Disclaimer - I feel the strangest sense of deja vu. It's almost like I've disclaimed this chapter before...
A/N - Behold, another director's cut chapter. After much debate and even more tweaking, Kit and I have decided this chapter is ready to be re-posted. The conversations feel like they flow better now, though the chapter is still long on the backstory/exposition and short on actual plot development. Yet there's still something about this chapter that I really like. If nothing else, this remains a good Quistis-development chapter. Anywho, on to the show. ^_^
Note - Thanks to Berkie88 for pointing out the proper spelling of "anaphylactic" for us. ^_^
10/30/2012 - Re-edit.
Chapter Three
Seifer scowled at the brace on his leg. It was irritating and in the way... and his leg hurt every time he bumped into something. He couldn't wait until Dr. Kadowaki could finally fix it.
Just a few more hours...
The sound of sharp, stuttered breaths, the sort typically used to hide sobs without any actual success, caught Seifer's attention. Deciding to vent his irritation and inability to sleep on whoever the hapless person was (someone ditched by their date at the party, perhaps, or some unfortunate cadet), Seifer crept as silently as possible – made difficult by his crutches – around the corner.
Then he stopped in surprise.
Quistis Trepe was sitting alone on one of the benches in the entry hall. Tears were running slowly down her cheeks and her whip, Save the Queen, lay coiled uselessly at her feet. He'd last seen her some hours earlier when she'd ordered Squall to meet her at the training center. The two gunbladers had assumed that Trepe's order had something to do with her longstanding crush on the brunet, though Seifer secretly thought it had a little something to do with her losing her instructor's license as well. While Seifer wasn't too surprised that Squall's rejection had been terse enough to cause Quistis a few tears, he'd have thought she'd be recovered by now.
Fleetingly, Seifer remembered a younger Quistis making sandcastles on a beach. She'd been as bossy then as she was now. They'd shared a lot of their childhood and, despite much of their memories of that time being blocked by Guardian Forces, it had to mean something... right?
Hobbling over to her, Seifer seated himself beside her. He waited patiently, and silently, for her tears to subside.
"What... what do you want?" Quistis' voice was a little hoarse and brittle.
"Unless Squall was mysteriously killed by a T-Rexaur or declared his undying love for his gunblade and renamed her Sheila, I can't imagine why you're sitting here crying. But then, I've never seen you cry before, so I have no idea what it takes to merit this sort of reaction from you." Seifer paused and, when Quistis didn't respond, added, "you were fine when you were trying to flirt with Squall earlier."
"I wasn't trying to flirt with him," Quistis corrected automatically. "I... I don't know what I was trying to do."
"Squall is quiet, so a lot of people take his silence as obliviousness or agreement. The thing is, though, Squall is rarely agreeable and extremely observant," Seifer mused aloud. "He's known about your crush on him from the beginning. It was kind of obvious, though you did a halfway descent job of ignoring it. Lately, though... well, Squall was about to graduate and you started slipping. He didn't respond to your flirting because he was hoping you'd stop. Squall's always been the 'if I ignore it then it's not really there' sort of person."
"So I've learned," she responded desolately. "Only I didn't go away. I dragged him out to the secret area and told him all about how I lost my instructor's license. I was hoping that... maybe he'd listen and sympathize. I was hoping that..."
"He'd suddenly unfreeze for you?"
"He's certainly not acting frozen around you today," Quistis groused.
Seifer snorted in amusement. "You're jealous because he's suddenly on speaking terms with me?" Seifer snickered again. "He feels guilty 'cause I stopped some Galbadian soldier from skewering him and he didn't manage to do the same for me. It's not exactly the most rational reaction to what happened and once he figures out it wasn't his fault then he'll forget about the whole thing, forget that I'm not quite the person he always thought I was, and go back to ignoring me at every turn."
"What makes you so certain that's what will happen?"
"Guardian Forces make people forget. Without something to remind you of the past, eventually even you'll forget this night some day."
"That doesn't sound so bad," Quistis sighed.
"Yeah, but tell me, do you remember being eight or nine or ten? The earliest a person can start at Garden is the age of twelve and how much of your life before that age can you recall? I've got photo albums from my childhood, so I remember more than most, but even I've got more holes than memories of that time." Seifer gave her a long look. "We're kind of getting off topic here, though."
"I suppose." Quistis' eyes unfocused. "You're right, though. I can't remember being ten." Seeing the look on his face, she shrugged. "So what was the topic at hand again?"
"Squall's lack of social graces, including the knee-jerk reaction of saying 'there, there, it'll be alright' or whatever it was you were wishing he'd say upon learning of your lost license."
"You aren't very good at being sympathetic either."
"Meh, you don't want my sympathy. You want me to be more like Squall... or your idealized image of him, at any rate. It's annoying, really, to have my every habit critiqued as being 'not bad, but Squall did better.'"
