Warnings- swearing, canon-typical mentions of violence.
Had to warn first for my language in the author's notes (there is also language in the story proper). This is a bastardisation of canon- everything is technically correct to the point where canon ends (obvious embellishment is obvious) and is so not actually AU despite my fucking with characters. Inspired by Breaking Benjamin's 'Blow Me Away', because it's been years since I actually played the game, and maybe I missed something, but I suddenly figured a mercenary school should be more- mercenary, I guess- than what I remember the game to be. Yes, I'm overlaying my ideas (and ideals) onto a fictional interpretation of humanity again.
This is a dark, cynical interpretation of canon. For those who like sunshine and daisies, stay away.
Disclaimer-I wish.
Enjoi.
Quistis Trepe, despite her numerous fans, had got some stick at the start of her training for her choice of primary weapon.
Meant to be a warrior, not a walking fantasy, was one of the politer comments made. And that was only counting those she actually heard.
Only makes it easier for her to blend in in a whorehouse- isn't that where most women get their missions? Said with a wink and a hearty laugh, the man slapping his comrade on the shoulder.
It may not have been the most deadly of weapons- she knew that when she chose it (chose it because of that, maybe; after two years of service, Quistis had no problems killing a man in cold blood. Back in training, she had still been- soft. It was a weakness she had lost quickly, as did all of those who survived.). But most men saw a whip as a mere tool, rather than a weapon.
Most of them had never seen her flick it up to encircle an opponent's neck, then jerk sharply down, breaking it. All in a matter of seconds before she turned to the next victim.
All completely cold.
No SeeD could survive unless they had the ability to turn off the human side of them when necessary.
So when men laughed at her and disparaged her weapon, she smirked at their blindness- any weapon was useless except for what the SeeD, the mercenary, could do with it.
Zell's body was his weapon. He made his way by being stronger, faster, and most importantly, better than anybody he opposed. Speed and strength won most of his battles for him, but when it came down to two physical fighters, sometimes only skill got him through.
Although he'd only chosen to be a martial artist because of how absolutely awesome it had looked, he'd worked out along the way that it just wasn't going to work.
Not unless something changed.
Because, well- he was a close-quarters fighter. Sure, so were swordsmen like Squall or the bastard, but they didn't have the deepest understanding of the term like he did.
Squall and Almasy (that utter bastard) were good enough, by now, that they were rarely hit by the other person's blood. Hell, Almasy wore that ridiculous white coat most of the time; he couldn't afford to anything less than truly skilled, unless he wanted to rack up a fortune in dry-cleaning costs.
Zell Dincht would never have that luxury. He could avoid the bloodstains on his clothes, but his hands- his weapons- were another story. Weapons were meant to be blood-soaked; it was a sign of skilled usage, as long as the blood was your opponents'.
His hands had borne the blood of so many people, it was becoming difficult to keep scraping dried-on stains from under his nails: Zell knew he'd have to either change disciplines, setting aside all of his hard work so far, or well- change mindsets.
His hands were his weapons. To wield a weapon properly, you had to be ruthless. Hit harder, faster, and smarter than the other person. Or they'd hit you, and then his hard work wouldn't be an issue anyway.
You had to be ruthless enough that if you're pinned, and the only way is to take out the other guy's eyeball-
Zell didn't hesitate. And well, he'd survived, hadn't he?
Irvine Kinneas disliked getting his hands dirty. Call it stupid, girly or whatever- nobody had managed to convince him otherwise.
He put up with the general training: got his knuckles bruised until they were tough enough to throw a proper punch and his forearms sliced to ribbons before he learned the correct way to deflect a knife. He had the healers cure away the scars, however, and there was nothing to show for his hard-earned training.
When he was old enough to specialise, he chose the sniper rifle without hesitation. Yeah, there were a few more comments thrown his way- and the fact that he refused to cut his hair didn't help with the accusations of gender confusion.
A few short years, and he was the one being called in as support for the cadets (some now SeeD) who had chosen 'manly' specialisations, and laughed at him. Every time he placed a shot that saved their lives, he threw all the shit they'd thrown him right back in the debrief following.
There was one accusation that got somewhat close to the truth- Irvine was loath to admit it, but there was some element of cowardice in his sniping.
He knew full well what a high-velocity round did to unarmed flesh: entry wound like a penny, exit wound like a pizza. There was no coming back from a bullet that blew the back of the mark's skull. He knew that most of his successful shots were killing ones.
But he also knew that when he squatted half a kilometre away and squeezed the trigger gently, physically speaking, his hands were clean. There was no blood on his hands, no scars to show his battles and no mess to clean off his weapon in the aftermath.
