Disclaimer: Don't own 'em.

Note: Written in response to Alonia's cemetery scene challenge. I dedicate this one to Ripley, a huge fan of Xu.

Tombstone

They were gone at last. She sighed, stretching limbs tired from an hour of standing still.

It was silly, she reflected as she walked out of the shadow of the trees. Why dive for cover every time someone entered the cemetery, like a thief in the night?

Or like a murderer?

She reeled from the thought and briefly the world spun around her, azure of sky and green of leaves swirling together-

-like his eyes-

Her hand touched warm, familiar stone and she could breathe again. She clutched it, and sank heavily to her knees.

After a few moments she dared to lift her head, coming face-to-face with the inscription once more.

SEIFER ALMASY
born December 22, 3770
died January 31, 3790

And the memory came once again unbidden, one that drained her in the day and woke her up more nights than she cared to count.

He sat at the table with that familiar easy grace, face contemplative.

"They're going to kill me, you know." It was a statement of a fact. There was no fear in his eyes or his voice, only a kind of resignation.

Did she really laugh at him then? She denied it to herself later, she'd only maybe smiled a little, or just given a little snort or something. She couldn't have laughed--could she?

"Don't be stupid, Almasy. Your sentence is imprisonment for life, not a death sentence."

He shook his head slowly, and his eyes came up to meet hers. "You don't get it, do you. I did get the death sentence. If I go to D-District prison, I'll die."

"Would you quit your whining!" Her hand came down at the table, hard. Her palm burned, as did her eyes. "You're going to die? What about all those people you killed? The lives you ruined? You bastard." She brought her face close to his. "How do you sleep at night?"

He looked straight into her eyes, and in his gaze she saw a calm that unnerved her more than his rages back when he was a student. "Easy." Close as she was, she had to strain to hear him. "I don't."

She pulled away as if slapped. Before she could make or even think of some cutting reply, there were footsteps behind her and the guards entered.

"Should we take him away, ma'am?"

They're going to kill me.

She hesitated for a long moment. Maybe she could stall, give some sort of excuse, request another hearing to decide jurisprudence, formally notify the Council of Gardens of her concerns. She could have. She could have.

But she didn't.

"Take him away."

His eyes never left hers as they hauled him to his feet none too gently. He looked back at her as they cuffed his hands behind his back. She would never forget his eyes for some reason, the blackness of the pupil, the pale, clear green of the irises.

Then he gave a shrug and a smirk, and was led away. The tramp of boots down the corridor pounded in her ears for a very long time.

He was dead one month later. Official cause of death: Suicide by hanging.

No one was fooled.

The government of Galbadia steadfastly refused an autopsy, or even to let Garden see the body. While the Council of Gardens and Galbadia wrangled, the remains were quickly and quietly cremated and delivered to Balamb Garden, all possible evidence burned along with the body.

There was nothing else to bury, no family to take the ash. A plot in one corner of the Balamb Cemetery, reserved for SeeDs and Balamb Garden students without family, became the final resting place of a man whose death was the only controversy greater than his life.

So this is your revenge, she thought hollowly, staring at the sunwashed face of the gravestone. You make a murderer out of me.

The what-ifs were endless. What if he had spoken up sooner? What if he'd spoken to others besides her?

What if she'd listened to him?

She clapped a hand over her mouth, fighting down the bile that made its way up her throat.

She often wondered what the last moments of his life had been like. Did he lie alone in a cold and filthy cell, the coal-black darkness pressing down on him? Did he stare with sightless eyes into the depths of night, brutalized body fighting to stay awake, fighting to breathe, to live? Did his breaths grow shallower and shallower until they stopped? Were his final thoughts of pain and darkness, of a despair that would outlive him?

Sunlight was warm upon her face, and a bird's song echoed through the trees. A scented breeze stirred the neatly-clipped grass. The beauty of the day mocked her thoughts, mocked a life that had burned too bright and flickered out too soon.

She would never be free of him.

"Xu?"

She sprang to her feet, heart pounding. She couldn't believe she hadn't heard someone approaching.

"It's all right." The voice was a low monotone, and she wondered if she was imagining the note of sympathy. "I knew about your visits here."

