relight

[llyse]

             "Say what?" Seifer Almasy surprised looked oddly boyish, dignity forgotten as he leaned across the counter, slamming one palm on the rough wood. One would never guess that he had just been assaulted to within an inch of his life one month ago, what with the way he was carrying on now, fighting and arguing as usual.

            Hand me the answer or I'll hand you your head, Fujin thought, laughing silently. And there I was thinking he'd actually gotten humble. Not that Seifer Almasy was ever humble. When hit by a wave one could either give in and allow it to sweep one Hyne-knew-where, or try to swim. Or one could drown. Seifer had walked away more than once with his pride bruised but intact, arrogance replaced by a quiet confidence hard-earned after weeks of struggling with himself. Sometimes his old arrogance reasserted itself, though.

            "Didn't you hear?"  Where have you been, the unspoken thought. "Sorceress Rinoa went mad an' killed Commander Squall."

            Seifer grunted as if struck, Jeffren continuing to speak. "Just goes t'show that you can't trust them sorceresses." He spat in a corner. "Filthy two-timing bitches."

            "And here I thought some were worshipping her as the new Hyne," the one-time sorceress' knight muttered. Jeffren laughed. Fujin would have, too, if the issue at hand were not so serious. Being a sorceress was easily a double-sided coin, like being a hero. You were feted and worshipped, and behind your back people plotted, and if the slightest whiff of wrongdoing reached public ears, a few dozen people would leap out with 'I told you so's primed. People without power were always ready to believe that those with power would misuse it, just like they believed that they themselves would make better use of that same power.

            "They've laid the Commander out in state—anyone that wants to can go see 'im."

            And, Fujin thought, that. Leonhart would become a hero, a martyr, the brave Commander and father dying in defense of his children. Heartily would become the evil seducing Sorceress, corrupted by her power, using the hero to her dastardly ends and discarding him when she was done. All Leonhart's defects glossed over, all Heartilly's virtues likewise. Never mind that they had loved each other, that they had been husband and wife. The wars were probably being wages in the newslists now, pro-sorceress versus anti-sorceress. "Debate" would probably be too civilized a word for it. This would be a verbal brawl.

            Seifer nodded, the look in his eyes indicating that he was thinking, flecks of gray shimmering in green eyes. Jeffren yawned, counting out the gil owed them for monster-hunting. There had been no work readily available for an unemployed knight and his squire, and the call from Esthar for monster-hunters had been a godsend. The job had stuck. It was a simple life, and it suited them perfectly.

            "Here." Jeffren passed the gil over, and Seifer riffled through it distractedly, preoccupied. Fujin narrowed a maroon eye. He couldn't be thinking—

            "I'm going," the man said out in the street. Fujin didn't sigh; that was beneath her. She twitched her sleeves down, glaring at Seifer.

            "Idiot."

            "Yes well, we're at peace. They aren't gonna fall on me and tear me apart." He slanted gray-green eyes at her. "We were rivals. I don't suppose you really had a rival, Fuj, but it means a lot, the way we were. I have to see how he's like, now. I have to pay my respects. It's just something I gotta do—"

            How little he knows.

            "Help Heartilly?"

            Seifer twitched at his shirt. "Yes," he said simply. Damn. It was his dream, she could see it in the light rekindling in his eyes. For all that he had said that he needed no dreams, it was there, pile of dry tinder, just waiting to be relit. This was the perfect opportunity. Sometimes Fujin wished that she could just tie him up and lock him away somewhere until the tinder dried up and blew away in the wind. Sometimes Fujin wished that she could summon that wind.

            He would go. Fujin would go with him, of course. It was what he did.

            Garden was decked in shadow, black mourning swathed over the walls. Its most famous, most celebrated commander was lost. Balamb town was out in force, dressed in dark colors. Seifer, contrary as always, wore a white shirt, with black trousers as a concession to Squall. He carried a long bundle wrapped in gray cloth, content unknown. Fujin was a quiet shadow in gray shirt and dark trousers. Nobody recognized them; people stared at Seifer only because he wore white, the tale of the Lion and his rival long-forgotten, and no one made the connection between the sorceress' knight and this strapping man, even with the slender pale-haired woman at his side.