At the end of the day, Irvine had no care for metaphors; he was a man of action, not of words. And that was exactly why he let most of the accusations slip past him- no matter what anyone else called him, he knew he was a mercenary rather than a poet, and words meant little to him.
Selphie Tilmitt was the pride and shock of Trabia Garden. How somebody so friendly, so talkative and wordy and bright had the gumption to become a mercenary, and one so promising, was a mystery nobody had yet come close to solving.
The most popular theory was that she just turned it all off in combat, became like any normal member of her class and actually took the tasks seriously. She'd pouted on hearing that, and those who'd trained with her quickly disagreed, stating her maniacal laughter as she fought to be damning evidence to the contrary.
Of course, this wasn't to say she didn't take her tasks seriously. But seriously was so very different to serious, and she exploited that in every fight.
What nobody worked out, and nobody ever bothered to actually just ask her, was that- nothing changed. Why should she change? She liked herself the way she was.
Selphie had gone to Trabia Garden because it offered her the best education in the area, and her adoptive parents were quick to take advantage of that.
Even quicker was how Selphie took to Garden's lessons. It was like she was born for it.
And when Selphie fought, nunchaku whirling, it was much like she did every other aspect of life- talking, laughing, smiling, and giving it everything she had to give.
And nobody yet had matched her, neither for skills, nor for spirit. She fought like she had nothing to lose- and she would lose nothing of herself until that match was found.
Seifer Almasy had lost everything- his Sorceress, his freedom and his will to fight. He'd suffered under six weeks of house arrest and had Hyperion returned to him with more provisos at the end of it.
Two weeks after that, and the gunblade still sat in its case, collecting dust in the corner of his (cell) room.
He'd had visits from Tilmitt and Trepe, but they'd failed to rouse him. Rinoa had seen him once, at the start, crying and asking why he'd done what he did. He had no real answer to give her. He'd believed it was the right thing at the time- now, he had no belief left to give, or explain.
Trepe had, of course, seen right through this, and scorned him. As she left, she wondered aloud why they'd fought so hard to save him, if he'd given up and broken on them. Essentially, to his limited point of view, she scorned him for being human- for having feelings, passions, and then having them taken away.
Fighting with passion was a risk Trepe had never taken. She was logical, methodical- unfeeling, and Seifer could only wait with baited breath for the day when someone shook her enough to reach her soul, locked deep inside her.
Tilmitt was the greater surprise. She'd visited four times now, and each time she just sat across the room from him and pulled out the book she always brought with her. He'd asked her, eventually, what she was doing visiting him. She'd smiled like she'd been waiting for the question, and said the silence was sometimes soothing, and he didn't expect anything else of her.
Seifer saw that one day, Selphie would lose herself, would shatter beneath the smiles and the laughs, unless someone else started smiling for her first. But they continued to sit there in silence, and he thought that neither of them held out much hope of that happening.
He was waiting as much as she was. Being beaten and broken was a great teacher of humility, and patience. No matter how busy the man might be, eventually Leonhart would visit, and he'd see if there was anything left fighting for.
Selphie saw as much in him as he saw in her- the fifth time she visited, there was a sad smile and a murmured, 'do you want to talk about- it?' (and he knew the hesitation was because she'd been about to say 'him').
He answered that talking wouldn't bring solace to either of them.
Until someone came and woke him up, the silence was all he had.
Squall Leonhart sometimes wished he'd been born deaf. Or since that would be impractical (a deaf mercenary was a dead mercenary), he at least wished he was mute. Silence was grounding, helped him focus, and he needed the clarity now he was busier than ever.
There was never any peace. From dealing with Garden, to Rinoa and everything she entailed (her Sorceress powers were growing, and few people were happy to hear it), to now wondering exactly what Selphie did during the multiple visits to Almasy that he'd signed her off for.
There were no mikes to match the cameras in the cells, but Squall didn't need them to see little to no talking went on during those visits. It made him undeniably curious, which only made him wonder more, why so curious, why now, why him?
He'd tried asking Selphie what the visits meant. She'd been decidedly unhelpful.
He had one other resource to exploit before accepting that he was silently going mad. He'd been delaying this action for weeks, before acknowledging that no other could be taken.
Squall manned up, and recorded the visit in his paperwork, proper and he thought, pointless. Then he was in front of the door. He entered his access code; the light flashed green and let him through.
Almasy glanced over, blinked, and jerked upright. Squall raised an eyebrow, silently wondering why he was worthy of such action, such surprise.
"Finally descended from your tower, princess?" Seifer drawled.
It would be too easy to fall back into old routine, so Squall ignored the obvious incitation. The silence stretched between them until Seifer broke it, again.
