Ta, sillies. TY muchos for the corrections. 'Timber' fiasco has been corrected. This is why seventhe should not write at 3am.

Chapter Twelve

The Company of Confinement

She'd only been an actual prisoner once before: and the Desert Prison might have been more dreary in appearance, but it was certainly more pleasant in retrospect. She'd had Zell and Selphie with her at the time, and she could remember thinking, how did I get stuck babysitting these two? Selphie had thought it was "Sooo coooool" that they were in prison and had enlisted Zell (once he had overcome his initial panic attack) to help her think up a myriad of overly elaborate escape plans. They had instantly reverted to child-like behaviour, leaving Quistis to act as the adult: the leader.

Even then, she'd had the image: the tall one, the golden one, who automatically took charge and took command and took care of everybody else.

But in the Prison, it had been a projection still: Quistis had never been in a situation like this, and she was nervous. More nervous than Selphie or Zell, she had thought, until she looked into their play-acting eyes and saw the fear, bubbling below the surface, hidden by their faked cheer. It made her feel a little bit better about being afraid; and feeling a little bit better meant hiding it a little bit better, until eventually she had taken all the fear and watered it down into a useful determination.

And so Quistis had slipped back into Instructor Mode.

Every Balamb cadet had to take a one-month seminar called "Prisoner's Etiquette", which discussed what to do in such a situation. The class was based on a controversial text written by a man who had been a prisoner-of-war in Adel's Conflict. It was only controversial because the Gardens disagreed on its importance: it was required reading at Balamb Garden, while at Trabia it was one of four options, choose two, in their "SeeD as a Symbol" study track. Galbadia dismissed it altogether on the grounds that including directions on how to be a prisoner was like teaching teens how to use condoms: a step in what they saw as the wrong direction. Cid had monitored many a disagreement but stood his ground: war was what it was, and his SeeD would be prepared.

And so Quistis had followed the text for guidance. She knew it all too well; it was one of a couple seminars she had applied to teach right before she lost her license.

Keep yourself in shape. You never know when the right opportunity will present itself, or when physique will come in handy: an escape attempt, a rescue mission, a torture session. You need to be in top form - or as much as you can. Do exercises in your cell to keep your muscles strong. Stretch. These will help you in the long run, and will also keep you entertained, to stave off boredom.

So Quistis had made them all spar, hand-to-hand (although Zell had a fair advantage; eventually he was made to hold one hand behind his back). They'd had contests for situps and pushups and flexibility. They'd done gymnastics off the wall. Zell had bench-pressed Selphie. It had actually almost been fun, except for the entire prison aspect.

Eat everything they give you: again, it is of utmost importance that you keep your health. So Quistis had made sure that they all received enough of the meager food given them, to the point where she gave up some of her own food when Zell wasn't looking. Get sleep in short intervals. Staying awake constantly will do you no good and much harm. Sleep for short periods of time and then take account of your surroundings. Quistis had put them all on a watch schedule. She had made sure that only one person slept at a time, so the two conscious members could always make conversation. Keep your mind stimulated. She'd taken part in the "Wild and Crazy Booya Booyaka Escape Plan" discussions, as they had come to be called, and had posed some situations she had been given in her Instructor's Certification.

It had made her feel a lot more confident to have been able to take charge: to have successfully cared for everyone in the cell. To have kept them all in shape to the point where Zell could run off and recover their weapons and they could all make a run for it. To have actually been the leader she had been seen as: to be as tall as was required.

Now, here, she was alone. No one to spar with. Or bench-press.

Quistis Trepe works best alone ...right?

It wasn't a cell so much as a room in some abandoned warehouse somewhere. The walls had once been whitewashed plaster, but were now dusty and a little mildewed. The door had been replaced with the standard iron bars, swinging on clean hinges, obviously new additions. There was an unimpressive but clean cot against one wall. The barred door was the only way she could see out.

She'd been taken back to Argun for imprisonment; she could tell she was in Esthar roughly by the time it had taken in that little disgusting hovercraft thing they had. She'd literally been counting the minutes; it had been horribly uncomfortable. She had assumed it was Argun from the start, but then she'd seen Dulle on an errand, which had confirmed her suspicions. Apparently the Fat Man had been demoted.

They'd stripped her of her GFs - Siren as well, this time - and her brain felt all jumbly and empty and rearranged. And she'd been dreaming as well: she remembered now, constant quick re-Junctioning or dis-Junctioning loosened the brain's connections, which usually resulted in abnormal dream cycles. The dreams were coming full-force, and while none of them were as eerily meaningful as the Shain dream, they were all equally as bizarre.

