AN: zzzzZZZZZZ

Seifer: looks around OK, we can sneak off while she's asleep

Zell: falls down stairs with a loud crash

Zephyr5: zzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZ

Seifer: yells Quietly Chickenwuss!

Zephyr5: zzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Squall: ...

Zephyr5: wakes up whazzapnin?

Seifer and Zell: sweatdrop

Rei the Wind Spirit - thank you for the review! glomps  I only hope I manage to hold everything together right through to the end ;)

Book Three of the Sorcerer Arc Battle Lines Chapter Five Dangerous Memories

He had his back to her, and Lionheart was already drawn - an ominous sign.  But there was something different about the silence now that she was in the room.  From outside, tainted by the fears and expectations of the three SeeDs protecting the brunette from the world, and the world from the brunette, the silence had seemed to teeter on the verge of devastating violence.  Now that she was in there, with just the source and the silence, the air seemed steeped in regret.

"Kiros was right."  He was staring out of the large window.  Gazing at something or nothing, Edea couldn't tell.  "Too damn right."  He growled.  Violence flashed through the atmosphere like lightning lancing through a storm cloud.  Before Edea had even registered movement, two chairs exploded into splinters beneath Lionheart's razor-sharp edge, the crash as they disintegrated like a clap of thunder in the office.  Seconds later Seifer, Quistis and Zell burst in, weapons at the ready.

They found the two of them standing in silence.  Squall staring out of the large window at the storm rolling in over the Gaulg Mountains, Edea staring at the brunette's back, as the last specks of dust from the wrecked chairs settled to the floor.

"What do you want Edea?"  Squall sounded distracted, as though his real attention were elsewhere.  Edea took a step closer and bowed her head.

"I came, to respectfully ask for your aid, and to offer mine in return."  There was silence.

"And what of Ellone?  Is she safe?"  Edea swallowed.

"She should be.  Something happened on the Phoenix..."  A raised hand cut her off.

"But you don't know for certain."  Squall's voice was dangerously soft.  "You try and play your petty games in order to bring her back from space.  You ignore the fact that Kylari has Rinoa shadowing your every move.  You virtually hand Kylari the chance to leave Esthar leaderless.  And you have the gall to return to beg me to provide you with a knight, before ensuring that Ellone is, indeed, safe."

"You're being too hard."  Zell remarked into the tense silence, his words evoking a similar scene many years before.  Squall, coldly criticising the Forest Owls as an outdoor television flickered and displayed Adel's cries for help.

"Is he?"  It was, surprisingly, Edea who spoke.  "It's all true.  Had I known about the threat to the Lunar Gate I would have warned them, but I didn't think..."

"No.  You didn't think."  Squall cut her off.  "Sorceresses never think."

Squall, calm down.  Seifer warned the brunette firmly.  This worked up, Squall could let slip things that he couldn't afford to let slip.  Do you intend to help her or not?

"There...there are things I would like to tell you.  Things that I should have told you before, about Kylari's motives."  Squall finally turned around.

"I know."  The two words said everything.  His attention switched to the others in the room.  "Seifer, choose the five most suitable candidates from the top six ranks of SeeD - include Nida.  Quistis, put a call out for the ones he chooses to come up here.  Zell, you sort out the elevator codes."  The three vanished into the outer office.  Minutes later Quistis' voice came over the Garden-wide tannoy requesting that five named SeeDs report to Squall's office at once.

Their responses were prompt.  Within ten minutes of the call going out, all five SeeDs were lined up in Squall's office.  They were clearly nervous, but hiding it well considering the wreckage of the chairs still had to be cleared away.  Seifer wondered if they were contemplating how high to jump when Squall said 'boo'.

"Well Edea?  Yours is the need.  I'm not going to order anyone into it."  One or two of those Seifer had chosen seemed to recognise Squall's tone of voice.  There was sudden stillness about them, a hope that the ground might swallow them, or that they might suddenly become invisible. 

"Your former headmaster, Cid Kramer, my knight, is dead."  She looked for a reaction, found none.  Her heart sank slightly.  "I will go insane, probably sometime soon, if I do not find another knight."  Still no reaction.  But their emotions weren't hostile, just wary, defensive.  Almost, protective...  But what of?  What did they think they had to protect from her, at all costs?  "I will not force anyone to become my knight.  But your Commander has allowed me to ask you..."

"I volunteer."  It was a slim brunette at the end of line, someone Edea had seen, but not really seen.  His green eyes were full of compassion and understanding, and Edea suddenly wondered if it really was possible to fall in love more than once.

How in hell did you know?  Seifer demanded of Squall, gaping at Nida in surprise.

