A/N: I chose in this chapter to use the spelling "cactuar" as opposed to the FFX variant "qactuar" because...well, I just don't like the latter. Also, there are a few minor lines of dialogue lifted directly from the FFVIII script in this chapter.
Chapter 7: Thunder Plains
Living underground had its advantages. The Guado didn't worry much about Sin. In fact, they didn't worry about much of anything. For someone like Seifer, who had grown up surrounded by constant noise and metropolitan movement, Guadosalam must have seemed at times to be standing still. Like right now, for instance. He tapped the hilt of his sword and sighed, casting his gaze about for any available opening to brew trouble. None of it bothered Quistis. She sat perched on the high curve of a wayward root and watched the city breathe. Beside her, Squall did the same.
She didn't know what to say to Squall. But for once, she felt comfortable with his silence. Yesterday, she might have felt compelled to deconstruct him, to try and guess what thoughts might be moving through his head. Now that she'd begun to let go of the idea that any of his thoughts might involve her, she found that she didn't care quite so much. She was starting to see him as simply quiet. Not deep, tortured, and in need to fixing.
It felt good to pull free of his grip on her heart.
Surprisingly so.
"I told her to meet us here," Seifer grumbled, then turned to Squall. "Did she say where the hell she was going the last time you saw her?"
"Said she needed to say goodbye to some friends."
"Friends? Sweet Yevon, she's only been in town for a day. How has she already managed to make lifelong acquaintances?"
Squall shrugged as if to say: You know how she is.
"Don't you think we ought to go track her down before she starts some Guadosalam chapter of the Forest Owls? Not that this place couldn't use the drama. But, I'd rather not wait around while she does her whole 'rah, rah freedom' routine."
"Give her a few more minutes," Quistis suggested. "She'll be here."
"Here's a crazy thought: why don't we just leave without her?"
"You don't mean that," Quistis said, confident that somewhere deep down Seifer still harbored some affection for his ex-girlfriend.
"Sure I do. She's a guest on this pilgrimage. And the chocobo is leaving the station. It's her own fault she's not here on time."
Right then, the door to the huge estate in the middle of town opened, drawing all of their attention, and the striking figure of Seymour Guado stepped out—the Lady Yuna's fiance, if rumors could be believed. Quistis had to admit that, even through his half-Guado blood, she could see the man's appeal. He possessed a handsome face, strong jawed and perfectly proportioned. That combined with his towering height and raw political power gave him a unique charisma.
Well, maybe not unique. He reminded her a little, she decided, of Seifer.
"Looks like even that ugly bastard is going to beat us to Zanarkand," Seifer said, his tone huffy.
Quistis smiled. "Funny you should say that. I was just thinking about how much the two of you look alike."
"What? Me and Seymour? Gee…thanks. Nice to know how you really feel about me. Guy looks like he got puked on by a tree, for goodness sake."
"I meant your faces."
"Our faces?"
"You have similar bone structure."
He shook his head. "I'm gonna do you a big favor and pretend that you never even brought this up. Okay?" When he glanced around and noticed the amusement on Raijin and Fujin's faces, he lost all of his remaining patience. "I'm going to find Rinoa," he announced and drew his sword.
For the safety of all involved, Quistis and the rest of the party followed along, and eventually they found Rinoa near the tunnel leading north out of the city. She stood talking to a Yevonite girl with red hair and a pointy, green hat.
"Hey guys!" Rinoa said when she saw them coming. "You just missed Maester Seymour. He said he was heading to Macalania Temple."
"He's the high priest there," the red-head added.
"Perfect. He's probably on his way up there to decorate or something." Seifer reached over his sword to grab Rinoa by the arm. "Come on, Rin. We've gotta make it to and from that temple before he turns it into his personal love nest to wed and bed Lady Yuna in."
"Lady Yuna…?" The red-head lifted her hands to her face as Seifer's sentence processed. "Lady Yuna and Maester Seymour are to marry?"
