Disclaimer: Still do not own FF8, or any rights towards the incredible work of Neko Case.
Fool's Gold
By giggleplex
Chapter 8: Running Out of Fools
You left me all alone right here
Your goodbye was even colder than ice
Didn't bother you I was cryin'
Now you wanna break my heart twice
Is that why you got in touch with me
Ohhh, guess you must be runnin' out of fools
- "Running Out of Fools" Neko Case
The car rattled on.
He was sure that time had stopped, but for the rattling and sliding of the vehicle under him on the cobblestone road. It was the main road out of Timber, and was congested with traffic as it always was. But he dared not cry out for help from the situation he was in.
Despite no shackles or physical obligations besides a worn seatbelt to the car, he was a captive. His two captors rode in the front seats of the red sedan, and ignored him.
He would have bolted, if it was not for the assumed proficiency the man had with his hand gun, which lay next to the lever for the emergency break. The driver's hands, callused from pulling many triggers, tapped on the leather steering wheel. He was humming to some song that was popular ten years before.
The woman was looking at her reflection in the vanity mirror. She closed it with a snap that made the Wanderer jump in his seat.
He could feel the tension mingling with his own nervous perspiration, but to people outside it would appear perfectly normal. The Wanderer forgot to blink for a few moments, and his eyes began to tear up before he furiously closed his eyelids in necessity and frustration.
It was his nature to bolt, but he reeled his instinct in and sat on his hands. His was not the only fate at stake . . .
He also resisted the urge to look toward the trunk. He wouldn't be able to see anything anyway. Hell, even if he could see inside, it would be impossible to tell if the Fool was alive or dead.
The Wanderer still did not know what to do. But somehow, it did not seem as though all hope was lost.
He just hoped that he had read the Fool's eyes right—that he would be willing to do anything to see that woman again.
Because the Wanderer could not for the life of him think of anything he had left to live for. If he survived, what then? Would he enlist in the nearest military endeavor once again?
It was all just a distraction. His life was a search for a distraction from the terrible thought that everything he did was just empty. He had no woman to live for.
He was willing to do anything to see the Fool find what he was looking for.
And he was willing to risk both of their lives to find it.
His grip on the side of the seat loosened slightly, his gaze flickered over the blurry landscape outside, and he waited.
When they approached the large, shell-shaped monstrosity that was anchored to a field about an hour outside of Timber, the Wanderer couldn't help but feel his stomach jolt uncomfortably. It was a beautiful structure. He did not know quite what it meant until his consciousness awoke from its distant doze.
The famous Balamb Garden. They had arrived.
The woman was still chatting, and he was sure that she had not stopped since they had left the city. Something about a festival and a "big stick in the mud."
"And can you believe it?! He went out of his way to tell me no!"
"Well, I can see why he'd find it a bit hazardous." The cowboy replied, leaning forward over the wheel to keep his eyes peeled for a parking spot.
"Oh come on, Irvy!" The girl pouted monstrously and peered over to her companion "Fireworks aren't that dangerous!"
"They are right next to the fuel tank." He muttered.
"Well," she huffed "now I have two-hundred pounds of fireworks and nothing to do with them. He TOTALLY ruined my festival. And my day."
The cowboy smirked in a way that categorized him as a lady-killer.
"I'm sure you of all people can find somethin' to do with a huge pile of explosives."
"Wha-a-at, throw sparklers at insurgents or something?"
The cowboy (Irvy) laughed, and the woman giggled her girlish giggle. Somehow, the Wanderer did not find it funny.
He hardly noticed when they pulled into the perpendicular parking spot until the humming of the car stopped as it was turned off. Suddenly, the Wanderer's eyes widened and he held his hands as if they were tied. He felt like a doe in headlights.
"We're here! Time to get out." The woman's face flourished over the back of her headrest. She opened her door and stretched for a second, before turning toward him with another expectant expression.
He opened the door, surprised that it was unlocked, and momentarily surprised he could remember how to open a car door with the blood pounding in his ears as it was. He looked down.
The sound of the stretcher wheels jangling against the smooth concrete of the parking garage caused him to shiver. He looked over at the Fool's form, still covered in a white linen sheet. The cowboy was removing his body from the back of the sedan.
A limp hand fell across the side of the stretcher, so it was visible beyond the hem of the sheet. The Wanderer stared at it. He wondered how many people had died in that stretcher. He wondered how someone who looked so dead could ever be alive again.
The Wanderer forcefully quelled the feeling of nausea that arose from his thoughts. He braced himself against the side of the car and hoped that he would not suffer further degradation by becoming sick in front of the people that had ruined the plans that had cost him so much to construct.
The woman cocked her head to the side and watched him with what could have been concern, but he ignored her.
