Chapter 7 – The Vortex
A/N: From here, as mentioned earlier, the chapters tend to get longer. In fact, Chapters 7 to 9 were originally intended to form a single chapter. (Sorry – there doesn't appear to be much I can do about it.) Also, divergences in the magic system become more obvious; this is deliberate.
Warning: contains…mild-to-moderate (I guess?) coarse language.
Selphie looked down. And down…
…Oh my… that's a long way down… She couldn't even see the bottom, shrouded from the afternoon sun by the rocky precipice.
Squall had lived up to his word. There really was hard climbing involved.
The Ragnorak pinnace's crew had tailed the hunter high into the mountains, tracking him all the way to where she now stood. But Squall had also been correct in warning them that landing nearby was impossible. And so they had been forced to backtrack to the nearest piece of flat terrain large enough for the airship to land, perhaps eight hundred metres to the northwest. (By foot, of course, it was more like five times that distance.) Selphie had stepped out with a few radio beacons, and the pinnace departed for Trabia Garden to begin the task of ferrying search parties into the area. She had at least traversed that distance safely, and even in a time the match of Squall's. Though, that wasn't saying much for her stamina; Squall had bounded up and down those slopes like some demented mountain goat. After running all the way here, stopping only for combats and a spot or two of looting afterward, and to signal his location to the ship.
Using the butt of her customised Strange Vision as an impromptu hammer, she drove the second locator beacon into the rock at the top of the cliff. Her eyes scoped the inner contours of the deep, jagged shaft. A landslide had covered one side with boulders and scree; she suspected that the rubble buried what had once been a series of switchbacks. The other side, like the bottom, was too dark to make out clearly, standing as she was in the light.
Well, there were ways of dealing with that. One hand shielded over her brow to fend off the sun's rays, Selphie aimed at a spot in the centre of the shaft.
Her firaga spell lit the shaft below like a bonfire. (Perhaps a hundred metres below, Squall used the distraction to truncate the snout of a hexadragon.) The spell winked out; Selphie decided queasily not to repeat the act. If Squall had been the one to startle, he would by now have been in serious trouble.
A couple of minutes later, another fire spell burned for a moment; it lit a small section of the shadowed precipice. She squinted. Is that something on a ledge…?
Working her way down to it took a little while, mostly due to the darkness; the climb itself was actually easier than some of what she'd had to do to get there. Looking down at what she had seen from the top, she smiled.
Good old Squall… He may not have waited at the top for her, but he had left her what she needed to follow him down – and to highlight the recommended path for the reinforcements. A dozen giant, splintered (and blood-spattered) bones were stacked upon several long, tightly coiled strips of snow-lion fur. And now that she was out of the sun and her eyes had adjusted, she could easily see where the jury-rigged guide rope needed to go.
It still took over an hour to first make it back to the top, and then string the guide ropes out along the path. Panting from the exertion at the bottom, on level ground at last, she straightened to look around.
As promised, there was a mine entrance. As she had promised him, there were also powerful monsters. Two hexadragons. Or rather, two ex-hexadragons. She could just see Squall, a dark figure sitting on top of one of them.
His voice, rasping and rusty with disuse (and, she vaguely hoped, exhaustion), barely carried to her. "You promised tough monsters, and you delivered. We eat here." A weak fire spell, more like a spark, dimly illumined the shaft floor for long enough to track the package he lobbed in her direction. Some watercress shoots from her own supplies really set off the rich, marbled dragonflesh; she finished with water and a dried apple, finding a small spring behind the other dead dragon to refill her canteen afterwards.
Turning around, she saw him slide down the furred side of the dragon, moving towards the mine entrance with gunblade in hand. His solemn words drifted back to her: "I promised you a husband."
Grinning, she followed him.
—ox-oxo-xo—
Zena's eyes shimmered, a quite fetching quicksilver. Again.
Irvine sighed. "Why do you keep scanning your brother?" And while I'm at it, he wondered, why are you still coming onto me? Is it some weird survival mechanism? Did you pick it up out of a romance novel? Or are you just insatiably horny? Come to think of it, it could be all three of those things…or, it occurred to him, another factor entirely. But she was giving him an answer to his spoken question.
