Icicle knight, fiery SeeD

Chapter 11

//\\

Seifer had actually kept his word; or his implied word anyway, Squall reflected to himself. Somehow, in the two months they'd been back in their own time period (Squall still wasn't sure how the blond had managed it, and wasn't sure if he wanted to know how), Seifer had managed to sell to the general public some story that had quieted down and actually deflected most of the blame for the Second Sorceress War away from the ex-knight's shoulders. There were of course, limits to what even Seifer could do with such a fickle thing as public opinion, but if his reception in the cafeteria had cooled down somewhat, or if he still received the occasional death threat in his weekly mail, Squall couldn't honestly have cared less.

That didn't mean that he drifted through Garden's corridors without a purpose or without a thought in his head. Something had been bothering him since he'd returned, and he wasn't at all sure of what it meant.

That Kiss. That one brief Kiss Seifer had given him during Time Compression. Why had Seifer done that? And why, when the kiss was over (much too soon a part of his mind had protested), had Seifer jumped away, and ordered him back to Garden as if the kiss had never happened? He'd obeyed, that had been his forfeit for 'losing' their spar, but now, back in Garden there was nothing he could do but think about what had happened between the two of them between times.

It wasn't as if he had anything better to do. As Seifer had warned, he was on probation, under surveillance, and his security clearance had been reduced to the level of an underclass cadet. That meant, in a nutshell, no assignments, no missions, and no classified access of anything under any circumstances. The one upper level control he did have, for which he was profoundly grateful, was the access and ability to program high level monsters in the Training Center so that at least he wasn't going stir-crazy with nothing challenging to do. Consequently, he spent a lot of time there, systematically going through the database and singlehandedly slaughtering T-Rexars, Grats, Marlboros, and whatever else the system had a record of that looked to be even a slight challenge. It wasn't as if he had anything human to fight.

Because Seifer was avoiding him. Why, Squall had no idea. Sure, he claimed that he was busy with his new responsibilities (he'd been dumbfounded when he found out that Seifer had actually been telling the Hyne-dammed truth about his new status in Garden) but Squall had seen the blond exiting the Training Center just the other day with his posse after what had obviously been a long and challenging workout, given the size of the dark sweat-marks still marring their clothes. Not only that, but when he'd walked up to Seifer, intending to challenge him to another match, the blond had seen him, apologized to his posse, and turned around and walked in the opposite direction. There had been no way to follow Seifer and find out what was wrong (even if chasing after someone was a trademark of his (because it wasn't), because Fujin had seen him as well and given him such a scorching glare out of her single eye that he'd known at once that there'd been no way he'd get past her. Asking if she could possibly return Shiva to him had also been out of the question.

This new dynamic between Seifer and himself was… troubling. Usually, he was the one hiding away, and Seifer being the one to initiate their encounters. Now Seifer was the one hiding, hiding himself away in his new responsibilities, leaving the position of initiator to Squall, and he wasn't at all sure how to deal with this new situation. He could track as well as any SeeD, could propose and analyze a military strategy with only the slightest scraps of Intelligence to go on and no sleep, but analyzing an individual's possible motivations for a given set of actions was not a skill he excelled at, and was usually left to another member of the team, that is, if there were any. And it wasn't as if there was anyone he could go to and ask for help interpreting this situation. There were only a very small number of people in Garden who he trusted enough to get help with problems, that is to say, none. If anyone had bothered to ask him who his closest friend was in Garden, the one he trusted the most, he would have had to say Seifer, though that was before Ultimecia and the Sorceress War. He hadn't bothered to try and generate ties with his classmates, being of the general opinion that it was better to be independent and aloof in a facility that thrived on death and destruction. The only consequent of that opinion meant that he had no one to help him understand things when he got stuck. Which, admittedly, didn't happen often, but there were some times, like now, when he needed another perspective in order to make sense of a situation.