Just a hunch.  Squall's words were tinged with mental laughter, his thoughts stained the pale pink of amusement.  It was infectious.  Seifer found himself fighting to keep the grin from his face.

"Thank you Nida.  The rest of you, dismissed."  The four SeeDs, deliberately chosen by Seifer because he'd known they wouldn't volunteer to be a sorceress' knight, saluted and hurried from the office.  Quistis and Zell followed them, out of reflex at the dismissal Seifer thought, but he doubted they'd sidle back in.

The blond surveyed the room.  Edea and Nida were lost in each other, probably already halfway to completing the bonding process without even realising it.  Squall was watching them with a smug expression.  Seifer wondered just how long the brunette had been waiting to pair Nida up with someone.  But there was also a sadness behind Squall's eyes, a faint wistfulness perhaps, that this had been under happier circumstances.

Squall grimaced at the back of his eyelids and reined his senses in as far as he could.  The inevitable lip-lock between Nida and Edea was getting somewhat enthusiastic, but he was damned if he'd be driven out of his own office.  So he concentrated on the desk in front of him.  Or tried to.

Seifer was having similar problems ignoring the uninhibited bonding process across the office, and was currently attempting to estimate how many separate parts - bricks, beams, panes of glass etc. - made up the entire Garden.  He wasn't getting very far, but he was reasonably sure it was a lot.

"Shit!"  The muffled cry of alarm and surprise, coupled with the sound of two different people hitting the floor, had both Squall and Seifer turning to face Edea and Nida, weapons drawn, ready for trouble.  "Sorry sir."  Nida apologised mournfully, looking like he expected to get in trouble.  Edea was gaping at the brunette she'd just taken as her knight, but then she looked up at Squall - and scuttled away from him with a wordless squeak of sheer terror.

"No, no...nononono..."  She muttered, still staring wide-eyed at the SeeD commander.  Seifer frowned.

"I couldn't block her, sorry sir."  Nida apologised to Squall again.  Seifer's frown deepened.  Clearly Nida had some embarrassing memories that he'd failed to block from Edea's mind.  But why was he apologising to Squall?

"You're...you're a sorcerer!"

Seifer froze as Edea's accusation reached his ears.  She knew.  The secret was out...but...  She'd learned from Nida's memories, which meant Nida also knew.  How in hell had Nida discovered?

Squall ignored Edea, his full attention now on Nida, who was just picking himself off the floor.

"May I?"  The brunette sorcerer gestured, indicating that he wanted to see the memory Edea had.  Nida blinked in confusion for a moment, then nodded and hung his head, looking ashamed.

FLASHBACK START

"Hyne's truth!  They both said it!"  Nida wandered closer to the cafeteria table, intrigued by the snippet of conversation.

"The Commander," a pause to check that said brunette hadn't appeared, "a sorcerer."  The words were filled with a healthy scepticism.  "Get real.  Sorcerers don't exist."

"And what would you know?  Bet you think babies just appear on the doorstep!"  A small scuffle broke out over that, halted when someone firmly sat both involved parties down.

"Seriously though, don't you think so many things would make sense if he were a sorcerer?"  There was a contemplative silence, followed by a few tentative agreements.

"I guess it boils down to one question.  If the Commander is a sorcerer, does it make any difference?"  There was more hearty chorus of disagreement.  "So, whatever happens, we protect our Commander, and our Garden."  Fortunately the cafeteria was long used to spontaneous outbursts of noise at the back tables.

"Heard an interesting rumour earlier."  Nida's ears pricked up at the quietly off-hand comment.  He was in the SeeD lounge on the second floor, somewhere that rumours were only mentioned when they became fact.

"About Leonhart being a sorcerer?  Reckon that one's all over Garden by now."  There was a slight chuckle.  "I'd hate to be the one who lets it slip around ice-blade himself."  The chuckle was echoed by several other nearby SeeDs.

"So what do you think?  Is it true?  Or do we try and track the source and see if that imagination can't be put to better use?"  There was a burst of outright laughter at the suggestion of tracking down the source of the rumour.

"There's got to be some truth in it."  A contemplative voice decided, cutting off the laughter abruptly.  "Even if it's just that Leonhart's a potential target for any sorceress involved in this."  There was silence as that idea was considered.

"No."  Someone decided, shaking their head.  "I think it's more than rumour this time.  It's too convenient that this gets spread whilst Quistis and Zell aren't around."  A pause, and a shrug.  "What difference does it make anyway?  He's not become a sorcerer overnight, so sorcerer or no, he's still the same guy."

FLASHBACK END

"I see."  Squall stepped backwards, away from Nida, hand falling back to his side.  "Seifer, see if Quistis or Zell know of the rumour."