"I'm not actually trying to scan him. I'm trying to scan behind him."
He blinked. "You can do that? Scan inanimate objects?"
"Don't see why not." Zena rubbed at her eyes; she really was quite young, and it was obvious when she forgot herself for long enough to act like it. Which was never for long. She leaned over to rest her head against his shoulder. "But it doesn't seem to work. The scan spell only seems to work on a single object, in line of sight…"
Irvine gently pushed her away. It was the smart thing to do, even if he felt like a heartless bastard every time he did it; he well knew what she was doing, and also knew that he could not afford to let the conniving sorceress think she could get away with it. She threw him a pout. Her brother Zamal slept on, snoring gently; he'd really made an effort to make himself useful today…whenever 'today' was down here.
Irvine absently massaged his right hand. "Damn finger…" He winced, realising his mistake instantly.
Zena leaned in again. "I could kiss it better…"
…Screw this… He turned his head to look at her. Her eyes were inches from his, her lips ever-so-slightly puckered… Irvine ignored the lips, staring her down. She withdrew, hiding the hurt at his rejection pretty well; if he was her age, he might not have caught it.
Then again, if he was her age, then he'd probably not have turned her down. Indeed, he'd likely be very busy right about now… He blinked. Cheeky minx! Those thoughts didn't belong anywhere in his head…especially when one of his old friends had the ability to drop Irvine's wife into position behind his eyeballs at any given moment.
"So… How far along are you with your sorceress classes?" Even as he asked the question, Irvine decided to see if his recent hunch about her motivations was correct.
"It's goin' alright…" The stock-standard response to an instructor asking about a student's studies. "The 'magic' part's interesting…" She mustered the courage to dart another suggestive smile at him. "…But I like the 'physical' stuff more."
He rolled his eyes. "Have you done anything on statistics yet?"
She made a face. "Do I have to?"
"Not if you don't want to be a SeeD," Irvine shrugged. "But there are some statistics you might not know. And as a sorceress, you should know them."
She was trying to hold the 'suggestive' look, but at the moment it was tending more towards 'puzzled'.
"Do you know how many sorceresses there are in the world?"
She pouted again. "A pop quiz? Now?"
He glowered back. "Well?"
"Wait, I remember this… The last I heard, there were 278 of us. That's just the ones on the Garden's logs, there's probably some other ones still hiding their powers." She grinned. "I'm right aren't I, Instructor."
He nodded, "Not precisely, but the figure goes up and down every so often. My wife, Headmistress Selphie Kinneas—" No harm being blunt with that much, he figured. Pity it never seemed to work… "—told me a couple of months ago that the last count was 292 sorceresses." He marshalled the figures in advance from the dim recesses of his memory, with a certain amount of difficulty; it wasn't like he cared overmuch for such things, especially when the had no relation to the calculations related to marksmanship. "Almost all of whom became sorceresses on the same day, in the same way." He let out a melancholic sigh. "Before your time, of course. I seem to remember you said you got the power from an elderly sorceress?"
Zena gave him a sombre nod. "Her husband died of old age or something, and she tried to kill herself. But she couldn't really die 'till she passed on her power, so the village women ran a lottery for the girls. I was the winner." He noticed her lips again, how they trembled for just a moment. "So I was given the sorceress power, and then they sent me off to Garden like I was a package…" Bingo.
"Thought so. You do realise the contest was rigged, right?"
She gaped at him, all pretence of allure thrown out the window. He sighed again. It was an educated guess, not knowledge of her village, but he was willing to bet that guess was spot-on.
"The women of your village were not stupid, Zena. They listened to the warnings that Garden and the governments put out about the sorceresses. And not just the one about not killing them." Now she was actually listening… "Garden has researched this pretty well. Of those 292 sorceresses, or however many there are at the moment, how many of them do you think have knights – had knights, at the moment they were chosen?"
She blinked, frowned.