"Squally!" the delighted voice echoing through the packed Lobby made him abruptly freeze with dread. Selphie, still as loud and energetic as she'd been that time he'd shown her around Garden that day before the Exam, was one of the few people who seemed to be without even the slightest stirrings of resentment over the War, going so far as to actually physically jump all over him when Seifer had led him up to Garden's front gate. In the two months since Ultimecia's defeat, not all the preparations for the upcoming Garden festival, nor all the quick missions Seifer had sent her on to raise much needed cash for Garden, could dent her massive supply of energy or diminish her desire to get Squall to "open up a bit more" or some other similar inanity.

Abruptly, a thought struck him with the knowledge that he could hit two Grats with one swing as it were. He needed to figure out Seifer's behavior, Selphie wanted him to talk to her about his problems. With any luck, he could get the yellow-dressed hyper SeeD off his back while getting his… (ok, he could admit it), problem taken care of.

Resigned to his fate, Squall stopped walking and suffered the brightly-dressed SeeD to catch up and physically glomp herself all over him, nearly knocking him on his ass and already talking his ear off a mile a minute. Interrupting her blow-by-blow rendition of the escort mission that she'd just returned from, he let her know that he wanted to talk to her about something. Predictably, she nearly deafened him with her squees of joy and proceeded to continue talking his ear off as they moved together out of the crowded Lobby in search of a quieter place where they could talk, or at least that was Squall's destination. It was… nice, he supposed having someone around who didn't seem to notice when he failed to respond, who was content to babble on about whatever streamed through her head, only breaking off her excited monologue to offer bright greetings to those she had already assembled as fast friends.

Finally reaching a place where he was reasonably confident that he wouldn't be overheard, he faced Selphie and fixed her with a hard glare. "If I ever hear that you've told anyone what I'm about to tell you, they'll still be hunting for all your body parts in Ultimecia's home era. Do you understand me?" a bit over the top perhaps, but usually it was best to establish all potential consequences ahead of time. That was what he did with Seifer, though that blond jackass would often disregard such heartfelt threats to his person, preferring to deliberately push into such forbidden zones in order to goad Squall into reacting.

And he was not thinking about moronic blonds, not thinking about moronic blonds at all, and definitely not thinking about moronic blonds who were actually better kissers than Squall had given him credit for, despite the frequent boasts…

Argh. Not. Helping. That was another thing that was aggravating him. No matter what he did, no matter where he went, his mind always returned to Seifer and the Kiss. It didn't help matters at all that the place he'd chosen to speak to Selphie, the one place that he was reasonably sure would be empty at this time of day, was the Secret Area in the heart of the Training Center, the place where all the couples in Garden went to "be alone together".

Focus. Talk to Selphie, get these Hyne damned feelings out of his way, and move on with his life; alone as always. The sooner he began, the sooner it would be done.

/\

Pensive, Squall aimlessly wandered Garden's halls, Selphie's advice still turning over endlessly in his mind. Once Selphie had stopped loudly squealing in obscure joy and jumping happily up and down for exactly three solid minutes straight (he'd timed her on a moment's whim), her advice had been surprisingly brief and to the point: talk things out with Seifer.

No matter how he… (not begged nor pleaded, he didn't do those things thank you very much)… asked that Selphie reconsider her advice, the petite SeeD had been adamant. She hadn't relented for anything, not when he'd told her that he wasn't accustomed to talking out his problems, not when he'd told her that Seifer had been avoiding him recently, not even when he'd told her that Fujin was guarding her leader from him. While the silver-haired Sorceress hadn't uttered the word "RAGE!!" in his direction yet, but Squall knew better than to try and predict her actions when she believed that Seifer needed protection. And from her glare outside the Training Center, she obviously believed that he, Squall, had done something to Seifer during Time Compression, the only thing stopping her from taking action, was that she had no proof of such occurrence, and that Seifer would kill her himself if she attacked him without that proof.