"Commander Leonhart." She saluted him with a still-trembling hand.

He stood next to her to gaze down on the tombstone. "It's odd," he said as if to himself. "It still seems wrong to talk about him in past tense."

She glanced over at him. "I thought you didn't like him."

"I thought you didn't, either." His quiet gaze met hers.

She smiled bitterly. "The human mind is a twisted thing, Commander. Before, I wished I could get rid of him--and now that I have, I can't live with myself."

"You didn't kill him, Xu." His gaze was stern.

"Didn't I? I didn't hurt a hair on his head, no. All I did was not believe him, I kept my mouth shut, I did nothing. And it was more than enough. It was murder by compliance, Commander. The guards at D-District killed him, and the rest of us let them. We all killed him. Most of all, I killed him." The last words were almost a scream, torn from the very fabric of her being.

"I-I keep thinking." She crossed her arms, clutching her arm hard enough to leave bruises. "What if it were you, or Quistis, or Nida, someone I considered a friend? Would I have written them off like that?"

"Probably not." Squall's face was deadpan as ever.

She found herself actually chuckling at that. "Thanks, Commander. That's such a comfort." She really did thank him--at least he didn't lie to tell her what she wanted to hear.

"Think of it this way." There was actually a hint of a smile on his lips. Rinoa was a very good influence on him. "He's probably ecstatic that you were wrong and he was right."

"That son of a bitch."

"Exactly."

She laughed out loud for the first time in months, and it was as if a darkness was lifted from her eyes and she could see clearly once again. She realized just how much she had missed the small things like laughter and light.

"I have something to tell you." Squall turned very serious again.

"What is it?"

"I'm reopening the investigation into Seifer Almasy's death."

She stared at him, then blinked. "I don't understand." She tried to ignore the way her heart leapt at the news. "You know there's zero physical evidence."

"No, the physical evidence is gone." Squall's glance strayed to the grave. "But that's not the only evidence that counts."

"You mean you've got a guard who's willing to testify?" Grass rustled underfoot as she took a step toward him.

"You can thank Quistis for that. She's been going through the prison's books all these months."

"What!" Her eyes widened. "Why wasn't I-"

"Quistis asked me not to tell you until she had something concrete."

"So as not to give me any false hopes," Xu said slowly.

"Yes."

"And?" She bit her lip, willing herself not to throttle Squall to make him talk faster.

"She's uncovered an embezzler. He's willing to tell us what he knows in exchange for a measure of clemency."

She let out a long breath. "Think he knows enough?"

"He's dropped some rather broad hints."

"So we're in."

"Not really. This is only the beginning."

"All right, Commander." She turned to face him squarely, arms akimbo. "Either you put me in charge of the investigation, or I bug you until you give in."

This time there was no mistaking the smile. "I was wondering when you'd ask." Then his demeanor became formal and official. "Lieutenant Trepe will be working with you, and a staff of SeeDs trained in investigative techniques has been selected to aid you. Any questions?"

"None, sir," she said briskly.

"All right then." His gaze flicked between her and the gravestone. "I'm going ahead to Garden. I'll be in my office if you need anything."

"Commander." She watched his retreating figure, and absently wondered if Rinoa was making him attend sensitivity classes or something.

Slowly she turned around to face the grave again. The light of the westering sun fell across the tombstone, bathing it in crimson. She stiffened momentarily, taking deep breaths to calm herself.

She looked around and saw the other graves, some of the most recent being that of students and SeeDs fallen during Galbadia Garden's assault. And finally they lay side by side, the killer and the killed, in a peace that only the living could break.

She looked at the gravestone again and this time it was simply a gravestone, a memory of a troubled young man who had been a comrade, a student, maybe even a friend.

"I just wanted to tell you, Almasy," she brushed a hand over the stone. "You're a bigger pain in the ass dead than you were alive. And that's saying something."

She closed her eyes and pictured his last moments again. And maybe her motives were selfish, but she imagined that his thoughts as he died might have been happy ones, of a childhood long ago, memories of the sea, and hope beyond the longest night.

-The End-