They say misery loves company
We could start a company and make misery
Frustrated Incorporated
I know just what you need
I might just have the key
Put me out of my misery
Suicide kings and drama queens
Forever after happily
Making misery
-Soul Asylum, Misery (also recommended, Runaway Train by same band)
"My dear instructor. I'm hurt. Those are rather cruel words for an aspiring student. A mediocre instructor like you will never understand." –Seifer, to Quistis
Chapter 9
Quistis' eyes narrowed in determination as she gazed across the desk, meeting a pair of smirking jade.
Round 1, Seifer.
She was determined that Round 2 of their seemingly inevitable spats would belong to her. Whatever kind things could be said about Quistis Trepe, she was not a good loser. A gracious winner, and fair player, but a good loser?
Never.
Admittedly, she hadn't had much experience in the practice. She'd worked hard her entire life to make sure she settled in the upper crust of whatever endeavor she'd chosen to tackle. If not the best, then close enough. She'd rarely had to deal with the bitter aftermath of second place (Squall being a rather large exception.)
Seifer Almasy, however, had always assured the bitter taste of failure in her mouth. The very name used to make her swallow in preparation. Not any more.
Today, she was going to do something she should have done a long time ago.
She'd teach him.
She drew her tongue over her bottom lip, hoping that this endeavor would prove more successful than those previous. He'd gotten the better of her temper yesterday, but that was yesterday. Today was different.
She held his gaze.
I will teach him if it kills me. I will teach him if it kills me.
"Seifer, did you read the materials I assigned you?"
He studied the ceiling, legs draped on the desk in his familiar posture. "Define 'read'."
Hell, thought Quistis. I may well end up killing him.
She bit the inside of her cheek
Patience, Quistis, she urged. Don't wring his neck.
Yet.
"Reading means you looked at all of the words on all of the pages, and committed the information within to memory," she replied tersely. "Did you?"
He shrugged.
"Seifer-" her voice bordered on warning, a shadow of her old Instructor's tone rising to her lips.
He glanced up sharply. "This stuff is boring as shit. I couldn't 'commit' it to memory if I had only one fucking brain cell designed especially for the purpose."
Quistis sighed, removing her glasses and pinching her nose in frustration. "The material is dull, yes, but not all of it. You have to realize the implications behind the reading, realize the real-world applications." She stood up. "Seifer, if you don't pass the SeeD written exam, you can't even take the field exam!"
"No shit, really?" he feigned surprise, but his eyes belied his derision.
She narrowed her eyes in kind. "Does being an asshole aide in learning?"
"Obviously not. I'd be a fucking genius, wouldn't I?" He replied sarcastically, but she was nonetheless surprised at his admission.
She walked over, sitting on the desk in front of him, trying desperately to get his attention as she had so miserably failed to do in the past. "Seifer, I can help you learn this. It won't be easy, but it's just another game you have to play to get in."
"Oh, and I should be good at playing games, is that it?"
She sighed, throwing up her arms in exasperation. "I didn't say that."
"Yeah, whatever, fine. I play these little fucking games, get myself a SeeD uniform, and for what? It sure as fuck isn't going to change anything. Can't dress up a sow's purse like a silk ear."
"It's sow's ear like a silk purse." She interjected tiredly, her chin in her hand.
"Yeah, whatfuckingever." He sighed. "Coming back here was a mistake."
She was losing him. She could feel him slip through her fingers, as he had years ago. Only now, it was hopelessness and not ambition that drove him away from her.
Not this time.
"It's only a mistake if you make it one." She said quietly.
"Tch. What, you're going to feed me that whole, 'I'm in charge of my own destiny shit'?" he scorned.
"It isn't 'shit.'" She spat. "It's true. You make your own choices. Only fools put their destinies in the hands of other men-."
"Or other sorceresses, am I right?" he spat, posture both angry and defensive.
"-or give them up," she finished lamely.
Inwardly, she sighed, even as her temper flared. Why did it always end this way? With both of them at each other's throats like hungry dogs, each trying to get in the last lick?