While that was more than reason enough to steer clear of Fujin in this mood, Squall had extra reason to avoid her. Even though Fujin had taken Raijin for her knight (using Seifer had been out of the question given a knight's subservient relationship to his sorceress), the part of him that had been Ultimecia's knight still recognized the familiar feel of sorceress magic. The mind-consuming nature of the bond of knighthood still drew him at times, tempting him with a return to the joys of service. Squall doubted that anyone except him noticed the slight difference in Raijin's behavior since the brawny member of Seifer's posse had become Fujin's knight, especially since Raijin had always submitted his will to Fujin's, even before the claiming had happened. It was subtle, but for those who were aware of it, the increased deference and fawning had been as clear as a shout. Despite that, and while Squall logically knew that Fujin was far to devoted to Seifer to pose any kind of threat, he still found it hard to stay in Fujin's company for long. The pull of magic on his mind, far too similar to Ultimecia's, made it hard for him to trust himself around the sorceress. And given that trust was all that had brought him back and kept him at Garden…

No matter how he felt about Fujin at the moment, it was a fact that unless the one-eyed Sorceress gave her approval, he wouldn't get anywhere near Seifer alive. Failing that approval, the only way he'd encounter Seifer would be if Seifer sought him out himself… which given the blond's behavior since they'd both returned to Garden wasn't likely.

Abruptly, Squall turned around and made his way back to the Training Center. A new monster had been added to the database last week and he had yet to try Lionheart against it. This would be the perfect opportunity. The gossip in the corridors said that it was extremely smart, quick and agile; all features that made it extremely deadly and thus had been banned from all but active-duty SeeDs and the uppermost level of cadets from even attempting testing their strength against it. If he couldn't talk to Seifer and get these bothersome emotions out of his way that way, then at least he could work up enough of a sweat to make even his mind stop working. A brawl with the latest monster, something he'd never encountered before and thus had no immediate idea how to destroy, might just be what Dr. Kadowaki ordered to get his mind off things. With his focus on the fight, there would be no room left over to obsess over Seifer; that damned Kiss, or anything else.

//\\

Safe in his office, something that sounded so supremely wrong to Seifer even as he thought it, the blond SeeD Commander sighed gustily and let his forehead solidly pang the desk in front of him, hard, several times, ignoring the mess that that made of his paperwork. Fucking paperwork. He'd signed up for SeeD to fight armies and monsters, not be turned into some Hyne-be-damned secretary. Not for the first time, he toyed longingly with the idea of solving all his paperwork problems with one quick Fira, but Fujin would know, somehow she always knew, and then he'd have double the amount of work to do; and all of it under a disapproving ruby eye at that.

After one last solid strike to the wood, he let his forehead rest for a moment on the desk and sighed gustily, then sat up and cast Cure on his aching skull. What was he kidding? Grousing to himself about paperwork (though exactly how Cid had held up under that load Seifer didn't know and wasn't sure he wanted to) wasn't going to distract him from his current problem, the one that wore indecently tight leathers, and was the only one in the entire world who came close to Seifer's skill with gunblade or any other weapon. Yes, that was right, Star SeeD and Commander of Balamb Garden, Seifer Almasy, the man with a closet full of well-trained mercenary toy soldiers to do his fearsome bidding, the fearless warrior who had stood up to and taken down an insane Sorceress who had nearly squished Time itself, was fucking afraid. And he had damned good reason to be.

Time Compression had quit on them barely moments after the all-important Kiss, so there had been little to no time to gage Squall for reactions before they'd both been pulled into the public eye, not that such signs would have been immediately obvious even if there'd been hours with which to study the brunet's reactions, particularly since even getting him to simply raise an eyebrow took an amount of effort that made pulling well-rooted teeth from a writhing prisoner look easy. And no, he wasn't exaggerating, well, not by that much. And even though he'd won the war, and had accomplished all of his private tasks in the bargain, make SeeD, bring Squall back to Garden, he felt like he had lost something, something Hyne-damned important, if only he knew what the fuck that was.

