A/N: Overly dramatic? Maybe. But aren't people always? I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter, but I'm following my instincts. They may be good or bad, but they're all I've got. Regardless of Quistis and Seifer, this is the story. The heart of the matter moves without them.

As I walk the room
there before me her shadow
From another world
where no other can follow

Chapter 11: Shadows

Pallas stood among the trees, her nose poised wetly in the air. Closing her eyes, she inhaled the passing scent of the woman who was sitting on the beach in the moonlight, drawing patterns in the sand between her legs. Her scent was wholly unfamiliar and nearly blocked out by the overwhelming, sticky sweetness of the foliage. No matter what she did, Pallas couldn't seem to find a spot where the air wasn't littered with pollen, sea salt, and the sour odor of people in motion. The overwhelming presence of life, proliferating and screaming for attention, was beginning to cut off sections of her brain which had been overdeveloped in the icy terrain she was used to. Tilting her head back down, she licked some collected plant matter from between her toes and turned around three times before settling herself down in the grass.

Thero laid next to her, his dark mass almost invisible in the night. He leaned away from her, his sides heaving as he panted. Pallas' own tongue was hanging out as well, the cool air pleasantly cooling the inside of her mouth and zapping collected heat from her body.

"Who do you suppose she is?" Thero asked.

"They look alike," Pallas tilted her head. "But they don't smell alike."

"He seems interested."

Pallas peered out toward the beach, turning her gaze from the blonde woman to the figure lurking in the shadows of the sea cliffs further down the beach. He stared out of the darkness in her direction, unmoving and riveted. It was impossible for Pallas to tell what he was thinking, but the attention this woman was drawing could only bode well for them.

"Why isn't he doing anything?" Thero asked irritably. "Why is he just sitting there?"

"Maybe he doesn't know her," Pallas offered.

"Well, he's not going to get to know her by just sitting there." Thero's tail slashed through the shrubbery behind them.

The two sat for a moment in silence, continuing to observe. Pallas could understand Thero's impatience. The heat on this island was stifling. They had spent the better part of the day going in and out of the water. Their thick winter coats resisted getting wet, and they had to lay for long periods of times in the waves until they had absorbed as much water as possible, gaining great amounts of weight in the process until they could stumble back into the trees like swollen sponges.

"He's not going to do it," Thero complained. "Look. He's laying down."

Indeed, Seifer was settling down for the night in the sand, his tattered coat thrown over his legs and his arms pillowed under his head. The woman had not yet noticed his presence and was getting up, dusting sand off her pants and hands.

"We've got to do something," he insisted. "What if she's the one?"

"Then he'll go to her," Pallas replied, not quite as concerned.

"Well, I'm not going to wait," Thero announced, standing up and shaking so that his coat slid side to side across the muscle underneath his skin. Before Pallas could say anything, he darted out from the trees and across the broad grassy plain between them and the beach. Sighing, she got up to follow him. Time was running out, that she knew. But she also knew this wasn't something they could force. Seifer would have to do something to save himself, they couldn't make the decision for him. If he couldn't reach that point on his own, there wasn't anything they could do. And maybe he couldn't. There had been so many chances already, and in each his darkness had won. She was beginning to think that perhaps Seifer just didn't have the capacity, and possibly that was why Ultimecia had chosen him.

Loping through the grass, she sincerely hoped that wasn't the case.

***

Quistis dusted herself off, rubbing the sand from her palms and her clothing. It was late, and the silence of the world among the waves was beginning to wear on her. She could only ignore the rhythm so long, and then it would begin to hold a feeling of anticipation -- like becoming suddenly aware of your own heartbeat and expectantly waiting for the next thud, helpless to control it but no long able to shut it out. Taking a moment to retie the waste of her pants, which had loosed as she sat, she smoothed her hands over her hair and started back toward the shining lights of Garden. Balamb was a place that was never really dark. The brilliant, buzzing lights of Garden were like a beacon on the horizon, blotting out the stars and reflecting back down off clouds. She'd often wondered what the point was, curious as to why Garden felt so compelled to draw attention to itself when it established it's reputation through secrecy. One would think that the building itself would have made more of an effort to be discreet.

