Chapter Nine -The Condition I'm In
Oh my weary and aching head,
You know I got to get some thinking done.
I can't remember where I put the bed,
I haven't moved it since '71.
I got a real funny feeling I'm about to fall down.
I hope I find my way to the ground.
I'd hate to spend the whole night floating around,
In the condition I'm in….
Moxy Fruvous-Ash Hash.
Seifer woke up and groaned.
Damn.
His mouth tasted like it had been coated in fur and repeatedly shat upon by a parrot.
His arms hurt. His head hurt. Even his eyeballs hurt, for Hyne's sake.
Sometime in the night the air-conditioner had packed up again, leaving the room heavy
and hot. The smell of stale fag-ash and alcohol haunted the air like a separate entity.
A fly buzzed futilely against the windowpane, each soft bump against the glass
threatening to split his skull.
Window.
He fumbled an arm out of the entangling sheets and raised himself on one elbow.
Big mistake. If his head had been hurting before, there were no words to describe
exactly how it felt now. He tried, anyway.
It felt like a herd of elephants was marching through his skull, accompanied by a
brass band, and that was the best he could some up with.
There were bruises, but on as careful an inspection as he could manage, nothing
was broken.
Than Hyne for small mercies. He really didn't feel like visiting a doctor.
Seifer gave up on the window-opening idea and flopped back into bed with a sigh,
closing his eyes. The top of his head threatened to unscrew from his skull, exposing
what few brain cells were left clinging on for dear life as he tried to lie very, very still.
It might have been a few seconds or several hours later that the knocking began.
It took Seifer a few hazy minutes to separate the hammering on the door from the
hammering in his head.
He groaned into his pillow "Shut up." and then stuffed it over his head when
whoever-it-was (and he could guess, oh yes) refused to comply.
There was an abrupt silence, and then the noises resumed, harder.
Seifer screamed silent curses at it in his head and stopped, because it hurt too much.
He should get a sign, one of those coat-hanger door tags. The Mercenary is NOT in.
Urgh.
Had to..
Get up.
This idea did not meet with a rousing approval from his body. Or his brain. Or indeed
any part of him, except maybe certain areas of his hair, which was doing its normal
early-morning thing. Seifer peeled himself off the mattress anyway.
Hyne, he ached. It felt like he'd been beaten up.
Funny, that.
He gave himself a brief glance to check that he still had clothes on and then scanned
the room through slitted eyes for any possibly incriminating underwear, bottles, or
women. The search came up negative, which was just as well. His boots were
abandoned halfway across the room, laces trailing.
So - he couldn't have been all that drunk.
He flopped back onto his bed and tried to think round the headache. There had been whisky.
Yeah, he really had been that drunk.
The hammering had increased to a point where it was amplifying the headache. It felt
like someone was trying to nail through his temple.
Noise. Down.
Seifer rubbed a palm against his face, and then into his hair, where it stuck. Never a
good sign. Sighing, he shambled across the room, fumbled the latch left-handed and
stuck his head out the door. The sunlight hit like a blow, outlining a figure in a nimbus
of palely glowing beams.
"Unhh?"
The figure swung round, hair flying and one hand raised to knock on the door. It
landed the fist on Seifer's chest, hard, and then recoiled, registering the change
between peeling wood and ragged T-shirt.
Enter Quistis, pristinely clean (of course) with an expression of annoyance and
general revulsion.
"Seifer, where..?" She hesitated, taking in his general appearance, and Seifer glanced down.
Damn.
His T shirt was covered in blood, red stains standing out with a Rorschach contrast
that made his head hurt. Well, not covered, but at least heavily spotted. One of the
sleeves was missing, and his jeans' last remaining knee had given up the ghost.
"What have you been doing?"
"Drinking." It felt like some kind of superhuman effort just to open his mouth. Drinking
had been involved, hadn't it? Drinking, fighting… ..and other things ending in 'ing'.
Vomiting, probably.
"You're covered in blood." Her voice lowered the ambient temperature a good few degrees.
Temperature on Planet Quistis: minus thirty.
Mood: Frosty.
Colonisation verdict; incompatible with life. Give up and go home.
Seifer sighed. Hyne, what did I say to her last night?
"Don't worry, most of it's not mine."
"I wasn't." Flatly.
"Fine." He turned round to go back into the flat. To do, what, he wasn't sure.
"Seifer."
The door was halfway closed. Seifer levered it open and sighed heavily, trying to make
a point. "Huh?"
"My key." Quistis's glare could have given him a suntan.
"What?"
"I gave you my goddamn key and when you buggered off last night I didn't have one
so I had to go get one from the receptionist who gave me a lecture about what the youth
of today was coming to and I practically had to promise her my firstborn child to get a
spare one and I had to have it back at nine sharp so that's why I came over here and
do you know just how big a lump of pride I had to swallow, you selfish bastard?"
Her face was turning red. She took a break to breathe and Seifer jumped on the pause.
"Last night, you said..
"What do you mean, I? You said.."
"Something about how I was an arrogant jerk…"
"That I only slept with you on some sort of order
"and I was jealous of Squall…like hell."
"….and at least I was right!"
They glared at each other in mutually outraged silent incomprehension, broken only by
the old lady next door banging on her window and shouting.
Seifer sighed. "You'd better come in. Anything else?"
"Yeah. We're all going to hell. According to the receptionist"
"Like that's news."
I've been going to hell for so long I've reserved a parking space…..
