2


Seifer didn't disappoint. By the time we had reached the train depot he'd managed to hit every one of my buttons. Whether it was my driving, my clothing, my way of packing - nothing was off limits to Seifer. I'd managed, somehow, to keep my cool the whole way there, hoping he would get the hint that I wasn't interested in talk, but he must have loved the sound of his voice because he never shut up. If it had been anyone else I might have chalked it up to nerves, but he was just trying to be annoying. He was doing a bang-up job of it too.

Seifer had gotten steadily more annoying since our return, which was saying a lot. Always an instant critic, he'd become both more distant and downright mean since right after the whole incident. His only companions were his long-time posse members Fujin and Raijin, but more and more often I'd seen them alone, with no Seifer in sight. It was almost like he was purposely distancing himself from those around him, but to what end I had no clue. Whenever someone approached him, they usually emerged from the conversation scorched around the edges from the burning comments he'd throw their way. He had advanced out of any of my own classes, but fellow instructors would talk about his disruptions in class in annoyed tones, nobody wishing him on even their worst enemies. From the way it sounded, Seifer wasn't making his reintroduction into Garden all that easy.

We left our transport at the depot and headed towards the train station. It occurred to me as we walked up the steps that Seifer was being really quiet, especially compared to the trip out of Balamb. This puzzled me, but I figured he'd finally run out of things to say: it sure had taken long enough. I'd thought he would never shut up.

As we headed down the grey platforms, I noticed a lot of faces turning our way. We were attracting an unflattering amount of attention, something which didn't bode well for a covert ops. Seeing as we were in plainclothes, not dress uniform, we should have fit in but apparently we were being recognized nonetheless. It wasn't until I saw a mother pull her young son away, glancing fearfully towards us, that I realized something was amiss.

I glanced sideways at Seifer. His face was decidedly neutral, his expression its normal haughty self, but a muscle ticked along his jaw. Schooling my own expression into nonchalance, I glanced around the station to gauge the situation. What I saw surprised me, although in retrospect it probably shouldn't have.

In this large train station full of people moving rapidly by us, we were a main attraction. While it wasn't everybody, we were garnering stares from people all around us. The common expressions ranged from fearful to angry, with heads turning as we passed by. Rather… it became readily apparent that it wasn't we who had the crowd's attention, but Seifer. I glanced at him again, wondering how all the interest was affecting him.

He noticed my look and stared back for a second before once again looking forward. No smirk, no quip, nothing - this from the man for who found something sarcastic to say in every situation. That had me worried. "Maybe we shouldn't have come through the front door," I murmured sideways to him.

I expected a quip, perhaps something along the lines of a sarcastic "Ya think?", but instead he just nodded. I had to give him brownie points, he was taking this a lot better than I would have. His gaze was straight ahead, and his expression was perhaps a bit toned down from the normal Garden smirk but still the arrogant look he normally sported.

It made me suddenly curious, and I shot him a slightly worried glance which he either didn't see or didn't bother to acknowledge. Had he been dealing with this all along, and nobody had noticed? Or worse yet, had we noticed and done nothing about it?

I was deep in thought along those lines when a man stumbled out directly in front of us. Surprised, I started to drop into a defensive position then quickly recovered when I saw it was just a civilian. Obviously drunk and sporting the red cheeks to prove it, he ignored me completely, his total attention focused on Seifer. "Are you him?" he asked, his speech slightly slurred.

His face betraying nothing, Seifer stared down at the man, who couldn't have been an inch over five-five . "What if I am?"

The man's already red face contorted into a gross caricature, then his head shot forward and he spit right in Seifer's face. "My brother was among the ones you slaughtered, you bastard," he snarled, visibly shaking.

Seifer reached up and wiped away the spittle with his sleeve, but said nothing in his defense, only stared down at the smaller man. The muscle in his jaw was ticking again, but he didn't move.

With a growl the man leaped at Seifer, arm flying through the air. So surprised was I at the sudden change in events that I didn't have time to prevent the attack, but an instant before the drunk man's fist connected with Seifer's jaw, another man stepped in and hastily wrapped his arms around Seifer's assailant. "Renald, don't do this," the man pleaded, tugging their questioner away from Seifer.

"No, I'm not going to let him get off," Renald snarled, fighting off the other man's arms. "He killed my brother, he and that witch of his..."

"Renald, please, not here, not like this," the other man pleaded, shooting Seifer a fearful look and finally succeeding in getting a good hold, dragging a struggling Renald away towards an adjacent platform.

"You bastard! You murdering bastard!" The raging screams echoed throughout the station, drawing more attention to our position - never a good thing while on a mission.

Shaking off my disbelief, not quite able to grasp that that had just happened, I grabbed Seifer's arm. "Let's get out of here."

Seifer ripped his arm out of my grasp however and gave me a condescending look. "What, instructor," he stated acridly, "are you too embarrassed to be seen with me in public? Don't want me to tarnish your pristine hero-image?"

Leaving me flabbergasted, he swung up his duffel bag again and stalked away from me down the causeway, people scattering before him.

--0--

I finally caught up with him on the train itself. He'd accessed the cabin area and had locked himself inside our designated room. Scanning my own pass and confirming my identity, I unlocked the doors and let them open, allowing me access.

What I saw arrested forward movement. Blade whirling in the air, Seifer was performing one of the combat forms we'd learned as SeeDs. A mixture of martial arts and weapon combat, the forms were designed to mimic real battle situations and develop balance, agility, and speed. I had only seen part of a gunblade form a year ago, when I'd walked in on Squall just as he was finishing up.

