We All Fall Down: Act One
By Djinn Hashiba-Maxwell

Ring a-round the rosie,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes, ashes,
We all fall down.

--Children's Rhyme, Referring to the Black Death

Balamb never knew what hit it.

Neither did anyone else.

By the time the first reports started coming in from the long-range detectors in Esthar, the city of Balamb was a smoking ruin, a match to the crater that was the erstwhile home of Balamb Garden. Now there was truly nothing worthwhile on the island at all, just the shards of the past, like the ruined orphanage at Centra, like the Tomb of the Unknown King. Shadows without names.

Or perhaps they did have names--it would take years, generations, before Balamb would become a forgotten relic of a grave sin, before people did not feel it so sharply.

But it would happen, there was no doubt of that.

"Gone?"

Squall stared determinedly at the polished laquer surface of his desk, unable to meet Zell's eyes, unable to breathe a word of comfort to the man that was rumored to be one of his best friends.

"It can't be ... gone." Zell said, his voice trembling. "I mean ... it's a whole town. They don't just ... up and disappear from the map."

The room was empty, and entirely too large to justify the single desk and communications panel that were set in it. Quistis once put a large plastic fern in the corner, but it ended up being shredded to bits by one of Selphie's kittens. Squall regreted it--it would have given him somewhere to focus his attention while calmly notlooking at Zell.

Someone else should have done this, he thought with sudden, wrenching clarity. He shouldn't have to hear this from someone who can't even tell him they're sorry.

"It was a missle strike." Squall said, his voice dispassionate. "Enough warheads fell on Balamb to turn the town to powder. We had no warning, it just ... happened."

"But, I mean ..." Zell swallowed. "Surely not everyone was in the town when it was hit." He offered, his voice trembling only slightly.

"We've been getting a few reports of survivors who were in Timber or Galbadia at the time of the strike." Squall allowed. "But Zell, I don't want you to lie to yourself. When was the last time your mother went to Timber or Galbadia?"

"That doesn't mean she didn't!" Zell replied, defensively. His voice echoed in the large empty room, and Squall thought that maybe when Zell heard himself in reflection he realized how foolish he sounded, because he just ... wilted. Maybe a kinder person would have tried to leave Zell his illusions for a while, maybe not. Squall wouldn't know--whatever praise that might be given him, he wasn't kind.

"As per regulations, you can take up to three days paid leave for bereavement." Squall said. He'd done this before, people die all the time, even during times of peace. It should have been different because it was Zell, it should have meant something, but Squall wouldn't let it.

"Is that all you have to say?" Zell asked, his voice tight, thought with tears or rage, Squall couldn't be sure.

Squall looked up from his desk and met Zell's eyes, lowering his trembling hands into his lap and squeezing his fingers together to hold them still. Zell's eyes had always been bright blue, electric, crackling with barely restrained energy. They hadn't changed, but the wetness there that wasn't quite tears made them glow, preternaturally, like he was possessed.

"People die, Zell." Squall said. "They die all the time."

Zell made a noise that might have been a snort or a sob, Squall told himself that he didn't want to know which. "Not like this." Zell murmured, shaking his head, and left.

Fuujin was shivering when they pulled her aboard, soaked to the bone, her white hair hanging lankly in her eyes. The uniforms were only vaguely familar, Galbadian, she was sure, since Trabia rarely had teams in the tropics. The first students had tried to pry the blackened blade from her hands--it had been red-hot when she first picked it up, and her skin had bubbled and melted where she touched it, sticking like glue, but she had barely noticed. The heat made her feel colder, Hyperion a dead weight in her arms.

There had been pieces of Balamb left when she got there, a subtle suggestion of a lost whole. The train station had been built with steel beams, and the bombs had not totally destroyed them. They curled over nothing like the the rib bones of a slain monster. The rest of the town was wood--what had not already collapsed, burned.

The old man's home was a crater, sunk into itself. Underneath the smouldering rubble were bodies, she could smell the faint scent of burning flesh. If they had lived long enough, they had probably cried out from the heat as the fire licked at them, hungrily. Now, though, it was silent.

One tear for the old man, who lived and died alone.

Ma Dincht had been kind to the trio when they had come to Balamb, she was a woman without hate and without artifice. She knew Fuujin for the woman who would have burned her town, knew Seifer for the man who would have ordered it, and didn't care. Her home was gone now. Had she been standing in the kitchen when the missles hit, humming to herself and thinking of her son?

One tear for the woman who had raised Zell Dincht. They all should have been so lucky.

The pier had probably collapsed first, falling into the water before it could be consumed by fire. If Fuujin looked closely, she thought she could see the edge of the boathouse peaking over the water. She wondered, almost idly, if that was where Raijin had been when his life ended, wondered if she peaked into the water, would she see him pinned beneath the dock, grey-skinned in death?

A tear trickled down her cheek, and another. Two tears, then, for the tag-along who had become a friend, and now was nothing.

The heat was starting to get to her as she turned from the weapons shop. There was a body on the ground there, the first she'd actually seen--he must have been sitting on the bench when the shop all but exploded. His neck was bent at a strange angle, and his chest didn't move.

A glance at his face proved she didn't know the man, and as cold as it was, there were no tears for him.

The road curved past the homes, and the ash made the incline slick--Fuujin lost her balance and fell, her trousers and the palms of her hands coming away black as the sorceress' hair. She crawled down the slope from there; glass fragments dug into her knees. The hotel didn't have a basement, it wasn't recessed into the ground like the homes, and the devistation there was far more obvious. It was still burning, not slowly smoldering like the homes, but openly burning, flames crackling softly.

One tear each for the hotel's owner, his wife, and their young daughter. The hotel had been their home in Balamb, and she had warm feelings for those who kept it.

That was where she found Hyperion--blackened, charred, red-hot. The handle was gone, the etching barely visible beneath the ash, and that was where she pulled it to her, her skin melting as she touched it, as if she weren't worthy. As if the blade sought to punish her for surviving.

The rest of her tears fell, but which were for Seifer, and which for herself, she couldn't be sure. The sky opened up, as if it too mourned for her--the raindrops sizzled on the burning blade she held.

Then the uniforms had come, pulling her back from the fire, wrapping her in blankets that were soaked though by the rain in seconds. A redhead held something to her lips and helped her drink it--she felt lightheaded after, and dropped into murky unconsciousness.