"Why are you here?" the blond spat out.
Squall paused, because there was something in Seifer's expression- it was all too clear that this was another taunt, but it was more besides. There was resignation in his words, but there was also hope.
He decided to stick to the facts he wanted answered. Feelings only made things more complicated.
"Why does Selphie continue to visit you, if you don't say anything to each other?"
Seifer stared at him, then huffed a laugh. "Out of everything you could say, that's what you ask?" He didn't seem to require an answer, and continued before Squall could say anything anyway. "Hell, I figured that would be something you'd understand." At Squall's blank look, he laughed some more. "Unspoken understanding? The value of silence? Any of this ringing any bells?" Seifer paused, and snorted at his own words. "Silently and hypothetically speaking, is any of this making any sense to you?"
That, at least, Squall could answer quickly. "None of this makes sense to me. Why else do you think I'm here?"
Seifer cocked his head, and just- looked at him. Looked through him. "Hyne help me, you're serious," he muttered.
Squall shifted from one foot to the other, needing something to do that wasn't asking more questions he apparently wouldn't have answered.
"You're the commander," Seifer said abruptly. "You're in charge, you have to know everything that's going on, and you have a solution to everything that's going wrong. Right? That's what being in command means. You have Rinoa and Trepe, Dincht and Kinneas and Tilmitt, and they keep you on the straight and narrow when you take all their information and make your decisions based on that information."
It seemed a rhetorical statement, so Squall kept his silence.
"Hyne help me, but you don't have a clue," Seifer continued. "You're in charge, but you have no idea of how this really works, do you?"
You're fucked went unspoken, but Squall knew silence better than Seifer thought, even as he knew nothing else, and understood what the blond wasn't saying.
There was a substantial pause then, so Squall (begrudgingly) felt obliged to contribute to Seifer's monologue. "Enlighten me."
Seifer grinned, but it was bitter. "Trepe is a sociopath. She feels nothing when she kills, and eventually she'll start to enjoy it- the competition, the knowing she's better than anyone else you've set her against. Eventually, orders won't be enough, and you'll have to order someone else to match her, and kill her.
"Dincht- Hyne help me, because he hasn't visited, but I know what he's thinking. One day he'll be in the thick of battle, and he'll hesitate. I don't know if it'll cost you his life or your own, but he'll hesitate, and the result will be fucking catastrophic.
"Kinneas is a wuss- he bodged the shot on Ultimecia-"
"Luckily," Squall bit in. He shoved all emotion aside (it took little effort) and realised that Seifer's words were making him defensive because they were too truthful. "If he'd made that shot, Hyne only knows where her powers would have ended up."
"Luckily," Seifer echoed distantly. "He's a coward; you know it, and you'll never rely on him completely. But out of some misguided sense of loyalty that everyone tells you you should be feeling, you'll choose him for missions anyway. Your mission effectiveness will be compromised, because if you can't rely on your sniper on a mission you've requested him for, it's fucked from the start.
"Selphie-" Seifer paused, and for the first time, Squall fancied he was recognising genuine regret for his words. His truths. "Tilmitt is a ticking time bomb. One day she'll explode, because she's handled everybody so well that nobody knows how to handle her."
Seifer fell silent. It was a relief, until it wasn't, because Squall could see what Seifer wasn't saying.
"And you?" he asked, because holy Hyne, he couldn't leave this curiosity alone. "And me?"
Seifer laughed, and it was bitter again. "I'm already broken, Leonhart. I was waiting to see if you had anything left to give, but let's not get me started on that."
"Let's say I'm curious," Squall replied with truth for truth. "Let's get you started."
Seifer looked at him, through him, again, and apparently decided that what he had yet to say was no less damning than what he had said already. "I've got nothing left to live for, Leonhart. I saw my chance, and I lived my dream. I became a Sorceress' Knight. And I lost my Sorceress. I lost my dream, and I've got nothing left to fight for, even if I had something left in with me to fight with."
Squall carefully avoided glancing at the corner where Hyperion was laid in its case, gathering dust.
"And you-" Seifer's laugh was incredulous this time. "You're the most ironic thing I've ever seen. Hearing everything about your advisors, your friends, you don't flinch because you don't feel any particular attachment to them. Any misplaced feeling is from constant reinforcement from everyone else that you should feel something for them. That misplaced loyalty to Kinneas?" Seifer rolled his eyes. "You know I'm right. Left to your own devices, Kinneas would never have another mission again. But your friends will advise you, he's really the best shot they've ever seen and he's your brother in everything that counts, and if you can't trust that, what can you trust?. You know I'm right. I know that you know I'm right, because honest to Hyne, you are the perfect mercenary. You know what is necessary for the job, and you know how to motivate people in specific instances to get that job done."
