Quistis Trepe sat in the old royal garden, surrounded by a thousand blooming roses and the sun beating down on her face, and wondered how much longer her patience and sanity would hold out.

At first she had stayed in the room she had shared with Xu on their arrival, but eventually cabin fever had driven her outwards into the halls of the Dollet ducal palace. She walked the halls and looked out of the huge glass windows onto the city below, the people walking the seaside streets and going on with their lives as sorceress cultists walked among them and their leader stewed in her own hate. With the exception of those who guarded her, the servants and soldiers refused to talk to her or even acknowledge her presence. They looked away or stood at a statue-like attention as she spoke at them and eventually she had simply stopped trying, contenting herself with her own company rather than try to squeeze blood from a stone. Her name and captive status went before her like a repelling shield she couldn't escape, and she travelled the halls of the massive building like a ghost, her feet beating a path between her room, the interior gardens and the dining hall. Days turned into weeks and before she realised it her walk through the halls had become a habit, her routine a normal thing rather than an unnatural confinement, and she found herself slipping away from the outside world as the richly-decorated walls and silent servants of the duchess' palace became all she had, the books in the ancient library the only exercise for her mind and the occasional tame cat or hound the only living creatures that would approach her.

She sighed in frustration and leaned back, eyes closed, letting the sun play over her face. She had thrown her SeeD uniform off after the first week, after she had woken one morning to find a red summer dress laid gently on the back of the room's single chair. She had ignored the fact that someone had snuck into her room in the night and gratefully switched from the hot and stifling uniform to the airy fabric and for a moment as she viewed herself in the mirror, for once looking like a normal person and not the physical embodiment of SeeD, and could have almost forgiven the duchess, until she realised that even with golden bars and gourmet food a cage is still a cage.

Like her feet on the rich carpets of the mansion she found her thoughts wandering in circles that turned into deep ruts as again and again they intruded on her and demanded that she worry about that, even as she could do nothing to silence their questions. Her communicator had been taken away and her single attempt to slip through the castle up to its antennae array had been cut short by the pitying smile of Leonard Nerva as he bared her way. He was the only human within a hundred square miles who so much as looked her in the eye, appearing like smoke when she strayed too close to some forbidden wing or doorway to guide her away, and apart from distant servants talking amongst themselves that grew silent as she approached, his was the only voice she heard. His partner remained ever unsmiling and silent. Still, none of his words contained answers to her questions.

Did Squall and Rinoa reach Deling City okay?

Was Xu already at G-garden bringing the Galbadian leaders to heel?

What was Laguna's plans for the spread of the cultists?

And finally another that slipped through the rest like a shark, coming up when she least expected it and whispering a name into her thoughts.

Aimsland.

Her routine had taken her into the rose gardens again, and it there she sat reading some ancient book she barely bothered to remember the title of – words to keep her mind active and nothing else – when the quiet and inhumanly perfect elegance of the palace grounds were interrupted for the first time, as somewhere in the bushes ahead of her a child laughed.

For a moment she kept reading, her mind unable to parse the sounds that it had heard, until finally it forced its way through the dust that had been gathering over mind and Quistis looked up in surprise as the girlish laughter sounded through the garden, and before she could tell herself to pause and wait she was up from the bench, her book discarded, and walking through the garden in search of its origin. Even within the cavernous and confusing layout of the rose gardens she did not have to search for long.

The girl and the boy were playing on the spacious lawn at the centre of the garden, surrounded by rose bushes that covered the area on all sides. The smooth wooden square at the centre of the lawn must have been used for ceremonial purposes but it was empty as the children ran and laughed across it, their feet slapping against the pristine surface. She hung back and watched as he boy swung an imaginary wooden pole around himself, making metallic noises as the girl clung to his leg and laughed as he defeated the imaginary enemies surrounding him. Neither could have been older than a dozen years, and to Quistis who had spent the last three weeks surrounded by nothing but walls and roses they both looked heartbreakingly cute.

"Who're you?"