"Zell."

The blonde was sitting on the open edge of the quad, legs dangling in midair, and for one painful second a fist closed around Squall's heart as he considered the possibility that Zell was going to jump--just slide off the edge and plummet into the ocean. He knew he wouldn't, knew Zell was not that type of person, but the idea made it, for a moment, impossible for him to breathe, and he wasn't quite certain why. He wasn't used to that sort of feeling, to worrying in advance about things that might not happen. He was much better at dealing with things as they came.

Zell leaned back on one arm as he turned to look over his shoulder, giving Squall a breif, appraising glance, before returning his attention to the passing water. "What do you want? Sir?" He asked sullenly, emphasising the salutation.

"Nida told me that you requested a mission." Squall said. "I believe I told you that you were entitled to paid leave."

"I don't want any."

Squall cleared his throat. "That's your choice, Zell." He murmured, folding his hands behind his back. "Quistis thought you might like to be informed that we are going to begin investigating the attack on Balamb immediately. She and Xu are putting together teams."

"Good." Zell said, standing. "When do we leave?"

"You don't." Squall said easily. "Once we reach Balamb, you are confined to the Garden until we leave. It's not appropriate for you to be involved in the investigation."

Zell could move damned fast when he chose to, so almost before Squall was aware the smaller boy was moving, he was backed up against the wall, Zell's hands fisted in his jacket, the leather creaking under his grip. "Not appropriate! How dare you! That's my home, you better believe I'm going!"

Squall wondered when this situation had abruptly spiraled out of his control. He held his hands up, palm outward, a gesture of surrender. "Zell, if you can't control yourself now, having a conversation with me, what makes you think you can handle seeing Balamb?" He said, his voice so low and soothing that it was almost mocking.

Zell pressed him back against the wall once more, hard, as a sort of threat, before releasing him and turning sharply on one heel. "I have to go." He snapped. "I have a duty to my mother ... my town--"

"You have a duty to SeeD, and to your commander." Squall cut in. "And he says you're staying here. Dismissed." Squall strained his jacket, and then turned to leave the quad.

"How can you just tell me--"

"It's very easy, Zell." Squall said, without turning. "Stop reacting like a son and start thinking like a SeeD."

He left without another word.

"If you have no objections, Squall, I thought that Xu and I might handle this." Quistis said, not even looking up from the sheeves of paper she was rifling though, looking for the proper report. "For an investigation of this size, you need someone with more experience. Selphie is, of course, out of the question, and Irvine ... well, he's not much for professionalism. We could send some of the newer SeeDs, of course, but I imagine that you would rather have one of us ... ah, here we are." Quistis placed a sheet of paper down in front of him, and then dropped the rest of the stack back onto his desk. "From Galbadia--they recovered a survivor from the town."

Squall looked up, his face registering shock--he'd seen the pictures from Esthar's scout planes, and knew there was no way anyone could have survived it. "A survivor?" He repeated, dumbly.

"Fuujin. She was injured, but they do not think it was from the attack. The report states that she was likely outside of the town when it was hit." If Quistis had any feelings on the identity of this refugee, she kept them well hidden. "Esthar's preliminary findings seem to indicate that the missles were launched from a supposedly dismantled Galbadian base in Northern Centra. A team in the Winhill area has been diverted to reconoiter." Quistis glanced at Squall out of the corner of her eyes, noticing his lack of expression. "Shall I go on?"

"When will we reach Balamb?" He replied, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Quistis glanced at the chronometer. "Within two hours. Is that the reason for your distraction?" Quistis voice softened; this was Quistis as big sister. Quistis could slide in and out of roles like someone putting on a coat, from administrator to mercenary to teacher to mother, it seemed to easy for her to be everything to everyone, while Squall himself had trouble being anything to anyone.

But then again, at least Squall didn't have to run himself ragged trying to be what everyone needed.

"Zell." He said.

Quistis blinked. "Excuse me?"

"The reason for my distraction." Squall expanded with a sigh. "It's Zell."

"Oh. I see." Quistis said, though the tone of her voice indicated that she didn't see at all. "Has he said something? Because I'm sure you understand that he is simply upset--"

"It's not what he's said," Squall cut her off, "it's how he is."

Quistis didn't respond, but she frowned, shifting her weight uncomfortably as she tried to understand what he was saying.

"Most SeeDs don't have families. I don't have one, neither do you ... and everyone expects me to take care of everyone, because they think it will help me somehow, but I don't understand it, and what's more, I don't want to! Why am I supposed to change the way I deal with him because we fought together? He's still a SeeD, I'm still his commander! I may not have asked for it, but that's the way it is."

"Ah." Quistis murmured, somehow gathering this disjointed protest into a logical whole. Uncharacteristically, she came over and sat on the corner of his desk. "Zell wants to go to Balamb. You had to say no."

"I didn't have to." Squall protested this understatement of his authority. "But I did. It was the most reasonable thing to do. An objective eye is more practical."

"Of course it is." Quistis assured him. "And it was the right decision, even if Zell protested."

Squall pinched the bridge of his nose again. "He asked me how I could do it. As if I weren't human."

"Squall." Quistis sighed, fiddling with the zipper of her blouse. "Two years ago, would you have cared if Zell said something like that to you? Would it have preoccupied you?" She paused, as if waiting for him to answer, but when he didn't she did it for him. "Of course it wouldn't have. You have changed, Squall, but you will always be who you are."

Squall paused. "Quistis, you and I will go to Balamb." He said, as if the conversation had not happened. "Xu will remain here in case any new reports come in. And ask Irvine to contact Galbadia Garden. I'd like Fuujin to be in our care. And she'll need to be questioned."

"I'm sure G-Garden will be glad to be rid of her." Quistis replied dryly. "Anything else?"

"Not right now." Squall responded. "I'll meet you at the entrance when we reach Balamb. Dismissed."

"I could be there in an hour and a half." Selphie said, her bright eyes shadowed with worry. "Doctor Odine just finished giving the Ragnarok her tune up, she's faster than ever."

"No, Sefie." Irvine said languidly. "You know you're more useful where you are. Esthar will know the second anything happens. We need you to keep us up to date."

