A/N: For the person who asked, I plan to finish this before the 15th. (I'm really excited to start on my new one!) And, to Trista-Selphie...I'm planning on reading your stuff later tonight, and thanks so much for all the really nice compliments!! You're too sweet :-)
Chapter 20: Telling the Truth
Seifer pulled a hat down low over his face as he walked onto the only boat still anchored in the harbor. Quistis was directly in front of him, her hair loose and a pair of sunglasses perched on her nose. They'd left the orphanage early in the morning, and Seifer had reluctantly awoken Faber to say goodbye. Never in his life had he become so attached to another human being in such a short amount of time. Generally speaking, he avoided all forms of bonding. Becoming close to someone meant facing the risk of loosing that person. Besides, he had himself to take care of.
Faber though, he had been able to breach every single one of Seifer's defenses with one smile. It was more than just the fact that Faber worshiped him as a hero, it was the explicit trust and affection that the child immediately displayed toward him. No one had ever liked him right away for who he was. He wasn't, after all, a very likeable guy.
"Tickets?" a big, sweaty man stuck out his hand at Quistis as they walked by.
"Right here," she said, dropping them elegantly in the man's grubby palm.
"Alright," he looked at the tickets, reading over the small print. "Balamb is the second stop, be paying attention because we're not going to make some sort of big announcement when we get there."
"Okay." Quistis paused and looked around the ship. "Do we have a room?"
"It's nothing fancy," the man scratched at the back of his head. "Down those steps over there...should be the third door on the right. Shouldn't need a key, the door doesn't lock."
"Wonderful." Quistis set Seifer a slightly disgusted look. He followed her obediently down the said steps, leaving the man behind to deal with the next lucky customers who had bought passage on the ship.
There were a string of small, yellowy lights running along the ceiling of the hallway. A few of the rooms, Seifer guessed, were storage. The ship obviously wasn't a passenger one by design. Their room was nothing more than a single, rectangle shaped hollow. A bed sat in the middle of it, and a mirror hung on one wall. Other than a small, frightening looking sink, there was no other furniture.
"This is nice..." Seifer grunted. "Real first class."
"It's not like we're going to be staying here very long," she replied.
Seifer was fighting the urge to ask her why she didn't just contact Garden and request a transport. It would have been cheaper, quicker, and much more comfortable. He figured that if he asked her, she would probably freak out and yell at him. She'd been awfully moody since their kiss.
The kiss. He'd liked it, a lot. And he wanted to find the chance to repeat the wonderful little occurrence. While sometimes Quistis seemed perfectly willing to press her lips to his yet again, most of the time she was reverting back to hostility. He didn't think she would kiss him without reason to do so, and he could find no other reason for it than that she liked him. That theory was further supported by the things that had happened between them since the snowstorm.
She'd slept in the same bed as him without complaint. She'd opened up to him and talked about their childhood. She'd joked and laughed with him. She'd told him that she loved him.
That still bothered him. Her confession pricked incessantly at his brain. If she was confident enough to be able to say that, or even think it, why was she so unsure now? What did he want from her anyway?
"You get what you pay for, I suppose," she announced, running one finger inside of the sink.
He set his things down on the floor and took a seat on the side of the bed. Quistis followed suit, flopping down beside him with a long sigh.
Seifer sat silent for sometime, debating whether or not to try and wring the truth from Quistis once and for all. His future in Balamb was shaky at best. He really wasn't sure just how angry people were at him. There could be a lynch mob waiting when he arrived, or a group of people wondering who the hell he was. If the former were the case, he didn't want to be left with many dangling questions.
"Matron was disappointed in me, I think," she suddenly blurted out. "For taking you back, I mean."
"Why?"
"She wanted me to leave you there with her." She bit at her bottom lip.
Edea was a one of a kind sort of woman. Her capacity to care for others never ceased to amaze Seifer , especially considering his own inabilities in that area. At least, until recently he'd had difficulty convincing himself to care about others.
"She could have just come with us, I suppose," Quistis said, laying back across the bed with a sigh. "Of course, then Faber would have wanted to come along too, and no one would be taking care of the rest of the children."
"Do you not like Faber, or something?" Seifer asked. As time went on, Quistis seemed more and more antagonistic toward the child, and he couldn't fathom any reason why they wouldn't get along.