"I wasn't that bad," Quistis objected.
Seifer raised an eyebrow, gave her a disbelieving look, and then continued speaking as though she hadn't commented. "And this brings us back to the fact that, really, you don't want Squall's sympathy either. You want some dream guy's sympathy and Squall just happens to be close enough to your ideal, in your mind, that he's the one you've been fixating on.
"Oh Hyne... this is what I get for leafing through Fuu's psychology texts. I do not like reading other people's subtext; it just leaves me irritated."
Quistis laughed. "Fujin has psychology books and you've actually read them?"
"Yeah, Fuu's got a bunch of psych books. She's applied for admission into an Estharian university. She wants to earn a doctorate in psychology." He ignored the jab Quistis had taken at his intelligence. He was getting in more than enough sharp pokes in on her flaws that he could take a few rejoinders. It wasn't like he'd completely understood what the books were talking about, anyway.
"So is this basically your long way of saying 'I could have told you so?'"
"Maybe a little." Seifer shrugged. "I already knew about you losing your license. One of the older teaches was gloating about how he knew you were too young for it. Personally, I always found his classes boring and was forever falling asleep in the back of his class; he never noticed since he was too into lecturing directly from the book in unfailing monotone."
"You never slept in my class," Quistis stated a little proudly.
"I was too busy making sure your stalkers didn't decide to kill me in my sleep. The Trepies are the single most frightening group in all of Garden and after the Paintball Fiasco, they hold no love for the DC," Seifer let himself ramble a little. "As the leader of the Disciplinary Committee, I was supposed to have a passing familiarity with the charters of all the clubs on campus. The Trepies are an official club and their guidelines are... very disturbing."
"How disturbing?"
"I was scarred for life," Seifer clarified unhelpfully.
"Just tell me that they don't take pictures of me in the shower."
"They don't," was Seifer's too-fast reply.
Quistis eyed him in suspicion. "You just lied to me, didn't you?"
"If I tell you the truth while within Garden's walls, there is a very good chance that they'll hunt me down and take my internal organs as their trophies. I'm rather fond of my internal organs. They keep me alive, you see." Of course, that was assuming Fujin didn't hunt them all down and kill them in horrific ways first. She was on particularly bad terms with the Trepies and was ever hopeful for an excuse to destroy them. Not that Quistis needed to know any of this.
Giggling, Quistis smiled at him, looking happy despite the puffy redness around her eyes. "Wow, you are capable of being nice."
"The beauty of it is that no one will believe you if you tell," Seifer responded with a smirk. Tapping his fingers lightly against his crutch, he steered the conversation back to the subject of Trepe's lost instructor's license. "You weren't the greatest instructor, Trepe. You had a tendency to assume that everyone knew most of the material already and grew frustrated when you had to re-explain things more than twice. But then, you should've been a student-teacher, or whatever, first. That's how teacher's learn to teach outside of Garden, anyway.
"It's late. Get some sleep; you won't feel any better about what's happened in the morning, but at least you won't be exhausted. If you need to take your frustration out on someone, then go after the Trepies for all the times they've invaded your privacy. Get their charter revoked; you might lose a few stalkers and feel healthier for it."
Quistis laughed again and then yawned. "Shouldn't you be getting some sleep too? You had a rough day."
"Rough morning, at any rate," Seifer corrected. "I slept a lot of the day away and now I'm not all that tired. My internal clock feels like it ought to be nine pm, not 3 am." Shrugging, he added, "Fujin is going to be randomly attacking me all day tomorrow to keep me from falling asleep."
"Goodnight, Seifer." Standing and stretching, Quistis headed towards the SeeD dorms. "Oh, and Seifer?"
"Hmm?"
"Thanks."
For a moment, Seifer was tempted to ask her about Orphanage. He didn't know if just asking would be enough to trigger her memories of that place, but in that moment he desperately wanted someone else to remember that they were his foster siblings. He wanted someone else around who could recall Edea fondly.
Contrary to popular belief – well, popular in the other future – Sorceresses did not necessarily have an intimate relationship with their Knights. A Knight needed only to care deeply for their Sorceress and have that feeling returned for the bond between them to work properly. A parent, child, or sibling could just as easily become Sorceress' Knight as a lover or friend. Yet, in the other timeline, the theory that Seifer had slept with Ultimecia while she still possessed Edea had remained prevalent in the tabloids. The rumors couldn't have been further from the truth, but the gossip and speculation had soured his memories of the Orphanage somehow.
Now the taint was gone, but he was all alone.
Still, the clicks of Quistis' shoes on the tiled floor faded away and the moment passed. "This is why I don't do introspective very often," Seifer grumbled to the empty entry hall.
They were gone. Squall, Zell, and Selphie had left for Timber... without saying goodbye.
Not that Seifer had expected them to, it was just...