He crossed the room carefully, kicked the boots into a corner and shoved the window
open using his left hand. Quistis stood in the middle of the room awkwardly, looking
like a particularly decorative hatstand as Seifer settled himself on the floor, within easy
reach of the window just in case he hadn't got rid of all the drink last night. She sank
into the armchair and sighed.
"You don't look so good."
"I don't feel so good." Understatement of the month.
"You don't look like you feel so good." She smiled, icy clouds breaking for a moment
and then closing over just as fast.
"Well, I don't feel like I look like I feel so good." He rested his head on his hand, sliding
his other hand up gingerly to touch his face and wincing whenever it found a mark.
"Do you want a shower before I start with the shouting?" Quistis' voice had turned back
to frosty.
Her words surprised Seifer until he noticed that her nose was wrinkling. Never one to look
a gift horse in the mouth, he nodded, getting the feeling Quistis would have liked to turn the
cold tap on full blast and shove his head under it.
"Sure."
Her glare was hurting his eyes. And the noise of the water would drown out the shouting,
just in case she started early.
Quistis' temper was much like a stick of dynamite: it took a while to go off but once it did
it made one hell of a mess. Maybe the explosion would be over by the time he got out but
he wouldn't like to bet on it.
Seifer got up and made his unsteady way out the door and into
the tiny shared shower room, trying his best to walk in a straight line and feeling her glare
like a knife between his shoulderblades the whole way.
Quistis leant back against the wall and listened to the water falling. She'd been shocked
when she first saw Seifer but long experience had led her to expect almost anything from
him, the more blood the better.
His hair looked like it had been styled by running his hands through it, as opposed to
normal, where it looked like it had been styled with the thing you use to clip the grass
before cricket matches. It was dark and matted in places, and his clothes were a mess.
Not to mention his face.
He got into a fight. Again.
Of course he got into a fight, this is Seifer we're talking about, Mr I-use-other-
people-as-stress-balls.
I don't know why I bother…..
Her first-aid skills itched in the back of her mind like a mosquito bite. Quistis clenched
her fists and ignored them.
The man could just..no, he could damn well just clean himself up.
Why would anyone want to drink what was basically poison? Why would anyone
actually enjoy losing control? She didn't understand.
It pissed her off no end. Control was the lifebelt of Quistis' hardworking and slightly
repressed life. It just didn't make sense. And as for drinking to forget, she seemed
to manage that just fine without any kind of foreign substance, thank you very much.
Steam poured through the open door, turning the already hot room into a sauna.
She screamed "How hot do you want it?" and them mentally groaned and counted to ten.
No answer.
Hmm. Either Seifer's ears were blocked up with soap or he really was feeling bad.
She was going to enjoy this argument. One of the advantages of having an fight with a
hungover person tended to be that they didn't say a lot except 'please keep it down'
and would agree to anything if they though there was the chance of a small glass of cold
water and an aspirin.
But Seifer had never been good at doing the 'please' thing and Quistis knew that the addition
of a hangover
was unlikely to help the equation.
Half an hour later Quistis was starting, fiercely against her will, to worry that he'd somehow
managed to pass out and drown in three inches of water. She tiptoed over and opened the
bathroom door.
Seifer was standing in front of the bathroom mirror shaving. The white shaving foam made
his face look very tanned and accentuated the dark rings round his eyes.
He narrowed his eyes and stared at her, flicking soap from his razor into the sink. "What?"
"Just checking."
Seifer grunted and went back to shaving. Quistis looked down.
Seifer was shirtless. The fraying cuffs of his jeans trailed in the inch-deep water that
covered the floor. They were possibly the only bit of clean clothing he was wearing;
the remainder of the denim was spotted with mud and dark black smeary drops that
Quistis could have sworn were blood. His knuckles were skinned and bleeding,
probably from hard and repeated contact with other people's chins.
No prizes for guessing exactly what had gone on, then…
"Seifer, you look like a railroad accident."
"Add that to the list of things I never needed to know."
Quistis leant against the doorframe, avoiding the puddles of water. "What happened to you?"
"I got into a fight."
Agent Obvious strikes again, huh?
She sighed. "They didn't recognise you?"
"Nah." He waved a dismissive hand, winced and then went back to his shaving. Now that
most of the foam had been removed, Quistis could see that at least one of what she'd just
assumed were dark rings around his eyes was a bruise. "It wasn't about that. Just some guys off the boat."
Quistis swept her eyes down his torso, critically. There were a couple of large grey-green
patches that looked very much like bootmarks. "You're a mess."
"Yeah, but you should have seen the other guys."
"Yes?"
"There were six of them."
Mr. Macho. " And a dog, right?" She rolled her eyes.
Seifer ignored Quistis, leant forwards and dunked his face into the bowl of shaving water.
The plug must have had a crack in it, and in the silence Quistis could hear the water dripping
down into the drain. She shut up, irritated, because there wasn't really much point in trying
to argue with someone who couldn't hear you shouting.
When he surfaced for air she snapped "You're so careless."
"Punching people isn't careless."
Seifer ran his hands over his cropped hair, dripping water. The movement made his shoulder
muscles move in interesting ways that Quistis thought would have looked better if he hadn't
immediately turned, winced and grabbed at his left arm in a move that nearly dislocated his
opposite shoulder. She saw a thin line of blood running down his back and commented
caustically "Would you rather I said deliberately stupid?"
"Shit." Seifer touched fingers to his back and stared blurrily at the blood. "You got any cure
spells?"
"Seifer, I'm on holiday. We have to account for those things. And if you think for one minute
I'm going to waste one on you just because you've gone out and got hammered. I'll stitch
you up if you like."