Two men strode to the recently-parked vehicle as the cowboy twirled the keys around his index finger. They jingled with each apex of the elliptical pattern coerced by the movements of his wrist.
As natural as the movements would have seemed on any normal man, they seemed oddly similar to the twirling of a pistol in some sort of b-rate western. The cowboy was enigmatic and the Wanderer had no desire to test the boundaries of his seeming lack of concentration toward what mercenaries were hired to do—to kill and manipulate.
And the woman's motives were just as frighteningly impenetrable. Her green dress was somehow brighter in the artificial lights than he remembered it being in the halls of the hospital. With the matching hat, it seemed as though she was more suited toward spending time in a fashionable district of Deling City than capturing a comatose but reportedly homicidal maniac.
He wondered how much the odd pair was getting paid. Or if there were other motives. Would he have done the same thing the year before? He also wondered, dimly, the fate of himself and if he would even have a chance to give his life for something he believed in.
The Wanderer tensed up his muscles suddenly and almost bolted but he caught sight of the woman staring straight at him with a frown. He lowered his head again, and was sure he was seeing stars. There was no escape and no hope.
Oh God. His mind called. He forgot that he did not believe in God. Oh God oh God oh God . . .
The new pair of SeeD's stood up straight in their pristine, medal-adorned uniforms. Their trousers were tucked into their shiny black boots without much ruffling or creases. They saluted toward his captors with utmost formality.
The cowboy just leaned back on the vehicle and waved a hand as if to dispel them. The woman in the green dress approached them on her tip-toes.
"Sorry we're a bit late! We had a bit of trouble with some of the G-Garden bozos . . . "
"Captain Tilmitt, we have been ready for you at any time, and we can assure you that our preparations have not wavered through the time that we have been expecting you."
She creased her eyebrows.
"Oh come on, don't sound so stuffy."
The cowboy smiled at her.
"Stuffiness is what they do for a living, Selphie."
"We don't." she said reproachfully.
Miss Tilmitt . . . Selphie . . .
The Wanderer stopped shaking. He looked at her in horror. She was the one that . . . Doctor Marshall had mentioned her along with . . .
"At ease." The cowboy rolled his eyes.
The two men relaxed their positions, but not by much.
"I was wondering if you two could do me a teensy favor," The alleged Selphie Tilmitt batted her eyelashes "do you think we have room for err, another 'visitor'?"
The two men looked at the Wanderer as though they hadn't noticed him before. The surprise on their faces quickly melted into something far less polite.
"Oh, a houseguest?" said one.
"An unexpected one, by the looks of it. Like in-laws except even more unwelcome." The other continued.
"Well, what exactly were you doing that got you caught up into the hands of SeeD?" the first one stepped forward, cracking his knuckles.
The Wanderer could hardly care less at their implied threats. He looked at the famous Selphie Tilmitt, who had saved thousands of lives, as if not daring to believe her actions. She was a savior of life, but she was perfectly willing to let a poor man die.
Said woman scowled at the pair of muscle-bound SeeDs.
"I think we can handle this from here on." She said, and grabbed the Wanderer's arm unexpectedly.
He gave a strangled cry and his knees gave way to his weight, and he nearly drug her down as he collapsed into the oily concrete. In a daze that lasted moments, he seemed to melt. He raised his hands to his head and opened his mouth in a silent scream. There was no gunfire and no blood—but he was as afraid as he could ever recall being.
But then again, he never had anyone to be afraid for. He had no responsibilities that could compare to the one currently on his shoulders. The responsibility that he had no chance of withholding, and no claim to in the first place.
The woman shooed away the men with sudden concern as she knelt beside him. Her movements barely registered.
"Come on, get up and we can talk about this later once we deal with . . . " she bit her lip and glanced at the Fool's silent form "him."
He could not help but look at her directly. He could not help but reach for her thin, bony shoulders. And he could not help his voice from cracking.
"How could you do this? You don't understand anything." Because she didn't.
They assumed he was a murderer without conscience and that the world would be better off without him. But they were murderers too, and every person present in that parking garage would probably be a momentous hypocrite for denying someone their own lives because they had killed.
He couldn't speak, but he hoped his eyes could do the talking. The man was a fool, but he was a good man. He was a better man than most. He was a better man than any of them.
He was willing to do anything to save him.
For a moment, those large green eyes of hers widened in understanding. But the moment passed so quickly he was sure that he had imagined it.
"Just wait and we can talk about it later." She said under her breath, but she was smiling a horrible smile and he pushed her away.
He scrambled in the opposite direction on his hands and knees. He stared at all of them as if they were wild animals. The two nameless SeeDs smirked at him. The cowboy's face was unreadable, and he looked away. Selphie Tilmitt looked distraught and confused.
