Well, aha. Are there people who think they have figured it out? Read on. And beware of the curse words (if by chance they offend you) - there seem to be a lot of them in this chapter. I think it's Seifer's fault though. This was a hard chapter to write...
Chapter Eight
The Force of Instinct
Sometimes people had ended up at the orphanage: families with young children, trying to find an uninhabited stretch of beachland; naive sailors who washed up after storms; young lovers looking for escape. They were all welcomed in the same fashion by Matron's graces. Anyone over the age of ten was brought into the house and offered tea and some of the morning's muffins; anyone under the age of ten was sent to the beach to play with the other children.
It was through this intermittent information stream that the orphanage children came upon the idea of summer camp. One little girl had just come home when Daddy's motor broke and landed them beside Edea's stone house. She told her audience in glowing terms about all the activities summer camp had to offer. And the orphanage children - not realizing that their own life was much like perpetual summer camp - latched onto the idea and held it long after the little girl left.
Zell pleaded. Seifer threatened. Squall sulked. Selphie bounced. Irvine batted his lashes. Quistis presented arguments. All six of them combined their forces (in a remarkable display of their future grown-up strengths) and eventually they won. Counselor Matron and Junior Counselor Ellone decided on activities (and for five seconds, Quistis - in her undying desire to be Big Sis Elle - wanted to be a counselor) and summer camp began.
One day Matron had presented them with large pieces of white paper and thick crayons and told them to draw out their future. Giggling, the children spent all morning on the masterpieces. Later in the afternoon Ellone had them stand up and display what the fortune-telling crayons had wrought.
Zell had drawn himself riding some sort of futuristic spacecraft (that looked, surprisingly, like a t-board) and winning a big race. Squall had drawn himself, just bigger, with Elle. Selphie and Irvine's pictures were somewhat mangled. Selphie had drawn herself in a bright dress at a party, surrounded by butterflies and fireworks; Irvine had drawn himself as a cowboy with a bunch of flowers and a horse. The two of them had then tried to tape their pictures together so that they were holding hands and, in the process, had ripped both. Quistis had drawn herself as a teacher, holding books and standing by a desk. Seifer's picture had showed him with a giant sword, fighting off a big ugly dragon, in front of a house that he declared as the stone orphanage. Once Elle looked closely, she saw the little faces in the window: black hair, yellow hair, brown hair clearly labeling who was who.
It was this picture - crayon Seifer defending the orphanage family - that flitted across Quistis's memory now as she stared into Seifer Almasy's face, her nerves still burning.
And the fire exploded into rage, simmering along every conduit in her body. Hyne dammit, this was Seifer. None of them had remembered, none at all, and he had betrayed Garden once - that had hurt. But this, the second time, it was personal. Before, he could have been bewitched by sorcery and by Edea and by the search for Ellone, who in her own way had bewitched all children. This time it was real, it was Seifer, and it cut deep.
"Oh, don't be so surprised," she hissed, backing away to a point where Hyperion couldn't reach her without a little bit of warning. "I should have known it would be you. You bastard."
To her surprise, the shock flickered once but didn't go away. And a slight trickle of unease registered, in that small detached part of her mind.
Seifer raised Hyperion across from her, and his trained eyes watched as her body shifted stance in response. "What the fuck are you doing here, Trepe?"
"I'm hunting down your ass. I'd ask what you're doing here, but it's no big secret."
The shock in his eyes flickered again into something Quistis recognized suddenly as confusion. Seifer bit down on the emotion, his eyes dimming into simple anger. "Get the fuck out of here."
She laughed, once, her wrist sending Save the Queen into an eloquent snap. "You seem surprised to see me."
His voice, sharp as a blade, was dripping with sarcasm. "I must confess, Trepe, you've finally shocked me. I was never expecting you. I should feel honored to be visited by Garden's missionaries, but frankly, I'm pissed off. So piss off."
"Nice try," she retorted. "Like I'll just leave and let you get back to your work."
She realized that Seifer had been backing down the hall and that she had followed him, the two of them moving instinctively to keep safe distance between their weapons. They were now circling each other in a starkly empty room with two blinding windows. Her eyes flicked to the floor momentarily, taking in details. A folding cot, against one wall. A duffle bag with wrinkled clothes. If Seifer did live here, he hadn't lived here long.
"Might I enquire," Seifer's cold voice asked over Hyperion's blade, "who is behind this search? Is Galbadia hunting for the Sorceress's lapdog again? Or has B-Garden decided to offer me amnesty again? It must be someone serious if they sent Quistis Trepe - I mean, they must be paying very well." His voice was mocking.
