Second Interlude
As my hand touches the door, she jumps up. "Wait!" she says. "Quistis, please, wait." She's standing there, pleading with me, one hand at her mouth, fingers touching her lips. It's an unguarded moment. You don't see many of those around here. I wish I could frame this instant for her, so years down the road she can look back on who she once was.
No, I don't. Because then she'll start thinking about who she's become. That's not always a pretty picture. SeeDs have about a thirty-year shelf life. And the expiration date doesn't slide by quietly. When I said we only have one SeeD drawing a pension, I wasn't kidding. The graveyard keeps getting bigger, but the list of distinguished alumni rests at one. On some level, I wanted to go that route. Get an assignment teaching some theory class and move me away from the front lines. Then, just... fade away.
"I wasn't... I... I didn't tell you the whole story before," she says. "About why I wanted Intelligence. And I should."
"You don't owe me an explanation," I reply.
"It's not that." She sinks back into her chair, but she's keeping me in the room with her gaze. "I've never told anyone and... I might not get another chance."
I nod, turning away from the door and easing myself back into the chair. There's time. I was trying to hurry out of here, get the end of the game underway, but... they'll wait for me. Squall might put up a fuss, but the rest of the gang knows how to handle him by now. I'm not the only one who can finish his sentences anymore. And I think I like it that way.
"Just before the parade, before I really understood SeeD, I was in the Great Library. And I was reading some society magazine, and they had an enormous article on an upcoming gala dinner for the Sorceress held by, you guessed it, Vinzer Deling. It was her... debutante ball. To induct her into the upper echelons of Galbadian society." Her eyes fade again as the past takes over her mind.
"They had a fold-out section dedicated to the elite team of caterers Deling had hired for the party. He couldn't be content with hiring just one caterer. He needed to have the very best. They had the Baron of Breads, who supervised the Earl of Éclaires and the Rajah of Rolls. The Proconsul of Pepper and the Satrap of Salt both worked for the Chevalier of Condiments, who in turn worked for the Sultan of Seasoning. They all had exalted titles like that, along with profiles in the magazine and pictures of their food."
Her mouth works a little bit and she swallows, and I know she's salivating at the memory of it. Years of hunger are hard to erase, no matter what happens to you.
"Words can't describe it," she said. "It was lavish by any standard, but for me, a lavish meal was half of a baked potato that someone didn't eat.
"I saw that food, and I got to thinking. I went to bed every night with hunger pains so these people could have such opulence. The very food that graced their tables was rightfully mine."
Her eyes flash up to me, angry, tempestuous. Am I her friend? Therapist? Confessor? Inquisitor? Sometimes, it's hard for me to tell. Sometimes, it doesn't matter.
"And how did they get all this money? Were they better than I was? Harder workers? What did they do to earn the money?
"Nothing. The Galbadian government has always been funded on simple concepts. Tax the citizens into oblivion. When we've taken all their money, shove them off to the side. When there are too many of them to handle, declare a radical shift in ideology and hold mass executions. While you're at it, declare the people who made it rich the last time the new enemies, and confiscate all their property in the name of social justice. Lather. Rinse. Repeat."
Her voice falls so flat on these last three words that I almost hear a bell chime in the distance. She's also pinpointed the exact heart of the Galbadian problem. The last ten elected presidents were overthrown, to say nothing of the military dictatorships.
"Understand. I don't hate rich people for being rich. I hate – hated – the Galbadian rich."
She caught herself too late. The hate is important. Present tense. Any other night, I'd file this away and mark it in her psych profile. Have to keep an eye on the troops, you know.
"Potential psychological anomalies" is the phrase. Coined by Cid Kramer and it shows. For the uninitiated, it means, "They aren't crazy as long as they're useful. Once they stop being useful, here's our justification for ditching them, along with a built in 'told-ya-so.'" We don't actually have these anomalies, but we might. When it becomes convenient.
