Yeah."

They sat in the restaurant lobby, each sipping at their own large cup of special Dollet roast. It was now eight in the morning, approximately one hour before their ride for the Council came.

"..." "..." "Everything ready?" "That's the third time you asked."

"I know." They sip the steaming brew at the same time. Quistis, as usual, wears her uniform without a flaw in sight. The gold and silver embroidery looked as bright and new as the day she first put it on. She looked like one of those SeeDs in the propaganda posters. Her hair clean and fresh, the sparse amount of makeup on her face highlighting her jewel like eyes. Yes, in all ways, she looked like the perfect SeeD.

"..." "..." "Then why did you ask?" "I don't know." Squall looked better than he did yesterday. His hair had been combed back; his long bangs tied with one of Quistis' ribbons at the back of his head. His uniform was wrinkled in more areas than would be allowed on a propaganda poster, but his appearance had been deemed... presentable, at least. The gold and silver embroidery was dull in a few areas. He had noticed a stitch that had come undone. Quistis noticed as well, and neither said anything when she clipped off the loose thread.

"..." "..." "Everything's ready."

"I know." Squall turned to Quistis. He noticed that a strand of her hair had come loose from the small, tight ribbon on top of her head. Squall observed it. She would not be allowed in a propaganda poster if that small strand of hair remained out of the small ribbon.

He knew that he no longer cared about the propaganda poster. The strand was beautiful. It was perfect. If the poster would not allow that small piece of beauty in their picture of the perfect SeeD, then... "Fuck it."

"..." "..." "They put too much sugar in mine."

"Mine too." Squall kept staring at the hair. The moment was over now. The hair was nothing special anymore. It was just hair, an out of place hair, a hair that he knew, would be placed back in the ribbon. In due time, the hair would be placed back in with the other strands of beauty. He turned his head away. "I hope the hair stays out of place."

"..." "..." "Do you want to talk?"

"I need to think."

"Of course." Quistis took her eyes off the cup of coffee long enough to look at the brightly polished ring on her finger. For years, she would stare at that ring, longing to be the one to wear it. She wanted to be the one to wear it; she wanted to have Griever for herself. And now that she had Griever... "What? What the fuck do I have?"

"..." "..." "..." "..." Yes, she had Griever, and she was still no more or less well off than she was before. She had Griever, she had her uniform, and she had her place in the propaganda poster. She sighed. The ring barely fit on her thumb. She fit into it better than expected. Quistis did not notice however, that a strand of her hair had come undone.

The next hour passed by without a word spoken between the two. The other members of the council seemed to trickle down slowly into the lobby. Squall observed each of them, recognition flashing across his eyes. They were all Garden Alumni, and all of them had originally come from Balamb. They all seemed so much older to him than they had when he was in school.

At Garden, their bright and new looking pictures adorned the large copper wall outside the Headmaster's office. Out of the thousand or so SeeDs that had come out of Garden in the first year, these thirteen were all that were left of the first generation.

The other nine hundred and eighty seven were not given pictures. Their names were etched in an obsidian wall, some twenty miles north of the Garden.

Squall finished his coffee and stood up.

Quistis watched the Generals mingle about in the lobby. She remembered that when she was younger, she had looked up to the upper classmen. They seemed so powerful, immortal almost. Quistis had known for a while now that that illusion was long since dispersed. The reason why so many of the SeeDs she had seen in her youth seemed so powerful was because most SeeDs never lived past the age of thirty. She had never understood why so many SeeDs never lived past the age of thirty. Seeing these middle aged, overweight and balding Generals... "I wonder why I never understood..."

She finished her coffee and stood next to Squall.

"General Foley." Squall said, saluting the first class General. Quistis saluted as well, but she said nothing. "General Leonhart, General Trepe." Foley said, returning the salutes. "Its good to see you both again. The last time we saw each other was in... Balamb, last winter, right?"

Squall nodded. He, Quistis, and Foley had become what some would call allies since she and Squall had joined the council three years ago. General first class Charles Foley represented practically the only support Squall and Quistis generated from the council. Also to his credit, Foley was an entirely likable and friendly guy. He was forty-three years old, black, and partially going gray in some areas of his short hair. Foley, unlike the other members of the council, had only recently accepted the additional title of "Section Commander," which for most SeeDs, basically translated into "retirement."

"That's correct Charles." Squall said, wondering what Foley's stance would be on Esthar. He was about to ask when Quistis chimed said:

"I understand you were given Section Commander status. Congratulations." She said this last bit with something of a grin.

Foley smiled back. He was about to say something when a Dollet soldier with the insignia of a Colonel on his shoulder raised his hands over his head, addressed the council. "Transport to the palace of the Duke Lorraine, 82nd of that name, has arrived. Representatives of each Garden will now go to their respective vehicles, and await further instructions from inside the vehicle. Would you all please follow me."

Foley shook his head. "I'll talk to you two later."

The morning air was sticky and hot. Quistis couldn't believe that there had been such nice weather yesterday. She could see that a lot of the other members of the council were suffering under their wool uniforms in the heat of the morning. She felt the lion etched on the ring on her thumb. "It's going to be a long d-" A sudden and fierce pain on her neck interrupted her thoughts. She slapped at the source of the pain.

A crushed hornet lay in the palm of her hand.

Part 4
A Fevered Dream

The pain was overwhelming; she could not believe how much venom could be in a small hornet. She almost swooned, the poison causing her eyelids to flutter as she nearly fainted.

Squall noticed immediately. "Quistis!" He whispered harshly. There were Dollet soldiers everywhere. The other SeeDs were already in the vans. He grasped her shoulder, and whispered her name again. "Quistis, are you alright?"

Quistis struggled to remain on her feet. The poison was everywhere in her body. She looked at Squall through half closed lids. "Yeah... yeah I'll be fine. We better get on." She moved his hand off her shoulder and went into the armored van.

There was no air conditioning in the transport. She noticed this immediately. The other representatives of Balamb Garden sat in their seats; beads of sweat appearing on their oily foreheads. Quistis half sat, half fell at the far end of the van. The poison in her body was causing voices to be muffled and her vision impaired. A few seconds later, she could not see or hear.

Squall took a seat in front of Quistis.

A soldier in full battle uniform stood at the front of the bus and began reading from a sheet of paper. "On behalf of the Duke Lorraine, Dollet apologizes for these less than ideal travel conditions. These vans have been built to repel any ground attack, being magic, bomb and bullet proof. Air conditioning will not be supplied, at the risk of nerve or CS gas attack. Windows will not be opened at the risk of sniper fire. We will be at the Duke's palace within one hour. Please enjoy your ride."

Squall frowned and loosened his collar. "Chances are, the only risk of attack would come from within the Dollet army; not any outside force."

He frowned and turned around to Quistis. She was sweating heavily, and her eyelids were fluttering. He could have cast a cure spell, had they been outside the van. In these conditions though, all Squall could do was wait and hope Quistis would come out of it before they arrived at the council.

Quistis awoke, sweating and alone in an empty lot. Large weeds, broken beer bottles and cracked pavement surrounded her. It was the kind of place where underage kids would go at night to drink cheap beer and get high. It could also have been used as a resting stop for a group of transients, possibly wishing to start a fire and warm their cold bodies.

She stood up. The sky was a deep dark red, the kind of color you would see in a city on a rainy night. There was no rain though. No rain would fall yet. There were also no stars, nor any trace of the moon.

The night was cold, and it chilled her sweat soaked body to her bones. Her whip hung loosely on her belt. She rubbed her eyes, and looked for a way out of the lot. Then she saw him.

A lone figure stood in the middle of the lot, a gunblade hanging from his belt. Quistis squinted in the near darkness. The figure could have been anyone, but she suddenly had a feeling...

"Squall?" She croaked.

In less than a second, the figure unsheathed the gunblade, and ran full tilt towards a very alarmed Quistis.

Her mind raced, scanning over thousands of possible ways to deal with the situation. Her eyes flashed, as her mind came to the inevitable answer, the correct way for the perfect SeeD to deal with any situation.

Fight.

The figure came at her with the deadly blade at his side, ready to swing upwards in an uppercut. Quistis realized this in less than a second. In the remainder of that second, the whip came alive in her hand as she leapt to the right of her shadowy assailant, vacating the spot where a millisecond later, her body would have been sliced in two.

The assailant realized her move quickly, and his feet moved in front of his body, stopping instantly and using the force from his run to leap directly in front of Quistis, gunblade ready.

The initial shock had worn off, and her whip danced at her feet, waiting for the man to attack, for him to make the first move. The dim, moonless night made any attempt at identifying the assailant futile, unless she managed to get within a centimeter of his face.

The night was silent. The figure apparently made no sound; she could not even hear him breathing in the still night. His silence was of little consequence anyway. She could hear nothing above the symphony of her blood pounding in her ears. Her breath came out in small puffs of smoke, evidence of the heavy moisture in the air...

Without warning, the figure ran to Quistis, gunblade cocked and ready to fire. She brought herself into position, using the heavy handle of her whip to block the first blow, the shot whizzing over her head. She responded with a well-placed roundhouse kick to his side.

Squall looked back at Quistis, his still features masking the concern he felt. He took his seat in front of her still form with good reason. Had any other members of the council seen her, they might have had a reason to discredit her opinion in the council. As far as Squall could tell, none of the other Generals had taken notice of her. They were all dozing away the overheated hour in the armored transport.

He sat back; staring out the thick, bulletproof windows to the crashing waves of the coast below. As an afterthought, he reached back and took her left hand in his. It felt cold and clammy, no doubt a result from the poison in her body. He rubbed her fingers, trying to warm them a little. "Pull out of it. Quisty... pull out of this..."

The fight ensued. He was a vicious, but smart fighter. Quistis gave all she had, and maybe a little bit more. Their bodies fought in darkness, each jab and block; thrust and parry were instinctive. They fought in the darkness like two pieces of space, not entirely tangible, but definitely THERE.

Quistis was tired. Her inner magic, what her classmates had called Limit Breaks, were of no effect on her dark assailant. She had fought in every way she knew how; by the book, around the book, and sometimes flat out breaking the book, and still she could not take him down. She was bleeding from several wounds, mostly on her arms and shoulders, the places where occasionally, the gunblade hit its mark.

Quistis was moving back quickly, her dancing whip keeping the attacker at bay. She snapped the whip at his face, then leapt quickly into the air, flipping once, and bringing her foot down on his forehead. It was beautifully executed, and also represented the only real damage done to him during the battle. It also left her on the hard, cracked pavement of the lot, the wind completely knocked out of her.

She looked up slowly, her breathing ragged, her body limp and cold. A sudden realization came to her, like a heavy lead blanket had just dropped onto her. "I can't win." It was that simple. No matter how hard she tried, her opposition was just too strong. With this realization lodged firmly in her mind, Quistis stood up, letting the whip hang limply at her side. She stood, waiting for the attacker to recover, to stand again and finish his job.

He stood presently. He was obviously injured as well. Besides a new gash in his forehead from her boot, he had marks all over him, some bleeding from the places where the whip had struck. Quistis was beginning to see this. It pained her to see that she was apparently so close: so close to winning, and yet she could not.

More than anything else really, it pained her to know that if she perished, she would not know why. It hurt. It hurt her that the only definite knowledge in her life would be that at the end, she would not know why.

The attacker charged, gunblade low.

What happened next defied all logic, what logic there was in this nightmare world. The whip that had hung so loose and hopelessly in her hand came alive, and struck at the running attacker's knees. The whip wrapped around, once, twice, three times the attackers right knee joint. Before she knew it, Quistis yanked hard on the whip.

The snap that followed was louder than any bolt of lightning, any bomb, any explosion that Quistis had ever heard. The assailant tumbled forward, his right leg useless, paralyzing his lower body.

It had happened so quickly, Quistis didn't even realize her whip had broken in half. She didn't notice the gunblade sweeping out, severing the two major tendons at the back of her right knee. She didn't notice that the gunblade had snapped in half upon impact. She noticed none of this, not even that again, she was tumbling towards the pavement of the forsaken lot. No, she noticed nothing...

Except Squall's bleeding, tired, sweaty face, centimeters in front of her own.

She saw that he was afraid, of her? She tried to speak, but her voice would not respond. Instead she thought, hoping somehow, Squall would hear her.

"Why did you attack me?" "Why did you attack me?" Squall responded. He was just as confused as she was. He was just as hurt. Quistis felt herself smile a little. "What have we done?" Squall shook his head. He had no answer to give.

