When they got back to Garden after their spying mission in Deling City, it was shortly after dinnertime. They'd stopped in Balamb Town to get some food as soon as they disembarked, and Cid had known about the findings of their mission before Lady Knightlinger had, so they went straight to the dorms. Instead of dropping their stuff in their own rooms, however, they headed for Zell and Raijin's room, knowing they'd get hell if they didn't visit their friends right away and rescue them from class work for a couple hours. (And, of course, the two SeeDs would get dragged into assisting with the work, ending up getting to bed nightmarishly late and being happier about it than they should have been.)
Seifer reached the door just ahead of Squall and knocked. "One minute!" Raijin shouted from inside. There was the sound of things being shoved around and a quiet curse from Irvine, making the two teens outside trade bemused looks. Raijin finally pulled the door open after a few minutes and relaxed at the sight of them. "It's just Seifer and Squall, guys," he announced. A very loud, multi-person sigh resounded from behind the bulky teen.
"I think I'm insulted," Seifer commented, shoving at Raijin. "Let us in."
Raijin stepped to the side and let the two SeeDs in. After a quick perusal of the messy room, they accounted for everyone but Xu – and October, but he didn't tend to hang out with the younger group of friends during the evenings, preferring his few older friends among the SeeD ranks. Recalling that the young woman's birthday was in a few weeks, Squall asked, "What are you plotting for Xu?"
There were sheepish smiles all around at that. "Just a little... Well, you know how she's been wanting that new car the Tempest company's just released to the public?" Zell asked as they all took seats around the floor, Squall and Seifer's bags left next to the door.
"Yeah, sure," Seifer agreed for both of them, remembering well how much Xu had been gushing over the car. SeeDs didn't usually have personal vehicles, seeing as Balamb Garden was sort of stuck on an island, but a couple of the particularly rich SeeDs and upper classmen brought something from home and kept it in the garage just to show it off. The Han family wasn't particularly rich or influential, but that hardly kept Xu from drooling over the newest car in the Tempest line.
"Well, her dad said way definitely no," Selphie chirped, looking more excited than she should have been at that statement.
"There's no way you can afford that car on a cadet's salary," Squall pointed out drily. "Even adding in Quisty's SeeD income won't make up the difference."
The group of teens shifted before Zell nodded to Irvine and the cowboy slipped into the blond's room, coming out with a rather realistic model of the car. "It was the best we could do," Raijin said mournfully.
Seifer turned away, both hands clapped over his mouth to keep from laughing madly at their pathetic expressions. Squall just sighed and rubbed at his scar.
"I think it looks pretty good," Selphie said, pouting a bit at their reactions.
Roxanne straightened next to her roommate and shot the two male SeeDs an imperious look. "For laughing, Sir Seifer, you'll be buying Xu the real thing."
Seifer snorted. "Yeah, alright." At their disbelieving looks, he shrugged and said, "Squall and I put the order in while we were in Deling."
"You're a bunch of sneaky bastards!" Selphie declared as she launched herself across the floor and tackled both of them with a hug. Roxanne wasn't far behind her and the others laughed at the sight of the two best SeeDs in all of Garden, trapped under a couple of overly excited girls.
When the two girls finally got off and moved back to their previous positions on the floor, Squall remembered the silent presence in the back of his mind. "Hey, Selph, I've got a present for you."
Selphie's expression lit up. "A present? For me?"
"No, for the mouse in your pocket," Seifer replied, rolling his eyes in amusement.
Squall concentrated for a moment and Doomtrain's sickly purple and green crystal appeared in his hand, which he held out to the chipper girl. "Doomtrain."
Selphie took the crystal with a curious look and junctioned it. After a moment of silent, internal contemplation, her eyes brightened. "Awesome!"
Squall and Seifer both leaned back to listen as Selphie started talking rather gleefully about her new GF and about the bad man who'd had it before, but then Squall had rescued it and told it there was an amazing friend of his who was looking for a good GF and, and, and...