            They didn't check for weapons; Seifer and Fujin wandered back into the Garden that had been their home for half their lives virtually unchallenged. It hadn't changed much—just the swathing on the walls, and the students in Garden dark brown and black. The biggest crowd surrounded the elevators; Squall—his body—had been laid out in the living room of what had been is quarters. There were SeeDs guarding the lifts, controlling the throng. Seifer took one look at the crowd and made for the cafeteria.

            Not to eat; there was a little-used service stairway from the cafeteria to the second floor, that they had used three lifetimes ago (and accompanied by he who had been so dark of mind, and exceedingly bright of spirit) to sneak upstairs and downstairs after curfew when faculty guarded the 'lifts. The cafeteria was crowded with people, not all of whom were Garden personnel. Through this throng the two moved; the service stairway was unguarded—perhaps they thought that nobody knew about it.

            At the door to the office Seifer hesitated; there was no one nearby, and Fujin laid a hand on her friend's shoulder.

            "Return?" Her word seemed to galvanize him. Seifer tapped the doorpad, the door sliding open smoothly. The office beyond wasn't quite as packed as the elevator area downstairs, the people in the room turning to look at Seifer, then ignoring him. The SeeDs guarding the door stared longer, conferred with each other, and then one of them thumbed the doorpad and vanished inside. The other SeeD went back to watching the people, and covertly watching Seifer. Fujin thought that he looked vaguely familiar.

            The door hissed open again, and someone exited to be greeted by calls of "Commander Zell." Commander Zell. Fujin laughed to herself. How the times had changed them. If anyone had told her eighteen years past that Zell would become Commander of Garden, Fujin would have laughed herself silly… where no one could see, of course.

            Zell stomped through the small crowd and came to a halt in front of Seifer. "What are you doing here?" he asked, equably enough. The old Zell would have been attempting to punch Seifer.

            "Paying my respects," Seifer responded, just as equable. "Not illegal, is it?"

            Zell sighed. "No, not really." He picked his way back through the crowd, Seifer in his wake, Fujin in Seifer's wake. The door opened, the vaguely familiar SeeD was ushered inside, two others came out to take their place, five people were shooed out, and then Zell led the two former enemies of his inside.

            Leonhart didn't look that much different from the brooding young man he had been. He looked more powerful, broader across the shoulders, slightly taller, less brooding. There was no gray in his dark hair, no lines on his face. This, perhaps, was the way heroes were supposed to die, powerful and unmarked, in the prime of life, before the toll that aging exacted became obvious. It would be better if Squall's body vanished, too. Then everyone could remember him as he was, and legends could be scribed about how he was not dead, only vanished, and would reappear when Garden was in danger, or some mystical mythical crap like that. Someone had dressed him in a Garden uniform, black-and-gold, Lionheart at his side.

            Fujin saluted him solemnly, warrior to warrior. Squall and Fujin had always shared a kind of understanding that did not extend to friendship. Even during Seifer's dreaming days, when each would have struck the other down without a qualm, Fujin had understood that Squall had to fight for his Garden. Likewise, he had understood that she had to fight for her love. They were warriors. Emotion had no business in a fight, not Zell's enthusiasm, not Rinoa's idealism, not Seifer's fury. Emotion gave strength, and took reason; granted endurance and robbed consideration. Better by far to be rid of the whole lot.

            Seifer stared down at his long-time rival, sober. Finally he held out the long bundle, unwrapping it to reveal a dark-gray gunblade, lovingly polished, triangular and narrow, blade still wickedly sharp. They all recognized it, of course. Fujin had thought it lost, sold for gil. She had been sure that it had been sold for gil. Seifer's face was inscrutable when she shot a glance at him.

            "There was a time when I wanted to bury this in you," Seifer said, quiet, holding the gunblade almost lovingly. "Now, I think, I'll bury it with you." He laid Hyperion beside Squall, almost reverent.