The whip, now little less than half a meter long, lay next to the discarded gunblade, broken in half. By no one's will, the broken weapons rose. The now hovering weapons darted to the two kneeling SeeDs. The whip wrapped around Squall's neck, and the gunblade was a mere millimeter away from Quistis' jugular.

She stared into his eyes. This was it, their final moment. She knew that the terror in Squall's eyes was mirrored within her own. She inhaled, then exhaled. She closed her eyes, and let her lips move towards his. No more thoughts, no more fighting, no more violence.

Squall moved his head a little to the left, eyes closed, ready to receive his final kiss. Her lips were close, closer than they had ever been before. Their final moment ended. The lips so close...

Crack. The whip attempted to pull itself straight, but then realized it had failed when Squall's neck interfered. The whip had to satisfy itself with the crunch resulting from his now demolished vertebrae.

Slice. The gunblade, apparently deciding that it's business was done, whipped itself upward, leaving a nice and deep hollow of air where Quistis' vocal cords, jugular, and throat had been a moment before.

The hollow shells fell into each other, two meaningless pieces of trash added to the desolation of the cracked and torn up lot. The night sky above was still red, still threatening to spill over at any moment with rain. The rain would have washed away the blood spilling from their bodies.

She sat up to find herself face to face with Squall. Concern was etched across his otherwise unreadable features. She was out of breath, and sweating through the uniform in the baking transport.

"Did you dream?" spoken unlike a question.

"... How did you know?"

He turned his head, to show Quistis a small, pinhole sized scar. She unconsciously moved her hand to feel the angry red welt on her neck.

"The venom in the hornet is strong." He said.

Quistis frowned, moved to say something, then closed her mouth and shook her head.

An armed guard picked up the microphone. "Attention, attention, we will be arriving at the Duke Lorraine's palace in fifteen minutes. On behalf of the Dollet Armed Services, I would like to thank you for your cooperation in this..."

Part 5
The Three Matrix Project

In the heart of Esthar City, much of which now lays in ruin, there is a company called "Three Matrix Archive and Records." This building which Three Matrix used to operate in is now partly destroyed, with its upper fifteen levels being completely blown away.

A young SeeD cadet named Tomas Chee is quietly looking around the basement levels, a titanium spear held in his hands. Chee was not in his SeeD uniform. Instead, all members of the force in Esthar were dressed the same. Dark gray pants, black shirts, heavy chest armor, with a large helmet on his head. The helmet contained a radio. Chee had been sent into the building in order to seek out any survivors. In the space above him, Chee could hear the fighting between the SeeD forces and the rebel forces.

"We're not going to last much longer." Chee thought, rolling a body over with his spear. The man that the body used to belong too had had his face caved in by a heavy metal pipe, which lay a few meters away. Chee shook his head. He couldn't understand why these people would be murdering one another while a goddamned war was going on.

He was about to give up his search when his SeeD sensitive ears picked up a noise, approximately three hundred meters in front of him. Chee sheathed his spear and ran swiftly but soundlessly to the noise, which came from what appeared to be a kitchen area. Chee stopped, slowed his breathing and listened. The sound had stopped. Chee unsheathed his spear, holding it in an underhand position. He didn't move. The noise started again, and Chee could tell that it came from a large, industrial refrigerator, right in front of him. Chee exhaled, sheathed his spear and took out his sidearm. He crept to the refrigerator, cocked the pistol...

Chee swung the door open, and immediately holstered his weapon as a haggard, freezing man tumbled out. The man was speaking in tongues, and shaking hard.

Chee tried to speak to the man. However, Chee's remedial level Estharian seemed to have no effect on the freezing and obviously terrified civilian. So Chee just picked him up and slapped him full across the face.

"Pull yourself together!" He shouted, as an explosion rocked the foundation of the building. The man screamed hysterically, and fell to his knees, hands clamped in prayer.

Chee shook his head, viciously pulled the man up again and shouted, "SeeD! SeeD! I'm a SeeD!"

The man's eyes widened. He finally fell silent.

Another explosion. Chee heard the sounds of airships rising. Then a crackle from his radio. "Corporal Chee, this is Lieutenant Silla. We are pulling out. Repeat, we are pulling out of Esthar City."

Chee nodded. "Sir, this is Chee. I have one survivor, a starry, request immediate air support. Three Matrix is not going to last much longer." Silence. "Negative Corporal. Airship Pantomime is pulling out, with or without you."

Chee swore. "How much time do I have sir?"

Silla took her time to respond. "Ten minutes. We'll hold out as long as possible."

Fisherman's Horizon had been quickly transformed into the largest military camp ever assembled. Fully sixteen square miles of floating ground had been added on to house all the military staff, weapons, munitions, and transportation, from Airships to Juggernaut class M1 Battleships. Almost the entire civilian population of FH had been quietly escorted out of the area to an undisclosed location in southern Galbadia. Lieutenant Silla, a charming woman and SeeD of four years sat behind Corporal Chee in one of the interrogation rooms. The room was plain, with one two-way mirror on one of the walls. Silla could barely make out the forms of recording technicians behind the glass.

"And then I just came upon this starry, hiding in a refrigerator. The call came from my CO, and I just took 'em and ran."

The interrogator, a thin and balding man in his forties, took a drag on his cigarette. Silla wondered briefly if the smoke from the cigarette interfered with the recording equipment.

The interrogator looked to the mirror before saying, "Son, do you know who you took from that building?"

Silla's face contorted slightly upon hearing this... civilian call one of her best men "son."

Chee noticed also, but he did nothing to reveal his irritation. "Negative, he just looked like another starry."

The interrogator took another drag and addressed Silla, who hadn't said anything during the entire interrogation. "You authorized Corporal Chee here to enter the Three Matrix building?"

Silla was beginning to wonder where this interrogation was going. "Yes. We were on refugee detail when the rebels started to blast us. The starry from Three Matrix was the only civilian we managed to get out."

"Corporal Chee, did you happen to come across any record material? Specifically twenty millimeter Digital Audio Tapes?"

Chee shrugged. He wanted to look to Silla for reassurance, but he realized that this was more than just a post mission interrogation. "No. It all looked like rubble to me. If there were any DATs, I doubt they would have survived. The building collapsed shortly after we evacuated."

The interrogator nodded, and looked to the mirror again. He looked back at the two SeeDs. "Corporal Chee, you wouldn't be lying to me, would you?"

This was too much for Silla. She stood and walked calmly to the window. "I think that about does it for now." She stood, patted Chee on the shoulder. He stood and walked after his CO.

The interrogator looked desperately to the mirror. "Wait, we're not finished here!"

"I say you are." Silla said, holding the door open for Chee. "Good evening to you gentlemen." She spoke this last to the men behind the mirror.

Part 5, B
The Three Matrix Project

Another interrogation room, another thin, balding interrogator. Except now the Estharian from Three Matrix is being interrogated. An interpreter, wearing the traditional robes of Esthar sat between the two men. The Estharian has calmed down visibly since being brought into camp.

The interrogator took a drag on his cigarette. It seems that there is only one kind of interrogator in the world. "State your name please."

"I am Pocoshe Vinsino, CEO of the Three Matrix Company." Spoken through the interpreter.

The interrogator took another drag. "Three Matrix had been charged by your government with the task to catalogue Esthar's history. How long have you been working on this?"

The translator translated. Vinsino took his time to respond. He licked his licks before speaking rapidly for several seconds.

"The hell did he just say?" Interrogator asked this to the translator.

The translator shrugged. "He says that he will give you what information he has, but that he is obliged under contract not to say anything else."

The interrogator tapped his cigarette, letting the ashes fall onto the table. "Who is the contract with?"

The translator listened as Vinsino went on for a few minutes. The interrogator wondered briefly if his kids had gotten to school this morning.

The translator nodded when Vinsino finished. "All he can say is that the contract is with a third party outside of the government. Saying anything else would be breach of contract."

The interrogator looked to the window.

Part 5, C
A starry DAT

A mile away, in the main intelligence building, a bored tech is putting a rather battered DAT into his computer. This was his last charge of the day before he could go home.

The tech, a twenty three year old Galbadian named Ivan, was surprised to learn that the starry's DAT was actually contained an audio file. He pressed play.

"As I'm sure many of you know, Esthar was found when refugees from the Lunar Cry went their separate ways. The one's who went northwest, they founded the countries of Galbadia and Dollet, while the one's who went northeast, founded the country of Esthar. Move forward a few thousand years, you will find that every sorceress, since the Great Hyne decided to split itself in half, has been in the borders of Esthar. Thusly, every Sorceress that ever came into being ruled as a Queen, or tyrant, or whatever you want to call her. Then Loire showed up, led the rebellion, and cast Esthar into a state of global unconsciousness, and the planet into perpetual silence, due to the radio interference."

The tape was scratchy, with a lot of static in the background. Ivan frowned as he thought for a second, then started the recording again.

"Of course, you all know what happened then.

However, I am willing to bet that none of you know anything about Esthar itself. Would you think that eight years would create any real cultural integration between a xenophobic country and the rest of the globe? No, I wouldn't think so. So, let me explain it briefly:

The static continued in the background. Ivan frowned again, thinking. Digital audiotapes were known for their amazing clarity, and static, even on a damaged DAT, was a very rare occurrence.

"The government of Esthar is composed of three branches:

The Judicial branch, which handles all matters of law enforcement, from arrest to trial to punishment. (Incidentally, torture and the death penalty had been removed under the Loire rule, but more on that later).

The Legislative branch, which is a council of four representatives from the city's Alpha, Beta, Theta, and Delta districts. The Omega district, or more accurately the presidential palace, is exempt from the council, but is the final word on any decisions made.

The Executive branch is the President of Esthar, who once elected, is ruler for life. At the time of the president's death, the people have a choice of whether or not the heir will take his or her father's place as ruler. If not, the country is controlled by the council until an adequate candidate is found.

The system sounds perfect, no? In case you're wondering, the Executive branch of the government controls all military concerns. However, like any other military, there are numerous ranks that can be acquired in the Estharian Armed Forces.

I assume that most of you already know how technologically advanced Esthar City is. Indeed, the technology is second to no other country in the world. The city itself is a testament to man's will to create beauty in everything he sees."

The tape went into indistinct static for a few more moments. Ivan popped the DAT out. "Something isn't right here. The static... noises in the background..."

Ivan pushed the DAT into a different machine; this one was hooked up to several glowing LED meters.

Ivan's eyes widened as he saw the meters turn from green to yellow to red. According to the machine, this DAT contained over twenty gigabytes of information, way more information than a simple audiotape would contain.

"What if..."

"Ivan."

Ivan was broken from his thoughts by the relief tech. "Bedtime my man."

Ivan frowned, looked at the DAT again. "Yeah, yeah... hey, would you hold onto this for me? Just until morning?"

"Sure thing. Sweet dreams."

Ivan left the office. The relief tech, whose name was Domi, pocketed the tape, forgetting immediately it was there.

Part 6
Introduction of Hijirah

In the SeeD encampment, an unapproved satellite call has just been picked up.

CALL BEGIN: 17:54, FH TIME

TO: 1-245-17-872-555-4185 {POS. IDENT: RAHEEM SOHRAB} FROM: 1-001-02-210-555-9829 {POS. IDENT: HIJIRA MUHAJID.}

ALERT: HIJIRA MUHAJID, RECENTLY ESCAPED FROM HADES INTERNATIONAL CORRECTIONAL FACILITY, BLUE WATER ISLAND, GALBADIA. SUSPECTED IN VARIOUS ASSASSINATIONS OF HIGH-RANKING GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS. CONSIDER ARMED AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.

BEGIN RECORDING: 17:54, FH TIME

SOHRAB: Who the fuck is this? Motherfucker, you know what time it is?

MUHAJID: Raheem, its Hijira.

SOHRAB: ... how did you get this number?

MUHAJID: Raheem, just listen. I'm out. I'm coming home.

SOHRAB: Hijira, shit... boy, that might have been possible a couple weeks ago, but none of us can afford you back in town. You come here, then we all dead, not just those dumb niggas that shot up Loire.

MUHAJID: Raheem, I don't care. I just need you to let me back in Nial long enough for me to get my stuff. Then I'm gone.

SOHRAB: ... you mean that?

MUHAJID: On my mother's fucking grave.

SOHRAB: (indistinct) Alright. I'll tell the brothers on guard detail not to shoot you on sight.

MUHAJID: If I hadn't called you, would they?