"Why do you always have to take the worst possible meaning of what I say?"
"Why do you care what I think you think of me, Trepe? It never bothered you before I became your fucking charity case! Asking Squall to fucking 'teach' me? What, the shame's not rubbing in well enough? You have to help it along, or what?"
Before she knew what she was doing, she'd lunged forward and shoved him as hard as she could. Surprised, he stumbled back, feet catching as he fell back into the chair, which promptly skidded back into the wall with the force of its occupant.
His head jerked up, eyes furious, but she followed up her shove, Save the Queen a blur of steel and leather as it wrapped around his chest, tying him effectively to the chair. He struggled, shoulder muscles a writhing shift of weak muscle beneath her whip's thick leather twine.
She braced her boot on his chest in a move quick as lightening, yanking the end of her whip and pulling the chest noose tight before looping the end around the bottom rung of the chair, in a location he could not physically reach.
"What the hell, Trepe!" he shouted.
Quistis did her best to calm her breathing and her temper, tendrils of hair hanging wildly in her eyes. Between the strands sat one very furious ex-knight. But her own anger was match enough.
And there it was: the position she'd been dying to see him in for years.
"Quit with the pity shit, Almasy. It's beneath you. I don't feel sorry for you. I never have. You made your decisions, you made your mistakes. They were yours to make, and they're yours to make now."
He was still struggling. Quite useless really. Save the Queen was nearly, if not entirely, impossible to break. She'd tested it herself on T-Rexaur teeth, and even Seifer's biting temper couldn't compete with that serration. She continued, confident in her restraint.
She stood before him a woman changed. A master of her own classroom, as it were. For the moment. And all she'd had to do was employ violence.
Hm. I should have done this years ago.
"The decisions have always been yours. But you seemed determined to throw them away, so I'm going to make a decision for you. You're going to sit here, in this chair, until you can recite every vital concept of those novels from memory."
"The fuck I will." He snarled, lurching forward at her.
"Then you're not getting up." She stood unimpressed in front of him, arms folded, waiting for him to realize his quandary.
It was Seifer Almasy. It might take awhile.
"Damnit! You bitch! Untie me!" The whip was making it hard to breathe.
Quistis examined a nail. "Really, Seifer, flattery will get you nowhere." She said dryly, watching with a raised eyebrow as he swore up another storm, lunging forward again as the whip's grip swiftly pinned him back to the chair. The almost three-legged creation rocked precariously, threatening to spill Seifer over on his face.
It was sick, but she was almost enjoying this.
All right, she was enjoying this.
She suppressed a smirk at the sight of her ex-pupil strapped firmly to a chair, his expression one of an absolutely furious child ready to pitch an unholy fit. She almost laughed. Almost. Instead, she turned her back on him, walking back to the large desk at the front and retrieving her own copy of 'Guardian Forces- Pros and Cons', flipping it open to the first of her footnotes.
"Now, Seifer, what is the main point that Dr. Glasser makes concerning the benefits of GF's?"
"Go to hell."
"No, I'm sure the well-learned Dr. Glasser made a more 'couth' statement than that. Care to try again?"
"Care to kiss my ass?" The damned whip was strong. He could barely move, and the whip was so tight around him, it constrained his cursing.
"One should never answer a question with a question, it displays a distinct lack of knowledge and bearing. You'd know that if you bothered to Basic SeeD procedure and etiquette." She replied, smiling. "Dr. Glasser documented various scans of the brains of GF users over a period of time, and came to conclude that over extended periods of extreme usage, damage eventually spread to the hippocampus, infringing the formation of new memories as well as old. His theory was a revolutionary addition to the military community, who had, until now, advocated GF usage without reservation. Now, what was theoretically the first GF to be documented in history?"
"Fuck you." He grumbled, still wriggling his arms. He was, however, quickly losing steam. That was the thing she had come to learn about Seifer Almasy. Quick to anger, quick to cool. Quick to re-anger.
It was a seemingly endless cycle.
