Chapter Fifteen

I've been drowned out by the rain,

Still I'm wishing I could stay.

But I'm sorry my old friend,

I've got to leave you once again.

And it might be very hard.

Can't be more than what we are,

Can't be more till it's over.

Here comes the resurrection,

Everybody"s got to die for something,

Never thought I'd live to leave you when you go…

Moist-Resurrection (edit)

Seifer wandered through the ruin, his hair and clothes grey with dust and streaked with blood and water and Hyne knew what else. It wasn't until he coughed and spat watery blood onto the snow that he realised it was even light. Dawn, to be precise.

Hyne, when had it got so bright? It seemed like several lifetimes since he'd seen the sun. Maybe it was.

Dust danced in the golden light and merged with the black spots and pinwheels of neon dancing before his vision.

There was something he needed to do.

He looked down at his hand with the blurred detachment of the recently concussed. His gloves were ripped to shreds.

Quistis.

He'd seen the thing throw her into the wall, just before he threw the transmitter, and it exploded.

The transmitter had exploded.

Which meant that she was dead.

It felt like a hand had grabbed his chest and was slowly squeezing. He couldn't breathe.

Seifer glanced around wildly. He could see where the door had been. There were splinters of wood and fragments of carved eroded frame.

Quistis had been to the right of it. Seifer tramped across more rubble. Other figures groaned and stirred. He ignored them. There was a groan from the rubble underneath as the ruin began to settle, shifting into the ground. He ignored that, too.

Just about…here.

He grabbed a chunk of rock and pushed, boots skidding on rock and rising clouds of grainy pale dust.

She had to be here.

Didn't she?

Quistis hadn't deserved to die. The image of her head hitting the rock with a sick crack just before he tried to distract the monster replayed in his mind like a stuck tape.

He lifted a few more pieces of rock, muscles burning.

Nothing.

He cast to the left and found a cracked pair of glasses. His heart leaped in his throat. He shifted another slab of rock to the side, carefully, in case the movement rocked other chunks of architecture.

Quistis was under it.

He worked fast, clearing the area around her body with shaking bloody hands. He didn't dare to check her pulse, to confirm what he already knew was true.

Underneath the rubble, she seemed almost normal. Seifer had been expecting twisted limbs and torn flesh. He'd seen too many explosion victims even as a SeeD trainee to hold any optimistic thoughts. But Quistis just looked like she was asleep. Maybe a bit pale, but hey, it was cold.

He placed his open palm over her face, brushing her lips with his fingers.

Nothing.

She wasn't breathing.

Seifer reached desperately for into the void inside his head, feeling blindly for some kind of magic from the monster and the draw points inside its castle, but it had crumbled.

But he knew someone did have magic. Someone who might help him.

Isak.

It took him a few minutes to find the Galbadian. He was leaning up against a pile of rubble and at first Seifer though he was dead. Blood trickled down his face and pooled in his collarbone. The whole left side of his face seemed to be a redlaced ruin until Isak raised his head and looked up towards Seifer. He shifted his position and Seifer realised it was just his hand, held up to his face. He was sitting like he was hurt.

But he wasn't dead. He had magic. Spells. He could help Quistis.

"You got magic left?"

Isak raised dull eyes. "Sure. For what's it worth. We won, Seifer. We killed it. I'd get out of here if I was you. I"ll give you that. Before any of the others wake up. If they"re gonna."

"It's Quistis. You have to come."

Isak looked at him. He showed no sign of rising, which lit the shortening touch paper of Seifer's temper. "You bastard. If you Don't come you"ll spend the last damn moments of your life regretting you were ever born, you son of a bitch. And that'll be about five fucking seconds." He hauled the smaller man to his feet, nothing distantly how much effort it took.

""I didn't say I wouldn't."

"Right you didn't. Her. Now."

"What's the matter with her?"

Seifer's face was a mask. "She's dead."

Isak said "fuck" quite quietly, and shut his mouth again. He looked very young and pale as a ghost. Long white stripes streaked the front of his uniform where dust had settled on caking blood.

Seifer grabbed the sleeve of Isak's uniform and dragged him after him. The younger soldier's feet caught on rubble as they half walked, half-ran to the boulder. The incongruous remains of a pair of smashed night-vision goggles dangled round Isak's neck, looking like a very high-tech bandanna.