By the time Seifer and Squall managed to escape their friends – having related the whole story about Semans at least twice and being bullied into unearthing the photos Chris had taken during that visit – it was past midnight and Squall was almost asleep on his feet. Seifer followed the brunet into his room, ostensibly to ensure Squall didn't fall asleep on the floor, but in reality, he had every intention of sleeping in Squall's bed.
Squall didn't have anything negative to say about Seifer staying over, waiting until they were both changed into sleep trousers before tugging the blond down into the bed and curling against him with a pleased sigh.
Seifer only cursed their friends a little bit for wearing Squall out on their first night outside Deling City, but he was kind of tired from the train ride, anyway, so he wasn't as upset as he could have been.
-0-
They hadn't really tried to hide their relationship from their friends, it's just that Squall wasn't much for public displays of affection, and Seifer had discovered himself to rather enjoy keeping Squall's affections to himself. They hadn't seen the point in telling anyone straight out that they were a couple – especially since Cid or the faculty could very well consider that just cause for breaking up their partnership – but they didn't make a huge secret of it either. It was just...they'd always been close, so no one thought much about seeing the two teens share a meal in the cafeteria or walk particularly close in the halls. They also tended to be outside of Garden more than they were in, still, so catching them out wasn't an easy task, especially if no one was looking for it.
It wasn't until Irvine joined the elder two SeeDs on an assignment up in Trabia almost six months after they officially got together that anyone found out.
Squall and Seifer had been trying to negotiate the release of a small group of women and children from one of the mountain villages for a good week before they finally got an agreement to a meeting with the bandit group who had done the kidnapping. The bandits had insisted the two SeeDs come in unarmed, insisting this was a 'peaceful negotiations meeting'. Normally, Squall and Seifer wouldn't have had a problem with meeting hostiles without weapons, being more than capable of holding their own in a fist-fight, but the village elder and two of the husband/fathers had determined to come with.
"No," Seifer had snapped. "It's too dangerous for a couple of civilians. We're not taking you with us."
"Then we'll go on our own," one of the husband/fathers snapped back. The whole village was on edge, especially since they didn't know what was happening to their people. They'd only called on SeeD because the first group of men they'd sent after the bandits had been slaughtered and sent back to the village in pieces. Squall and Seifer weren't welcome there, especially since they'd insisted on trying for peaceful negotiation before sending another group into an unknown hideout to be killed.
"We'll wait a few days," Squall decided in a quietly calm voice, touching a hand to Seifer's arm to calm his lover before the blond could get into another shouting match with the villagers. "We've got a friend who will even the stakes a bit."
"We do?" Seifer wondered.
"Irvine."
Seifer blinked a few times, then his eyes lit with understanding when he remembered that the meeting position the bandits had agreed on had a clear line-of-sight from a nice cliff. A cliff that would be an excellent sniping position. "Yeah, that should work."
"What if we don't have a few days?" the husband/father half-shouted.
"Then you can run in there like an idiot chocobo and leave your wife and son to mourn their husband and father once we've freed them," Squall replied in that same even tone, his eyes cold as the snowy mountains they resided in.
The villagers had dispersed, muttering amongst themselves, and Seifer had taken a trip down the mountain to the nearest town with cable access to request their sniper friend.
Two days later, Irvine was driven into the village by one of the townspeople from down the mountain, who quickly retreated from the heated atmosphere.
"Your friend is finally here," one of the villagers announced nastily to Squall and Seifer as Irvine was led into the small hut the SeeDs had been leant.
Seifer shot the villager a murderous look. Squall sighed and said, "We'll head out for the meeting tomorrow afternoon."
"Wow," Irvine said once the villager had left. "They really don't like you two."
"They wanted us to go storming into a base that we don't even have exact coordinates on, let alone a layout of, and get their families back before we even set our stuff down," Seifer grumbled as Irvine joined the other two around the small table they'd been eating lunch at. "We decided they were idiots and set about requesting negotiations with the bandits. And when we couldn't talk them out of letting us go alone, we made them wait until we had someone to cover our asses, since we're going in without weapons."
