Chapter 10: Breathing Lessons
When Quistis got out of the shower, she put on a white t-shirt and a pair of loose, dark blue sweatpants that tied at the waist and said "Balamb" across the butt. She ran her fingers through her damp hair and padded over to her backpack. Out of one of the front pockets, she retrieved a bottle of aspirin and poured two into the palm of her hand. A few healing spells had done a lot to help the searing pain in her ribs. Now she was just sore and tired.
She rolled the pills back and forth with her thumb for a moment before tossing them to the back of her throat and swallowing them. They slid down dryly, leaving a sour taste in her mouth.
It didn't sound like Seifer was still in the shower across the room. But with the afternoon he'd had, she wouldn't have blamed him if he was still just standing under the hot spray, letting it pound down on his back and arms. For a long time, Quistis had thought that SeeDs like Seifer were old hat, not really any different than hired muscle. It was magic that set SeeD apart from the rest. And he didn't rely much on that, preferring to meet problems with his fist and blade. It was a world view that worked to her advantage. Her blue magic made her superior, not just to men like Seifer, but to everyone. Here, none of that mattered. Her magic meant nothing against the monster in the jungle. Here, Seifer was superior.
He'd saved all of their lives, and she'd never seen a more impressive, feral display. His strength had been inhuman. Adrenaline had turned his body, already ripe for battle, into that of an animal. He'd been magnificent.
Thinking of it made her shudder. And it made her smile.
Zipping up her backpack, she walked around the bathroom, taking in the cinderblock walls, the chipped paint, and the concrete floor. Neither the doctor nor Abra, the man who had guided them in from the jungle, had said much about themselves or this building. But it was obviously an old military compound. She recognized the construction, and she knew that the materials to make it weren't available on the island. This was definitely the remnant of something bigger, a lost tendril of Esthar's empire.
On the way to her room, their guide had taken them through hallways spotted with heavy doors. All of them were closed with no windows — not the sort of thing she'd expected for a building that had been taken over by a village. She'd thought they'd see doors propped open with families and children camped inside. She'd thought they'd at east see other people, but it had just been them, their guide, and the stark military silence.
She gathered up the rest of her things and padded across the hallway back to the room she and Seifer had been alloted.
When she opened the door, it was dark inside. The darkness was warm and cozy, much better than the harsh fluorescents in the bathroom and the dismal yellow of the hallway. She closed the door behind her and reached out with one hand to find the wall.
"Seifer?" she whispered into the dark.
When he didn't respond, she stepped forward, leaving the safety of the regular dips and crevices in the wall to walk toward where she thought the bed was. But she ran into something, tripped, and dropped her clothing and her backpack.
"Ow! Son of a—!"
"Quistis?" The bed creaked as Seifer got up, then turned on the light. "What the hell? What's wrong?"
Her toe was stinging where she'd stubbed it against something hard in his backpack, and her own belongings were scattered all across the floor. "Nothing's wrong," she replied, still hissing and grabbing her big toe.
"Then what's all the damn fuss?"
"What? The fuss?"
"Yeah." He sounded angry. "I'd just fallen asleep, and you come in here and fucking yell…Hyne! You scared the shit out of me."
"I ran into your stupid backpack. You turned off the light and left it in the middle of the room," she said, feeling a little angry as well. "Why didn't you wait up for me?"
He shrugged and sat back down on the bed again. "I didn't think you expected me to," he replied. Then, as an afterthought: "Sorry."
Stepping over their things, Quistis flopped down beside him, scooting all the way back so she could lean against the wall. "I guess it's okay," she said and tucked her knees up, laying her head back. It had been a long day and she was tired, but the battle and the mission still had her humming. It was impossible to rest when her mind was still whirring.
One thing bothering her was the very real possibility that Carson was right about the mission, or at least her place on it. Adrian's injury was weighing heavily on her, as was her own ineffectiveness against the monster. This wasn't fear. It wasn't what she'd felt looking up at Ultimecia on her throne, or the nightmares that had plagued her afterward. Rather, it was something older — the tossed to the wind uselessness she'd felt as a child.
Hyne…Carson. She hadn't bothered to write to him even on the long, boring trip from Deling City. Guiltily, she wondered if he was worrying about her.
Of course he was. That's what Carson did best.
She could have at least dropped him a note, she thought. So why didn't she?
"Seifer?"
"Yeah?"
She rolled her head to the side to look at him.
"Do you think we should try to get back to the ship?" she asked.
"What for?"
"To radio Garden…tell them what we've found. We can ask for backup and wait for them to get here while Adrian is recovering."
He shook his head. "Cid said we weren't getting any backup."
"Yeah, I know. But…now that we've definitely found something, they might change their minds."
"And our friends out there might change theirs, too," he replied. "I don't think they want all of Garden coming down here and taking over their home. I think they just want to get us the hell on our way and hope that we never come back. We're at their mercy right now."