"I like him well enough," she evaded, closing her eyes. The ship was rocking slightly back and forth with waves, but the movement didn't seem to bother her. Seifer had eventually gotten used to being on the water on their boat trip to Centra, but as they sat in their room he found himself struggling to acclimate himself once again. He liked to have both of his feet on the land, boats weren't his thing.
They sat for a few moments in silence, Seifer forcing his body to once again get used to being in constant motion. On the way to Centra he'd been mildly sea sick for the first day, not going so far as to vomit over the side of the ship, but he'd felt extremely uncomfortable. He wasn't looking forward to repeating the episode, and was sincerely hoping that he wouldn't have to. Thus far things were going well, his stomach felt quite content if not a little nervous.
"Are you okay?" Quistis asked, cracking one eye open.
"Great, why?"
"You're quiet," she shrugged. "Thought maybe you weren't feeling well again."
"Actually, I'm feeling pretty good this time," he took a deep breath. "We're not out on the open sea yet though." He was miserable just thinking about the hell of seasickness.
"You'll be okay," she replied confidently, sitting up on her elbows. "You never got sick before when we used to take Garden transports. I think it was just that you hadn't been on the water in a long time."
"Maybe," he frowned. There was nothing more disgusting, more completely unnerving to him than having his body revolt beyond his control in such a vile manner. He didn't like to see other people vomit, and he hated to do so himself.
"Want something for it?" she asked, looking concerned.
"You have something?"
"Well, after you spent the last trip hanging over a bucket and groaning miserably," she tilted her head a little, "I decided to buy a little something for motion sickness this time around."
Seifer was oddly touched. Quistis was taking care of him, watching out for him. It was a sign that she cared, and it was rare that someone would care enough to think ahead and plan for his comfort.
She didn't wait for him to reply, but got up and rummaged through her bag. She was wearing an airy blue and white dress that fell just blow her knees, and he traced the way it outlined her as she had her back to him. The look was fitting for her, summery and careless. Her hair spilling down her back and strappy sandals completed the look, and in his mind's eye he could see her wandering up and down some distant beach.
"Here you go," she stood up, smoothing down her dress, and handed him a small bottle. "They're probably going to make you drowsy though."
He looked down at the bottle with only slight interest, he was feeling fine. Still, he stashed it away for future use. One they left the harbor he figured he'd pop one and hopefully get some sleep. Quistis reclaimed her spot on the bed beside him, but she didn't lay back down. Instead she watched his every move with interest.
"Thanks," he finally said.
"No problem."
He looked at her for a moment, trying to work up the courage to ask her about what she had said back in Trabia. There wasn't generally a lack of candor apparent in him, but dealing with softer emotions was much different than criticizing someone.
Dragging a hand through his hair, he sighed, angry at himself for being such a coward.
Quistis looked at him curiously, noticing his unease.
"Sure you're feeling okay?" she asked.
"I'm fine," he nodded, working again at a good way of brining up her confession. He wasn't even completely sure that he wanted to know the truth if it turned out that he was merely kidding himself in thinking she could possibly like him. What reason did she have to like him?
"Okay...well, I'm going to go dig up a bucket just in case," she announced, skeptical of his insistence that he was feeling fine.
"Quistis," he grabbed her arm, "I'm fine."
"Something's bugging you," she shook her head. "I can tell."
"Really? When did you become the expert on me?" he asked.
"When I spent forever and a day trapped in a room with you," she retorted quickly.
"Then maybe you can tell me what's bothering me," he grinned. What better way to bring up an uncomfortable subject than force someone else to? She pressed her lips together and looked at him, knowing all the while what he was thinking of.
"Me?" she asked somewhat hesitantly. She was standing in front of him, and he was still holding on to her arm. The world was slowly beginning to bleed away, and in the dark room of the ship, the facts of their life didn't seem to matter so much as what was going on inside of them. Seifer, for one, was reluctant to look at what was going on inside of himself. Part of him was convinced that he only felt anything toward Quistis because he was starved for any sort of relationship.
"Something you said," he finally managed to spit the words out.
"Oh?" she arched one eyebrow curiously. "What did I say?"
Seifer stared up at her, once again unable to find the courage to tell her. He was getting closer, so much closer, but he still couldn't get himself to take that one last step.
"It's not important," he shrugged. "You weren't thinking clearly at the time anyway."