Squall looked up sharply to protest this, but Seifer spotted the movement and talked over him. "It's petty manipulation, Leonhart; don't try to argue with me. You feel the satisfaction of a job well done, the same as baker would like a batch of well-cooked rolls, or an author would re-read his masterpiece from sheer pleasure that he could create something so brilliant. I'm not even pretending you understand the basics of human emotion; don't get your back up over it."
Squall deliberately spoke louder, enough that Seifer couldn't disregard him, this time. "So I'm another sociopath. Quistis and me, we're both perfect mercenaries. Is that your point?"
Seifer rolled his eyes. "And you're fucking clueless. No, princess, that is not my point. My point is that you are a perfect mercenary in a world where perfection is useless. Unique perfection is a way of making you different, individual... to use an overrated phrase: unique, just like everybody else." His bitter grin becomes a smirk.
And Squall saw what he was getting at, the silence between the lines.
"I'm limited to the constraints of my comrades." He stated the obvious for the two of them. "A perfect mercenary is useless because anybody imperfectly human will think him heartless." He pinched the bridge of his nose, because for all he has learned here, it is an imperfect world he lives in, and Seifer is right in that at least; none of it would be of use the moment he stepped out of this room. "Quisits is the perfect mercenary, for now at least. But she's too human. Is that what you're trying to say?"
There was a long pause this time before Seifer replied, succinctly. "You're fucking useless."
Squall wanted to tear his hair out, but he kept his composure. Barely. "Enlighten me," he said again.
"Maybe you're the anomaly in an otherwise perfect world," Seifer mused aloud. Then, "Nah, it wouldn't be perfection if everybody was a part of it." He shook his head. His hair was growing too long; blond strands trailing down past his ears. "You've got questions unasked, and answers to questions that nobody needs to ask, because you're already ten steps ahead of them when they're asking you what to do. Which basically means that you'll never know shit, and you'll never know the right, human, questions to ask."
Squall almost snorted at Seifer's phrasing, but sensed that this, again, was too close to the truth to laugh off.
He tried to ask a correct question.
"So... what do I do?"
The silence was not comforting. This was perhaps the most unsettling thing about the conversation so far.
Then Seifer answered. "Fucked if I know. Hyne help us both, but at least you're asking human-type questions. Don't let it go too far though; don't want to let your followers down when they realise you're fucking clueless."
The conversation was going in circles. None of the truths Squall had admitted to always knowing would be of any use once he left this room; he couldn't be that unfeeling outside of this room because that in and of itself would cause useless dissent.
Squall turned to the door. There was a metal plaque on the wall, and he saw Almasy's lopsided smirk aimed at his back. He knew that, useless as this conversation had been to himself, it was worse for Almasy.
Seifer had nobody to live for except himself, and he couldn't muster the self-belief for that.
Squall had always believed in himself if nothing else; knowing that he was right even if it meant that everyone else who believed in him was wrong. He was right because they believed he could do no wrong, even when they had a different opinion about his choices.
He realised that with every little bit he conceded to Rinoa, to Quistis, to numerous other people (his followers, as Almasy so derogatively said), he lost a sliver of that self-belief. Yet, he thought, if he stops his concessions, they will stop believing in him. It was circular logic.
Squall couldn't get around this.
He mostly wished he'd never accepted his humanity enough to wonder.
Rinoa sees more than anybody gives her credit for. She grieves for her fellow humans and is scared of what the future holds, because no matter what she sees, she cannot help them.
She sees a bitter man, grieving for the future he will never have.
She sees a scared girl, waiting for somebody to soothe her fears.
She sees a heartless woman, who will never realise her heart is merely broken.
She sees a coward whose bluffs and false confidence fools himself most of all.
She sees a student who changed his entire personality to stay alive and sane.
She sees a leader so directionless that he can't admit he is lost.
She covers every mirror in her room before she sees too deeply into herself, for fear of what the mirror would show her.
(If she dared look, it would show a man merely waiting for the right time, a girl with no regrets, a woman only in need of healing, a soldier whose bravery shines when he worries about every shot he takes, a teacher who preaches his own experiences, and a uniquely perfect human only trying to find his way.
It would show a Sorceress who is in control and unafraid of her own shadow.)
Rinoa never meets the eyes of her reflection. It is safer, she thinks, to see herself as her fans see her- a woman with unfathomable power. Flawed, yes, but undoubtably, brilliantly, human.
Rinoa never saw what she could be if she believed in herself, rather than what her fans thought her to be.