(On a dirt road on the way to somewhere)
The wind twists and turns in her hands. It's fanciful of her, but she imagines each pass is its own farewell, thanking her for time spent in its company. She plays with it until the thought comes to her that she is a child still, pretending each gust and whisper were a friend come to tell secrets. She turns it in on itself, pours her own frustration and bitterness into it, curls it close and then hurls it away.
"That'll be a storm tomorrow." His tone is neutral.
"Good."
They've been on the move for three days now. Three days since they boarded up the diner and threw the keys through the letterbox, spent not sleeping and snapping across at one another, trapped in a van that reeks of sweat and salt fish. Time enough to turn even the closest of comrades into snarling, grubby louts ripe enough to be turned away by Esthar's border control.
This would make a bad road movie, she thinks. They aren't buddies, or any kind of posse now. Just three kids in a truck, each knowing too much to hate the others, but hating that they know it all the same. Things have been rotten for a long time now, even before the soldiers started circling closer, even before the news of Garden's arrival finally sent them running again.
Seifer has made them stop to get clean in the salt flats. Plenty of brackish ditch-water to make them wince as they scrub, sand in the water making tiny cuts that burn and sting. All these small indignities are to be endured for the promise of a better life. How many times has she heard that? So many grand promises have got them through the kinds of lives that normal people would never live, would choose death first.
There's no promise waiting for them now, only another of Seifer's fever-dreams.
She's remembering another time in another flat, sunburned desert, fear sliding under her skin with the recollection of crystal walls looping endlessly, fighting to breathe air so still it might be centuries old, and hearing monsters shriek from the shadows.
Are you strong or are you not-strong, Fujin?
She is lurching hopelessly behind, as Raijin strides through a stopped-clock maze for what could be forever. Seifer is over his shoulders in a fireman's lift; she feels strangely weightless herself. Her stomach is where her head should be.
There is a a ragged, hoarse voice singing - "suan ná séan ní bhfuaireas féin, ó chuaigh i gcéin mo ghile mear..."- the voice is hers, and she lets the tune carry her forward to Raijin. "Stop." she says. "Rest."
They sleep cradled in cold crystal, and do not dream. When they wake the air is flowing again. She lets Pandemona lead them out from the tomb and back into a world that is still, somehow, alive.
The brine trickling down her forehead reaches her eye. The sting brings her back to the present. The three of them glance at each other and wordlessly head back to the van. There's still five miles or so to the border crossing, and none of them want to think any longer on the last time they were here.
Quistis blames the graduate students, because there is no one else to blame but herself. She's grown up enough, by now, to know when things are not her fault.
The party is in full swing at their apartment, and Merle has made ironic bunting from cereal packets that reads Welcome Freshmen! Quistis does not feel welcome, or particularly fresh; she is bruised and stinging from whip-duelling all day with no junctions, and wants to sleep. The mysterious Pietr has deigned to leave his room for this, and he is glaring at her, as if this were all her doing. Well, it's not, she thinks viciously, but she is almost cruel enough to wish it so, to spite him.
She shakes herself. The only reason for such nastiness in her is the phone call she's just taken, stuffed in her wardrobe for a little quiet since the music is shaking the walls.
She's stuffed on a sofa between Merle and a guy playing bad guitar to the song Tomasz has just put on. Merle leans down and says something to Quistis she can't make out, so she moves closer:
"You're buzzing, or are you just glad to see me?"
Sure enough, Quistis' phone has vibrated right out of her pocket and down the side of the sofa, where it is still angrily flashing with the call sign BG-232-A.
She's drunk just enough not to quietly ignore this, the first Garden call in two weeks. It's easy enough to slam her laptop closed and hide under her covers; harder to rein in what she's feeling right now. So, when she takes the phone with her to her room, at first fully intending to throw it into the back of her wardrobe, she pauses. When the next ring comes, she answers.
"Trepe?" It's hesitant, enough to make her bite her lip and reconsider the words that want to leap out.
"Commander."
He sighs and she can almost see the gesture; he has his palm over his face, as if closing his eyes will take him to a place where he no longer has to deal with her.
"Report."
She sighs. "Rinoa's training is going well." Leaving unmentioned all the weeks of planning it took to move a fledgling Galbadian sorceress to a city that hates foreigners – and, of course, witches. "She's thriving."
Rinoa is beloved wherever she goes, charming and charmed by equal measure. She's spurned Laguna's offer of a suite in the palace for a dump that only a student would live in, and would probably be singing along to "Streets of Deling" with some dreadlocked moron right now. Except that Tomasz, spellbound, has invited her over.
Squall is taking an age to respond.
"She'll be here soon. You haven't spoken to her at all, then?"
She's hidden the slur creeping into her voice pretty well there at the end, she thinks. She wonders if the shaking of the walls is making her sound drunker than she is. She wonders if thinking about it makes her sound drunker than she is.
She wonders how anyone would hear her thoughts, and remembers that Ellone still lives here. She shivers.
Squall still isn't answering. She huffs impatiently without really realising she's done it, and this gets her a full sentence.
"No contact. It's what she asked for."
Quistis holds back the snarl of frustration bursting to come out. She knows there's something that Squall doesn't want to talk about. There is a part of her that needs to have its nose in everything, and it eats away at her with an anxiety she cannot name if she doesn't dig and claw desperately for the truth. Often she thinks that without it, she'd be the last to know anything at all.
The smart part of her, on the other hand, the part that doesn't have the cold sweats and the twitch in its left eye – that part thinks she should leave well alone. She owes him.
But - fuck it. He owes her right back, so she lets him have it.
"I didn't sign up to be a mediator. Or a babysitter. It's not my job to keep her safe. You know as well as I that sneaking around pretending I'm her – cousin or whatever – is no way to watch her."
"You're not watching her, Quistis, you're not a bodyguard, I-"
"What?"
"I just need to know that there's someone there that she can trust."
"So what do I do if something goes wrong? When someone kidnaps her, I'll just call in a squad? That'll work out well." She's flailing, angry, reaching for things that will hurt.
"Quistis."
She shuts up.
"Quistis - Laguna knows she's a sorceress, and I don't trust him. Or Kiros, or Ward."
Her mind races ahead, as usual. So Squall hasn't made the logical leap that she had made the second she looked at Laguna. The rest of them had seen a man blindsided by looking into the face of his son for the first time; Squall had seen –
- what had Squall seen?
"Laguna doesn't like Odine any more than you do, Commander."
He sighs, and as she's regretting the anger, thinking of something reassuring to say, the doorbell rings.
"I have to go. Your girlfriend is here."
She hangs up and feels guilty again almost immediately, but does not call him back to apologise.
Rinoa is already making friends with Pietr; it's going as well as making friends with Rinoa often goes, when one party is unwilling. She's giggling, leaning into his face, speaking in bad Estharian – you will enjoy my company is what Quistis hears before deliberately moving in front of a speaker so she can't hear any more.
At times like these, she wishes she could remember her childhood. The twist in her personality, the need to please others, the sick feeling she gets when she feels she didn't try hard enough, if she knew where it came from – a shudder runs through her and catches at the back of her throat. Ellone would go back and find it for her, if she asked, but the thought of her sympathy is terrifying, worse than the fear of failure.
So she takes a drink, leans against the wall, and tries not to think about what could go wrong.