A/N: The next chapter may take some time to come up. I'm going to try and write ahead so that I can post all the concluding chapters in quick succession. Also, it occurs to me that some of you might be noticing similarities between my fic and Final Fantasy 10 (aeons, etc.). They're unintentional -- resulting largely from the fact that someone at Square and I share an interest in Gnosticism.
Chapter 24: Vidar
Seifer closed his eyes and let the memories sweep through his mind. There were so many now that he was overwhelmed. Wood popped in the fire and his heartbeat strained to slow as he was rocked by flashes of fireworks glittering in the deep black sky, salt heavy in the air, and a shadowy building flanked by sand and flowers. Quistis squirmed in his arms, trying to pull back and look at him, but he held her where she was and rested his chin against her shoulder.
He'd collected and killed bugs. He'd learned to fish, to build fires, to swim, and to climb the one scraggly tree that grew in the field behind the orphanage. He remembered having shoes that closed with Velcro straps, spearing a dead stingray that had washed up on shore with a stick, and taking baths in a basin where thin fingers held him in the water with uncanny strength.
And he remembered Quistis as a little girl: small, bossy, and rude.
"Oh hell," he grunted, remembering other children there as well. "Squall and Chicken Wuss, too."
"And Selphie and Irvine," Quistis whispered.
"They all remember this? They all remember me?"
"Yes. Irvine never really forgot." She shifted against him again, and this time he let her go so that she could lean back. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes dark in the dim light, and the fire behind her turned her blonde hair into a bright corona flaring out around her head.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked, feeling like an ass.
She shrugged. "Would you have believed me?"
He looked away. Maybe not.
"Do you remember anything from before the orphanage?"
"Not really."
"I think you were about three or four when you got there. I was just a baby; I don't know anything about my real parents. But something might still come back to you about yours."
She smiled kindly, kissed him, and drew up her legs which were beginning to prickle with goose bumps. He knew they should get dressed before someone else got up but didn't have enough modesty to motivate him into moving. The mental image he was holding of a little girl gave way to the woman she'd become as he rubbed his palms down Quistis's calves, hoping to keep her malleable and content. The faint possibility of someone discovering them blurred, then vanished completely from his thoughts, and he found himself kissing down the side of her neck, testing her pulse with his lips and tongue -- it was fast, strong. Her hips pressed against his for a moment and he thought she would give in, but then she shook her head and turned away.
"Stop. I'm cold."
"You feel fine to me."
"Seifer..."
He relented, letting her go, and she hurried back into her pants, leaving him to chuckle as he pulled up his own. What would the Trepies think if they knew, he thought?
"Are you going to go back to bed?" she asked as she pulled on her boots.
"Nah." Sleep wasn't on his mind; dreams of the orphanage had roused him, and he was sure that more memories would keep coming back.
"I'll stay up with you," she offered. "And I'll tell you what I remember if you tell me."
She was back in her clothes now and drew her knees up to her chest, locking her arms around them. Perhaps it was his memory interfering, but he thought she looked suddenly younger: fresh, hopeful, wide-eyed.
He wasn't interested in talking. But she quietly began telling him stories of time spent on the beach, of hot dogs and marshmallows blackened over campfires, and of the day she'd been adopted. Somehow, as if he were eager to compete with her, he began to talk, too. The dam in his mind cracked and groaned as she sparked fresh recognition of places and people and scents within him.
"That was one of the first things I remembered," she said when he mentioned setting off fireworks. "Matron was so mad at us. I'm still not sure where we got them."
Matron.
His recollection grew suddenly darker, filled by a length of black hair and a gray, woolen dress.
Edea.
God, it hurt to think of her -- the woman who'd played both mother and sorceress to him. Toward the end of the war, whenever he'd looked at Edea, he'd usually seen right past her to Ultimecia. He was glad for that now, afraid what he might feel if it was his mother's face that still haunted his dreams.
Maybe, he thought, he'd start remembering some more clouded bits from the war as well -- things like Galbadia Garden, Lunatic Pandora, and Odin. A confused haze thick as valley fog had settled over those points and he couldn't make out the details anymore. Those were the times when Ultimecia had been deep in his mind. He glanced at Quistis and wondered how bad the memories might be. He'd killed a guardian force. What else had he done? Weary, he rubbed his eyes and sighed.
"Are you okay?" Quistis asked.
"Yeah. Fine."
"Are you sure? Did you remember something bad?"