Seifer shoved Rinoa past her. "You didn't hear it from us," he said.
They moved on, leaving the young girl behind, utterly over the moon at the prospect of the celebrity wedding on the horizon. As cynical as ever, Seifer merely rolled his eyes at Quistis. She rolled her eyes right back, though part of her envied Yuna. Not that Quistis wanted to get married. But she would have liked to experience love at some point before she died. The mutual kind.
While they made their way down the long tunnel, Quistis made sure that she had her lightning bangle properly secured over her upper arm, then pulled on a light pink raincoat with blue stitching that she'd purchased over top. The rubbery material squeaked and groaned as she moved. And she considered abandoning the coat all-together until a fresh, wet breeze wafted up the dark tunnel, thick with the scent of a distant storm. She took in huge breaths of it, appreciating the clean scope of that smell after a day and a half spent in the cluttered, earthly morass of Guadosalam.
Thunder reached her next. It rippled off the rocks, a sonic boom that Quistis felt echo in her chest. Then she began to see flashes of light and to hear the regular patter of rain. At the tunnel's end, she paused to pull up the hood on her jacket and survey the huge, barren plain beyond. Nothing grew here except for water-loving fungus and mold. The oppressive storm clouds overhead blocked out the sun and made it impossible for anything green to survive.
"Is it true that the lightning never stops?" Raijin asked, awed.
"It must have at some point, since there's the remains of a machina city here," Rinoa pointed out. "I'd be willing to bet there's something buried here that's causing the storm. If we could just dig it up and turn it off, the sky would clear."
"Maybe. But for now all we've got are these lightning rod towers." Quistis pointed to the nearest one. "They attract most of the strikes. But not all of them. We still need to be careful not to get hit."
"Isn't that what these damn bangles are for?" Seifer asked.
"They're designed to absorb attacks by lightning elementals. The real bolts from the sky are orders of magnitude more powerful. The bangle will help, but I wouldn't advise getting hit. Stay close to the towers."
Rain pounded against her hood as she stepped out into the storm. Water had gathered in deep puddles and eroded away much of the road that had once led the way through the plain. So Quistis aimed for the first tower. Above, a white bolt of electricity connected with the metal rod sticking out the top, the flash searing the back of her eyes.
"I've always wondered where my ancestors came from. Back in the machina days, I mean. And I think this has gotta be it, ya know?" Raijin was saying to Seifer. "This place…it just feels like home."
"REFRESHING," Fujin agreed.
"I think it's sad," Rinoa said. "When you see places like this and realize what we did to Spira in the past…Sin makes a little more sense."
Quistis could see both points of view. She liked the storm at a visceral level, liked the crashing, flashing raw power of it. It reminded her of the summer storms they'd gotten in Kilika, which blew through every day at dinner time like clockwork for a week every year, leaving streams of water running down off the mountain, through town to the sea. At the same time, this particular storm seemed to seethe. An old wound, never healed. Like the planet was angry with them. That was certainly what Yevonites taught when musing on this place. Quistis supposed Rinoa took more from her father than she realized.
It didn't take long before the novelty of the rain wore off and Quistis's toes began to feel wet through her boots. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a flash of green, but when she turned it was gone. Just more bare rock.
Seifer moved to walk next to her. He had the collar on his gray coat turned up, but had refused to wear anything else. He looked soaked through.
"There's a travel agency halfway," she told him. "We'll stop so that you can dry off and warm up there."
"I'm fine. But if Pubes or Rinoa need to stop…I don't care."
She smiled at him under the shadow of her hood. "I wanted to thank you, by the way."
"For what?"
She thought about how exactly to phrase her response for a second before saying, "For being my guardian." For all of his faults, he remained the one there at her side whenever she found herself alone: in Kilika, in Djose, and at NORG's Bar. She appreciated his dedication, even if she hadn't initially wanted it.
"If you let me ditch Squall and the princess, we can be right back to good old times." He sounded only half-joking.