"That's a good idea" Seifer said, in the tone of voice of someone who didn't think it was
a good idea at all.
"Seriously."
He pulled the plug and slouched over to the door, feet trailing wet prints over the floor.
"Okay."
"Turn round."
Seifer sighed and leant against the bathroom wall, resting his elbows on the plaster above
his head. Quistis stepped gingerly over the slick damp tiles and ran cautious fingers down
his back. The injury wasn't much, she decided after a cursory inspection. A couple of
stitches or five, the kind of thing a Curaga would have been helpful with.
"Did I tell you you're an idiot?"
"Within the last ten minutes? At least twice."
Quistis found their usual bickering comforting, the small and petty quarrels of those who
feared the big arguments.
She reached for a washcloth and wiped the blood of his skin,
feeling Seifer's back tense under her not-so-gentle touch. He inhaled sharply.
…..You're afraid everyone else'll work out you're not quite the frigid ice bitch
everyone says you are. Shit, you let your walls down, Trepe. Where's your damn
mask now? What are you going to do?
She pressed the flannel down harder and then let it drop to the floor, cursing herself.
I can't believe I bothered saving your life….
Dammit. She couldn't even make herself feel better by hurting him.
I better get this done quickly. The landlady wants her key back….
"I'll go borrow a needle and thread from the old lady next door. Just go into the next room
and try not to open it up again, okay. Bring the washcloth."
No answer.
"Okay?"
Seifer opened his eyes. He looked drawn, tired and shaky, probably due to the copious
ingestion the night before of what, Quistis thought, was essentially a poison. "Yeah."
Idiot.
She crossed the hall and after five minutes cautious bartering, managed to obtain needle
and thread from the old woman. The needle was blunt and not curved, and then thread
wasn't anything near medical quality, but it was just going to have to do.
She slammed and locked Seifer's flat door and motioned to a point on the floor. "Sit."
Seifer sauntered across the room and sat at a point near, but not on, the one she'd indicated.
Obscurely, it irritated Quistis almost as much as the key thing. There were so many other
things that she could be mad at him for.
Trying to kill her, for one, if you really wanted to exhume skeletons…..
"Lean forwards."
Seifer rested his elbows on his knees. Quistis sighed. She knelt down on the horrible carpet
behind him. "No, not like that. You're going to pull it open."
"Trepe, do you actually know how to do this?"
"I've been on first aid courses." Quistis refrained from mentioning that she'd aced them all.
Learning how to put people back together melded seamlessly with learning how to take
them apart.
"Did you actually get to practise on anything except a piece of meat?"
"Yes." Quistis' voice was about one degree above the temperature of Seifer's freezer,
currently gently defrosting into a puddle onto the floor.
"What?"
"Myself. Give me a lighter. I know you've got one somewhere."
Seifer fished a cracked plastic lighter from his pocket and handed it over without speaking.
Quistis got the feeling she'd impressed him. Earning respect from Seifer was like pulling teeth,
but once you had it, you had it.
She flicked on the lighter and held the end of the needle in the flame until it glowed red,
waved it about with slightly scorched fingers until the metal cooled and then threaded the
cotton she'd acquired carefully through the eye. It was pink, which she thought served
him right. She placed one hand against his back to hold him still.
"Don't move."
"Don't worry. I don't want to wind up with my arms sewn to my leg."
She bit her lip. That's if you're lucky. I had something far more creative in mind…..
"Ready?"
"Sure."
Quistis started stitching. It was harder than anyone watching would have thought, especially
with the kind of straight needle made for sewing fabric instead of skin and the tendency of
real people to bleed copiously. Seifer tensed and took one deep breath, hissing the same
three swearwords over and over. He was sweating slightly under her hands, and Quistis
concentrated on the slight pulling sensation as the thread slipped though the flesh. It was
much easier, sewing yourself up.
She cast around for a topic, and settled on the obvious.
"Why?"
"Why what?" Seifer sounded slightly exasperated, but his voice was steady enough.
"Why the drink. It can't do any good."
Seifer shrugged.
Quistis snapped. "Don't move!"
Hell, if you'd bothered to go get the cut on your face stitched instead of being too
bloody macho to go see Kadowaki, you probably wouldn't have that damn scar
to start with…….
Three stitches to go…I need to talk, if only to get my mind off this…
"The drink?"
"It doesn't make me forget-but it helps me cope with remembering."
Quistis sighed.
One day I'll get a straight answer out of him about what the hell freaks him out
so damn much. It's more than just the sorceresses.
"I would ask you how much you drink on a normal day, but
then you'd scare me."
"In the winter when it's really cold, nine to constantly. And that's just the
hard liquor..."
"You're joking."
"Maybe."
"I hope so. For your sake." Quistis said. She finished the cut and counted down her
stitches, giving one final tug on the thread to make sure everything was secure. Seifer
grunted, hit the floor with one fist and snarled. She raised her eyebrows.
"Yeah, yeah. I know, all men are babies."
"I believe the word was 'asshole'." Quistis reached for the bottle of neat iodine that
she'd filched from the bathroom medicine cabinet. "Wait one second…" She grabbed
the flannel, wadded it in the mouth of the bottle and flicked the bottle upside down.
Holding the washcloth gingerly between her fingers, she wrung it out just above the cut.
It was going to stain, but who cared? Maybe it'd make him wash more often.
This is for one impromptu makeshift first-aid in Trabia, you bastard…
She counted softly under her breath, waiting for the iodine to penetrate. One, two..