"I just feel useless." Selphie complained, her voice going high pitched for a moment, almost a wail. "I was so excited when they made me the Estharian liason, but I've been cut off for so long--"

"Esthar is important, Sefie." Irvine assured her. "And so are you. Just keep your eyes open, yeah?"

Selphie sighed, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. "Understood. What does Squall have you doing?"

"Playing ambassador to G-Garden." He replied. "They've got one of the survivors, and since we all know how Squall hates delegating responsibility, I have to go and retrieve her, so she's our problem."

"Who is it?"

"Some former student ... Suijin, maybe?"

Selphie tensed. "Fuujin."

Irvine blinked. For some reason, when Selphie said the name in that tone, it clicked. "Hey! She was the one that--"

"That fought with Seifer." Selphie finished, looking away slightly. "Not that I was at B-Garden very long before we left, but I know that she and Raijin were Seifer's best--only--friends."

Irvine paused. "She was going to burn Balamb." He murmured, tilting his head down until the shadow from his cap covered his eyes.

Selphie sniffled. "Guess it turns out she didn't need to."

Selphie snapped off the connection on her end without another word, and when Irvine looked up, Galbadia Garden loomed, huge and almost ominous, on the horizon. Irvine thought it strange that the place where he had grown up now filled him with such a sense of dread.

He'd barely boarded when the Headmistress came running to meet him. "It's about time you got here!" The woman had snapped, grasping the sleeve of his duster. "You're from Balamb Garden, aren't you? Your girl--she took down three of my students. She's gone."

They arrived at Balamb shortly before nightfall. The air smelled like wet ash, and the heat was unseasonable, even for the tropics. The rain had made the air thick, and it felt more like wading than walking as Squall and Quistis took in the town.

Quistis was more affected than he was, but at the same time, more adept at distracting herself. She had produced a steno pad and wrote down the details of every bomb strike, the condition of every pile of rubble, the identity of every body they found. Her hand trembled when she wrote 'Elmyra Dincht, dec'd', and she made a comment about the smoke in the air when she produced a handkercheif and dabbed at her watery eyes. They'd all been the recipients of Ma Dincht's hospitality at some point or another. It seemed as if she wanted to be mother to all of them, sometimes.

Zell shared his family freely, and so, he also shared his loss.

Squall had thought it was another corpse, when he rounded the corner. She had always been death-pale, and she was so covered in soot that she might have been burned herself, the ash making her skin appear even paler in contrast. He thought 'corpse' only for a moment, for there was no way that a body could die in that position, kneeling back on her heels, head bowed. Dead, she would have listed to the side, fallen to the pavement in a graceless sprawl.

Her blouse was gone, the black shirt she wore beneath it torn alomst to shreds, it hung off her in long strips. She was soaking wet, and Squall was ready to attribute it to the rain until he saw strips of kelp over her and the body laid across her folded knees. She had entered the water to retrieve him, clearly, and perhaps had dragged him as far as her strength allowed, but they had not made it past the hotel. Now she knelt, awkwardly stroking the short fuzz of his hair meditatively, staring sightlessly at nothing. Raijin hadn't been burned or crushed, he must have drowned.

Quistis spoke, which Squall was grateful for. He wouldn't have known what to say. "Fuujin. We were told you were in Galbadia Garden."

Fuujin didn't start or jump or so much as twitch when Quistis spoke, though she might have blinked, once. She didn't look up, didn't still her hand. "I ... was at Garden." She said slowly, thoughtfully.

"Then, how did you get here?" Quistis pressed, her tone low, soothing and steady, even as she stepped close enough to strike.

"I ... came back." Fuujin said in that same distant tone. "Couldn't ... leave him. Needs me."

At about the same moment Squall realized that the shape beside her was a sword-blade, he realized that the momevments of her hands were so strange because her palms had been burned--seared, really. He could see the red blisters, bubbles of flesh, heat so intense it had made her skin boil. He wondered if she had recieved the burns digging through the rubble, searching.

Quistis tried to make her words comforting. "There's nothing you can do for him anymore, Fuujin. Please, come with us."

"Always needs me." Fuujin said, and Squall wasn't sure if she was really hearing them at all. The hand stroking Raijin's hair drifted slowly to the sword-blade beside her--Hyperion, Squall realized with a jolt, it was Hyperion. Or, it had been. "Always needs me." She repeated. The blade made a dull ringing noise when she dragged it across the pavement as she lifted it. "With Seifer." She whispered, nodding to herself seriously. "Always needs me.

"Always with Seifer."

Quistis was close, but not close enough to stop her. Her scream was shrill, wordless, as she dove for Fuujin, wrenching the blade out from under the wind-caller's ribs. Fuujin had known where she was aiming, tilting the blade upwards, towards her heart. Squall wasn't sure if the curagas that fell from Quistis' lips as she pressed hands over the wound would be enough.

He walked over and carefully closed Raijin's eyes, then commed the Garden for a med team.

"Will she live?"

Doctor Kadowaki swiped away a strand of hair that was clinging to her forehead with sweat, leaving a streak of bright red blood in its place. "It was a close thing. She has no desire to survive."

Squall cleared his throat and crossed his hands behind his back in a way that, on anyone else, would be called fidgeting. "Do not misunderstand, it is not that I--" care, particularly, whether she lives or dies "--am worried about her recovery, it is only, she is the closest thing we have to an actual witness."

"Even if she were conscious, she's not coherent. Her mind is ... well, it's not working the way it's supposed to. The shock has rattled her brain, and if you don't mind my saying, she was never that cogent to begin with." She sunk behind her desk, pulling off her gloves with a snap. "In short, Commander, I believe that she will prove to be of little value to you, at least in the near future."

"Regardless, contact me when she is able to talk." Squall replied, and the Doctor nodded absently.

"Yes, I will. I have work to do now, Squall." It was a dismissial, and not even a subtle one, but Squall heeded it, and bowed out of the infirmary quickly.

Quistis was waiting outside the infirmary, leaning against the railings, one booted foot kicked up behind her. "Will she recover?" She asked, one eyebrow arching curiously. She had washed up, but Squall could still see the faint pink tint of blood under her nails, and there was a bright red blot of it on the hem of her skirt, turning the salmon-colored material violet.

"Doctor Kadowaki believes that she will pull through," Squall replied, "though she appears to have a rather severe case of shock."