"I know I've asked you this before, but I don't think you've ever answered honestly," she said, ignoring his suggestion. "I'd really like to know, out of all the summoners in Spira, why you picked me."
"I get the feeling there's something specific you want me to say…"
"Just the truth."
He looked up at the sky. "I came to Kilika because it was nearby, and because I knew High Summoner Ohalland had been from there. I figured it'd be a good place to start looking and there you were, just waiting for someone like me to come along."
"There wasn't anything else to it?" she pressed, thinking for the umpteenth time that day about what Rinoa had said to her at the bar, about Seifer perhaps harboring deeper feelings.
But he shook his head, all business. She wasn't quite sure if she felt relief or disappointment at his response. But a flash of green caught her attention again, drawing her away from their conversation. This time she spotted it—the shape of a cactuar glowing on one of the rocks. She stopped and stared. Raijin nearly plowed into her.
"Hold on a second," she said. As soon as she stepped toward it, the cactuar shape vanished, but she kept her eyes locked on where it had been. And as she got close enough to the rock to touch it, a bolt of lightning struck behind her, illuminating a gap in the sheer wall ahead. Compelled, she walked up to the gap and found it just wide enough to squeeze through.
"Where are you going?" Seifer asked. "Macalania is that way."
"I'm not sure yet. Just follow me." Of all the places in Spira, the Thunder Plains kept the most secrets. No one stayed here long, and not much off the beaten path had been explored. Quistis's heart hammered in her chest as she wondered what she might find on the other side of the gap. Rinoa's storm making machine, maybe?
The gap grew tight and she turned sideways to make it through, then popped out on the other side to find herself looking down into a shallow basin, dominated by the strangest looking structure she'd ever seen. It looked half-decayed: a tower, barely held up by a massive octahedral frame. A single, thin staircase led up into the structure. And hammered deep into the rock, a wooden sign—barely legible—proclaimed the area, in the ancient tongue, "My Blue Heaven."
"What in the world is that?" Seifer asked as he came up behind her.
"I don't know. But I want to explore it."
"Why? Looks like it'll topple with a sneeze and kill us all."
"I bet nobody but us has seen this for thousands of years," Rinoa said. "I'm with Quistis. We should check it out."
Quistis didn't have to wait for the consent of her whole party, let alone Seifer, so she started down toward the building by herself. Immediately, she noticed a scrabble of movement in among the ruins. Fiends, most likely. Though she couldn't tell what type. Judging from what she'd seen so far, she thought maybe small lizards or dragons.
Assurance that she'd made the right decision settled firmly in her mind when she put her foot on the first step and a beam of green-blue light appeared where the railing had rotted away. Enchanted, she ran her hand through it and felt the warmth of ancient magic. Very ancient.
"I don't think we should spend too much time here," Squall said, agreeing with Seifer for one of the first times in his life. "This doesn't look very sturdy."
Quistis moved up the steps and found them solid. At the top, they spit her out onto a circular platform with a statue in the middle that had been worn down so badly by the years she could no longer tell what it had depicted. This place was too old, she thought, for it to be of a high summoner. And she didn't know enough about the machina cities to guess what sort of men or things they had venerated.
"There's legends about the Thunder Plains," she said, keeping her voice low, as she moved around the statue. "The city that was here was one of the first destroyed in the machina war. Bevelle did it. They used some kind of weapon to rain down destruction from the sky."
"I'm sure they deserved it," Seifer said.
Up another set of magical stairs they found more ruins. And, disconcertingly, a fiend that Quistis had only heard of but never seen. She caught only a brief glimpse as it scampered away, the light from the lantern it carried glinting off its bald, green head. A tonberry. She'd thought them eradicated in all but Spira's deepest, darkest places. It gave Quistis a moment's pause to realize that this might qualify.
"What do you suppose this place was?" Rinoa asked, twirling around, oblivious to the danger. "It seems too isolated to be part of the main city."
"Maybe it's a tomb," Raijin suggested.