Actually, he knew damn well what he'd lost. He'd lost Squall, the rival who would glare at him as a means of communicating, the fighter who was the only one in the world who could give him a decent fight. A satisfied grin split his face as he contemplated that deadlocked spar, the one that had proved beyond all measure exactly just how equal they were in skill. That had been a glorious fight, one that had validated everything he'd thought he'd known about his rival. And then the grin disappeared. No sooner had he achieved that perfect communion with his rival, no sooner had he proved that their strength was equal in (almost) every way, he'd had to ruin it all with that stupid Kiss. Why had he done that? Why had he jeopardized everything he valued by moving beyond the boundaries of their rivalry? Even if explaining his temper tantrum had been Squall's condition for winning, that didn't mean that he'd actually had to tell the truth, did it? Well…, given that Squall had always been able to see through even his most careful lies as if they were as obvious as the obnoxiously colored Ragnarok in middle of the fucking Centran Desert, then, yeah, he did have to. But couldn't he have found a different way than kissing him!

Thankfully, Seifer found himself jarred out of his thoughts before they could drive him completely mad by Fujin's timely arrival. And even though Balamb Garden's resident Sorceress gave him the inevitable stink-eye for the state of his desk; littered as it was by untidy, partly-finished and undone paperwork, with not so much as a completed form in sight, Seifer welcomed the interruption, given that it meant a distraction from the self-castigating thoughts of Squall that had been chasing him ever since his return to Garden.

Or at least, it should have meant that. It looked as if Fujin had been thinking about Puberty-boy as well. "LEONHART." She barked.

Seifer blinked stupidly for a minute up at his lieutenant's short height. Then he recovered himself. "What about the boy-wonder?" he paused, thinking for a moment, then glared warningly up at Fujin. "If you've attacked him while unarmed…" he let the threat die away. Squall was good enough to make mincemeat out of Fujin armed, but given that the former knight was barred from carrying his weapon outside the Training Center as one of the conditions of his probation, not to mention harsher than usual penalties imposed on him for any fighting at all outside of designated practice areas, it was a better than even chance that if Fujin had ambushed him in the corridors (something she had done to those violating curfew more than once), his rival might not have been able to put up a proper defense.

"DONE NOTHING. TALK."

"You talked to Leonhart? About what?"

"NO. TALK TO SEIFER. LEONHART."

Seifer could feel a headache begin to build. "What about Leonhart?" if his constant confusion and frustration around Garden's resident charity case (as he'd overheard two cadets snidely talking amongst themselves say a week ago, at least before he'd burst in on them and sentenced them both to the most onerous round of detentions he could think of, and being the former head of the Disciplinary Committee he knew several), didn't go away soon, he'd go insane. At least, more insane than the precarious level of sanity he already enjoyed. "If you had any reservations about my allowing him back to Garden, you'd have brought it up long before now. So what is it?"

"TIME COMPRESSION."

"Time Compression's been over for nearly two months now, Fuu. You'll have to do better than that."

"WHAT HAPPENED?"

"With Leonhart?" Seifer guessed, trying to hide the sudden nervousness he felt. Shit, he did not need this. He'd never been able to hide anything from Fujin, ever, and this was not something he wanted to get into, right now or ever. "After killing the Evil Bitch, I found him where he was freezing his pretty little ass off in some Hyne-forsaken wasteland, Hyne only knows where or when he was, and convinced him to come home." All true, even though he'd left out certain vital pieces of what really happened.

It didn't fool Fujin for a second. "LIES." She insisted forcibly.

He scowled darkly up at her, wishing that Fujin would just take his word that nothing of note had happened for once. The target of said glare didn't react outside of raising one eyebrow in question, being more than used to the strength of his glares in the past. Then he shifted his expression to one of his most wounded ones, mentally snorting when all it did was raise the enquiring eyebrow higher. Fujin was as immune to his cute looks as she was to his glares.