"Try Phoenix Down," he ordered.

"What?" Isak stared at him like he"d just asked for a ferret.

"The spell. It can help to bring people back to life. You got one?"

Well, yeah" Isak said. "It's standard issue. But I"ve never seen it used to revive someone dead. Not, you know, completely .Dying, yeah, but...I dunno. I Don't even know if it can be done. If it should be done..."

"Then you"re about to find out." Seifer had never been let loose with a Phoenix Down, but he knew about the spell, if from reputation yanked Isak past the boulder and pointed at Quistis. "Try it."

Isak knelt by Quistis' body and pressed a hand to her throat. He shook his head.

Seifer scowled. "I'mtelling you, she's dead. I want you to use that to cure her."

"I'm sorry."

"I don't need your fucking pity. Just do it, or I'll break every bone in your body. Including the small ones in your fingers and that's really hard to do."

Together they pulled Quistis up to a sitting position, carefully removing the rubble surrounding her. When Isak pushed the last rock away Seifee saw blood on her head, startlingly red in the dust. There was a lot of it, and her skull looked wrong, soft and swollen. He held her up as Isak whispered a few words and held out his hands. His hands glowed briefly and faded.

It didn't work.

Qustis didn't move. Seifer's exhaustion crashed into him like a wave. He rested his head in his hands. His knuckles stung. It was hard to think, or rather, it was easy to think, but the word wouldn't string together into coherent sentences. He should get the hell out of here, but right now, he just couldn't. He didn't know what he should do.

So he just sat there, like some kind of sappy idiot, trying to get enough energy to do something constructive and failing miserably. Miserably being the operative word.

Isak tapped him on the shoulder."Seifer, I think you should go."

Seifer shook his head. He was tired and fed up and he ached just about everywhere he thought you could ache and lots of places he hadn't thought you could and he wasn't going anywhere, or at least not with any speed. "Isak, just…"

"I think you ought to go now."

Seifer heard a click as a weapon cocked behind him. His first thought was, oh, fuck, not again. He half-turned, not getting up, and squinted up through the smoke.

There were two people behind him, a woman and a man. Both of them looked uniformly pissed off, probably due to the after-effects of having half a building fall on them. Both of them held weapons.

The man looked oddly familiar in a way Seifer couldn't place. At last he realised he was, of course, the stick-up-his-ass cadet from earlier, only not nearly so assured and looking a bit chewed round the edges.

"You have the right to remain silent," the cadet told Seifer, "but anything that you say may be recorded and later used as evidence in a court of law. You…"

"Fuck off." Seifer snapped.

"Is that a statement?"

"No. It's an order."

Someone grabbed his wrist. Seifer reflexively clasped both hands to break the hold, without thinking that it had come from the wrong direction. He glanced down in shock.

Quistis looked up at him.

Blood clotted black in her hair, she was covered with dust and her spectacles were cracked, but she was alive. She looked like shit, but hell, so did he.

And he could honestly say that he"d never been so glad to see her in his life.

She gave another weak little smile, doubled over and started coughing, hard. Seifer thought it was probably just dust in her lungs, but she probably needed medical attention

"Hey, scarface. You deaf? Hands in the air!" called the female Galbadian.

Seifer gave her the finger. He shot a surreptitious glance at Quistis, who was busy still coughing her guts up. He hoped there weren't any internal injuries the spell had somehow failed to cure and wondered what exactly he could do about it if there was. Behind Quistis' glasses her eyes were scrunched tight shut, but at least she wasn't coughing up any blood, so her lungs, at least, were probably okay for the moment. And she seemed to be moving fine. Stiff, but fine.

Isak rummaged through the rubble. He hauled up Quistis' rucksack, trailing dust and pebbles. He fumbled with the unfamiliar buckles for a second, flipped the top open and wordlessly held out a stainless steel flask. Quistis grabbed it and took a big swallow.

Seifer watched as her coughs began to subside. She squeezed his hand, and then let go to hold the flask more securely. Her voice was a rusty whisper. "Lucky….to get out….of that."

Seifer winced. "Uh, Quistis, There's something you should..."