The Wanderer knew that he had no chance of escaping them. He was in a friendless territory and his body was weak with stress and fatigue. But he was sure he was missing something.
And suddenly, hope was not lost.
The cowboy gestured toward the Fool's hidden body and addressed the two men: "Just take care of him like we talked about before."
They turned toward each other and spoke curt orders and confirmations. The Wanderer stared at his feet, then at his hands. If he could have looked at his heart, he would have. But to a man without a home, feet and hands were the closest things to a heart he could think of in such a cluttered mindset.
He whispered first. They did not hear anything but a faint mumble, and the woman frowned at him.
He repeated himself, and the other three heads turned. It couldn't have been what they thought he said . . .
And the Wanderer's head shot up, framed with dirty hair and wide, blood-shot eyes.
"Take me to Quistis Trepe. I want to talk to Quistis Trepe."
They looked shocked. The woman in the green dress looked around nervously.
"Please, don't say anymore—"
"I WANT TO SPEAK WITH QUISTIS TREPE!" The Wanderer screamed.
The shout reverberated through the concrete cavern and it seemed to shake the rearview mirrors and antennae of the SeeD vehicles like a gust of wind. His demand was so loud that the silence that eventually followed was as deafening as the roar itself.
The Wanderer brought a knee up to his bony chest and panted like a wounded soldier. Their winces were oddly satisfying to him.
They were all stock-still, silent, and heavily uncomfortable. The Wanderer continued to stare. Just as he was sure they were too shocked to say anything, he began to open his mouth—
"What the hell is going on here?"
—and he scrambled for a view of the owner of the new voice. It was deep and feminine, like cinnamon and dark chocolate, and the tone was such that it left room for no argument. He realized it was the sort of voice that a commercial would use for its melodious lilt.
The cowboy and the woman in the green dress suddenly stared at a point over his shoulder. The cowboy was looking a bit nervous, and caught. The woman's lips pursed but she straightened her small form and looked ready to brace herself against the worst.
The two other men widened their eyes and straightened themselves in disciplined stances that were unseen up to that point. They did not speak. They saluted as if they knew that they would march off of the end of the world if it was ordered of them by this new voice.
And the Wanderer turned to face the source of everyone else's discomfort.
He was glad of his position on the ground, because his shock made him forget that he had knees and elbows and feet.
He had seen her once before, on Dr. Marshall's small television screen. That brief glimpse allowed for him to recognize who she was, but gave little warning to the presence that melted off of her like heat waves.
She stood with her hand on her hip. It jutted out to the same side that her head was tilted, and she looked at all of them as if they were doing something they shouldn't. She had pale skin that somehow matched her gray and bronze suit. Her fingers were long and spindly, her legs were perfectly sculpted and looked to pack enough power to break a few ribs with one swing of her graceful, high-heeled foot.
Her height was immediately noticeable, but somehow she seemed taller and more domineering than she actually was. There was something about her face, and her eyes and her high-cheekbones and long hair that swept across the front of her bronze-bedecked shoulders. She should have been beautiful, but there was too much strength in that pointy chin and nose, and those black eyebrows and those long eyelashes—to be considered anything as simple as "beautiful."
She wore little cosmetics, but most noticeable was her matte lipstick applied in a curvy fashion about small-set lips. It was a classic look, not fashionable like the teenagers with their gloss and mascara, but somehow transcendent to an attempt of self-improving colors. Her lips were stained the shade of blood. She was like a noir goddess in color, and if she was anybody else, he could have fallen in love with her right then and there.
What little he could glimpse of her eyes was frightening. They were exceedingly bright, and he wondered if there was a sort of hidden magic to make them so vibrantly blue. He was glad she was wearing glasses, because he probably couldn't have met them if they were uncovered.
He stood up shakily and tried not to think about himself. His discomfort was almost unbearable, but he managed to ignore it as he braced himself against a nearby car.
"Please," he stumbled forward, close to grabbing the hem of her coat "please . . . "
"Who is this?" she demanded, glancing toward Selphie Tilmitt. "Who are you?"
But he couldn't answer that, yet. It wouldn't have mattered and he didn't know how much longer the spell would last before he would be drug away again.
"Please save him. You're our only hope left."
Damn his lip for trembling. Damn his legs for faltering. Damn his pride for yielding to his need to get down on his knees and beg.
She raised a perfect eyebrow at him with agonizing calmness.
"Save whom?" she said. He could tell it was nothing more than habitual courtesy. He was nothing, and captured, and she was so tall and so . . .
Selphie strode over to the still-covered stretcher in a swirl of green. She backed herself against it so that it rolled a few inches, and grabbed the edge of it nervously behind her back.