"You don't think they'll let us go back to the ship," Quistis guessed.
"No. I don't."
"I was afraid you'd say that," she said. "This isn't right, is it? This building. These people. Something's off with them."
He sighed and leaned forward, his shoulders slumped. "Nothing about this island is right."
"Are you okay?" Quistis asked.
"Yeah. Just tired and sore. Been a while since I've been knocked around like that."
Softness melted through her worry. He looked vulnerable sitting there in a pair of sweats, just out of the shower and looking so weary.
"Here, scoot forward," she said and urged him toward the edge of the bed. He did what she asked, and she got up on her knees behind him. Then, starting from the tops of his shoulders, she began rubbing his back, kneading his tired muscles and remembering how hard they'd worked to plunge his sword through the monster's spinal cord. A little groan tore loose from his throat. Grinning, she leaned into him and put her weight behind her palms, finding every knot and working it until his breath caught.
"Hyne." He let out a long breath. "That feels good."
His back was broad and strong and warm. And the way he shifted and grumbled under her ministrations triggered something deep in Quistis. It made her blood pump a little stronger, a little hotter. She moved further down his back, working her thumbs in slow circles under his shoulder blades. "You know," she said, leaning over his shoulder, wanting so badly to collapse against him, "I wasn't really worried about this monster. I thought you and Adrian would take it easy. It was exactly what the DNA reports told us it was going to be, but the reality of that didn't really hit me until we were there, facing it. Carson tried to talk some sense into me before we left. God…I hate it when he's right about these things."
"Why are you with him anyway?" Seifer asked.
Quistis sighed. "What do you mean?"
"Brecht. What do you see in him?"
"Well…he loves me," she replied.
"That's it?"
"That's enough. Isn't it?"
Love was something she'd been searching for her whole life. And Carson might not have been a prince on a white horse or anything else she'd dreamt of as a little girl, but he loved her. All of his flaws sprang from his affection for her — his overprotectiveness, his tendency to coddle and spoil and be overbearing. But that was always what she'd thought a relationship should be. He took her to dinner. He bought her flowers. He remembered all the important dates and was always thoughtful and kind. It should have been perfect.
"What about you?" Seifer asked. "Do you love him?"
This simple question, with as obvious as the answer should have been, drew a complete blank for Quistis. What about her? Did she love him? Maybe a little. But probably not as much as he loved her. She frowned to herself and her hands slowed against Seifer's back.
"Why are we talking about Carson?" she asked, uncomfortable all of the sudden.
"You brought him up."
"I was trying to talk about the mission. Not about him."
"All right. Talk about the mission then," he said. Then he reached around his back and grabbed her hands. "Why did you stop?"
"I'm not your slave," Quistis joked. "I think that's all you're going to get."
"After I saved your life?"
She laughed. "Afraid so."
"I thought the life of Quistis Trepe would be worth a lot more than that," he replied, then dropped the subject. "You tired? I'm fucking exhausted."
"Yeah. But…how is this going to work?" she asked. The bed was barely big enough for the two of them to fit together like this on, and there was only one bed in this room. Since they'd insisted on not being separated, this was all they'd been given.
Seifer got up and turned off the light. "What do you mean? Lay down. Close your eyes. It'll come to you."
"No. I mean…" She stopped when he sat back down on the bed again in the dark, his arms coming around her and pulling her down.
"Please stop talking," he said. One arm had snaked all the way around her, and his hand was pressing her head down onto the pillow beside his own. "Stop thinking. Stop worrying. And just sleep. You can figure it all out tomorrow."
Quistis knew he was right. They both needed to rest, and the mystery of the island, the monster, and Sascha Maurden's death could wait. But it was hard to calm down when he was holding her like this. She was glad that it was dark so he couldn't see the wild look that must have been in her eyes, or the way her face was flushed. He was trying to shut her up — she knew that. He was exhausted and was man handling her, forcing her to sleep so that he could. But it felt like something different. And her heart was hammering.
Already half asleep, he didn't notice. She struggled to rein in whatever this was that she was feeling. Maybe, she thought, it was the after effects of adrenaline still lingering in her blood, the thrill of battle still charging through her, because it couldn't be anything else making her hand fist in the scratchy blanket underneath them.
"Don't roll over on me," she whispered.
"I won't."
Breathe, she reminded herself. Seifer's grip on her grew loose as he fell asleep. The narrow slice of mattress she had between him and the wall didn't give her any room to move away, so she did her best to settle in beside him. They'd figure all of this out in the morning. They'd get a second room, check on Adrian, and call Garden. Seifer seemed sure that it would all work out. And even though she wasn't, his certainty eased her.
It was really quite comfortable beside him, she thought. Warm. Safe. And then her own exhaustion caught up to her, crashing against her consciousness in long, dark waves.