Irvine raised an eyebrow at that. "This sounds like fun. You got a map around here, somewhere?"
"One moment," Squall agreed as he got up to sort through his bag. They spent the rest of the afternoon discussing all their plans and sorting things out. Over dinner, Irvine caught the other two SeeDs up on the happenings of their friends, since Seifer and Squall hadn't really seen the others since the SeeD exam four months ago; the others always seemed to be out on assignments during the rare times Squall and Seifer were in Garden, and most of their communications ended up going through Roxanne, Raijin, or Fujin, since they were all still cadets. (Technically, Fujin could have taken the exam this year, but she'd wanted to keep Raijin company for another year.)
When they'd finished with dinner, Irvine took in the two cots set up in the room and asked, "So, who's sleeping where?"
"You can have that one," Squall said, pointing at the cot that he and Seifer had mostly ignored for their stay.
Irvine shrugged and got up to dump his bag next to the bed. He pulled out his sniper rifle and set about cleaning it while Squall laid back on the other cot to mend a slashed shirt and Seifer pulled out a worn notebook to read at the table. Irvine managed about ten minutes of silent curiosity – he'd never seen Seifer read anything, though the others had sworn that they'd seen the blond bowed over a school book once or twice...but reading for pleasure wasn't something anyone had seen much of, and certainly not something handwritten – before he had to ask, "Seifer, what're you reading? Porn?"
Seifer snickered. "No, alas. It's just Squally's diary." Then he had to duck under the table – quite the feat, given how low the table was – to avoid the knife Squall threw. "Journal! His journal!"
Squall pinned his best friend with a chilled look as Seifer crawled back out from under the table. "Stop calling it that."
Seifer rolled his eyes and tugged the knife out of the tabletop before tossing it back to Squall, who caught it without any apparent effort. "You really need to get over that complex of yours, Squally."
Irvine shook his head at them, somewhat in awe of how casually the two tossed knives back and forth – it was easy to forget that they were the top two SeeDs when you'd known them as kids and regularly saw them half asleep or buried under Roxanne and Selphie. "Squall has a journal?" he asked. "And you're letting Seifer read it?"
"He's had it since we were kids," Seifer announced.
"Seifer's been asking to read it practically since he learned how," Squall added drily. "I finally let him have it just so he'd shut up." Which wasn't really true, but it was as much as Squall was going to explain to anyone.
"So, were the first couple entries in picture format?" Irvine wondered teasingly.
Seifer snorted. "No, though some of them were on Andy's construction paper that went missing."
"It was all I could find," Squall defended. "It's not like people kept lined paper lying around."
Irvine blinked a few times, tried to remember who Andy was, then choked. "Fucking Hyne, Squall! Andy got adopted just after Zell! How long have you been able to write?"
Squall shrugged. "A while."
"He's not human," Seifer informed the sharpshooter. "I've been saying this for years, but no one will believe me."
"That's because you always exaggerate things," Irvine replied, shooting Squall an odd look. "Before I left, you and Seifer used to train with wooden sticks all the time, didn't you? And you were the one teaching him."
"Yes."
"But why?" Irvine asked. "I didn't get it back then, either; your sudden infatuation with swordplay. I mean, sure, we'd play war all the time with sticks, but that was real. I didn't even realise how real, but you were actually teaching Seifer how to grip the stick like a proper sword and how not to trip over his feet."
Squall shrugged again. "So? I read a book about it."
Irvine turned to Seifer, disbelieving, and the blond shrugged, no sympathy for the younger teen. "This is what I've put up with since before you got adopted; get used to it, Irvy."
Irvine turned his eyes back towards Squall, but the other boy had returned his attention to his mending, ignoring them both with the air of someone who'd had years of practise. Given, he probably had, knowing how persistent Seifer was. Irvine turned back toward the eldest of the three of them. "Well, maybe you can enlighten me?" he suggested. "I mean, you've got his journal, right?"