END CALL.

ALERT FORWARDED TO G.I.A. DELETE RECORDING FROM SEED DATABASE?

(Y/N)

Y.

Hijira hung up the phone, and let out a sigh. The sigh that came from him was not just a mere audible exhalation of breath. No, this was the sigh of complete and utter relief. A sigh of knowing. Hijira knew that a certain hell he had known for fourteen years, for a little less than half of his bloody natural life, was near an end.

Hijira sighed again. This time, it was merely audible exhalation of breath.

He stood on the bow of a Galbadian ferry, service from a part of the suburbs, heading into one of the port towns west of Deling City. He seemed out of place among the pale business people. Hijira had escaped from Hades two weeks ago, presumably at the same moment when the President of Esthar, Laguna Loire, had been shot in the face, and half of government center blown to pieces. Hijira was a handsome man of thirty-eight years. He stood at six feet tall, and had a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee on his face. His skin was light brown, like an eggshell. He did not look all that unusual, except for the unnatural coolness of his blue eyes.

Part 6, B
Homecoming

Nial was the same. A small town in the vast southeastern deserts of Esthar which attracted the bare minimum of tourists. Though Nial was located in Esthar, there were no Estharians living there. The people who lived in Nial were a sub race of desert inhabitants descended from the first Centran refugees and nomads. These tall, dark skinned people were called Guevarians, the name translating to the ancient Centran for desert. The Guevarians have a long and rather intellectual history. Aside from the first to use a solar rather than lunar calendar, the Guevarians were credited for mapping nearly half of the known world, as well as being the original inventors of the ancient weapon of a knight, the gunblade.

Like all desert towns, Nial was centered on an oasis among the harsh mountains and air. The oasis however, had long since dried up, and a large machine sat in the depression among the rocks and sand. This machine was named a condenser; its function was to separate hydrogen and oxygen atoms from the air, day and night, to provide water for Nial's inhabitants.

The township of Nial itself however, was little more than two adobe structures, one on each side of a dusty street, spanning for a half mile, with the condenser machine in the middle.

Raheem Sohrab's personal transport, a late model light blue "Leo" convertible, had picked Hijirah up along the outskirts of Nial about twenty minutes ago. Just now the proprietor of the "Aloca Inn and Bar" could see the trail of dust and sand left by the Leo's tires.

Hijira stood on the road of Nial for the first time in nearly five years. The last time he was in Nial had just been to drop of his clothing and equipment before he was caught and sent to Hades. He inhaled deeply. The hot, dry air had already caused sweat to bead on his forehead. He wasn't necessarily happy about being "home." Nial was never really "home" anyway; more like a place you stop in every now and then than anything Hijira would call "home."

He started walking to the Aloca. If he guessed right, Raheem would be in the office above right now, either fucking one of the Aloca's waitresses, or counting the profit from his small "family" business.

As it turned out, Hijira had been correct about the former. The girl ran out of the office with an embarrassed smile on her face, leaving an angry Sohrab behind the desk, quickly zipping his fly.

"Raheem, my brother." Hijira walked up to the desk. Raheem looked the same as he always looked; overweight, balding, and sweating. If Raheem walked into any other town on the planet, no one would spare him a second look, unless it was a look of disgust. But Raheem was smarter than his appearance gave him credit. He was smart enough to know not to try to rise any higher than this, a family boss in an armpit desert town.

"Don't 'my brother' me, you damn fool." Raheem never liked his nephew. He always thought that the boy had aspirations higher than what his skin and history could ever hope to accomplish. He had said as much to his sister until the day she died.

Hijira just shook his head. The heat was getting to him. He just wanted to get his gear and get the hell out of town. "Look, I'm not going to trouble you. I just came to get my supplies, maybe say hello to my father and sister, then that's it. You'll never have to see me again Raheem."

Raheem snorted. "Hmp. You wanna see your daddy; you better take one of those guns of yours and shoot your dumb self in the head. Yo' daddy's dead boy. Of course you would have known that if your dumb ass wasn't getting sodomized over at Hades."

Hijia felt his jaw tighten. He had never held any real love for his father. More respect than anything else, but never love. But being told that his father, his only father on this earth, was dead in such a crude way by his ass of an uncle... it just put a shadow over the feeling of freedom he had since escaping. He spoke quickly. "First of all, I do not participate in homosexual sex while in prison, Raheem. More than a half a dozen of 'em had to die before they learned that. Second of all, I don't give a damn about my father, and I sure as hell am not going to swallow a bullet on his account. Third of all... third of all, go fuck yourself anyway nigga. I didn't escape from hell to have you pound on my head with your bullshit in the middle of this damn heat in this fucking town. Just give me back my gear and I'm out of here."

Raheem snorted again. He didn't seem to hear Hijira's calmly executed outburst. "How you gonna get out of here, boy? Matter of fact, how'd you get in, anyway? You know them damn niggas go on and kill that Estharian president put the entire world on edge. They got SeeD over here now, you know that boy? How the hell you gonna get past SeeD, 'Hijira'?"

Hearing his uncle make a mockery of his name made Hijira want to break the bastard's neck where he sat. Instead, Hijira stood silent and tall. He had said all he would say.

Raheem gave a dry, sour chuckle. "Oh you gonna cry now boy? Fine, fine. I'll get yo' sister up here, she'll take you to your stuff."

Raheem stabbed a fat finger into an antiquated intercom system. He pressed his lips right next to the speaker and spoke softly enough that Hijira couldn't hear.

A second later, someone knocked on the door. "Get in here!" Barked Raheem.

An attractive woman, about thirty five years old, walked into the room. She was dressed in the coarse black robe of a priestess of the Hyne. The bright red cross glared at Hijira out of the robe. Upon seeing Hijira, the priestess slapped him full across the face.

"Bastard." She spat.

Hijira rubbed his cheek. He had expected such a greeting from his baby sister.

"Hello Majila. Nice to see you again." He said.

Majila looked about ready to curse Hijira out again, but Raheem interrupted her.

"Majila, save it. Bring this boy to his shit and then see him safely out of Nial. Once he's out, he's out for good, ain't that right Hijira?"

"Yes Raheem." Hijira said simply.

"Go on." Raheem said to Majila.

The cool air of the temple was glorious after the heat of the Aloca's top floor. Hijira said as much to Majila. She did not look at nor did she speak to Hijira until they came to the domed temple, almost fifty feet below the harsh surface.

Majila bent to one knee before she passed the arch into the domed room. Hijirah walked right through.

The temple looked as he always remembered it. Dusty old prayer rugs hanging from the walls, the musty smell of smoke and incense. Torches dotted among the room lighted the temple faintly. At the far side, opposite the entrance, stood an eight foot tall figure of the Great Hyne, surrounded by votive candles, incense, and photographs of young men. Hijira asked Majila, "What's with the photos?"

Majila kneeled in front of the figure. "Men and boys that left the town to wage the Holy War. The Blessed Hyne is the only one who can help them."

Hijira tried hard not to roll his eyes. "Was departed father one of those?"

Majila did not look at her brother. "No; departed father died of stroke last year. He did not get the chance to remove the dishonor from his soul." She started weeping. "So much dishonor in our family. I pray day and night that the Forgiving Hyne excuse our sins. But there are just so many sins to atone for... departed father never atoned for the adultery he committed with that..." she stopped crying and her face grew dark, "woman! That outsider! She wasn't even Guevarian! I-"

Majila could have gone ranting about the white woman for the next few hours if Hijira had not shaken her shoulder. "Majila... my stuff."

She eyed him coldly. "Of course."

The priestess stood and walked to a dark area of the temple, not lit by torchlight. Hijira could not see, but he thought he heard the sound of a metal door opening, then wheels across the stone floor. When Majila appeared again, she was pulling a casket on wheels behind her.

Hijira stared at the last home of a human being. This was not the kind of omen he was ready for. "Go on, do what you have to do." And with that, she left the temple.

Hijira sighed and bent to open the casket.

The things inside were for survival. There were five handguns, during his youth, he had named the pistols The Five Desires of Man: The two matching .44 automatics were called Vengeance and Justice. The long barreled assassin's pistol named simply Judgement with a silencer and scope. Finally, the two seven shot PPk's were named Life and Death, because Life contained merely powerful electric pulses that would incapacitate without killing. Death used seven extremely dense and extremely compact armor piercing bullets, made from depleted uranium.

The things inside were for necessity. In a sealed plastic bag were his Galbadian style clothes: Loose black canvas pants with reinforced stitching, a short-sleeved white linen shirt, a brown leather mid-length jacket and black boots. Under his clothes and guns, there was a thick stack of gil notes; about ten inches square, totaling one hundred thousand gil.

Finally, the things inside were for his profession. There was a Ulysses shotgun laying in pieces, ready to be assembled and cleaned. A rucksack full of ammunition, raw materials such as Dark Matter, and the tools for creating special shotgun shells.

Hijira stripped off his sweat soaked and dirty clothes, and proceeded to dress in his old clothes. He put Vengeance and Justice in a double holster on the small of his back. A double jacket holster held Life and Death on each side of his body, twelve centimeters under each armpit. Judgement hung at his waist.

He cleaned and assembled the Ulysses with a robot like ease and precision, before he slung the shotgun on his back. In all, he carried nearly thirty kilograms of tempered and polished steel on his person.

Hijira left the casket open on the floor. Let Majila take care of it, he decided. She's going to hate me anyway.

He climbed the stairs out of the ceiling, and was surprised to see Majila, Raheem, and several of Raheem's "men" were waiting for him.

"An armed escort to lead me out of town, Raheem?" Hijira said without rancor.

Raheem obviously did not want to be out in the sun. "No. Majila, give it to him." Majila stepped forward, and for the first time, Hijira noticed the glint of steel under her robe. His suspicions were confirmed when she unsheathed his fahter's gunblade.

"Departed father requested you should take the family burden. "La Falca de Guevaria." The Desert Falcon. He wanted you to have it, Hijira."

Hijira looked down at the gunblade. It was a revolver, a bird of prey etched at the tip of the blade. Probably weighed about ten kilos, Hijira thought.

He sighed. "Fine." He took the gunblade, and waited as Majila unhooked the holster.

Raheem grunted. "Get out of my town."

Hijira ignored him. "Are you ever going to forgive me, Majila?"

His baby sister looked up at him, the harsh look in her eyes softening for a moment. "It's not my place to forgive you Hijira. Its yours."

"I did what I did because it was the right thing to do. The woman may have been an outsider. But her child, father's and the woman's, Juliet, she was our sister..."

Majila stared at the ground. "I never have, nor will I ever acknowledge Juliet, as my sister. Hijira. If you were ever a brother to me, or a son to mother, you would understand that. As it stands now, it's all between you and the Great Hyne. I will have no more of it."

Hijira was not encouraged by these words. Whatever elation he felt from escaping was gone now, replaced by a sinking feeling of dread. In the coming days and months, Hijira would know what it would mean to understand the feelings, as he will be unwillingly dragged into issues of the past, the present, and the future. Even though he had gained exodus from an undesirable place, his journey was far from over.

Part 7
Throwing Stones in a Hall of Mirrors

The Hall of Mirrors, the famous meeting room of the Duke's palace, seemed to be filled with thousands of SeeDs, each milling about and within and among the beautiful crystal walls. Dozens of Squalls, Quistis', and Charles' sat on all sides of the room, gazing at the walls and ceilings at the seeming chaos of the SeeDs. Quistis wondered at the kind of irony that had to be utilized in creating such a room. In the Hall of Mirrors, there had probably been countless acts of subterfuge, treason, double-dealing, and other various forms of extortion and manipulation. "What kind of sick architect would force a corrupt politician to have to look at himself in the mirror after every decision he would ever make in this room?" Quistis mused on the consciences of politicians for a while longer, before she finally turned to Charles.

"Where's Censura?" She asked, referring to the council's moderator.

Charles shrugged, looking very bored. "Who knows? With all of the advancement in diplomatic relations in the world, I still wonder why the creators of this council can't create a functioning schedule."

Quistis smiled wryly as Charles continued.

"I mean look at us Quistis. We're practically going to be controlling the fate of the world, and yet we cannot create a schedule that will get everyone in on time." Charles trailed off as he looked at Quistis' hand. "That's a very handsome ring, Quistis. May I inquire where you purchased it?"

Quistis started to mouth something. Just as she was about to speak, the doors opened, with the Council moderator and his staff following immediately afterwards.

