Disclaimer: Don't own 'em, wish I did. All characters but the two cadets in
the last bit belong to Squaresoft, lucky swines that they are.
In other news, I reread the last three chapters and came to the conclusion that there wasn't quite enough violence and cussing to warrant an R rating. That, and FF.net has this irritating habit of only displaying G - PG-13 stories as a default setting. And have they ever explained the rationale behind banning NC-17 stories altogether?
CHAPTER FOUR
Selphie opened her eyes.
For a moment, she felt wild, irrational panic at the darkness. Just for a moment. Then her eyes focussed on the wall clock opposite her bed. Its luminous hands slowly made their way to eleven o' clock, whether a.m. or p.m., she could not say. She closed her eyes again and slumped back down onto the bed, breathing deeply and regularly, until her heart had reacquired its normal rhythm. She tried to remember what she'd been dreaming about, but nothing came. She hadn't even been asleep, really, but had hovered for hours in that restless stasis between wakefulness and repose.
Dear Hyne, how MANY hours?
She sat up, swung her legs off the bed and bowed her head, rubbing her temples with stiff fingers until the throbbing went away. Then she rose, shuffled over to her dorm's window and jerked open the thick blinds.
Ow. Ow. Ow.
Okay, WAY too much time in the dark.
She blinked furiously until her eyes were used to the bright light outside, swearing softly under her breath, before risking another peek outside. The Garden had stopped moving, that much was certain. The dull rumble of its engines, or whatever means of propulsion it possessed, had ceased a little while ago. It had been almost soothing, that faint, distant hum. Certainly, it had almost been enough to lull her into blessed, truly dreamless sleep, and perhaps its absence had been what had woken her.
Below her, the seas rippled calmly, stirred by a lazy south wind, as she peered into the distance, just able to make out the coast of a nearby continent. She narrowed her eyes as she focussed on the large house nestled right on the beach. Centra. The Orphanage, she was sure. It was difficult to make out the details from that distance, but you didn't really need phenomenal deductive powers when there was a whopping great lighthouse stabbing up at the sky. Dead giveaway, really.
The orphanage. Her childhood home. All of theirs, including---his.
She slumped back down onto her bed, ruffling the half-kicked off covers even further, the effort of trying not to think about what happened threatening to overwhelm her once again. Again, (She'd lost track of how many times, exactly), she felt Quistis' pale, sickly body cradled in her arms, blood staining the fabric of her dress and the tears rolling freely down her face as she screamed in helpless anguish, viciously, mindlessly struggling against Irvine and Zell as they tried to pull her away.
She struck her bedstead with a tight fist, the action dulling the memory, replacing it with brief pain. Then, after a few minutes of lying still, with her eyes screwed shut to keep the tears back, she rose unsteadily to her feet and lurched off to the shower.
The hot, almost scalding water stimulated her senses, giving her still slightly shocked mind something else to focus on. As did the arduous process of drying and curling her shoulder length brown tresses up into her usual style, as well as dressing, tightening the straps on her knee-length boots and performing her routine check on her nunchuku. She occupied her mind with focussing on every last aspect of her every movement. Better to fill it with the usual, mundane things rather than any other memories it might randomly flash before her eyes.
And her mind just froze completely whenever she considered, even remotely, the possibility of going down to the sickbay to see how Quistis was.
She glanced again at her clock before pausing in front of her front door, taking a deep breath and whispering a prayer before opening it. A quick glance outside confirmed her hopes; Irvine had gone.
She felt relieved and yet, at the same time, felt a pang of regret, and something else. Loneliness? Abandonment?
How long had he sat out here anyway, cajoling, pleading? Trying his damnedest to get her to come out of her shell, desperately trying to convince her that it wasn't her fault? She didn't really know, and another random feeling struck her. Guilt? At what? At not answering him, just once, too wrapped up in her selfish little universe of sorrow? And if not that, then what? What was she feeling?
*Whatever*, she thought, trying unsuccessfully to brush the thought away before shutting the door behind her and making her way slowly, but with increasing confidence, toward the training centre. An hour or two or three of slaughtering captured monsters ought to be enough to calm her, and give her something to focus on as she plucked up the courage and strength to go to the bloody sickbay and see just how her friend was doing. If anything, she owed her at least that.