"No. I said I'm fine."
"Okay. I just thought that you looked upset."
She scooted over to him, awkward for a moment, and then pressed a kiss to the middle of his forehead. It was affectionate, quick, like the way Rinoa had kissed him so long ago. And it left him feeling uncertain as she settled against his chest and shoulder. They weren't casual like this. He sat still, waiting to see what she would do, but the moment stretched until she was nodding with sleep. He eventually relaxed and allowed himself to drop back into the depths of his mind to dig for more things he hadn't been aware were lost.
She slept for a while, her breath puffing against the side of his neck. He let the fire die down perilously low before disturbing her to add another log to the pile. While he stirred the cinders, she rubbed her eyes, and though she didn't ask him to, he drew her close again when he sat back down. Hell, it was a stupid thing to do. But he kind of liked the feel of her. He unzipped his coat, unzipped hers, and wrapped them both together.
And then they slept until Raijin split them up in the morning.
0 0 0
Getting back to the Ragnarok took longer than Quistis would have liked. The whole time they were packing, Duran was trying to raise President Krier on the radio. He managed to contact a ship on the coast which patched him through to Deling City only to find Krier already gone and was franticly attempting to locate him in Centra when they left.
In the frigid calm outside, Duran's angry voice carried clear across the snow. Quistis could hear him swearing all the way to the pass and held her breath, hoping that he wouldn't run out of the temple after them. He'd already cornered her several times the day before, and she still hadn't been convinced of his usefulness. She didn't relax or feel wholly in control again until the temple was well out of sight.
Going down the mountain was easier than going up it had been and they made up much of the time they'd lost by their slow start. Morning was just turning to afternoon when they arrived at the crater.
Selphie had to drop them down through thick, dark clouds. The storm that had been dumping snow in the mountains was now sprawled out in the valley, drizzling from one horizon to the other, the mist obscuring the bright lights of nearby Trabia Garden. They circled several times, Dr. Shipey with his nose pressed to the window, but were unable to spot any sign of the tomb below. Selphie set them down near the middle of the crater at the professor's suggestion.
As they disembarked, Quistis pulled her hood up to block out the rain that was peppering the ground, turning it black as coffee grounds. Mud squished out from underneath her boots, sucked and pulled at her feet with every step.
"Hyne is buried here?" Seifer asked in disbelief.
"And Sir Vascaroon, too, if Quisty is right," Selphie added.
"Well I'd hope that if I saved the whole goddamn world, they'd put me somewhere a little nicer. Even the damned desert had something going for it. But this is just...It doesn't seem like the sort of place you'd bury a hero."
He had a point. This remote corner of Trabia didn't seem significant enough to house the body of a man who'd been the subject of beautiful statues and legends carved on temple walls. In the crater there was only desolation all around. Although, Quistis could see why the Centrans had chosen to bury Hyne here -- there was a certain elegance in this ruined patch of earth surrounded by verdant, virgin woods holding the body of the creator turned destroyer. But to bury Vascaroon in such a place without any outward honors and allowing his resting place to be forgotten? The thought was enough to shake her conviction.
"There were several locations we'd pin-pointed as possibilities," the professor said. "One to the north, another at the crater's impact point, and one along a ridge to the east. Do either of you recall which direction you found the tomb in?"
Quistis shook her head. "I wasn't paying close attention. We stopped at a lot of places on the way there, and on the way back it was dark."
Zell agreed with her. "But there's a tarp over it, camouflaging the entrance so that nothing will get down there," he said. "We'll know when we find it. Probably doesn't blend in quite so well in this rain as it did on a sunny day."
Once Selphie took their bearing, they started out, heading directly into the center of the crater. The walk was just as long and boring as Quistis remembered but further aggravated this time around by the prevalence of mud. When they finally stumbled across the tomb entrance hours later, her boots were caked and heavy and sweat was trickling down her forehead toward her eyes.
Raijin, Seifer, Zell, and Irvine all had to labor hard to pull back the waterlogged, canvas tarp. Slowly, they revealed the set of stone steps underneath, unadorned, plunging into the ground. This was it, Quistis realized. This was the last stop between her team and Hyne.
Flashlight on, a deep breath held firm in her lungs, Quistis went down the stairs first.
A strange feeling crept over her, an itchy shiver that reminded her of the skulls of children down below and the tiny, frozen city. Death was close to the surface here.
