Author's Note: A few things – An action sequence follows. I think it's okay, but nothing great. Seifer's ability is based on the game's own statistics, so don't rag on me. I don't think I under-represent Quistis' fighting prowess here, but I'm not one to depict her as some sort of Valkyrie or war goddess, at least not relative to her in-game peers.

Sun-Tzu is referenced in a roundabout way below.

I also firmly believe Seifer would express words of affection or other emotions if he felt them. He seems to be the type of consequences-be-damned person in other areas and I'm saying it holds in this realm too. Yes, he's a sweetheart with Quistis sometimes here, but only with her, and he's still often a jerk about it. Hope you still consider him in character.

"Monument to all our sins" is a reference to an achievement in Halo Reach.

Maybe I'm predictable, or recycle themes and words, but I hope I do so in a meaningful way. That's the intent. I'm also determined to end every chapter with laughter.

Thank you to my reviewers. You make writing this all the more rewarding. Enjoy.

: : :

Theirs was a guilt that was self-fulfilling. She couldn't take it when she failed others; he loathed when he failed himself. She found her tongue disappeared when someone needed comfort; he knew that his just grew sharper on the grating sounds of suffering. He hated how he couldn't discipline himself; she sometimes wished she could stop. She was consumed because she could only share her true self with him; he was enflamed because he wanted to keep it that way.

She was a confessor who only admitted her culpability to the sin she had made. He didn't confess because he was out of forgiveness' reach.

: : :

Sparing with Seifer was a masochist's wet dream. Or a very fast and skilled sadist's, since he didn't mind getting hurt as much as he didn't mind hurting. Quistis always asked to train with him when she felt ashamed or down, needing to be punished, and his were castigations from which one could always learn.

Seifer was at least as strong as Squall, almost as fast as Kiros in his prime, and unknown to many, one of the most powerful casters in Balamb Garden. Quistis was too competitive to just cede the matches to him and take a beating and he wouldn't oblige her if she did. Instead she attempted to hone her aim and tactics: by ambushing, feinting, various magical combinations, and generally staying far away from Hyperion.

Easier said than done didn't have many better exemplars.

She watched him saunter into the training center at 17:58. His gunblade was already covered with foam and tape, all edges and barrel blanketed, but it would still hurt to be on the receiving end. He looked around, suspecting a set-up, but Quistis had long before learned to cover her tracks. He slowly walked around using his gunblade to peek into the thick foliage and using his nose to detect hints of jasmine, which did not grow in the training center.

Grinning at her plan, which did involve covering her scent, she set it into motion. She'd fashioned an impromptu ghillie suit from the plants nearby and her whip already looked much like the ubiquitous vines, so she was well camouflaged. His head snapped almost in time with the dry stick she'd broken between her fingers while crouched in the brush. Seifer immediately drew his attention elsewhere when he didn't see anything, suspecting an ambush.

Quistis had been counting on him overthinking the situation. She leapt out into the open casting a mid-level ice spell that would do little else but make him flinch and angry, but it bought her the opening she needed to send Save the Queen lassoing around his ankle. She pulled, hard, and sent him sprawling into the dirt. Managing another blow to his side before he got up, Quistis darted into the flora again.

Her plan was one of straight guerilla warfare. Frontal assaults were suicidal, keeping a safe distance devoured her energy, and magical attacks were a mixed bag. She knew him well, but in battle it didn't matter much. His eyesight was keen, olfactory was borderline canine, and reaction times superhuman. His one deficiency was hearing, which was simply average. In the training center, with so much ambient noise, Quistis could move around with impunity using only minimal amounts of caution. That one deficiency didn't make for much of an advantage though; Quistis thought that at this point anyone who landed a hit to Seifer was both extremely skilled and lucky. Well, at least momentarily, since they were also about to be very badly maimed.

Some old author talked about knowing yourself and your enemy as if it made it so that you shouldn't fear the results of battle. It was obvious Seifer had never been his enemy.

He was laughing, laughing, at her. Prowling around near where she last entered the jungle, he clearly wished for Hyperion's cutting edges to chop away at the undergrowth. He looked for flattened leaves and bent trunks to signal her passing and tried to anticipate where she would emerge next, ignoring the staring ranks of cadets

Fortunately, he saw the next lash and stepped back out of the way, just before he heard it crack in front of his face. He quickly determined its origin and crashed through the plants where he expected to find her, pulling at suspicious vines left and right. Seifer walked right past where she lay, hidden in the ferns and leaf litter.