They walked into one of the only remaining structures and Quistis nearly lost her balance when the floor moved under their feet, propelling them upward just like the lifts on Mushroom Rock Road. It took them up what felt like a long way, and when it stopped, they startled a huge, knee-high tonberry that had been in the middle of chewing on the bare, knotty end of a bone. It made a guttural sound, dropped its meal, and pointed its lantern at Quistis, sending searing pain straight through her heart.
With a gasp, she dropped to her knees.
Seifer moved first, though Squall was nearly as fast. The two of them fell upon the fiend in a fury. They had it outmatched in both height and weight. But the tonberry shrugged off their attacks with alarming ease, only to sink a little knife hilt deep in Seifer's leg. He howled, fell back, and his posse rushed in to take his place. It took a concerted effort. Including one of Quistis's aeons. But at length, the little beast finally fell—dissolving into a burst of pyreflies. Everyone stood panting. Rinoa had her arms wrapped around Squall like a frightened monkey. And Seifer clutched at the knife still protruding from his leg.
With a grimace, he tugged it free and tossed the blade onto the ground.
"Don't move. I'll heal you." Quistis rushed to help him.
Blood covered his hand. He wiped it clean on his wet coat while Quistis collected all of her magic to stitch him back together. The wound looked deep, down to the bone, and even Seifer who rarely showed pain couldn't hide the pale hint of shock on his face. The spell helped to bring back some of his color.
"Let's try not to run into one of those again," he said.
"Yeah," Rinoa agreed. "I was really scared."
"I'd like to go on a little further," Quistis said.
Seifer winced as he put his full weight on his leg, and she thought he was preparing to demand they return to the pilgrim road, get back on track for their all-important date with Sin. But he didn't. He gestured her to go on. Before he could change his mind, she did just that. She jogged up another set of stairs and kept going until she figured she'd neared the very top of the tower. A huge, stone slab door marked again with the words "My Blue Heaven" met her. Statues of winged monsters flanked both sides, one of them missing an eye.
When she pressed her palm to the door, Quistis felt the hair rise on the back of her neck.
"We have to get in here," she said.
"Why?" Rinoa asked. "Looks like the kind of place that I'd lock up something dangerous in."
Quistis couldn't explain it. Maybe she'd been consumed by the sheer thrill of discovery. Or maybe Yevon had guided her here, to a special destiny. Either way, she had to know what this place had been built to hide. Working her fingers as deep as she could into the door's seam, she braced her feet and pulled. After a moment's consideration, Squall joined her. Then Raijin did, too.
"I hope you know what you're doing, Summoner," Seifer said before he, too, added his weight to their efforts.
The door, however, refused to budge.
"I don't think we're getting anywhere with this," Squall said.
Raijin let go to suck on his scraped fingertips. "Yeah. There's nowhere to grab, ya know? I think we could do this all day and not make a difference."
Quisits didn't want to see that they were right, but her logic overruled the thundering of her heart and she let go of the door with a heavy sigh.
"Hey. It's not so bad," Rinoa said, her tone cheery. "You can always come back here again later, and…oh! I mean…" She blushed. "Sorry. Forget I said anything."
The reminder that she might never pass this way again made Quistis's feet heavy.
"Well, we tried," Seifer said, speaking louder than necessary to override Rinoa's slip of tongue. "Nothing more we can do here. So let's get back on track for the travel agency before I freeze to death in this damned rain."
Everyone turned to leave. Quistis lagged behind. She knew she couldn't do anything more. But she lingered anyway, unable to bring herself to walk away. One last time, she glanced over the superstructure of the tower's frame overhead, over the writing on the door, and over the two statues, drinking it all in. A glimmer of red at one of the statue's feet caught her attention. It's missing eye, she realized. It was the least she could do for this forgotten place. She bent down, picked the stone up, and stood on her tip-toes to slot it into the beast's empty eye socket. It locked into place with a satisfying click.
And then, with a grumble like thunder, the door slid open.