"They don't."  Nida spoke before Seifer could move.  "No one dared ask.  I guess they don't really want to know the truth.  It's all very well to think things through when it might or might not be true, but to have that taken away, to really know...  It's a big step to take."  Seifer stared at Nida in open astonishment.  The brunette had been a knight for under a minute, and already he was changing.  Squall really had known what he was doing.

Edea continued to gape blankly at Squall, her thoughts racing.  Squall...a sorcerer.  Squall, whom she'd raised from an infant, a sorcerer.  If it hadn't been for the carpet, rough beneath her hands, and the wall, cold at her back, Edea might have thought she was dreaming.  A nightmare.

Everything she'd been taught as a sorceress, everything she'd learned, said that sorcerers were, or had been, inhuman creatures.  Cruel and emotionless, only desiring power and control.  She'd learned to hate even the concept of sorcerers with her whole being.  She'd rehearsed, in the darkest hours of the night, what she would do to any sorcerers she discovered.  That had been before she'd learned that there were no sorcerers.  Not anymore.  Before she learned that the sorceresses had once joined forces, long, long ago, and conducted a fierce and bloody pogrom, eradicating the sorcerers from the planet.  Before she'd discovered about the cult dedicated to the eradication of all sorcerers, and those even rumoured to be related to sorcerers - the Centra.  Before Adel, and her days seeking out and eliminating sorceresses who abused their powers in Adel's domain.  Before she'd finally stopped one day, and looked at her bloodstained hands, and wondered, at what point did your actions make you inhuman?

That was when she'd fled Adel's increasingly paranoid rule.  Fled to Centra and begun an orphanage where she could save and nurture life, instead of blindly taking it.  And there she'd brought up, unknowing, a sorcerer...no.  She'd brought up a young boy and his sister.  A young boy who'd lost his mother, and been abandoned by his father, and who then had his sister snatched away by fate.  A young boy who'd not understood, or perhaps had understood too well.  A young boy who'd grown into a young man, and who had saved the world in the process.

Just who was telling the truth?  Edea wondered.  That the sorcerers had been persecuted by the sorceresses to the very edge of extinction was certain.  But why?  Had they really been power-hungry devils?  Or had the devils been the sorceresses?  Hyne knew that there were always sorceresses who desired more power than they'd been given.  And if she measured what she knew of sorceresses, against what she knew of Squall, there was little doubt in her mind.  Not only were her hands incurably stained with blood by her own actions, her powers were steeped in the spilt blood of innocents - actions justified by lies.

And if that was the truth, then she, and every other sorceress, deserved whatever judgement Squall passed on them.  They deserved to be hunted by him, as they had hunted his kind.  But he had never passed judgement on them for their past sins.  Even knowing, as he had to know if he knew to hide from them, what they had done.  He had the vast power of SeeD at his command, and the ears of the leaders of the two most powerful nations.  And he had done nothing but remain true to what SeeD stood for.  A neutral mercenary and training academy.

She was ashamed.

Nida felt the wave of shame roll from Edea into him, and turned from Squall to see his sorceress slowly climbing to her knees.  Head bowed, Edea took a deep breath.

"I humbly submit myself to whatever mercy you see fit to grant me.  I cannot atone for the wrongs of my predecessors, but perhaps I can begin to repair the damage that has been done."

"Edea...?"  Nida took half a step towards his sorceress, stopped by Seifer's hand on his shoulder.

"This is between them."  He patted the confused brunette on the shoulder reassuringly.  "Come with me, and I'll try and explain."  The two knights left the office, Nida casting a last glance over his shoulder before the door closed behind them.

"There is no repairing what was broken.  No recovering what was lost.  From the moment the memories of the sorceresses became dim, this end was the only end."  Squall's hand appeared in her vision.  Open.  Empty.  Offering nothing except the chance to start again.  She took it, silently allowing him to help her to her feet.  "Whether you side with me, or with Kylari, it no longer matters.  All that will change is how long it takes for the end to come."

Edea made her decision.

The explanation was simple.  Long ago sorceresses had waged a vicious and bloody war against sorcerers, desiring their powers.  They had succeeded in eliminating all but one line of sorcerers, and Squall was the last of that line.  Now Kylari, determined to merge the worlds of the dead and the living, was slowly eliminating all perceived competition in a bid to take Squall's powers.  An event that would result in the end of the world.

Quistis and Zell had both left - presumably to continue with their normal duties about Garden - and both Nida and Seifer were glad.  There was a tension between them, born of the knowledge that Edea's decision might result in them becoming mortal enemies.