"Right. Good." Quistis said, putting some relief into her voice. Squall wasn't fooled--Quistis, as an instructor, was someone who had tried to appear as if she care greatly about everyone, but when one teaches mercenaries, it is psychologically very difficult to handle the strain of caring about anyone. Quistis saved her true concern only for those she was closest to, and Fuujin was not one of those.

Seifer might have been, though, and perhaps Quistis was truly worried about her, if only for his sake. It was an interesting thought.

Irvine was just walking up from the entrance as the came around to the elevator; he doffed his hat and nodded seriously at the two of them. "From what they told me as I came up, I suppose you know that I don't have Fuujin-san."

"Thank you anyway, Irvine." Quistis said graciously, when it became clear that Squall had absolutely nothing to say on the matter. "I apologize for sending you on a wild goose chase, but there was no way we could have known--"

"Commander," Xu's voice, slightly tinny, came from Squall's personal comm, "please come to your ready room immediately. We have just recieved a transmission." A slight hesitation. "If Quistis is with you, she might also have an interest in this. I will meet you there."

The message was brief, to-the-point, more or less a simple terrorist demand. The Garden had, of course, had contact with terrorists before, but never this directly. Garden was a mercenary enclave, and as such, they were hired to deal with terrorist threats, they didn't recieve them. This, however, would have to be considered a very special case.

"My name is Sorceress Rinoa Heartilly Caraway. You will soon be informed that I have been declared the uncontested ruler of Galbadia. I have all its resources at my command." A pause. "Balamb was a warning. However, do not think that I will hesitate in destroying other cities if Garden does not--"

Squall paused the recording.

"When was this recieved?" He asked, his voice perfectly even, though his hand trembled slightly, if one cared to look closely enough. Quistis was stark white. Xu remained impassive--she had not known Rinoa all that well, and held a lingering distrust of sorceresses.

"It was recieved while you were investigating Balamb, sir, though it was not relayed live." Xu said. "I apologize for not informing you the minute it was recieved, but we did not wish to waste your time with it if it could not be authenticated."

"So it has been authenticated?" Quistis said softly.

"Nida went over it personally." Xu told her. "There is no doubt--that is Rinoa Caraway, and she is in Hajime, in control of Galbadia, as she claims." When the conflict which was now being called the Sorceress' War had finally ended, the name 'Deling City' had the stink of oppression about it, and so the capital of Galbadia had been renamed 'Hajime', a word that meant beginnings. It was a symbol of the rebirth of the land.

How ironic that it had once again been taken over by a tyrant.

"Do we have teams in Hajime?" Squall asked.

Xu looked away, but only for a moment. "We have been unable to raise them. We must assume they have been compromised."

"What has happened here?" Quistis whispered, staring wide eyed at the image of Rinoa, her face frozen on the ready room's comm panel. "It hasn't been all that long since we last heard from her ... has it?" She turned to Squall, because of course he would have been the one Rinoa spoke to, the only one who would have cared to stay in touch with her when she returned to her father's home.

Squall had to think hard about it. "I spoke to her three weeks ago." He said after a moment. "She seemed ... fine. The same as always."

"What did you speak about?" Quistis pressed.

Squall tuned her out when she rambled, and had to think about this. "She was excited about the Midwinter festival. Her father had managed to get her a seat on one of the floats. And she was going to visit some friends later that week."

Xu's eyes narrowed. "Friends. In Timber?"

He hadn't thought about it. "She didn't say. We ... didn't speak for very long."

Xu nodded, accepting this, though Quistis flashed him a rather curious look. "I will look into this. Such a radical change is not usual. It is possible that she is once more being controlled." Xu saluted smartly and turned without waiting to be dismissed, her boot heels echoing loudly on the marble.

"Xu--" Squall called after her, and she paused, looking over her shoulder with a raised eyebrow. "How many people know about this?"

"Only the four of us." Xu replied. "The two of you, Nida, and myself."

Squall nodded. "Good. Let's keep it that way."

Xu's eyes narrowed slightly, but she saluted again without makeing a comment. "Understood, sir."

When she had gone, Quistis came up beside Squall, and unpaused the recording.

"--capitulate. I am a reasonable woman. I do not wish to end lives in order to make myself understood. Later contact will make more clear how things will be handled." Another pause. "Please do not try anything so foolish as attack. I will be forced to retaliate. I already have missles aimed at both Winhill and Fisherman's Horizon." Rinoa turned, as if to leave the screen, but then she paused.

"You may think it unfair of me to make demands to Garden, who is supposed to be impartial, mere mercenaries. But you know as well as I that you are the driving force in this world now, more powerful than any army, and you must learn that such power makes you a target. Of course ..." Rinoa leaned towards the screen, as if she could see them, as if she wanted to crawl out towards them, an alien expression settling her features into a mask of macabre humor, "Selphie has already learned that lesson from Trabia, hasn't she? Do tell her I said hello, Squall ... we haven't spoken in so long."

And then the screen went black.

And Squall and Quistis exchanged a quick glance, and tried to pretend they weren't horrified.

He found Zell in the Training Center. It hadn't been hard, he'd just followed the slaughtered grats. They were child's play after a few trips to the Island Closest to Hell, but they were good enough for working off some steam. There were times when you just needed to hit something.

And there were times when you needed something that hit back, and evidently this was one of those, because Irvine found that Zell had rounded on one of the center's elusive T-Rexaurs. Even blinded, even poisoned, you could hit a T-Rexaur for a good long time before it hit the ground. This one was on it's last gasp, however--it's left leg was broken, and blood and gore dripped from the crater where's it's right eye had been. Zell's arms were covered up to the elbows in the thing's blood, one of the unfortunate side-effects of using one's own body as a weapon.

The battle was all but over, so Irvine leveled his shotgun carefully, drilled a round into the creature's good eye, and it toppled, dead.

The shot echoed for a moment, before it was drowned out by the sound of the T-Rexaur hitting the ground; the ground shook with the force of it, and Zell actually wobbled, unable to keep firm grasp of his balance.

For a martial artist, that was completely unacceptable.

He was bouncing on his heels, watching Irvine intently as the sharpshooter meandered over to him; his eyes were bloodshot, but Irvine couldn't tell if he'd been crying, or if he'd merely been hit with a blind spell sometime earlier. Whatever it was, there were tears trailing through the spattering of blood on his face, and when he reached up to wipe his nose against the back of his arm, he left a longer stripe of gore across his face. "'Sup, cowboy?" He said, his tone a challenge. Irvine knew he was looking for an excuse to start a fight.