The GFs were still in her head, but there was some field in the room (maybe on the entire floor; maybe the entire complex) that was clamping down on them and making them unreachable, let alone useable. Stealing another person's GF was punishable by Garden Law at a very high level due to the mental and submental damage it did to a person. Quistis was glad that they had left hers alone, but was worried: it implied that the involvement of Garden was very high, if Elsevier was aware of this rule.

So Quistis set her internal clock, and slept and woke at deliberate intervals. Having no windows she couldn't check her internal clock by day and night, but she continued to keep schedule. She did sets of situps and pushups and agility exercises, which made the guards snicker. Once a day she was escorted to a shower and twice a day (unless otherwise requested) she was escorted to the toilet.

They hadn't beat her, hadn't tortured her, hadn't touched her. The jail was musty from disuse but much more comfortable than the Desert Prison. But the detached part of her mind had to whisper: even when they're torturing you, it means that you have something they need. They don't need you.

The problem with confinement, she began to remember, was the introspection. With no one to talk to you talk to yourself; and when you talk to yourself, the easiest thing to talk about is yourself.

Quistis didn't like talking about herself. She didn't like thinking about herself. Every time she tried to open up, to chip away at the gold and show someone the flesh underneath ...well, she ended up talking to a wall.

Not every time, though. She felt her face blush slightly as she remembered her last real conversation with Shain. She hadn't meant to let him in - Shain, of all people - but -

Shain hadn't rejected her or mocked her or insulted her. He had taken her words calmly and looked at them like a photograph and then given her words of his own, not just words but precious ones, a picture in return.

And she'd dreamed about him, that crazy dream where he spoke in other voices and gave her advice. A crazy, GF-induced dream, but a dream nonetheless.

Shain would probably think it was funny, but what would she say? "Hey, Headmaster, don't freak, but I had this hilarious dream about you the other night, and you had Rinoa Heartilly's voice."

Her imagination produced Shain's voice: "Kinky."

She'd dreamed about him! Quistis Trepe, dreaming about Headmaster Shain Sheridan. Didn't that just take the cake and sound horribly romantically cliched when in fact it was nowhere near remotely anything like that. Nothing. And Instructor Trepe doesn't talk in long unpunctuated run-on sentences either.

Quistis lay carefully back onto the cot with a sigh.

----

How many days had she been here? It was very irresponsible of her to lose track. She was counting hours, regulating her sleep patterns, but in doing so had forgotten to keep track of the greater picture: how many days?

The ceiling was just as dingy as the walls, spotted with little tiny mildew colonies. Quistis looked at them for a while, trying to get her mind out of its rut; there was a grouping over in one corner that, if she lay at a slightly different angle, made her think of a dog-face. Oh good - now Angelo could keep her company. Angelo was a sweet dog, with an intelligent look and eyes that often held amusement; and sometimes he tilted his head when you spoke to him. The mildew-shape in the corner had this image, Angelo with his head cocked, looking at you with those big liquid eyes.

She remembered Angelo and Rinoa, in the girl's early days with the SeeDs, trying desperately to show that she was a good enough fighter to fit in. Much bluster and little substance, but enough bluster that she could do whatever she wanted to do, and you believed she'd do it with nothing but her faith in her dog and a second-hand weapon like that Blaster Edge. Quistis had helped the girl upgrade that as soon as possible; Rinoa did have real skill with the ranged weapon, but even the best carpenter would only get so far with a plastic hammer.

Rinoa's skill with Angelo had been pure genius, however, and Quistis (again, in the past) had thought of asking Rinoa to come to Garden and work a month-long seminar on canine training; many of Quistis' Limit Break students were having difficulties coming up with moves effective enough to fully utilize the adrenaline punch of a Limit Break, and Quistis thought the idea of a training companion would be brilliant. But then - again - Rinoa inherited Ultimecia, and became the only thing Garden would be interested in - the Sorceress.

Quistis realized that she must have spent a good deal of time churning ideas over in her brain, trying to think of ways to help Rinoa fit in, to help her feel like she mattered. Even though the girl rubbed her the wrong way, it wasn't like there was any dislike between the two. Apparently even in the midst of something as horribly confusing as Sorceress-chasing Quistis's brain fragments could spin on their own, coming up with Rinoa-related compliments. It had probably been more to appease Squall than for any other reason.

She wanted to talk to Rinoa, too: ask her, "Have you ever suspected Seifer of being capable of lots of great evil and treachery? Oh wait, yeah, he did try to feed you to Adel, huh." No, she couldn't say anything like that; she'd have to feel her way into it, try to pick up Rinoa's feelings on the entire matter before the girl caught on to the purpose behind the questions.

What would Rinoa do when she found Seifer was alive? Would she be glad? (They had been lovers, once, if only in some sense of the word.) Would she be angry? (He had betrayed her, tried to kill her, and tried to kill Squall.) Would she be indifferent? (Seifer had kind of dug his own hole.) Would she immediately march out, armed with Angelo and Angel Wing, and demand Seifer's head on a golden platter? (Like Shain might have done.)