Of course there's your plan and then there's what happens when Seifer happens to your plan…

As soon as she stood at a crouch, he turned and swept down on her, forgoing his gunblade, which was rendered next to useless without a cutting edge in the undergrowth. Almost as useless as a whip at close range. She quickly fisted a second hand over the whip's length, about a meter from the hilt, and used it defensively. Seifer was too fast for her to make use of it, and he grabbed a handful of her suit and threw her into the shorter grass with little effort.

She rolled when she hit the ground, but it still bit painfully into her shoulder. He swung a wide arc meant to sweep her legs and she jumped away, narrowly escaping by stepping back, but his lunge that followed with a second spin only a millisecond later caught her full in the chest.

The breath exited her body in a sudden whoosh when she slammed into the tree. She struggled to track his movement. Quistis couldn't catch her breath enough to cast a spell, so she stumbled back into the underbrush to regroup.

Seifer swung with a force that would have cleft the tree had his gunblade not been wrapped. Quistis ducked just in time, kicked him in the shoulder where the jarred-bone sensation after making contact with the tree still stung. Strafing to his left, she caught a whirling attack with her whip wrapping around the weapon, but the impact knocked her to her knees, skidding several feet while still holding on to the whip at both ends. He tore Hyperion away with a fierce yank and pulled Save the Queen with it, sending Quistis falling toward him.

He shoved her down into the dirt with his foot.

For a while Quistis lay there, panting, regaining her equilibrium and strength. They looked at each other, sweating, hearts beating rapidly, before Seifer offered her his hand.

She spoke once she was able.

"Again."

He lifted her off the ground with one hand. "You're getting faster," he said.

She healed herself and then they repeated the skirmish.

: : :

So it went for the better part of an hour. Then they separated to shower in respective locker rooms, Seifer went back to his dorm, and Quistis drove into Balamb town to collect their dinners and a bottle, no, make that two bottles of wine.

She reflected on the day during her drive.

Aidan had been less than happy to discover Quistis' undergarments on Seifer's coffee table, and he'd said as much. He begrudgingly ceded that Seifer seemed to be an honorable man, at least with concerns to Quistis, and he even talked about how he made him realize that by suspecting Quistis of cheating on him with Seifer, he hadn't trusted and respected her as much as he should have. In the end, despite how backwards it seemed to her, he ended up apologizing to her after she spent the night with another man. It made her feel even worse about the previous night.

Things grew very awkward when he asked her how they could build trust and comfort and she had no answer but 'be more like Seifer,' which she thankfully didn't verbalize. He seemed mollified when she told him that it could happen with time and with him taking an interest in her pursuits, intellectual and otherwise. Aidan promised her that he would then asked if they could have dinner together.

Quistis gently told him that she had made plans already, and told him again, when he suggested that they do something after. She couldn't tell him that she intended to spend the evening with Seifer again, and the fact that she could see he already suspected but didn't ask about it, ate away at her. She kissed him then and then told him to expect her for dinner on Monday at seven.

She left him happier than when she found him. He even began chattering excitedly about his research, thanked her for supporting it through him, and went back to it. Maybe he felt better, but she felt worse, somehow feeling less wanted.

Then she picked up the dossier on the man whom she was expected to convince to support Garden and walked with guilt-slouched shoulders to get ready to be punished by the man at the heart of her shame. Quistis needed his support for the guilt she felt for coming to him for his support. The thought was enough to make her laugh, but the tear at the end of her mirth wasn't a joyous one.

: : :

The car pulled into an upscale family style diner. Quistis walked across the street to a wine merchant and picked up two bottles of red wine: a Barolo and a Barbaresco, both made from grapes in the nebbiolo family, which would complement the rich, carb-heavy food she was going to pick up at the restaurant. Across the street she paid for the meal and took it back out to the car in a crock that she'd brought with her.

Delicious scents and the parting of the clouds had her in better spirits on the way home. She rolled down the window and took in the smell of the sea breeze and the air that had warmed during the day. Sunlight glittered off the gentle waves and she sighed a contented sigh.

: : :

She was at Seifer's door less than fifteen minutes later, ringing the doorbell with her hip because she had her hands full with the food and wine. Seifer took the food and drink from her graciously and then not-so-graciously shut the door on her before she could step in.

"Ass," she laughed, when he opened the door again moments later.

He grinned. "It takes a nice one to be one, they say."