            "Well?" Zell asked, hands on hips. Fujin glanced around the room unobtrusively. This was Leonhart's living room? The room was liberally littered with flowers, in bouquets, vases, jugs, even a couple of wilted-looking flowers (roses, of all things) stuck in a cup full of water. While these were obviously later additions, the bright colors of the curtains and furniture showed Rinoa's hand. The only sign of 'Squall' appeared to be a pair of crossed swords hung on the wall. Aside from Zell, Xu and Nida stood near the windows, conversing quietly and apparently paying no heed to the people around the bier, although Xu's left hand was on the hilt of one of her daggers, and Nida kept twitching the sling that held his shotgun. Two people stood near the door, a young man who looked like he was in shock, and a young woman who kept trying to talk to him.

            "Well what?"

            "What now, Seifer?" Zell repeated. "Now that Squall's dead, where do you go? What do you do?"

            "Do? Go?" The ex-sorceress' knight laughed, something of his young self in the way he tossed his head proudly and laughed, uncaring. "I'll go where I've always gone, I'll do what I've always done, Zell. Squall's no shackle to set me free."

            "You finally call him by name?" Xu put in from the window.

            "When did I last not call Zell, Zell, Xu-darling?" Seifer retorted.

            ­Eighteen years, Fujin thought. Eighteen years is a long time. Seifer has no need to belittle anyone else to prove his own strength, any more. He's comfortable with who he is, and what he is.

            "So," Seifer said, cutting the reminiscing short. "Where's Rinoa."

            "Still in the Training Center." Zell looked uncomfortable. "She was kind of in shock after… killing Squall. Delyn and Ceresia carried him out of there. Rinoa wouldn't come."

            "All right." Seifer stalked towards the door. "I'm going to get her."

            Fujin missed old times, often. Not Seifer dreaming, no, nor Edea, not the destructive rivalry, the Lion and the Dark Knight. She missed the clean fighting, when every sweep of a blade was not weighted with a multitude of sins, and they could form a protective circle, or attacking wedge. In short, she missed the third member of their party, dark skin and bright smile and heavy, comforting presence in battle. He was never a killer, was Raijin: his choice of weapon indicated that.

            Their little party was three as they stepped out of the elevator, the young familiar-looking SeeD having joined them as the doors were closing. He was silent, knuckles white on the hilts of two handguns. Fujin said nothing. Seifer measured him with a gaze, accepted the gunblade the other handed him (a fine-looking weapon, but a little too flashy for Fujin, spraying light every which way), and said nothing. Having just confronted Leonhart's imposing dead presence, Fujin wondered if this boy was his son. They certainly looked alike.

            The party was four as they walked into the corridor to the Training Center, as a young brunette came charging down the corridor behind them and pulled to a stop beside the young man, dark-green eyes challenging them to stop her. Seifer glanced her way mildly.

            "In battle," he said, "two's company, three's a party and four's a crowd."

            The girl glared.

            The young man patted her arm, and said something soft, of which Fujin caught only 'Sia', and 'alright'. The young woman turned the glare on him, then sighed. "Take care of yourself, Delyn," she snapped, and ran back to rejoin Zell, Nida and Xeu, who had just appeared at the entrance, and did not seem to mind having four people in a party.

            "Delyn," mused Seifer. "Delyn—Raine—"

            "Shut up," Delyn said, without rancor.

            Seifer raised an eyebrow. "Don't like it?"

            "Don't want to be judged by it!" Delyn snapped, then lapsed into silence.

            The bone-rattling roar of a T-Rexaur met them at the entrance to the Training Center, and a blast of noise that sounded like a Thundaga. It was times like this that Fujin sorely missed Pandemona, the only Guardian Force she had ever owned, stolen from her by Leonhart. She wondered if the Guardian lay within Leonhart still, sealed in by crumbling flesh. After the confirmation of the reports of memory loss due to GF usage, Balamb Garden had decided to issue a warning, but no ban on their summoning. Wise of them, really, at a time when there was an uprising in Deling to deal with, and the Esthar monsters. Given a chance between memory loss and death, Fujin would choose memory loss, easily.

            The blast of hot, wet air hit them in the face as Delyn triggered the locked doorpad for the left gate, and they charged through, followed by Zell and company. Four embattled SeeDs were facing a T-Rexaur that looked like it had been raised on steroids. Zell tossed something to her; Fujin caught it instinctively. Seifer and Delyn had already charged into the fray, dodging sweeps of the T-Rexaur's muscular tail. She glanced down at the silvery orb gleaming in her palm, and smiled.