"You seen Balamb yet?" Irvine offered, hefting his shotgun and resting it against his shoulder, tilting his head down so that the brim of his hat hid his eyes.

Zell wiped his nose again, smearing blood and snot across his face. "I'm confined to the Garden until we leave." He replied, bitterly but without hesitation. "Leonhart thinks that somehow that will make it better."

Irvine made a noncommital noise. "I only got a glimpse of it on my way back, but it doesn't look like there's much left to see." He reached up to pull his hat down a little further, but after a moment the silence grew heavy, and he looked. The narrow-eyed look Zell was giving him was very disconcerting. "What?"

"I guess I'm trying to decide if I want to ask what you saw."

"You'd be wasting your time." Irvine shrugged. "And you don't want to know, anyway."

"Maybe." Zell started rocking, forward onto the balls of his feet, and then back onto the heels. Forward, back. Forward, back. "Is this the part where you tell me everything will be all right, or where you say I should talk about it? Because you can take your sympathy and--"

"I've got no sympathy for you." Irvine said mildly. "You've lost something I never had. If anything, I'm jealous."

Zell just stared at him for a second, clearly horrified. "Jealous?"

"Zell, the reason you're--" all the adjectives sound girly. Upset? Sad? Hurt? "--pissed as fucking hell right now is because you had a mother who cared about you, raised you, and loved you. You think I wouldn't kill to have had that? If you ask me, what you're going through now would be a small price to pay."

"You don't know what you're talking about." Zell sneered, and the expression was completely alien on his face.

"Yeah," Irvine agreed, "I guess I don't." He pulled down on the brim of his hat, a reflexive gesture, and turned away. "You ought to wash up, man, you're filthy."

"Thank you for coming down, Quistis." Doctor Kadowaki said, idly brushing some creases out of her lab coat. "I tried to reach Xu, but she isn't answering her comm, I hope you don't mind."

"It's fine, Edna." Quistis said magnanimously, glancing towards the infirmary's only occupied room. "You said that this had something to do with our ... guest?"

"Call it a gut instinct," the Doctor said, "but I ran her bloodwork for irregularities. I had assumed that her lack of coherence and the erratic nature of her brainwaves were due to shock, but it appears I was a bit preemptive in my diagnosis."

Quistis arched one perfect blonde eyebrow. "Your meaning?"

"Your girl has been drugged."

If Quistis was expecting anything at all, that was not it. She blinked, once, very deliberately, and then accepted the sheet of bloodwork that Doctor Kadowaki held out to her. Her lips moved slowly as she read out the unfamiliar medical terms. "I'm afraid I cannot decipher this." Quistis admitted, handing the sheet back to the Doctor. "Perhaps you could translate it."

"She was slipped a large amount of a potent hallucinogen, though not enough to prove fatal. I say 'slipped' because she ingested this drug, and it seems unlikely that she would have administered it to herself through ingestion. To be certain, I checked her over--no needle marks, and there's no indication that she was a regular user."

Quistis laid the report down on the Doctor's desk slowly, her lips pursing thoughtfully. "Not to put to fine of a point on it, Edna, but her two best friends did die in the attack on Balamb. It's entirely possible that the hallucinogen was a suicide attempt."

Kadowaki gave her a dubious look over the rim of her glasses. "That is distinctly unlikely, Quistis. SeeDs, SeeD candidates and Garden students in general have an aversion to passive methods. The number who resorted to poison is statistically insignificant--something about the cleanliness of such a death holds no appeal for SeeDs. The self-disembowlment for which I treated her is consistent with a suicide attempt by a former SeeD student, but poisoning? No. Someone else did that for her."

Quistis looked away, but she nodded. She had been an instructor, she'd read those statistics. "Very well, if you say so. Will this ... affect her recovery?"

"No, but knowing about it alters my diagnosis. She may become coherent much sooner than I thought. She could regain consciousness as soon as the drug is completely out of her system, in about two days."

"Thank you. I'll inform the commander." Quistis told her, and turned for the door.

"Oh, one more thing, Quistis." Kadowaki called after her, and Quistis turned, raising an eyebrow. "It's hard to pinpoint the exact time, of course, but it would seem that Fuujin was dosed some time after the attack on Balamb. As much as an two hours afterwards."

Quistis' eyes widened slightly. "She was picked up by G-Garden less than an hour after the attack. You can't possibly be implying that--"

"I'm not implying anything." Kadowaki snapped. "I'm telling you a fact. What it means is solely your concern."

Cid Kramer, when he was in charge of Balamb Garden, had almost always conducted his briefings in casual clothes, out by the front gate. He did not like ceremony, because he believed it was for soldiers, not mercinaries. He did, however, enjoy long-winded speeches, and so he usually wore tennis shoes under his trousers, so he could stay on his feet for long periods of time.

Squall, too, conduced his briefings out of uniform, but one would hesitate to call his civilian attire 'casual'. He was the opposite of Kramer in terms of verbosity. Sometimes he did not give the briefings at all. He attended them, because the seal of approval that was his presence was occasionally required, but Quistis had always been more at home in front of a group of expectant faces, and so he left such duties to her. She usually conducted them in the classrooms, because she liked to illustrate her points, and after her breifings the boards were always covered with terrain sketches and arrows.

He had pressed her, but she had refused to conduct this briefing. Quistis, like many others in his life, thought that she certainly knew better than he what was good for him, and was determined to see him get it. They had agreed, between them, that Zell could not be here. They could have given him leave, but it would only have made more accute the fact that he had no home to go to anymore, so they had compromised. They had decided that Zell would go to Esthar.

Esthar was the obvious choice, because Zell had always gotten along well with Selphie, and he was like Loire in ways that the man's own blood relatives weren't.

No one had ever proven any kinship between Squall and Laguna Loire. Squall refused a blood test, because to his mind as long as no one could prove it, it wasn't so, even though it was fairly obvious that it was so, Squall's denial notwithstanding. It sometimes seemed that Laguna was as afraid as Squall of this tenuous connection between them, and he therefore never insisted on treating Squall as a son.

At least, not as any more of a son than he treated all the children who had saved the world.