He'd wanted to go with them, but it wasn't Garden policy to send someone out into the field until forty-eight hours had passed after recovering from an extensive healing. It was one of the few policies Seifer usually agreed with – forty-eight hours gave the healing magic plenty of time to dissipate from a person's system so that if they were injured and required more healing, the magic would work properly – but right now he hated the idea of Squall going off without him. Hadn't the whole point of changing his life been to fight at Squall's side instead of winding up fighting for Ultimecia?
Seifer felt like he was getting stuck on the sidelines. He wasn't useless; he ought to be out there.
"Something wrong, Seifer?"
Looking up, Seifer grinned at Raijin and Fujin while putting aside his worries. "Nah, I'm just bored, that's all. And, hey, no more crutches." He stood up and stepped around the bench to demonstrate his restored mobility.
Fuu smiled and jubilantly – for her, anyway – stuck a letter in his face. Snatching it and moving it away from his eyes enough to actually be able read it, Seifer began to read aloud. "Dear Miss Engel, we are happy to inform you that you have been accepted by the Estharian University at Esthar City. Additionally, you are eligible to apply for the following scholarships..." he trailed off and pulled the silver-haired girl into a hug. "Fuu, this is wonderful!" Pulling away, they both smiled brightly.
"What's wonderful?" Quistis asked, wandering over to them.
"Fujin's been accepted to one of the Estharian Universities. She's pretty amazing, ya know?" Raijin told her, puffing up with pride over Fujin's achievement.
"And she's eligible for an ungodly amount of scholarships," Seifer added, feeling every bit as proud of Fujin as Raijin did.
Fujin stood there with a faint blush on her cheeks. "Lucky," she muttered, looking down at the ground.
"Not luck," Raijin objected, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and giving her a peck on the forehead. "Intelligence, ya know?"
"Oh for crying out loud," Seifer mumbled. Louder he drawled, "you should probably take her on a real date before you give her any more kisses. And Fuu, stop trying to pretend the closet fiasco didn't change anything," he complained as his two friends turned bright red, sprang apart, and settled onto the bench on either side of where Seifer had been sitting when they'd shown up. "This is getting annoying. I locked you two in there for a reason and if you don't stop I will do it again."
"REVENGE!" Fujin growled.
"We're going bowling on tomorrow night." Raijin winced as Fujin reached over and smacked him. "What? He already knows we're dating, Fujin. You're just gonna have to find some other way to get him back for the tiny, dark closet, ya know?"
"Closet fiasco?" Quistis grinned, sitting down across the table from them. "That sounds interesting."
"Not really," Seifer took a long look at his friends and then grabbed Fujin's shoulders, pushing her over to sit by Raijin and then taking the place she'd been sitting before she could scoot back over. He smirked at her. "You're revenge plan A isn't very fair to Rai, Fuu," he told her gently and she sighed, leaning against her boyfriend in defeat.
"He locked us in a closet, ya know? How he managed it, I'm not really sure," Raijin admitted, looking a little confused. "I was walking down the hall, ya know? I just tripped and the next thing I knew I was in a closet with Fujin and the door was locked. Seifer doesn't usually fall back on clichés so I didn't consider he was responsible until Fuu said he was, ya know?"
"It was a spur of the moment thing," Seifer responded with a shrug. "The puppy-eyed stares you two were giving each other were starting to give me hives. I had to do something and, well... it seemed like a good idea at the time."
"We didn't need help," Fujin grumbled, still pouting. "We'd have gotten together on our own soon enough."
"Not before I wound up in anaphylactic shock," Seifer teased.
"Are you really allergic to puppy-eyed stares?" Raijin asked, sounding half serious.
Quistis laughed. "The three of you are the best entertainment I've had all day," she declared.
"You haven't been looking hard enough," Seifer told her. "So did you see off the trio to Timber this morning?"
Startled, Quistis nodded affirmatively. "How did you know they're going to Timber?"
"I'm the one who set up the meeting between their client and Kramer. Rinoa Heartily runs a resistance faction in there called the Forest Owls. They're nice people. Weird, but nice."
"Oh..."
Seifer let his attention wander around the cafeteria, wondering what would happen next. Obviously there would be no running off to Timber and becoming the Sorceress Knight again. The idea of helping Ultimecia conquer everything using his foreknowledge was kind of tempting, but somehow the idea of crushing Squall wasn't appealing this time around.
Maybe it never really had been appealing. Seifer wasn't sure anymore.
But Seifer had always wanted to be a hero and he knew now that siding with Ultimecia would make him enemy number one in practically every country on the planet. There was also the fact that, having spent most of the afternoon and evening with Squall the day before, Seifer felt a burning desire to get to know the reticent brunet better. Despite having known each other for years, Squall was good at making himself mysterious and only getting a taste of what lay beneath the surface of Squall's icy mask just wasn't enough.