            Wind scythed into the T-Rexaur, maddening it; in swiped at the invisible knives raking it head to clawed toes. Fujin, magic singing in her veins, wondered if it was supposed to be this easy, frost-wind in her mind, as if Pandemona was welcoming her after all these years. Her physical body was not at the scene, of course, but her mind rode the winds, and bent them away from her allies and friends, and she knew as the giant reptile howled and stumbled, slashed to the bone, and went down.

            Fujin was tired when she rematerialized on the physical plane, the price Pandemona extracted form its wielder no matter how eagerly the Guardian leapt to mind, but her strength returned easily enough.

            Zell (and the others; but not Seifer) were staring at her with a look bordering on awe—this woman who raised the Wind-God, and rode it—Zell said, "I'm glad you didn't use it on us." What he meant was back when we used to fight, Fujin understood.

            "First time," she admitted, closing her fingers around the silver-orb and stashing it into one of her pockets. She had summoned Pandemona before, memory faded but bright still through the layer of time, and it had never been like this. The blade winds, Fujin thought, remembering, and even the Guardian had changed—it had been asexual, emotionless; the sense Fujin had of it now was indisputably female, and imbued with a protectiveness that surprised her.

            They split again, Fujin and Delyn flanking Seifer to range slightly ahead, the girl who seemed to be named Sia and Nida and Xu attaching themselves to Zell without comment. The SeeDs who had first fought the T-Rexaur had retreated to guard the gate.

            "It was a woman." The voice startled Fujin slightly; sound, where there had been silence. Even the Training Center around them seemed quiet, although Fujin knew that there were things out there watching them, waiting. The death of the T-Rexaur had given them pause, but they would be back once they recovered their nerve. She slanted the one eye to stare at the slender young man, Leonhart's son, who walked beside her, both hands on the hilts of his handguns. He had to be Leonhart's son, he looked too much like his parents. Fujin remembered the boy's vehement response to Seifer's calling him by his full name—it said a lot, really.

            "It was a woman. Pandemona. When you summoned it. I've never seen it like that before." Delyn twitched as he said it, as if he expected to be condemned him for it.

            Seifer turned to look at him, surprise on his face. "That was Pandemona? How do you know?"

            Delyn blinked. "I… just know. I saw Commander Leonhart summon, once," he added hastily. Commander Leonhart? Relations in the family did not seem as close as it might have looked.

            "Well, I've seen Fuj summon it dozens of times, and it's never looked like that—"

            Conversation was derailed as a pair of Toramas—Toramas, in the Training Center?—leapt out of the bushes at them. Fujin chose not to use Pandemona, shuriken flying. She remembered Edea, remembered the warning the woman had given a little silver-haired girl in a darkened Garden. You hold the potential to be more than you are. Comport yourself carefully amongst sorceresses, for they hold the key to changing your future. What Edea had meant was that Fujin had sorceress potential, which manifested itself as a heightened affinity for GFs and magic, some odd senses, and the certainty that should a sorceress die nearby, the power would be drawn to her surely as iron fillings to a lodestone. Edea had deliberately gathered children with magic-potential at her orphanage, the future sorceresses and knights. Perhaps Delyn, the son of sorceress and knight, was possessed of power or sense beyond mere potential.

            "How did you do that, Fuj?" Seifer questioned, after the battle. Fujin said the only thing she could say.

            "Don't know."

            It's your Ultimate Summon, Edea had said, ignoring the belligerent look from the little girl. Perhaps it is fate, that you lost an eye gaining this. One day you will be mature enough, attuned enough to it to unlock the Guardian's full power. It is yours, as much as any Guardian can be. Because your personalities, your souls mesh so. Perhaps she was an ancestor of yours, or you yourself in an earlier incarnation. One hand on the child's shoulder, attempted unaccepted comfort. You don't know? Most don't. Guardian Forces are sorceress souls, bound by power and will, so old that they remember not the reason they stayed behind, and shaped by the thoughts of those living nearby. Only in their Ultimate Form do they shed the illusion cast by others, and revert to their original appearance.