"I won't go." Zell said, stubborn as a child, crossing his arms over his chest. I don't want to and you can't make me.

Squall could make him, if he wanted to. He hoped it would not come to that.

"It's a mission." Squall said. "You wanted a mission."

"It's fucking busywork is what it is." Zell sneered. "You've got Selphie in Esthar, and all she does is sit on her hands all day, you don't need two of us for that. If you don't want to deal with me, you should at least have the balls to say so to my face, Commander."

"Fine." Squall snapped. "I don't want to deal with you. I don't have the time or energy, and I wouldn't know how, anyway. You wanted a mission, I gave you one. I'm sorry if it's not good enough for you, but I'm your Commander, and you follow my orders."

"You never wanted this job, and now you're quoting rank at me?" Zell shot back. "You must really be enjoying all the power you have over us, yeah? No more having to rely on others when you can just order them to leave you the fuck alone and mind their business, to do whatever you want them to--"

Squall was reminded that the people who know you best are the ones who can hurt you the most.

"Xu will arrange your transport to Fisherman's Horizon. Selphie will meet you there." He said, he voice carefully calm. "You're dismissed."

Quistis was waiting outside, and when Zell tried to push past her silently, she pulled him in close and whispered something into his ear--Squall could not hear what it was, but Zell's mouth tightened into a thin line as she spoke, and he nodded once, briefly, when she finally released his arm.

"Thank you, Dean Trepe." He said, formally. "I'll keep that in mind."

"Take care, Zell." She murmured, and as an afterthought, "Give Selphie my regards."

Zell smiled, slightly, and turned over his shoulder to look back to where Squall was standing in the doorway. "You know, the commander didn't send his regards. At least you remember your friends."

"I remember them better than you these past few days." She said abruptly, her softness gone. "You should see Administrator Chiang about your transport, Cadet. I believe you were dismissed."

Xu was working on an insertion plan when Quistis found her later, but it was not for Zell--the three-dimensional map clearly showed the circular arrangement of the streets in Galbadia's capital. Xu had always been good with tactics, particularly the delicate kind, that was why she had been made into an Administrator rather than an active combatant. Talented tacticians were rare enough that they usually were jealously guarded. You could almost call Xu B-Garden's 'secret weapon', the reason that Balamb was usual the Garden contracted for large-scale military movements.

Small, covert insertions were not her strongest point, and Quistis had never known her to be pre-emptive in her plans. To Quistis' knowledge, she had received no orders that there was to be a mission in Glabadian territory, let alone in the capital itself.

"It's not like you to make more work for yourself, Xu." Quistis said mildly, tracing a finger along the edge of the model.

"It's not like you to interest yourself with what I do in my free time." Xu replied, grasping Quistis' hand at the wrist and lifting it away without looking up from her work. "Was there something you wanted, Quistis?"

"There was I time I wouldn't have to be interrogated simply for coming to your office." She replied softly.

"That was a long time ago, and you were the one who put an end to such familiarities, as I recall." Xu replied. "If the current situation's tensions have you searching for some form of ... of release, find someone else to provide it. If you're here for advice, I'm hardly the expert on dealing with grief, and if you want to know my thoughts on Cadet Dincht, I haven't any."

"What I want to know," Quistis said, "is why you've become as icy as Squall lately."

Quistis could see Xu's lips press together in a hard thin line for a moment, and then she looked up from her model, her dark eyes flat and lifeless. "I'm upset," she said, "for the same reason that the Commander still doesn't quite trust me."

Quistis was silent for a long moment. "Seifer?"

"I've lost friends before," she said, "but Seifer was no friend, he was--" She stopped herself, abruptly. "I hated him."

Even when she had been forced to fight him, even on those times when her whip had left lines of bloody, weeping welts across his face, his throat, Quistis had never hated him, and she'd had far more reason to than Xu, so she'd had to ask, "Did you really hate him?"

"Most of the time." She responded. "He was a terrible student, an insubordinate soldier and a shameful leader. Every power I gave him, he misapplied, every bit of faith I placed in him, he abused. He reminded me of everything that is wrong with me."

"But you always defended him, until right before he left." Quistis argued, perplexed. "You were even reprimanded for--"

"When I defended Seifer, I was only defending myself." She she replied, disgusted, though it was clear that she was the only object of her ire. "If I admitted his faults, I was admitting that I had been wrong from the start, that not everyone can be helped, or I was admitting that I wasn't ... good enough. That the problem was with me. I wasn't ready to admit either of those things."

Quistis made a thoughtful noise. "And you are now?"

Xu sighed and pushed her hair back off her forehead--it was getting longer. "I'm willing to admit that I should never have been the Dean of Students. That was always made for someone like you, who has a sense of proportion. And I know I did some ... stupid things in regards to Seifer."

To put it mildly, Quistis thought, but she did not voice it.

"But I still don't believe that there are people who are beyond all aid." Xu added. "Seifer ... given time, he could have overcome the harm I inflicted on him with my permissiveness and special treatment. But now ... he's dead, and like everything else, it's her fault!"

"Rinoa's?" Quistis said in disbelief, because she could not think of an 'everything else' that Xu might possibly blame Rinoa for, but Xu didn't seem to hear her exclamation.

"That's why I'm making tactics, Quistis--because that's what I'm good at, and someone had to take the first step in taking care of that sorceress. I'll see she's neutralized, even if I have to do it myself." An expression crossed her face that could only be called a sneer. "I'm not entirely certain the Commander has the stomach for it."

Quistis felt suddenly sick, the same sort of sickness she'd felt when she's first realized who Sorceress Edea had been to her, or the sort she had felt only a few hours ago, when Rinoa's cherubic face appeared on the viewscreen, and she gleefully admitted to mass murder. It was the feeling that a situation you thought you understood had suddenly spun wildly out of control, and someone you knew became a stranger to you. Quistis had loved Xu, years ago, but the Xu that Quistis had loved was a soft-eyed idealist, and the woman before her now was a cold, angry soldier.

"I think you should wait for an order before you start planning a mission, Xu." Quistis said softly. "You said yourself, Rinoa might be being controlled. We don't know that she's our true enemy."

Xu's eyes were dark, her expression mocking. "And if she isn't being controlled? If she's just gone mad? What will be your excuse then? I know all about making excuses for someone who isn't acting the way you'd want them to."