Seifer immediately shook his head, not even needing to sense Squall's sharp gaze on him to know that the brunet's secrets weren't his to share. "No can do, Cowboy. I like my intestines inside my skin, see."
Irvine glanced towards Squall, shuddering at the violent gleam in the grey-blue eyes. He wisely decided his best option would be to return to cleaning his rifle and not mention the journal again within Squall's hearing range.
About an hour later, Squall had finished mending the shirt and written in a different notebook from the one Seifer was reading, and Irvine had finished cleaning his rifle and was debating getting some sleep, but Seifer was still reading, expression almost thoughtful.
"I'm going to bed," Squall announced.
"Hm?" Seifer glanced up, then checked his watch. "Oh, yeah. Hold on..." He got up and flipped off the lamp on the table, then walked over to the cot Squall had claimed. The journal was shoved under the pillow, where Irvine had noticed Squall placing the other one, then Seifer peeled off his shirt and slipped into the small cot with Squall.
Irvine sort of blinked a few times. 'Are they actually... Yes, yes they are.' Irvine shook his head and clicked off the light next to his cot. 'I don't get those two, sometimes...'
-0-
"How about a kiss for luck?" Seifer asked as they got up from the low table after lunch.
Squall rolled his eyes. "No."
"A blowjob for luck?"
"Do I need to discuss hand motions with Irvy for 'shoot Seifer between the eyes'?"
Seifer laughed and wrapped an arm around Squall's shoulders. "You wouldn't," he said.
Squall snorted and rested his head against Seifer's shoulder for a moment before pulling away and turning towards where Irvine was watching the two of them with wide eyes. Sure, he'd wondered, last night, if there wasn't something going on between the two of them, but to actually catch them cuddling? "Irvy," the older brunet said, "are you ready to go?"
Irvine shook his head and shoved himself to his feet. "Yeah, give me a moment."
"I'll go collect the sheep," Seifer said before walking out of their hut, sans his coat.
Really, neither he nor Squall were wearing coats, as if the cold of the mountains wasn't bothering them. Irvine figured Squall made some sort of sense, being the so-called 'favourite' of Shiva, but he wasn't sure why Seifer wasn't freezing his ass off. Irvine knew they were sort of expected to show off that they were unarmed, since the bandits wouldn't meet with them if they were carrying even a single knife between the two of them. But there was obvious, and then there was obvious, and wearing tight short-sleeved shirts and jeans without a coat was a little too obvious for Irvine. But, then, he wasn't Rank A, either.
Hoisting his bag onto his shoulder, Irvine turned back to Squall and nodded that he was ready, so the older teen led the way out of the hut, showing not a shiver at the sudden gust of icy wind that had Irvine hugging his arms against his body for warmth. 'I don't think either of them are human,' Irvine decided as he spotted Seifer's coat-less self with a couple of villagers, all of whom were decked out in fur coats and looking at Seifer like he was insane.
"Hey, Squally?" Irvine asked when they reached the fork that Irvine would be taking up to the cliff.
Squall glanced back at him, one eyebrow raised in silent inquiry.
"You and Seifer... Are you...?"
"We've been dating for..." Squall considered that for a moment, then settled on, "About six months."
"And you never said anything?"
Squall shrugged. "No one asked," he replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, before starting off again.
Irvine shook his head, somewhat disbelieving. ' "No one asked", my ass. It's not like you showed it off, or anything.' Although, now that Irvine thought about it, he supposed Squall and Seifer had taken to sitting just that little bit closer in the months before the exam, but that hadn't been something any of the then-cadets had been interested in wondering after, honestly. 'Though, knowing how fucking secretive Squally is about things, I suppose that was sort of the point.'
Once he was up on the cliff, Irvine snapped his rifle together and settled in to wait for everyone to show up, looking through his scope to see what was going on. Squall, Seifer, and the village party were already in place, standing slightly separate, but not far enough that the two SeeDs couldn't protect the civilians. Since he was looking for it, Irvine saw how the two SeeDs were touching shoulders, not being obvious about their relationship, but closer than one might consider normal for friends.