Busted. Right now, Seifer hated passionately that Fujin had always been able to read him so easily. It was almost uncanny the way that both she and Squall were able to know when he was telling the truth-

Hyne's fucking flaming Balls! With a groan of pure frustration, Seifer sagged, cradling his skull in the palms of his hands, trying to suppress his sudden urge to burst out in hysterical laughter. Why did everything in Garden always lead back to the Pansy-ass Puberty-boy recently? Even the sanctuary of his office (and Seifer again internally shuddered at the traitorous thought), wasn't completely safe, given that Fujin had walked right through the doors and brought the specter of his rival into the space.

Briefly, Seifer considered trying to fool Fujin further into believing that nothing had happened between himself and Squall in Time Compression. Just as quickly, he discarded that notion, knowing that any such efforts would be in vain. And while Fujin might not be the most articulate in a serious conversation, she also wouldn't spread tales all over Garden, especially if he asked her to keep her mouth shut. Maybe if he talked to her about this, much as the mere thought gave him hives, the Hyne-blasted thoughts and feelings would just go away.

Sighing, and looking anywhere but at his lieutenant, Seifer spilled. "I did find Puberty-boy in a fucking wasteland. Tried to get him to come back to Garden, but Squally-boy wasn't having any of it. I tried several tactics, told him I was going to bring him back, that I had a way to shield him from the worst of the responsibility of Ultimecia's rampage, he wasn't having any of it. Oh, he believed me," he hastened to say in response to Fujin's raised eyebrow. "But the Ice Princess was so fucking independent as usual that he couldn't understand why I was willing to go to the lengths I'd specified just to take him back when it was obvious that "I'd just leave him alone again eventually". "

"ANGRY?" Seifer snorted at Fujin's matter-of-fact tone, apparently his Sorceress knew him and his relationship to Squall (even though she was still in the dark about the majority of it) well enough to know the likely result of that statement.

"Yeah, I was pissed. I blew up at him, yelled at him that if he'd only looked, that he'd find out that I had been with him the entire time, that he'd been the one to leave me and other such shit. I was building up a fine head of steam when something occurred to me." He caught Fujin's sardonic eye and winced. Ok, fine. Maybe he was laying it a bit on too thick, but that was the only way he knew how to express what had been and still was going through his mind.

Too agitated to stay still, Seifer leapt to his feet and began to pace. "I'd never given up on him Fuu. Never. Not at the parade, not after D-District where he literally tortured me with fucking electricity, not after Trabia and nearly destroying Garden, or after Galbadia Garden's attack, not even during the Lunar Cry and at Lunatic Pandora. I never believed that he couldn't be taken back, never lost faith in him. Ever. Why? I should have. Standard procedure says that on mission, and especially when Garden is threatened, personal opinions go out the figurative window. So why!"

Silence. Not Fujin's normal silence, something that was nearly as legendary in Garden gossip as his rivalry with Squall-not thinking about him right now!-this was something different. This was her shocked silence, one that Seifer had only experienced a bare handful of times since she's joined his posse. The last time he'd heard (or not heard, as case very well maybe) that silence, it had been when he'd told his posse that Squall Leonhart had been brainwashed into defecting from Garden by a mind-raping, time-traveling, Sorceress.

"SO?" thankfully Fujin's voice eventually broke through Seifer's current thoughts. Tossing her a grateful glance, Seifer mentally shook off the cluttered tangents that even the merest thought of Squall brought to his mind. Shit, he almost missed the war, at least then he'd had other things to focus on, and there hadn't been a distinctive leather-clad ass turning heads all over Garden and distracting him whenever he had a dull moment.