"Ninety-three percent of them. And that's down from ninety-six percent, with the original group of sorceresses from twenty years ago. Do you really think that happens by accident?"
"H-how?" The young sorceress was actually beginning to sniffle. Hopefully it wasn't another ploy for gratuitous 'comfort'…
"Rinoa…she knew what she was doing. She knew that sorceresses who are paired with good and kindly knights have the best chance of living out their lives in peace." His eyes looked into a time long gone. "She had such a knight. She had all the powers of the mad sorceress Ultimecia… and she managed to control them for nine years, Zena. Even more – when she finally began to lose her grip, she held on for long enough to figure out a way to divide her power – among hundreds of girls and women, all over the world. Something that no sorceress before her had ever done before." Focussing once more on the present, and on the sorry sorceress before him now, Irvine reached out with his left hand, gripping her shoulder to emphasise his point. "That is what a good knight can do for you." A sardonic grin stretched his lips for a moment. "Not that you didn't know that, of course."
She rolled her eyes, blushing faintly. He scowled at her.
"And here's another statistic for you… Do you know how many of those men and boys – and girls and women—" She blinked again. There certainly weren't many of them, but females could serve as knights. Of course, she hadn't been thinking of that, now had she… "—are lovers as well as knights?" He squeezed her shoulder to emphasise the point. 'Only about half. Most of the rest are family – fathers, sons, brothers, cousins. One in ten knights is a twin to the sorceress."
He could almost see her mind go 'click'. Zena darted a glance at her snoozing brother.
"Yep, that's why they picked you. They figured you already had a knight." Irvine retrieved his hand, waiting for her to process it all.
"But I hate him!"
"But he loves you." His statement stung her to silence. "When you connived your way into joining my hunting party, did he not follow you? Has he not protected you for that entire journey, with every fibre of his being?" She bit her lip, staring at Zamal. "Being a knight… it's about love. He loves you." Irvine rose to his feet, stretched with a weary grunt. He really could use more sleep; pity he wasn't going to get it. "There's nothing in the Sorceress Rulebook that requires you to fall in love with your knight, Zena." He snorted. "Or even be that nice to him."
"But…"
She reminded him of Rinoa, actually. Too young, in too many ways. Headstrong, impulsive…but she did listen to reason, if it was presented correctly. Irvine made his eyes as cold as they could go. Squall in Mission Mode… His gun rose, poised like the hand of Hyne over the dozing youth. "Or I could just put the poor kid out of his misery now…"
She knew he wasn't going to shoot a party member in cold blood…right? But the expression which twisted her face into a rictus gave her confidence the lie.
…Point made. He lowered the gun, raised the glare. She started breathing again. He tried not to snicker.
"…That doesn't prove anything…"
"You keep telling yourself that."
—ox-oxo-xo—
"Stop."
"What is it?" Selphie glared at her travelling companion. First he comes charging down here without a break, and now he wants to stop? And then she blinked. This feeling… The Trabia Headmistress grinned. The 'faeries' had just stopped by for a visit…
He looked over his shoulder at her, his expression impatient – and his eyes quicksilver. "Cast an area-scan spell and see for yourself."
Did I mishear him? "…A…what-scan spell?"
"Ah…" He frowned for a moment. "Alright… See that spot on the wall? That one right there?" Squall was pointing at a completely unremarkable piece of wall, a little way in front of him and to the right. "Scan that."
She stared at him. "All riiiight…" She scanned that space. "Hm?" A short rectangular strip, perhaps the size of a Triple Triad card, seemed to present itself for her inspection. "Huh…" Alongside the seemingly innocuous object, ghostly lettering began to form in the air. "I never knew you could scan objects…"
"It's not just an object."
-0-0-0-
'GA-1567 Anti-Galbadian Personnel Motion Detector-R
Developed by Trabian demolitioneers to guard against
infringement by Galbadian troops, machines and
unauthorised firearms.
Triggering will cause the mine tunnel to collapse.
Vive la Trabia!'
-0-0-0-
"…What? Oh, bummer!"
