South Down The Coast

by xahra99

Eventually lemonscented sequel to Government Bloodhounds. Seifer sits on a beach and thinks about what he did, and Quistis helps him to forget.NOW COMPLETE

2. Chapter Two South Down The Coast

Chapter Two: South Down the Coast

Well I woke up in midafternoon, 'cause that's when it all hurts the most.

I dream I never know anyone at the party, and I'm always the host.

If dreams are like movies then memories are films about ghosts.

You can never escape, you can only move south down the coast.

Counting Crows: Mrs Potter's Lullaby(edit)

Where are you now?

Broken up or still around?

The  CIA says you're a guilty man

Will we see the likes of you again?

Manic Street Preachers: Let Robeson Sing

The title picture didn't show on the last one. This time I'll try a different format. It's still up at  and it's not going away .:D

The train delivered Quistis to Hana one afternoon in the manner of an unwanted parcel. Quistis, predictably, hated it.

She hated the general forced we're-here-to-have-fun-and-by-Hyne's-name-we're-going-to air, the baking hot weather that forced all but the most dedicated sunworshippers inside at noon, the small and annoyingly sticky children, the gangs of drunk teenage boys that roamed the streets every evening, pathetic in their desperation for a good time.  

On the face of it she supposed Hana wasn't all bad. The town's olde world fishing village charm that had probably attracted people in the first place was still present in places, if slapped over with a fresh coat of paint and covered with neon and candyfloss and the surroundings were pretty enough, if arid. The boats still went out every morning and came back in every evening. Little shoals of multicoloured fish swirled round the harbour for scraps when the kids went crabfishing and the shops hawked paper cones of shrimp as well as T-shirts and candy.

Quistis had to admit that the major problem was her.

She just didn't know what to do with herself. Everything irritated her with its sheer disorganisation.

The first night she'd unpacked her case at the hotel with a similar kind of forced desperation to the daytrippers (thanks to Squall's enjoy-or-else speech) and  unloaded her meagre store of possessions around the room in a vain attempt to make the place look lived in.   With absolutely no idea what she was going to do, she booted up her laptop and decided to check the list of potential students for her next class only to find that someone had locked it, except for a small cache of game files and an electronic message to 'have FUN!'

 Fun. Quistis was really beginning to resent that word, as well as her friends' assumption that she had no kind of social life outside of Garden whatsoever, which she was beginning to realise was right. 

Selphie had put Snake on her computer.

Snake. On her computer.

Snake.On her computer.

The thought was an indecency. Computers were for work, plus, the game was frankly annoying. Annoying and pointless, because since when was guiding tiny pixellated serpents around a blank screen actually going to help her do anything?

Other sources of entertainment had to be found, and Quistis conscientiously tried most of what Hana had to offer. The beach was hot, and noisy, and cramped, and the people that crowded close and jumped into the shallow water with the tenacity of lemmings made her nervy and on edge. The shops sold nothing she wanted to buy. The movies were boring, and more importantly, unrealistic.  The restaurants and bars seemed to be full of lonely single men with pocketfuls of lame chat up lines, and frankly if she had to hear one more question like "Do you like the sun? because baby you are HOT" then civilian casualty or no civilian casualty Hyne help her someone was going to have his heart cut out with the soup spoons.     

She settled on a kind of compromise in the end after three days of desperate attempted work, rising early for a training run when the streets were empty and the weather still cool and then reading or walking her bad mood off in the hills around the town.

It was the fourth day in June when her comfortable and boring routine abruptly changed.

Quistis knew this because the evening before she'd reluctantly bought a paper to read while she took a bath. Reluctantly, because she had a junkie's need to find out exactly what was going on at Garden but their military coverage was useless.

Quistis had mixed feelings about this. On the positive side it was at least protecting Garden from yet more mostly unwanted press attention. However, on the negative side, she really, really wanted to know what was going on, and that didn't include some carefully primed journalist's third-hand account of some incident of minor importance.

She flicked through the rest of the paper. The only story even mildly related to Garden was an article on Mysterious Meteorite Strikes in Balamb. It went into so much depth on alien sightings and featured so many experts' testimonies that it almost convinced Quistis, whose own theory was based solely on watching Selphie almost crash the Raganarok into a group of trees in an attempt to break the sound barrier.

She ripped the page out, and concentrated on folding a small paper aeroplane out of the wreckage.

After she'd finished that, the crossword puzzle took her all of ten minutes to do.  The Cryptic crossword took fifteen. She consciously avoided turning to the Horoscope page while she read the paper from cover to cover, flicking over page three (fake) and the letters (some extremist cult banging on about child exploitation in the Gardens)

She consoled herself with the reasoning that any attempt of world-threatening nature would probably be reported in the press. Possibly in the obituaries.

Probably.

Damn this.

Quistis closed her eyes and then fell asleep in the bath. At three a.m. she grumpily hauled herself out with a crick in the neck and skin like bubblewrap. She didn't put the paper away and it lay for a few minutes in the breeze from the open window, casually ruffling its pages to the world before a freak gust of wind pushed it into the tub, which Quistis had forgotten to empty.

A casual observer would have noticed that it eventually fell open at the Horoscope page.