Her skin crawled and she spun around as the voice came from behind, her hand already reaching down for a weapon that wasn't there. As her brain caught up to her reactions she realised it wasn't necessary, as the teenage boy looking at her in puzzlement was obviously no kind of soldier. She coughed to disguise her shaky hands and straightened her dress. "I'm-"

She never got a chance to finish, as the man – the boy cut her off. "Servants aren't supposed to be here. You should leave before my bodyguard comes back."

"I'm not a servant." She cursed herself as the words came out too fast. She felt light-headed as she stood there by the bushes, talking to this young man who stood looking at her as though he was the lord of the castle and she were just a serving-woman. Not a little bit of panic there Quistis? "I'm a guest of the duchess." While grossly false there was no way she was going to admit to the boy that she was a prisoner in the palace.

"Sorry, the dress confused me." He turned as behind him the children went on with their game and Quistis watched. His entire demeanour marked him as one of Dollet's old families. The easy confidence and poise spoke of a life free of worry and of total confidence in its status. She felt a stab of annoyance (admit it girl you're a little jealous) go through her and dismissed it for the unworthy impulse it was as he turned back. "We're guests too. Auntie said we should come and stay while bad stuff happened outside."

It took her a second before her memory filled in the blanks, half-remembered pieces of information falling into place from endless briefings and reports as she had tried to memorise the names and faces of the new circles she travelled in. "You're the duchess' nephew?" She knew hardly anything about the Nuo family, the duchess her only contact with the old Dollet rulers. These three must have been from the Galbadian branch of the family. Small wonder they'd come back to Dollet with tensions so high between the two city-states.

"Yes." He turned again and shouted, the two children turning at his voice and dropping their game to run over. "I'm Alec, this is Caty and Jon."

The two children could have been young doppelgangers for the duchess. The same black straight hair and thin faces. But where time and loss had twisted the Duchess into a pale shadow of a person the two kids were still bright and alive. The boy smiled up at her as the girl hid behind Alec's legs. "Hiya!"

Quistis smiled. "Nice to meet you. What're you playing out here?" As if she didn't know the answer.

The boy beamed and held up the small branch he had been waving around. "Knights and Sorceresses!"

Of course, what else? Throughout the world you'd still find small children playing Knights and Sorceresses wherever you found a boy and a girl together, and some unlucky third kid to be The Bad Guy that the knight would beat down as the sorceress watched on. It felt strangely sad and at the same time uplifting watching them. She knew a real Sorceress and her knight, and she had seen what that pairing could become if the worst happened. Two sides of the same coin. "Are you a good sorceress or a bad one?"

The girl harrumphed and put her hands on her hips. The gesture reminded her of Selphie. "All sorceresses are good!" She slapped the boy around the ears. "And my knight is the best!"

Quistis and Alec laughed. "Good for you. A good sorceress always needs her knight." Always.

"Who're you lady? I like your dress," the girl said, tugging at the hem. Her older brother shooed her away.

"I'm…" For a moment she debated lying, making up some lie to avoid the hassle, but then decided simply, what the hell. "Call me Quisty." She heard the sharp indrawn breath from beside her as the small girl gave her a calculating look and nodded.

"That's a pretty name."

Alec coughed and waved the two children away. "Go get ready for dinner kids, I'll come back in a minute." He ignored the protests and sad looks he got. "Go alright? I'll get you an ice-cream or something if you're quiet."

The two watched as the two children cheerfully ran off into the mansion. "They're nice kids," Quistis said carefully, wondering what was running through the young man's mind. When she finally turned to look at him she had to try hard to stop herself from laughing. The boy had turned beet-red.

"I…I didn't realise you were…umm, I mean…I'm sorry I didn't-"

She smiled and cut him off. "That's alright." She ran a hand down her dress. "I'm not usually pictured wearing this kind of outfit."

If anything the boy turned redder. "I didn't mean anything by it Ms Trepe."