"You are under arrest!" shouted the woman.

"You died," Seifer told Quistis.

"I what?"

"Why is nobody paying attention here?" asked the Galbadian theatrically.

"Scuse me, could you shut the hell up?" Seifer asked without looking at the Galbadians.

They ignored him. "Seifer Almasy? Come with us," said the man.

Seifer raised his eyes and looked from one face to another, weighing up his chances of them not being able to shoot him in the knees before he made it to cover. Not good.

He opened his mouth and then shut it again as another voice cut in. "He isn't doing anything of the sort. This man is already under Balamb Garden jurisdiction as of two days ago. I have witnesses in the village of Yesnaby who will testify to this situation."

It was Quistis. She supported herself on one elbow. Seifer would have said she looked shaky at the best of times, but he knew that expression. He"d seen it many times as a student. It meant that you were doing what she said, right here, right now, no second chances, no stopping. He reached out an arm and she pulled herself up to a sitting posture, wincing. The other soldier didn't appear to be fazed. "I believe you happen to be outnumbered."

"Three against two." Isak said. "I think not."

The woman interrupted him. "Isak, he's a murderer.Don't throw your career away. "

Isak's eyes rolled from the soldiers to Quistis, to Seifer and back to the soldiers again.

"Put your hands up. Now." snapped the female Galbadian.

Seifer rolled his eyes. "Leave me the hell alone."

The discussion above his head turned into an argument. The argument seemed to be made up of Quistis and the other guy quoting long passages of the SeeD manual at each other. He supposed he should be more bothered, but he just didn't care. He was more worried about Quistis. She looked pale.

The sky overhead had turned gray in parts, clouds threatening rain. It matched Seifer's mood, which was black, and turning blacker. He guessed he should have felt glad, maybe, that they"d managed to get out of the last mess in one piece, but then why the fuck should he be? There wasn't any way this was going to turn out well.

The Galbadian woman noticed Seifer's lack of attention. She frowned and motioned with the gun for him to stay still.

Seifer yawned in response, partly in contempt but mainly because he was dog-tired, and the morning sun, while it lasted, was warm.

"Don't move," she snapped.

The curt words resurrected Seifer's short temper. "Hell, what does it matter who gets me? The only difference it's going to make is what colour uniform the person flipping the switch"s got on. What do you care?"

Her eyes were pale and cold. "You made Galbadia look like a fool, and now no one wants to hire us. Thanks to you." Her tone was vindictive.

"You did it all by yourself. Bet you were first in line cheering for the sorceress at the start. "

She paled. "I hope you mouth off just as well when you"ve got a rope around your neck. People I know are dead because of you."

Seifer didn't know what to say. He bit his lip in indecision. The woman was jumpy. It would be so damn easy to force her to lose control and well, then there were two ways it could he just looked up at her and shrugged, pretending an indifference he didn't feel. It turned out to be either a very good move or not at all, because the woman's eyes narrowed. "I'll dance on your grave, you murdering bastard."

Seifer mentally gauged the distance to her feet. It would be a gamble, but hey. "Good. Wear a short skirt, it"ll give me something to look forward to."

There was another rumble from the ground. He would have swore he could hear rocks shifting, the splash of rubble into the underground lake behind the cold white outraged silence of her anger."Maybe we should move," he said.

"I don't take suggestions from dead men."

"Fine." He opened his mouth to shout to Quistis that the ground wasn't anywhere near safe and then shut it again as there was a louder shifting of rubble, a long screech of stone on metal or rock and the noises of conversation behind him stopped. The woman swayed. The Galbadian man behind her stretched out an arm in a vain attempt to keep himself upright and shook her off balance. Her gun swayed like a snakecharmer"s flute and pointed down at the ground.

It wasn't even a conscious decision. Seifer's instincts passed straight to his muscles and he was up and running though the gathering dust, ten metres away before his brain kicked in and he thought that maybe he should have stayed where he was. His muscles burned, aching from the after effects of being kicked round a stone floor.

There was the sound of a shot. A puff of dust erupted from the ground half a handspan behind his feet. He heard Quistis shout and decided he really shouldn"t have run, but he didn't even rate his chances if he stopped so he kept going. The ground shifted below his feet, forcing him to turn and blindly dodge again. The movement probably saved his life. A bullet punched a neat hole through the leather of his coat. His breath rasped, ribs aching, throat burning, ears filled with the ebb and flow of his blood.