Focus. Shaking his head, Seifer continued. "I realized when Leonhart denied my presence, that it bothered me on more than one level. There was the rival relationship, shit, I sound like a civilian teenage girl saying that, that he was denying, but there was more to it than just that. It was like…." He broke off, swearing pungently, as the words to describe what he'd felt two months ago failed to come to him. He tried again. "…like I'd… I'd based my entire life around him in one way or another, and it meant nothing to him!" with an impassioned oath, he began pacing again, still ranting away.

"HATED THAT." Fujin interrupted, obviously seeing where he was trying to go with this. Exactly when had he complained about the mind-reading qualities of his lieutenant? He couldn't remember now, and he must have been mistaken. They were a godsend now, ensuring that he didn't have to find words to communicate complicated matters.

"HAPPENED NEXT?" Or maybe, those qualities weren't so great after all. Calming down slightly from his fury, he answered Fujin as well as he could.

"Leonhart got curious, wondered what inspired my little tantrum upon receiving that not so little epiphany. Naturally, I refused, thinking that I'd end up with Puberty-boy's blue beauty in my chest or through my skull if I told him…" too late Seifer realized that that wasn't the best thing to share with an overprotective Sorceress. He cringed slightly as her glare reached incendiary levels and actually took his life in his hands by stopping her with a hand on her shoulder from running out of his office and disemboweling the ex-knight wherever he happened to be.

"I only thought that, he never drew even a drop of blood from me." He insisted as strongly as he could when she turned that burning glare on him for getting in between her and her prey. "Stand down." He added for good measure when that pronouncement failed to relax her completely. "Do you want me to finish telling you what happened between me and Leonhart during Time Compression, or what?"

Stony silence. After a minute or so of standoff, with Seifer doing his best to avoid crumbling under his lieutenant's acid glare, Fujin lowered her gaze, all lines of threat leaving her posture. Another minute of sharp scrutiny, just to be sure that Fujin wasn't faking so she could make a break for the door the instant he dropped his guard, and Seifer stepped back as well, ready to continue his tale.

"Anyway, what I was saying was that for once our usual roles were reversed." At Fujin's questioning glance, Seifer elaborated. "He was the one pressing me for answers, and I was shutting him down, even if I was using more words to try and get him to back down than he would. He didn't give up, not as if I ever did, and eventually proposed a spar to finish our business in Lunatic Pandora with my explaining myself as his condition for winning. And don't look like that Fuu, it was tame compared to some of our previous duels. And we used our usual conditions on it, no magical assists, no GF's, first blood or submission marks the win."

He grinned, unable to help himself at the thought of that magnificent match. Hyne's flaming balls, but that had been one wonderful fight! "WON?" was Fujin's guess seeing that expression.

Seifer shook his head, still grinning like a fool. "No. Double kill. That's what made it so great." If only he could have savored that sensation, of feeling so completely matched with his rival that neither one had been able to claim victory. Sure, winning was great, but nothing could match that feeling. As it was, the slightly dumbfounded expression on Fuu's normally impassive face now nearly made up for the lack of proper afterglow then.

Then his expression sobered. The fight had been amazing, but what had come after it, had been the cause of the many sleepless nights he'd struggled through before finally knuckling under and began hitting himself with a Sleep spell when he had to crash. He couldn't exactly call the dreams he'd been having nightmares; as a matter of fact, if he were completely honest with himself (something he hated doing), he'd have to call them the most erotic wet dreams he'd had in his life. While on the whole that wasn't a bad thing, it was the content of those dreams that had him either trying to stay up all night or putting himself immediately out with magic to completely (he hoped) skip the dreaming stage of sleep. Sure, he'd had wet dreams of Squall before, but never anything like this.

Thankfully he didn't have too long to brood on the subject of his recent dreams. Fujin noticed his altered mood almost at once, and in her typical blunt manner, tried to do something about it. "WHAT?" she asked, trying to understand just what had caused his giddy mood over the tie to vanish so abruptly. When Seifer didn't answer immediately, merely shaking his head slightly at nothing, she insisted he speak. "TALK."