"Oh my…" she breathed, then called over her shoulder, "Seifer! Squall! Come back!"
The chamber beyond the door was dark, but she could make out the familiar circular impression on the floor of a fayth. Behind her, she heard her guardians' footsteps approaching. So she took a step into the dark. She couldn't recall any legend, any source of hearsay, that the Thunder Plains had ever been home to one of Yevon's temples. It made no sense for a fayth to exist here, unless it predated the storm, going all the way back to the days of the machina war. No one had prayed to this fayth for thousands of years, she realized. No other summoner in living memory had commanded its aeon.
Why had it been locked away here?
From the shadows, her eyes caught movement. She looked up from the fayth and heard a noisy puff of breath before a strange set of hooves clopped slowly across the stone floor and into the light. A huge white horse, six legged, approached bearing a single rider. Quistis couldn't make out his face, but she could see his hands, his tallow-yellow skin, and the glimmer of a huge, blue-black blade at his side.
"The weak shall perish," he announced, his voice deep and dusty and thick with an ancient accent. "The strong shall triumph. Prevail over my sword, and I shall grant it to thee."
He gestured her forward with one of his hands and her feet skidded across the stone, past the door's threshold.
"Quistis!" someone shouted behind her.
The door slammed shut, leaving her alone in the dark with the aeon, who lifted his sword.
"For honor…let us fight!"
0 0 0
Despite the lingering pain in his leg, Seifer launched himself at the door that had just closed behind Quistis. Desperate, he heaved himself against it, slamming his shoulder into the rock with the distant hope that it might give way. When it didn't, he wedged his fingers as far as he could into the door's seam and pulled until his arms ached and his fingernails felt like they would pop off.
He swore and attempted to lever it open with Hyperion, bending the sword until he thought it, too might break.
"Did anybody see how she got it open?" he demanded.
Everyone shook their heads. Squall searched the door for any sort of mechanism which she might have tripped, up along the top, down along the bottom, even behind and around the gargoyle statues.
"I don't see anything," he said.
"We can't leave her alone in there! That thing is going to kill her!" Seifer roared.
He'd caught a glimpse of the aeon before the door had swept closed and had overheard what it had said to her. No ordinary aeon, this one didn't want prayer—it wanted blood. Had it already killed her? She had some talent with her whip and had magic and other aeons at her call…but he didn't know what that might mean against an adversary like this. It couldn't be a coincidence that this aeon had been locked up here in this difficult to access, dangerous place.
Frustrated, he banged against the door with his fists. He hadn't come this far to lose his summoner to a stupid aeon.
"She can take care of herself. Right?" Rinoa said. "She's a summoner. She's trained for this kind of thing. I'm sure she'll be okay."
Squall didn't look convinced.
And Seifer felt downright sick.
Helpless, frustrated, he could do nothing but wait.
0 0 0
The aeon never moved. He merely stood, impervious, as Quistis unleashed everything she had on him. She got the feeling that he had some internal countdown going and if she couldn't prove herself before he reached zero, he'd lob off her head with his sword and be done with her. She summoned Ixion and together they filled the entire chamber with lightning. The scent of ozone laced the air by the time they finished, and she stood alone again, Save the Queen coiled at her feet.
"Stop," the aeon commanded.
She hesitated, still ready to wrap her whip around his neck, though she didn't think it would have much effect on him. He wore black armor from toes to chin and a horned helmet that nearly brushed the ceiling.
"Thou art strong," he said, a satisfied smile tugging at the corners of his otherworldly mouth. "I am Odin. And this," he inclined his sword, "is Zantetsuken. Call upon me in times of trouble…"
Unlike her experiences with other fayth where she forged a bond over a matter of hours, this time the connection happened all at once. It rocked her and she fell back against the wall, her mind momentarily taken over by Odin.