There was more shouting behind him.

Seifer made the mistake of glancing back. He saw a silhouette neatly silhouetted in the dusty glow, feet apart, arms raised, sighting down the barrel of a gun. The skin between his shoulderblades prickled, expecting a bullet.

The trees loomed invitingly ahead.

He almost made it.

There was a sharp crack from behind him as he dodged for the third time. It felt like someone had just punched him in the back of the leg. He fell untidily, his cheek and hands full of sharp stone splinters, blood in his mouth. It tasted like defeat.

A gaping hole loomed wide in front of him, dark and gaping into nowhere. The smashing sweep of Seifer'ss body as he fell pushed a cascade of stone splinters and debris in front of him like a miniature wave. Just before he reached it he saw the chips go tumbling out into the dark into a cascade of dust that caught the last rays of the sun and made them look like stars. There was a sharp series of clicks as they bounced off other stones in the darkness, followed by a hollow plop as they dropped into water at the bottom.

He fell.

The impact knocked the wind out of him as he slammed into a piece of stone slab in the dark, hands scrabbling uselessly at the sheer grainy surface. He watched the circle of light recede over his head. The world lurched sickeningly as he fell off the end of the stone slab, falling again into nothing as he looked down. He saw a pale circle which even his dazed mind realised was water just before he crashed into it, shattering the reflection into a myriad of tiny glittering pieces.

Seifer's head sank below the surface before reality came back with a sickening slap and he clawed his way up to the air. Reality suggested that he really should get out of the way, fast, before she came back to finish the job. He began to stumble towards the edge of the light, his leg cramping in the cold water.

There was a quiet splash as he bumped into something into soft and unyielding. He reached out cold hands to push it away. The corpse flipped, rolling heavily in the water. Cloth tore under his grip.

Seifer swore and pushed the body away from him, before he turned back to the much more pressing business of surviving. The water was chest-deep and his hands were already starting to turn numb. He wondered for a second if he should try to attract some attention before he froze to death, but then decided caution was the best option. The Galbadians had already demonstrated a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.

His questing hands felt smooth jointed stone, remnants of the old wall, and he carefully settled down, lowering himself into the freezing water in a crouch that just exposed his head. His back was straight his and knees bent, his hands pressed flat against the stone. The water washed cold against his exposed throat as he pulled back, sheltering under a slight ledge.

He heard voices.

One of them was female. Seifer had hoped for Quistis,but as the head swung over the hole he recognised the pale closed-off face and the fan of black hair that fell at an angle from the woman"s jaw to dangle round her face.

It was the Galbadian.

The other Galbadian"s head peered over the hole a second later. They conversed in low voices that Seifer strained to hear, punctuated by a series of small splashes as they dislodged stones from the edge of the hole. He closed his eyes and listened.

"..he dead?"

An inaudible answer, then "…something down there…." The words cut off and he heard crunching noises, accompanied by another shower of stones and the sounds of someone coming up from the right. Quistis?

Seifer opened his eyes. Pale blurs of faces blocked the light. There was a hurried movement, and then a blur of shining motion as Rahel raised something up to peer down the hole. Seifer hoped it wasn't a torch.

It wasn't.

There was a deafening staccato rattle as the Galbadian man emptied his clip of ammunition down the hole. Several of the bullets hit the corpse, which jumped and moved, lying face down in a grotesque parody of life. Seifer shrank back against the wall, not daring to move, as bullets hissed through the air, clipping chips off the wall, throwing up spray and ricocheting madly. One buried itself into the mortar a few inches from his head.

Silence, broken by raised voices. Quistis had caught up. The faces pulled away from the hole.

"…if he wasn't dead, he is now."

"…murderer…"

"..better."

They think I'm dead.

Seifer opened his eyes.

The Galbadian woman's abruptly pulled back from the hole. A second pale oval replaced . Seifer wasn't close enough to read the expression on her face, but her voice was sharp, angry and upset.