She slapped the aforementioned anatomy, harder than was necessary, especially because he'd fallen on it when they were training. Quistis frowned playfully. "Hey, are you calling me an ass?"

"No."

"Why not? Mine's not half bad either."

It was funny how the guilt disappeared when she was around him.

Seifer laughed. "Okay, fair enough." He changed the subject, shaking his head. "Smells good. Where did you go?"

"Pelican's Landing."

Seifer had taken the crock and set it on the table, lifting its lid and examining the contents, he nodded his approval. It was nothing fancy, but then, neither was he. A thick red sauce covered a shell-like pasta which was filled with a variety of cheeses and spice, chicken and shellfish were cut into the mix, along with chunks of mushrooms and peppers. Quistis threw the dossier on the table in the living room. He put out some place settings as she poured the wine into glasses, then Seifer used a serving spoon to ladle out generous helpings of the pasta.

As he was preparing the table, he asked, "How'd things go with Aidan?"

"Better than expected. He apologized to me after I spent the night with you." She shook her head. "Can you believe that?"

Seifer shrugged. "Why not? You didn't do anything wrong."

She sat down and took a bite, chewing slowly. "I know, but it still feels wrong. Shouldn't I be staying with him? Why don't I feel a desire to, or even feel comfortable with the idea?"

"I can't answer that question for you. If it feels wrong, then don't do it." Sometimes he made things so simple.

"It doesn't feel wrong when I do it, just when I think about it later, in context."

He shrugged again. "Then either don't do it or don't think about it." Too simple. "Why do you feel guilty anyway? What do you think you owe him that you aren't giving him?"

Setting down her fork, she looked up at him. "I don't know. The truth, I guess, about whether or not I'm capable of having the feelings I have for you with him." Seifer looked uncomfortable. "You know what I mean," she added quickly.

"Well, are you?" he asked, almost always head-on with his dealings with any issue. Quistis stared out the window, not answering.

"I keep thinking that with enough time with you I can learn how to feel and maybe act the same way with others."

He nodded slowly. They ate silently for a while.

After some time, he raised his glass and waited for her to do the same.

"To destroying the monument to all our sins," he toasted. Quistis wasn't sure what he meant, but clinked her glass to his and drank anyway. She watched him over her glass as she drank and tried to read his expression. It was inscrutable even to her. With Seifer though, if you waited long enough, his thoughts would come to surface. She was patient.

As they continued their meal though, he didn't share what was on his mind.

"What are you thinking about?" she finally asked.

His stare was level. "I'm thinking that maybe you're going about this the wrong way. I'm thinking your comfort and familiarity with me is a crutch that will prevent you from developing the same or similar feelings for anyone else. More time away from me would probably do you well."

Quistis was struck silent for a while. "What are you trying to say?"

"I'm not trying to say anything, I fucking said it already. How can you expect to grow comfortable or happy around someone you're so seldom actually around?"

"If you don't want to be around me, just say so." Only the few rejections and setbacks she'd faced in her life seemed to occupy her mind now, and they filled it, crowding out all of the accolades, warm friendships, and tender moments.

He stood up quickly, eyes intense. "Damn it, Quistis!" he yelled. "Stop being so fucking melodramatic!" He started to pace in front of the kitchen window, rubbing his scar. She bit her bottom lip. "I'm not tossing you aside. Shit... You say that you want to have something like what we have with someone else, and you don't see me brooding about you wanting to leave me, do you? I like what we have and I think you do too. If you felt his way with others, I think you'd be happier, and I think you want that. You want something, sometimes you have to work for it. Want to be comfortable with something, or someone? Expose yourself to what you want. Even if it scares you."

Rolling some remaining shells around her bowl, she nodded. "You're right. You're always right. …Almost" She finished her glass of wine and refilled it.

Seifer sat back down and refilled his bowl.

"What if I can't do it?"

"What, change how you feel? Nobody can make a decision to feel something that they don't, only to be happy or not with how they feel and what they have," he returned.

"What if, what if…" Seifer mocked. "Sometimes you can't analyze something so much that you get an answer, not even you, brainiac. Sometimes you just need to go fucking see for yourself. Gemba."

She smiled warmly at him. "When did you grow so wise?"

"A good teacher and a thousand mistakes give you a lot of opportunities to learn."

"You're a good man, Seifer. I wish you weren't so hard on yourself; that's my job."

He snorted. "And the pot calls the kettle black." He pushed his bowl to the middle of the table and leaned back in his chair, swirling the wine in his glass before finishing it and pouring another.