Carefully looking anywhere but at the silver-haired Sorceress, Seifer spoke quickly. "You remember how Trepe and the other Instructors never could understand why my and Leonhart's rivalry consumed so much of our focus here at Garden? It was all well and good when we practiced techniques on each other, and studied hard to show each other up in class, but often they would try and separate us due to one or the other of us ending up in the Infirmary with some training accident or another, and how both of us resisted any such efforts?" he barely paused long enough for Fujin to nod before continuing on. "The same…I don't know… stuff that made me more determined to continue competing with Leonhart the harder people tried to keep us away, and no matter how much I enjoyed the responsibilities of running the Disciplinary Committee, there's a record of a formal recommendation in Cid's files that I be given that to do, with the intention that I would be so busy with rounds, training, and studies that I'd leave him alone. That feeling, it… intensified during the war. Sometimes I could barely think past the fury that Ultibitch had taken him, not from Garden, but from me. "

Groaning, he dropped back into his chair and covered his eyes with the back of his forearm, trying to fight the headache that was building as he tried to clue his lieutenant in on something that was so instinctive to him. Then again, it may be instinctive, but if he couldn't articulate it even to himself, then he didn't have a hope to Hyne of sharing it with Fuu.

When he lowered his arm, it was to find Fujin studying him with that disconcertingly fixed stare she had. Seifer had appreciated that stare, usually when it was turned on some unsuspecting cadet that had just been fingered for smuggling contraband into Garden. It usually worked like a charm, getting the little troublemakers to squeal like the little rats they were after just a few minutes of enduring that silent, fixed stare. He'd never apprieciated just how disconcerting that stare was before, given that it had never been turned in his direction before. Finally he couldn't stand the pressure and cracked under it, just like so many others. "Just spit out what you're thinking. I can handle it, whatever it is." He demanded, desperate to get Fujin to let him go before he went insane.

"SURE?"

"I told you, just spit it out!"

"LOVE" Fujin declared with finally, at last releasing Seifer from her penetrating gaze. Reflexively he shuddered, shaking of the chills produced by that stare, then turned confused sea-green eyes on the sorceress who was standing in his office with a tiny smile actually dancing around normally rock-solid lips.

"Uh... you want to clear that up Fuu? I don't think I understood that." While normally he had no problem translating Fujin's verbal brevity, but even if he and some trouble, he could at least get a sense of what his silver-haired sorceress was saying. This time though, he had to be mistaken, had to be misreading Fujin's sparse verbal and physical cues because if he wasn't…

"Hey Seifer, this is where you've been hiding! I mean sure," Raijin laughed as he pushed the ridiculous door open with his brawny arms full, "you've got work to do, but I never expected that you'd actually spend more time in here than you had to…" as Raijin bounced into the office holding some more of the dreaded paperwork, no doubt the class evaluations Trepe had been threatening him with last week, Seifer felt one of the strongest surges of gratitude he'd ever felt toward the muscle of his posse. Normally Seifer would have dreaded the sight, but now even the advent of more paperwork was welcomed as a relief from the current conversation. Anything was preferable to the confusing thoughts that both Fujin and Squall had been dragging up in his already crowded brain for the past few months and most notably the past hour. Any distraction would be welcomed. Even if it was more blasted paperwork.

No such luck. Using more perceptiveness than he was known for, Raijin glanced slowly between the other members of the posse, taking in Seifer's defensive posture, contrasted by the light and open demeanor Fujin sported, complete with the small secretive smile about her lips.

"Uh…Seifer? Fujin? Fill me in on what's going on, ya know? 'Cause I know that something's going down, and don't you try and deny it Seifer!"