"Don't play stupid, Seifer," she said in a voice that might have been her instructor's voice had it not been tinged red.
"I can't think of any recent crimes that would have been so serious that they caught Garden's attention," he said, and although his voice was still raw and angry, she recognized truth - surprisingly. Her fury dimmed momentarily as she watched, listening intently, wanting him to reveal more.
"Or did you hunt me down of your own accord?" he continued, seeing the flicker of thought in her eyes. "Decide to take matters into your own capable hands. Why Quistis, I never knew you cared." He batted his eyelashes at her.
"Shut up, Almasy," she snapped. "I didn't know it was you until I saw your ugly mug - although, granted, I should have guessed."
"Trepe, if I had any idea what the fuck you were talking about, I'd be a genius."
"You know exactly what I'm talking about!"
Her anger and rage and sense of betrayal flared up like fireworks, and for a moment Quistis was so angry that she actually saw red. The shadows on Seifer's face were edged with red, and Hyperion fairly gleamed with it. How dare he - Before she knew what she was doing, she had taken a step forward and spit in his face. Quistis Trepe, who had never spit at anything - who didn't know how to spit, who ironed her SeeD uniform every morning, who had been so concerned about her image that she wouldn't even use curse words.
She was just as surprised as Seifer, and for a moment their eyes locked in shock. She saw a lot in Seifer's eyes at that moment: fear, anger, relief, indignance, confusion. Confusion? The fire along her spine dimmed slightly.
Seifer stepped back, holding Hyperion steady but not threateningly, ready for defense but not attack. "Trepe," he said, and his voice was strangely un-confident. "What the bloody hell is going on?"
"Hyne, Seifer, stop playing dumb." Quistis shook her head slightly, as if to settle her thoughts. Her mind was whirring, gears turning, tearing the facts apart and putting them back together in different ways, trying to see what fit -
"You gave me detention for spitting once," Seifer said, his voice gaining back the Almasy confidence. "Quistis Trepe would never do something so dirty. Who are you, and what the bloody fuck is wrong with you?"
"What's wrong with me?" Her voice was high, red; and something broke inside of her, letting loose the torrent. "You're running an organization that's trying to take down Garden from the inside - you're targeting innocent people - some bullshit scientific organization roped you in with their brain-washing - and you want to know what's wrong with me?"
She took a breath and would have continued, but Seifer raised Hyperion threateningly. His face had darkened into a solid sort of anger, and Quistis remembered how fierce of a fighter he was.
"What?" His voice was a growl.
"Elsevier, Seifer, does the name ring a bell?" It was her turn to be sarcastic, and she relished it.
There was a strange moment of silence. Quistis decided to fill it. "We found you, Seifer. We put the pieces together. We know Elsevier has been trying to destroy Garden from the inside, and we're prepared to take care of the people responsible -"
"It's not me, Trepe."
Her eyes snapped to his face. "What?"
"I shit you not, Trepe. You've got the wrong man."
Looking back, Quistis was amazed to see that she hadn't given a second's thought to the possibility that Seifer could be lying. Yes, she had questioned it as a dutiful SeeD might, but deep in her heart she believed him. Instinctively. Gut reaction. She knew all too well that Seifer Almasy never lied. He never told the truth, either: he shouted the truth, shoved it into other people's faces, very often violently. Let me tell you about my romantic dream.
As his Instructor, Quistis found that she had to be very careful in reprimanding Seifer. If he was guilty, he'd yell it out with much pride and no remorse. If innocent, he'd call out undeniable proof to that effect - which was, most often, worse than the crime she had been accusing him of. Every bone in her body believed the words as they came out of his mouth - Seifer was telling the truth.
She wondered briefly if this was dangerous. The Seifer she'd known was Pre-War Seifer, Pre-Sorceress Seifer. They'd all changed so much. She knew she'd changed: lightened up, learned to curse, broken her addiction to coffee (well, almost). Seifer could have changed as well; she had no way to know.
She shouldn't trust her instincts in this case.
Quistis flicked her eyes back to him, prepared to play the game. His game.
"Then what the hell are you doing here?"
"I live here, Trepe."
Her eyes flicked back to the bag on the floor, the barren walls. "Sure you do. You move a lot?"
"Actually, yes."
"And why is that?"