"Wait here," Squall ordered. At the open rear door of the SeeD hovercraft, Xu nodded wordlessly, and Squall strode the last few steps down the ramp onto the beach. His boots left deep impressions in the damp sand that were swallowed up as quickly as they were made as he made his way higher up onto the sands toward the figure awaiting him at the foot of the weather-beaten stone stairs leading down from the house.
Long, dark tresses flowed down onto her shoulders, framing a youthful face only just now beginning to show the first signs of age. A long, plain grey and white dress, coming down to her ankles, only served to accentuate her feminine grace, even with a white woollen shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders against the winds that blew in from the North. But her face, with its dark eyes and slight smile, was unmistakeably that of a mother. Squall's mother, in a way. Certainly, she was the mother he and the others had never had, and she was most definitely realer to them than the women who had given them life.
"Squall," she said simply, by way of greeting.
"Matron. I," he began, but cut off as, suddenly, she stepped forward, wrapping both arms around him. For a moment, he stood frozen, uncertain how to respond to an action that once would have calmed him but which now came from the woman who was once his enemy. Then he relaxed, and returned her embrace, a son come home from a long journey.
When they parted, she looked him over with a critical eye. "Hmm," she mused, an amused sparkle lighting her eyes, so sombre before. "Even Rinoa doesn't seem to have persuaded you to cut that mop."
He ran a hand self consciously through said mop, a faint grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Nah. It's got a personality all on its own now. Cutting it would be like losing an old friend."
The two shared a laugh, albeit a faint one. Even after six months, Edea Kramer and her former charges were still so uncertain of the nature of their relationship. They were all still feeling their way. But they still visited her. Not merely out of duty, either. Hell, more and more it seemed that Cid didn't have to cajole or shame them into going quite as much as he once did. A bit more time, and they would almost be comfortable with her again.
They walked along the beach, toward the lighthouse. Occasionally, children's laughter would waft over them, prompting Squall to jerk his head around in surprise, eliciting a laugh from Edea each time.
"What?" she queried with a raised eyebrow. "It gets lonely here, you know, even with Cid coming home every Friday. And you and Zell and the others aren't the only orphans in the world."
"Yeah, but---" he flailed helplessly for the right words as she looked at him expectantly. "I guess.I just didn't expect it, is all."
She smiled again and shook her head, sighing. Then she grew solemn, stopped and turned and faced him. Taking a deep breath, she asked. "How is Quisty?" At his look of surprise, she added, humourlessly, "Cid called me when it happened. No sorceresses or scrying, just good old-fashioned communication."
He ran a hand through his hair again in his characteristic, nervous tic. "She'll recover. At least, that's what Doctor Kadowaki says." He frowned. "She's almost all healed. But the shock of it all was---she just needs to wake up, now. Come back to us. Just a matter of time, really."
"You sound like you don't believe that."
"I do," he countered, firmly. "Its Quistis. She'll pull through. She always has."
Edea nodded, then looked away, out to sea towards the floating garden, the one she'd once been hell-bent on annihilating. Squall waited for a moment, allowing it to sink in, before continuing. "If you know what happened, then you also know." He broke off, waiting for her to continue.
She bowed her head silently, and then nodded. "Seifer."
He placed a hand on her shoulder, his own gentleness surprising him. "Matron---I have to know. Can you still---"
"---sense him?" she finished for him, bitterly. "Control him?" She turned back toward him, and the intensity in her eyes compelled him to take a step back. "No. No, Squall, I can't. I lost that ability when my powers passed on to Rinoa. And that is the truth."
He shook his head. "Matron, I---" he fumbled for the right words, uncertain of what to say. "I'm not accusing you of anything. I just---you can't even sense him?"
She shook her head no, wordlessly, tightly, still peering straight at him with burning eyes. Had he looked closer, perhaps he might have seen how close they were to welling up with tears. "I don't know why he did what he did. Why he hurt Quistis. Cid told me you suspected that someone was controlling him. Well, it wasn't me. But maybe---maybe the power that's making him act that way is---Oh, I can't describe it in words you'd understand!" She shook her head made a short, ironic, bitter noise at the back of her throat. "Like---a leftover, a remnant of a spell that wasn't dissipated when Ultimecia was defeated, causing him to---do things. Things he wouldn't ordinarily do."