Dr. Shipey pressed his palms flat against the rhyolite wall at the bottom of the stairs. "Wow. The tomb of Hyne. It's never what you expect, is it?"
"We went through down here," Zell said, indicating the ragged hole they'd smashed with sledgehammers. He got down on his hands and knees, shined his flashlight through, and poked his head inside. "Doesn't look like anyone's been here."
"No shit." Seifer kicked Zell, leaving a muddy print across his backside. "Get moving, Chicken Wuss. You're plugging the hole."
"Hey! That hurt, damn it!"
Selphie leaned toward Irvine. "Sheesh. What a jerk." She paused while Seifer wriggled through after Zell, then continued. "Do you really think he's going to be any help? I don't remember him being much of a match for Squall to begin with."
Quistis tried, unsuccessfully, to hide the way Selphie's remark made her bristle: "I taught both of them. Trust me -- he can be just as exceptional. And he's part of the team now, Selphie. So give him a break."
Surprised, maybe even a little suspicious, Selphie stepped away from Quistis, her lips parted in preparation for a response that never came.
"Sorry," Quistis said, not entirely meaning it. Maybe she was overly sensitive at the moment, the pressure of the mission beginning to come down hard, but she didn't feel too badly about putting Selphie in her place.
"You coming or what?" Seifer yelled up at what he could see of her ankles standing in front of the hole. She ducked down and saw him waiting at the bottom for her with Zell whose hair jutted up from behind his shoulder.
"Coming."
Quistis slid down the incline into the sweet smelling room beyond. Cinnamon, honey, and incense: the scent of reverence in Ancient Centra. She inhaled deeply, gripped Seifer's outstretched hands, and let him pull her up onto her feet amongst the broken pottery. The room looked familiar now, no longer foreign or mysterious. The writing running in thick columns down the wall was the same they'd been looking at throughout the whole mission, and the art worked here in thick paint was done in the same style she'd seen delicately brushed across the pages of parchment they'd left behind in the mountains.
The painting of Vascaroon caught her eye, and she let go of Seifer's hands.
He stomped after her toward it, not seeming to care that he was crushing a millennia's worth of history under his muddy boots.
"So this is him?"
"Yes."
Relief -- it certainly was him. He was stylized, dressed in patchy bits of fur and delicately sewn leather scale armor, wielding a massive sword beyond all practicality, but was clearly recognizable as the same figure they'd seen in the temple. He was looking directly out from the painting, hair like flames, eyes clear and blue.
"Oh my God." Dr. Shipey sounded on the verge of physical rapture. "I can't believe I missed this the first time around. Look at all of this. My God."
Hands trembling, he turned in a slow circle, surveying the room and breathing like his lungs had seized and wouldn't fill all the way. The pottery on the floor waylaid him several times as he made his way across the room to where Quistis and Seifer were standing.
"What's that say?" Seifer asked, pointing to some writing above Vascaroon's head.
Shipey had to squint and stand on his toes to read it. "Looks like verse. A poem maybe, or a song or bit of religious writing." He mumbled, skipping over bits about mountains and hawks. "Here we go. That last part right there. Sort of the equivalent of rest in peace. I've seen it at several Centran grave sites. It's the only thing scholars could read with any certainty before now."
"So he really is buried here," Zell said,
"Sounds like it to me."
"Awesome!" Zell clapped Quistis on the back, knocking her forward a step. "So...uh...where? We've been down that way, and there's nothing there besides an empty chamber and a little town thing. No other burial spots or nothin'."
"Ancient Centran tombs tend to be flashy, well decorated and marked. It shouldn't be too hard to find. Maybe it's in the city and you missed it the first time through," Dr. Shipey suggested.
Seifer started to say something, but Zell cut him off. "We didn't spend much time there. It looked huge, and we just sorta went straight through. Let's go check it out."
"I think that's a good idea," Shipey agreed, and the two started toward the stairs leading down, oblivious to Seifer's irritated grunt.
"IDEA?" Fujin asked.
He rolled his eyes. "I was just thinking, if those two dip-shits would'a let me talk...shouldn't he be buried where it says rest in peace? Isn't that the way it works?"
Without even pausing to think about it, Raijin threw his support behind Seifer. "Yeah. You only write that on someone's grave, ya know?"
"Right. So...it's gotta be right here. This is his gravestone."