The Galbadian beside her scanned the hole. Shrugging, he raised the pistol and put a hole neatly through the back of the corpse"s head. It bobbed, but didn't turn over.

Quistis, whatever you do don't see me, let her not see me, Hyne.

He hadn't realised he wanted to live so much, freezing cold and soaking wet in the bowels of a hole in the middle of the forest.

There was shouting, and the two faces disappeared. Seifer held his breath, staring at the corpse.

Quistis, I never knew you cared..

His leg had stopped hurting. He he bent to slide a palm down the back of his calf, struggling to keep his head above water. His clothes clung to him, heavy and soaking and wet.

So, not too bad.

His questing fingers traced a shallow groove in the back of his leg, numb from cold. The bullet must have just clipped him.

He'd been lucky, after all.

Quistis rested white-knuckled hands on the lip of the pit. Above her head the storm rolled and rumbled, threatening rain or snow from leaden grey skies.

Dammit.

Seifer might have been an annoying bastard, but he'd made the world a more interesting place. And now he was dead, the first of the orphanage gang to go. It felt even more depressing than how she'd felt the first time, when they thought he"d been executed for kidnapping Deling. This time it was something more than the grief and guilt that came as a matter of course, for going on when someone else had not and knowing that the world was still there after all. She didn't know why.

The kiss burned in her brain like Greek fire, refusing to be quenched.

Time to pull yourself together, girl.

The Galbadia soldier shrugged and put the pistol back in his belt. Beside him the woman made a small sound of satisfaction. Quistis hated her for a moment, and then squinted at the nametag on the other soldier"s uniform. It read "" in trailing grubby thread.

No rank, but hell, she had to outrank him.

"SeeD Grosvenor." Even to Quistis's own ears her voice sounded bitter. "I hope you can explain your actions."

He shrugged, a casual gesture that somehow clashed with the military clothes and bearing. "I don't have to."

"You shot an unarmed man" She stressed the last two words, but knew it wasn't going to work.

Rahel snorted. "Please. My friends are dead because of him and you dare to say that justice hasn't been done? You make me sick." There was no trace in her expression or manner of the SeeD that Quistis had been impressed by in the cell, even liked. If the rain had already started to fall, it would have sizzled on her thin tense shoulders.

Even the uniformed man looked taken aback by her outburst. "Rahel, please. I'm sure we all feel the same way but I'm sure SeeD Trepe is doing her best and we're all very.."

Rahel growled "Go to hell."

Grosvenor appealed to her. " It's not like we wished this to happen. The original plan was always for a trial." He grabbed Rahel by the wrist and pulled her slightly behind him and away from the hole, as if he thought she might jump, or Quistis push her.

"I shall be lodging a formal complaint and investigation." Quistis said, knowing it was a futile effort. By the time they could get a team out with equipment the body would be long gone, swallowed up by the earth as the ruins settled.

"Maybe It's better this way for your…. friend." The significant pause spoke volumes, mostly Suggested For Mature Readers. "Lets go,"Rahel said. Her voice dripped disdain.

Quistis bristled. "Yeah, go and wash your hands of this." She shouted the useless words at the pair"s backs as they turned away. "I suggest steel wool."

They said nothing.

Quistis' coat snapped in the wind and then all at once it began to rain, a thin vicious sleet that whipped her hair round her face.

The hole gaped in front of her, emphatically empty. She turned her face up to the rain, fighting a sense of despair and waste. One of her most promising students a gilded hero, the Lion of Balamb, and one dead like this, forgotten. And who would have thought that it would end up this way, when they were younger, with Seifer all golden brilliant arrogance, and Squall all chilly blackness and reserve?

Not her.

She knelt, staring down the hole. It gaped black and empty in front of her. Nothing moved.

There was a shout from behind her as something large loomed up through the thin rain, trees bending with the wind of its passing. Quistis looked around and saw the transport. On its side was a chipped Balamb insignia.

She was getting on with her life.

But she couldn't make her feet move, and she couldn't tell whether the water running down her face and sleeking her hair was tears or rain.

She turned away, and didn not look back.

Seifer watched the pale oval of her face turn and then flick out of the field of vision.

Save it your pity for those who need it, Instructor.

He stumbled out of the corner and started to lever hands and feet into crevices, looking for a way up.