Squall was silent for a moment, as the momentary anger in her eyes faded away and she turned to face the sea once more. Things he wouldn't ordinarily do? Bullshit. There was no way that he could believe that a person could be taken over so completely by another, especially not once so strong-willed as Seifer. He was responsible for the death or injury of hundreds of people, had simply and cold-heartedly thrown Rinoa to the nonexistent mercies of the revived Adel and now he'd almost fatally wounded one of Squall's---one of his OWN---childhood friends, all the while seeming to be in perfect control of himself and his abilities.
Someone like Seifer couldn't do that sort of thing on the whim of another, even if he weren't in complete control of himself. As Squall remembered, when he did something it was ALWAYS with utmost and extreme confidence. Squall wouldn't believe it.
He could not. If the control spell was so successful, it must have been because, on some level not too deeply buried, Seifer must have wanted it---
Aloud, he said: "All right. So if it isn't an outside force, but some kind of---remnant of the original sorceress' control.how can it be dispelled?"
Edea paused in thought, now on familiar ground. She had crafted countless spells over the years, and still retained the knowledge now, even though she had no means of ever casting them again. "Not by your average spell, like Dispel or something similar. It can be done, and I know how, but it would take another sorceress to do it."
Squall's face tightened. "Like Rinoa."
Edea tensed, sensing the edge to his voice. "Yes," she conceded, guardedly, not pleased with the direction that the conversion had taken. "She could do it, yes."
"Would you be willing to teach her?"
Silence fell between them, with Squall waiting expectantly for an answer and Edea staring at him, uncertain of what to think.
Finally, she said, gently, " Squall.For a spell to have persisted this long, it must be extremely powerful.the kind of energy you'd need to dissipate it might be enough of a shock to kill him! Are you sure you could- --"
"Answer, yes or no, Matron," Squall said abruptly, cutting off any protest. "He's not going to stay hidden for long, I don't think. Sooner or later, he'll resurface, and I want to be able to deal with him, once and for all, whatever it takes!" Edea watched as a hand crept unconsciously to the handle of the Gunblade slung from his belt. "With the spell you could teach Rinoa, he MAY survive. But I promise you, if he reappears and tries something, there's no way in hell that he'll survive MY method of dealing with him! Now will you teach Rinoa?"
Edea stared at him in stunned shock, unable to believe that her ears had just heard the request he'd made.
"Squall," she whispered. "I told you.dispelling the control could kill him."
"And I just told you," he growled. "That I most definitely WILL kill him, because if you won't help, then there'll be no other way. He's not gonna just surrender."
Again, that thunderous silence.
Finally, Edea sighed and whispered, defeated; "Fine. I'll teach Rinoa."
He nodded, satisfied. The hand left his Gunblade. The gesture hadn't been meant to frighten her---he probably hadn't really been aware of it---but nevertheless, she wrapped her shawl all the more tightly around her shoulders at the sudden chill of his demeanour. "I'll send her around later today."
He bowed respectfully to her and turned on his heels. He made as if to go, then paused long enough to look over his shoulder and say, stiffly, albeit sincerely; "Thank you, Matron."
And as she watched his retreating back, she noted, with some irony and no amusement whatsoever, that she'd seen that stubborn resolution, that single- minded focus in another of her children. And the road that she'd made that one travel had lead only to ruin for them both.
She had little time for such thoughts, though. As always, the children called her back, with another scraped knee, or petty insult-match or simple cry for attention. But her mind remained troubled long after the SeeD hovercraft had embarked from the beach and sped back to the offshore Balamb Garden.
EVENING
"Remind me again," growled SeeD cadet Jon Mannheim as he laboriously applied another coat of wax to the side of SeeD hovercraft III, with a grimy, ragged cloth which appeared to have been passed down along the generations. "Just why we're down here at bloody eleven at night waxing up every SeeD vehicle three times over?"