Quistis turned to look at the painting, hoping that Seifer's theory wouldn't mean they'd need to hollow out Vascaroon's chest to reach his tomb. But Seifer was already ahead of her. He flattened his hands against the knobby cushion of paint plastering the wall and pushed hard, his feet sliding out from underneath him and struggling for purchase among loose sand and bits of terra cotta. Raijin joined him. Soon Fujin did, too. And with a startling, sudden groan, the entire section of wall with the painting lurched forward. Stone ground against stone, the sound reverberating painfully in Quistis's molars. The wall moved in an inch, then a hand width, and with another mighty heave it was offset by more than a foot.
"God. You're right, Seifer." Irvine urged Fujin out of the way, then took her spot and helped push. Another foot and a dark, yawning gap opened up between the massive gravestone and the wall.
"Selphie. You'd better go get Zell and Dr. Shipey," Quistis said.
Selphie jogged across the room and vanished down the stairway.
The crack gasped and breathed then settled as the ancient air within mingled for the first time in thousands of years with the fresh air outside.
"I think we can fit through here now," Seifer said. He wedged his shoulder in to be sure, and then pulled his head through. "Yeah. We're good. Raij, you might have to wait though." His hand, dirty with paint flecks that had crumbled into his grip, trailed along the wall for a moment, then vanished through. Quistis's mouth went dry. Had he really just walked right into the black chamber beyond without a second thought? In the tomb of Hyne?
"Seifer! Wait for the rest of us!" She pushed Irvine out of the way to follow him.
The opening was an easy fit for her and she slipped through with only a slight brush of her breasts along the wall. Irvine was close behind. She didn't stop to wait for him, but lifted her light and searched for Seifer in the darkness. He was a few steps in front of her, standing frozen in place, Hyperion gripped and ready in his right hand. The room they'd come into was small in comparison to the main gallery they'd come from with a lower ceiling. As Quistis crossed to Seifer, she noticed the evenness of the floor, smooth under her feet like a stretch of polished marble.
"What is it?" she asked. But as she reached him and saw beyond his shoulders and knew what had alarmed him.
A sarcophagus was sitting at the far end of the room, huge and heavy, made entirely of stone. It was broken, the lid cracked horizontally down the center, bowing the entire structure into the middle. And settled between the twin slabs sat a man.
Not Vascaroon.
Not dead.
But a man still as stone, too large to be human, his skin a nearly translucent green. He wore thick armor that could have been dragon scale, a helmet with backward facing ivory horns, and a piecemeal fur cloak that was wrapped around his shoulders and arms. From under the cloak a sword protruded, gripped in both hands, lying across his knees.
Quistis moved closer to Seifer and retrieved her whip from underneath her winter coat.
And in the utter silence as they held their breath, the man began to stir.
0 0 0
Rinoa walked in front of Squall and climbed the steps leading up to a towering building that was blinding white in the hot afternoon sun.
"What's this?" Squall asked. "I thought everything in Centra was in ruins."
"Everything is," she replied, apparently not seeing the contradiction inherent in her statement.
"Did we cross into Esthar?"
"No. Of course not."
He followed her up the steps, comforted by the solid stone under his feet. It was real enough. "You didn't answer me. What is this?"
"It used to be the king's palace in the Ancient Centran capital," she replied.
"How do you know that?"
Rinoa hesitated, then turned and smiled at him. "Oh. I learned it in school. Didn't you? We can stay here for a while."
She had become possessed with the need to move days ago and had been driving them hard across the desert to this building. Squall wasn't sure where on the continent they were anymore, but he supposed they were far inland now, somewhere in the middle where the lunar cry hadn't hit so hard. A ring of forest surrounded them; the mountains weren't far to the east. It was a good place to hole up for a while.
"How long do you want to stay?" he asked.
"I only need a few more days."
"For what?"
She waved her hand at him. "To rest. Come on. Let's settle in."
Squall followed her inside. The palace was in excellent condition. It looked not only like it had survived the lunar cry unscathed, but as if the years had ignored it completely. The floor was made of alternating black and white tiles that made geometric patterns on the floor. High, latticed windows filtered the sunlight to soft gold. Squall lifted his shirt to dab sweat from his brow, not sure that he was seeing everything clearly. But the ceiling covered in frescos and the patterns traced on the wall in bits of silver and gold remained. Rinoa walked straight through the room and out into a courtyard beyond where a fountain was running.
He went to follow her, but she turned around and stopped him.
"You should stay in there."
"Why?"
"Because if anyone follows us, they'll come in that way."
