Broken Mirror
act one - shatter
III - triage
It was one of those rare cases where those in need of a clue are blessed with someone who's genuinely clueless.
-- Homicide: Life on the Streets
***
There was something too organic about Delling Palace - all curves and veils and sinewy arches. A beast of the ocean depths, perhaps, flowing blues and greys and translucence forming an ethereal sort of skeleton where perhaps a garden might have thrived. A rather beautiful corpse mummified. Too lovely for death, too static for life.
A clever deception by a clever man, that. Well, at least he must have been clever at some point. Now he wasn't even a meal for the flies - vaporized for all to see on national television. A blemish on the life of a man who'd fought against the most advanced empire on the planet. Such a the bloody gash on his reputation was brought about by the simple reality that taking up with a Sorceress was not terribly conducive to your average mortal dictator. Still, President Delling's palace was something special among the baubles of the tyrants of the day - a brilliant facade. Far removed for the inferno depths of a subterranean political prison, and gated away from the writhing hordes of purgatory.
Leeches are sea beasts. They feed and they drain and they heal and one never feels a thing. Willing victims praise them to the skies.
But on this day of all days the balance was upset - and the impassive ocean blue of heaven's florescent lights was assaulted by flickering crimson traveled up from the middle regions. It wasn't often that purgatory mattered in it's passive sleep twixt heaven and hell, you understand. Yet today they were confused - their angel looked a demon and had fallen from the skies. An inexcusable break of the general order of their lives. Today there were to come up against the great beast that was not.
The wall had broken, somehow. Whitewash and mortar were out of place in heaven - scar tissue for the beast.
But if there was something organic about Delling Palace , then there was no hope of infection spreading through it's heavenly walls. Every great creature, you understand, has its parasites.
And it didn't hurt that any dictator worth a damn armed his stronghold to the teeth.
***
There was a spiral stairwell in the forum of the building - and it seemed the only escape from a suffocating crush of human bodies. Humidity of breath and scent of battle took on a life of it's own, an entity thriving on the tattered mass whose very presence contradicted their surroundings' gentility.
It was odd, then, that only one man stood on that stairwell. A tattered sort of man - worn and greying white - who burned brighter than the sun. Or maybe not. But the man certainly acted the part of alpha male well.
"Alright. I want company one to get their asses to the rooftop and man the rail guns - and for Hyne's sake flow that goddamn clock the fuck up. Second company is searching every goddamn corner of this place for our gunmen, and if you even think about killing them I will personally hand your ass to you. Third - you're at the breach. BARRICADE is the word, people - we're not getting out of this fucking sea of psychos alive with just some pansy sniping. The rest of you get your girly selves to the walltop. I want a sentry every five meters. Is that clear? "
Silence reigned, but for the screams of rioters caught in magical insanity, breathing, and the rustling of clothes. Not too enthusiastic, but at least he'd pulled them all in here. Goddamn pansy morons couldn't even take direction...
The crowd blinked. In unison. Quite the achievement, actually.
"Look, does anyone else have the balls to get up here? I didn't think so. So get your pansy asses out there before that mob tears us apart!"
And lo, order ensued. Almost mystically, really. Of course there were the usual rumblings of discontent, but one did not make it into Edea's guard without knowing the ways of the wolf pack. Subordinate creatures, the lot of them. Well, that and the tiny matter of not wanting to die.
The smell of charred flesh wafted through the windows, carried upon wings of terror. Sparks of a greater inferno hadn't reached them though. Not yet.
"Do we have any tech people here?" the leader's voice, that of one Seifer Almasy, didn't sound like it should have. Mental imbalance didn't carry well through the shouting. The mark of a born leader, that one little modulation of manner - most of the great have been at least a touch eccentric.
Said voice halted a surprisingly large soldier in his tracks - brave soul.
"Sir?" it took him a minute to fight through the crowd.
"Congratulations, you're promoted. Now get on the line with Carroway and ask him where the fuck his people are! I'm out of here."
The man nodded, more than a little cowed by the one turning away from him to climb the steps.
"Sir? Where..." the refrain continued, this time a bit more unsteady.
"Rooftop, " Seifer clipped his words.
"And I shall address you to General Carroway as..." the man was either extremely competent, or extremely stupid. Given the rather disconcerting gleam in Seifer's eyes at the moment, most likely a bit of both.
"Sir Seifer. Stop wasting my time," the Knight drawled.
"But.. sir, the sorceress is dead..." apparently stupidity had won out as motivating factor.
"Did I not just give you a direct order?" his commander breathed a question, narrowing cerulean eyes in impatience before continuing his ascent. Seifer didn't need to wait for the answer - there were important things to be done. Fucking pansy. No wonder these people needed a man like him to fix things for them.
"... no sir. Sorry, sir..."