His companion, Jhana Kang, peeked her head around the nose of the craft and scowled at him, idly toying with the idea fetching one of the hoses with which the bay was equipped and spraying him with it until he'd run out of curses. "That, my dear Manny," she said sweetly instead, albeit with significant and quite detectable malice. "May have something to do with the way you turned Instructor Aki's classroom into a meat locker with one of your Blizzard spells. Which you WEREN'T authorised to cast even in training just yet, never mind in class."
He swore under his breath, paused in his labours and shot back: "Well, that's the reason they gave, but c'mon! First offence, and no one was hurt by it anyway, so what the fuck?!? They made us clean it up, and I promised I'd never do it again anyway."
"True. After swearing you had nothing to do with it, after which they threw both you AND me down here."
"Hey, hey, whoa! I may have been the reason that Instructor Aki had a mild case of frost-bite, but whose bright idea was it to try using Fire to thaw him out?"
Despite the bleak punishment of being made to wash and wax the five SeeD hovercraft stowed in the hangar, Jon grinned at the sound of the angry mutterings coming from the opposite side of the vehicle. The two hapless Cadets were in one of the vast storage spaces in Balamb Garden's lower levels. There were two such chambers, discovered six months previously when dire circumstances involving everything from a Faculty revolt to a missile attack had eventually culminating in Balamb first taking to the skies. One of them housed five SeeD Hovercrafts, specially outfitted to be launched from Garden without the installation having to be touched down, and capable of being housed back in their hangar via a system of cranes and pulleys. The other chamber, above this one, only barely managed to accommodate the huge Estharian Ragnarok aircraft.
"Well, whatever," he said, with a victorious chuckle, raising himself up from his haunches with a grunt and straightening up, wincing at the sound his spine made as it stretched out. "I'm done my side. Two more to go, and we're outta here. Thank Hyne tomorrow's Saturday, that's all I can say." A noise from within the craft caused him to jerk his head around with a curse. "Damn. Thought I'd secured all the overhead storage compartments already."
He stalked to the ramp leading into the passenger area of the craft and trotted up it, still grumbling about how reactionary the disciplinary board was getting these days. Jhana buffed the last patch of hull and squinted into it, contorting her face into humorous expressions and giggling at her even more distorted mirror image. At least she'd done a good job at it---
From within, there was a yelp and a thud, like flesh striking metal from a height. She shook her head. "Clumsy jackass," she sighed, getting up and making her way to the back of the craft.
"Manny, jeez," she laughed as she rounded the hull and came to the open ramp. "It's not like its even dark enough in there for you not to see the hatch before you run into---" And then her characteristic Dolletian wit died on her lips. Within the dim passenger area, her companion and partner in crime lay face down on the deck, and in the space behind him, something-- -someone---just seemed to materialise from nothing.
She backed away, awkwardly down the ramp as a bloodied spectre strode cockily down the ramp on to the floor of the bay after her. A shiny, obviously well maintained gunblade was clasped in one hand, finger on the trigger, in alert readiness. The long, grey trench coat worn by the newcomer was sliced in some places, and stained with dried blood, days old. And his face was twisted in a cruel smirk, almost a leer, as he edged his way toward her. And as he did, the short, angry scar that split his face between the eyes marked him out for all the world to see.
Her backward advance was halted as she backed into the hull of another craft. Trapped. She pressed herself up against it in terror as the figure advanced to within two feet of her, twisting its head from side to side, working out the kinks of two days spent curled in the substructure of the hovercraft, in the area beneath the seats, between the hull and the part of the craft actually meant for human habitation. She could only stare in mute paralysis as he reached out one, gloved hand out to stroke her cheek.
"Please," he whispered, through tight lips as sweat beaded on his forehead. The voice was far away, ethereal. Pained? "Don't struggle. It'll be much, much worse if you do."
Then the tautness of his face faded away, relaxed, and the newly serene visage resumed its smirk. With one hand, it swung its gunblade out and brought it down on her with a flash.
Her scream was short, sharp and lost in the bowels of the thunderous Garden, with none to hear it.
A/N: Many thanks to all of my reviewers! Nice to know that there's someone out there reading this. Thanks for all the encouragement. Squall, I know what you mean. I'm almost tempted to slap "Queifer" on it. That usually draws the crowds, I must say.