Libra:

You may be feeling ennui and questioning the meaning of life. Events in the past suddenly take on an importance that you may not have expected and you may be called on to make some tough decisions. Act with confidence and follow your instincts and you may be pleasantly surprised by the results. Goats may be hazardous to your health.

Quistis would have been surprised to know that it was perfectly correct except for the goats.

The paper slowly dissolved to paste in the tub as Quistis fell asleep.

Seifer woke up.

On a one to ten scale of awakenings, it rated better than most. Arms, check, legs, check. . The clock said five a.m and outside the sky was just lightening, a wind blowing fresh off the sea to rattle the blinds.

He'd had the dreams again. They hadn't been too bad for once, better than the really weird ones that came drifting out of the little mental box in his subconscious marked "Beware Of the Leopard, Please Do Not Open", odd memories and flashbacks that only seemed to make sense in the early hours of the morning.

  As always, they were persistent, and disturbingly vivid. Thankfully they didn't show up every night, but often when they did he didn't get much sleep. Recently it had been bad enough to make him wonder if he needed to think about sleeping pills or something and that had been one hell of a big mistake. Damn stuff didn't stop you having dreams, it just stopped you waking up from them.

No fun at all.

  Seifer sighed. Swimming round his subconscious was like waving your feet in a shark pond for kicks. He stared up at the ceiling, crooking one arm behind his head for a pillow. Cracked, like everything in this damn house, him included.

He reached for smokes and lighter without getting out of bed, lit up and inhaled, staring at the ceiling as little flakes of ash drifted into the sheets.  

The flat wasn't much, and that would have been an understatement. Living in a military academy meant that you soon learnt to tolerate shared rooms little bigger than a shoebox, but at least they weren't falling apart. He hated to think what the place would be like in winter. 

Winter had been five months ago.

It seemed like a lifetime.

After leaving Gen's, Seifer had walked back to southern Trabia, carefully avoiding Marduk, and then walked further south on the railroad tracks with no greater aim than to go somewhere sunny where people weren't trying to kill him all the time.  He'd done a number of minimum-wage part-time jobs, from which he'd reached three conclusions, that illegal work was far easier to get than people thought, that a normal life was way overrated, and that having no money really, really sucked.

Of course, normal was what you made of it.

Ironic, really. There had been so many times in Garden when Seifer had dreamed of kicking over the traces, leaving to find somewhere else when nobody told him what to do or when to do it. The trouble was, like so many things in life, the whole idea of freedom was just a pair of socks wrapped up in one big fancy package. Work or Starve.

It wasn't really a choice.

Plus, of course, the whole fake identity thing really screwed things up. Most people assumed that you had something to hide if you didn't look anything like your identity card photo, and they would of course, have been dead right, Seifer's ID had once belonged to one Dave Matthews late of Marduk, Trabia, who had made the mistake of trying to mug him but who had instead been taught a lesson. It had been a valuable lesson of the sort that you could learn only once.

The cigarette smoke spiralled in a blue haze to the ceiling and a second clock check confirmed that it was now 5.05 am.

Seifer leant out of bed and reached for a book. He wasn't usually much of a reader, but well, you had to do something on your days off.  An afternoon's surreptitious searching in the local library had yielded no less than ten volumes concerning the sorceresses. Or more importantly, their Knights.

It had taken Seifer several days to work his way through them all. He'd bookmarked the relevant pages with torn off parts of cigarette packets and newspapers that bristled from the pages. Several of them had scrawled notes that he scanned absently, the smell of nicotine and smoke mingling with the scent of dusty crumpled books.

The oldest book was little more than a collection of legends, fairy stories. The myth of the sorceress was ancient, and every sorceress had her Knight, the steel against steel, to match the magic against magic.  His memories of the wars were blurred at the best of times, but Seifer could have sworn, and often had, that Edea had been fond of telling him to "go fight these fifteen people for me" and then getting pissed when he got his ass kicked. Funny how it was only evil when the bad guys outnumbered people six to one.

He'd been surprised to learn that the Knights had played many parts, advisor, tactician, champion, warlord, all roles recorded in loving biased detail. Although the legends might be vague when it came to what the sorceresses in olden times had actually done, they were painfully precise when recording what had happened to them. Most of them had illustrations, save for the oldest ones, which had even more enthusiastically detailed woodcuts.

 Burned at the stake. Beheaded. Put to the question, and it probably wasn't  "what is your favourite colour".  Defeated.  Insane. Dead. Worse, defeated, then insane, then dead, choose your order, one at a time or all together.

The text regarding the knights was much the same, though vaguer. Most had died defending their sorceresses, that was their job, after all, and those that hadn't had followed shortly after. One book noted cheerfully that a medieval knight had been hanged and dismembered and buried in seven graves.

He picked up the newest text, an article that explored the psychological powers of sorceresses.  It had a glossary twice as long as the actual journal, which was never a good sign, and had been padded out at the back with a thick sheaf of diagrams featuring  little cartoon brains, arrows and chemical names.

Seifer thought he preferred the woodcuts. He ran a finger along the lines of closely printed text.