In a flash, she knew everything that he'd once been in life and saw the great city that had existed in the then peaceful, lush expanse of the Thunder Plains. She saw their technology and felt Odin's pride in his civilization. And she saw the destruction that rained down on it from above, knew his anger and his sense of complete betrayal, felt the physical pain he'd experienced at losing an eye in the attack. Above all of that rose the conviction and simmering rage that had compelled him to give his body and soul over to become a fayth.
Like a fog, the past gradually lifted, and Quistis once again saw the dark ruins of Odin's chamber.
The door opened behind her. Her vision blurred and sweat trekked down the side of her face. She could barely stand, exhausted by the battle and the new aeon binding himself to her soul.
She must have fallen, because she felt someone's hands scoop under her arms and lift her up.
"Is she hurt?"
"DEAD?"
"I dunno! I can't see, ya know!"
"Damn it, Quistis." Seifer's voice sounded close to her ear and she realized through the haze in her head that he was the one holding her up. "Don't do that again. I thought you were dead."
It took her a few more minutes to work through the confusion. Seifer hauled her out of the fayth's chamber and deposited her on a slab of broken rock. Cool, misty rain pattered down on her face. He shook her.
"Are you okay?"
Full to the brim with Odin's presence, she nodded. "I'm better than I've ever been."
"Yeah, you look like it, too," he said sourly. "Don't tell me I'm going to have to carry you all the way to the travel agency."
"No. Of course not. I'm fine." She went to stand up, but her head swam and she had to plop back down again. "In a few seconds," she amended. "It's a lot to process. And this aeon in particular is…" All she could think of to say was undiluted but she didn't think Seifer would understand what she meant. Most of Spira's fayth served multiple summoners. Ifrit and Ixion didn't belong wholly to her. She shared them and their power with Yuna, Dona, and others. But not Odin.
When she thought she'd recovered, she went to stand again.
"I think I can make it back to the road now," she announced.
Squall offered her his arm, and she took it with a grateful smile.
They made it all the way to the first floor with the destroyed statue before crossing paths with another tonberry. Seifer cursed when he spotted it and put a protective hand over his leg where she imagined he could still feel the ghostly imprint of the last one's knife. The tiny creature came at them, its lantern waving, and Quistis's mind flickered to her new aeon. She hadn't even fully decided to summon him when he appeared, a crackle of lightning announcing his presence.
Odin galloped at the fiend, swung his sword in a huge arc, and then vanished as quickly as he'd appeared. In his wake, the tonberry, sliced cleanly in two, dissolved in a huge burst of pyreflies that left them all stunned.
"Sweet Yevon. That was…" Seifer seemed at a loss for words.
"AMAZING," Fujin provided.
"Yeah. What she said," Rinoa agreed.
For the first time in a while—since Seifer had taken over her life, really—Quistis felt powerful and respected. It buoyed her spirit. Filled her with the confidence she'd lost after being rejected by Squall weeks ago on the temple steps in Kilika.
She let go of Squall's arm, and, full of her own authority, took the lead. For a second, glancing back over the ancient temple as they left, she saw it through the eyes of the man Odin had once been—as a polished marble and sparkling granite column flanked by trees, its stained glass windows spreading sprites of color.
Spira before Sin.
0 0 0
At the travel agency, Seifer changed out of his wet clothes and into a pair of Luca Goers sweatpants and t-shirt, then gave everything he had to the Al Bhed at the front desk who promised that he had some contraption which would dry them in a matter of hours. As he'd changed, he'd stopped to examine the thin white line on his thigh, all that remained from the injury he'd suffered at the tonberry's little lizard hands. It still ached deep in his flesh, like the tip of the knife was grating against his femur, but it didn't hurt worse when he pushed his thumb to the scar. Phantom pain. It'd go away once his body came to terms with the fact that he'd been healed.
On his way back from the front desk, he found Raijin sitting by one of the agency's windows.
"Hey. Have you seen Quistis?" he asked. "I want to talk to her."
"I think she's in her room," Raijin replied. "But Fujin and Rinoa are in there, too. In case you don't want to…ya know…talk in front of them."
Seifer sighed. "What are you trying to get at?"