Cheers. Expect regular updates until Christmas, then afterward into the New Year. I'll finish this thing regardless of the cost to my sanity.
In other news, I reread the last three chapters and came to the conclusion that there wasn't quite enough violence and cussing to warrant an R rating. That, and FF.net has this irritating habit of only displaying G - PG-13 stories as a default setting. And have they ever explained the rationale behind banning NC-17 stories altogether?
CHAPTER FOUR
Selphie opened her eyes.
For a moment, she felt wild, irrational panic at the darkness. Just for a moment. Then her eyes focussed on the wall clock opposite her bed. Its luminous hands slowly made their way to eleven o' clock, whether a.m. or p.m., she could not say. She closed her eyes again and slumped back down onto the bed, breathing deeply and regularly, until her heart had reacquired its normal rhythm. She tried to remember what she'd been dreaming about, but nothing came. She hadn't even been asleep, really, but had hovered for hours in that restless stasis between wakefulness and repose.
Dear Hyne, how MANY hours?
She sat up, swung her legs off the bed and bowed her head, rubbing her temples with stiff fingers until the throbbing went away. Then she rose, shuffled over to her dorm's window and jerked open the thick blinds.
Ow. Ow. Ow.
Okay, WAY too much time in the dark.
She blinked furiously until her eyes were used to the bright light outside, swearing softly under her breath, before risking another peek outside. The Garden had stopped moving, that much was certain. The dull rumble of its engines, or whatever means of propulsion it possessed, had ceased a little while ago. It had been almost soothing, that faint, distant hum. Certainly, it had almost been enough to lull her into blessed, truly dreamless sleep, and perhaps its absence had been what had woken her.
Below her, the seas rippled calmly, stirred by a lazy south wind, as she peered into the distance, just able to make out the coast of a nearby continent. She narrowed her eyes as she focussed on the large house nestled right on the beach. Centra. The Orphanage, she was sure. It was difficult to make out the details from that distance, but you didn't really need phenomenal deductive powers when there was a whopping great lighthouse stabbing up at the sky. Dead giveaway, really.
The orphanage. Her childhood home. All of theirs, including---his.
She slumped back down onto her bed, ruffling the half-kicked off covers even further, the effort of trying not to think about what happened threatening to overwhelm her once again. Again, (She'd lost track of how many times, exactly), she felt Quistis' pale, sickly body cradled in her arms, blood staining the fabric of her dress and the tears rolling freely down her face as she screamed in helpless anguish, viciously, mindlessly struggling against Irvine and Zell as they tried to pull her away.
She struck her bedstead with a tight fist, the action dulling the memory, replacing it with brief pain. Then, after a few minutes of lying still, with her eyes screwed shut to keep the tears back, she rose unsteadily to her feet and lurched off to the shower.
The hot, almost scalding water stimulated her senses, giving her still slightly shocked mind something else to focus on. As did the arduous process of drying and curling her shoulder length brown tresses up into her usual style, as well as dressing, tightening the straps on her knee-length boots and performing her routine check on her nunchuku. She occupied her mind with focussing on every last aspect of her every movement. Better to fill it with the usual, mundane things rather than any other memories it might randomly flash before her eyes.
And her mind just froze completely whenever she considered, even remotely, the possibility of going down to the sickbay to see how Quistis was.
She glanced again at her clock before pausing in front of her front door, taking a deep breath and whispering a prayer before opening it. A quick glance outside confirmed her hopes; Irvine had gone.
She felt relieved and yet, at the same time, felt a pang of regret, and something else. Loneliness? Abandonment?
How long had he sat out here anyway, cajoling, pleading? Trying his damnedest to get her to come out of her shell, desperately trying to convince her that it wasn't her fault? She didn't really know, and another random feeling struck her. Guilt? At what? At not answering him, just once, too wrapped up in her selfish little universe of sorrow? And if not that, then what? What was she feeling?
*Whatever*, she thought, trying unsuccessfully to brush the thought away before shutting the door behind her and making her way slowly, but with increasing confidence, toward the training centre. An hour or two or three of slaughtering captured monsters ought to be enough to calm her, and give her something to focus on as she plucked up the courage and strength to go to the bloody sickbay and see just how her friend was doing. If anything, she owed her at least that.