Squall made a conscious effort to clear his mind as the generals began to sit and organize themselves. Though he did not want to admit it to himself, since he was after all trying to keep his mind blank, he was extremely nervous about speaking. For one horrible second he thought his armpits smelled, but then he realized it was one of the other three generals to his right. Quistis was on his left.

Then Squall's mind decided to do something awful. A clear and extremely provocative picture of Rinoa suddenly flashed into his mind.

"Oh god... not now... Rinoa..."

But he wasn't so much seeing Rinoa as he was seeing a finely sculpted landscape of perfect ivory; the whiteness offset only by two obsidian deposits and the two fields of red roses. A second later, all he could see were the roses of her lips, as they kissed his own, and then kissed his chest, and then...

"God... no not now..." The stink of body odor was now definitely coming from him. One of the other Balamb representatives eyed him quickly. Squall was the picture of stoic calm, but in his mind, seas of old lust and love swelled.

He was being crushed under tons of red flower petals and pure white feathers. His body felt like it was trapped in the hot and humid atmosphere of Deling City in mid summer. His mouth tasted of sickeningly sweet strawberries and apricots. Venom poured through his veins...

And it was suddenly all stopped by Quistis' lips brushing against his left ear as she whispered, "Be ready for anything, Squall."

The sights, tastes, and overall sensation of the hallucination were gone now, being replaced by the warm feeling of two soft lips brushing his earlobe. He whispered in response, "Okay."

Censura, the moderator of the SeeD council's meetings, cleared his throat and spoke. "Good morning everyone. The time is ten am, Dollet Standard. I hereby announce this, the fourteenth council of the Worldwide Garden Alliance open. Today we will discuss SeeD's involvement with the recent violent coup de tat in the Republic of Esthar. General Foley of Galbadia Garden, would you please make your opening statement."

Foley rose, walked to the center of the room, and addressed the other Garden's representatives, slowly moving in a circle in order to catch everyone's eyes in the circular room. "Thank you moderator Censura. I have been charged with finding out the details of the coup de tat as of today. So far, gentlemen, ladies, there have been an estimated four thousand casualties in Esthar city, including rebellious forces, Republic Soldiers, and civilians. Government center and the Presidential Palace in the Omega district have been completely destroyed, causing an estimated fourteen trillion gil in damages."

Foley paused for a moment to allow time for the information to be scribbled in various notebooks, then he continued. "Of course, that's all the information that has been released to the international press. However, there is more to this coup, a lot more."

Foley then proceeded to pass out eight by ten black and white photographs to each member of the council, including Censura. "These," he said, "are the rebels that took Esthar. Members of a sub-race of Esthar called Guevarians."

Quistis carefully studied the photographs. A group of tall young men with dark skin, wearing sashes at their waists, and... she blinked at this, gunblades at their sides. She eyed Squall, and he raised his eyebrows slightly.

"The Guevarians you see in these photos are the ones who carried out the assassination of President Loire and most of his cabinet. The palace was then blown to pieces moments later by rocket attack, which we believe came from one of Esthar's offshore missile bases, which supports the widely held theory that parts of the Estharian armed forces were in league with the Guevarians." Foley paused, swallowed, then said "As of this moment, we do not know the answers to two very important questions; the first, is how the Guevarians came into league with the Estharian armed forces, and second, is why the Guevarians attacked in the first place."

Foley suddenly started walking in a long, fast circle around the room. "Right now the international press is making their own story, that being the coup was part of a larger, proletarian type revolution. Right now, it's probably best that we don't say anything." Foley stopped suddenly. "Until we're sure, it is my recommendation that the council vote on total Media Blackout."

Quistis scribbled something on a note and handed it to Squall. "I think he knows more than he's willing to say." Squall scribbled back, "I think you're right."

The various other speakers went on, but Quistis found herself not paying much attention. All the generals seemed to be saying the same things; immediate and swift retaliation, rallying of troops worldwide, continued occupation of FH, etc. etc... She just hoped that what she and Squall had to say would make some difference in the general attitude of action to take to this so-called proletarian revolution.

Censura cleared his throat. "Next speaker; General third class Squall Leonhart. He will be speaking his individual assessment of SeeD's actions."

Squall stood, and glancing once into Quistis' eyes, strode to the center of the room. "I'm ten years old all over again, trying to impress a bunch of older people I don't even know."

"Thank you Moderator Censura. Gentlemen and ladies, our latest complete intelligence reports, received about forty eight hours ago, estimate the Guevarian's forces at around ninety five thousand men. By all accounts, these men are well trained, and are using some of the latest weapons in Esthar's arsenal. As you know, the combined forces of SeeDs, Estharian soldiers, and miscellaneous soldiers from Balamb and Galbadia total about thirty three thousand; a little more than one third of the force of the Guevarian's."

Squall paused as a few concerned mutterings floated through the air.

"The report received two days ago also stated that the Guevarian's main forces were situated in the center of Esthar itself. However, partial reports received in the last fourteen hours have stated that Guevarians living in the deserts and mountains in the Esthar continent have been rising up in revolt themselves. Therefore, if we were to count every Guevarian on the Esthar continent as a threat, then we are looking at an army of nearly one billion men, women, and children."

One of the Balamb representatives handed Quistis a sheet of paper. "Just in from FH: Guevarians have officially taken the capital; our forces are being driven out of countryside. Estimated time until complete evacuation of our forces; fifteen hours."

Quistis glanced incredulously at the General. She shrugged. Quistis coughed silently, holding out the sheet to Squall. He took the paper, reading quickly.

"We have just received a communiqué from FH. SeeD has evacuated the city of Esthar, and a general retreat has been called to the forces in the country- side."

A representative of Trabia stood. "This is an outrage! SeeD has jurisdictional right to be in Esthar. We can't let these Guevarian thugs push us out while we're trying to get innocent civilians evacuated!"

A representative from Galbadia also stood. "He's right. These Guevarians are breaking international law. Moderator Censura, we can't let these talks continue further-"

The general was cut off by Quistis' authoritative teacher's voice breaking through the din. "May I remind you all that General Leonhart has the floor right now. Moderator Censura, I request that the next outburst that occurs be considered grounds for contempt of the Council."

Censura nodded. "Granted, General Trepe."

Squall shook his head. He wished Quistis had spoken up before that second one stood. He sighed. It didn't matter now. The atmosphere was electrified with the desire to make war, yet no one in the entire room knew why. "It-

-starts." Quistis thought, not knowing that she just completed Squall's thought.

"As I was saying, it is a simple matter of numbers. Thirty thousand troops cannot possibly fight a war with an entire race. All out war would mean nothing but death of SeeDs and in...no...cent..." Squall trailed off as he saw the expressions of the members of the council. Foley looked like he wanted to say something, Quistis' expression showed sympathy and hope. The other twelve members burned with a lust for battle that Squall remembered all too well.

"So, let me get this straight General Leonhart. Is it your recommendation that we break off all fighting?"

Squall swallowed. "It is my recommendation that we not start a war until we know what we're fighting for."

The stone basin was filled to the brim with cool, glasslike water. The surface shattered as Squall threw his face under, letting out a silent scream.

He pulled his head out of the water, his head soaking wet. He searched for the towels in the large bathroom.

The door opened and Foley walked in, trailed by Quistis. She carried a clean linen towel. Squall took it wordlessly.

"Its not like this is unexpected." Charles said, turning away from the two to wash his hands in the basin. "SeeD has been quite a lucrative business ever since all three Gardens adopted the program. They probably only want a war because it seems like a good way to make a lot of money at the expense of a few million poorly trained desert dwellers." He finished washing his hands and turned back to Squall and Quistis. The two stared into each other's eyes; the scene made Foley stop and look from Squall to Quistis, a poorly masked look of confusion on his face.

Quistis broke the silence. "You don't believe we're just fighting against a group of poorly trained desert dwellers, do you Charles?"

Foley stood silent, then he pointed up to a vent in the ceiling. He mouthed the word, "Later", then said "Well, none of us really know what we're fighting, do we? My meaning is that it's unfair to simply excuse these rebels as uneducated bandits."

Squall grit his teeth. "I'm not in the mood for this espionage bullshit." "You probably know by now that Quistis and I are against this war. What about you? It's not going to be anything except needless waste of life on both sides, and I am very sure you know that."

Foley took a look of indifference. "What exactly are you asking, Squall?"

Squall couldn't believe what he was about to say. "How do you feel about our actions?"

Quistis couldn't believe it either.

Foley's indifferent look lingered. "My feelings and opinions have nothing to do with this, General Leonhart."

Foley paused.

"I am surprised though, at your reaction to this mess Squall. I would have expected that you of all people would want to keep personal feelings out of this."

Squall's head hurt. "It's not about personal feelings. It's about..." Squall broke off. "Forget it."

Charles looked confused, but Quistis understood. "Come on Squall. It's time we get back."

Censura read something on a piece of paper, then he spoke. "It is now four p.m. Today's meeting is adjourned until tomorrow morning at ten am. Please have your individual plans of action ready for presentation."

Censura made another one of his pauses. "On a more personal note, I would like to say that despite the Council's seeming single-mindedness towards this issue, we must still not rush to judgement, whether it be for or against a war with these Guevarians. I want you all to keep in mind that when you signed up for SeeD, you agreed to two things. One, as a SeeD you are required to follow orders precisely, without question and without fail. And two, when you sign up for SeeD, you are a SeeD for life; therefore, whatever the council may decide, that decision is as law, and must be abided by all here present, is that understood? This meeting is adjourned. Good day."

Part 8:
Bourbon, Water Back

Quistis stared at the departing sun from the window of the van. The crashing waves of the coast below and the setting sun above, truly a beautiful place. "Such a curious feeling," she thought with a small sigh, "how peaceful it feels to know you've given up. And look, its such a beautiful eve-" Her peaceful reverie was interrupted by a fierce bout of scratching brought on by the sting on her neck.

"Squall?"

Squall sat next to her, on the last seat of the bus. He had done a careful job of staring ahead the entire ride down, his eyes closed. "Yeah?"

"When will the itching from the sting go away?"

Squall thought for a moment before he answered. "I guess you could say it never goes away."

Quistis did not know quite how to respond to that. She remembered the hallucinogenic dream brought on by the powerful venom of the sting. She decided to change the subject; "Do you want to do anything tonight?"

Squall still stared straight ahead. He thought of oranges, tulips, and pomegranates... "Dinner. I think we should get some dinner. Drinks too. You want to go get drunk with me, Quistis?"

Quistis smiled slightly. "Do you think getting drunk will help with our situation right now, Squall?"

Squall shrugged. "I'm going to try my damnedest to convince the council of peace. But... I don't think I believe there is any hope of winning. I think I'm just going to give up."

Quistis wanted to ask the question, "But do you still want to leave SeeD, Squall?" But of course she didn't. Not here, not now, among all of these nameless and faceless generals.

Squall saw Quistis' eyes soften slightly. He had noticed that whenever she wanted to say something, the ice look in her eyes would melt; if she said the words, the ice did not freeze again. When she held back, as Squall knew she was doing now, the ice froze immediately. Squall wondered why he had never noticed the curious aspect of her thoughts being mirrored in her actions. He then wondered if he himself had any of those physical gestures that gave an unwanted look into his mind.

Squall closed his eyes for a moment, then looked past Quistis to witness the birth of the Dollet evening. Quistis turned around as well. They stared out the window for the rest of the ride.

Squall and Quistis had stopped at the hotel to change back into their civilian clothes. They had asked Charles if he wanted to join them. Quistis asked, "We have a lot to talk about, don't we?" Charles had politely declined, saying that he already had a bottle of sour mash in his room.

After an early and rather silent dinner of steamed vegetables and fish, Squall paid the bill and told Quistis that they should go get some drinks. She wiped her mouth, downed the rest of her white wine, and told him to lead the way.

Dollet seemed curiously quiet for this time of night. The sounds were only that of their boots striking the brick road with each step.

Finally, Squall decided that the silence, which was welcome before, was getting too much for him. "What do you think Charles is up to anyway?"

General first class Charles Foley lay on his bed in the dark, the muted television casting blue light on the walls and ceiling. He lay above the sheets, wearing only white cotton boxers and a white cotton tank top. His breathing was slow and even, only interrupted by the occasional sip from the bourbon on the bedside table.

Charles wished he had a cigarette to smoke. It would make his façade of the "middle aged loner" a bit more cliched.

He reached over to the bourbon, tipped back, finished off the glass. As he poured another glass from the bottle of sour mash, he took a long drink of water.