"Looks like I really will only be in charge of the Disciplinary Committee for a few months after all," Fujin remarked morosely, breaking Seifer out of his thoughts.
Fujin's use of normal speech patterns twice in a row seemed to have stunned Quistis, but Seifer didn't pay her surprise any attention as he gave his sister his full concentration. "Have Mitchell follow you around like a second shadow for a while. He wants to be a detective, so heading up the DC would be good experience for him," Seifer recommended. "Unless you've rethought your assertion you'd rather take orders than follow them, Rai?"
Raijin shook his head violently. "Nah. I've been thinking of trying my luck at Fishermen's Horizon after the summer ends. I mean... you'll be off on missions all the time and Fuu'll be at college. I need to find something to do with myself, ya know? I just... don't think SeeD is for me."
Reluctantly, Seifer nodded in acceptance. He'd known that neither of his friends wanted to be SeeD for a while, but he'd held out hope that maybe Rai would at least give it a try. The realization that this was it, their last summer together before splitting off in different directions, jolted him painfully. "We'll always be a posse, though."
"AFFIRMATIVE!"
"What she said."
"The three of you are very close," Quistis observed wistfully. "That's difficult to manage in a school this competitive."
"We're all a lot alike, ya know?" Rai tried to explain. "We're orphans and we just... click together. It'd be weird if we weren't friends, ya know?"
"You're so eloquent," Seifer muttered, instinctively ducking Fuu's teasing swat.
"Don't you have friends you're close to?" Raijin asked Quistis.
"Well... there's Xu, but we're not like you three. We get along well so we hang out sometimes. We're friends, but not particularly close." Quistis shrugged as a sad expression appeared in her eyes even as she attempted to mask her unhappiness and loneliness.
Fujin reached out and clasped Quistis' hands in her own and Seifer recognized the look in Fuu's eyes. She'd just found herself a new project: helping Quistis. "LONELY!"
"A little, I suppose," Quistis reluctantly agreed.
"Do you really think Mitch can handle the DC?" Raijin cut in.
"He needs to learn to speak up for himself more, but he's got the talent for it." Seifer waved his hands absently. "I know he'll only be a sophomore next year, but I still think the upper years will listen to him. He had a lot of good ideas this year, so if he can just make himself be more assertive he'll do fine." Fujin nodded in agreement, not bothering to speak aloud.
"I never quite understood what the Disciplinary Committee was for," Quistis admitted sheepishly. "It seems like you're just doing the same thing the Shumi Guardians do."
"In a way we kind of do. But the Shumi won't investigate grievances. Unless they're given proof of what's going on, they'll only believe something is wrong if they've witnessed it themselves. Surely you remember that from your time as a cadet?" Seifer drawled.
"Well... yes."
"When we were freshmen, a group of us were being harassed by some upper years and we were getting sick of no one doing anything about it. The instructors told us to take it up with Shumi, the Shumi wouldn't do a damn thing about it, Security told us it wasn't their problem, and Kramer encouraged us to be more understanding of the other cadet's feelings and point of view." Seifer rolled his eyes. "Like singing hippie songs and trying to convince them to 'love thy neighbor' was gonna do us any good. So we decided to do something about it. It was difficult to convince the rest of the cadets to vote for the creation of the Disciplinary Committee, but we managed to get the majority vote we needed. Then we set the DC up as a cadet run detective force; we enforce the rules and actually investigate when someone comes to us with a complaint."
"We became more effective than Garden Security," Fujin asserted, giving Seifer a sideways look. "Six months ago Seifer almost got killed because he was doing his job so well."
"What?" Quistis sounded genuinely surprised and appalled.
"We're not supposed to..."
"You're not supposed to talk about it," Fujin corrected. "Raijin and I can say whatever we want. Squall, too, for that matter. Headmaster Kramer never forbade anyone but you to talk about what happened."
"Well, maybe I don't want you telling Trepe about it," Seifer snapped, forcing himself not to rub his shoulder reflexively.
"Seifer just doesn't like that it makes him sound like a hero, ya know?"
"It makes me sound like an idiot," Seifer muttered. If he hadn't been alone, with his guard down, he'd have never been shot. He'd been stupid and if Squall hadn't been there...
The other two members of the posse exchanged looks again and then Raijin asked Quistis, "do you remember a SeeD called James McCormick?"
"Raijin!" Seifer started to protest only to have Fujin slap a hand over his mouth. His muffled protest went ignored and, since Fuu had gloves on, the childish trick of licking her palm didn't do any good. He reached up to move her hand away, but she batted at his hands with her free hand while keeping her other one over his mouth as he struggled to get away.
Quistis snickered at the sight.