Squall frowned. "If we're going to be attacked, then I'd rather have you nearby."
"I'll be fine. I'm just going to go rest for a while. Okay?" She walked over, kissed him, and smiled. "I'm sure we'll be fine. It's beautiful here, isn't it? We'll be safe."
Squall watched her go. Her blue duster caught the breeze and brushed the lip of the fountain as she passed it. Something was different about her. She was sharper somehow, not as affectionate or as innocent as she'd once been. Perhaps it was stress or the power of being a sorceress finally catching up to her. He crossed his arms, irritated at everyone in Garden for making them go through all of this. SeeDs job was to defeat sorceresses -- he knew that. But he hadn't thought his friends would turn on Rinoa. Of course, the entire situation must be bothering her. He wondered if he should go after her and put her fears to rest, reassure her once again that he'd never let anything happen to her.
But he stayed where he was instead, turned around and looked at the doorway. He sat down on the high throne and propped his gunblade against the arm, grateful for this fortress they'd found.
Rinoa was right. They hadn't come for her yet, but they'd be coming soon. He'd wait and watch. And he'd be ready for them.
0 0 0
Seifer felt Save the Queen slither past his boot a moment before the man sitting on top of the sarcophagus raised his head and sucked in a deep, rasping breath. His pale, green fingers tightened reflexively around his blade, making his knuckles crack with a sound like breaking stone. Finally, his eyes flashed open. They were a dark, unnatural blue, and they landed directly on Seifer and Quistis -- the two of them standing side by side with their weapons drawn.
A moment of stunned silence stretched between them.
And then Irvine slipped through the door.
"Holy crap. Is that...?"
Another sucking breath interrupted Irvine, and the man lifted himself off the broken coffin, revealing a nest of bones inside. The horns on top of his helmet brushed the ceiling. His movements were colored with uncertainty, like he'd been frozen in one spot too long and his body had fallen out of touch with his mind.
"It's a guardian force," Irvine finished.
Was this the one they needed to defeat Hyne, Seifer wondered? Another Odin?
He turned to look at Quistis, to see if she was smiling. But she was still gripping Save the Queen and standing hunched like a cat on the prowl -- muscles coiled, eyes locked. A chill of fear raced up Seifer's spine. A second later, the guardian force took a step toward them, his sword rising into an offensive position, and Quistis bolted for the door.
"Irvine! Go!"
Seifer's legs were propelling him after her before he knew what they were about. Irvine slipped back through the doorway and yelled at everyone else to get ready. Quistis was a only a few steps behind him, her ponytail streaming like fire behind her.
The flurry of movement triggered something in the guardian force. Shedding years, tapping an ethereal fluidity, he beat them to the stone slab and pushed it shut with one shove of his massive hand. Quistis swore, skid across the glassy floor, and hit the wall hard with her shoulder. The impact made her drop her flashlight which bounced and rolled between the guardian force's feet.
Seifer barely managed to avoid crashing into her. He had to drop his own flashlight to catch himself against the wall above her head, more willing to part with it than Hyperion. He pivoted himself between her and the guardian force and then blindly cast with his free hand. A fire spell crackled and flew off his fingers.
The ball of flame hit dead on target, lighting up the scale armor and fur strung over the guardian force's chest. He fell back a step, scrambled to brush the dying embers of the spell away, and Seifer fled with Quistis to a more defensible position behind the broken sarcophagus.
"I thought this thing was supposed to help us," he said to her as he searched through his dwindling mental inventory of spells.
"He might."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"Sometimes you have to convince them first."
In the dark, they heard more than saw the guardian force coming toward them. They dropped to their knees, ducking behind Vascaroon's body, and Seifer heard a sword whistle through the thick tomb darkness overhead. It shaved by close enough to leave a hot wake behind in his stomach. They needed to find some upper hand or the damn thing was going to slice them both in half.
"Stay here." Roughly, Seifer pushed Quistis's head down to make sure she was adequately hidden. He'd killed a guardian force before. There had to be something he could do.
The room was partially illuminated by the two flashlights sitting up against the wall, enough for Seifer to find his mark as he stood up. Another fireball roared from his hand. He followed after it over top the sarcophagus, leaping into the acrid storm of smoke and flame with Hyperion drawn. His blade impacted hard, ground against armor without breaking through. And then he found himself pushed to the side by a powerful hand. He tumbled over the tile floor.