The villagers were clearly speaking – Irvine thought they were probably bitching to each other quietly, since Seifer wasn't glaring at them – but Squall and Seifer were silent, watching the surrounding hills with eyes trained to spot the slightest difference, even in so unfamiliar a place.
Seifer spotted the bandits first and brushed his hand against Squall's while putting a more reasonable distance between them. Irvine followed the other two SeeDs' gaze with his scope and frowned at the sight of eight heavily-armed bandits, forcefully escorting a tired group of five children and four women. One of the women stumbled and the man holding her arm yanked roughly, making her mouth open in a sound of pain that Irvine couldn't hear. He was quite glad for his distance, and he turned his scope back towards the party from the village just in time to see one of the men start forward, shouting a name just loud enough for Irvine to hear the faint echoes.
Seifer reached over and grabbed the back of the man's neck, leaning down to hiss something in his ear. The man shoved away from Seifer and rubbed at the back of his neck, but he didn't try moving towards the approaching bandits again.
When the bandits finally came to a stop a good few metres away, pleasantries were exchanged – knowing Seifer, that meant someone's parentage had just been insulted, as well as their fashion sense. Irvine could only assume they were discussing terms for the trade of the hostages, and he decided he needed to learn to read lips sometime in the future.
A minor debate started, with the village elder stepping up to reply angrily to the grinning bandit leader. Squall and Seifer watched on with blank expressions, until the elder apparently said something even more rude than Seifer's usual greeting, because the leader and two of this men reached for the very large, very nasty swords they wore on their backs. Then the two SeeD moved in sync to step between the village elder and the bandits, dangerous even without weapons.
One of the SeeDs must have said something funny, for the leader let out a loud laugh that reached Irvine and relaxed. Once the other bandits had removed their hands from their sword hilts, the two teens stepped back and let the elder continue... Irvine thought the old man might well have been crying, at that point. Begging, perhaps.
The leader laughed again, loud and violent, and turned away, motioning to his men.
Irvine's attention was caught as much by Squall's hands as he was by the teen stepping forward to speak words that Irvine couldn't hear. The SeeD sign language came through loud and clear, however: 'One warning shot to the left of the leader's head on my mark...'
Irvine settled against the trigger, eyes narrowed as he waited for Squall's hands to move again.
'Mark.'
The rifle snapped up and Irvine had fired the shot almost before he could think, years of conditioning taking over and refusing to let him think too much and miss the target. Or, in this case, hit the target.
A beautiful 'oh shit' expression crossed the leader's face as the shot brushed past his ear and Irvine returned his attention to Squall, waiting to see if the older teen would require another shot.
As luck would have it – though whose luck, Hyne only knew – no further shots were required. Irvine found out once they'd returned to their hut to pack up their things, that the bandit leader was an illegitimate son of the village elder and had been banned from the village upon his majority and ordered to never return. He'd gathered together a band of other angry guys and they had made their way from village to village, stealing what they felt like when they felt like it. Honestly, if he hadn't had an axe to grind with his old man, they never would have run off with the women and children and SeeD never would have been called.
While family squabbles weren't the sort of things SeeD like to get in the middle of, Seifer and Squall had bartered for the release of the hostages. The elder had to make a proper apology to his bastard and rescind his banishment. The son, likewise, was allowed to return to his birth village, but it was suggested by Seifer that he was better off continuing his thieving ways by other villages who were less likely to call SeeD if a basket of grain or some Balamb fruit went missing. The villagers had been properly disgusted with Seifer for suggested the band of bandits continue wrecking havoc, but the blond made some new friends among the bandits.
The villagers couldn't get rid of the three SeeDs quick enough and they found themselves heading down the mountain in the all-terrain vehicle Squall and Seifer had borrowed from Trabia Garden upon their arrival less than twenty minutes after returning to the village.