She smiled wanly. "Not quite. The first documentation was recorded at the base of Mount Palciar, and was thought to be the form of Ifrit. She thumbed to the next page. "Now, what are some of the advantages claimed by GF usage?"
Killing former instructors, he thought to himself.
Seifer's eyes were barely visible slits as he lurched at her again, another string of curse words loosing from his lips. The wobbly chair scraped forward an inch or so. By this time, thought Quistis ruefully, he'll reach me by tomorrow morning.
Seifer grimaced. He was going to kill her if it took all day.
"Really, Seifer, you should work on broadening that vocabulary." She suggested, thumbing to the next page as she crossed her legs, resting her backside against the desk. "Some of the advantages claimed by GF usage include, but are not limited to: enhanced vitality, increased sensory perception, an increase in muscle definition, and an increased focus. Other advantages are particular to the type of GF junctioned."
Seifer glared at her. Although, he had to admit, her words did aid memory, and the woman was fucking smart. She had always been a good teacher, she just had shitty control over her class.
Well, namely, over him. He couldn't really blame her for that. Half of his life, he hadn't been able to control himself either.
"Hmm…another question? What is the proper procedure for a poison counter-spell cocktail when on site?"
"I hate you." He sighed.
"Yes, this once can be a bit tricky, can't it? First one should take care to cast Esuna, followed by a mild Cure or Cura, depending on the severity of the wound. Curaga should almost never be used except in life threatening cases because of its affects on the circulatory system when paired immediately with another status altering spell that targets the blood. Yet another fact you would know if you had thumbed through the SeeD field guide manual." Her eyes met his, full of mirth and a kind of sick mischief he had not seen for years. Nearly sixteen years, to be exact. It was a strange site, uncommon but not unattractive on her.
Narrowing his eyes, he lurched forward once more, feeling with sick assuredness the tip of the chair begin to spill him over. Damned near three-legged chair. He tilted back violently, resulting in the chair's motion in the same fashion.
Fuck.
He reeled back with a clamor, the back of his head slapping the floor with a sick crack.
"Fuck!"
Suddenly, Quistis' gaze loomed over him, eyes concerned until the torrent of cuss words spilled from his lips, most of them directed at her. After his tirade, she simply looked relieved.
He glared and Quistis smiled.
He was really stuck now. He'd admit, he'd had a few fantasies about the whip when he was her student, but none of them involved being strapped to his chair, sprawled out on the floor and listening to her babble about GF's. And they'd involved a lot less fucking clothes.
Instead of helping him up, she simply turned a page in her book. "All right, let's move on to the GF biotech summary. What was the board's decision on GF safety vs. potential risk?"
"I'm going to kill you."
She smirked down at him. "Unlikely, Mr. Almasy, from your current vantage point. Now, the sooner we go through the reading, the sooner you're free to leave."
Surprisingly, he said nothing, simply stared at the wall like he wanted to burn a hole through it.
She shook her head and turned another page. "The board voted, in a 3 to 47 majority in respect to GF usage being a perfectly safe and reasonable modus operandi concerning mission types A, B, and F."
She glanced down at him. "Are you familiar with mission types?"
Seeing as he hadn't gone on a single official one…………
He shook his head. She continued. "Mission type A relates to any mission specific to a distress call from a free state, Mission type B relates to a hostage situation, Mission-"
She droned on, and Seifer, given little other fucking choice, found himself actually listening for a change with only a few thoughts of strangling her when she finally conceded to untie him interrupting thoughts of GF debate and mission protocol.
Three hours later an extremely cranky Seifer Almasy could recite (with fewer than five cuss words per sentence) the main points of each of the books. It only confirmed what Quistis had always believed- that Seifer Almasy was intelligent, but unmotivated.
She wasn't sure being tied to a chair qualified as motivation, but at any rate, this method had worked. She doubted she could tie him to a chair every day; he would eventually catch on and refuse to sit, but the technique had been…….fun…… for today.