The guardian force immediately pursued him, faster than Seifer had anticipated. Whatever disorientation or physical disconnect the man had been suffering was clearly gone now; he moved with speed and grace, the only sound the hush of fur against scale, boots on marble, and the pounding of Seifer's heart in his ears. He managed to get to his feet again, and as the guardian force's sword swung straight for his head, he quickly parried.
Hyperion caught the blow, but just barely. The gunblade's blunt edge seared against his palm, distributing the force across his shoulders and throwing him back into the wall. His shoulder blades hit hard and the back of his head bounced sickeningly off the stone. His consciousness spun dangerously for a moment and he swam desperately through the darkness and the pain, struggling to gather his scattered wits. He had to be ready for the next blow. But when his vision cleared the guardian force had withdrawn, his head cocked to one side like a curious dog's.
"Knight," he said in a long disused voice.
Quistis shouted and a bolt of lightning burned a bizarre tableau across Seifer's eyes. She was on top of Vascaroon's sarcophagus, her legs straddling the severe crack where knotty ends of bones glowed eerie white in the flash. Thunder rumbled. In response, someone yelled on the other side of the door. It could have been Fujin or Raijin or anyone. But by the way the slab began to scrape across the floor again, Seifer guessed it was Raijin. Quistis hit the guardian force with another spell from her perch when he turned toward her.
"Seifer! Get over here!"
She ducked and he couldn't see her past billowing cloak and angry steel. He ran, slipping under the guardian force's sword-wielding arm. Something tripped him. He fell, his palms sliding across the floor until they burned. Instinct carried him and he was back on his feet again, reflexes already twisting his body so that he brushed aside a blow, letting it glance off his shoulder.
"Hurry!"
Quistis was looming above him up on the sarcophagus again. She was injured, a cottony gash bulging in the arm of her coat and blood running down her sleeve, dripping out at the wrist. She had a possessed look about her that he recognized: a summon lurked right under her flesh, held in place until he was close enough to be safe. He jumped up beside her and grabbed her arm to staunch the flow of blood. The flash of pain broke her concentration and Bahamut tore loose. The dragon roared from her head, materializing out of ozone and electric flash in front of them.
The strange guardian looked startled. His blue eyes went wide. Then, amazingly, he lowered his sword by a fraction, grabbed Bahamut forcefully by the wing, and yelled something in another language.
Bahamut landed with a thud and pulled his wing free. The fireball that had been brewing in his mouth sizzled, popped, and he swallowed it with a gulp. He wheezed and choked. "I protect her," he said.
The guardian force peered around Bahamut at Seifer and Quistis and said something else.
"She is SeeD. We've all joined them," Bahamut replied. Then, apparently satisfied that he'd explained himself, he dissolved away and Quistis slumped forward, released from the bond of summoning.
Seifer found himself with a sword pressing delicately against his throat. "Knight," the guardian force repeated. "Explain. What is SeeD? Why do you have archons with you?"
Deja vu. Seifer remembered holding Hyperion to Squall's throat and asking something similar not so long ago.
"SeeD protects the world from sorceresses," Quistis offered. "We junction with guardian forces...um...archons, so that we can use magic."
"Then why are you here with a knight?"
"Ex-knight," Seifer countered.
Quistis lowered her whip and explained, "We're here looking for help to defeat Hyne."
"Hyne!" His eyes narrowed hatefully, but he lowered his sword so that Seifer could breathe again.
"Are you an aeon? Like Odin?" Quistis asked.
"Like Odin? Odin -- yes. I am." He thought for a moment, struggling with something. "I am Vidar."
The door scraped open and the rest of the team piled in, their weapons poised, and guardian forces primed for battle. Vidar didn't even turn to look at them.
"You'll come with us then?" Quistis asked. "And help us defeat Hyne?"
Vidar's face was impassive. "No."
"What? Why the hell not?" Seifer demanded. "That's why you're here, isn't it? That's what you're supposed to do."
"I will not go with you." Vidar pointed at Seifer. "I will not leave here with a sorceress's knight."
"We killed his sorceress. He doesn't have anyone he's interested in protecting anymore. He's harmless," Quistis said.
Vidar shook his head. "No. He still has the power; I can feel it in him. He cannot kill me here, so close to my body. But out there..." He glanced toward the door and seemed for the first time to notice the other people standing there. "I cannot leave here with him."
Seifer frowned. Close to his body? What did that mean?
"But what about Hyne, ya know?" Raijin said from the door.