" the relationship of a Sorceress and her Knight is of particular interest. This has been postulated (Odine) to vary between avatars but all seem to involve a psychological bond of unusual intensity. Therefore disruption of the partnership can only be broken by the death or repossession of one of the parties, however this has rarely been studied as due to the intense nature of the bond survivors in times of crisis are rare. Nevertheless, it is certainly possible that such individuals would suffer severe psychological disturbance and it is doubtful whether normal function could be ever be retained."

Seifer wondered what Edea was doing, right now, and whether her 'normal functions' were okay. Sighing, he let the paper drop to the floor and then, after a second's thought, picked it up and held his lit cigarette to the corner of the article. The paper smouldered and then slowly ignited, hungry orange flames creeping up to char the author's name. It took some time to crisp all the letters after, but he managed it eventually. Dr. Hiroaki Samura, LL, MD, ……whatever. Burn, you fucker.

And it did, until the flames reached Seifer's fingers and he shook the paper out with a curse

Samura, huh? What did he know? Sure, he'd only spent half his life studying this shit, but he bet he'd spent the whole of the sorceresses' wars hiding behind a sofa. Both of them.

I will give you dreams.

Get the hell outa my head.

Seifer dragged a hand over his face and got up, feet crisping the charred paper remnants to ash.

The clock said five-fifteen. Breakfast time. He took a packet of cereal off the sink and slammed it onto the table, spraying little wheaty Os like miniature shrapnel.  Five minutes' hard searching in the depths of the washing up bowl revealed a last semi-clean spoon, stained indelibly with coffee dregs, and a chipped bowl. Right. Cereal, bowl and spoon. Something was missing.

Milk.

Seifer's fridge was tiny, one of the portable models students used for orange juice and chocolate bars. Tiny, and currently occupied only by four parts of a six-pack of beer.

He thought for maybe one second about the taste of cereal in beer, cursed, slammed the door closed, kicked it shut when it swung open and then sat on the open windowsill and ate cereal straight from the packet in between drags on the cigarette.

The bay looked calm and tranquil in the early morning light. Some fishing boats were already beginning to set off into the sun. If he'd been the kind of person to notice things like that, they would have been pretty. 

Worthless child.

He shook his head. Whatever. Time to go.

Seifer shrugged on carefully nondescript clothes and pulled on his boots. He needed to replace them sometime soon, but then he'd long ago got used to wearing the same clothes until they wore out. The jeans were frayed and worn along the bottom, thinning to whitely soft almost-holes in the knees, and the T-shirt more grey than black. His boots were the best of the lot, scuffed and revealing metal caps in places, and even they weren't going to last the season. Seifer tried not to think about winter, hard and bleak in towns like this with the tourists gone, no work, no money and nothing but storms and rain on the weather forecast. Right now there was work, which was good, even if it was boring, a cycle of working at crappy jobs to earn money to get food to live and work at crappy jobs. No point wondering about the future, or even the past with its painful memories and more painful pain.

Five thirty.

His boots bounced on the steps as he made his way down to the street, crumbling little flakes of rust into the grass underneath. The shop below his room was boarded up and had been for some time, salt sea air hastening the decline of what had once been some kind of hardware store. Unpainted boards blanked out the windows but left splintering cracks to peer into the quiet rooms, dust-sheets enveloping counters in pale and mysterious shrouds. Above, the sign had been pulled off and the exposed metal rivets, corroding gently, trailed long tears of rust down the boarding.

Seifer trailed past it without looking, dried dead grass left parched from the summer weather rattling at his legs as he walked through the remains of the parking lot on his way to the seafront. It was quiet in that early-morning way of usually busy places, trash blowing forlornly in the breeze, and his footsteps clumped echoing down the street.

It was already hot. In a way, the weather was good, Seifer had never liked the cold, and this dislike had been magnified since the winter spent freezing his ass off in Trabia. Plus, it guaranteed some kind of tolerable temperature out at sea, where it could be damn cold at the same time as people on land were wandering happily round in shorts.

He sauntered down the road, if not quite happy then at least warmly content, smoking, thoughts blank with determined early morning tiredness. The harbour area was almost empty by the time he got there so he settled down on a fishbox to wait, resting against the chainlink fence guarding the cannery. If he squinted, the mast of the Ophelia, a forty-foot trawler and his current meal ticket, could just be seen at the end of the jetty poking up from behind the cannery roof.

If ships were like women, the Ophelia would have been the kind that only started to look attractive after ten pints of beer.  She wouldn't have made it onto any picture postcards even in her best days, and she'd seen most of thirty years go by. Rust stained every exposed surface, and the wake that flowed behind them every morning as the boat chugged asthmatically out of the harbour was always glazed with a thin sheen of oil.

The crew was little better. Rafe was the nominal owner of the ship, a thin and wizened man stained brown from too many years working out at sea. He called Seifer Mike, but then he called everyone Mike, even his son, Rob. Rob never called anyone anything because he never said a word. And then there was Seifer.

However they had one major advantage, as far as Seifer was concerned. They didn't appear to care about anything, except fishing, and as long as you got the work done, they asked no questions and paid cash in hand. In fact, if several Ruby Dragons had floated down from the sky and danced a cancan round the docks, neither would have said a thing. Sailing with them was certainly peaceful, or it would have been, if it hadn't been for Lou. Lou was the second hired hand, a local boy, and he made sure that everyone knew it.  He was Rob's friend, upwards of thirty and fond of wild exaggeratings about women, cars and fish, in that order.  