There was a stifled gasp from Seifer. He pushed off the floor and was standing on the
other side of the room within a second, looking much more wide awake than previously.
Bingo.
And lo! One instant cure for hangover.
She wound the cotton back into a neat roll and smiled angelically at Seifer as he glared at her,
stabbing the needle into the thread to keep it safe as if she was jabbing swords into an
assailant's flesh.
"Better?"
"My ass."
"I thought it was your back?"
Seifer gave her a 'don't even try to be funny' glare and muttered something she couldn't
quite hear. It didn't seem to be complimentary, and probably rhymed with 'luck'.
She sighed.
How could I have been so stupid as to expect any kind of gratitude?
"What's that? Oh, thanks for sewing me up, Quistis. Never mind."
Seifer looked slightly sheepish. He flexed his shoulder and ran one finger carefully over
the stitches. They seemed to meet with his approval, so he wandered over to the sink.
"Coffee?"
She recognised it as an Almasy-style peace-offering, and about as much thanks as she was
going to get. And anyway, Quistis was always ready for coffee, in the same way that vampires
are always ready for blood, so she nodded.
"Yes. "
Seifer got two mugs out from under the sink." Shout away."
"Coffee first." Coffee came before shouting. It came before everything.
"Normal coffee, or special coffee?"
Quistis scowled and said "What's in it?" You didn't mess with the coffee.
"Coffee. Sugar. Cocoa. "Seifer saw her disbelieving face. "It's nothing weird. Or toxic.
Want any?"
"Okay." Quistis subsided. "But just the normal kind."
She watched as Seifer tipped two teaspoons of coffee into each mug, added two of cocoa
and a couple of sugars to his and topped them off with hot water, rolling her eyes as he did so.
That can't be healthy.
The spoon stood up in his drink as he bent awkwardly down to pass her a mug.
"Don't blame me if you get diabetes."
"Nah. I'm counting on the liver failure. Or maybe lung cancer. Can't make up my mind so
I thought I'd go for both at once. And that's assuming I escape the old favourite 'death
by firing squad'."
Quistis thought of the Zen Buddhist temple that was her body, and winced. "It's your life."
Seifer shrugged, and ended up spilling half his cup on the floor. He held out a hand as
Quistis sighed and went to grab the washcloth.
" Don't worry, it'd make the rest of the carpet look too clean"
So that's the reason behind the sticky floor.
And anyway, I wouldn't worry about his carpet getting messy. I don't worry.
It's not as if I'm neurotic or anything. I just like things to be neat. And tidy.
Neat and tidy. Is that too much to ask?
"I'm not…no never mind…" Quistis decided to change the subject "Why are you so
damn stupid sometimes?" That was the question she'd been meaning to ask ever since
she'd opened the door. "Is it some kind of big macho thing?"
"Nah. Look, it's nothing, I went for a drink, I got into a fight. Nothing happened."
"You call that nothing?"
Seifer sat down on the floor beside her and groaned as his body told him in no uncertain
words that it really hadn't been nothing. His eyeballs hurt, for Hyne's sake. His hair hurt.
Maybe on a one to ten scale, with ten being just about as bad as you could get without
dying and one being 'oh, look, I broke a nail' how he felt wasn't all that bad. After all,
he'd legally died three times.
Still, he felt like shit.
Judging from Quistis's expression, he looked like it too.
She looked like she was thinking, very hard.
Seifer didn't even want to guess what she was thinking about. He didn't really want to think, in fact.
Thinking hurt.
Maybe he was out of practise.
In fact, the thoughts running through Quistis' head were fairly simple.
What am I doing with a man whose hobbies include nasty violence and self-abuse,
who is currently sitting next to me, looking like something the cat dragged in and
…….., oh, nice one….drinking lethally strong coffee with one hand and dropping
fag-ash into it with the cigarette held in the other?
Are relationships really supposed to go like this?
Quistis considered.
Her main relationship points of reference were confined to a secret addiction to the
Balamb soap opera Destiny, and her friends.
Friends, check. Irvine and Selphie's relationship seemed to be based solely on sex
( when they were together) and sending extremely long pornographic emails to each other
(whenever one of them was out of town.)
Well, that wasn't going to work. She couldn't even use her computer.
Rinoa and Squall had a weirdly co-dependent but so far pretty much normal relationship
that seemed to be based on a mutual agreement that Rinoa not get overly affectionate
with Squall in public. In return Squall occasionally uttered words of more than three
syllables and told Rinoa that she looked 'nice, like… 'you know.'on occasion.
Despite all predictions, it seemed to work
Come back to that.
Let's think… Irvine and Selphie, Rinoa and Squall, Zell and that librarian girl who has
all the personality of a box-leaf file, but who I'm sure is a really wonderful and amazing
person when you get to know her..and....Cid and Edea.
Hmmm.
Well, there were just some things she didn't need to imagine. Edea's taste in men was..
individual…
Plus, of course, the fact that she might have just slept with Seifer, two years ago….
For a minute Quistis' brain shut down in horror.
Beside her, Seifer stubbed his latest cigarette out on the table, blissfully oblivious of just
what was going on in Quistis' mind. He rubbed his eyes for a minute, muttered
something that sounded like 'Turn the damn seagulls down" and then fell asleep on the table.
There was a knock on the door behind her. Quistis swallowed her coffee in one gulp and
glanced at Seifer, who was comatose on the table top. Screw coffee, she was going
to need a Phoenix Down at the very least to get him going. A Phoenix Down or a good
kick in the pants.
The knock repeated, louder.
Quistis sighed, shook Seifer's arm half-heartedly and then padded across the carpet.