"Wait here," Squall ordered. At the open rear door of the SeeD hovercraft, Xu nodded wordlessly, and Squall strode the last few steps down the ramp onto the beach. His boots left deep impressions in the damp sand that were swallowed up as quickly as they were made as he made his way higher up onto the sands toward the figure awaiting him at the foot of the weather-beaten stone stairs leading down from the house.
Long, dark tresses flowed down onto her shoulders, framing a youthful face only just now beginning to show the first signs of age. A long, plain grey and white dress, coming down to her ankles, only served to accentuate her feminine grace, even with a white woollen shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders against the winds that blew in from the North. But her face, with its dark eyes and slight smile, was unmistakeably that of a mother. Squall's mother, in a way. Certainly, she was the mother he and the others had never had, and she was most definitely realer to them than the women who had given them life.
"Squall," she said simply, by way of greeting.
"Matron. I," he began, but cut off as, suddenly, she stepped forward, wrapping both arms around him. For a moment, he stood frozen, uncertain how to respond to an action that once would have calmed him but which now came from the woman who was once his enemy. Then he relaxed, and returned her embrace, a son come home from a long journey.
When they parted, she looked him over with a critical eye. "Hmm," she mused, an amused sparkle lighting her eyes, so sombre before. "Even Rinoa doesn't seem to have persuaded you to cut that mop."
He ran a hand self consciously through said mop, a faint grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Nah. It's got a personality all on its own now. Cutting it would be like losing an old friend."
The two shared a laugh, albeit a faint one. Even after six months, Edea Kramer and her former charges were still so uncertain of the nature of their relationship. They were all still feeling their way. But they still visited her. Not merely out of duty, either. Hell, more and more it seemed that Cid didn't have to cajole or shame them into going quite as much as he once did. A bit more time, and they would almost be comfortable with her again.
They walked along the beach, toward the lighthouse. Occasionally, children's laughter would waft over them, prompting Squall to jerk his head around in surprise, eliciting a laugh from Edea each time.
"What?" she queried with a raised eyebrow. "It gets lonely here, you know, even with Cid coming home every Friday. And you and Zell and the others aren't the only orphans in the world."
"Yeah, but---" he flailed helplessly for the right words as she looked at him expectantly. "I guess.I just didn't expect it, is all."
She smiled again and shook her head, sighing. Then she grew solemn, stopped and turned and faced him. Taking a deep breath, she asked. "How is Quisty?" At his look of surprise, she added, humourlessly, "Cid called me when it happened. No sorceresses or scrying, just good old-fashioned communication."
He ran a hand through his hair again in his characteristic, nervous tic. "She'll recover. At least, that's what Doctor Kadowaki says." He frowned. "She's almost all healed. But the shock of it all was---she just needs to wake up, now. Come back to us. Just a matter of time, really."
"You sound like you don't believe that."
"I do," he countered, firmly. "Its Quistis. She'll pull through. She always has."
Edea nodded, then looked away, out to sea towards the floating garden, the one she'd once been hell-bent on annihilating. Squall waited for a moment, allowing it to sink in, before continuing. "If you know what happened, then you also know." He broke off, waiting for her to continue.
She bowed her head silently, and then nodded. "Seifer."
He placed a hand on her shoulder, his own gentleness surprising him. "Matron---I have to know. Can you still---"
"---sense him?" she finished for him, bitterly. "Control him?" She turned back toward him, and the intensity in her eyes compelled him to take a step back. "No. No, Squall, I can't. I lost that ability when my powers passed on to Rinoa. And that is the truth."
He shook his head. "Matron, I---" he fumbled for the right words, uncertain of what to say. "I'm not accusing you of anything. I just---you can't even sense him?"
She shook her head no, wordlessly, tightly, still peering straight at him with burning eyes. Had he looked closer, perhaps he might have seen how close they were to welling up with tears. "I don't know why he did what he did. Why he hurt Quistis. Cid told me you suspected that someone was controlling him. Well, it wasn't me. But maybe---maybe the power that's making him act that way is---Oh, I can't describe it in words you'd understand!" She shook her head made a short, ironic, bitter noise at the back of her throat. "Like---a leftover, a remnant of a spell that wasn't dissipated when Ultimecia was defeated, causing him to---do things. Things he wouldn't ordinarily do."