Squall noted, "There are similar detectors on the opposite wall and the ceiling, but they say the same thing. See that patch of earth just there?" He pointed at it – it did seem suspiciously rectangular, like a paving stone. "Scan it…"
-0-0-0-
'GU-1567 Mine Security Template
Used to deactivate the GA-1567 security system.
Only loyal Trabians may gain access; speak the
password, o patriot, and the system will turn green
and you may pass. Galbadians will be crushed like the
bugs that they are.
Vive la Trabia!'
-0-0-0-
Squall shrugged. "It seems likely such a trap was responsible for the cave-in which stranded your husband. Do you know how to disarm the trap?"
"Hmm… Hmmmm…" She snapped her fingers. "It's so obvious! Viva la Trabia!"
Nothing happened.
"Selphie."
"…Yeah Squall?"
"What does that mean?"
"Oh, it just means 'live for Trabia'…" The three strips and the plate flashed green. "…Oh." She stared at him for a moment. "Y'know… I wish I could believe you meant to do that…" Selphie walked over the plate, which stopped glowing. "Coming?" She shivered for a moment; the inner presence of Ellone and whoever she'd roped in for the connection had just left.
He looked at the plate…
"Come on! Just say 'live for Trabia' and you can go through!"
Looked at the plate. Looked at his gunblade. Looked at Selphie. Oh right…no way in hell that's an authorised firearm… "Ok, hold on a second!" She searched for anything out of place. There's gotta be an access panel somewhere… It occurred to her that here was a chance to satisfy her curiosity regarding that spell. "Hey, Squall… Can you spot me one of your…what was it? Area-scan spells?" She could probably find the access panel anyway, but damn it she wanted to try one of those things!
In response, he rummaged in his inventory for a moment. She peered avidly in the poor light at the lumpy object in his hand. Huh…it's just a magic stone… Sheathing his gunblade, he cupped the stone between his hands for a moment, closing his shimmering eyes. When he opened them, they were back to their customary stormy blue… and the stone shimmered like a polished ball bearing, perfectly spherical in his hands. He tossed it over to her. "Place it on the ground. Stand a little away from it." Still staring at him – I could've sworn Siren didn't make tools like that! – she did as he directed. "Now scan it."
…It was amazing! It was like, there was a…a bubble surrounding her, its surface shimmering and rippling with every move she made. Her head darted up and down and around, and her world shook like a swirled fishbowl! A flash of movement to her right brought a large panel of aluminium winging out to her, revolving gently in front of her eyes in the standard fashion. But instead of the ghostly words, a voice began to speak. A lot like Squall's voice, only smoother. And deeper.
'Camouflaged panel to security access console. Trapped; push hidden button at top right of panel to open without mishap.'
She did this, blowing dust from the ancient keypad the panel had hidden. A tiny green LED screen lit up, waiting for a passcode – and a long string of digits was suddenly superimposed upon the display. Wow…this really is some spell! She typed in the code as she saw it. The screen flashed three times and went blank. I hope that worked…
Selphie turned round, to find Squall standing next to her, gunblade in hand and eyes bathed in liquid metal once more. She couldn't help it – she looked at him, gaze drawn to the hunter like a lodestone. And…flinched.
His aura was a lot like his mane. Grey, dark, with licks of blood-red flame pulsing throughout. That voice spoke…
'Name…' But the voice suddenly warbled into gut-roiling static. 'Age…' More static. She clutched her stomach. 'Purpose…' She slammed her hands over her ears, dimming that awful noise not one bit. Stomach heaving, eyes streaming, head pounding, dropped to her knees, Selphie stared stupidly at the seven ghostly symbols which appeared above his forehead, swirling in the gravitational pull of the vortex which his aura suddenly seemed to resemble, the aura that seemed to claw at him as if trying to eat him alive…
The report of the hunter's gunblade echoed on and on through the claustrophobic passageway.
Selphie's vision cleared, her stomach calmed, that Hyneawful voice cut off mid-gargle. She gaped up at him, quivering on the edge of hysteria.
"Sorry." He truly did seem repentant. "I have not used standard scan spells for so long… I had forgotten. Area-scans are more vivid. They take some getting used to."