He wondered idly where they'd be heading today. As far as Seifer knew, the location for the days' work depended on some complex kind of magic, including weather, season, family and possibly some kind of almanac, the kind of thing that only little old men who'd fished for sixty years could know. Maybe they sent you into a room somewhere, gave you your very own cableknit fisherman's sweater, took away your powers of speech and entrusted you with the Knowledge. Maybe fishermen had to go through some secret initiation rites involving ten pound halibuts and secret handshakes. Or they just were in tune with the cycles of nature.

Seifer decided he liked his first theory better, maybe because his role certainly didn't require his being in tune with the cycles of nature, which was just as well. The job mostly involved gutting and freezing the fish on board so they were ready to be packed off to market as soon as the boat touched land. Unsurprisingly it required much the same talents as his assassin's job in Marduk, a steady hand and a firm stomach. The initiation, or explanation, or training, had consisted of a demonstration that went something like: Fish. Knife. Put the Knife in the Fish. Repeat many times. It sucked, but it was a job at the end of the day, and it kept him in the flat with beer and cigarettes and as much free fish as he could eat. Seifer never could have imagined he'd ever get so sick of fish.

He idly watched the first few men come drifting to the dock in small groups. On the whole, fishermen weren't welcoming people, and Seifer's shabby clothes and slight Balamb accent marked him out too obviously as Not From Around Here. They left him alone, mostly, and mostly that suited him just fine, slotted in somewhere between local fisherman and summer tourist. So far, no one had noticed who the hell he was, and though that only confirmed his suspicion of the average guy on the street being dumber than monkey shit, it was a relief. People only saw what they expected to see, and that didn't include Knights or heroes or anything else hanging round the docks hoping to get some take-home pay. 

 Smoke drifted up towards the clouds. The smell of cigarettes almost but not quite drowned out the stench of fish guts.

Smoking was Seifer's one vice, or if you really thought about it, just one among many. He'd tried giving up once at Garden, figuring it was only going to make him weaker, but now there wasn't really anyone left to fight. The fishermen? The candy floss sellers? Himself?

Whatever.

He doubted there'd be time for him to die of lung cancer, so he might as well enjoy it. Once Quistis got that letter, if she had, she'd no doubt send a packet of Marlboros with instructions for him to smoke himself to death. Nah. That would take too long.  Just a razor blade and a bath plug…...

Quistis.

 It was odd that he was thinking about her when it happened. Stubbing his cigarette out, bored and more than a little tired, Seifer got up from the crate (which felt like it was grating his butt) and settled for leaning against the chainlink fence separating the cannery from the docks, watching idly for the other guys from the boat.  It gave under his weight with a soft clink as he shifted, thoughts drifting, hands rammed firmly in pockets.

Instead he noticed another figure come past at a fast jog and settle to catch her breath on one of the benches by the quay, some tourist out for exercise, which made him think he really should do more of that. Since the winter he'd no doubt let things slip a bit, training in his flat, mostly, and alone. True, there had been some random monster-slaying jobs to keep him some kind of shape, and fishing wasn't exactly easy, but he still wasn't anything near Garden fit.  And damn, the chick looked good. 

 He toyed with the idea of maybe wandering down to the seats and trying to work up a conversation. Why not? Maybe she'd like what she saw, and it wasn't like he had anything else to do.

Hey. My name's Seifer. What's yours? I like to kill things…..

Seifer was thirty seconds out of the shadow of the building and closing in when the girl turned her head towards him, the early sunlight hitting her profile in a way that would have made one of the famous Centra artists eat his brush.

She looks like Quistis. Funny. But hot.

She really, really looks like Quistis.

That's one hell of a coincidence.

She really, really, really looks like Quistis, either I should have told her she's got an evil twin somewhere or …sweet damn and holy Hyne what the HELL is she doing here?

Seifer automatically drew back into the shadows of a large ornamental potted palm. The surreptitious movement startled a group of seagulls that were hanging around in hope of food, sending them flapping jerkily into the air, squawking indignantly.

Seifer swore imaginatively and flicked his cigarette butt at the nearest bird as Quistis looked up, swept a sweaty hand across her face, brushing back her hair, and scowled in his vague direction.

The last time he'd seen that scowl, she'd been chewing out someone who she'd thought had just shot him. Which, you know, implied that she cared. However then there had been the letter, which Seifer still wasn't really sure he should have sent. But then, he'd owed her. Quistis had saved his butt more than once, and although he'd ended up returning the favour, still, without him, her butt wouldn't have been there to be saved.

Maybe it was a trap. It wasn't paranoia if they were really out to get you.

He watched Quistis covertly from the shadow of the palm as she turned her face back to the sea.. She looked better than when he'd last left her, but then she'd just been killed and resurrected while wearing a giant parka. Relaxation was obviously suiting her. She was casually dressed in a tank top and shorts, both sweaty and sticking to her in interesting ways while she sat hugging one leg to her chest and watching the boats, her face turned away from his and the sweep of her long hair hiding her expression. The pose hiked her cleavage up, pretending a voluptuous figure at odds with Quistis' usual sleek and athletic posture.   