She opened, carefully, in case it was the police.
Stood framed in the doorway was a small child that reached up to Quistis' waist. He
was dressed in high-top trainers and a T shirt reading Say No To Drugs, which
Quistis could only guess was a good thing.
She said, cautiously, "Hello."
The child took a step back, retrieved the middle finger of his right hand from the depths
of his nostril and thrust a sheaf of paper wordlessly into her grasp. He then replaced the
finger in his nose, turned and ran down the steps, disappearing down the street.
Quistis took a cautious glance at the bundle, which she was beginning to realise was a
very tattered daily paper. She wiped her fingers carefully on her shorts, noticing a
scrawled Biro note inked on the margin of the back cover.
It read 7a Sullivan Street.
Quistis glanced up at the numbers Tipp-Exed on the wall beside Seifer's door. It read
7b Sullivan Street.
So, the wrong address. It must belong to the little old lady who'd just lent her the needle
and thread (with an expression that said she couldn't even begin to imagine what Quistis
was going to get up to with them).
She'd have to remember to wipe the blood off.
Quistis flipped the paper over, preparing to walk across the landing and stuff it through
the old lady's letterbox. As she turned it, however, she caught sight of the front cover.
Tattered or not, the words were still legible.
It was then that Quistis Trepe did the one thing she'd been trying to avoid in all her
twenty years of life. She broke the law.
Instead of stuffing the ( paid for and delivered) newspaper through the old neighbour's
letterbox, she sat down on the steps, read the entire paper through, read the first three
pages twice more, got up slowly and re-entered Seifer's flat, still moving slowly but
accelerating by the second.
Seifer was woken by Quistis tugging on his arm. He groaned.
My mouth tastes like monster shit. Maybe all the sugar wasn't a good idea.
It sure as hell doesn't seem to have woken me up.
On the plus side, at least I slept.
Quistis was pulling on his arm and babbling something about a newspaper article.
She waved a blurry newspaper in front of him and then, as his eyes still refused to
focus, smacked him on the head with it.
"Read the paper!"
Okay, simple. Just as soon as he worked out which one he was supposed to read
he'd have it covered.
Of course, the fact that the main headline was in three-inch high letters helped a bit.
It read, emphatically "ATTACK ON GARDEN'
After staring at the paper for ten seconds in horrified bemusement he realised that it
had an 's' at the end. Attack on Gardens. He couldn't decide whether that was better or worse.
Seifer started reading.
"News of the recent attacks on Balamb, Galbadia and Trabia Gardens rocked the
political community to its core today. All three organisations were attacked in
the early hours of this morning though it is not known how much damage was
caused. . When approached, the commanders of all three Gardens declined to
comment, though a formal joint statement is planned for release later this afternoon.….."
Scan. More of the same. Just journalistic bullshit that seemed to imply a lot while never
admitting they didn't know what in Hyne's name was going on.
"A document released by the terrorist organisation known as the CLF confirmed
their involvement in the attack. The paper cited suspected child abuse and political
power manipulation as reasons for the attacks.
A detailed political analysis of major events followed, accompanied with information
on the Gardens, on the organisation they thought might have been involved and other crap.
He read on.
Are the Gardens really getting too powerful? Write in with your opinions now!"
Seifer was tempted, for maybe a second, to write in to point out that without Balamb
Garden they'd all be paying homage to the Forces of darkness or floating in little particles in outer space
…not to mention being picked out the teeth of various unpleasant and spiky monsters.
Eventually, he decided he couldn't afford the postage and glanced up, feeling vaguely
disappointed that someone had managed to wreak that much havoc. If anyone was
going to do it, it was going to be him.
Quistis was rushing round the flat, collecting up her things.
"I have to go."
"What about the key."
"Forget the key." She had a little puzzled frown between her eyes that meant she'd forgotten it too.
Seifer's hand went immediately to his pocket. "I'm coming."
"You are not. I need to phone. You don't have a phone, do you? I need to get back
to the hotel so I can use the phone there, and you can't come back to the hotel because
the receptionist is still gunning for us." Quistis threw up her hands, slid her glasses
down her nose and then pushed them back up. "So no."
"Don't you think you're over-reacting?" he asked. Her voice was getting to his head.
The paper lay on the table between them like a ransom demand.
"I Do. Not Overreact." Quistis slung her bag over her shoulder.
Seifer recognised the look on her face. Back when he'd been a little kid watching
his favourite TV programmes all the fake medieval knights had had much the same
expression on their faces while buckling on their swords and spurring their fiery-eyed
chargers into the fray.
He held one hand to his head, concentrated really hard on ignoring the pain and said,
quietly, so not to hurt his ears, "Okay. You don't. But the Garden isn't going to fall
apart just because you're not there. "
In fact, because I'm not there, it's probably in better shape.
"Don't you think they'd have told you by now otherwise?
She paused, halfway out the door. "Yeah, that's right, Xu should have phoned me."
Seifer fished the key out of his pocket, brushed lint, pieces of cigarette ash and nameless
crud off and put it into Quistis' unresisting hand. He felt a small gleam of happiness at
being the logical one for a change and stubbed his cigarette out on the table. "Because
you're on holiday? Remember? Come on."
"You don't have to come."
Seifer kicked the gunblade under the table and snatched up his own keys. "Fine, I'm
just walking in this direction."
Besides, I want to know what's going on just as much as you, and not just because
they might blame it on me if they knew I was alive….
Quistis slipped the key into her pocket and was halfway out of the door in front of him
before she stopped and turned. "Just ..Seifer, change your clothes, okay."