She waved it away as she sat on the bench vacated by the noisy youngsters. "Don't worry about it. I'm off duty right now." He didn't move to sit, and she cursed inwardly as all the signs presented themselves. After the Second War had ended and the world had returned to normalcy Balamb Garden, SeeD, and the entire organisation had gained near-instant mythological status. None of them had escaped the attention, and especially not the Orphanage Gang, six brave young heroes who had journeyed across the world, freed a nation from the grip of an evil tyrant, and travelled to the end of time to save the planet. Never mind that half the journey the brave young heroes had been miserable from cold, spending half the war running from one place to the next and surviving by the skin of their teeth. The truth of the conflict had been boiled down into extremes and absolutes; the cruel and merciless sorceress trying to destroy the world versus the proud and heroic men and women trying to stop her, with the other nation-states of the world being given different allegiances depending who was telling the tale. Just as the bloody and pyrrhic war had been changed into a bedtime story so too had people been stripped of their hopes and dreams, wishes and aspirations and transformed unwillingly into caricatures as their most easily-seen traits became their new selves. The cheerful young maiden and her cool gunman, the young martial artists with fists as fast as lightning, the beautiful ice-queen that guided their steps, the evil traitor that sold a nation to the vile sorceress, and finally the young angel and her brave knight. All united as they struggled across the world and fell in love.

She could hear his next question even as it left his lips. "What was it like?" he asked, his confidence suddenly gone as he found himself in front of one of the legendary heroes. For a moment she was tempted to tell him what it was really like, but thought better of it. The boy didn't want to hear about the nights spent hiding in forests as Galbadians or monsters passed by inches from their hiding places, or the cuts and scars and shaking relief after one too many close calls, or the looks on the faces of those they had cut down as they died. He wanted to hear about brave battles against evil mages and strange and exotic locations. An amazing journey to the moon and magical creatures that could be called up in battle and spit lightning from their fingers. He wanted a dream, and these days all Quistis could provide was the reality. The young nobleman's imagination could fool himself into thinking of it all as a grand adventure, and her own had long since lost the capacity. Zell had told them they would all look back on it and laugh, but for her that laughter had never arrived.

But were you any different when you were his age.

At his age I was already a SeeD, I didn't need to imagine.

"It was…an experience."

"And you really met the archan…Ultimecia?" The boy's voice was so quiet in his awe at meeting a for-real hero that he was almost whispering. "What was she like?"

It pulled her up short. She had been expecting the usual questions: what was the Battle of the Gardens like? Is Esthar as amazing as everyone says? What was it like in space? What's it like in the future? What is was like? She paused as she thought of an answer, this small child before her, barely younger than she had been when she had been thrust into a global conflict that had taken her to worlds and beyond, to the end of the time itself to face a being so powerful she had pulled the past to her like a child would pull a toy car on the end of a string. She thought back on those memories, of the ancient cold castle filled with bitterness and hatred and the sadness of the last living thing in a dead world. "She was cold. Cold and empty."

The boy managed to get the stars out of his eyes for long enough to remember that even if he was considerably younger than one of his idols, she was in his house. Or close enough. "Umm…is there anything I can do while you're staying here? We could show you around the city. Dollet is…errr."

Quistis spared the young man any more embarrassment and cut him off as gently as she could. "I'd love to, I know how good Dollet hospitality can be. Unfortunately I'm not able to leave the mansion for a while." She gave him her most winning smile as she wondered on how silly the situation must look to anyone watching: A young noble of an ancient house, trying to be courteous and at the same time commanding towards a mere common commander of soldiers. My life's changed in many ways since taking this job. She opened her mouth to let him down gently when she saw the expression on his face change from nervous admiration to something more approaching terror.

"The trouble in the city! That was you?" The boy took two steps away from her and she resisted the urge to close the gap again. "You're the one she's keeping here!"

She knew his meaning instantly. "That was a horrible accident. I'm sorry it had to happen. We were just defending ourselves." Sorcery. The dreaded power that had crushed the world into a single stretch of time, the loosening of which had broken minds during its Aftermath. Feared and sometimes hated by the world that barely understood the basic para-magic of SeeD and only knew of its power through three cruel tyrants and a single innocent woman. Three-to-one wasn't good odds for acceptance. "I'm here to try and make up for it."

From the look on the boy's face he knew well the sort of atonement she meant. "Aunt- the duchess isn't a bad person." He leaned back closer to her and she breathed an inward sigh of relief that paranoia didn't seem to run too deeply in the family. "She gets scared sometimes, that's all. She brought all the family back here, where we can't get in trouble."