Quistis pushed her hair back behind her ears. "You'll make a woman really happy someday."

"I make lots of women happy, almost every day."

She laughed. "Me most of all."

Leaving her seat, she walked to where he sat, slipped behind him and pressed her hands into his shoulders, massaging the knots, tension, and pain away. He leaned forward allowing her to leverage her elbows down his back. The realization that she could physically feel his tension, his pain, and the power he had was a shocking one. It wasn't like her touching him was a rarity, it wasn't even the first time she'd worked on his shoulders and back, but it felt that way. Less a duty and more a gift.

To push more deeply, she leaned into him. Her hair spilled over him and he made contented sounds from his diaphragm and throat. Quistis had an almost astounding vocabulary, but when it came to expressions of emotion or gratitude, there was seldom any words she could summon, and often found she needed to speak with her actions. In a reversal of stereotypical gender roles, Seifer definitely did not have this problem. He captured the back of her head to hold her in place, fingers splayed in her hair, and kissed her on the cheek.

"I love you, you know that Quistis?"

She stopped suddenly and he laughed. "Don't freak out. I thought maybe you didn't know," he continued. "You're well-loved, by all of your friends, but I'm willing to bet most of them are too afraid of how you'd react to say it to you." He shrugged, which lifted her nearly off the ground, as much as she was leaning on him. "I figure everyone should hear it once and a while. I know you won't say it back and I don't expect you to. Just thought you needed to hear it..."

Quistis wrapped her arms around his neck, rocking back and forth for a time, and he put a hand on her arm.

Love was an inevitable, or perhaps omnipresent, component between people who had spent their entire lives together, fought against each other, and for the same causes. They'd watched each other nearly die on several occasions, had even taken the news of the other's death, but they saved each other. More times than they knew.

When Seifer stood, she slid off his back. He left the table as it was, most of the food had been eaten, the bowls scraped clean. She grabbed the other bottle of wine, the Barolo, and their glasses and walked to the living room.

Seifer sat on the side of the couch and took his glass when Quistis handed it to him. He picked up the folder on the politician in the other hand.

"So, what have you found out about this guy?"

"Other than his propensity for blonde girlfriends, not much. He lives outside Deling City with his wife of eight years. Grew up in a family that made it big in industry, pioneering ways of incorporating para-magical items to increase the efficiency of manufacturing processes. He was basically a trust-fund baby, but he's taken the family reins of the business and has started several charitable foundations for the homeless and destitute."

Seifer thought. "Almost sounds like competition to Garden, but you can certainly leverage that interest with ours. Does he have any kids of his own?"

"No, but it looks like they may be expecting."

"Okay, that's good."

"Why's that?"

"You may want to point out that children enrolled at Garden are far more likely to survive in times of war than in any of the conscripted armies or navies."

"And that it provides a better liberal arts education than most private schools," she added.

He nodded.

Eventually she sidled up next to him and rested her head on his shoulder, brushing her fingers along his leg as she moved her hand along her own thigh. Seifer captured her hand and held it, looking at her.

"You practicing?"

Quistis looked puzzled. "What?"

"For your mission. Lightly making 'incidental,'" He lifted her hand. "Contact like this is a great way to see how effective you've been at making advances."

"Oh." A pause. "Seifer, can I ask you something?"

"Sure." He took a long drink of the wine.

"How can you talk about love so casually?"

He frowned. "Casually? Just because I told you I love you doesn't mean it was flippantly done and it doesn't mean I can only say it in the context of presumably unending romance. If I couldn't say it to you, seriously, but not gravely, then to whom could I say it?"

She considered for a moment, rubbing her thumb along his hand that she held. "Matron. You could say it to her. To family." Quistis stopped for a moment and then turned to look at his face. "Have you talked to her recently?"

Seifer tried to wave his hand dismissively, but found it was still in her grasp. He frowned. "You and I are closer than most siblings and yes, I talk to Matron every week."

On something akin to premonition, she set down her glass. "Then why does she always ask me when you'll come down with the rest of us to see her?"

Her eyes couldn't find a resting place on his face. His eyes were turned away and squinted, forehead wrinkled in an unknown, unknowable disgust, jaws clenching and unclenching with each breath torn roughly from the room. Painfully his hand tightened around hers, until she couldn't bear it, and she decided to go into his solitary oblivious fury to rescue him from his mysterious shame and self-loathing.

"Seifer, you're hurting me."