"You freaked out in a major way back there when that door closed on her," Raijin said.
"So?"
"It just seemed like there might be some feelings there, ya know?"
"She's our summoner. Without her, all of this will have been for nothing. It's my job to protect her."
Raijin shrugged. "Guess she doesn't need us as much as you think then, ya know?"
That was for damn sure. Not that he'd ever admit it. The incident back at Odin's temple had spooked him, and after raging against that door and nearly giving Quistis up as dead, he'd been seriously reluctant to admit to the trip being worthwhile. Even when her aeon appeared and sliced through a tonberry like a pat of butter, he hadn't been ready to accept the risk she'd taken. But now that he'd had time to process it and to work through the unexpected fear he'd felt in the face of losing her, he'd begun to come around.
He walked to the room she shared with Rinoa and Fujin and, without knocking, swung the door open.
"Hey, Summoner, I need to….whoa!"
Fujin sat armpit deep in a basin full of water. She gasped and drew her knees up to cover herself. Half a heart-beat later, her pinwheel whistled past Seifer's ear and embedded itself in the door.
"OUT!"
He didn't waste any time leaping back out of the room and slamming the door shut behind him. He hadn't caught his breath yet, the image of Fujin in the bath still seared and glowing on the back of his eyeballs, when Quistis opened the door and stepped into the hallway with him.
"Don't you know how to knock?" she asked and pantomimed it, as if he didn't even know what she meant.
"Yeah, but…How was I supposed to know she was taking a bath?" he whispered. "What the hell are you and Rinoa doing in there with her, anyway?"
"It's our room. We're allowed." She crossed her arms. "How much did you see?"
Seifer scrubbed his eyes. "Too much."
Amused at his misfortune, she dropped her arms and leaned in close. "Did you need something from me?"
"I just wanted to talk."
"Good. I want to talk to you, too."
"You do?" He guided Quistis away from the door so that their conversation wouldn't be overheard. Rinoa probably had her ear pressed so hard against it that she'd have the grain of the wood imprinted on her face.
"Yes. About what happened back at Odin's temple. I know that you think it was reckless and that I worried you. Rinoa told me about what happened after the door closed, and I—"
"It's my job to worry," he interrupted, uncomfortable with the way he figured Rinoa would have interpreted his concern.
"I know." She smiled kindly. "But still, I didn't mean to scare you like that. Honestly, it never occurred to me that you might take a threat against me so seriously."
"I wouldn't be much of a guardian if I didn't…"
"True. But, as a guardian, you also at some level have to be okay with the idea of delivering me to my death. Which I realize now is why you've been a better choice than Squall all along. He hasn't come to terms with that yet."
For some reason, her words didn't sit well with him.
"I had assumed," she continued, "that if something happened to me, you'd just find a new summoner."
"No." He shook his head. "You're special."
Odin meant that they had an edge on every other summoner out there.
No one else had an aeon who could cut through the swaths of fiends between here and Zanarkand with that kind of ease and efficiency. Quistis was now the most powerful summoner in all of Spira. Fate had delivered to him the one woman who could make him a hero and fulfill all of his dreams.
The fact that she had to die to do that didn't bother him. Did it? Truthfully, he hadn't thought overmuch about it. And he didn't like the way that thinking about it now made him feel.
"Damn right I'm special." She glowed with a level of self-assurance he'd never seen in her before. She wore it well. "How's your leg, by the way. Is it bothering you at all?"
"No," he lied. "I feel great." Not in pain. Not conflicted. Every inch the epic, infallible hero he'd always wanted to be.
"Good." She nudged him. "If you come back in about ten minutes, you might be able to catch Rinoa in the tub rather than Fujin. She's the one you were hoping for, right?"
"Not hardly. When do I have to came back to get you?" The flirtatious taunt tasted sour to him, false levity on top of the darkness creeping into his heart.
She shook her head and walked away, her hips swaying for everything she was worth. "Sorry. Too slow. That chance has already come and gone."