"Yeah," Zell added, his fighter's stance relaxing. "We've been all over the world looking for you. Odin's dead. You're the only chance we've got left. There's already been a lunar cry -- we've killed two god beasts. Hyne's almost back to full strength."
Vidar wavered; his sword hand trembled. The mere mention of Hyne seemed to have a visceral effect on him. And he couldn't hide the way his overwhelming hatred threatened to override his aversion to knights. His gaze fell to Seifer's hand, still wrapped around Quistis's arm. Her blood was leaking between his fingers and dribbling over his knuckles. A strange intimacy, but Vidar noticed it.
"You," he said, gesturing to Quistis. "I would go with you. But there's a price."
"It doesn't matter. I accept whatever it might be."
He grunted, sheathed his sword. And then he was gone. Seifer blinked. Next to him, Quistis's knees failed her. A small, sad cry tumbled from her lips and she collapsed onto her shins, one hand flying out to catch her fall and grabbing bone instead. It crumbled in her grip. Seifer held her halfway up by her injured arm.
"Quisty?" Zell ran across the tomb.
Her face was ashen. She tried to get up, but couldn't quite lift herself. Seifer hauled her back up to her feet and helped her down off the sarcophagus.
"We've got to go," she said, her hand fisted in his coat.
"Hold on, Quisty. I've got a potion here somewhere." Zell rummaged through his pants' pockets. "Here you go."
As she drank, Dr. Shipey circled behind them. He angled his flashlight across the bare walls, inspected the smooth floor, and peeked in at what was left of Vascaroon -- just scraps of bone and straight, worn teeth. He shook his head, looked up at Seifer and Quistis and said, "What just happened?"
"That was an aeon," Quistis explained. "I've got him. He's with me." Despite the potion working through her, making her skin glow blue, she leaned against Seifer. Vidar's presence must have been heavy in her mind. Or maybe he was doing something to her -- exacting that price he'd mentioned.
"We did it," she continued and smiled. "Now we just need to take him to Hyne."
0 0 0
Quistis didn't bother to put her hood up on the way back to the Ragnarok. The cool rain felt good against her face and helped to center her. Bahamut was roaring distractingly at the back of her mind, and Vidar was rummaging through her fragmented memories, occasionally trespassing into private and emotionally charged areas. She struggled to stay in the present when he reviewed all the steps that had led them to Vascaroon's tomb. And when he paused to glance at her and Seifer in bed together in Esthar, she couldn't hold back a blush. Finally, as they were taking off, he seemed satisfied and relaxed.
Though he didn't tell her so, she knew that his concern over Seifer had waned. Vidar felt safe enough inside of her -- naively assured that he cared enough about her to override the risk he posed as a knight.
Once Vidar settled, Bahamut did, too. And Quistis was left with silence. She sighed, brushed damp hair out of her eyes, and leaned her head back in her seat.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Esthar," Selphie replied. "I talked to Cid, and he wants us back there before we head to Centra."
Quistis drifted off for part of the flight, exhausted from a week of restless and infrequent sleep, the long walks, brief battle, and the mental calisthenics Vidar had put her through on the way out of the crater. When they landed, Zell woke her up and walked with her back to her room in the Presidential Palace.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Sure."
"Because, that guardian force said there'd be a price. And you look really awful." He stopped and winced. "That's not what I meant to say."
"I'm fine," she reassured him. "But I'm going to skip dinner and just go to bed. I'll see you in the morning when we meet with Cid. Okay?"
"Yeah. Let me know if you need anything."
Quistis nodded and let herself into her room. She dropped her bag at the foot of the bed and peeled her coat off. It was stuck to her arm where blood had dried and she had to pull hard at the still sensitive skin underneath. Her shirt, too, took some effort to remove. The cut Vidar's sword had made in her flesh was fully healed, if still tender -- just a pale, white line now. She sighed and ran her fingers across what would become another scar.
A long shower washed her of too many days' accumulated dirt and the last of the blood. Clean and comfortable, she wrapped herself in a fluffy white robe and toweled dry her hair. She was running a wide-toothed comb through it as she walked back into her room. A cool breeze was blowing through, ruffling the curtains hanging over the French doors. Beyond, a pair of broad shoulders where silhouetted in the late evening light.
"So this is Esthar," he said. "So much has changed."
Quistis put her comb down on the nightstand. "I didn't summon you."
Vidar didn't turn to look at her. "I can come and go as I please."