Raijin started talking again, however, and Quistis quickly grew somber again as she heard what Raijin had to say. "About a year ago there were a few girls – cadets and SeeDs – who were drugged and raped in town. They didn't know who was attacking them, but they knew it had to be someone in Garden since they'd wake up in their own rooms, ya know? When Security wouldn't do anything, they went to the DC and Seifer... he got obsessed, ya know? He nearly flunked a couple of his classes 'cause he kept skipping in order to investigate."
"I do remember you skipping out on a lot of my classes earlier this school year," Quistis observed quietly, finally understanding what had been going on with her student.
"Seifer managed to find out who the guy was: James McCormick. Problem was, the evidence was circumstantial so the Shumi didn't consider it real evidence, ya know? Security still wouldn't do anything; said we were little children playing at being detectives and we ought to go back to our video games, ya know? Anyway, Seifer tried to take what he'd learned to the headmaster but Kramer just gave him a pat on the head, promised he'd look into it, and then sent us off to study. It didn't really look like he was gonna do anything, ya know?
"So Seifer took everything to the Balamb PD. The girls were drugged in town, so the cops had jurisdiction, ya know? That was when McCormick tried to kill Seifer and McCormick wound up being sent to D-District in Galbadia, ya know? Everything was hushed up after that. Kramer didn't want what happened causing a scandal."
"If Leonhart hadn't followed you that night..." Fujin trailed off, shuddering as she pulled her hand away from his mouth. She didn't finish the thought, but she didn't have to. Seifer knew what she was thinking.
Seifer scowled at her anyway. He had no idea what the hell Fujin thought she was playing at, bringing this up now. "It wasn't that big a deal," Seifer grumbled. Though, now that he thought about it, he distinctly remembered killing McCormick just before interrogating Squall at D-District during the other go-around. The bastard's death had been so very satisfying...
"Not a big deal... you..." Quistis trailed off, shaking her head ruefully. "The more I learn about you the more I realize I've never understood you at all."
"We've been practically strangers for years, Trepe," Seifer responded with a shrug. "It shouldn't be surprising that we know basically nothing about each other. I prefer it that way." Seifer noticed Fujin's wince and nearly did the same when Raijin rolled his eyes. "What is with you two?" he demanded.
"NOTHING!" Fuu started to stand as she pointedly raised her arm to stare at her watch. "LATE!"
Raijin hopped to his feet as well. "I should go... I have... ya know... stuff?"
Reaching around Fujin, Seifer grabbed Raijin's arm and pulled him back down to the bench while giving Fujin a pointed look. "What is with you two today?" he repeated. "You're both terrible liars, by the way."
"Fuu already has her other revenge plan in the works... plan B, ya know?" Raijin confessed. "Oww!" he yelped as the silver haired girl sat back down regally and planted her elbow in her boyfriend's ribs.
"It isn't exactly revenge," Fujin finally said. "You're just... alone a lot now. We're together and we're going to be leaving..."
"We just want you to be happy too, ya know? Since you can't stand Rinoa anymore..."
"HALLELUJAH!"
"Fuu!" This time Raijin was the one glowering at her for interrupting. "So we're just..."
"Trying to set me up with Trepe?" Seifer sounded bewildered.
"Not really," Fujin shrugged. "I considered her, but she's not your type. She is good at unintentionally helping find out things about people, however. I was hoping to... steer the conversation towards someone else and see how things progressed." She shrugged. "Plan A failed. Time for plan B."
Quistis snickered and leaned forward, giving Fujin a conspiratorial grin. "Whatever plan B is, count me in. I'd love an excuse to wind someone up today."
"Seifer's fun to irritate," Fujin agreed impishly.
"Plan B?" Seifer scooted to the edge of the bench, glancing around to make sure he'd have a clean getaway. He had a bad feeling about this...
"Well, in novels there's often a love-hate thing," Fujin began to explain.
"Fujin," Seifer spoke warningly, "I really don't want to know how you've managed to lose your mind, okay? I especially don't want to know about the plots to those raunchy romance novels you're always leaving around our dorm room."
"You two shared a dorm?" Quistis was shocked again. She was shocked way too easily in Seifer's opinion.
"The management was sufficiently assured that the two of us would never have anything more than a platonic relationship," Seifer explained absently. Narrowing his eyes at Fujin, he asked, "how badly am I going to hate this plan B of yours?"
"I'm leaving!" Raijin jumped up and scurried away before either his best friend or girlfriend could stop him.
"COWARD!" Fujin yelled at the rapidly departing staff-fighter.
"That bad, huh?" Seifer closed his eyes, massaging the bridge of his nose to ward off the oncoming headache. He'd wanted to be out there with Squall and the others earlier because he hadn't wanted to feel useless. Now he wanted to be out there to save his sanity from Fujin's plotting.
"Are you thinking of setting him up with Xu?" Quistis asked. "There's definitely an... affectionate hatred between the two of you and she's a brunette." The blonde woman smirked. "Brunettes are more your type, I think."