Irvine had taken the back seat while Squall drove and Seifer made a half-assed attempt at playing navigator, which Squall pretty much ignored. After watching Seifer make make a fool out of himself for a good fifteen minutes, Irvine asked, "So, given that none of us noticed, why didn't you mention you were dating?"
"What is it with your fascination about our relationship?" Squall demanded, eyes flicking towards the sharpshooter in the rear-view mirror.
"Morbid curiosity," Irvine deadpanned.
Seifer snorted and twisted in his seat a bit to watch Irvine. "You lot were freaking out about the exam when we officially started dating, and then everybody's always on missions because Cid's a prick."
"Cid uses his resources to the best of his ability," Squall interrupted. "Just because he doesn't consider the personal preferences of his soldiers doesn't make him a 'bad man'."
Seifer rolled his eyes. "Whatever. The point is–" he turned back to Irvine, "–there's never been a good time to tell you all, and this isn't really something you pass through the grapevine. Especially since Cid and the faculty are trying to find a good reason to split us back up again."
"What, still?" Irvine asked, disgusted. "It's obvious you two work best together."
"But if we were separated, there would be twice as many missions we could go on," Squall pointed out calmly.
"Oh, go right ahead and defend them, then," Seifer snarked, scowling a bit.
"I'm simply pointing out their reasoning," Squall said, still calm. "I neither agree with it, nor would I want to be separated from you. You know this, Seifer."
Seifer grinned. "Yeah, but that doesn't mean I don't like hearing you say it every once and a while."
"You're impossible," Squall muttered, but there was a note of fondness in his voice that Irvine didn't think he'd ever heard before.
"Wow, sugar overload. I think my teeth hurt." Irvine leaned back in his seat and flashed a smile at the twin glares his comment received. "Selph is going to love hearing about this, you know. She'll probably want to throw a party, right after she beats you both up for not telling her sooner."
"Oh joy," Squall deadpanned.
Irvine laughed.
-0-
'Sis,
'I know you've said that you want to change the past so Laguna could have been with Raine when she died and then raised the two of us, but I don't agree. Maybe life could have been better if Laguna had stayed, or if he'd come right back after they sealed Adel – then again, maybe it could have been worse. I don't know, and neither do you, which is part of the point.
'The other part of the point is, I like my life the way it is. I have parents and friends and a big sister – who I never see, but you can't have everything – and a job I love. I even have a man who means the world to me.
'I know you may not be the happiest person in the world, but you're content on that ship, being a big sister to all those kids. And I am happy; all of those downtimes in the orphanage, when everyone left...all the darkness of my job...it was worth it. It is worth it.
'If you're still determined to try changing the past, in spite of everything I've just written, I have some cautions for you: 1) You're transmitting real people to the past, and their bodies remain in the present, without their consciousness; without any way to defend themselves from danger. If you use any of us SeeDs in this project of yours, we may well be dead upon waking. Take care in who you pick and where they are. 2) If you want to change the past, you can't just send them back without any idea of what's going on. We can't change anything if we have no idea what you want to change. 3) I will not help you. Seifer will not help you. The others might or might not, but if you drag Seifer or myself into this, we will do exactly the opposite of what you want, and we may caution the others to do the same.
'I love you, and I do want you to be happy, but not at the expense of my own happiness. Please understand.
'Squall'
-0-
"They look so young," Selphie commented, eyeing the new batch of cadets as they stumbled their way through Garden for the first time.
"Because you're really all that old," October teased with good humour.
"It's not just age, though, ya know?" Raijin said with a tired note to his voice. His first year as a SeeD was over, and he hadn't done all that well, being separated from all of his friends on his first four missions. Cid had finally paired him with Fujin for his fifth mission, which had gone much smoother, but his sixth mission had, again, been with another SeeD who'd graduated with him and the other boy had died.
Cid's way of cheering Raijin up had been to sort missions around so the group of friends could all spend almost two weeks together in Garden. Raijin had been an absolute wreck when Zell and Irvine had arrived back first from their mission, and though he was much better after a couple days of all of them being together again – and Seifer and October sitting him down to talk about losing a partner on a mission, being the only other two to have done so – he was still looking a little worn around the edges.