But if Nida's inexperience had prevented him from guarding his memories, and led to Edea's momentous discover, Edea was a seasoned sorceress, and more than capable of shielding her emotions.  So it was only when both knights were contacted by their respective magi that they knew the outcome.

The tension peaked, and then faded as if it had never been.  Both knights changed, subtly - no longer holding themselves ready for an attack.  Nida looked relieved, as well he might.  Not only had he been spared a fight to the death against one of Garden's finest fighters, he'd also been spared the sudden and gut-wrenching realisation that his loyalties were no longer his own.  Oh sure, he'd make a hundred little choices every day, just as he already did, but if Edea decided something, then - like it or not - Nida had no choice but to back her up.  The last real decision a knight made was the decision to become a knight.  And in some cases, Seifer thought ruefully, even that decision was made for him.

The two knights entered the office together, each going to their respective magi.  Squall was back behind his desk, looking over a message that had just arrived.  He neither looked nor felt happy to Seifer.  Quickly reading the message over the brunette's shoulder, Seifer could easily see why.  They'd lost contact with both Esthar and Galbadia.  Esthar was only to be expected.  With the deaths of Laguna, Kiros and Ward, and Ellone still needing retrieving from the emergency landing zone, the still-xenophobic country had most likely sealed itself once more.  Galbadia was more worrying, because when they lost contact with Galbadia, it meant all their agents inside the country, and Caraway himself, were out of contact.  That was something that shouldn't have happened.  Then again, Seifer reflected, Kylari shouldn't have happened.  But she had, and now they had to deal with her as well as they could.  Which at the minute wasn't very well.

"Edea, I want you and Nida to go to Esthar - they've sealed themselves, but you know where the salt lake entrance is.  Find Odine and ask him what the likely outcome of killing a sorceress, possessed by an independent personality fragment of another sorceress, would be.  Then make sure Ellone's safe."  He paused for a moment, then threw a GF orb - occupied - to Nida.  "Should you need to get a message to me, Quezacotl will carry it."  Nida nodded slowly, and placed the orb with his own GF orb, in a pouch on his belt.

Seifer hid his own surprise.  It was one thing to admit to himself that there were things Squall had not told him - for whatever reasons - but quite another to admit that to someone who, potentially, could still become an enemy.  Admittedly, now he really thought about it, many things that had confused him in the past - about Squall and his GF compatibility - suddenly made sense.  The GFs had aided the sorcerers when they hid from the sorceresses, so of course all sorcerers were likely to have a high compatibility with GFs.  Add to that the fact that Squall was the last sorcerer...

"We'll find out what's going on in Galbadia soon enough."  Squall frowned as he spoke, reflecting on the fact that, whilst his hand-picked and discrete bodyguards had been enough to discourage most would-be presidents, there was one man who, with the backing of a sorceress, would have taken on anything.  Tieren Deling.  Vinzer Deling's son through and through. 

You'd have thought, the way his father ended, he might have learned a lesson about sorceresses and power.  Seifer mused, picking up on Squall's thoughts.

I'd hoped.  The brunette responded, watching silently as Edea and Nida teleported out of his office.  He thought they'd probably jump a couple of times - most likely both locations in Galbadia - before heading for their real destination.  Sensing a presence, he reached out with his mind, finding one of his early GFs hovering 'nearby' on the GF's home plane.  Ifrit, see if you can distract Rinoa when Edea and Nida breach the Esthar seal.  With a mental bow, the GF departed.

"You never told me the GFs liked you that much."  Squall chuckled at Seifer's reproach, a genuine sound of amusement.

"They'll do it for anyone with full compatibility.  Same as they'll appear physically."  Seifer blinked.

"It's nothing to do with you being a sorcerer?"  Squall shook his head.

"That helps with the compatibility, that's all."

"Oh."  Seifer fell silent, for once without comment.  "So what do we do about Galbadia?"  Squall shrugged.

"We wait.  They can't have gotten all of our contacts and operatives.  Someone will get in touch with us, or Galbadia Garden."

"You think the G-Garden's safe?  I mean, if she's going after Galbadia, she'll be going after the G-Garden as a base, right?"  Squall didn't answer.  "Squall?"  There was still no response, but Seifer could feel the brunette's emotions becoming flat - not suppressed - and dead.  Squall was entering another quiet mood...

AN: The whole Edea/Nida thing, don't ask me why, but I can kinda see Nida being her knight if Cid ever died.  I think he's the kind of person who doesn't stand out, until they find the niche where they belong.  Nida's niches in my mind (at least for this fic) seem to be as the pilot of Garden, and as Edea's knight.  Although piloting Garden isn't exactly a high profile career.