When I had said Seifer was poetry in motion on the battlefield, I had meant it. Watching him do the form, however, was pure magic. His coat and shirt lying on the couch, he whirled the blade around fluidly, stabbing and slicing through the air as smooth as silk. Seifer's eyes were closed, his brow furrowed in concentration as he twirled and cut the air with a controlled movement which I knew ever connected with an opponent would slice them in two. Barely audible grunts told just how much power he was putting into his swings, his muscles flexing with each blow. It was the way the movements were controlled however, the way he managed to turn even the fastest slices and stabs that told more than anything else the strength and ferocity of the man behind the blade.

The trick behind mastering a gunblade, which on close inspection is an ungainly weapon, is to not treat it like you would a sword. It's far too heavy for any fencing moves, which rely almost solely on techniques which force you to arrest movement before you can move on to the next attack; unless fully trained and extremely strong, it's next to impossible to stop a slice by the four-foot, fully-metal weapon. The secret is to instead use the weight of the weapon as your power, and continually shift the direction of the blade along its arc, applying no greater force than is needed to change the direction of the slice. That is why someone who was perhaps a bit shorter and more wiry, like Squall, could still utilize the weapon and be perfectly capable of mastering these techniques; as long as you could lift it and keep it from slipping out of your hands from centrifugal force, you could learn it. There were some things, however, that Squall could never do simply because, as strong as he was, he wasn't strong enough.

Watching Seifer's biceps bulge, the thickly corded muscles in his back playing under his skin as he arrested several chops mere inches from the floor, it was painfully obvious to even the most delusional that Seifer was most definitely strong enough.

He executed one last maneuver which came within millimeters of slicing the room's sofa, crouched low on one leg, the other pointing straight out to the side and the gunblade held horizontal above his head. Exhaling slowly, his eyes opened and he saw me, but there was no surprise in the gaze. Either he'd known I was there, or was good at hiding the fact he hadn't. Standing up as gracefully as he'd moved mere seconds ago, he twirled the gunblade around and sheathed it. "Enjoy the show?"

Unsure of what to say, I shook my head as he picked up his shirt. "Seifer, you puzzle the hell out of me, you know that?"

Something flickered in his eyes, but was gone before I could tell what it might have been. "I live to please," he commented, a hint of his normal smirk playing over his lips as he slid the shirt over his head.

"I mean it Seifer." Shaking my head and still not sure what I was getting at, I leaned against the wall next to the door. "I don't understand you at all; no matter how hard I try to figure you out, you always manage to surprise me somehow."

His smirk had died, but his eyes remained enigmatic. "Surprised that I know how to use the gunblade?"

"No, surprised that I never noticed, or thought about, what you probably have to go through every day."

He visibly stiffened, and his face hardened. "I deal with my own problems, I don't need a meddling teacher putting her nose in where it doesn't belong."

I knew I'd messed up by being so blunt, but it was too late to back down. "Do you have to deal with that kind of thing day in and day out?" I persisted. "If you do, why haven't you tried to talk to someone about it?"

His eyes flickered away, then focussed back on me. "What makes you think I haven't tried?" he asked in an uncharacteristically mild voice.

The statement gave me pause. It was hard to imagine Seifer desperate enough to seek advise, but… could he have tried, only to be rebuffed? "Have you? Seifer, I'm sorry, but why..."

He was across the room faster than I would have thought possible. I swallowed a yelp and pressed myself against the wall as he leaned into me. His face was inches from mine, and I couldn't help but be slightly intimidated; he was over half a foot taller than me and a lot bigger than I was, and all the anger in his eyes was directed right at me. I'd be a fool not to be a little fearful.

"I don't want your pity," he grit out. "I knew if I ever went to any of you that's what I would get. 'The poor Sorceress' Knight, she's defeated so now do we do with him?'" He drew closer to me, if that was possible. "I told you once, I deal with my own problems, my own way. I can't trust anyone else, especially not anyone who doesn't have a clue what I'm going through."

"But you said you tried," I interjected, feeling a bit nervous about having him this close but unwilling to give the subject up. "Why didn't they try to support you, make it so you could make amends?"

"Why don't you tell me the answer to that?"

I stared at him in confusion, then the meaning of his words hit me. "You never asked for my help!" I exclaimed, staring at him wide-eyed.

His eyes flickered to the side for a moment, then refocussed on me. "Should I have had to?"

I opened my mouth to say something, but there was nothing to say. I couldn't bare to look in his eyes and dropped my gaze. He moved back away from me, then brushed past my shoulder out the cabin doors. They shut behind him and I was left alone.

For a minute I could do nothing but stand there, staring at the floorboards. I eventually made my way across the cabin to the couch, collapsing more than sitting on the overstuffed cushions. I leaned back and laid my hand over my eyes, biting back a groan. I knew my whole part in this little passion play, I knew it well.

Like everyone else at Garden and beyond, I'd shunned Seifer since his return. I'd questioned Cid's decision, openly participated in malicious gossip, and done my utmost to make Seifer feel unwanted. And, no surprise, it had worked; how could it not when just about everyone had been acting the same way. I'd become just like everyone else, quick to judge and loath to forgive. There had never been a doubt in my mind that Seifer's withdrawal had been because of the defeat, that it had been a blow to his pride. Now I wondered, though, could it have been more than that? Could it be that, more than a blow to his ego, he was actually sorry?

The doors swished open again and I squeezed my eyes shut. I wasn't ready to face Seifer yet, but apparently it couldn't be helped. We needed to talk anyway; there were things I wanted to say to him, even though my mind was still a tangled mess. I sighed and, lifting my head off the back of the couch, opened my eyes to see Irvine silhouetted in the doorway.