Seifer looked down at himself. Walking had not made his assortment of aches any less,
though the coffee had cleared up some of his richly-deserved hangover. He told himself
firmly that the damage wasn't all that bad. Highly visible, but not even close to serious
trauma.
Still, he found it hard to argue with Quistis' idea. He grabbed the nearest crumpled T shirt
off the pile on the floor, sniffed it and shrugged it on, hissing at the pain in his shoulder.
The stitches felt tight against his skin.
As an afterthought, he picked up a can of deodorant from the floor, held it six inches away
and sprayed it in liberal quantities over all his clothing. The jeans were pretty much beyond
hope, but then even before the fight they'd been well on their way to crunchy. They got
changed, anyway.
Quistis didn't say anything, but he could have sworn that the woman was stifling a wince
as she turned away to go down the steps.
Seifer followed, locked the door just in case there was anyone desperate enough to
steal from him, and joined her. They walked down the street together, under the hot sun,
fast. Mostly the tourists got out of their way. It could have been the expression on Quistis'
face, the fact that she moved like a threat, or even Seifer's black eye, but they moved.
He gave her a careful look.
There was a certain tightness round Quistis' eyes and she had sweat marks under her arms.
Tiny beads of perspiration beaded in her hairline, pulled into a shape Nature never meant it
to hold. By anyone else's standards she still looked immaculate, by Seifer's standards she
was so tidy it bordered on sterile. Judged by hers, the woman was a wreck.
He tried to cheer her up by making casual conversation. It was a mistake. Conversation
had never been his strong point. Threats, yes. Small talk, no.
"You think it's terrorists? Really?"
Quistis pushed her hair behind her ears, irritably. "Terrorists? Why would terrorists want
to attack Garden?" Her shoes clicked on the pavement with the speed of an express train,
clicketyclicketyclickety.
"Because they think it's a cruel animal massacring power-hungry megacorp that trains cute
little orphaned kids to be fighting machines?" Seifer said. He reached for the ever-present
packet of cigarettes in his jeans, cupped one against the sea breeze and lit up.
Quistis shot him an angry look and he added "Just guessing" unrepentantly.
"I'll terrorise them." Her lips had compressed into a thin pale line and the paper tucked
under one arm was crumpling.
"There's nothing worse than people who think they're doing the right thing." Seifer said
noncommittally. He sneaked a quick look at Quistis to check she'd got the message
She gave him a look.
"What? I 'm just always right."
"You wish." Even her acidly phrased putdowns didn't seem to have the same venom.
Seifer was worried, even if he didn't even admit it to himself.
He grinned round the cigarette. "You love it."
"Right." Quistis said in a tone of voice that implied not at all, and that was pretty much
it as far as conversation went.
They finished the rest of the walk in silence. Seifer chain-smoked and Quistis stared
straight ahead with an expression that implied her mind was working furiously
behind those neat square glasses.
Seifer could tell that she was ready to take a train back to Balamb as soon as anyone
even implied maybe it'd be a good idea if she returned.
Which was admirable and all, but where did that leave him?
Bored, alone, and loserish, that was what.
They turned into the hotel car park. Quistis headed for the lobby. Seifer split automatically
and wandered round the back of the building. He waited outside the fire door and blew
smoke into the air conditioning vent.
A few minutes later the safety lock rattled and Quistis peered out. "Come on, if you're
coming." She added, as an afterthought. "No weapons."
Seifer sauntered through the door, stubbing his cigarette out on the hotel's stuccoed wall
and throwing it into the flower beds as an afterthought.
The stub bounced off the hard earth, trailing sparks like a miniature firework.
"What makes you think it's weapons, maybe I'm just pleased to see you."
Quistis didn't even deign to reply.
Well, that one went down like a lead balloon.
Seifer shrugged, lit up again, took a deep drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke out of
his nose, which he knew pissed Quistis off. To his disappointment, she didn't seem to
notice, though he supposed it was fair. Having cigarette smoke blown in your face
didn't really compare with having your home of ten years bombed.
To his surprise, he was feeling vaguely angry about the whole incident, and not just
because he'd have liked to do the same thing first. Quistis being so obviously upset
wasn't helping, so Seifer told himself it was just because she was rattled and left it at
that.
There was no way he was ever going to feel protective of Garden. Not after he'd tried
to bomb the place, kill all of its star students and ram it with another boarding school.
Was there?
They made it up to Quistis' room without incident, sneaking in commando-style round
the corridors and halls just in case the maid was around. Seifer started to feel like some
kind of James Bond. Plus, every time he tried to start a conversation with Quistis the
woman blanked him. It wasn't until they rounded the final corner and were standing
outside Quistis' room that he finally noticed a clock.
"One in the afternoon?"
Quistis spoke over her shoulder, rattling the lock." I didn't come round until eleven thirty.
Well, I did. I visited at nine. And ten. And eleven, but I couldn't get you to wake up."
She shot him an accusing look.
Seifer blinked.
Wow.
By his reckoning, which wasn't very reliable, he'd staggered in from the bar at about two,
so that meant around nine hours in bed. It must have been some kind of record, for him.
Quistis wasn't paying much attention. He hoped the receptionist hadn't bothered to chew
her out, because it would have gone in one ear and out the other. She let the both in and
then started searching around in drawers for her cellphone
The room was in its usual immaculate state, though the piles of paperwork had definitely
shrunk since last time Seifer had visited. He wasn't sure whether that was a good thing
or a bad thing.