Zell, accompanied by Roxanne, skidded around the corner at the far end of the hallway stretching from the lift to the second floor, their arms full of balloons filled with water. "How about some hazing?" the tattooed blond suggested with a huge grin.
"Zell!" Quistis snapped in her best 'I'm older than you and you better listen' voice. "You're not dropping water balloons on cadets!"
"It's training practise, Quis," Zell defended. "Teaching them to expect the unexpec–AAAH! Fucking shit!" He dropped his armful of suddenly-popped balloons and turned to stare at the throwing knife that had slipped just between his arms and rested none-too-innocently in the ground at his feet.
Squall idly tossed a second knife into the air and caught it by the blade. "Princess, go put those back," he ordered Roxanne while everyone else let out a roar of laughter at the wet and disgruntled Zell.
Roxanne flashed Squall a smile, then ran for it.
"That was dangerous, Squall," Quistis informed the brunet once she'd managed to stop laughing.
"Probably," Squall agreed as he tucked his second knife away and motioned to the one at Zell's feet. "I'll give you a free shot," he promised.
"Zell, no," Quistis snapped as Zell tugged the knife from the floor.
Before Zell could actually throw it, Fujin stalked forward and snatched it from his hands. "NO. RAI."
Everyone turned to look at where Raijin was watching the unfolding drama with short breaths. Zell's irritated expression slid away. "Aw, Rai, I'm sorry. I only meant for us to have some fun."
Raijin shook his head. "Not your fault," he whispered.
Squall stepped forward then and met the panicked brown eyes calmly. "SeeD Pimo Creamer is dead," he stated in a neutral tone, naming the boy who had died as Raijin's partner.
"Squall!" Zell, Quistis, Selphie, and Xu all shouted.
Squall shot them a silencing look, then turned back to Raijin, who looked sick. "He's dead," he repeated. "Nothing in this world can change that fact, and you have two choices: You can continue wallowing around like a lost child and eventually be forced to drop out of SeeD because you don't have what it takes. Or you can keep on, learn from his death, and never let it happen again. Do you understand?"
Raijin stared at Squall for a long moment before he nodded and croaked, "Yeah."
Squall turned towards where Fujin stood with the knife and ordered, "Throw it."
Fujin wasn't the only one who frowned. "NO."
Squall raised an eyebrow at her. "SeeD Natsuki, I gave you an order."
Fujin tensed and her eyes flickered towards where Raijin was staring on in horrified fascination. "NO," she said again, throwing the knife into the ground at her feet.
October, who thought he had an idea about what Squall was up to, stooped and picked the knife up. Barely giving himself time to aim, he threw the knife just over Squall's shoulder, at Raijin's right eye, and smiled when Squall caught it with the ease of long practice.
Squall turned to Raijin, who had turned a little green again. "Could you have stopped this knife?" he asked.
Raijin shook his head. "No."
Squall reached out and pressed the knife into Raijin's hand. "Learn to," he said, then turned to Seifer. "I'm going to the cafeteria."
Seifer grinned. "We're going to have to wade through cadets," he pointed out.
Squall shrugged and turned towards the lift. "I have a gunblade."
Seifer laughed and followed his lover away from their friends with a wave over his shoulder.
As soon as the two Rank As were gone, Quistis turned and punched October in the arm. "What were you thinking?!"
October shrugged. "I knew Squall would catch it."
"NOT POINT!" Fujin snapped, kicking at his ankle and only missing because he dodged.
Before Selphie, Xu, or Zell could join the attempts to beat up on October for playing along, Irvine hissed, "Look at Rai!"
They all turned to watch as Raijin tossed the knife Squall had given him into the air and attempted to catch it. The large teen hissed when he missed and cut himself, but his expression just turned more determined and he tossed it again.