But nothing about Garden was discreet. Not really, anyway. She was discovering that more and more everyday she worked in the administration. Her office was filled with huge filing cabinets of information on every client Garden recently had. There were more archives in the administrative archives where details about everyone Garden had done business with was recorded. There were potential bombs resting in that building, facts that would storm the political world as they knew it. Garden was invested with more power and clout than Quistis had ever imagined. And they were sure to let officials and governments know just what a precarious position they were in. The Garden Archives were infamous.

She snorted. Maybe that's why they light the place up, she thought. We don't have to hide.

Stuffing her hands into her pockets, she gazed up at the forest and caught somewhere in her peripheral vision a darting movement. Turning fast, she sought through the darkness for what had moved, her hand coming to rest on her ever present whip.

The dark sat stagnantly, completely impenetrable.

Blinking and rubbing her eyes, she turned to continue on her way.

She stood up the pathway, unmoving and shimmery in the diffused light from Garden. Quistis froze, staring at something that in all of her travels around the globe she'd never seen. The wolf lowered her head a little and sniffed the ground, then jerked it back up and stared from the halo of her silver coat directly at the motionless Quistis.

Wolves, Quistis knew, were rare. They'd been almost completely wiped out hundreds of years ago, and those that remained were extremely secretive. They had only been seen in Trabia, as far as she knew, and none had certainly been in Balamb for a very long time. The wolf, in fact, seemed just as distantly surprised to see Quistis.

Light glinted light blue off the back of the wolf's eyes as she titled her head and then began to slowly pace, her massive frame shuddering visibly under her silver coat.

"I'd better go around..." Quistis murmured to herself, not quite sure how to handle the encounter but knowing somewhere at the back of her mind that fighting would not be an option. Monsters were different, this was a wolf, and somehow that made all the difference. There was a familiarity there she couldn't find in the awkward, slashing tentacles of a grat or the deranged buzzing of bite bugs. To kill this beast, which had slid out of the shadows as if blessing her with the rare chance to see her, would have been sacrilegious.

Quistis took a slow step to the side and, smiling for some reason, began walking further down the beach. The wolf, for her part, slipped back into the shadows and vanished in a moment, resuming her clandestine life away from the prying eyes of late night strollers. Her heart was hammering in a way that monsters had never inspired. It was a reaction she couldn't quite explain, but wasn't interested in exploring.

As she walked down the beach to the point where she felt it was safe to cross, her eyes made out an odd form resting near the cliffs. At high tide, the water came up to meet them, but when it receded a layer of eroded away sand was exposed. Laying across the white expanse was a dark lump. Concerned, Quistis started toward it. If it was a drunk, passed out student, there was a good chance he or she would drown. It had nearly happened once, the year she was a SeeD candidate, but the boy had been found just as the tide was beginning to creep up on him. It could come in fast and hard, the cliffs were testimony to that, and it would be easy, Quistis imagined, to get swept away if you weren't aware of what was happening.

"Excuse me," she called out, finally making out the form for certain as a man laying there. She kept walking, figuring that this was just her luck. He was probably laying passed out in a pool of his own vomit, which would undoubtedly get all over her clean track suit. Grimacing a little, she called out again, "Are you okay?"

Only a few feet away now, she could tell that he was covered by a long coat, his head hidden under his arms and his face pressed into the sand. Standing uncertainly for a moment, she weighed her options.

You are so getting written up for this.

Sighing, she stepped closer and reached out to poke him, sniffing the air for any unpleasant bodily fluids she might have to contend with once she got him up. Her index and middle finger jabbed him quickly, and the reaction was so instantaneous that she didn't have time to react.

Slammed flat onto her back in the sand, her head spun. It took a few long moments to figure out what had happened and where she was. The man had launched at her and was sitting on top of her, pressing her down into the sand, his hands pressing painfully into her shoulders.