The foyer had emptied itself of infection, leaving but that one fragment stranded on perfect steps. The veils on the walls, alas, ,has met their fate at the hand of overzealous soldiers. The acoustics of the empty chamber, however, served to carry one Knight's footsteps over the cacophony.
***
If Delling Palace might easily have been mistaken for a Garden, then Galbadia Garden should have been a fortress rather than a glorified dormitory. A pity, really. Fujin certainly wished that it was. For them it might be full of professionals rather than a bunch of heavily-armed case-studies in the effect of post-traumatic stress syndrome on adolescents. Never mind that two out of three misanthropes would have dubbed the albino the same.
She, at least, wasn't so deluded as to think that the death of Martine would be a great time to attempt to hold some kind of protest turned kegger. Obviously, the students of Galbadia Garden doubted her ability to kick their asses.
Bah. Students. Not soldiers or mercenaries. That was the problem, and the solution.
"RAGE!"
Soldiers for example, would have have taken an aggressive yet defensive position upon the entrance of a hostile force smaller than their own into home territory. Organized some sort of blockade maybe, or if mercenary they could have performed a nasty little guerilla ambush. The trademark of inferior forces everywhere, of course. At the very least it would have involved some kind of convoluted escape plan through ventilation ducts and/or easily locked passages.
When Fujin and her group of higher-level student loyalists made their entrance to the now thoroughly wrecked cafeteria, the general populace didn't bat an eye. Not to mention that it looked like a tornado had recently been interior decorating, rather than any sort of organized defense perimeter having been set up.
And so, it appeared that the new commander had a problem. A very loud, somewhat drunken, and altogether disrespectful problem. Apparently, being... "nice" to them hadn't worked. Bah. The most annoying part was that she knew exactly how it felt - that burning desire to be in control of something. It must be an orphan thing.
Unacceptable, that depth of feeling. That was best left to Seifer.
"RAAAAAAAAAAGE!"
Thereby came the sad, swift, and sudden downfall of three kegs of beer liberated from the kitchens. Poor things. They couldn't have seen the triplet thundaga's heading for them. And surely, if by some hint of extra-sensory perception they could, there was no predicting the sudden and assuredly fierce wind that had sprung up within the chamber.
Now, apparently , she had their attention.
"INSOLENCE!"
But lo, her intimidation tactics had a rather unanticipated effect. Said effect being very little of one. The students seemed more confused than anything, and some of them appeared to be... laughing at her? Stifling giggles in the crowd? These ill-trained, sheltered, pansy students dared to laugh at her!?! And what moron had decided to have a party in the middle of a freaking war zone? And what the hell was this?
Why, the frightening realization that she had no mouthpiece, of course.
And so, before a crowd of several hundred red-clad teenagers, Fujin Asher was faced with a decision. It was the kind of decision that changes things - like the wings of a butterfly fluttering to create a storm ten thousand miles away. A decision that belonged more in some kind of television special about personal growth to be shown after school hours. Something so apparent in it's alteration of reality that it blows the concept of chaos theory right out of the water.
There was only one person here to give discipline.
Ascending the top of one iron table very fortunate not to be a filthy wreck, Fujin Asher did the most courageous thing she'd ever done in her life. Maybe it was a dram of adrenaline become absinth. Or perhaps the desperate, primitive hunger for survival. Power, mayhaps. Or even a blue-eyed ideal goading her on.
But it wasn't.
It was actually rather unconscious.
When Fujin Asher stopped looking like a deer caught in the headlights, she began to speak.
"That was your last mistake of the evening. You are unarmed, yet behaving in an inappropriate manner. I do not wish to open fire, but this is conduct unacceptable in soldiers. So are you soldiers? Or just a lot of whining brats? Either way, I will have discipline here."
And no one was as surprised as she was.
***
"Sir."
An orderly, upon entering General Carroway's office, would be immediately struck with the implicit neatness of the place. Not sterile, mind you, but blessed with a starched sort of quality. Yet said messenger might not, unless confronted with a mirror, realize that he too looked just a little bit starched. Back strait, eyes forward, and a voice exemplifying the impartial military ideal -that was the rule of the day. Carroway, it seemed, was used to things like that. And people always like what they're used to.
"I'm somewhat occupied here. Is it Rinoa?" the beaded man, obviously fatigued, propped his head up only by force of an iron will. The general had, after all, been working out troop movements for most of the night.
"No, sir. We have a communiqué from Delling Palace. Seems that they've holed up under a... "Sir Seifer Almasy", sir? Apparently they're trying to subdue the civilians by force."
"Almasy.. did you say Almasy?" the question in his voice was uncharacteristic. A mark upon the staunch facade that was the man himself, just as out of place as the guttering candles which brought an unreliable light to the chamber. It was too dangerous to put on electric lights - who knew what elements the chaos of the day had brought to a fore?
"Yes, sir."