"Quisty," she pleaded "you've got to trust us on this one . . . you have to let us handle it . . . "
"If it's truly any of my concern I suppose I should see what it is you're trying to hide from me." Quistis pointed out logically "I thought you were supposed to be on vacation today. Surely you weren't planning to spend the day in a parking garage."
The cowboy and the small woman looked at each other in alarm.
"Am I wrong to assume that the Commander knows nothing about this?" she said, a bit weary.
"Please, just leave it to us." Selphie tried again. She was biting her lip and the Wanderer was not going to let her get away with it.
"She's going to kill him." He pointed at Selphie, his voice creaky and horrified.
Quistis frowned.
"Kill who?"
The cowboy walked over to Selphie and put an arm on her shoulder. They shared a silent look.
"We should just tell her, Selphie. You know we can't do this alone."
She looked at him in distress.
"We'll just have to deal with it when the time comes." He continued.
She looked down at the sheet. Then at her hands. And she stepped aside, without looking back. The Wanderer noticed that her hands were clamped into little fists at her sides. He couldn't help but realize that there was something afoot there that he did not understand.
But the glorious Quistis Trepe was already striding toward the prone form of his charge. He raised a hand feebly, and his heart began to race again.
She took one last glance at the cowboy and the woman, who were avoiding her gaze. Then she looked at the Wanderer, with something akin to concern.
Then she grasped the end of the sheet, and pulled it off in one, swift motion.
It fluttered to the ground slowly, like an angel's shift falling delicately to the ground. It was as final as death.
Quistis Trepe did not move for sometime as she looked at the barely-alive body of the man who loved her. The man from her past. She was deathly still.
Each second that went by made him feel slightly more uneasy in contrast with his initial relief. It was a miracle that it was she who was patrolling the parking garage at that time, and who knew what would happen if she hadn't been there.
And then she finally turned around to face the Wanderer, her gold hair hanging over her face like a spectral ghost. He tried to smile for her. She had seen him, he had finished his self-proclaimed mission and he had delivered the Fool to his golden woman.
He blinked slowly, his countenance fading to quizzical. He didn't notice her fingers twitching—
--and a strangled cry of pain shot out somewhere above him; there was someone standing in front of him that wasn't there before—
It was the cowboy, and his arm was dripping blood on the Wanderer's worn tennis-shoes in droplets quick enough to cause concern.
The Wanderer needed a moment of shock to set in before he noticed that the cowboy's arm was wrapped tightly in the deadly, poisonous barbs of the edge of a whip. He audibly grimaced and tightened the fist of the arm that was caught, and a small storm of blood dripped even quicker.
His eyes trailed toward the other side of the weapon.
And he saw blue fire burning out of her eyes.
The lenses of her glasses were cracked, and her eyes were glowing. But it was a glow that made him want to get away as fast as possible.
Because he had never seen anyone look so furious in his life.
Feebly, he looked toward the cowboy, and Quistis Trepe still refused to let him go. He had jumped in front of her attack before he could even blink. It had knocked his hat off. He had saved him. It did not take a genius to understand that the attack was meant for his unprotected eyes—a textbook weak-spot of soldiers and monsters alike. The attack would have blinded him immediately.
The Wanderer did not know what to feel, or what to think.
He found that he was paralyzed somehow, and couldn't look up into her eyes. He stared at the blood dripping on his feet, but made no move to draw them in.
He was very, very cold.
"How dare you . . . " the hiss was unlike the deep feminine voice from before. Something crackled in her throat like electricity. "How DARE you bring him here!"
"Quistis! Stop! Please!" he could see green shoes dancing toward the deadly being out of the corner of his eyes.
"How dare you expect me to save him?!"
"You're hurting him Quistis!" she shrieked.
"How dare you expect me to do anything for this god-forsaken soul, after all he has done?!"
"Stop! You're not thinking straight!"
"I told him," the voice was now deadly calm, but something still crackled in it "I told him that if I ever saw him again, I would kill him."
And suddenly, the Wanderer realized he was burning hot. He smelled ozone.
"He has no right to be here!"
Then he realized that he was on fire.
Author's Notes – No flashbacks this time, sorry if you're disappointed. Usually I feel a bit tedious when I read fics with so much concern with what has already happened. Let me know what you think of this, there are so many flashbacks I could put in here, but they're not necessary. Just let me know; e-mail me or drop a review!
This was a difficult chapter to write. Very emotional and pained. And I'm trying to make Quistis truly care about something, so pardon her craziness.
You know the drill. I do love reviews, and tend to see them as a way to measure how good I am at writing. Thank you again to all of you who have reviewed and helped me edit my work in the past!
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