She sat down on the edge of the bed and watched him lean against the balcony railing, his sword scraping across the floor. The horns on his helmet swiveled as he took the city in.
"How long have you been in that tomb?" she asked.
"A very long time. Since it was sealed shut. This was all desert when I last saw it. The Centrans were building a little colony...right over that way somewhere, by the salt lake. Esthar. I suppose that's what this...this is." He waved his hand across the view from her balcony.
"This city?" Quistis provided.
"Right. City. I'm still learning your language. It's a lot to take in." He sighed. "That little colony I knew has grown into this massive city now; Centra must be very wealthy."
"Actually, Esthar is an independent nation. Centra itself deteriorated a thousand years ago, and then what was left of it was destroyed by a lunar cry. There's nothing there anymore. The whole continent is abandoned, except for a few places along the coast."
He stepped back through the curtains and into her room. Quistis pulled her robe tighter, self-conscious even though he'd already seen her most private moments in the depths of her mind.
"What about Trabia?" he asked.
"There's not much left there either. There are a few small towns. But it's nothing like it used to be. Nothing like you probably remember, anyway. They were conquered by Esthar."
Vidar groaned and pulled his helmet off. It dropped to the floor with a loud, leaden thud and he swept a hand though a wealth of fire-colored hair, his blue eyes pinched closed.
"And Odin?" he asked, opening his eyes to look at her again. "You said he was dead."
"He was killed when we were fighting Ultimecia."
Vidar nodded. "Yes. I saw her in your memories. The sorceress that started all of this, compressing time to bring back Hyne. The one that became Hyne...she's a friend?"
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry."
He lingered silently for a moment. Quistis wasn't sure what to do. Neither Odin nor Gilgamesh had ever imposed on her this way, and no other guardian force had been able to come and go at will before. She wanted to collapse into bed and sleep. But Vidar had settled into a crouch in front of her French doors and didn't appear to be about to leave. His eyes were closed and he looked deep in thought, meditating maybe.
"Why are you afraid of knights?" she finally asked, bringing his roaming attention back to her.
"A sorceress cannot kill me. But a sorceress, or Hyne, can give their knight that power. Your friend has it. He was able to meet my blow." His hand traced the contours of his blade.
"Is that why Vascaroon shut you up in his tomb?" she asked. "To protect you from any knights until Hyne returned again?"
This time his attention narrowed in sharply. He stood up again and picked up his helmet off the floor. "No. My body is there. I need a physical connection to this world to stay here. I couldn't leave until someone came to get me."
"Your body," Quistis repeated. She watched him put his helmet back on. He was withdrawing, clearly uncomfortable with the direction their conversation was headed. She looked at him hard then: at his sword, his armor, his hair.
Realization dawned.
"You're Vascaroon."
"I was. Once."
Quistis stared. Her mouth dropped open.
Vascaroon.
For so long now, she'd been following in his footsteps, chasing after the sound of his voice whispering down through history. They'd crossed the globe trying to find out what he had known. They'd found and opened his tomb. She'd held his bones in her hands. And here he was -- something beyond human, an aeon -- Vidar.
"This is the price you will have to pay," he said softly, indicating himself. "I can kill Hyne once. But then the power will pass on to you. And after you die, you'll become an aeon, too."
She stood up, her heart clenching. "I'll what?"
A knock at the door startled her.
"Quistis?" Seifer opened the door and walked in. "Chicken Wuss thinks that you're about to die or something. He wants you to come down and eat." He stopped and looked at her. "Is something wrong?"
She waved her hand toward Vidar -- Vascaroon -- but he was gone. The gauzy curtains billowed in like breath sighing across the patch of carpet he'd occupied. Where was he now, she wondered? Deep in her mind? Off in the ether, in one of the many Trabian heavens? She didn't know what to say to Seifer as he approached her.
So she didn't say anything.
He looked at her for a moment, then took her hand and drew back the sleeve of her robe to see the spot where she'd been injured. He swept his thumb across it. Roughly, he drew her close. The sound of his heart beating pounded against her ear: solid, full of life. She felt disconnected from him, consumed by the idea of spending thousands of years alone in some dark tomb, waiting for Hyne to return.
"Quistis?"
She glanced up at him and he kissed her, hands cupping either side of her face, until her feet felt solid against the ground again. She didn't ask him to stay, and he didn't ask if he could. But he sat down on the edge of the bed with her anyway. And after a long moment of silence, she told him everything she'd learned.