"Bourbon, water back... the true drink of sociopaths." He allowed himself a smile at the unexpected thought. The drink he had been given by the Headmaster the night he became a SeeD. There was no grand ballroom, there were no fashionable party guests; most had just been given a uniform and an assignment and sent on their way, to die on a thousand different foreign battlefields, for a thousand different reasons. But not Charles. Charles was given an invitation to have a drink with the Headmaster himself. A drink of all things; Foley had no idea what the Headmaster wanted with him.

Foley sat in a booth at the far end of the bar, dressed in his uniform. The Headmaster, then only a man ten years older than Foley, had troubled eyes that were poorly masked by a benign and enthusiastic smile. He ordered them both drinks. Foley, who wasn't even old enough to shave, drank his bourbon with tightly clenched eyes. The liquor was unexpectedly smooth, especially with the cool water flowing down afterwards.

The Headmaster gave the young man his most benign smile. "I had my first one of these when I was your age; years from now, this'll be all you ever want to drink. Please, have another"

Foley didn't know what to say. Though he was still young, he had had a hard and difficult struggle through life, one that was not helped by the color of his skin; SeeD was about the only option he'd had at the time, but that didn't mean young Charles Foley was ready to trust anyone yet.

"Thank you... sir." He said, a little apprehensive giving the Headmaster the honorific outside of school.

The Headmaster nodded, a shrewd look crossing his face. "I suppose you're wondering why I asked you to meet me tonight." He said, sipping his bourbon. "Well, I'm not going to lie to you, Foley. You are one of the finest cadets to come out of the first generation of SeeDs. You will have a far grander purpose than putting out international fires. Do you understand?"

Not really, but who was he to argue? "Yes, sir."

The Headmaster continued. "Now, you noticed that when your time for graduation came, you were not given an assignment by the Garden staff, like most of your comrades. I have a somewhat... unusual mission for you Foley."

Charles sipped liquor. "Unusual, sir?"

The sudden electronic beeping coming from his private satellite phone interrupted Charles' memory. He sat up, put his drink on the nightstand, and took the phone, which was about the size of a pack of cigarettes.

"Foley here."

"It's Domi. Can you talk?"

Charles smiled. "Yes nephew. Do you have something for me?"

Domi stood at the far end of the base. He held a phone similar to Foley's, staring over the blue water in the very late night. At three in the morning, the sky was almost as bright as it was during the day.

"Yes uncle. Last night, I relieved a tech. He had gotten hold of a DAT from one of the starry civilians. He didn't tell me what was on it, and I didn't even remember I had it until about lunchtime yesterday. Anyway, when I finally remembered I had-"

Foley interrupted him. His voice came over the phone slightly distorted. "What does this have to do with your task, nephew?"

Domi repressed a sigh. Charles had been like a father to him, ever since his parents died. He loved this man dearly, but sometimes he could be a pain in the ass, especially when dealing with civilians. "I was getting to that uncle. The tech... I probably shouldn't say his name, is dead. When I left my shift yesterday morning, a few members of security personnel came up to me and said that he had died, accidental drowning or some bullshit like that. Anyway, they asked me if he had given anything to me, specifically any digital audio tapes."

A brief pause. "You don't think this tech's death was accidental, do you Domi?"

Domi wanted a cigarette. "No. I mean, I knew this guy. Maybe not well enough to know if he was a good swimmer or not, but I don't think he would be the type to just fall off the deck and drown in the ocean. It's not exactly a probable cause of death."

Foley sighed audibly. "Do you still have the DAT, Domi?"

Domi smiled to no one in particular. "Yes. Don't worry, I put it in a safe place."

"Have you had a chance to analyze its contents?"

Domi lost the smile. "No. I've been swamped with work since I remembered the DAT and have not yet had a chance to conduct a study. I don't know what's on there, but I do remember that this guy was incensed by what he had, and I also know that whatever is on the DAT is important enough for someone to kill him for it."

Foley was silent for a few seconds. "Domi, listen to me. Analyze the DAT as soon as you can, but be discreet about it. Let me know if you find anything interesting."

Domi nodded. "I will uncle."

Foley coughed. "Now, about matters at hand. Have you the advance data on the Guevarians?"

Domi extracted a one inch by one inch electronic wafer from his pocket. "Right here uncle. Maps, deployments, sightings, new pictures; highest priority. If anyone finds this I'm a dead man."

"Don't be melodramatic, nephew. Upload it to me."

Domi pulled the phone away from his ear, inserted the wafer into a tiny slot on the bottom of the phone, hit a few buttons. The phone buzzed and beeped, and ejected the wafer into Domi's palm. "It's done uncle." He heard his uncle take a sip of something. "Good work nephew. Call me at your next convenience."

Domi ended the call, put the phone back in a discreet pocket on his hip.

The wafer was still in his hand. Domi spit on it, then placed it on the metal deck of the base. With a quick and hard stomp, he crushed the wafer into a thousand pieces.

Quistis stared at the glass of bourbon. She had spent the last hour in the bar trying to keep her mind blank. Staring at the glass, or her hand, or the cardboard coaster on the table. She was trying to keep her mind blank; so far, she'd done a pretty good job.

Squall on the other hand, had been staring at Quistis the entire time. There was nothing ulterior to his staring. There were no sexual or perverse reasons for his staring. Squall was simply staring. He started at her hair, then her eyes, then her shoulders. His eyes passed her breasts, but only in a glance, as his stare went to her hands. From her upturned palms to the tips of her fingers, back to her palms and up her arms to her shoulders, to her neck, then once again, his eyes rested on her face and eyes.

If he were asked about it later, Squall would not have been able to explain why he had asked that question to Quistis at that moment, halfway through his second bourbon. He would not be able to explain the motive, cause, or reason for the question that represented his (and Quistis'?) growing detachment and apathy to SeeD. Squall would not be able to answer for any of this, as he would not be able to explain his staring at his partner and friend for the better part of an hour, but he asked anyway.

"Quistis..."

Quistis found that removing her eyes from her glass of bourbon was more difficult than she anticipated. "Yeah?"

Squall licked his lips, trying to figure out how to ask so seemingly a complex question. "Quistis, what are we?"

The implications of what Squall had just asked, like the implications of his emotional walls crumbling over dinner, or the implications of Squall sharing his bed with Quistis, would have far reaching effects into the rest of both their lives. Of course, neither knew the implications of the question, as neither knew how to properly answer the question. Quistis seriously considered her answer before she said, somewhat uneasily, "Sociopaths?"

Squall raised his eyebrows, but didn't seem all that unsatisfied with the answer. He took another sip of his bourbon and said, "Explain."

Quistis sat forward, refusing to admit to herself that she enjoyed this unusual closeness with her friend. "Well, I was fifteen when I first killed a man. You were seventeen. And in the years since you and I have become SeeDs, do you still consider taking a human life to be that big a deal?"

Squall studied Quistis' eyes. The usually cool look that she maintained was gone now, replaced by that warm look that brought feelings he refused to even acknowledge.

"I don't know, really. I guess that's one of the reasons I want to resign from SeeD. Did I even tell you about the mission I finished while you had the eye surgery?"

"Tell me."

"Have I wasted my life? Am I just going to end up like that poor old bastard?"

These troubled thoughts are coming from the mind of Lincoln Kerim-Bey, a forty two year old Galbadian with short, black hair, sharp, handsome features, and that world weary look in his eyes, that seemed to be so common today.

Lincoln sat at the back of dimly lit bar, in a neighborhood of Deling City that attracted the bare minimum of tourists, and more importantly, police officers.

But that's the idea, isn't it? Lincoln told himself. One doesn't spend thirty years of your life doing one thing and not learning anything from it. Of course, after taking two falls, and spending about thirteen years of his life in jail, Lincoln didn't consider himself to be very smart.

Until a few weeks ago, Lincoln had been a thief, and a rather successful one. He had knocked off more banks, convenience stores, gas stations, super markets, pharmacies, etc. than any one man in the Galbadian government's files. He never used a gun. Forty two years old, not one body to his name. Such people were becoming rarer and rarer.

But then he lost it. The frustration of his life, of chances gone south, finally got to him. He got careless. And he got caught. Two falls, the first lasting 12 years and the second lasting a little over one. The latter pretty much sealed his retirement. But being a thief is not exactly a great career decision to begin with. No career assessment quiz ever says that holding up a joint for beer money was the ideal path for your "attitude bracket."

Yet it was the choice he made, all those years ago. You'd think that after all this time, he would have grown apathetic to the whole deal. That the guilt and the fear would subside into career boredom as time went on. But it didn't. Lincoln was as afraid today as he had been thirty years ago. The trick, Lincoln told people, was that you didn't let it show.

But Lincoln knew it would be over for him soon. He had wasted his entire life; he had never created art, never read a book under a tree with long, weeping branches on a fall day. He had never stopped walking to appreciate the sensual shape and smell of a Galbadian rose. He had never loved a woman in the way that he felt was anything more than base lust or friendship. The grim reaper stood at the bar, having the lovely little thing of a barmaid send a pint over to Kerim-Bey, with a wave and look that said, "Hey, come on over! Join the party!"

"No thanks." Lincoln turned down the cold pint in the hand of the lovely little thing of a barmaid. "I prefer to buy my own drinks."

The barmaid smiled sweetly, yet her eyes were bored and expressionless. "He says he's an old friend of yours."

Lincoln looked to the bar again. He blinked once, stupidly. At the bar was not the grim reaper; it was in fact, an old friend of his.

"Hijira."

Hijira walked over to Lincoln, a pint and bourbon in his hands. "Lincoln. Its good to see you again."

"I never thought I'd see you outside of prison walls." Lincoln, spread his arms wide, and hugged his friend of near twenty years. The two had met while serving time in a holding facility in Deling City, when Hijira was seventeen and Lincoln just turned twenty one. The two had found that despite their criminal and ideological differences (Hijira being a hired gun, Lincoln believing in non-violent crime) the two had become fast friends immediately. Lincoln remembered, upon seeing Hijira again, that his friend hadn't even been imprisoned for a violent crime, but rather for an immigration hearing...

"Hades couldn't contain the ancients' greatest heroes, let alone me."

The two sat down; old friendship blossoming like a gun shot wound. Lincoln took a drink of the cold pint, velvety bitter flowing down his throat. Neither man spoke for a couple minutes. Hijira adjusted his sniper's pistol until he was able to sit comfortably. Finally, Hijira took a sip of bourbon, and asked after a quick smack of his laps, "What have you been doing with yourself?"

Lincoln looked shifty, ran his fingers through his short hair, coughed. "I had a interview today. A uh, job... interview."

Hijira's reacted with a slight arch of his left brow, but otherwise said nothing. Lincoln continued, "On the way over, on the train, I saw this old guy. I mean we're talking ancient. The guy was holding two bottles of milk, one in each of his shaky old hands. I don't know why, I guess I was bored or something, but I started talking to him. I said, 'Father, where you going clutching two pints of milk?' And the guy says, 'work son. I have to work. The milk is my lunch.' Now, I'm more than a little surprised that a guy this old is working. But for some reason, the milk was really bothering me. The guy says, 'I have two, just in case I drop the first one.'"

Hijira didn't say anything. He saw where this story was going. Foley continued, staring into the yeasty darkness of his beer. "And I wondered, what kind of life could this fuckin' guy have, where he's ninety years old and his chief concern is dropping milk. And I don't mind telling you 'Jir, but thinking about that guy really fucked with my head. All I could think about for the rest of the day was this guy, drinking milk on his lunch break, accidentally dropping a bottle, only to get the other bottle, and pray to the Hyne or whoever's listening that he doesn't drop that one too. And what if he did drop that bottle? What does he do? He can't buy another; he's too poor. So what... he probably cries. I sat in that interview, listening to my future manager, a kid half my age, bitch and moan for half an hour about mission statements, and how since I'm paroled, he'd be keeping his eye on me. And... fuck me, I dunno Hijira. I'm depressed. I'm thinking about going on one of those happy endorphin whatever pills."

Hearing this, and given the somber nature of his monologue, Hijira thought for a second that his friend was serious. But then Lincoln started to laugh, not raucously, but just enough to let his friend he was only kidding about that last part.

Hijira took a sip, smiled. "Damn man, you want to talk depressing? I just got back from Esthar. And man, I tell you: I'm never going back to that fucking country. My father's dead, my sister hates me, and to top it off, about a million of those niggers over there have started tearing up the place like it was Judgement Day."