"You're getting a sadistic sort of pleasure from this, aren't you?" Seifer accused.
"Maybe..."
"No, I wasn't thinking of setting him up with Xu." Fujin's expression as she nixed the idea grew evil, but Seifer didn't notice as he said 'thank Hyne' with great relief. "What do I read besides raunchy romance novels?" Fujin teased slyly.
All the color drained from Seifer's face. "I really hate you sometimes, Fuu." Pushing away from the table, Seifer tried to get the hell away from the table before he could hear anything further. Unfortunately, he wasn't fast enough.
"I like yaoi manga," Fujin explained. "My backup plan, as Seifer has just realized, is to set him up with Squall Leonhart."
Seifer blushed at hearing that... and then cursed internally. One thing about Fujin was that she never expected her first plan to work. In fact, plan B was the one she always expected to succeed. That meant she'd never really intended to hide her relationship with Raijin... just make Seifer think she was so that she could blindside him with this ridiculous plot.
That silver haired, red eyed, psychotic albino was clearly delusional. There was simply no way...
Dammit...
Sure, I was distressed over missing him before he left for Timber and I've noticed on occasion – many occasions – that he's really hot... especially after a good spar when he's a little short of breath and his hair is plastered to his forehead... and his eyes get that look...
No! No, no, no... Hyne dammit, she's screwing with my mind. That's all.
I've never been attracted to men... never felt the urge to date a guy... wanting to spend time with Squall – a lot of time with Squall – to get to know him and assuage my curiosity about him does not mean...
Even if I did harbor an attraction to him... he's supposed to wind up with Rinoa.
Why does that hurt?
Seifer only just barely managed to avoid walking into the door frame as he left the cafeteria. His thoughts kept churning in circles for quite some time, though, and he avoided Fujin, Quistis, and Raijin for the rest of the day.
Two days later, Seifer found himself sitting on a train bound for Galbadia Garden with Quistis. In his hands was the file containing the orders to assassinate the Sorceress.
Even knowing that the assassination attempt would fail, Seifer felt like a traitor for carrying the file.
"Looking forward to seeing Squall again?" Quistis teased, jerking Seifer out of his thoughts.
"Not as much as you are, I'm sure," Seifer shot back.
"So there isn't any basis for Fujin's grand plan for you and Squall...?"
"The closet thing was just the latest of my attempts to make those two stop with the puppy-eyes," Seifer responded dismissively. "Fujin's getting creative in her revenge; that's all. She's going to torment me with stranger and crazier plots until she get's bored and moves on to something else. This isn't the first time she's gone a little weird in her plans for vengeance. Admittedly, this is the first time she's threatened to try and set me up with Squall, but..." he shrugged. "I guess there really is a first time for everything."
"You and Squall were awfully comfortable out there on that balcony, alone together the night of the party," Quistis observed quietly, growing serious. "The two of you were both equally pissed off by my showing up and ordering Squall to leave."
"Well, you were being kind of rude," Seifer hedged, not really wanting to think too hard on the lightheaded way he'd felt around Squall that evening.
"I suppose I was," Quistis relented, backing off the subject. "So what else did you do to your posse?"
"I shouldn't say."
"Oh come on..." Quistis batted her eyes winningly at him and Seifer rolled his in response.
He could understand why the Trepies were so infatuated with Quistis – she was smart, beautiful, and deadly, after all – but ultimately she really wasn't his type. Truthfully, Rinoa wasn't his type either, but she was close enough that he'd thought she was until they'd started dating. Like Quistis had insinuated the other day, brunettes were Seifer's type. Brunettes as in pretty, female brunettes and not handsome, male brunets who looked dead sexy in leather pants and fur-lined bomber jackets.
Denial was certainly a lovely place to vacation this time of year.
Seifer shook his head and gathered his thoughts. "No. It's bad enough Fujin is using you to vicariously wreak her revenge upon me. I refuse to further incite her wrath by further explaining what I did to her and Raijin... no matter how hilarious the events may have been at the time."
"She's not even here!"
"And that's how much she scares me," Seifer responded fatalistically. "In fact, your stalkers fear her, too.
"Yeah... when the Trepies were bugging the public showers to get pictures of you, Fuu very nearly throttled their ring leader in order to get a little privacy back. She won't go within fifteen feet of Fuu if she can help it anymore."
"She?"
"Yep. Most of the Trepies are females. I thought you knew..."
"No... I knew that some were women, but I... I just didn't pay much attention to them."
"Well, they are the focus of many a fantasy for just about every guy in Garden." Grinning mischievously, Seifer blocked her angry attempt to hit him on the head. "I'm just stating the truth, Trepe. No need to be so violent. Besides, I never said you were part of those fantasies... though I'm sure most made the inclusion."
"But never yours?" she sounded more curious than insulted now.