 So she has boobs, who'd have thought it?

It reminded Seifer of all the times he'd watched her in class, idly, because it was better than doing boring useless work. Particularly the fantasy where she said take me away from all this and they went on the run, swindling rich suckers and spending their nightly take in bars, before returning to their seedy hotel dive for hot mad monkey sex. He remembered feeling vaguely annoyed for having such an obvious lust object as Quistis, the smart beautiful prodigy with legs that went all the way up, the one everyone was talking about.  So damn adolescently predictable at a time when Seifer had prided himself on never doing anything like everyone else, but also, unfortunately at a time when anything male and teenage was busy thinking about sex with anything female.

Now that he thought about it, the teenage was probably optional. Seifer mentally shook himself. He might as well join the Trepies and start sewing 'I heart Quistis Trepe' on his underwear.

Nah.  Must be the legs. And, hell, the cleavage. And the fact that he hadn't got laid in well, too damn long.

Not that Quistis had ever been anything but easy on the eye, but then she'd had a whale-sized crush on Squall, the kind for which the word crush was perfect, a heavy all-enveloping thing that Squall had been the only person completely oblivious to, as usual. At the time he'd just resented her for paying more attention to Squall than him, and resented Squall for being so bloody blind. As well as for just breathing the same air, he guessed. No, he'd hated him, at least partly, for being there for comparisons.

Why aren't you more like Squall?

If Seifer had been much given to introspection, he might have said something like how Squall was the damn perfect pupil with no damn personality of his own, all yes, of course all the time. Quistis had given Squall all the attention, and it slid off him like water off a duck's back

Man, had that grated.

Quistis shifted on the bench, a dark silhouette against the sunrise. Wind whipped at her hair.  

Seifer wondered if he should go down there.

Yes

No.

Maybe.

I'm going to have to walk past her to get to the bloody ship anyway, unless she leaves.

This mood of indecision did not sit well with him. For a man who normally considered two seconds of 'should I/shouldn't I…aaa hell just how much trouble can I get in anyway' to get in the way of action this was an advanced course in tactics. He sighed and started out from under the spiky shadow of the palm, still not entirely happy with the decision.

The movement must have startled Quistis-she was a soldier, after all-and she turned her head with a stare like a searchlight and a expression on her pretty face that moved from mild irritation at being disturbed to tense amazement to a careful blankfaced and composed mask. Her pose did not change, and he thought that that was all Quistis, somewhere under the hair her brain was working madly away, assessing the situation, choosing options. Of course, it all left about as much outwards sign as the swans floating on the harbour: they might look serene, but underneath their feet were paddling away like mad.

 "Quistis…..It's been a while."

She stared back at him, perfect forehead creasing in an annoyed frown.

Seifer tried again. "What are you doing here?" His hands found the square outlines of his pack of Lucky Strikes in his pocket and he automatically drew a second cigarette out, cupping his hands against the breeze to light it.

"What do you mean, what am I doing here? You're supposed to be dead!" Annoyed…no, 'livid' was more the word. Or maybe 'raging.' "Don't sound so disappointed."

Quistis threw up her hands, looking like she was going to pick up the bench and throw it at him. "I saw them shoot you." Each word was carefully enunciated like sniper fire. Seifer moved back a cautious step, beginning to think that maybe he'd made a mistake  "Those bullets had your name on it."

"They must have spelt it wrong."

 "That letter…"

"I thought you deserved it."

"Deserved a load of guilt, you mean. Wow, thanks." Quistis spat the last word with a kind of acidic sharpness that, by the look on her face, surprised even her.

Seifer sat down on the bench beside her, thankful that she didn't appear to have anything junctioned. If she had, he was sure that he'd be smoking in more ways than one by now "You know, I think you've got a lot of anger inside you that you need to let out. I recommend activities involving fire and weaponry."

 "You didn't think I'd rat on you to Squall?"

The blunt question stunned Seifer for a minute. Of course, he'd considered it, but Squall hadn't really been on his mind when he'd decided to write the letter. He wasn't sure exactly how much Quistis had told the new commander about what had happened that winter.

She gave an exasperated sigh at his surprise. "Have you killed anyone at all in the last five months?"

Seifer shot her a look, but Quistis appeared deadly serious. "Uh, no." When this didn't change the frown, he added. "Should I?" sarcastically. "Look, I just walked here. Didn't know where else to go. I haven't killed anyone. I haven't done anything illegal." He though about this for a second and changed it to "Mostly illegal, anyway. Apart from maybe just existing."

"So, did you go back to Marduk?" Was that relief in her voice?

Seifer took a drag and watched the embers glow in response. "Just passing through. I promised myself I'd go back one day this summer."

"So it wasn't all that bad after all?"

 "No, it'll burn better. Dry weather."

There was a long and awkward silence. Seifer stared out at the boats and thought of the past months.

December: a long slog of monotonous walking retracing his route though the forest and wearing out yet another pair of shoes.

January:  back to civilisation, or at least Trabia. He'd kept a seriously low profile.