"And…" She slowly stood, wiping her eyes, trying to rein her hammering heart back into her chest. The fused remains of the Mirror Stone crunched under her feet as she backed away from the hunter. "…You always use that spell?"
"Not always. Only when there is reason." He smiled, and for a moment he truly did look like Squall. "You do not want to examine a malboro with that spell." The smile evaporated, and he was the nameless hunter once more.
The one that his own scan-spell had labelled: '?#?#?#?'
The words burst out of her, like the vomit which had so narrowly escaped the same fate. It felt at this point like she must expel either one or choke on the other. "How can you stand it? Doesn't it sicken you?"
He looked down at her, silent. But…she could see the answer in his eyes. It was, word for word, the same one that she'd seen there decades before, before he changed.
Yes. I just live with it.
—ox-oxo-xo—
"S'like, Squall…" Selphie swayed in her chair, raising her voice over the music. "'ve always wondered…"
"Hmm?" He raised his head, staring at her muzzily. He was, she reflected, absolutely plastered…but then, so was most everyone else. Irvine was trying to dance with Ellone, and failing miserably – partly due to his intoxication, but mainly because the slightly less inebriated woman kept mischievously goosing him whenever she got the chance. Quistis and Rinoa were staring each other down across a flimsy card table; at an unseen signal, they snatched up their glasses and tossed back their shots. Quistis fell out of her chair in slow-motion; Rinoa burst into helpless giggles before joining her down there. Meanwhile, Zell and his girlfriend whats-her-name Pigtail were necking, sprawled on his bed; he seemed to be twitching to the guitar solo, but she didn't seem to be minding.
She tried to remember why she never brought a camera to these…things. Then she tried to remember what she was asking Squall about.
"Oh right!" She attempted to snap her fingers, somehow missing. "Y'know that prison? Y'know, that one we busted out'f?"
He blinked stupidly. "…Yeah?"
"S'like, Squall…" She remembered again. "Why weren't ya…tied up or summink?"
He smirked and snorted, his head bobbing and waggling. Selphie was pleasantly assaulted with the image of a Squall-plushie with a cute little nodding bobble-head…but he was answering. Hyne he must be shitfaced! "Pissed off the torturer. Made'im lek- elet-" he grimaced, "zap me till I passed out." A single tear rolled down his cheek – quite literally the first she had ever seen him shed since she'd left the orphanage as a child. "Hadda choose – lie or die. I chose ta die." He scrubbed at his eyes. "Guy pissed off, moombas lemme down." He shrugged, smirking again. "Prob'ly. Don' remember that bit…"
Selphie found her lower jaw on the floor, bubbling drool and muttering 'booyaka' to itself. She retrieved it, and placated the recalcitrant appendage with more whisky. She didn't know why, she hated the stuff… Grabbing the half-empty bottle, she lurched upright and staggered over to Squall's armchair, plonking herself down on his lap. He let out an 'oof'. It was so funny, she bounced a couple more times. He didn't oblige. He was no fun… but then, she remembered, that was the whole point of these weekly 'poker nights' over at Zell's new house, as Irvine and Zell called them. To teach him how to be fun.
"S'like, Squall…" She took another belt of liquor. "Whatzit like being tortured?" Actually, she'd been planning to ask something else, but for some reason the only other question which occurred to her at that moment was 'so what's up?' – and his sorceress girlfriend was right there on the carpet, tonguing Quistis's ear— on second thoughts, she might've got away with it…
Squall snatched the bottle away. "Gotta drink more 'fore I ansser that." And he proceeded to chug away at the bottle, knocking off a sizeable quantity of the amber liquid. "'s better…" He fell silent for a while; she poked him in the stomach repeatedly. "Right… You've been hit by lightning, right?" Strangely, he seemed more lucid.
"O'course! S'like…SeeDs! Thingy…job hazzid!" She took the bottle back.
"Right. Now imagine being stuck to a sheet o' metal. So's it hits you all over."