Quistis' voice seemed to snap him from his reverie and he blushed then blanched, trying to look at her but failing. He slowly released her hand. She pursued it.

Edea was always a soft spot for Seifer and he would be embarrassed at not paying her the respects and affections he felt she deserved.

"You don't tell her you love her, do you?" To her surprise, he didn't respond. She sighed, feeling foolish and ashamed. "I'm sorry, I know it's not any of my business. We don't have to talk about it, I just never thought I'd hear you s-"

"-No. I don't tell her." He scratched between his eyes and sighed deeply. "It's been years. Maybe I should talk about it."

She filed the comment away for quick recollection. "Do you? Love her, I mean?"

He snorted. "Now there's a hell of a question for you to ask me… There are three Edea Kramers. Matron, my mother, whom I will always love. The sorceress, my tormentor, whom I will always hate…"

"And the third?"

"And the third ensures that I can't ever consider her to be one of the other two. We're dropping this now," he declared suddenly. His voice had turned a more serious timbre, which said that if it needed to say anymore on the subject, it would be on the decidedly violent side.

"As long as you can drop your guilt."

"I will as soon as I deserve to be forgiven."

She frowned. "When will that be? Everyone has forgiven you already."

"I haven't. And I haven't deserved it. Never will."

Quistis' blue eyes grew inflamed. She slapped him, hard.

"Seifer. That was the single most arrogant thing you've ever said, and that's one hell of an accomplishment. How dare you think you're beyond redemption and that our forgiveness means nothing?" She searched out his green eyes until they met her own. When they did, she was shocked to see that tears were falling from them.

With a pleading look in his watering eyes, he silently begged her for all the comfort a confused and hurt little boy needed. He also told her to stay away, because he didn't want to be consoled.

"We were lovers then, back in the time Ultimecia possessed her."

Quistis was unable to suppress a gasp at his hidden confession. She might have suspected earlier if either Edea or Seifer had ever let on, or if she had questioned the strange union between this former knight and his sorceress, at once a comforting mother, domineering source of hazy, subtly twisted ambition, and exotic vision of enticing youthful beauty.

"Just how am I supposed to forgive myself for that and how can I get past it even if I could? Do you know how hard it is to even look at Cid? I can't look at her. Never again," he nearly sobbed, hands and head shaking. An unflappable and endlessly strong man, now made broken and powerless against the forces of rekindled memories and the way that blending all good things became an unspeakable abomination.

Seifer shrunk away from her comforting hands. She had no words for him, but her hands demanded to be heard. They pulled him, struggling weakly against her, into her arms. Then they guided his yielding head to her chest, where it remained, and she stroked his hair, hoping that she could sap away his guilt just as he had done for her countless times. Evasive words were captured and set free, just as his breathing grew even.

"Some things require more than just one person's strength to conquer, even yours, big guy. I'll be here to help you through." She smiled down at him and he smirked shyly back, embarrassed by his show of accepting comfort and especially by doing so on her bosom. She didn't seem to notice or care. Quistis was just happy to be strong for him for once.

"Why don't we just watch a movie?" she asked.

He got up, and by silent agreement, they quickly finished the remainder of the wine bottle, grinning with deep purple lips. They watched a film which was eminently forgettable, but was well able to make them forget the travails of their lives, and soon sleep threatened to overtake them.

Suddenly, he asked a question. "You ever junction sleep to your status defense to try to stay awake longer?"

Quistis laughed. She stretched as she stood. "No, can't say that I have. Does it work?"

"No." He yawned.

She waved a small object at him. A toothbrush, he realized after a moment's thought, and then joined her in the evening bathroom rituals. Most of them, anyway. They weren't literally joined at the hip.

They walked slowly to the bedroom where she made herself comfortable in his large shirt and he shed his. True to her word, she pushed Seifer into the bed first and followed to be on the outside. He grappled her close to him and she let it slide; he often gave her just what he needed. She lay in silence waiting for the darkness to swallow her thoughts, but one flew unbidden and refused to be taken.

"Seifer?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you too."

"I know." The smirk was audible.

She elbowed him in the ribs which did nothing to stop his chuckling. "Ass."

"Thanks. I work out."

Quistis giggled and turned. She swept her face toward his and pressed a light kiss. It caught the side of his lips and they twitched slightly at the touch.

"Go the fuck to sleep, Seifer."

They laughed.

: : :

Author's Note (again): I didn't like this one at first, but it's grown on me. Seems like a lot happened in this chapter, though. More to come soon, as I can't seem to stop writing this.