            The center of the storm loomed up ahead, the breach in the wall to the dormitories. The monsters were more concentrated, and they had to fight nearly non-stop to get to the area. Fujin wondered: was Rinoa's presence or power somehow feeding or creating the monsters? Inside the circle, it was calm—too calm. The monsters prowled outside, fading into the bushes.

            "Be careful," Zell warned. Leonhart's demise lay heavy on everyone.

            Fujin drew-cast Shell and Protect from some of the very convenient monsters prowling around the edges of the circle on everyone; Sia was doing the same. Heartilly was seated on the rubble, eyes closed, face ghost-pale beneath too-dark hair. The golden strands in the hair glowed lambent. She opened her eyes as they approached, molten gold and quite sane, and entirely dead.

            Rinoa Heartilly spread her arms and said, "Kill me."

            Fujin raised her shuriken almost unwillingly, compelled by the sorceress' deceptively simple words, recognizing the plea in Heartilly's brown-turned-inhuman eyes. Kill me, before I destroy—Yet something in her railed at cutting down this soul-dead woman, this sorceress-princess who should have lived happily ever after with her knight-prince—

            Seifer stayed her hand, fire-warmth, fever-warmth on her wrist. The woman lowered her weapon, single eye meeting double, questioning.

            "This is my duty," the knight (for knight he was now, dark as he was) said. This wasn't the Dream, that damnable hook in his soul that left him vulnerable. Or rather, it was the same, only matured and grown up to read "­help my sorceress when she needs me". No glory, just compassion. Fujin felt him brush past her, felt his warmth. She could hate Rinoa for it, but there was nothing to hate in that ash-souled woman.

            No matter what, Seifer always went back to his sorceress, a moth to flame.

            He raised gunblade then, the light-spraying, barbarically beautiful blade that Delyn had given him. He should have brought Hyperion, Fujin thought dizzily, it was more suited to killing a sorceress. This one was too bright, too beautiful. The world contracted to here (earth and air, Zell tense, Delyn frozen, Sia frozen, Seifer and sword and Rinoa) and now (2:15 pm on a sunny day 15th Month of Sun 1537 years after Hyne's Ascension, seconds a force of nature).

            The blade descended.

            Pandemona tore out of Fujin with a ferocity that stunned, her mind swept on a tide of wind, senses near-overwhelmed as her physical body, and Rinoa's vanished and the blade winds tore full on the unprotected figure of Seifer Almasy. Fujin's shell spell saved him, wind diffusing over the protective sphere. She could see it weakening, thinning; then the percussive roar of Iftrit shook the trees as the Guardian seared out of Zell, and he, Sia and Delyn shimmered into the other plane. Seifer flung up both hands as the sea of fire crashed over him, and then Fujin was solid again, on her knees, hands braced against the ground.

            It was unprecedented, unheard of, impossible—

            Guardians were devastating, but in a small area. A circle of earth and foliage roughly five meters in diameter was cut and scorched, and beyond it the monsters kept prowling. Someone was screaming; it couldn't be her, Fujin did not scream—but her throat was hoarse and aching, and when she closed her mouth the screaming stopped. The world was disconnected as she lurched to her feet and fell to her knees beside the burnt and slashed thing that was her posse leader, her friend, her lover—

            Seifer was alive, barely. Rinoa, sobbing, poured Curaga after Curaga into him a green tide to counteract the red-and-black that covered most of him. Fujin couldn't find Pandemona, in the recesses of her soul; the Guardian was gone. She could only watch as Rinoa swept power into Seifer. She had never felt so useless in her life.

            She could hate Rinoa for it, but there was nothing in Fujin left to hate.

A/N 24/4=Whoa, fun. I don't like FF8 any more (the game, no), uh huh, but fic-writing for it is still fun. Unfortunately, I kept forgetting that this was supposed to be eighteen years post-game, and I kept writing Seif and Fuj as youngsters. Darn. –cough, cough- "Guardians are sorceress souls—" That's an expansion of an idea I started in Bringing the Wind Home, and it's getting to be more fun than I ever thought it would be. Cheer me, yay.