FebruaryMarchApril: all blurred into one long wander.

May: That had been  when some guy, more friendly or blind and less suspicious than most he'd met had told him "I don't have any work for you, but why not try this little fishing village about so (gesturing) far south" Which by a direct route, led him here, wherever the fuck it was on a map.

Figures were beginning to congregate round the docks. Seifer stood, stubbing out his cigarette on the bench. It left a little streak of ash.   "Look, I have to go."

"You're not going anywhere."

I'm not just hanging round here for my health. I have to go to work. I'll be back this evening and I'll tell you whatever you want to know. Within reason. But not now."

Quistis gave him an answering stare and a furious shrug, lips tightly compressed and white, like there was too much she wanted to say to him.

He wondered if she would try to arrest him again.

"Dave!"

A shout from the docks. Seifer automatically turned to the voice, found Mike waving and absently waved back, thinking of how to tell Quistis not to worry, or at least not to actually get on a boat and start hunting him down. The fisherman beckoned in response and Seifer pretended not to see. Shit, sometimes one of the things that bothered him the most was not being able to use his real name, but he wasn't suicidal. Or at least, not yet.

Quistis raised an eyebrow. Under it her eyes looked more grey than blue, hard and flinty. "Dave?"

"Uh, yeah. I'll explain. Later. Name the time and the place."

"You're going to have lots of explaining to do." Like why you're still alive, for starters….

"I'll do it. Trust me."

"I wouldn't trust you if I nailed you to the ceiling, And believe me that's starting to look like a good idea.."

Seifer cut her off, fumbling in his pockets for something to give her. His fingers brushed his house key and he fished it out like a party favour, put it on the bench between them like a truce flag. "My door key. Look, I'm going to have to come see you just to get it back tonight. I get in at seven. I'll see you at seven-thirty."

Quistis' voice could have been used to sharpen knives. "You keep saying look, but all I can see right in front of me is someone who just ran over eight hundred miles to escape capture by SeeD forces. Forgive me for being cynical."

"You're not going to capture me." He spoke flatly, hoping it was true. "I need the money. Where 're you staying?"

Quistis drew one leg up to rest on the bench in a seemingly random move that placed her in the perfect position to jump off and grab him. "The Traveller's Rest on Main Street.  Nineteen thirty hours, on the dot, in reception. And I watch you get on the ship."

"Fine."

"Fine."

"Dave!"

"And if you try anything I'll have the police AND SeeD all over you like a cheap hooker before you get eight miles, never mind eight hundred… Dave." She narrowed her eyes. Seifer pretended not to notice as he turned away.

"It was more like twelve hundred, round trip" he shouted over his shoulder. Quistis muttered something as he turned away that sounded like "I need to go listen to some Enya"

Seifer could feel her eyes on his back as she watched him to the ship, up the steps and out into the harbour. 

So. Quistis. Who'd have thought it?

Thankfully Seifer was able to get through most of the day keeping his thoughts to himself and saying nothing. His brain whirred like a hamster in a cage, going round in circles and getting nowhere, hands working independently of his head as he gutted and packed and froze fish monotonously.  

He was so out of it he didn't even notice when Mike sent Lou down to help him with the last of the packing. And Lou was hard to miss. Almost as tall as Seifer at six one and twice as wide, he took up most of the deck. Smaller objects tended to gravitate towards him and Seifer thought it was as much due to his mass as to his light fingers.

"What's with the woman?"

Lou nudged him with one well-padded elbow. The movement pushed Seifer halfway down the deck, because Lou certainly didn't look like he missed any meals and was built like several wardrobes filled with lard. Seifer had tried to avoid getting into a fight with him so far, because he'd never particularly wanted to be crushed to death. You'd have to use quite a long knife actually to reach the vital organs. Rolls of fat overflowed over the man's collar, his head sunk in the middle of them like an egg in its cup. He disliked Seifer, maybe because he kept his mouth shut and worked hard for minimum wage and Mike approved of him for keeping his mouth shut and working hard for minimum wage. Mike approved of things that saved money. Maybe when the lucrative late-season fishing trips came up, Seifer would be paid for them and Lou would have to fight for places on another ship.

 Lou liked things easy. This suited Seifer fine. So did he. He flicked the tiny heart out of a mackerel and threw the still beating organ to a gull circling overhead, ignoring Lou.

The other fisherman didn't take the hint. "You deaf?"

Seifer sighed, throwing the fish in the waiting icebox with rather more force than was necessary. "Nah." Unfortunately, 'cause then I wouldn't have to put up with your shit.

"Got yourself a girl?"

"She's not my girl." Seifer didn't look up, picked up a second fish.

"Then who was that you were talking to down at the docks?"

"No one."

"Sure looked like someone to me." He made a suggestive gesture that implied a woman with a very strange centre of balance indeed. It certainly didn't look like Quistis, because you couldn't work out every day and still have a chest like a herd of cows.

"It wasn't." The guy was worse than a terrier. But he had balls, Seifer would have loved to hand them to him, possibly with decorative ribbon attached.  "Fuck off."