"Right…" Kinda like a thundaga, really…
"Right." He leaned forward, his forehead bumping gently against Selphie's. He stared into her eyes from a handful of centimetres away, deadly serious. "Now imagine some shithead askin' you a bunch o' stupid questions wi' no answers, and tellin' you he'll keep on zappin' if you don't answer 'em."
Blinking, she tried it… "…I don't get it."
Squall raised his head, her forehead sliding down his cheek – and twisting his neck, he planted a kiss on her temple. He slumped back, closing his eyes. A relieved smile, plainly visible for once, spread across his suddenly relaxed features. "Good."
For twenty-nine years, she had kept that memory as a cherished artefact of her youth – perhaps not as grand as her wedding and other Irvine-related memories, but certainly on a par with finding her best friend from Trabia Garden safe after the missile attack. It was the only time that Squall had ever talked about his incarceration and torture…but more importantly, it was also the first time since he was a very young child that Squall had been able to show affection and open up to his friends. Not just embraces awkwardly accepted from Matron or Sis. Not just holding hands with Rinoa (who he always remained leery about kissing in public, much to Rinoa's amusement). Just a straightforward, physical demonstration of his love for them all.
Never again had Squall got that drunk. He claimed not to remember it the next morning. But she had, and the others had been overjoyed to hear it.
To a greater or lesser extent, all seven of the Orphanage Gang (not counting Ellone) had entered their adulthoods with a welter of emotional scars, their souls scabbed over with the passage of years and battles. But after the chaos around the Ultimecia affair had settled, most of them had been given the chance to heal some of those wounds. To finish growing up, to become well-rounded, emotionally healthy adults (in relative terms at least). Or to put it bluntly, just to relax and let their hair down. Even Seifer found his own way to deal with things – first by heading to Fisherman's Horizon with his posse to start over, and then by joining the White SeeDs at Matron Edea's behest.
But Squall, one of the worst afflicted, had instead been thrust immediately and squarely into the highest echelons of the new world order. The weight of the world on his shoulders, and the hefty workload to prove it. To his credit, he had realised the problem – and come to his friends to help him work out how to metamorphose at last into a proper human being. That was the true rationale behind the 'poker nights', which had continued on a semi-regular basis for several years. And for Selphie Kinneas, her memory of that night was a glowing testimonial to friendship and what it could do if it were just given the chance.
For the others, that night also shed a bright light into how Squall's mind truly worked.
For most of his life, Squall had lived with emotional pain. First abandoned, then trained to be an emotionless killer, then being forced into positions of unwanted leadership at a woefully inadequate age – there had been nothing he could do to change any of these circumstances. As he figured it, his pain was his own, an immutable fact of his existence – and sharing his pain with others he cared about, was tantamount to giving them pain. And why should he wish to inflict pain on his loved ones? (And, if they cared about him, then why should they wish to give him their pain?)
Selphie's drunken, impulsive question had in retrospect proved to be perfectly chosen. That she could not imagine the torture he had suffered, made him happy – and anxious to preserve her, preserve their ignorance of what it had felt like for him. They didn't have his memories (after an inopportune question the next week, Squall had flatly forbidden Ellone to take anyone back to that time), or his nightmares (Rinoa had mentioned those; he claimed never to remember). And he was content to leave it at that.
—ox-oxo-xo—
To Squall – and, she guessed, to the nameless hunter who stood before her now, looking at her with faint concern – pain was not something to be resolved. No, it was something that just had to be lived with. It had simply never occurred to him that others could help him to rid himself of it, if he just let them try. It had taken them all years to beat that into his obstinate skull.
And now he was all the way back to square one. Square zero, even.
But she and the others had done it once before. Selphie took a deep, cleansing breath, reminding herself once again of that simple truth. It wasn't impossible. Love could conquer anything.
If he didn't know who he was, then it was time to remedy that. After all, she had him as a captive audience.
A/N Postscript:
Two things. (1) One of these days, I'm going to work out how to use two types of spacing in a posted document - I could swear I've seen it somewhere... (2) I seriously enjoyed writing that 'drunken Squall' bit, and might post a lengthier version as a oneshot.