Quistis realized with a short jolt that she couldn't even be sure that Shain hadn't gone looking for Seifer himself. With her out of the way, Shain could find him, probably easily, and take Trabia's revenge. All it would take was a squad of Elites and one short fight.

She wondered what Shain's primary weapon was.

But no, that wouldn't be Shain's style. He wouldn't go in secret and take care of the 'problem' in such a short way. He wouldn't go behind her and betray her like that, would he?

Betray her? As if they had some sort of binding contract.

Friendship was a sort of contract, wasn't it?

Quistis didn't know, honestly. She'd never had many friends, growing up. She'd always been a little out of place: a little bit taller, older, more mature than the ordinary kids she'd longed to be like. She made other children uneasy, her golden perfection magnifying everyone's flaws. And her tendency to want to care for everyone she met (the neverending quest to become Big Sis Quis) placed her in the older, adult category.

Her upbringing hadn't helped, either. Her foster parents had been terrifyingly old-fashioned folk. Her foster-father worked all day at a bank somewhere and her foster-mother stayed home and spent her hours cooking, cleaning, or instilling the two into her new foster-daughter.

Her mother's one requirement upon adoption was that she wanted a girl.

Instead she had gotten Quistis, golden-haired and blue-eyed as any mother could wish for. Quistis, who was tall and lean instead of short and sweetly plump. Quistis, who spoke with a grandeur five times her age even at a young six, when she should be demure and shy. Quistis, who took pride in the fact that she could - and did - beat the boys into bloody noses and tears (but only when she jumped on them in surprise. If they knew she was coming, she was a sure loser). Quistis, fiercely intelligent and curious, so sharp with both that she could and often did cut herself on her own tongue; when she should be sweet-voiced, unopinionated, reserved.

Posture, poise, propriety. Her foster-mother's mantra hammered into her, repeated with every step. Her mother's idea of posture was sitting straight-backed in a chair while strapped (or so it felt) into a ridiculous day-gown, looking alluring and sweet and fragile. Poise was pouring the tea correctly. Propriety was biting her tongue when the Visitor of the Day made some crack about a 'woman's place' and simply giggling rather than reaching for the teapot and cracking Visitor upside the head.

Quistis and her foster-family had parted ways when it became obvious that Quistis's ideas and dreams led her down a horrible path, a man's path (breaking every one of the Propriety Rules); Quistis wanted to lead and take care of and create and design and direct. The family decided to ship her off to Garden as a charity case, to get her out of the way. Her foster-mother at this point had realized that the daughter she had adopted would never be a girl; the foster-father barely noticed. No one shed tears.

It had caught up to her, two years later, in the wrath of Garden's training. Stress and change and sleep made her physics all strung out and she had descended into a pseudo-depression that only Kadowaki and Xu knew about anymore. She'd realized that she'd failed - again. One more in a long trend. She hadn't lived up to expectations. It didn't matter that she couldn't - she had disappointed, the most evil of curse words in the Trepe dictionary. And thus was born the horrendously fierce Trepe Determination: the power she found in willing herself to do the impossible.

The rules had produced who she was today. In over-pushing her daughter to be so girly the foster-family had managed to create a strong young woman - yes, woman at age eleven - who had no qualms about looking men right in the eyes. Her posture was tall and confident and intelligent; her poise was battle-ready; and she knew propriety like she knew the Garden Rulebook, by heart.

It had earned her respect, admiration, rumours, and eventually her SeeDship and her Instructor's License. But it hadn't earned her friends. The closest she'd come was Xu, older sister and friend and guardian all in one, who had been torn from her when both grown-up girls grew up and graduated.

----

Seifer, Seifer, Seifer.

If there was one thing she had to get out of jail for, it was to prove Seifer's innocence. Quistis wasn't so sure why this was her one dominating reason - she'd rather it had been so that you're not in jail any more or even something like so that you can finger Maxus and watch him rot in jail. But she felt almost guilty; she'd doubted Seifer, even accused him.

And Seifer was in danger, though if there was one thing Seifer was good at it was protecting himself. Attacking Seifer with anything less than a squad of highly-trained SeeD cadets (as they'd done during the Ultimecia ordeal) was just asking for punishment. Punishment that came in the form of bad words, dirty cigarette smoke, and Hyperion.

Quistis wondered. She'd been able to fire off a quick email to Xu from the Plasma: an email from a dummy account that only contained the GCC codes and was signed IQ (a nickname for Instructor Quistis that Xu had given her and had thought was hilarious). She knew that if anyone would recognize GCC codes, if would be Xu. She only hoped that the virus filters didn't eat it or anything.