"Well, let's see. I did a lot of really bad shit a little while ago - not entirely my fault - and there are a lot of people in the world that hate me. And sometimes they follow me around and bother the shit out of me - either try to kill me, or try to get me to join some stupid-ass save the world atone-for-my-fucking-sins organization. And so to keep my sanity I move around a lot."
"Why here? Why Argun?"
"The scenic view."
"Har har." Quistis was not in the mood to be frustrated. "That doesn't help your case, Seifer."
"Look, Trepe," Seifer said, and there was a hard edge to his voice. "I came here to Esthar because they only sorta want to kill me, as opposed to Galbadia, Deling, Balamb, Trabia, and everyone else, who really wants to kill me. I ended up in Argun because it's as dirty and shitty as I am, so I blend in real nice. And I can't leave because the city sentries won't let me. Not like I want to, anyway, since I'm currently alive, and would like to stay that way. Will you leave me the fuck alone now?"
"Tell me this, Seifer. Why do all the clues point to you? A secretive man out to destroy Garden and protect the Sorceresses and keep his anonymity at all costs. They even got the grey coat right." Quistis dropped this one like a bomb. "Grey fucking coat, Seifer, living in the top floor of these apartments. Explain that?"
"I didn't know you knew how to swear, Trepe."
"Fuck you."
Seifer looked mock-thoughtful. "Apparently you only learnt one word, though."
Quistis chose to look around the room again, instead. She noticed that both she and Seifer had lowered their weapons, although neither had relaxed their stance much. Her mind was strangely blank. She wished it was furiously churning as usual, computing all the data and spitting out the answer. She needed an answer. A nice long equation, with thirty-two variables, all solved for simultaneously. Variables like What is Seifer really doing here?, Is he telling the truth?, and Where is the nearest pot of coffee?. She put a hand to her head briefly, as if to jump-start the question-solving machine. More blankness.
She looked back to Seifer, who was watching her.
"Don't just stand there," she snapped, her hold on her temper quickly failing. She didn't know what was going on - she never lost her temper. She was a tall golden statue. She was made of ice. She was infallible, unbotherable. Damn. "How do you explain that every clue ties together very neatly in one pretty little package and points to you?"
Seifer shrugged his shoulders, casually letting the tip of Hyperion fall to the ground in what appeared to be a gesture of defeat (although Quistis wasn't fooled for a second). "Oh, I don't know, Trepe," he said, raggedly. "I'm an easy target, maybe?"
Quistis was shocked into silence.
"Look," he said, almost resigned. "I don't want to fucking fight with you, okay, but I will if you're going to do anything stupid. I'm not part of any scientific organization, although I've been asked to join about five. I can barely spell 'science', Trepe. Chances are somebody is looking for a scapegoat and they found me. I'm everybody's scapegoat nowadays, Trepe. It's nothing new to me."
She was still silent, and Seifer broke out into an arrogant grin. "You never thought of it that way, did you, Trepe? Holy Hyne's Ass, you didn't, did you? I thought of something before the great Quistis Trepe did. I deserve a cigarette."
It's not possible, Quistis thought. The answer is so easy, so perfect. If it's Seifer, everything fits together.
If it's not Seifer, nobody will believe him anyway.
I shouldn't believe him. It's a threat to SeeD security if I take him at his word and he's lying.
What happened to 'innocent until proven guilty'?
It was replaced by 'better safe than sorry'.
She'd never faced something like this before. The inner voices, the clockwork in her brain - there had always been an answer.
"Wouldn't that make sense?" Seifer continued, deliberately musing. "I mean, there are probably a couple people that know I'm here. They could spread a rumour or something. I bet it was -"
"No," she said. Her heart and her brain were arguing, and she knew something was wrong, because she didn't have a heart. Especially for Seifer. But somehow it felt like - like someone had accused Irvine of rape, maybe. His reputation might lend itself to an explanation, but anyone who knew him knew him incapable of something like that.
And yet being a SeeD had taught her to think only with her mind. Emotions led to weakness. And she knew the choice she had to make. For Garden's sake.
"Seifer, I'm not going to believe you without proof. The evidence led to you, and you're a suspect until we can show otherwise. Will you come with me?"
She was offering him a chance to come quietly, to resolve this with only herself and maybe another authority. She'd thought of going to Shain - he'd understand, maybe. She couldn't go to Galbadia, and Balamb was flat out. But Trabia had suffered from Seifer as well. Maybe this wasn't a good idea. She'd thrown it out blindly, the chance to avoid the fight she knew was coming...