They're just waiting to be used, the perfect excuse to have done with us. "Retirement." That's another Cid Kramer euphemism. Only one SeeD draws a pension, but scores have "retired." Connect the dots.
We all have them. The little marks against us, written in green: red was too abrasive, and no one wants "black marks" on their file.
Mine, among others, includes, "pathological fear of failure," "major depressive disorder," and, of course, "generalized anxiety disorder." That one's pretty common when you spend your days dodging bullets and your nights blowing up bridges.
Selphie's penchant for surveillance nailed her with a "voyeuristic paraphilia" label. Zell could have impulse-control disorders. Squall's goes so far as to raise the possibility of autism.
The best one, though, is Fujin's. Fujin's specialty is – like mine – psychological operations, but one of her secondary fields is linguistics. She's head and shoulders above the rest of SeeD. If there's the slightest regional dialect, she'll have picked it up in five minutes and you'd never know the difference. Of course, her appearance isn't suited for undercover work, so she opted for a support role.
Xu, who also has an interest in linguistics, got into an argument with Fujin when we were about 13. The details remain sketchy – Seifer and I have prodded both women and neither one will say what really happened. The end result, though, is that Fujin – in order to prove a point to Xu – took a vow of... brevity. I think they're keeping score or something, but I have no idea who's ahead. The only sure thing is that they're both very stubborn, and I don't see it abating any time in the near future.
The result of this protracted high-level argument about language constructs? Fujin got nailed with a host of developmental disorders and late-onset failures of language.
The actual pause in Tia's speech lasts for only a second. I marvel at my capacity for nonlinear thought.
"The Galbadian rich," she continues, "instituted a protracted campaign of starvation, and now they'd presented me with the perfect avenue to repay them. A warm place to spend the evening. Better food than I could imagine. And best of all, I'd be stealing it right out of Vinzer Deling's mouth."
I am truly impressed. We've all fought our own personal battles for revenge, but this is... breathtaking. Tia didn't grow up at our orphanage. She's too young to be part of our "gang." But I'm considering nominating her for an honorary membership. She smiles.
"Are you familiar with Security's intradepartmental disciplinary policy?"
I smile back. "I was there when Seifer coined the phrase." I don't add the second part, that for years before he coined the phrase, I watched him practice it on a daily basis.
She looks skyward and spreads her hands, quoting. "'Insubordination is inevitable when the punishment is acceptable.'
"It has a certain eloquence," she rhapsodizes. "And it was certainly true in my case. Nothing the Delings could do would be any worse than my day-to-day life. So this was just something I had to do.
"The beauty of the Great Library is that is housed everything. If you knew what you were looking for, and were willing to spend days tracking it down, you could find it.
"From the article, I learned where the reception would be held. I had plenty of time to plan. I pulled the building blueprints and studied those. I got the security plans and taught myself how to pick the locks I'd need to pick..."
As she details her plan, I feel my jaw start to drop. Most of my experience comes from hours of long study. I have plenty of field experience, but she taught herself this stuff on the fly. An improvised infiltration into a Galbadian state dinner.
"And then the night came. It was so easy. The third rule of the street in Deling City was 'don't get caught.' And I didn't. I moved through the dining hall like I owned it. And I stopped right underneath one of the tables. My first instinct was to grab food and eat until I couldn't eat any more. But then... My hunger for food faded. And was replaced with something... else."
"I reached up onto the table, and instead of grabbing at the beef there, I grabbed the carving knife. I crouched there, under the table, watching. Waiting. They passed so close to me, I could have reached out and touched them. I saw their faces, connected them to names. All the bigwigs of Galbadia were there. Generals. Politicians. Bankers. Growing up like... I did, I learned to handle myself. I held that knife, and charted a course across the room. I plotted my path. One body, two bodies, three bodies. I could almost hear them hit the floor. I could taste the blood. I held that knife and I knew I could bring down the whole damn system."
"And?" The word flies out of me, unbidden. She doesn't need my prompting to talk. But I find myself enthralled with her story.