And Xu wouldn't know what to do with the files once she pulled them up on the computer, but at least she'd see the unmarked dispensations. Quistis had no doubts that Era Maxus would slip into the system and change the GCC somehow to cover his tracks, now that he knew she'd been looking at it. But this way it was two people against Era's one. Unless he had more on his side within Garden bureaucracy. Quistis shivered.

But it didn't seem fair to her, even for Seifer Almasy, who had been a belligerent jerk even at the best of times and made the spawn of Cerberus look like happy puppies at his worst moments. For someone as fiery and independent as Seifer to be trapped in a shithole like Argun, run around from apartment to apartment or hotel to hotel, probably paying his rent and fees in anger and rat-slaughter: to Quistis it was a disgrace.

Also Seifer had been one of her students, and she took his success very personally.

Where'd she gone wrong? She'd misread Squall and Seifer both. Big Sis Quis still lived inside her head, buried under years of Shiva-Junction and Coulter's Handbook, and when the Instructor had looked at them for the first time Big Sis had reared up inside her neatly ordered mind and produced two little sparks. Big Sis had been drawn towards Squall (him being the one who needed Big Sis-ing) and had been repulsed from Seifer (who had usually thrown things at her). And the Instructor had misread these little sparks completely, becoming increasingly short and not tolerant with Almasy and his disrespectful behaviour; while she favored Leonhart beyond a lot of things and a lot of people, to the point where she found herself requesting to be his Fire Cavern Aide. To the point where she figured that, not having had a crush before, this must be one. To the point of misunderstood love.

But she'd still been connected to them both by the sparks. Why else would she have run after Seifer in Timber, where Seifer lost himself to Edea-Ultimecia-Matron?

Probably to save her good name. If one of her own students went wacko on the First Evening News In Eight Hundred Centuries, wouldn't she be held partially responsible? Even only partially?

She'd wanted to protect Seifer, subconsciously, as she'd always wanted to protect Squall. As she'd wanted to protect Selphie and Zell in the Desert Prison. As she'd wanted to protect Rinoa when they first met; though Rinoa hadn't been of the Orphanage, she'd still exuded the same lost-child sense that tapped into Quistis's instinct.

The big-sis instinct, the instinct of height, the instincts of posture, poise, propriety. The Trepe Determination. What made Quistis so tall?

Everything, and nothing. Nothing save Quistis herself.

----

Balamb Garden's policy on prisoners-of-war was Cid's personal policy, and it was simple: We will always come for you.

She was starting to worry. It had been long enough, hadn't it? Wouldn't someone start looking for her?

Who would know where she was, though - Squall and the others wouldn't know where to find her.

But Shain would. Her suitcases, still at Trabia. He'd realize something had happened; somebody would come after her, and she couldn't be too hard to find.

Would Shain bother to come himself? She'd been so cold. But she had to. She was going to be Balamb Headmaster and it wouldn't do for the Trabian Headmaster to know her innermost heart-workings. Shain could just notify Squall and then Balamb could send a relief team.

She realized with a jolt that she was almost hoping Shain would come. Why? So he could laugh and say I told you so, I told you Argun was dangerous? She'd have to apologize and eat words and junction herself to the teeth to get past him again. And she'd do it with a smile, gladly, and then slip out the back door to run off after Elsevier again.

But she did. She wanted him to come, because it meant that he cared.

She wasn't Trabia Garden's problem. He had no responsibility to her -

Cared? Cared?

Quistis Trepe didn't think in terms of caring and feeling and friendship. Why would she care whether or not Shain cared about her?

I'm getting lonely, Quistis thought, eyeing the patch of mildew that looked like Angelo's face. I'm getting lonely, and talking to mildew dogs, and weaving romantic nothings out of someone that I just want to be friends with.

Quistis Trepe works best alone ...right?

Is it so bad to want a friend?

------------------------

Pppppp;;;;;;o

That is from my cat, who likes to step on things. Although I did move it from the portion of the story where she inserted it, I thought the message important enough to include here, as a finale to the chapter.

One of the things which disappointed me about SC was that I lost the introspective angle; so here is my attempt to deliver a couple of Quistis-images. This chapter is in part for Enkida, the author of Growth (a fantasmic FF7 fanfic featuring a gorgeous Vincent, an adorable Red, and an undeniably Yuffie-ish Yuffie in a very cool plot I wish I had thought up myself), who paid me a greatly appreciated compliment and made me want to finish this chapter. Hooray motivation! The rest is dedicated to all my other reviewers; I've broken 100 reviews and I feel so honored. The drinks are on the house!

Please read mirrorfeather if you haven't already. It's one of those things you write when you're drunk on being back at your parents' house for Christmas like a child: it makes no sense, and I love it.