"She a tourist?" Lou liked to consider himself a ladies man, despite evidence, and he definitely sounded interested. Interested but with all the self-preservation talents of a suicidal lemming. He didn't bat an eyelid as Seifer gutted the herring pointedly right in front of him.

"You're dribbling on the fish." His temper was wearing thin. Or thinner, at least.

"I'd like to suck on her legs for a week…"

"You'd be sucking on her fist." Seifer flipped the final fish into an icebox. "Bullshit. She'd never look at you."

And not just because you look like the bastard offspring of a bulldog and a whale.

.He thought that it was a shame Quistis was never going to meet Lou, because otherwise he would have sold tickets and sat down to enjoy the fun with popcorn. Five seconds, max.

"That little blondie's just gagging for it, I'll bet you.."

The words made Seifer laugh. Anyone who referred to Quistis as 'the blonde' better have no need for their front teeth, or any of the others for that matter. "From you?" The scorn stung the other man. "I'm sure she can do better than you." He stared pointedly at the scars still visible on Seifer's arms. "Just who the fuck are you anyway?"

Lou said it in a way that made Seifer wonder just how long he'd been thinking it for.

He clenched his fist around the knife. The mesh of the cold chain-mail gloves they all had to wear for heath and safety reasons dug into his palm.

He can't know.

The scar on his face was much less noticeable now, a pale shiny line instead of the vivid red slash of months ago. The strategy of 'people only see what's normal and expected' had worked in Hana so far, (and most other places, now he thought of it),  but if people were thinking like that, starting to put two and two together and at least come up with something wrong, it was time to move on.  It was okay for them just to think, the problems started when one guy said something and then everyone else was all 'oh, yeeah…..' and after that, just add flaming torches and bingo! one instant mob.

Which meant Mike would soon have to be looking for a new fisherman, as Lou had just provided him with the excuse to quit the job. A quarrel over a girl was much more obvious than a row over fake identity. And well, Quistis was never going to know.  Seifer would rather have faced a pitchfork-waving mob than Quistis when she really got going.  

Dammit. He'd needed the money.

"Don't insult my girl. Unless you want me to rearrange your fucking face for you."

Lou sneered nastily and had just opened his mouth to reply when the knife thudded into the table neatly between two of his outspread fingers. The fisherman jerked his wrist away reflexively and wrenched his hand right out of the glove. It flopped on the table like a bad horror movie prop, pinned to the wood by the knife straight through the metal links. He opened and shut his mouth, looking much like the fish on the slab and with about as much neck, and then must have decided that Seifer wouldn't dare do any more.  "Was that a threat?"

"No, a threat'd be more" If you lay one hand on her I'll cut it off.", you lying fat bastard. And you know what? I won't have to. Because she'll do it instead."

This time Lou had the good sense to keep his mouth shut as Seifer turned away to help unload, smiling to himself as he watched him try to pull the knife out of the decking out of the corner of his eye and hoping that Quistis never got to hear of their conversation. Unfortunately the lack of movement in his mouth didn't extend to the outlying regions. A fist the size of a ham rose threateningly.

Seifer wondered if he'd be able to get the larger man to somehow fall overboard. He'd sink like a stone. On the negative side, he'd just let go of his only weapon, but on the positive side, he was wearing gloves that weighed a good ten pounds.

Lou spat "You think you're so clever."

"No, I know it." Seifer smirked. Lou growled.

"Lou!"

The ship hit the docks with a bump. "Dave!" Mike's voice, again.

Seifer automatically glanced round, and then turned back fast.

Wham.

Seifer nonchalantly leaned to the side and then ducked as the fist whirred ponderously through the air to smash through the thin wood of the nearest fishbox. He resisted the temptation to kick the table into Lou's groin with an effort. There was a puzzled look on the older fisherman's face as he tugged at his wrist with his bare hand, grunting and sweating. Seifer would have sworn that the fishing boat rocked with his movements.

"What's going on here?"

Lou lowered his hand and swung round. Mike stepped back slightly, because Lou had the advantage of momentum and took some time to come to a stop.

"Asshole just pulled a knife on me!"

That true? I've got better things to do than sort out quarrels. That fish is going to be stinking to high heaven and walking by itself if we don't get it moving off the docks right now. And I mean now."

Seifer shrugged. Lou nodded. The motion sent whole waves of flab rippling forwards. For a moment Seifer would have sworn that his eyebrows were invisible.

Mike sighed. "I don't keep people who pull stupid dangerous stunts."

 There was a pause. Seifer recognised it as the time where he should have been trying to explain himself, blame the other man, anything. Instead he sneered.

"Hell, fuck you. I've got better things to do than take your shit."

Anger was easy to fake. Maybe it wasn't even faked. These days it seemed like he was angry most of the time.

Mike's facial expression didn't change. "Right. Help unload, and then you can take your pay and get off this ship. I don't have time for this." He turned away. "And think yourself lucky I'm paying you for today."

Seifer snarled "Fucker" at his back, fingers digging up in a fast angry gesture as he started to unload the fishboxes, ignoring Lou's grins. Bastard hadn't just eaten all the pies, he'd started on the table. He again vaguely considered trying to tip the bigger man overboard, but consoled himself with the though that he had enough blood in his hands without being responsible for the death of several million in a tidal wave.