"And I put the knife back. I grabbed a few items of food and I walked away.
"When I got outside, I took the biggest risk yet. I went back. I went to the window, right next to the glass. I leaned in so close my breath condensed. Anyone looking outside could have seen me."
She closes her eyes and I go with her. I can so picture it, because it's a battle almost every one of us has fought in our own way.
"I leaned into the glass, and I talked to them. I said, "Listen. Listen to me, pigs. Until now, I have been worthless to you. Right now, in this moment, I am the only thing keeping you alive. You owe me your lives, you stupid bastards.
"And then I walked away."
We open our eyes together. I feel a little drunk on her triumph. I wish I could make her a SeeD right now and bring her along tonight. Having one more person this... ferocious could only do us good. I hope no one of the First Team expects me to call them my "star pupil." Tia is my legacy. She's what I want to pass on to the next generation. Strength. Intelligence. Commitment. Perseverance. Restraint.
If I'd had the courage to do this at her age. Well... I'd probably have a little more Scarlet in me than I care to think about.
"The parade was shortly after that, and Commander Leonhart seemed to sum up everything that happened the night of the dinner. And I knew, if I were in Intelligence, the rest of my life would be like that night. I would move between people. They wouldn't even know I was there. I could watch them through the window, take what I wanted from them, and then, just walk away."
I don't like telling people about the orphanage. It's not so much the fact that Cid had his hooks in us from day one. It's more that... those days are sacred to me. It's a special time that I shared with my friends. We've talked about it together, to patch in our memories, but... I rarely discuss it with outsiders.
Once again, I'm about to break my own rule. Seifer would be so proud.
"You remind me of someone," I say. "A young girl I knew once."
"Really?" she says.
"Selphie," I say. She looks startled. "We grew up together. Almost all of the First Team. At the same orphanage. I don't know if you know that or not."
"There's a rumor," she replies.
"It's true. We all grew up together. I don't expect you'll go spreading this around. This is just... two friends talking."
I lean my head back. I can smell the salt air. Waves lapping on the sand. I have an excellent memory, but the orphanage is more clear to me than anything else. Since we shook off Cid's tampering, I can go back there whenever I want.
"Once upon a time," I start, "there was an orphanage by the sea. Many children came and went, but there was a special group of them that always stuck together."
I'm not telling my story anymore. I so rarely see it from my own eyes. I see a composite view, narrated by all my friends. I've pieced all our stories together, and I see it in a third-person view.
"There was a serious little boy, hopelessly devoted to his adoptive big sister. He followed her everywhere, and it crushed him when she left. Even before that happened, he was the still surface of the proverbial deep pond."
Squall standing in the rain, tears streaking down his face as he waited for someone who was never coming home. When Matron dragged him in, he was running a high fever and I wound up taking care of him. That might have been the start.
"There was another little boy who loved cowboy movies. He practiced twirling his cap guns every day, all day, for weeks. By the time he was finished, he'd done things no movie star could dream of. He had a special understanding of the world. It was physics, but we didn't know that then. He could flip a coin so it landed on its edge or throw a card with such force it would embed itself into a watermelon from ten paces."
Irvine, showing us his "trick shots." Bouncing a coin off the wall so it landed in his pocket. Tossing a full deck of cards into a hat in under a minute. And that damn boomerang. Every time I threw it, it just flopped. He was so good with it, he used to promise to give us "haircuts."
"Two children with blond hair, a boy and a girl. Since they had no other family, they assumed they were siblings. They were absolutely inseparable, and had the sort of almost-telepathy you usually see in twins. They rarely needed to talk. If one stood up, the other rose, too, and started running, because, together, they always knew where to go next."
He ran so fast. So much faster than I did. But he always waited for me to catch up to him. We ran everywhere, no matter how short the distance.
"Another boy. He bonded closest with their surrogate mother. He could sense her moods better than anyone. If she was angry, he could calm her down; if she was sad, he could cheer her up with nothing more than a smile."