"Rinoa isn't Seifer, and Squall isn't you!" Quistis snapped.

"So he will be willing to do what must be done?" Xu said, and suddenly all venom was gone from her voice, she sounded worried, and hopeful.

"If it must be done," Quistis said, chosing her words carefully, "he'll do it."

Xu scrubbed both of her palms over her face, as if she were suddenly exhausted. "Then that will have to suffice, I suppose. Excuse me, Quistis, I have a lot more work to do."

Selphie had become the daughter Laguna had never had, or so he said to her often, though perhaps the metaphor of relation was designed to discourage her infatuation, one cannot say for certain. Regardless, she was the one who spent the most time in Esthar, boarding B-Garden barely once every six months, and so she was the farthest removed from it's everyday workings, and the best suited to dealing with Zell.

She was waiting for him when his ship docked, bouncing from foot to foot impatiently, and when he stepped onto the wooden planks at FH, one would have been forgiven for thinking she was going to run up and bowl him right over. Selphie had always been about barely restrained energy, and the more subdued those around her were, the more energetic she became, as if to make up for the difference. She'd always been calmer around Zell's energy or Rinoa's enthusiasm than around, say, Squall or Quistis, where she became nearly manic.

This was why she and Irvine had never really made a good match--his languor only exacerbated her vigor. Despite the rumors, though, nothing ever came of her and Zell, either, nor any of the other pairings the gossip speculated about. It wasn't that they didn't love each other, for all of them loved the others, fervently. But love is not all there is to such things, as anyone can tell you.

"It's good to see you, Zell." Selphie said warmly, sincerely. "I hope the ride wasn't too bumpy."

"It was fine." Zell responded, shortly, shoving his hands deep into his pants pockets and hunching his shoulders like a petulant child. "Just boring. It's, uh ... good to see you, too." He added as an afterthought, sounding perhaps a bit less sincere than she had. It had, after all, been almost four months since they'd met face to face, and he had missed her, but there were always other things to think about.

"I want to hear about everything!" Selphie exclaimed enthusiastically. "I've talked to Irvine, but he won't gossip. How are Squall and Rinoa? How's Lenith?"

The second question took him by surprise, because he was certain that Irvine must have at least told her that-- "She graduated, about two months ago. They sent her off somewhere." He said, mildly. Lenith worked hard for the library committee, but she hadn't valued it enough to request a station on the garden. Her infatuation had been flattering, but not much else, and certainly not enough for him to pursue her when she left Balamb behind her. "Rinoa was with her father, last I heard. Squall is ... the same as always."

Selphie pursed her lips and her eyes narrowed, seriously, as she nodded. "Which explains why you're here, instead of in Balamb, where you should be."

"You think I should be in Balamb?" Zell asked, surprised, because so many people had told him that his eye was too partial, too affected, to be of any use, he was starting to believe it.

"When Balamb was occupied, who led the assault? It was Squall in name, but I know you did all the work. You know Balamb, and it's your home, like Trabia is for me. When it was attacked you know damn well I was there as soon as I was able."

Selphie's voice hardened when she spoke of Trabia. It had taken years to repair the damage Ultimecia had done, but no amount of time could make recompense for the lives lost in that assault--her classmates, her friends, her allies. When Selphie spoke of Trabia, it was never a tone of wistful rememberance, but the hard tone of a soldier who had lost a battle.

Selphie had survived it, though. Perhaps, Zell thought, perhaps ...

He reached out and grasped her hand suddenly, closing his wide, square hand around her thin, delicate one. She looked over at him, surprised, but only for a moment, before pulling herself closer. They walked shoulder to shoulder with their hands swinging between them, like teenagers. She smiled at him, brightly, and he suddenly remembered walking down to the lighthouse in pairs with Matron behind them, holding each other steady when their feet slipped on the slick rocks. He remembered the feeling of amother person pulling you back when you could not do it yourself.

"Do you remember walking to the lighthouse?" He said, softly.

It was always a dangerous thing, these memories. Sometimes Zell thought it might be easier to forget forever than to see that bewildered look on his friend's faces when he recalled something they couldn't. For a moment, Selphie's eyes narrowed as she thought, hard, and Zell looked away.

"There were seven of us, with Ellone, so someone always got left out." She said slowly, as if the memory was a delicate thing that might break if brought out too quickly. "Squall always wanted to go with Ellone, and Quistis wanted to be with Squall, but Seifer didn't want to have to hold hands with any of us. He was always ..." She stopped. "Seifer's dead, isn't he?"

"They haven't tallied all the c-casualties, he could--" Zell replied, haltingly.

"I had such a crush on him, you know, when I was eight. You were already gone by then, I think, so I suppose you wouldn't know. I guess girls always fall for the worst possible man, hmm?" She said brightly, as she swung their linked hands between them. "When he died that first time, when we were in Galbadia, I didn't know that I should have mourned him. Now ... I don't know how to mourn him."

Zell wanted to ask why she would bother, why the hell Seifer was worth it, but the truth was that when he thought about it, he felt it too. They had grown up together, and whether or not it should, that meant something.

"He wouldn't want mourning, anyway." Zell muttered under his breath. "He'd want statues built and ballads sung and all the rest, but not people standing around crying like women."

"Ballads, hunh?" Selphie said, her eyes cloudy. "About a sorceress' knight. I can see that. We'll cut out all the 'planning to destroy time' bits, and throw in some filler about how romantic it all was."

Zell suddenly recalls the same moment Selphie must be thinking of, Seifer goading Squall with talk of his 'romantic' dream. The Sorceress' Knight. It was more than that, though. Seifer wanted to be the hero. There were moments when Zell thoguht he should have been, because he was charismatic and driven in ways Squall wasn't. Zell could see the story as it would have unfolded, with Seifer at the head of their rag-tag group, Rinoa on his arm, taunting the darkness--

Romantic.

It could not have been, anyway. They would not have followed Seifer any more than Seifer would have consented to be followed. No matter what his dreams, Seifer was born to play the gallant villan, the beautiful monster. There was romance in that, too, just of a different kind.

"You can't cut out the 'destroying time' parts," Zell responded. "Those are the best parts."

Selphie made a considering noise and fell unusually silent.

"Where's the Ragnarok?" Zell said, abruptly, when the silence stretched too long. Zell had noticed the ship's absense when they came up to the tracks, and there was no other easy way to get from Esthar to the outside world.