It took about forty-five minutes to unload the rest of the catch. By the time they had all finished, Seifer was sweating. Lou looked like he was melting. It was hot and uncomfortable and it stank of fish, and suddenly Seifer wasn't unhappy to be leaving after all. He watched the back of the refrigerated van as it drove off with a mixture of relief and exhaustion and didn't comment when Mike counted out a small pile of coins into his hand and told him to get lost. Just as well. How long was it going to be before someone made a connection, saw the face or shouted his real name, and he turned around? It would only take one person to point out the obvious for all his nice free freedom to come crashing down.

And he hoped to hell it wasn't going to be Quistis.

The afternoon stretched itself gloriously as he walked down the docks, not really thinking about Quistis or Garden or anything else at all.

"Hey. You."

It was Lou's voice. The larger man was standing like a small mountain under the shade of the bow. He gave a mocking glance at the money in Seifer's hand.

"Get what you deserve?"

Seifer followed his eyes to Mike, who was leaning on the bow of the ship and trying hard not to be obvious at looking at them both. Just enjoying the sun, just keeping an eye on things. Seifer got the message. 

But I think this guy might have eaten the Post-it note.

 "You did me a favour."

He grinned and left the other man to work it out, in a surprisingly good mood, considering the circumstances.

Even if you started out running, you had to stop somewhere. The body got tired. He knew better than to think that Quistis would stop chasing him, if she really was after him. Twelve hundred miles of Trabian forest bore witness.

Although he didn't really think she was after him. The surprise had been too genuine, one hundred percent twenty four carat 'what-the-hell?' Sometimes you just had to stop. Face the music and hope you liked the tune that was playing. It was sobering to realise that when you died, most people would already think you were dead or find an excuse to have a party.

And Seifer had never really been into being sober, at least not for the last two years  It was strange to think that his current career as an evil minion/alcoholic had only lasted for the last ten percent of so of his life.  He got the feeling it was kind of like an absinthe hangover, but instead of feeling like your brain was going to fall out your ears for a couple of days you got people trying to make it fall out for you, at great speed, for a few years.

Funny, that.

He considered changing clothes and showering before he went to meet Quistis at the hotel and then remembered that she had his key.

Oh well.  Her funeral. The Traveller's Rest was an..interesting place, from what he'd heard about the management.

It was.

Seifer looked round as he entered the lobby. SeeD sure hadn't gone overboard on this one. The whole place had a kind of down-at heel air, which was surprising as the décor was set firmly on Country Cottage. The kind of place that made you pay an extra ten gil for a patchwork quilt and a picture made of cheese straws pinned over the mantelpiece. Cushions overflowed on the seats, patterned with fat smiling cats and bowls of flowers. The carpet looked as if it had lost whole parties of explorers in there. His feet sank into it up to the ankles.

Quistis was seated at the receptionist's desk, her back to him. The receptionist glanced up and gave Seifer a hard look, reminding him sharply that he was currently just an out-of-work sometime mercenary, fish gutter and odd job man, a mindset which was hard to switch off.  Seifer couldn't help trying to pick out the defensive positions if the building were under attack.  He knew Quistis would probably be thinking the same right now, but she sure didn't look it.

Seifer realised that right now he probably looked like he was thinking about stealing the furniture. Sand trailed out of the bottom of his jeans.

The amount of money it was costing to stay in this place would have kept him in cigarettes for weeks. Hotels were expensive.

Quistis glanced up. Her body language went from Relaxed to Tense and Possibly Angry, Maybe Even Homicidal with the speed of a fighter jet.

Seifer wondered if it had been a good idea to come here after all. Personally he was surprised Quistis had waited, wouldn't have put it past her to hop on a boat and start hunting him down.

It would have been quite a big boat, possibly one of those with the big whale-hunting harpoons mounted on the bow.

Thank you everyone that reviewed! Wow :o so many! And I had a great holiday thank you all. See pictures on his sister's lj at blackthorn.easyjournal.com.

Um, I'm not sure exactly how accurate my sorceress history bit is, but I left it in anyway for the sake of narrative. :D Also, thanks to my sis, for contributing some one-liners and spending long evenings talking about shite and character motivation this summer. Pizza never tasted so good…...

To: Breaker-one (Sarcasm NEVER hurt anyone), DBZ Fanfiction Queen (ta:D) gauntlet-challenge (Dammit! Maybe he didn't notice she was covered in coffee…..or maybe he was just too polite to mention it. Uh, yeah) Ghost 140(well I was going to spam everyone who reviewed GB to let them know I'd updated: but no time, I guess, also not sure that everyone'd be interested) Kjata (more practice I guess) Mystery Science Seed (blunt descriptions of blunt instruments) nynaeve77(ta! I used to go to a Methodist youth group when I was little. We had a lot of required fun.) Ripley (woo!I don't much like Rinoa..she's so damn girly) seventhe (my ex used to have one of those talking bird clocks in his living room) superviolinist (the html is finally dancing to my tune..soon I will rule the world!!!!!!. Uh, enjoy it while it lasts, d00d) The Finely Tuned Fiend (wow:o ta, I've spent all fsckin' summer thinking about it) and Verdanni (last but not least as always)