"Trepe, I am a gentleman aspiring to the chivalrous code passed down by the knights of old..." seeing her disbelieving stare, he laughed. "To be honest, I never really considered you or any of your little stalkers. Crazy people with no regard for other people's personal boundaries bother me and you just aren't my type. You're attractive, but you just..."
"Don't do it for you?" She flushed slightly, but seemed a little relieved. "I suppose it's a good thing you aren't my type either, or I'd be a little offended."
"Why are you asking all this, anyway? Because Fujin wanted to use you to ferret info out of me in her 'mess with Seifer' plot?"
"Partly." She sounded completely unrepentant. "The rest is because I don't really know how other people view me and it bothers me a little."
"Bossy," Seifer declared.
"Excuse me?"
"You've always been bossy."
"What?"
"That's how I've always viewed you. You're bossy... and now you're a little nosy, but I'm blaming that on Fuu."
"Ugh, well, you've always been a jackass."
"Language, Trepe. If your stalkers could hear you now, they'd be so disappointed... or incredibly turned on."
"Seifer!" Quistis flushed again. "How can you be so flippant in the face of other people's critiques?"
The train whistled, signaling their arrival at the station. There was a small Galbadian town near the Garden and they'd be able to start out on the ten minute drive to Galbadia Garden as soon as they disembarked.
"I don't care what most people think about me, Trepe. It's not so much me being flippant as... indifference, I suppose. In the long run, you only see certain parts of who I am. You're not so bad when you aren't being bossy, so I don't mind you seeing more of who I am now than you did before. But in the end, I don't show you everything that makes me Seifer Almasy and that limits the accuracy of your critiques of my personality. Your opinions aren't fact and where you see a jackass, someone else sees the mask I hide more important traits behind."
Quistis nodded slowly. "Squall's opinion matters to you, though. You wouldn't mind him seeing everything that you are. Don't try to deny it Seifer; it's been obvious to me since the first day of class."
Seifer stiffened, his mind retracing its steps back to Fuu's so-called matchmaking plans. He wanted to know everything there was to know about Squall... but did he want Squall to know everything about him in return?
He was starting to think that maybe he did.
"Let's go," Seifer changed the subject. "We've got orders to deliver."
Quistis wound up delivering the orders without Seifer. Headmaster Martine typically only allowed Captains and higher into his office, barring special circumstances of course. Everyone else had to wait outside. Being an impatient person by nature, Seifer told her that he'd meet up with her later and then went exploring.
He'd found his way to Galbadia Garden's quad – it had been fairly easy to locate even without checking the map – and had settled down cross-legged on one of the benches. Raising his glove covered hand into the air, he eyed it with an appraising stare.
The red sword cross on his gloves and jacket had always been symbolic of the path he'd wanted in life. Knights of Old Centra were said to have worn symbols like his when they'd battled for the safety of their sorceresses. The sword stood for valor, the cross for death and rebirth, and red for blood freely sacrificed in battle.
Dropping his hand to his side, Seifer considered, for one final time, seeking out Ultimecia to be her Knight. This time he looked critically upon his actions in the other timeline, which he could no longer pretend had been a mere dream. None of his actions seemed particularly gallant or heroic in hindsight. In fact, some of it seemed like slaughter. He didn't regret the past, but he found himself wondering how much had really been his choice. He'd lost his dream of becoming a SeeD, was confronted by a sorceress possessing the closest person he had to a mother, was fed lies about Squall's... about Garden's motivations for stopping Edea's rise to power...
There was no denying just how badly he'd been manipulated.
As much as Seifer hated to, he admitted to himself that every time he'd doubted or wanted out, Ultimecia would say or do something that would change his mind. His very thoughts during that time were suspect – Seifer had no way of knowing whether she'd used magic to maintain his loyalty, but it was a good bet that she had.
On some level, Seifer felt like he'd known the truth all along. How else could he explain having the strength and skill to destroy, not simply defeat, the Guardian Force Odin, yet be beaten time and again by Squall and the others? Deep down, Seifer had wanted them to win and Ultimecia to be killed.
The acceptance he felt over what happened didn't stop the realization from rankling him. Seifer had always felt the need to assert his individuality. At orphanage, as the others were adopted one-by-one, he'd acted out more and more in hopes that someone would want him and adopt him. Eventually the behavior became part of his personality and developed into the brash front he used to hide the things he didn't want others to see about him.
Six years ago, upon meeting Fuu for the first time, the silver-haired girl had immediately understood Seifer. Her ability to see him when no one else could probably should have worried Seifer, but he'd been relieved to find someone who wasn't always trying to change him that he'd wound up loving her instead. It was a platonic sort of love and Fujin felt the same way about him; it wasn't long after that they hacked into Garden records and 'officially' made themselves siblings.