Struggling, the world still spinning form the too quick change of position, she tried to throw him off with a surge of adrenaline. Her muscles quivered, but the sand was absorbing great amounts of her energy. Groaning with the effort, her eyes clenched tightly closed, she thrashed and kicked wildly, eventually throwing her attacker off long enough for her to scramble to her feet and reach for her whip.

He slammed into her again. Pain shot up Quistis' side. His arms wrapped around her waist, pinning her arms there, and his floundering weight pulled her down again into the sand. Spitting the dry, dusty stuff from her mouth, she struggled to pull her hands free and then abruptly, as if thinking of it for the first time, opened her eyes.

"Seifer!" She froze and stared up at him, here eyes wide with shock. He stared down at her, his blonde hair long and hanging down in his eyes. A short beard had grown across the lower portion of his face, obscuring the grimace she knew he was wearing. But the scar arched down the middle of his face, slightly faded as Squall's was, and she stared at it wide eyed for several long moments, not taking a breath.

He just looked at her, his face close to hers.

Seifer...Seifer...

Her mind tried to wrap around it.

Seifer.

"Get off me!" She shifted her weight and thrust her knee up toward the heavens, connecting hard with Seifer's hip bone. He cringed with pain and, for a moment, eased up on his hold. It was enough that Quistis' arms burst free. Her hand was already around her whip, and rolling away from him, she scrambled into a crouching position. Seifer had rolled away from her as well, and as her whip shot through the air it missed by a good foot, snapping crisply in the air before returning to her a little too quickly. The end of the whip hit her forearm, splitting it open with a splash of blood. Shrieking with surprise, she dropped the whip.

"Stop!" He bellowed, coming at her.

Crazily, she leapt at him, tackling him and digging her fingernails into the exposed skin on his arms. He howled underneath her and easily, as if she weighed nothing, pushed her off. She'd never expected to see him again. He was like a bad dream, and with the single-minded determination that her nightmare rush engendered, she rushed at him again. The traitor. The murderer. The bastard. He'd betrayed them all, and she was surprised to see that the years had not eased her anger as she'd thought it had. The complacency with which she had thought of him in absentia boiled over into a rage she didn't really understand, and she lunged at him again.

Lashing out with her fist, she aimed the punch at his face, but he ducked away and she was only hit his rotating shoulder. The force of the blow radiated up her arm and then down her body into the sand. She ran at him, yelling incomprehensible words, but he grabbed her at the last second and spun, throwing her to the ground where she landed on her back with a hard, painful thud.

Panting, he twisted her arms hard behind her back, forcing her onto her stomach, and climbing on top of her. Her shoulders bent painfully backwards, and she let out one strangled cry before he forced her head down into the sand. It filled her mouth, silencing her, and the position he had her in was virtually impossible to fight back from. He was stronger, bigger, and she was suffocating, choking on the sand as his hand tangled in the hair at the back of her head, forcing it down.

"Shut up!" he commanded. "Shut up, Quistis."

Shuddering with defeat, she reluctantly let her body relax underneath him and pushed against the palm of his hand, urging him to let her head up. She knew the rules of the game, and it seemed he did, too. He eased the pressure against her head and she lifted her face to spit out a mouthful of sand. An angry tear slid down her cheek.

"What do you want, Seifer?" she asked, still spitting. "Come back to finish what you started?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked hotly.

"Edea got you let off," she replied, "but we both know the truth. You're a rat-bastard-snake!" She struggled to find words. "You always were good for nothing, and you turned on us all. What am I supposed to do, forgive you?"

Letting his weight off her, Seifer suddenly turned her over so that she was on her back. He looked down at her, the light of the moon haloed behind him. Leaning down, he stared hard at her.

"You think I haven't been punished, Quistis?" he demanded. "You think I haven't been through goddamn hell these past few years?"

"Nothing you didn't ask for," she retorted.