Selphie frowned, thoughtfully. "Laguna has shut down the Airstation. He's afraid that the Ragnarok in particular might become a target. They've got the trains working, though. Sort of. They're planning to start them on a regular schedule soon. Only for business--no tourists."

"Tourists." Zell repeated, dumbly, stuck by the image of foreigners wandering the streets of Esthar's captial. "I suppose a lot of people would want to visit, if they open their borders."

Selphie laughed at that, cheerfully. "The borders won't be opened. Even if Laguna was so inclined, the people wouldn't stand for it. It was difficult enough just getting them to part with some of their technology, I shudder to have to think of convincing them to allow strangers in."

Because that was her job. Convincing Esthar to do things that it did not want to. Zell did not envy her.

There were two Estharian soldiers waiting in the square, and they fell into step behind them as they crossed to the platform. Zell was not inclined to comment, but Selphie gestured to them and said, lightly, "My entourage. You'd think they'd realize that a SeeD is the last person to need an escort. No one's even thrown anything at me in months."

Zell frowned. "People threw things?"

Selphie laughed. "Nothing dangerous. Garbage, mostly. It's called 'Xenophobic Esthar' for a reason. They're used to me by now, though. I'm practically Estharian. You couldn't have asked for a better host than me."

Selphie had originally volunteered to be the Estharian liason on a transition basis until a permanant diplomat could be found. That had been almost two and a half years ago. Zell wondered now if Squall had even looked for someone to take Selphie's place, had tried to bring her back. He wondered if Squall had missed her during the long times when she was so far away. He knew Squall liked Selphie, as much as he liked anyone, but Squall was the type to leave well enough alone, and since Selphie did well as the liason, Zell wondered if Squall even cared if she was happy there. If he cared about the happiness of any of his SeeDs, so long as they were doing their job.

"I've missed you, Selphie." Zell said, because he suddenly thought--realized--that it was important that she know.

She squeezed his hand. "It's nice to know someone has."

"Surely Irvine has--"

"If Irvine misses anything at all, I am quite sure it's not my witty conversation." Selphie giggled. "This is our train." She gestured to a rather dubious-looking car that seemed to be in a bit of danger of toppling off the rails and down the stairs they had just ascended. Selphie must have noted his expression, for she grinned at him. "It looks a bit like that model Rinoa made, doesn't it? But it will get us there."

"Squall!" Ellone's smile was brillant, and she leaned so close to the com panel that her face filled it entirely. Squall could count her eyelashes. "What a nice surprise! I haven't heard from you since ... since ..."

"I'm sorry." Squall said, sincerely. "I'm very busy here."

"I understand. The toils of leadership are all Laguna talks about, lately. You are forgiven." Her brown eyes sparkled. "You look well, Squall. Tired, but well. Is Quistis taking care of you?"

"I take care of myself." Squall replied, but it came out sounding rather more petulant than he intended, and he looked away quickly after speaking, the tips of his ears turning red. "Ellone, sadly, there is a reason for my call besides to speak with you."

She sighed, and her face abruptly disappeared from the screen, reappearing after a moment at a more reasonable distance as she sat back in her chair. "I knew. I knew it. When Selphie said that Zell was to come to Esthar, I knew something was happening, but ... well, I am only a glorified librarian, a researcher at best. I don't see what I could do."

They had all known that there was no where for Ellone but at Laguna's side. Though she loved them all, it could never compare. They did not begrudge her that, and it was not their right to question her choices. Since the end of the Sorceress War, she had lived in the palace and spent her days scouring the Great Library for talk of pure magic, Hyne's magic. They had started to say, more recently, that she knew more that Odine himself about the powers of sorceresses, and there was no other reason for Squall's call.

"The enemy we face is another sorceress." He admitted, calmly.

Ellone's brow furrows. "There is only one living sorceress, and she is ..." She stopped, and as understanding struck her, she darted her gaze away. "I see. That does make things difficult, doesn't it? But truthfully, it was to be expected."

Squall shot forward in his chair, reaching out a hand to grip the side of the screen, as if he could draw himself closer. "What are you talking about?"

Ellone blink once, surprised. "I ... Quistis never said anything to you? Or Selphie?"

"What would they have said?" Squall demanded. "What did you tell them?"

Ellone tucked a lock of her long hair behind one ear, looking away, guilty. "I'm sure they had reasons not to mention it to you. It really ... well, it shouldn't have affected you, except through them."

"Ellone, tell me."

Her brown eyes looked out from the com panel, oddly intense. "It was about Hyne."

Legend said that all women shared the blood of Hyne, that somehow, Hyne was what had made women into women. This was what was said, but few people believed it anymore. If Hyne had ever truly existed she was, at her core, only a woman. The powers she had, however, the raw magic, that was real. That they could see.

"What about Hyne?"

"The true decendants of Hyne can still use raw magic." Ellone said, her voice low, carefully even. "My power, Quistis' blue magic, Selphie's unique spells. These are signs that we share Hyne's blood. We were born with raw magic, so we could control it. Those who weren't, like Rinoa ... are controlled by it. That's all I said to Selphie and Quistis. I just ... thought they should know that about themselves."

"But you didn't tell me." Squall accused.

"It wasn't your business." Ellone responded, defensively. "You're no descendant of Hyne. It didn't affect you."

"It sure as hell affected Balamb!" Squall snapped.

"I should not have had to tell you." Ellone said finally, her voice soft, but oddly flat. "If you were a proper knight, you would have felt your sorceress going mad. There seemed no point in warning you of such a danger, when it was clear that if your sorceress fell ... you would be her ally."

"Her ally?" Squall repeated. "How could you think--"

"That is the role of a knight, to defend their sorceress when she is wrong. Nearly anyone will defend her when she is right." Ellone replied. "Do you think ... do you really believe, even now, that Seifer had so abandoned all honor that he condoned what Ultimecia did? He followed his sorceress because he was her knight, he did not become her knight because he followed her."

Squall was silent, for a long moment. "You always thought more highly of him than we did."

"That's not true!" Ellone said, entreating. "He was your friend, once. You've only forgotten."

"I've forgotten a lot of things." Squall said, dismissive. "Tell me what we can do to stop the ... to stop Rinoa."

Footnote: "The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are right." -- Mark Twain