Squall was silent for a moment, as the momentary anger in her eyes faded away and she turned to face the sea once more. Things he wouldn't ordinarily do? Bullshit. There was no way that he could believe that a person could be taken over so completely by another, especially not once so strong-willed as Seifer. He was responsible for the death or injury of hundreds of people, had simply and cold-heartedly thrown Rinoa to the nonexistent mercies of the revived Adel and now he'd almost fatally wounded one of Squall's---one of his OWN---childhood friends, all the while seeming to be in perfect control of himself and his abilities.
Someone like Seifer couldn't do that sort of thing on the whim of another, even if he weren't in complete control of himself. As Squall remembered, when he did something it was ALWAYS with utmost and extreme confidence. Squall wouldn't believe it.
He could not. If the control spell was so successful, it must have been because, on some level not too deeply buried, Seifer must have wanted it---
Aloud, he said: "All right. So if it isn't an outside force, but some kind of---remnant of the original sorceress' control.how can it be dispelled?"
Edea paused in thought, now on familiar ground. She had crafted countless spells over the years, and still retained the knowledge now, even though she had no means of ever casting them again. "Not by your average spell, like Dispel or something similar. It can be done, and I know how, but it would take another sorceress to do it."
Squall's face tightened. "Like Rinoa."
Edea tensed, sensing the edge to his voice. "Yes," she conceded, guardedly, not pleased with the direction that the conversion had taken. "She could do it, yes."
"Would you be willing to teach her?"
Silence fell between them, with Squall waiting expectantly for an answer and Edea staring at him, uncertain of what to think.
Finally, she said, gently, " Squall.For a spell to have persisted this long, it must be extremely powerful.the kind of energy you'd need to dissipate it might be enough of a shock to kill him! Are you sure you could- --"
"Answer, yes or no, Matron," Squall said abruptly, cutting off any protest. "He's not going to stay hidden for long, I don't think. Sooner or later, he'll resurface, and I want to be able to deal with him, once and for all, whatever it takes!" Edea watched as a hand crept unconsciously to the handle of the Gunblade slung from his belt. "With the spell you could teach Rinoa, he MAY survive. But I promise you, if he reappears and tries something, there's no way in hell that he'll survive MY method of dealing with him! Now will you teach Rinoa?"
Edea stared at him in stunned shock, unable to believe that her ears had just heard the request he'd made.
"Squall," she whispered. "I told you.dispelling the control could kill him."
"And I just told you," he growled. "That I most definitely WILL kill him, because if you won't help, then there'll be no other way. He's not gonna just surrender."
Again, that thunderous silence.
Finally, Edea sighed and whispered, defeated; "Fine. I'll teach Rinoa."
He nodded, satisfied. The hand left his Gunblade. The gesture hadn't been meant to frighten her---he probably hadn't really been aware of it---but nevertheless, she wrapped her shawl all the more tightly around her shoulders at the sudden chill of his demeanour. "I'll send her around later today."
He bowed respectfully to her and turned on his heels. He made as if to go, then paused long enough to look over his shoulder and say, stiffly, albeit sincerely; "Thank you, Matron."
And as she watched his retreating back, she noted, with some irony and no amusement whatsoever, that she'd seen that stubborn resolution, that single- minded focus in another of her children. And the road that she'd made that one travel had lead only to ruin for them both.
She had little time for such thoughts, though. As always, the children called her back, with another scraped knee, or petty insult-match or simple cry for attention. But her mind remained troubled long after the SeeD hovercraft had embarked from the beach and sped back to the offshore Balamb Garden.
EVENING
"Remind me again," growled SeeD cadet Jon Mannheim as he laboriously applied another coat of wax to the side of SeeD hovercraft III, with a grimy, ragged cloth which appeared to have been passed down along the generations. "Just why we're down here at bloody eleven at night waxing up every SeeD vehicle three times over?"
His companion, Jhana Kang, peeked her head around the nose of the craft and scowled at him, idly toying with the idea fetching one of the hoses with which the bay was equipped and spraying him with it until he'd run out of curses. "That, my dear Manny," she said sweetly instead, albeit with significant and quite detectable malice. "May have something to do with the way you turned Instructor Aki's classroom into a meat locker with one of your Blizzard spells. Which you WEREN'T authorised to cast even in training just yet, never mind in class."