On the plus side, maybe she was taking the vacation seriously, learning to relax.
On the negative side, it meant you could see more of the wallpaper.
Seifer nudged a draught excluder shaped like a long fluffy snake with one boot toe and
then shrugged. He examined the pictures on the wall idly while Quistis rifled through her
drawers.
They were certainly better than Ultimecia's décor, those creepy pictures that seemed to
move as you watched them, but that wasn't saying much. All sunflowers in vases,
bug-eyed kittens and crying children that turned his stomach. One of them was made
of cheese straws, and he wondered vaguely how they'd managed it.
"I just hope everyone's okay." Quistis said.
She'd found the phone, finally.
Like all the rest of Quistis' kit, it looked expensive, small enough to have fitted into a
large wallet and with a sleek silver finish that looked bulletproof and watertight.
Seifer would have bet money on it having a number of extra modifications, from
built in taser shockers to miniature knife blades, cameras and hidden compartments.
Possibly a toothbrush, even.
She flipped it open, brushing dust off the keypad, which lit up.
"I wonder if they'll have hit the headmaster's office. That's what I would have done."
It was said in a worried tone of voice. He could pretty much guess what she as thinking about.
Or rather, who.
"He'll be all right" Seifer said, in the tone of voice of someone who didn't give a shit whether
Squall was alive or not.
"What do you care? You hated him." Quistis keyed in a number, her manicured fingers flying
over the buttons. She leant against the desk, one long leg crossed over the other while the
fingernails of her free hand tapped impatiently on the desk.
"Only to keep things interesting." Seifer sprawled out on the bed, bouncing appreciatively.
He kicked a fluffy cat shaped pillow off onto the floor and wondered if she'd let him listen
in. For a minute he considered asking and then discarded the idea like the cushion. Seifer
didn't like requesting. People offered, or nothing.
There was a shrill beep from the dresser.
Quistis had gotten through to Garden. She spoke into the phone, held one finger to her lips
and then stabbed her index finger at him, mouthing a couple of words into the air.
The message was clear.
Shut up.
She stabbed another finger at him, this one lower.
Seifer looked bemused.
"Take my pants off? While Xu's on the other end of the phone? Okay, if it turns you on…"
Quistis scowled, shook her head fiercely and tried again, pointing one finger at her feet.
Seifer raised his middle finger in response, bent down and started undoing his laces.
The boots shed little flecks of leather onto the carpet, their toes cracking and peeling
like scabs to reveal the metal underneath. He'd known cadets who scraped the
leather from the toes of their new boots simply to make themselves look harder.
Seifer had never seen the point himself. He liked the shocked expression on people's
faces when they caught one between their legs.
"Hello? It's Quistis, yes, Quistis Trepe. Can I speak to Xu?"
A pause.
"Yes, now. Right now."
A pause. "Yes. I heard the news. Is everything all right?"
Seifer lay back on the cushionless bed and found that if he listened very hard he
could just about hear both sides of the conversation. Xu's voice was tinny but faint.
"Yes. It's okay. I was going to phone you later. Knew you'd be worried."
"Everyone's all right?" Quistis was absently rubbing the back of one shoe against
her other calf. It made little tapping noises on the table.
"For a given value of right. Squall's livid. Really livid. You would not believe."
"I can."
Seifer tried hard not to feel pleased. So the guy actually had a facial expression. Who'd have thought it?
"They didn't catch who did it."
"Did what?" Quistis' fingers had stopped tapping.
"Someone managed to cut the electricity off. We don't know who they were,
and we don't know how they did it. Some kind of remote controlled signal from
land. We had to make a forced landing and we're grounded for a couple of days
for repairs. It made the generators melt, worse luck."
"Will it take long to fix?" Quistis asked.
"No. It could have been worse. They let all the monsters out in Trabia and
crashed the systems at Galbadia. They're still trying to clean up. We sent some
people over but it's going to be a while."
"We'll catch them." Quistis' voice was absolutely confident. Seifer would have hated
to be one of the terrorists.
"Yeah. " Xu sounded less convinced, as far as Seifer could tell. It was hard to read
nuances of expression into a voice that sounded like a mouse on helium. "Well, I hear
he's got a special mission lined up for you when you come back. It should be fun."
"Should I come back now?" Quistis sounded very casual, maybe too casual.
Seifer couldn't tell if she really wanted to be ordered back, or not, and the thought
of her wanting to get rid of him he found obscurely annoying.
Not Quistis. If she didn't want me here I'd be out on my ear.
Hell, I'd probably be holding my ear. In a bag.
"Should I?"
Seifer wondered why she bothered. If he'd been in Quistis' shoes and loved Garden
as much as she did, he'd have been on the next express back, holiday or no holiday.
And the terrorists, rebels, whatever, would be in small pieces, or at the very least
wishing Seifer had never been born.
But then, for him, time taken weighing the scales of justice had always been time that
would have been much better spent with a gunblade, some well-aimed spells of the
fatal kind and a mortuary full of bad guys.
He held his breath.
Xu's voice seemed to take a long time to come. "No. There's nothing you can do.
We've put all new assignments on hold anyway."
"It's no trouble." Quistis had turned away from him now, staring out over the ocean
so that Seifer had less to no chance of working out what she was thinking. She played
absently with strands of her long blond hair, smoothing the little pieces at the front of
her hairstyle over and over between her fingers.
"You're fine, and you've got to stay. Squall's orders. He knew you'd phone."
"Required fun, huh?" Quistis muttered.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Anyway, enjoy yourself. I wish I was there. I could do with a vacation." Xu's
voice sounded wistful even down the phone. "It's like bedlam in here. What's it
like in the sun?"