Funny way of showing fear, locking people up. "Of course." Something had been niggling at the back of her mind since she had started talking with the young man and now as the laughter and footsteps of the young man's two siblings returned she realised what it was. "Alec?"

"Hmmm?"

"You called Ultimecia the archangel?"

Alec blushed a little bit. "Sorry. I…er…it's just something I heard."

Quistis nodded. He couldn't have known. "No, it's fine. Some people call her that." She tried to find words to explain it and eventually just settled on; "Not particularly nice people."

"I have to go. Nice meeting you Ms Trepe."

"You to Alec. Kids."

Finally she realised what had been bothering her. "Wait!" She held up a hand as Alec turned back to look at her. "When you noticed me, what did you mean 'the dress confused you'?"

Alec's face burned red. "It…ummm."

"You can't make me mad, Alec."

"It's an old colour, back during the old…er…three dukes before the one before auntie, I think. In the old days…" His eyes went everywhere except her face. "Red dresses were used by woman who…well…er…when guests came and needed entertainment…ummm…male guests…"

Just laugh it off. Don't shout. Don't get mad.

Not at him anyway.

She smiled wryly. "Well that explains a few things, someone just having a little joke I guess. Look after yourself Alec."

"You too Ms Trepe."

She watched as the three children disappeared behind the heavy wooden doors and silence returned to the rose Garden. Finally when enough time had passed for them to have gone quite a ways, out of earshot, the slamof her fist against the stone wall was hard enough to leave a mark.


"How dare you, HOW DARE YOU!"

Leonard Nerva stared serenely up at the enraged woman and just smiled. "Can I help you headmistress?" He blinked. "I can't help but notice you've changed back into your-" He was cut off as a red flash of fabric was thrown into his face. The rational part of her mind was whispering calm but the rest of her shoved it aside. She stared down at the smiling man as he picked the dress from his face. "Is there a problem?"

"You slimy son of a bitch, you know damn well what my problem is!"

She didn't remember what she said next. She couldn't remember the last time she had been angry. She had been annoyed, she had been peeved and she had been exasperated as she tried to guide SeeD through a half-grateful but half-resentful world, and tried to placate half a dozen miniature tyrants that had sprung up from the remains of the Aftermath and Galbadia's abrupt downsizing. Even as her mind told her what she was doing she found herself unable to stop as the floodgates open and the bottled-up anger flowed out onto the smug, self-satisfied killer sat at the desk in front of her.

"I'm sure this is just some misunderstanding," Nerva said, still ever-so formal and polite, as if her insults hadn't left her mouth. "If there's something I can do to-"

She swallowed her rage at last. "There's nothing you can do," she hissed at him. She wanted to leave, she wanted to speak with other people who didn't treat her like some plaything, she wanted Xu, she wanted to get out of this god-forsaken palace and become a person again. "Nothing at all."

"You're beautiful when you're angry, Tyynes is a very lucky woman. I've always wondered; which one of you is on top?"

She almost did it then, it was that close. She was already stepping forward when her instincts caught hold of the reins and pulled backwards hard enough she almost jumped away, as the smile widened and she saw that his hand was behind his back. He wouldn't be crazy enough to kill me, a SeeD headmistress. Not with Squall and the others on the same continent.

"We're not done yet you and I," she said quietly, as she stepped away from Nerva's desk. As she did so she felt the air move around the room and knew that there were other guards behind her, their hands close to their holsters. "The duchess will hear about this. Whatever game you think you're playing with me I'm still a guest of this country." As if the duchess would care. Shut up Trepe, shut up before you say something really stupid.

"The duchess is unfortunately busy with matters of state and will be unavailable for audiences, even with important SeeD personnel. I however, have never forgotten that I too was once a cadet of the academy-"

I bet you haven't forgotten who signed your expulsion papers either.

"-and as a little gift to my once-superior, I've asked on your behalf that you be allowed free reign of the palace's outer grounds, as well as the interior gardens." He grinned that shark's grin again. "It's a shame for roses to spend all their time under a roof, don't you think?"

She glared at him for a moment before spinning around and walking out in silence, not trusting herself to speak. The second, the second she could she was going to leave this golden prison and taste real air again, even if it was the same Dollet air as this awful creature.

She hated this fucking town.