He swore under his breath, paused in his labours and shot back: "Well, that's the reason they gave, but c'mon! First offence, and no one was hurt by it anyway, so what the fuck?!? They made us clean it up, and I promised I'd never do it again anyway."
"True. After swearing you had nothing to do with it, after which they threw both you AND me down here."
"Hey, hey, whoa! I may have been the reason that Instructor Aki had a mild case of frost-bite, but whose bright idea was it to try using Fire to thaw him out?"
Despite the bleak punishment of being made to wash and wax the five SeeD hovercraft stowed in the hangar, Jon grinned at the sound of the angry mutterings coming from the opposite side of the vehicle. The two hapless Cadets were in one of the vast storage spaces in Balamb Garden's lower levels. There were two such chambers, discovered six months previously when dire circumstances involving everything from a Faculty revolt to a missile attack had eventually culminating in Balamb first taking to the skies. One of them housed five SeeD Hovercrafts, specially outfitted to be launched from Garden without the installation having to be touched down, and capable of being housed back in their hangar via a system of cranes and pulleys. The other chamber, above this one, only barely managed to accommodate the huge Estharian Ragnarok aircraft.
"Well, whatever," he said, with a victorious chuckle, raising himself up from his haunches with a grunt and straightening up, wincing at the sound his spine made as it stretched out. "I'm done my side. Two more to go, and we're outta here. Thank Hyne tomorrow's Saturday, that's all I can say." A noise from within the craft caused him to jerk his head around with a curse. "Damn. Thought I'd secured all the overhead storage compartments already."
He stalked to the ramp leading into the passenger area of the craft and trotted up it, still grumbling about how reactionary the disciplinary board was getting these days. Jhana buffed the last patch of hull and squinted into it, contorting her face into humorous expressions and giggling at her even more distorted mirror image. At least she'd done a good job at it---
From within, there was a yelp and a thud, like flesh striking metal from a height. She shook her head. "Clumsy jackass," she sighed, getting up and making her way to the back of the craft.
"Manny, jeez," she laughed as she rounded the hull and came to the open ramp. "It's not like its even dark enough in there for you not to see the hatch before you run into---" And then her characteristic Dolletian wit died on her lips. Within the dim passenger area, her companion and partner in crime lay face down on the deck, and in the space behind him, something-- -someone---just seemed to materialise from nothing.
She backed away, awkwardly down the ramp as a bloodied spectre strode cockily down the ramp on to the floor of the bay after her. A shiny, obviously well maintained gunblade was clasped in one hand, finger on the trigger, in alert readiness. The long, grey trench coat worn by the newcomer was sliced in some places, and stained with dried blood, days old. And his face was twisted in a cruel smirk, almost a leer, as he edged his way toward her. And as he did, the short, angry scar that split his face between the eyes marked him out for all the world to see.
Her backward advance was halted as she backed into the hull of another craft. Trapped. She pressed herself up against it in terror as the figure advanced to within two feet of her, twisting its head from side to side, working out the kinks of two days spent curled in the substructure of the hovercraft, in the area beneath the seats, between the hull and the part of the craft actually meant for human habitation. She could only stare in mute paralysis as he reached out one, gloved hand out to stroke her cheek.
"Please," he whispered, through tight lips as sweat beaded on his forehead. The voice was far away, ethereal. Pained? "Don't struggle. It'll be much, much worse if you do."
Then the tautness of his face faded away, relaxed, and the newly serene visage resumed its smirk. With one hand, it swung its gunblade out and brought it down on her with a flash.
Her scream was short, sharp and lost in the bowels of the thunderous Garden, with none to hear it.
A/N: Many thanks to all of my reviewers! Nice to know that there's someone out there reading this. Thanks for all the encouragement. Squall, I know what you mean. I'm almost tempted to slap "Queifer" on it. That usually draws the crowds, I must say.
Cheers. Expect regular updates until Christmas, then afterward into the New Year. I'll finish this thing regardless of the cost to my sanity.