Quistis visibly swallowed. "It's…. okay, I guess."
"Anyway, I've got to go. Have a good holiday. Enjoy yourself. "
"Bye, Xu."
The phone clicked.
Quistis put the phone down without turning round, folding it neatly away. Seifer
watched her from the bed. He could see her shoulders move as she let a long
breath out. As he'd expected, she knew he'd been listening and didn't bother to
fill him in, even supposing she'd wanted to.
She didn't look round. "I'm going to have a bath."
"Fine." He went to get up off the bed and reached for his boots.
There must have been something in his tone, because she turned round and looked
at him with almost pleading eyes, over the glasses. "Don't go. I need to talk to
someone."
The general imploring effect was slightly spoiled by the fact that her teeth were
gritted so hard Seifer thought it was a wonder they didn't' break. Each word
seemed to be dragged out of her like a fish on a line.
"I'm not going anywhere."
Quistis shot a glance at the burn makes still visible on the windowsill "The TV
remote's on the bed. Just in case you get bored."
"Sure."
After he heard the water running Seifer rolled over and switched the TV on. He
channel hopped through a while, rejecting Jerry Springer, cookery and Laguna Loire
on 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here.' until something caught his eye.
. There seemed to be some kind of nature documentary on…
"Contrary to popular opinion, male lions are rather cowardly, lazy animals."
Interesting.
He sprawled on the bed, watching TV and laughing to himself.
The programme had finished by the time Quistis came out of the bath, billowing
clouds of hot scented steam from the open door behind her. To Seifer's disappointment,
she was wearing a bathrobe and an almost indecently fluffy pair of slippers that
looked as if she'd eviscerated two rabbits and then stuck her foot in one end.
She sat down on the bed beside him, smelling of lilacs and water, some kind of
expensive hotel soap he guessed.
"They're okay." She said it like she needed to convince herself.
"I know, all right."
Seifer planted a kiss on the only bit of Quistis he could reach, which turned out to
be her neck. He laced an arm round her and slid the other down into the small of
her back. Quistis didn't move away and he took it as a license to continue.
"I'm sorry, okay."
She made a noise like 'mmmph' that Seifer translated as 'what for?' though the ease
at which he did this worried him slightly.
"For last night. For Garden. Just sorry, okay?"
"I may press and frame the moment."
"Yeah, Seifer Almasy apologises to Quistis Trepe. June, second year after the wars.
Make the most of it."
Quistis fussed with the belt of her dressing gown. "I said some stuff, too. I guess
I should be all mature and apologise." She sighed, said "I'm just glad they're all right."
and leant back on the bed, letting out a breath that should have echoed round the nasty
faux-antique rafters of the room. Her legs still dangled over the edge and she kicked
her shoes off, moving one foot against the other.
Seifer heard them slide to the floor and felt rather than saw the tension slowly disappear
from her body. He placed one hand flat on her stomach and looked down at her,
supporting his weight on his elbows.
If it had been anyone else, he would have sworn that they had tears in their eyes,
but then it Quistis never wept. Seifer put the glassiness in her eyes down to reflection
off her spectacles.
She smiled, faintly.
"Just hold me, okay."
She didn't say anything else, so he did.
Hey, guys. I have nothing to say, except that it really is very hard to stitch cuts with a
straight needle, because they go across, and people kind of go in. Actually, it's just
bloody hard. We have to practise on oranges and small plastic doodahs. The html-I
will get back. Honestly. 'Tis exam season (again) and decidedly unjolly. And anyone
who spots the gratuitous Counting Crows reference gets a cookie.
Reviewers:
Altol, (two! Oy. I loved the last ch of F&I, btw. Very, uh, inventive, especially what
with the nudity.), Amber Tinted, (Witty…maybe. Sometimes. On occasion.), ayanamiyuy,
(Thanks. Angst is good, but too much isn't. Um.) breaker-one, (No, action figures
aren't sad. I have a Yuna one which I won in some drawing competition and a
homemade Delerium and Princess Mononoke that my sister made me. Maybe she
should customise me a Ken. I'll suggest it.:D), Ghost140, ( Hey! 1-0 to you!),
nynaeve77, ( The cat is my version of Kuroneko. I like cats. And Trigun.), Mana
Angel (Romance is not subtle-that's my fault. I tried to squeeze two chapters into
one and then ran out of time. Ah well, that's what rewrites are for.), superviolinist,
(Yup. The Keyhole was a dive. I love English pub culture: you can go for a drink
at eighteen without being made to feel like some kind of social deviant)
kate ( Everyone thinks they're such sweet little things,
Soft downy feathers and nice little wings.
But there's a poison I'd like to administer,
You think they're cuddly but I think they're sinister.
What are they doing at night in the park?
Think of them waddling about in the dark.
Sneering and whispering, stealing your cars,
Reading pornography, smoking cigars.
Nasty and small, undeserving of life,
They smirk at your hairstyle and sleep with your wife.
Dressed in black jackets and horrible shoes,
Getting divorces and turning to booze.
Forcing old ladies to throw them some bread,
Who could deny they'd be better off dead?
Look closer and you may recoil in surprise.
At web-footed fascists with mad little eyes.
Ducks! Ducks! Quack! Quack!
The March of The Sinister Ducks, by the Sinister Ducks.(edit))
…which has led to a happy week thinking up variants with 'Mercedes' and 'rabies'
and 'pills' and 'ills' and ..oh, I could go on for hours.