His mouth distorted into a sneer, his beard and wild hair making him look like a half-crazed prisoner that had just made his escape. And maybe, Quistis thought, he had.

"Where've you been?" she asked. "Why are you here?" The wound on her arm was just beginning to sting, and the more she became aware of it, the more reticent she became of the fact that she'd gotten her ass kicked. She was getting rusty.

"Why am I here?" He repeated the question, and this time stopped. His expression became pained, and he leaned in closer than Quistis was comfortable with, his nose nearly touching hers. "I'm here..." He struggled to get it out, fumbling for words. "I'm...trying to..." His expression broke. "I don't know."

Seifer collapsed on top of her, his grip on her arms loosening and dropped his head hard onto her shoulder. He shuddered and gathered her close, hugging her tight. Confused, Quistis looked around franticly for someone to come and save her. But the beach was empty except for them. Not even the wolf had been drawn out by the fight. He clutched her tightly to him...too tightly, almost crushing her in his sudden, broken gusto.

"Seifer," she choked. "Stop."

"Quistis..." he breathed. "You're the only one who I thought...I don't know. We were always...something. Weren't we? I've been running. And Hyne, she won't fucking go away."

He rambled on, and Quistis became more and more at a loss for what to say. Something inside of him had obviously snapped, but she had no idea what it could be, or if it was mere happenstance that she was the one lying under him or if for some reason he'd planned it that way.

Pulling her hands free from the pinning pressure of his weight, she reached up and cups his face in her hands, raising it up off her shoulder long enough to see the glimmer of tears disappearing down into his beard. She gasped and, for the first time, took a long look at him. This wasn't the Seifer she remembered. This Seifer was so...defeated. His cheeks were sunken in, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He looked tormented, half crazy, and the floodgates had opened. Pinching his eyes closes, his forehead crinkled with pained lines and he sucked in air. She'd never seen this before, and she didn't know what to do. The anger seeped out from her body, exhausted by the kicking and fighting, and when she looked up at him she saw the brother she had watched over and protected, even though he clearly hadn't needed it, and she saw a little, immature boy who had been smashed by naivety -- ruined by his corrupted sense of self-worth.

"Seifer..." She didn't know what to say, but her heart unexpectedly swelled. It was hard to feel anything but a profound pity for him, and with an odd sense of it being the right thing to do, she wrapped her arms around him and held his body to hers.

"Oh God," he panted against her neck. "I was just hoping that maybe you...that someone would..." He didn't finish, but the thought was clear enough. Repentance often required someone to repent to. Godless and lost, Seifer sunk down against her, for the first time without all the defenses she'd come to know. She looked past his head up at the sky, feeling out of her body and confused. Rubbing his back, she listened as the single most guarded man she had ever know (Squall held nothing on Seifer when it came to erecting defensive blocks) began to bawl.

"You don't understand," he took a ragged breath. "Nobody does. I can't get away from it...I can't control it. It's inside me...this monster."

Seifer, indeed, did have a monster inside. That much Quistis knew.

A cloud moved over the moon, casting them into shadows, as Seifer mumbled incoherently she felt something deep inside of her move. Perhaps it was maternal instincts dusting themselves off and rising to the surface, or a part of her which recognized the same sort of barely contained core of self-hatred and despair that she had once upon a time seen in her father. She forgot about the war, and about Seifer's snide remarks to her in class. She forgot about the gash in her arm, and the bloody scratches on Seifer's. And with a conceding sigh released the wave of turbulent anger that resided in a deep recess of her heart, lodged next to her soul. Surrendered, caught up in Seifer's grief, she held him tightly as the shadows closed in closer around them.

Family. She wouldn't have chosen to claim him, but the fact remained there nonetheless. And a deep, filial love erupted from within her.

She didn't understand it. Didn't think she'd ever understand it. But at that moment, they had no history and no future. Simplistically, instinctually, she pressed her cheek to his.

Slipping through the darkness, unnoticed and breathless, the dark form of a wolf crept away from them, his tail swinging in time with his satisfied gait.