Lincoln nodded. "You think I don't know? It's just been about the only thing on the radio for the past few days. I hear that Loire's son... what's his name, Storm?"

Hijira shook his head. "No, no. Squall. Remember? He was the boy wonder the press made such a big deal of a few years back? That kid SeeD who deposed the sorceress?

Lincoln nodded, his eyes lighting. "Oh, right, right. Squall. Yeah, so anyway. The radio says that the SeeD council wants Squall to personally lead the charge against your boys. Something about how the kid is dying for revenge against the guys that murdered his pop."

Hijira finished his drink, signaled the cute little waitress for another. "Yeah right. Doesn't SeeD know the Guevarian code of murder? The guys who killed Loire; the real guys mind you, not those Holy War obsessed fucks in the desert; the actual assassins impaled themselves on their gunblades the second Loire was vaporized."

The drinks arrived; Lincoln made eye contact with the waitress, but was rebuffed. He shrugged, took a long pull. "Speaking of which, what is that big heavy thing on your belt? Oh no, wait, I know. Poppa's dead, you get the one permanent heirloom, right?"

Hijira nodded. "Yeah, like I don't carry enough metal on me right now. I swear, one of these days I'm gonna fall into a river and sink like a fishing lure."

Lincoln looked down. The two were silent for a moment. "Speaking of the metal... I take it you're going back to work."

Hijira didn't say anything. He simply extracted a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket and slid it across the table to Lincoln. "It's a growth industry Linc. All the goings on in the world, those in my rarefied field are going to be getting the most work at the highest rates in over twenty years."

Lincoln unfolded the paper. Written hastily in Guevarian was an address in one of the poorer sections of Deling City. He read it, glanced up at Hijira, staring into those cold blue eyes.

"But, there's an old saying. 'The firmest foundations of the future are built upon a settled past.' That's the address of the motherfucker who ratted me out on my last job. I just got to take care of him, do a couple of high market jobs, and retire clean and clear. And I want you to join me Lincoln."

Kerim-Bey didn't even hesitate. "You know I don't do wet work Hijira. And now if you'll excuse me-"Lincoln moved to get up from the table. Hijira continued talking, pretending not to notice.

"You know I would never ask you to anything like that Lincoln. I know how you feel about things of that nature. But that's exactly why I want you with me. Now sit down." This last was said in a commanding tone of voice, but Hijira knew Lincoln would only sit down on his own accord. He did so.

Hijira continued. "You're not a sociopath Lincoln: I am. It's not something I'm proud of, but it is who I am, and murder is all I know how to do. But you're not a sociopath. I know you only knocked over all those banks and liquor stores because, quite frankly, you don't know how to do anything else. You have a conscience, regardless of that too-cool-for-school façade you maintain."

Lincoln shrugged, not sure what his longtime friend was leading up to. Hijira paused. "You may only know how to rob people, but you got a conscience, and that's what I need right now. If you're not around, I know I'll only keep on doing this shit until I get killed. You get half of what I take in."

Lincoln rubbed at his chin, downed the rest of his drink. "Your conscience, huh? What exactly does my job entail?"

Hijira smiled, knowing that in his roundabout way, Lincoln agreed. And that made both men happier than either expected.

"I was staking out the apartment. Making notes, all that nonsense. The entire time, I'm waiting for the mark to do something illegal. You know that the entire time he was there, the guy made only three calls? One to his former boss, asking for a loan and the other two was to his wife and kid in Balamb. Nothing else. Then you left for your eyes. Then... well you know, word went around about Esthar. So, I just finished the second part of the job." Squall looked down and took a long sip of his drink.

Quistis looked at him for a minute, the ice over her eyes melting in sheets. She seemed to want to say something, but was trying to figure out the right way to do so. Finally, she shook her head and went for broke. "Squall. I want you to do something for me. Take whatever it is that's been buzzing around your head for the past few weeks: whatever it is that is messing up your sleep, whatever it is that is making you flub your reports, whatever it is that makes you want to kill yourself: for one moment, tell that whatever to shut the fuck up, and you, you answer my one, single, question."

Squall looked a little surprised by her tone, which combined warmth that he was not used to coming from Quistis, along with the familiarity of her cool teacher's voice. Regardless, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let his shoulder's drop. "Yes, Quisty."

Quistis in turn was a little surprised by the familiarity, but wrote it off as a result of the drinks they'd both consumed over the past couple hours. "Why were we on that stakeout?"
Part 9
Sleep and Thickening Agent

"How many active SeeDs are there in the world?"

"About twelve thousand, give or take."
"How many are A level SeeDs?"
"Less than a thousand."
"How many intelligence agents are A level SeeDs?"
"None. SeeD intelligence is for levels fifteen through eighteen only."
"Then why were we, Third Class Generals, staking out a nobody in Deling City?"

The answer was so obvious Squall wanted to kick himself. "The council wanted us... out of the way?"

Quistis shook her head, leaning close. "You're getting ahead of yourself, Squall. The council does not convene to decide such small matters. The decision to gather intelligence is at the sole discretion of each Garden's Section Commander. And to which section commander do we report to?"

Squall shook his head. "Foley... shit." He looked at his drink. Empty. He signaled the waitress just as the bartender shouted, "last call."

Squall looked up, aghast, slightly drunk. "Shit."

Quistis sat back, amused, tense, reserved, cool, also slightly drunk. "Let's get out of here."

Back in the room, Squall undressed in front of Quistis, too tired to be embarrassed. Quistis, still more the level headed of the two, even in her current inebriated state, became embarrassed for him and changed in the bathroom. When she came out, Squall was in bed, fingering Laguna's dog tags.

She turned the light off. Her eyes seemed to glow as she looked at Squall, who hadn't stopped fiddling with the tags despite the sudden absence of light. Squall looked over at his comrade, his colleague, his collaborator, noticed her outline, her curves, and her eyes. Those weird, glacier eyes. He gave a nod, imperceptible in the darkness to those with civilian vision.

Quistis walked over, lay down next to Squall, and closed her eyes. She drew his arm over her waist like a blanket. To his surprise, Squall fell asleep well before Quistis.

Quistis opened her eyes, a dull throbbing at the top of her head. It was early. Too early.

Bourbon. We drank too much bourbon. She tried to lift her head, but the sensation it caused made Quistis reconsider this action. She closed her eyes again, let her head fall back on the pillow. No, not just the pillow. The pillow and Squall's arm. Squall's arm? . It can't be more than four in the morning. Christ, what am I doing up? And why was Quistis sleeping on top of Squall's arm? The rest of him was there, shirtless, gray looking in the early morning. She turned her head, looked at Squall, her eyes adjusting to the absence of light. She followed the line of his straight nose down his lips, and from his lips to his chin, and from his chin to his chest, and chest to stomach, and stomach to-

Why am I so cold? Oh... oh, fuck me.

Quistis closed her eyes, the dull throbbing spreading like a piece of roadkill through the rest of her hungover brain. She lay, nude, next to a similarly nude Squall, their legs entwined, both feeling chilly in the early morning, both only barely covered by the thin, hotel room sheet.

No, no this is not happening. It can't be happening. Holy shit, this is too fucked up for me to even think about. Oh Christ...

"Squall, Squall wake up! Wake up Squall!"

Squall awoke with a start, beads of sweat on his forehead. Quistis was asleep. He had been holding her in his sleep.

God, please let my pants be on.

The pants, gratefully, were on. Squall looked over at Quistis. What time is it? Jesus, thank God my pants are on. She was still clothed as well, her back seemingly luminescent against the cotton tank top. Squall shook his head, trusted his legs to hold him if he stood, and stood. He walked to the bathroom, stubbing his toe on the frame of the other, vacant bed. He suppressed a swear, and quietly closed the door to the bathroom.

For a minute, he just stood there, alone in the dark bathroom, before he started fumbling for the light switch. He blinked in the new brightness, turned the tap as cold as it would go, and started splashing icy water all over his face. He was doing his best to not think about the dream, which, uncharacteristically, would not go away.

30 Seconds earlier...

Quistis awoke when Squall suddenly jumped up in bed. He heard his heavy breathing, felt his agitated state. She did not turn over to look at him though. In fact, she gave no sign that she was awake. Quistis didn't even know if she could look at Squall in the face without blushing. She just couldn't believe that she lacked the mental discipline to not have sex dreams pertaining to her oldest friend whilst sharing a bed with her oldest friend. How... embarrassing.

And 3 Hours Later...

An atypically awkward silence hangs over Squall and Quistis as they ride the transport for the second day of the Council meeting. Squall was having trouble keeping his eyes locked on the mountainous landscape passing outside the window. His eyes just kept shifting to the ring, his ring, wrapped comfortably around Quistis' thumb.

Similarly, Quistis was having trouble keeping focused. Her thoughts kept shifting, from the dream to Foley's weird behavior to Guevarians to Censura and his Council and, oddly enough, her last vivid memory from living in the orphanage: the day a tall, dark skinned stranger arrived, and left just as suddenly. These thoughts swirled in the maelstrom of cortex pulsating in Quistis' skull, almost to the point of disorientation that she felt after yesterday's sting.

For a moment, she allowed herself the freedom to believe that all the events in her life were connected by the spider's silk of fate to Squall. However, despite the spilt Griever resting inside her belt, and the ring on her finger, and the quite recent matching scars, Quistis dismissed the thought.

It can't be as simple as... fate. There is no fate. Fireworks, feathers, flowers... meaningless.

Censura gave a great show of shuffling papers and clearing his throat. Another few hours had passed. Even Censura, being the once idealistic student and now jaded bureaucrat, was still conscious enough to realize that, with the exception of Foley and his two young compatriots, those third class kids, absolutely nothing, nothing, had actually been said. War this, retribution that. These people were so deeply imbued with their own nonsense Censura wondered how they possibly could have risen as far in the ranks of SeeD as they had. With an inaudible sigh, he addressed the silent reflections of millions of graybeard generals in the Duke's hall of mirrors.

"Having received the honorable General Foley's latest information regarding Guevarian deployments in outlying areas, as well as some rather, well, impressive recon information, as well as yesterday's alarming news of the loss of Esthar City, I feel that SeeD has no choice but to cut these talks short. Therefore, I am now calling for a fifteen minute recess. Upon the cessation of this recess, I will put it to you council members to vote on a reasonable course of action. Until then ladies and gentlemen."

Quistis, Squall, and Charles were seated in the Palace's main courtyard, a lush garden affair heavy with the stench of red roses and exotic, sweet fruit. The three had sat in silence for ten minutes. Finally, not looking at Quistis or Squall, Charles spoke.

"I imagine the two of you have a lot of questions."

Neither SeeD spoke. Squall looked at Charles expectantly. Quistis stared at a hornet that buzzed around a large, yellow globe hanging from a lush tree.

"But now's not the time to answer any queries you two may have, however valid. We'll go out tonight, and I'll do my best to answer." Charles looked around, felt stifled in this atmosphere. "You two must have known that these talks were a foregone conclusion to war. You've been in the bureaucracy long enough."

Squall spoke, "Lately I've been getting the impression I know nothing, Charles." There was visible agitation in his voice, which Charles, despite expecting it, was a little surprised to hear.

"You two have been kept in the dark." Longer than you know, he thought. "But I promise I'll provide whatever answers I have. You just need to be patient."

Squall stood up, his neck itching. I need a haircut he thought absently. "Yeah, right. Be patient, sit still, do as you're told, be a good boy." Squall faced the exit of the courtyard, which led to the mirrored chamber.

"Yours is not to question why, yours is but to do and die... isn't that right Charles?"

Charles didn't say anything. He felt tired of himself, but he didn't say anything.

"But it's okay. 'Cause I... because we" he said, pointing to the silent Queen "were made that way. We grow up without any authority other than adults that weren't our parents... just a bunch of parents that had the ability and reason to turn us into what they wanted. Cid, Matron, Garden" girlfriends, he thought with anger "... no logic, no reason behind it. We just obey the highest authority, and that's it. No right, no wrong. And I guess that's how we'll always be... So I guess I'll just wait Charles."

Quistis, her head boiling, stood next to Squall and tenderly stroked his hand. She breathed into his ear.

"Squall..." She stopped stroking and suddenly pulled his trigger finger back to almost the point of breaking. He winced slightly.

"Snap the fuck out of it."

It was then that Quistis realized how deeply and powerfully she still loved this man. Her neck burned with this realization, and her eyes turned to ice.