Again somewhat jarringly - given his usual unflappable manner - the general appeared mildly frustrated. Not a good sign,in a man who'd acquired most of the wrinkles creasing his face at war with the Estharian Empire.
"One of Edea's lapdogs, " the general offered by way of explanation.
"They're requesting support."
".... Withhold. And have our men withdraw to circle this compound. I want barricades on Sussex Street and Beecher Avenue."
It was the general's job to be decisive, and decisive he was. The last thing they needed was for the Sorceress's lackey to make a grab for power at a time like this. Madman - if he wanted to start a civil war, Carroway would give it to him.
Robert Carroway had given up too much for the army - nay , for the nation - for anything else to be acceptable. Rinoa, after all, was out of his grasp.
***
"Squall... I need to rest."
Irvine Kinneas heard the light soprano through a fog of silence. The sort of veil created not by the pained screamings of a panicked mass - though there was that too - but by the mind's ability to willfuly create a mirage. In any case, he really couldn't care less about the comment's implications. The sniper wasn't about to regard much of anything at the moment, pausing in a mad dash to safety prompted only by his more silent companion.
The gunman was calmer now, though. He'd pulled himself together, in the too-hot night air. Had to, stars staring down at them. The whole word was looking, peering into very crack in his facade. Would they see it? Would they find his guilt, his stain?
... not my responsibility..
Not mine.
No.
Not ever.
Focus.
The girl was breathing heavily - obviously unsuited to combat. She smiled at him. Or more accurately, at Squall Leonhart. No matter.
She smiled.. why won't she stop smiling at me?
Matron, please... it's not my fault...
"I'll be alright, though! " the blue-clad girl chirped. Her hair was black as night. And she was smiling. Still smiling. There was gunfire in the air. There was blood in sable tresses. Just like...
No.
Why would she do this?
...it wasn't his fault.. wasn't his...
Couldn't be.
No.
Squall.
Squall had said that he would do it. Squall had said.
This was Squall's fault. He'd show her...
"You alright, Irvine?" Rinoa interrupted, apparently undaunted by her ordeal.
"Stop that!"
The sniper backed away, slowly raising a rifle whose voice was twinned most everywhere.
"Stop what?" the girl's brow creased in confusion. Rinoa was one of the more naive souls to grace this particular rooftop. And her voice...
She was really being very nice to him.
"You... it's your... STOP IT!" Irvine managed a growl, continuing his weapon's ascent in some soft of defensive arc. Not practiced though, more of an instinctual blocking.
Their fearless leader Squall was, as usual, oblivious. He'd likely been paying more attention to the possible motions of surrounding troops and the implications of a spreading blaze. Which was all very well and good, even though the play of firelight on Rinoa's obsidian locks might have played just the tiniest part in his distraction. The girl certainly would have liked that, but one never really knew with a man like Squall.
"Both of you - we have to keep moving..." leather-clad apathy gestured to a ladder. There was no observable reaction when Irvine turned towards him , firearm raised.
"This is your fault! Your responsibility!" a whisper in the night.
"What?" the response came like blood from a stone. Apparently the impervious Mr.Leonhart could be made to react after all, even if it was to the sort of glimmer in blue eyes that he might never notice on an ordinary day.
"You said it. You said so yourself. Just a signal.. just a sign..."
Such inattentiveness was probably why he hadn't noticed something in the sniper before. Something... broken. An air of wrongness that might as well be labeled sound psychiatric diagnosis.
Just a signal.. just a sign...
I'll prove it to her. I will. Then she'll stop, I know it.
Then she'll smile at him.
"You were the one that killed her. Why did you kill Matron? Why won't she stop smiling at me? It's not my fault," and suddenly , expressive lips were curled upwards in their own parody of a smile, framed by waved chestnut hair. Relief, perhaps? Perhaps - it was an expression almost childlike in nature. Irvine Kinneas was, at that moment, reduced to something like a peculiar stage of infancy - that where one is full of questions which cannot be answered.
Squall, of course, noticed none of that.
"Irvine?"
"It's your fault. And I'm going to prove it to her. I'm going to make her stop..." it was the sort of smile used for seduction. One that men of certain tastes practice in the eternal hope that they too might become the fabled 'lady's man'. A grin with a tinge of lust, a dram of longing. Just the right amount of charm to draw the unsuspecting like moths to a flame, and a suitable measure of poison added for that special air of danger.
It was with that smirk that Irvine Kinneas, the greatest sniper in all the gardens, opened fire. Perhaps he thought it was his right, or his duty, or his penance. Or maybe when one single bullet tore through the air, matched by the sound that signals flight or death, he wasn't thinking at all.
Regardless, when it summoned forth the blood in Squall Leonhart's chest, impact pushed the mercenary over the edge of the building and into the night. His blood didn't even stand a chance to reach the concrete. And Irvine could keep smiling.