"Can I be untied now?" said Seifer, still planted sourly on his back. "I played all your little games, didn't I?" Really, though, he wasn't as pissed as he would've thought. Granted, he hated being treated like a child, and the whip was going to leave a big fucking mark where he'd strained too hard against it, but he HAD learned something. It was a strange feeling, possessing a bunch of knowledge that he knew he was going to need. Gratifying.
Almost. It was still boring as all hell and he was still going to kill her.
"So you did." She agreed, sighing.
However, she was at a loss as to how to get him up. The end of the whip, secured to the back of the chair, was also pinned beneath the fallen chair and the floor, which in turn was near the wall. She'd just have to pick him up from the front.
She reached down, grabbing the back of the chair and digging her heels in as she yanked him up. Despite his skinny appearance, he was heavy.
The chair righted itself and Quistis found herself nearly sitting on his lap. Both took a moment to appreciate the implications of the position before Quistis flushed red and scrambled off of him.
Seconds ticked by. "You're going to have to let me up sometime today, Trepe." Came the caustic snarl.
She sighed. Tying up a wild animal always seemed like such a good idea, until the knowledge seeped in that one was going to have to UNtie an even more irate one. "Promise you'll control yourself?"
"Scout's honor," he seethed.
She walked around him, uncoiling Save the Queen in one graceful motion and stepping back, quickly, as if she were releasing an alligator. She didn't trust Seifer's temper, and seeing as she was perpetually on the wrong end of it, caution was commendable.
He jumped quickly to his feet, anger and annoyance still aflame in his gaze.
"Learning wasn't so bad, was it?"
He grimaced, stretching. "Depends on your vantage point, doesn't it?" He growled, advancing on her. "Mine was rather uncomfortable."
She didn't move, although she didn't seem pleased at his advance. "You promised-"
He sneered. "I've never been a fucking boy scout, Trepe."
She saw the move coming, but before she could dodge, he had her trapped in front of the desk, an arm on either side of the polished top. His body was just inches from hers, just as it had been in the Training Room. This was how he threatened her. Proximity. Physicality.
Because mentally, she scared the shit out of him.
There was nothing worse than letting a woman like Trepe into your head. It was like letting a mongoose in a snake farm. Or a snake in a mongoose farm. Whatever. He didn't even know what the fuck a mongoose was, come to think of it. He needed to stop using the analogy.
He leaned forward a little, just enough to catch the scent of raspberries and the faint scent of her alarm. It was impossible to say which he liked better. "You like to be in control, don't you?" he said.
"Not as much as you do." She replied coldly, form held rigid, unbending beneath him. Seifer become conscious in that moment of just how much it would take to bend a woman like Trepe.
A lot more than what broke him, most likely.
He chuckled, surprising her, his breath warm on her neck. It was a strangely disconcerting sensation, even more so than simply his proximity alone. He pulled back, regarding her with amusement in his eyes. Quistis realized, in that moment, that she would never be able to predict him.
He gave her a mocking little bow, a derisively graceful admission that their little spar was over, for the moment. "Well met, Trepe, well met." He sneered. "Are we finished in our pleasantries for the day?"
"Garden will be docking tonight in Trabia for two week's time, just so you're informed as to why tonight there's going to be a lot of noise near the bay entrances. Garden has been contracted for several missions to rid towns from various creature plagues that the mild spring allowed to breed in formidable numbers. I want you to meet me outside in the Quad tomorrow, fire magic equipped and gunblade polished and ready." She slid off of the desk, reaching into a leather book bag and pulling out a hardcover black book. "This is the official SeeD manual, which I'm sure you already recognize."
He smirked. They were great for starting fires, those SeeD manuals.
"It's the most important thing you'll learn both for the written and the mission exam." She continued.
He snorted, grabbing the book from her on his way out. "I already know how to swing a sword, Instructor."
Quistis' sighed as her eyes fell upon the empty room, leaning heavily back against the desk, exhausted from the day's lesson.
"You've just never known when to swing it." She muttered, as the door whirred shut behind her.