Fujin's understanding of Seifer had only improved over the years and that was why she'd given him the gloves. The emblems on the gloves allowed Seifer to continue to express his independence even when he conformed in other ways. Even as a SeeD, he'd still be Seifer Almasy first and foremost.
"Seifer?"
Looking up in surprise at Squall – who also looked surprised, but also a little tired too – Seifer smiled. "Hey, Squall. How went the mission?"
"Nn..." Squall's nose wrinkled almost imperceptibly. "Not so well," he admitted, hurrying over to sit beside Seifer, who immediately made room on the bench for the brunet. Zell and Selphie followed Squall over while Rinoa tagged along more reluctantly, though she beamed at Seifer as though he'd shown up just for her benefit.
"What happened?"
Taking turns and sounding something like twins, Selphie and Zell poured out the whole story surrounding the train job and their subsequent flight from Timber when their second attempt to capture President Deling fizzled without ever getting to start.
Narrowing his eyes, Seifer tilted his head and regarded Rinoa carefully. She fidgeted uncomfortably under his gaze. "Rinoa, did you run your intel past Squall?"
"No. There was no need to. The information was confirmed by multiple sources," Rinoa snapped, her tone objecting to his question.
"And all those sources turned out to be wrong," Seifer shot back. "SeeD aren't just fighters, Rinoa. We're trained in strategy, counter-intelligence, and anything else that might help us complete any type of mission you could possibly think of... including running peace talks. What use is hiring SeeD if you aren't going to utilize the abilities we possess that are relevant to the mission? Just because someone is only there on a contract is no excuse not to let them know on what grounds they're risking their lives for. Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference, but having someone actually trained for this sort of work verify the information instead of leaving it up to people who believe Bigfoot is going to solve all their problems is part of the reason why I recommended your group hire SeeD in the first place."
Rinoa glowered at him and clenched her hands into fists. "They don't all believe in Bigfoot!"
"Looks like Squall isn't the only one who can piss her off in under a minute," Zell muttered to Selphie.
"Watts spends three months each year searching for Bigfoot in the forests of Timber. Zone has an ulcer that, for reasons unknown, he refuses to seek treatment over. Reg, Cassia, and Jenner play Dungeons and Dragons using figurines that all looking like variations on President Deling and compete to see whose character dies the fastest. You are the sole driving force behind the Forest Owls, Rinoa, and you can't carry everyone on your own. Why didn't you at least try to trust the SeeDs you hired and attempt a little delegation to put things in order?"
"You're mercenaries!" Rinoa burst out. "None of you have any reason to care about Timber's well being!"
"So you're saying that since we're not from Timber, we have no real stake in liberating it?" Seifer wondered if she was really going to fall neatly into the verbal trap he'd just laid out for her.
"Exactly!"
"You're a spoiled, hypocritical little brat, Rinoa. You're a Galbadian, not a Timber native. As easily as you can accuse us of not giving a damn about anything other than being paid to fight, I can accuse you of not caring about anything other than rebelling against your father, General Caraway." His voice remained even and he smirked a little as he spoke.
"How dare you!" Rinoa moved to slap him, but Seifer caught her wrist before she could connect.
Gripping her wrist tightly, but not too painfully, Seifer told her, "I'm making a point. Balamb Garden has standards. When we take jobs it has to be with people whose ideals we can agree with and whose causes we feel are worth fighting for. We mercenaries have to be able to live with ourselves after we finish a job." He released Rinoa's wrist, which dropped limply to her side. "Think before you speak, Rinoa. You should know these things about us already."
"Seifer's right," Squall spoke up. "Rinoa, we may not be from Timber, but our mission is to help you liberate that country from Galbadia. We give our missions our all not just because we're SeeD, but because we don't have it within ourselves to give any less. That you'd think otherwise is insulting."
The clicks of Quistis' shoes on the ground alerted the five teens to the blonde woman's arrival. "Headmaster Martine wants to see all of us in front of Garden asap," she told them. Looking from Squall to Selphie and Zell, she added, "I'm glad to see you're okay." Eying Rinoa critically, she reached out to politely shake the civilian's hand. "You must be Rinoa. Fujin was regaling me with stories about you after your appearance at the Graduation Party at Balamb."
Rinoa knew exactly how much Fujin disliked her and paled a little. "Oh? She never seemed to be one to talk much."
"Mmm... no, she isn't," Quistis agreed. "She quite selective in who she'll exchange more than a few words with. I've been acquainted with her for years now, but it was only about two days ago that she deemed me worthy of actually conversing with."
"Ah..." Rinoa tried to think of something to say, but she seemed to be at a complete loss.
Smirking, Seifer stood and thoughtlessly offered Squall a hand up. "Let's get a move on, then, shall we?"
Accepting Seifer's hand, Squall let his fellow gunblade specialist pull him to his feet. "Let's go," he agreed, oblivious to the almost electric jolt of heat that flowed through Seifer even as their hands released.