Burying Zell in the sand. Seifer and I running to the lighthouse and leaving him behind. And one of the hardest moments: Zell's adoption. We all felt it – our family dissolving. Ellone had already gone, but Zell was the first of us to leave. All I could do was stare at Squall. I never noticed how much Seifer was hurting.
"And... a brunette, who was always something of a paradox. On the one hand, she was almost relentlessly cheery. But she was... strange."
"Strange?" Tia asks. "Strange how?"
"Sometimes, the good cheer was just an act, you'd see a look in her eyes like she knew much more than she was letting on. She always carried around paper in her pockets. And a pen behind her ear. If you looked at it, the paper was always blank. If you asked her what the paper was for, she'd say, 'taking notes.' 'Notes about what?' 'Just notes.'"
"What were the notes?" Tia presses.
"We never found them. Not until the Year of the Camera."
"Year of the Camera?"
"The year she got a camera for her birthday. As she unwrapped it, her eyes got really big and she went all quiet. She held it for a second and then ran away. When she came back, she didn't have the camera with her. We asked her where it was, but all she would tell us was that it was 'somewhere safe.'
"We didn't see that camera for an entire year. But we knew it was still out there. She'd be outside, playing with us or whatever, and then she'd say she was going inside. And that would be it. But when things got really quiet and you stopped paying attention, sometimes, you'd hear a little 'click.' If you turned fast enough, you could see a little flash of yellow out of the corner of your eye. Hence, the Year of the Camera."
"So when did you find the notes?"
"Zell woke up in the middle of the night to get a sandwich. On his way back from the kitchen, he stubbed his toe. And he started howling like the world was coming to an end. Seifer has always been a light sleeper... to put it mildly."
How to convey this particular quirk of his?
"You know how a cat can be curled up sleeping, and then it hears a noise and wakes up and runs across the room like it wasn't asleep at all?"
She nods.
"That's Seifer. So, when Zell started screaming, Seifer was up in a flash. I believe his stated purpose was, quote 'to pound the baby back to sleep.' Zell had indeed stubbed his toe, and they found out why. One of the stones in the main hallway was loose. Sticking up a little. We crossed that thing a million times a day, but all of a sudden, it was loose.
"So they pried it up. Underneath the stone was a little... cubby-hole. Inside, we found Selphie's camera and more pictures than we could count. There was also a notebook where she'd pasted all her notes. Little things like, 'Quistis is too bossy,' or 'Zell ate so much ice cream he puked.' Observations. Who said what to whom. Everything we'd said or done, stored there since well before she got the camera. Hidden right under our feet.
"We never would have found it, but for Zell's growling stomach. She was 'visiting' her treasure and he surprised her. She didn't have time to put it back in place properly, so the corner was elevated slightly more than it should have been."
"What did you all of you do?" Tia asks. I have to cock my head at this.
"Do? Nothing." The idea of doing something about it never entered our minds. "We were all looking at the notebook and she came out of the bedroom. She looked at us and we looked at her. Then, we just put it back and went back to bed.
"We never mentioned it and neither did she. The album and the photos were gone the next time anyone thought to look. I think she learned a lesson that day, but I don't think it stopped her."
"Why do you think that?"
"Every once in a while, you still see that look in her eyes. And, come to think of it: when was the last time you saw her write something down?"
"What's the connection to me?" she smiles. She knows. She just wants to hear me say it. I'll indulge her, and then I'll walk out that door and try not to get myself killed.
"You carry the lesson of that night with you. It motivates you. It's what drives you. You like the watching and knowing. You learn someone's secrets and that's what gives you power over them. And, like Selphie, while your childhood shaped you and influenced your path, it did not determine who you have become."
I stand at this. For once, I can think of nothing more to teach her. I could throw a mountain of facts at her, sure. But there aren't any more lessons I can give her.
Well, maybe one.
"I'm going now," I say. "Xu's got a briefing waiting for us. We're going to take back Garden or die trying."