Part 10
Downward Motion

Squall took a deep breath, held it, and breathed out slowly. Censura read off his list of actions, but Squall had stopped listening when he heard that the Council had decided that it would be he who would lead the SeeD armies to crush the Guevarians. There was no sound in the vacuums of his ears. Squall breathed in again, a cold crushing fear filling the void that had suddenly been created in the space between heart and stomach, but it did not stay put. Rather, the fear seeped into his veins and pumped through his body, like mercury flowing into a stream. Hard, heavy, cold and desolate. He was afraid. A thought resounded in the empty space of his consciousness.

If I fight I will die.

General Third Class of the SeeD Special Mercenary Force Squall Leonhart, son of the late President of Esthar Laguna Loire, was resolved.

Quistis took a deep breath, held it, and breathed out slowly. Her hair was perfect. Flowing bands of red gold which threatened to spill fire upon release, were bundled safely and tightly into the SeeD approved bun. Censura had made it clear that Quistis' role in the matter of a SeeD/Guevarian war would be that of information and public relations. She would never see a day of battle. Quistis' job would be to speak to the press, make radio and satellite appearances, and read the prompts the council would prepare for her. Quistis breathed in again, the seed of her discontent, sown out of Cid and Garden and SeeD denying her the power to have a say in her own destiny, bloomed, and through the freezing of her eyes, Quistis saw Squall's reflection in one of the meeting room's thousand mirrors.

General Third Class of the SeeD Special Mercenary Force Quistis Trepe, formerly under the guardianship of Balamb Garden, was calm.

Charles took a deep breath, held it, and breathed out slowly. He had known this outcome since he had heard from his Esthar contacts that Laguna Loire had been killed in a missile attack launched by Esthar's own military. He had known this outcome since he had heard a private company in Esthar city had financed a small group of disconsolate soldiers and Guevarians to revolt. He had known this outcome since Loire had allowed the country of Esthar to once again become vulnerable.

Charles took a deep breath, and mouthed a small prayer, a prayer not in the language of the two children to whom he was most responsible for. He mouthed a prayer for those who had already died, and those who would have to die. He mouthed a prayer in his native Guevarian for the safety of his nephew.

General First Class of the SeeD Special Mercenary Force Charles Foley, first born son of the Ghajihad family, and former resident of Nial, prayed. He prayed, and he breathed.

Foley prayed, and he breathed, because that was all that there was left for him to do.

Hijira smelled the body before he saw it. As he tapped lightly and pointlessly on the gray painted door of the grimy Deling City apartment, Hijira managed to keep from gagging as the billions of tiny, stinking microbes from the corpse, which lay not five feet inside the door, entered his brown nostrils. Apparently, someone had been kind enough to dispatch Hijira's prey before he had the chance.

He swore, lightly, and looked up and down the desolate corridor before wheeling around and delivering a booted heel to the lock of the cheap, hollow door. Old splinters went flying inward and outward, lightly stinging Hijira's face. Upon entering, he unholstered the shotgun from the sling across his back, and racked the slide.

The stench was concentrated inside the apartment, and only became more intense as Hijira edged closer to the body, which lay on top of a rough carpet, head gone, blood soaked to the bare wood floor. The body was at least a week or two old, but being sealed up inside the moist apartment for even that short period of time had been enough to make quite a messy scene in the middle of the floor. However, there was very little to be seen besides the sight of the already partially decomposed corpse; an open suitcase, some discarded fast food containers and a portable TV, its batteries long burned out.

Hijira sighed, partially out of relief, partially from disgust, but mostly frustration. The fact that the man's untimely demise was a foregone conclusion was of little consequence to the assassin. Hijira wanted to talk a little, get some information, before he put a bullet in the traitor's brain.

No matter. The body wasn't his concern: nothing of the sordid business in the apartment was his concern anymore. Hijira felt oddly at ease with that thought. Things were simpler: confusing, but still simpler. At least now, Hijira thought, I can get back to work.

That thought, pleasing in its macabre way, stayed with Hijira until his boot kicked something small and metal, unseen in the darkened apartment. Something about the sound made his stomach turn, even more than the body. He felt along the floor until he found it, whatever it was.

He brought the disquieting object into the dim light of the hall. The method of the man's end had not been an ordinary pistol or shotgun. The sword at his hip felt very heavy all of a sudden.

In Hijira's pale palm was the shell from the ammunition of a new, and highly advanced gunblade.

Lincoln had been sitting outside the apartment building in a car he had lifted not three hours ago. The engine, which had clearly seen better days, idled noisily as Lincoln tried hard to not think of what his oldest friend was doing inside of the crime ridden apartment he now found himself parked outside of. The promise he had made to Hijira last night, in the amber haze of inexpensive bourbon, about being the killer's conscience, seemed thin now that Lincoln was facing the reality of it. However, Linc knew that there was little else he could do at this point. He might as well stay with Hijira: Shit, where else did he have to go?

This thought occurred to Lincoln as Hijira walked slowly up to the car, yanked the rusted passenger side door open, and sat on the plastic seat. Lincoln drove off without a word, noticing the taciturn look in his friend's ice blue eyes.

They drove in silence, through the crumbling ghettoes of Deling City's outer rim. Seen from space, the poverty and misery of the outlying areas of the circular city would appear to be swallowing the affluent center whole, a regular sink hole created by the sudden loss of a powerful dictator and the absence of any kind of leadership. Lincoln didn't think of himself as smart, but he knew enough to know that the world situation, as usual, was liable to get a hell of a lot worse before it got the least bit better. He said as much to Hijira, who grunted and nodded.

They drove out of the city, and into the non-imposing area between urban and suburban worlds, where the highways and rails span for miles, motels and convenience stores the only signs of life outside of the never-ending stream of traffic. The sun was setting, casting the car and its occupants into a red glow, as they pulled the stolen vehicle into the parking lot of a motel that looked only slightly moth-bitten. Lincoln sighed, turned off the motor and watched the sun set in the silence of the stolen car. Hijira hadn't said anything for almost an hour.

Just as Linc was about to procure a room in the motel, Hijira reached into his jacket and pulled out a metal casing, about the size of Lincoln's thumb, and handed it to the disconsolate thief.

Lincoln held the casing, unsure of what it meant. Hijira enlightened him. "It means, old friend, that I'm not going to go back into the business."

Lincoln didn't know what was going on. "What do you mean? You killed that guy, right?"

Hijira shook his head, exhaling but not quite sighing. "No. He was dead when I found him. For a while too. Someone else got to him first."

Lincoln examined the casing. "This is gunblade ammo, right?"

Hijira nodded. "Mm hmm. Very new, very advanced."

Lincoln was grasping the edge of the puzzle, but still didn't understand. "Gunblade? Then someone from Esthar, a Guevarian maybe-"

Hijira shook his head, grabbing the casing from Lincoln's palm as he interrupted. "No, no definitely not one of the brothers. No, ammo like this can only be made in the west. No one in the desert has the money for the materials, or the machinery to manufacture. This is ammo of a professional. A professional with a decent amount of cash, and more importantly, the training to carry out a hit like that without anyone in the building know what was going on."

Lincoln understood, finally, piecing together what he knew of Hijira's past with the current information. "SeeD?"

Hijira closed his eyes. Nothing in life was simple. Apparently the tie Hijira wanted to sever, that tie the embodiment of a no-account smuggler who brought Guevarians to the west for profit, was severed, certainly, but someone else from the past had wanted that link severed more than anyone else.

Hijira opened his eyes, looked at Lincoln. "Suddenly, Linc, everything has gotten a shit-load worse. This is your chance to walk away."

Lincoln knew what the right thing to do was. He knew what the easy thing to do was. But he had never done anything in his life right or easy... why should he start now? He shook his head.

Hijira opened the door, the night blessedly cool. "How long a drive is it to Dollet?"

Lincoln still sat in the car. "About a day and a half." A pause, cars sailing to unknown destinations made their indiscreet racket. "What are you going to do there?"

Hijira blinked, looked at the gargantuan rising moon. "...see a friend..."

Quistis and Squall stood in front of the fountain in the square in front of the hotel. The streets were still empty, but normal signs of life were starting to return to the seafront city, despite the constant patrols of sentry guards. Their bags were packed and at their feet. They still wore their uniforms, but both looked like they had been deflated, nothing like the proud warriors of the propaganda posters. They watched as Foley approached, his face down. A young, fresh-faced female assistant carried his bag, walking slowly behind him. He stood in front of the two tired third classers, regarding them with pity. After a few seconds, Foley spoke.

"We're going to Deling City. Come with me."

The pair knew that they didn't have to obey; their orders to ship off to separate destinations as soon as possible were quite clear. However, they managed to shift their complacent bodies in line behind Foley, who still stood and walked tall.

"We're not taking the train. I have a jet waiting to take off outside of town."

This information was silently absorbed by the two.
As they neared the edge of the city, Quistis made out the lights of a small jet powered aircraft along the side of the road. The wheels of her head had been spinning out of control for the past five hours, behind the glaciers of her eyes.

"I've killed more men in eight years than most soldiers have in their entire lifetimes. I am a cold, by the book sociopath. I came to this path by choice... at least I thought it was choice." Quistis looked over to Squall, who actually looked to be close to tears. "No... this is not fate. Fate gave that bastard the one chance he had at happiness, but it was his choice that drove her away."

The four boarded the jet, which took off immediately. Quistis took no notice, her train of thought moving uninterrupted.

"I'm bound to him; whether I like it or not, I threw my lot in with Squall, before he was Leonhart or Loire or whatever. The Griever is with me now: The two pieces are back together, the ring is in on my finger." Quistis shook her head in bemusement. "This isn't romance. And it's not fate. It's codependence. I need him, and he needs me. And I don't need SeeD."

She looked over to Squall. He stared back, nodding, his eyes pleading, weak, but like a lion with a broken leg, the promise of renewal still showed.

"We're all we have left. And that's alright."

Squall stared out the window, watching the ground fall from underneath him. This was it. His life, whatever the hell he, or rather others had made it into, was over. He had no illusions of a happy ending. Rinoa was gone.

Rinoa is gone. Rinoa, Rinoa, Rinoa Heartilly is no longer a part of my life. People change... bullshit. I don't change. Quistis, she doesn't change either. I'm the same person that I ever was. It was her... Rinoa, she just looked at me differently. She didn't actually change anything: just changed the perception. But she's gone. The perception is my own now. My own. I'm alone.

He turned his head, looked at Quistis. She was a thousand miles away. But just as Squall was about to turn away as well, Quistis' eyes like liquid sapphire poured into his, leaving both completely vulnerable.

"No. I'm not alone. Birds of a feather flock together, blah blah blah... I need her. Does she need me? I guess I'll never know. But I'm not alone. I'm not alone. Rinoa may be gone, and I may be about to forsake the only institution that ever accepted me. But I'm not alone. My father is dead... really, so what? What secrets could I have learned? Shit, it's wrong to think that way, but that's the way it is. I am a sociopath. Quistis was right. But I'm not alone. We'll be together in our own dissatisfaction and misery and maybe someday we can even find some kind of joy together.

"She's all I have left. But that's alright."

Foley regarded his two friends. His assistant, upon request, removed herself to the cockpit. Then Foley spoke.

"When I think of how much the two of you have accomplished... and yet how much that has been done to you, without your knowing." He paused, closed his eyes, and sighed. "The two of you want to know some secrets. I'll tell you some."

As the small jet made its southwestern journey towards Deling City, a former Dollet soldier, five years off the job, drunk and disgruntled, made his way into the lobby of the hotel, chest strapped with plastique, suicide note taped to his calf. No one noticed as the former soldier, crouched, feral, and crying, hit the primer, sending himself, then the lobby, then the building, up in flames.

Squall listened, disinterested, noting facts as Foley dispensed them. Foley had started out in SeeD as a kidnapper: he traveled around the world, picking off very young children and sending them ahead to Garden, in order to give a more substantial student basis to the new classes. The first child he had taken was a small boy from the town of Winhill, on the southern tip of the Galbadian continent. The child's mother had died during childbirth, and the father was nowhere to be found. Foley took that one.

"Something strange happened then. I couldn't go through with it. Headmaster Cid and others like him had used me to further his own ends; how could I do that to this innocent child I picked off of a town in Galbadia?"