Because it wasn't his fault. It wasn't.
And the girl had stopped smiling. Just for now.
Matron... you see now don't you? You understand? They don't have to remember - and they promised.
They promised.
You always said that I should make sure that people fulfill their promises, Matron.
"Wh- what have you done, Irvine? Why... why would you.. he was..." a tear-stained, heart-shaped face attempted to intrude upon the sniper's vision. Alas, it could not.
And I did it just like the men in school said that I was supposed to.
Aren't I a good boy, Matron?
Maybe I shall go to the beach. We liked the beach, didn't we? There was sun, and clouds....
I liked the beach, out by the lighthouse. I liked to make sand castles. The waves were big. And you would play with me - you looked so pretty, Matron. And you'd smile at me.
But not that smile. That smile's for him.
Yes.
"I'm going to the beach," Irvine veritably sang, balancing on the ledge twixt adjacent structures. Rinoa had fallen to her knees, sobbing into air whose humidity just might have a chance at matching the moisture of her tears.
Because I didn't do it.
I didn't.
And I'm not going to think about it.
***
"What the fuck was that noise!?" the white knight came charging up the steps. Her white knight, in point of fact, though not to be confused with the black knight who lay bleeding three stories below.
" Don't fucking move, either of you. Decide to shoot up more women, you honorless femmy scumbag?"
A second - or possibly a year - later, when Rinoa Heartilly though once more to breath, she found herself bawling.
"Oh, I get it. You finally got some blood on your hands, eh Rinoa? You're both coming with me."
The man she loved had been shot. The man who was supposed to protect her in case of his injury was the one who had done the shooting. And the man she had thrown away, and was maybe just a little bit still attracted too, was coming after her with a gunblade. It was, therefore, a pretty decent time to start crying. Better than shock, at any rate. Rinoa had never thrived out of the company of men.
But at least the crazy man was running away - that was good, right? Seifer hadn't hit him with his bullets, like the crazy man had hit Squall.
"What!? Get the hell back here, prettyboy!"
Maybe this was all a dream. Yes, that must be it. Things like this didn't happen to her. Things like this never happened to her. Everyone loved Rinoa, right? People made things okay for her - daddy's little princess. Most everyone called her a princess, even if she wasn't one. A delicate girl.
So why was Seifer grabbing her arm and dragging her back into the palace instead of comforting her?
And why wasn't Squall coming up that ladder, freshly curaga'd , to save her?
Rinoa didn't understand. Just didn't understand it at all - the look of pain which had served to doubly scar her beloved's face. Because things like that weren't seen by her. That was what SeeDs and boyfriends and fathers were for.
Alright, so maybe shock played a part in her silent weeping, as she limply allowed herself to be guided back into the building.
***
"Sir, General Carroway has refused all requests to establish a coordinated effort. His aide also mentioned that the Sorceress is indeed dead, her successor being held by the General, and that he believes we should proceed at once to place ourselves under..."
Sir Almasy sat, night enthroned, in the former chamber of Sorceress Edea herself. Considering the night's events, a fitting revolution.
"Sorceress?"
"Yes sir."
"Ignoble moron. If the Sorceress had a successor, she isn't dead at all. Tell that bitch Carroway's people that I want their Sorceress, and that I expect the whole of the armed forces to be placed under my jurisdiction by sunrise, " Seifer Almasy grinned for the first time in hours like the proverbial Cheshire cat, " Tell them... that I have his daughter."
She had been fun, Rinoa - thought it wasn't really a huge surprise to see that that pansy Leonhart had somehow dragged her into things. But the Sorceress was more important. The dream just wouldn't perish, you see. That it might was simply inconceivable. The Sorceress was alive - and he could make the world fit for her. They had cherished their New Reality so much...
Seifer Almasy never failed.
***
That night, Fujin Asher took command for the first time in her life. And she spoke to a crowd of hundreds, about abandonment and war and death and a thousand other things she knew inside out. She didn't once think about Seifer.
That night, Seifer Almasy decided that something needed fixing. That a dream was not only worth his own death, but that of a thousand others. That a Knight - and only a Knight - could make things right. Whether the world liked it or not.
That night, Quistis Trepe lay in a coma, awaiting the care of a Dr.Kadowaki. Raijin Kasim told two hundred scared young children a story. Zell Dincht helped to build barricades, Selphie Tilmitt took a nice hot shower, and Rinoa Heartilly cried herself into slumber in a locked stateroom.
General Robert Carroway didn't sleep a wink.
That night, Irvine Kinneas lost his way. He was only trying to find the beach. For some reason Matron wouldn't let him go to bed yet. Why didn't she believe him?
That night, Edea Kramer's body was burned to ashes.
That night, Squall Leonhart lay broken on the pavement. As the rain washed away his blood and the people's burning rage, his form became ever more still...
But when the sun rose, he blinked.