"Does this have anything to do with when I kissed you?" she asked.
"Yes and no..." How could he possibly explain that she'd blurted out some of the most important words in the English language to him?
Quistis smiled a little down at him, amused at his lack for words and insecurity. Seifer didn't like his sudden falling out of character, and frowned deeply in reply to her grin. She leaned down and kissed his cheek with a light, distinctly feminine laugh.
Seifer turned his head before she could pull away, because he knew that she was going to. If Quistis was anything, she was constant and predictable (for the most part anyway). His nose brushed against hers, their lips close enough that he could feel her breath. The rocking of the boat seemed to increase in those moments, nearly sending him off balance. His head spun, and his eyes closed halfway.
Her caught her mouth once, lightly. There was barely any contact to the kiss, just a light brushing of his lips across her bottom one. Seifer had never done anything so delicately. It was like he was suddenly worried about breaking her, knowing all the while that if she did break it would be into hundreds of shards left to lodge under his skin. She had the capacity to hurt him terribly in those moments, but as he returned for a second light kiss, she hadn't pulled away. Instead, she gently returned the gesture, prolonging their contact by precious seconds.
"Seifer?" she murmured against his mouth, her legs folding underneath her as she dropped down onto her knees on the floor.
"Hmm?" He kissed her again, letting go of her arm in order to frame her face with his hands. It didn't matter that she was the bounty hunter and he the criminal. Social standings are easily forgotten in solitude, and they well could have been the only two people in the world.
She scooted toward him a little, her stomach pressed against the bed, his knees flanking her on either side.
"This shouldn't have happened," she whispered, opening her eyes to look at him.
"But it did," he pointed out. Seifer had spent the past few years of his life trying to forget the past. It had taken him a long while to realize that it was just that, the past. There was nothing he could do to change it, he could only hope to take a lesson from it and move on. The past was hard to let go of, almost as difficult as it had been for him to finally relinquish his hold on his dreams. He'd strangled them to death, held them until they turned to dust in his hands. By the time he'd come to release them, there was little left for him to move on to. A life as a fugitive, a man without a face or name wandering listlessly about the world. Only since Quistis had shown up that dark morning in Timber had he grasped back onto life and hope.
She looked down, her hands resting on his thighs.
"I tried to leave you there, you know," he informed her. "Back in Timber, in the blizzard. I walked away out into the snow...but I couldn't keep going. I turned around and got you because I couldn't leave you. And, damn, I tried hard to."
Her head snapped up, her eyes widening in surprise. He supposed that she figured he'd changed before the snowstorm, enabling her to reason out why he'd saved her in the first place. In a way, he supposed he hadn't changed so much as allowed part of himself in control that he didn't normally. He was the same man who'd become the sorceress' knight, he was the same child who had pulled her hair and stole her toys, he was still Seifer Almasy. She had to realize that the man she was looking at had been present the entire time, perhaps suppressed or covered up, but always at the core of his being.
"You were out of it," he shook his head, wrapping an arm slowly around her waist. "Going on and on about Squall, and Garden..."
Her blue eyes searched his, looking for some indication of where she was headed with his story.
Seifer leaned forward to kiss her again, closing his eyes so he wouldn't have to see the look on her face when he spoke. Nuzzling his face against hers, he murmured, "You said that you love me."
She stiffened in his grasp, probably becoming really aware for the first time of what they were doing. She was tucked against him, their intimacy seemingly non-sequitor with their destination.
"I did?" she finally choked out.
Now he needed to see her expression, he had to know the truth.
Her face was flushed and pale, her eyes wide. Luckily, she didn't seem angry or even particularly embarrassed, just surprised.
"Do you?"
She paused. "I don't know..."
It wasn't a no, and that was something at least. He searched her eyes for a moment, his arm tightening slightly around her to bring her up more firmly against the side of the bed.
"What about you?" She turned the situation around, looking up at him with blatant curiosity. Did he? No...not Could he tell her that? Absolutely not. He liked her, but love wasn't part of Seifer's vocabulary. How was a person supposed to recognize love anyway?
"That's a good question."
She planted one more clinging kiss to his mouth before pushing against his knees to stand back up. Seifer watched her walk out of the room, still trying to find the answer to that one simple question. Did he love her? Could he love her? With him, love was a fragile and crumbling thing, a neglected art that had been long since forgotten.