Foley paused, took a sip off a drink his assistant brought him. "So, I hid. Cid put a lot of faith in me, but he didn't trust me. I was always hiding, keeping one step ahead of the SeeDs Garden sent after me. I ended up in Deling City, with this baby, and after getting in touch with a business associate I met a friend of mine from my hometown. He had his niece, who was only a few months older than the boy I had. Well, between the two of us, we managed to elude the SeeDs for a while longer. Oh Quistis, you especially would have loved watching him fight. The way he handled guns... like an extension of his body."

Foley looked at Quistis after saying this. She regarded him, not showing any emotion but interest.

"Regardless, we couldn't hold them off forever. I was taken back to Garden and disciplined rather severely. My friend... he went to jail for a while. And the children we had with us... the children, were sent to a Garden holding station somewhere in Centra."

Foley paused, the afterburners making a dim hum in the cabin. "The situation we find ourselves faced with today: It's quite similar to that story. I was charged with obtaining material for Garden. Oh no, this time it's not children to turn into warriors. No, this time it's the simple matter of-"Foley rubbed his forefinger and thumb together. "Nothing's changed in the world, my friends. We still exploit each other for one reason or another."

Quistis stood, the top of her head barely rubbing against the cabin ceiling. She turned away from Foley, away from Squall. "Money. All of this for money."

"The second sorceress war nearly bankrupted the Gardens. The cost of implementing SeeD in Galbadia Garden, as well as the rebuilding of Trabia Garden was exorbitant. Not to mention the fact that no money was coming into the system during the period you were Commander of Balamb Garden. Add to that, the lowering of Esthar's defenses, as well as the Lunar Cry launched against Esthar City created a huge rift in the balance of power. A company, a rather successful archives firm called Three Matrix was financing small revolts in the outlying villages, in order to, I kid you not, create more interesting stories for their projects involved in cataloguing Esthar's history. I understand, from my FH contact, that messages were sent encrypted inside of DATS from a historian's lecture circuit.

Anyway, I weighed these factors, realized that a nice, neat war would give SeeD a very decent amount of capital to reinstate us as a power. So, I exacerbated the issues."

Quistis turned. "Exacerbated?"

"It turned out that a few flimsy promises of support to high ranking military officials were more than enough to get them to commit treason. The Guevarians, with their private little revolts, were just a convenient scapegoat."

Quistis was too tired to be surprised. Or maybe too jaded. Regardless, she was silent. Finally, Squall spoke. "Why tell us this now, Charles? Why all this nonsense with Censura and the council and Guevarians? You could have just ordered us to fight, and we would have fought."

Foley put his drink to the side. "You two should strap in, we're about to land. And to answer your question, Squall, the world suddenly pays a lot more attention to us now that broadcast TV has been restored. All eyes were on SeeD... we had to make it official. And I tell you this now, because-"

Suddenly, Foley's assistant came into the cabin, her pretty pale face flushed. "Sir, the hotel has been attacked. Preliminaries say that casualties are 100%."

Foley sighed. "How unfortunate." The plane bounced to landing, sending the assistant to the floor. Quistis regarded the young SeeD suddenly at her feet. Then she spoke.

"Funny how quickly the ground comes up, during a downward motion."

Part 11
Sunny Day

Hijira clicked off the car's radio, and returned his attention to the baking sunlit highway. SeeD was moving in across Esthar's deserts, making a steady procession towards the capital. Most of the Council members had died in an explosion last night. Only three were left, and they were safely in Deling City. Dollet, suddenly, was a non-issue.

Lincoln regarded his friend. "Good thing we decided on a later start."

Hijira nodded, smiled slightly. "Yeah. Now we don't have to waste any time backtracking. Problem is, how I get back to Ghajihad, find out what his deal is, why he suddenly is concerned with old business."

Lincoln leaned back in the passenger seat. They were getting close to Deling City now. "It has something to do with those two Generals, doesn't it?"

Hijira kept his eyes on the road. "What do you mean?"

Lincoln closed his eyes. "You mean it never occurred to you that Ghajihad wants to keep those two safe? I never had children myself, but I know that close bonds often form between adults and the very young... especially when the chief concern of the adults is to protect those children."

Hijira wondered for a moment, responded, "I don't know. Why kill the smuggler? He's completely unimportant-"

Lincoln corrected, "You wanted him dead."

Hijira responded, "That was business related. I can't conduct affairs with any kind of connection to SeeD, whether or not those connections were formed during smuggling missions or otherwise. No one was supposed to know why I kept contact with Ghajihad. And they can't know now: not with his position. Not with the children's position. It would be very dangerous for everyone concerned."

The three Generals sat together in Quistis' spartan apartment. Foley had loosened his collar. Quistis had sat on the floor, propping her back against a dark green wall. Squall sat next to Foley on a rather uncomfortable wooden chair. "You killed my father." He said after about two hours of silence.

Foley nodded. "Indirectly, yes."

Squall rubbed his neck. "He was killed for money."

Foley nodded again. "That's correct."

Squall stopped rubbing. He looked at Quistis, who was staring out the window, sun streaming in, incandescent and beautiful. "Oh... well."

Foley also looked at Quistis, again with pity. "You don't care?"

Squall said, flatly "I don't blame anyone. You were given an order, you carried it out. That's the risk you take when you work for a group like this. Anyone and everyone is a potential target. That's why Garden makes us they way we are. If I were normal... I probably would have cut your throat."

Quistis looked away from the window. "Charles."

Foley, who was not disturbed in the least by Squall's comment, responded tiredly. "Yes, my friend?"

"Who was the man you had us execute, before all of this" Quistis gestured "came to light?"

Foley was a little surprised. "Haven't you guessed? He was the connection I had that helped me get in touch with my friend from back home. He was a smuggler: human cargo mostly, sweatshop labor from the Estharian deserts. He got my friend and I across the ocean when were much younger, along with my friend's sister. She was a pretty little thing: bit of a scandal in the village really. My friend's father had an affair with a visiting white woman, and his sister was the result of that union. Anyway, her birth was a disgrace on the family, and when she was just fourteen years old, she was banished from my village. However, my friend, Hijira? He was quite close to her. He left as well, and I tagged along. The three of us came ashore, oh, a little more than twenty five years ago."

"But why were we sent to kill him?"

"A two edged purpose. I needed the two of you out of the council loop to finalize the Esthar plans. Also, this smuggler was the only one who knew of my connection to the two of you. Had he decided to talk, it would have been tricky explaining our relationship to the council."

Foley paused. "I guess that doesn't matter anymore."

Squall perked his head. "You mean, you didn't order the bombing?"

Foley smiled sardonically, rubbed his face. "Sorry Squall. No, I didn't order their ends. Sometimes shit like that just happens. I wish security had been a little tighter."

Squall shook his head. "You still haven't explained why you tell us all of this now."

Foley stood, paced slowly. "Why? Guilt. Remorse. The last glowing vestige of the love I hold for the two of you. I do love you two, you realize that, right? I feel responsible. Ever since I tried to save you from Garden and Cid. Quistis, you as well. You are the blood of my oldest friend, who I regard as blood. I couldn't let the two of you go fight this pointless war. I wanted the two of you to be cut off. Get the fresh start you deserve. But I think it may be too late. This bombing will take a lot of explaining. SeeD will need leadership, and they will look to you, my friends."

The apartment fell silent. Finally, Quistis spoke. "I'm leaving SeeD. They're not who I am... rather, they're not who I want to be. And I just can't do this anymore."

Squall felt relieved. The question he asked a few nights ago... "Feels like a lifetime ago" was answered. Whatever the future, it was with Quistis. Quistis, Quisty my Queen... he did not love her in the childish simplistic way he had loved Rinoa. This was different. It was love, but there would be no romance. There would be not much of anything, except he would rely on her, and she would rely on him. "Charles. I stand by Quistis. I can no longer be part of SeeD."

Foley looked at the ceiling. "You know that when you become a SeeD, you're a SeeD for life."

Squall sighed, almost smiled. "Yes. We'll both always be SeeDs, but not in the current sense. We'll both have the same indifference, and the same moral apathy, and probably the same inability to love in any normal sense." This last was spoken to Quistis. "But the exploitation is over. And we have to go."

Hijira pulled up to the apartment building. The graft circles in Deling City were still quite tight, despite the current crisis. It may have taken all of his remaining cash, but Hijira had found the location of his friend as well as the two young generals in less than four hours. Record time in this town. Sunlight caused waves of heat to rise from the pavement.

Lincoln loaded the shotgun, smoothly albeit somewhat slowly. He wasn't worried. He and Hijira, for whatever reason, were bound to each other. Comrades in arms, friends, whatever, he would die with him. "I guess I am a sociopath." Linc mumbled.

Hijira loaded the final piece of ammunition into the gunblade. He had taken off all the rest of his steel, a heavy pile in the backseat. "These people are SeeDs, remember. This guy is my friend, but I have no idea what's going on, so, you know, just in case."

Lincoln stared straight ahead, the shotgun feeling oddly at home in his arms. "What do we do when we get up there?"

"I just need to know some things. I need to know if those two generals with him know about us, but I don't think it will be a problem. After that, I dunno... I guess we'll leave."

Part 12
Codependence

"Ghajihad. Or is it Foley now?"

"Good morning, Hijira. And you may as well call me Foley."

"How are you, my friend?"

"About the same as always. You?"

"I'm a little concerned. Why did you kill smuggler?"

"He knew about Squall and Quistis. About us."

"Squall and Quistis... you mean, the children, he was going to talk?"

"I don't know about that. But he was a loose end."

"The way the world is right now, I guess I can't blame you."

"At our age, we can't blame anyone but ourselves."

"How's your war going?"

"Oh, it's going."

"Ever think of going back to Nial?"

"They're not my people anymore. Not yours either, as I recall."

"... Speaking of which, how is... I mean, my niece, is she..."

"She's fine. Those two... they need each other. Its love, but not in the way some think."

"I understand that. Oh, Foley, this is Lincoln."

"Pleasure. Hijira, is there any reason the two of you are armed?"

"I'm not sure. It felt like what I was expected to do."

"What, a big climatic gunfight? Why? And besides, I may have need for you."

"Excuse me, Foley did you say?"

"Yes."

"What need could you have for us?"

"You never know. Tell me, Lincoln, have you ever considered taking a teaching position?"

"What?"

"Never mind. We'll discuss it over a drink. Holy sh... Hijira."

"Yes?"

"Your eyes. God, I never noticed before. She really does look like you."

"... Do you think we could ever meet?"

"I doubt it, Hijira. But you never know. Things have a way of happening."

Part 13
Lion without a pride, Queen without a country

"Do you still think about her?"

This last was spoken by Quistis to Squall, as the two lay on their back in the middle of a grassy field in a small village outside of Timber. Quistis, her hair laying loose, long over her bare shoulders and chest and spilling onto Squall, sparkled red and gold highlights under the pale moonlight. They had been watching the moon make its long journey across the sky for several hours now. Neither spoke very much anymore. They found that, more often than not, their thoughts meshed together.

"Sometimes. It doesn't matter anyway... it doesn't hurt anymore."

Squall held Quistis tight to his chest, and though he admitted to himself everyday that he didn't understand anything, in the last six months he had found a kind of reserved contentment. It was the best he could ever hope for from this life.

Quistis held tighter to Squall, and he reciprocated the pressure. Quistis, for her part, understood about as much as Squall. All she knew was that she needed someone in this world, and that someone was Squall. They were anchors, each keeping the other from flying out into further death and despair. Quistis understood that. She also understood that they were alone now. And that was all right.

The Esthar war came and went. Gardens the world over opened their doors to the orphans who needed them. The stars keep burning, and money keeps flowing. Unconcerned, Squall and Quistis walk the earth, undisturbed by the goings on of Garden and SeeD. Regardless, Lionheart and Save the Queen never left their sides. Fortunately, Quistis' poison induced dream never came to pass.

Quistis imagined the stars dropping. Through it all, there are no happy endings, and no sad endings either. In a way, there never are endings, only different kinds of beginnings. Nothing may ever be solved, or understood, but that doesn't matter, because those mysteries are soon lost in the past, and then they don't matter.

Quistis felt Squall's short hair. It was an improvement. The night was cool. The grass was soft. The moon was becoming overcast. And rain threatened to spill from the shining heavens.

"Are you miserable?" Squall asked, absently twisting a lock of her hair.

"No."

"Are you ecstatic?"

"...No."

"... I like your hair like this." He said, a smile barely crossing his lips. Quistis said nothing, her hand stroking Squall's neck, and though clouds covered the stars, the rain didn't fall.