"Are you asking me out on a date, Trepe?" Seifer said, and by his voice she knew his answer. The mood between them had suddenly turned cold. Both of them raised their weapons instinctively. "Like hell I'm coming with you."
The clash came suddenly. Seifer spun his weight and made to attack her. Her GF-fueled senses let her slip nimbly out of his way, blocking with the staff of her whip. As she blocked she noticed that he was coming at her at an angle that wouldn't kill her, just knock her out. Not like being unconscious with Seifer would be pleasant. But it would probably be more pleasant than death.
She parried again as he struck again, a downward thrust that she knocked aside with the staff again. Luckily she'd had it upgraded, strengthened for a close-combat situation like this one. She took a step back, knowing that at long-range she would dominate. If Seifer had wanted to use the gun part of the gunblade, he would have done it by now.
He followed, watching her move. She made a snap towards him with the whip and he knocked it away, the tip just barely grazing his upper arm. Her mind was slowly starting to come back into motion, the ingrained habits of watching an opponent waking it from its gritty slumber. She was straining, actually. She'd learnt how to fight a gunblader, yes - but never how to fight one who wasn't trying to kill you. One would think this was a good thing, but it meant Quistis had no idea how to predict his movements and techniques. And her extensive knowledge of combat details and theory was one of her strengths - one she'd just lost.
A fight between a gunblade and a whip was a strange thing. One weapon designed almost exclusively for distance, dexterity, and precision; the other designed for a hands-on, more gruesome look at the enemy. Quistis and Seifer had skirmished before, in the practice ring at Garden. They both remembered it, too.
And now they were moving around each other in the same strange kind of dance they had back then, each testing the other. Quistis, the eternal teacher, wanting to draw techniques from her student like she drew magic; and Seifer, the bully, wanting everything he did to be the best anyone had ever seen.
Quistis's mind was picking up speed, accelerating quickly. She knew she should have re-junctioned for close combat, but she hadn't thought, hadn't had time.
Why wasn't he trying to kill her?
What, exactly, was he trying to do?
"Seifer," she began, "Look. I'm not making any decisions here in this room. All I want is to go somewhere where we can sort out these details with a mediator involved. I just -" a pause, as she dodged (barely) a particularly fierce slash. "-think it would be -"
The sentence trailed off as she leapt back again. He was approaching her, and she was backing down, the strange non-violence of the fight leaving her unwilling to press forward. If she'd had a second she could have re-arranged her junctions to compliment her opponent. The thought produced a quick surge of energy from Shiva, a cold angry strength tickling the back of her mind.
Magic. She knew Seifer used magic in his fights sometimes. It was how he had distracted Squall so long ago. Funny, he hadn't been trying to kill Squall either. She had no protection against an unexpected use of magic, she realized.
Then again, Seifer probably didn't have any either.
"I can get you out of the city," she offered, although she wasn't sure how. "And I won't take you to Balamb. We'll go somewhere-"
"No," he growled. "You're here. This is your call, Trepe, take some fucking responsibility. Either you believe me or you don't. This ends here."
She sighed, then, and took a step back, defeated. "I don't think I'm qualified to make that decision, Seifer," she said. Quietly. Resolutely. The tip of her whip came to rest gracefully on the floor.
Seifer looked at her, and for a second it was real Seifer, eyes full of weariness. She saw he didn't want to fight any more than she did. They stood there and looked at each other - just looked.
And then the door swung open behind her.
It shouldn't have happened, Quistis thought later, but her mind was so scattered that she couldn't really excuse herself. She should have been prepared, but for once, she wasn't. She heard a voice - one that dragged familiarity up from the recesses of memory - bark out sharply, "QUISTIS?"
She felt the spell hit her in the back of the head the second she began to pivot, her arm bringing the whip up to snap between herself and her new opponent - but Save the Queen was no barrier to magic. Her well-trained muscles recognized the feel of the Sleep spell, and she knew she was out. Her arm, already weary, let the whip drop.
The momentum of her body carried her far enough that she could see Fujin's face, full of shock, and Raijin's arm still extended with the force of his quick casting. Her vision was getting spotty; she noticed deliriously that Fujin's hair was long, Raijin had lost some weight. Her knees had apparently already buckled and as she fell she made a mental note to congratulate Raijin on his efficient response someday. She heard the loud thud of Seifer's boots behind her as her head hit the floor and blackness descended.
Am trying for a regular update schedule - I think maybe if I pick a day it will help me move my little ass along. How about once a week - every Sunday evening?