"Squall was giving him something else to focus on," Zell realised. "Something to work towards. Maybe Creamer is dead, and maybe there's nothing any of us can do about that, but by picking up a new skill, there's a chance you can save the next partner."
Xu sighed. "That is just so classically Squall."
"BASTARD," Fujin agreed, voice softening.
When they received their next mission assignments after a couple of days, Raijin was feeling much better. His expression perked up even further when Cid informed him and Fujin that they would remain partners until such a time as one of them requested a different partner. When Fujin had asked why, Cid had drily replied, "Squall can be rather convincing when he has his heart set on something."
'Classic Squall,' Fujin thought with a touch of fondness as they left the Headmaster's office with their new mission. 'And he and Seifer left last night so we couldn't thank them. Bastards.'
-0-
After a while, you really started to lose track of days. Especially when you were stuck in the oldest, slowest boat in all the world, on the stupidest, most tedious clusterfuck of a mission in the whole of SeeD history.
Some weeks ago – Seifer had lost track at around day eight – Seifer and Squall had been sent to the southern edge of the Esthar continent to locate and retrieve another SeeD team that had vanished down there a good three months before. The edges of Esthar's terrain were lined with the OCS, so there was no guarantee that they would actually be able to spot the team, especially if the Estharians had taken them inside their borders. But there hadn't been a good way to explain that knowledge to Cid and the faculty, especially with the chance that the team was on one of the islands outside the OCS.
So, there Squall and Seifer were. Stuck at sea again for an indeterminable length of time. Squall had already sworn to kill any druggies on sight, and Seifer had decided he'd put any idiots who got themselves lost out of their misery, rather than dragging them back to Garden.
Seifer kicked the control panel, as if that would make everything better. In reality, all it did was make his foot hurt and the controls flicker. One of the panels didn't seem to have a use, but Seifer's kick must have moved something just right, because the screen turned on to...static.
"Oh, that's just great," Seifer muttered to himself, keeping his voice low to lessen the chances of waking the dozing Squall, who had spent the past couple days drawing out the outline of the OCS from his memories on their map. It wasn't exact, by any means, but it had saved them from a few awkward collisions.
Seifer was just reaching for what he hoped was a switch to turn the damn thing back off when the screen cleared to show some people moving across it. Seifer sort of stared with a sinking feeling in his chest as a man in a pin-striped suit stepped up to a podium and beamed towards the camera with something like disbelief. "T-Testing... One... Two... Testing... Testing... Ohhh! P-People of the world! Can you see me? Can you hear me? Oh, this is incredible! Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a recording! This is–"
"Squall," Seifer called, still staring down at the small screen. He felt sick – they should have had more time! "Squall!"
Squall let out a moan from the direction of the cot.
Seifer chanced a glance over his shoulder at his unmoving lover. "Squall, you need to get over here!"
"Greetings," said the screen in the disgustingly familiar voice of SeeD's best client, "I am Vinzer Deling, lifelong president of Galbadia. Today, I stand before you to make the following–"
"Oh, fuck," Squall breathed as he stumbled to Seifer's side, roused by the voice of the Galbadian leader almost as much as he'd been by Seifer's slightly panicked shout. "We should have had another three months left," he murmured, staring down at the screen and leaning against his lover.
Seifer wrapped an arm around Squall's waist. "We stopped keeping track ages ago," he whispered, turning his head and burying his nose in Squall's hair, taking in the familiar scent of the other teen and trying to calm the bile climbing his throat.
"It can't have been three months already," Squall replied, and it was only because Seifer knew him so well that he heard the faint strain of fear in his voice.
Seifer took a deep breath. "It doesn't matter; we're out of time," he insisted.
Squall jerked at that and reached out to turn off the screen. "We're abandoning the mission and turning towards Deling City," he decided, moving his hands over the controls to change their course and give them as much speed as they could get out of the ancient engines.
"There's no way we can make it in time," Seifer said.
"I'm damn-well intending to try," Squall growled.
Seifer nodded and turned his attention to the controls, looking to see if he could help.