Traitors, the both of them. Helpless to stop it, Seifer could only listen as Fujin was all too happy to enlighten Raijin of what had been discussed prior to his arrival. "SEIFER, LEONHART. LOVE." He cringed as the very facts he would have preferred kept quiet about (especially if they happened to be true, something he still wasn't sure of) were shared. Well, at least it was Raijin, and not Xu or Trepe, or Hyne help him Tillmit. Raijin would at least keep what knowladge didn't exist regarding his love life (or lack of same) to himself. They were a posse, after all. He truly didn't have any reason to hide things from Raijin anyway, but it got fucking hard to share secrets with your friends when you didn't understand them yourself.

Raijin blanched at the implication of Fujin's words, darkly tanned skin paling rapidly. Seeing his subordinate glance at him for confirmation, Seifer shrugged, wishing he could do so diffidently. "Don't look at me, I'm not the one suggesting something so crazy." And he and Raijin shared a speaking glance that recalled other times when Fujin had gotten an idea between her teeth and would never let go until she'd been proven right. Then they sobered. Those instances may have been few in number, Seifer could count the number of times they had occurred since the posse formed on one hand, but Fujin had always been right, no matter how strange and insane they may have been.

In reply to their antics, the silver-haired Sorceress scowled at her two friends in a non-threatening manner, as in, with just enough strength to convince them she was serious but not so strongly that they pissed their pants. "SEIFER. LOVE LEONHART." She insisted again, the gleam in her single eye warning Seifer not to challenge her in this. "PERMISSION GRANTED."

"Permission to do what exactly Fuu?" he asked guardedly. Sometimes, ok it was most of the time he could follow Fujin's mental leaps, but today he was feeling a bit slow.

"LEONHART ,TALK. NOW. GO."

"But I have paperwork to do!" he burst out, more out of a reflexive desire to avoid the ex-knight than because he actually wanted to do paperwork, Hyne forbid. "I have a Garden to run, I don't have time to chase down the King of 'Whatever' in the vain hope that he's feeling sociable!" a one eyed crimson glare silenced any further protests before they could be voiced.

"LEONHART, LOCATION?" The glare turned and nailed Raijin to the spot. Her knight fidgeted under his Sorceress's stare; then caved.

"I think he's in the Training Center, tackling that new monster, the one that the recent cleanup teams brought the specs back for, ya know? Only that was a couple hours ago. He's got to be somewhere else by now, ya know?"

Despite the fact that he wasn't exactly eager to locate his rival, Seifer help snorting in derision at Raijin's inane pronouncement. Shaking his head slightly, he stood up and gave Raijin a swift smack upside the head, all the way re-educating his slower partner about one brunet ex-knight. "Have you forgotten just how obsessively Leonhart prefers to train? After the million and one times we had to pull him out of the Training Center after curfew? Add that to the fact that a) he doesn't have much else to do given that his Library Clearance got yanked back to first year level and the only place he can so much as hold his weapon now is the Training Center and b) he's got a new toy in the form of the new monster that everyone wants to see how their skills stack up against. Once he goes in there now, he's only coming out on his own to eat or sleep; if that." He shook his head pityingly.

Raijin opened his mouth to protest the harangue, but abruptly shut it, casting an inquiring glance at Fuu, which earned him a small, confirming nod in reply. Seifer's hackles instinctively rose at the sight, though he couldn't say just why. What had his posse figured out…? Then his blood froze when he mentally added his rant to the exchange about himself and Leonhart. No… it wasn't true. Snarling in defeat, Seifer did something he had only rarely done before, and had never before done from his posse. He ran.

//\\

Ok, I know I said that I'd just be finishing up the story in this chapter, and that was what I honestly intended to do. Only, unless I want to use a deus ex machina ending (which I really don't want to do, it would be utterly wrong for both Seifer and Squall…) I'll have to take the slow route to finishing this story. And that means starting diagramming the story out again, because I'm flying blind now and have no idea where I'm going except that I want Seifer and Squall in each other's pants before the story is done. So hang with me. Good news is that finals are right on top of me, so that means that summer break is only one week from actuality.

Sorry about the long wait. Part of the hazard of trying to write an undiagrammed chapter….

See you all again soon