Icicle Knight, Firey SeeD

Chapter 13

//\\

Squall clawed his way back to consciousness, fighting back a strange heavy feeling that seemed to permeate throughout his entire body, preventing him from achieving full alertness as quickly as he was accustomed to. When the reason behind his woozy brain finally penetrated his foggy mind, he closed still bleary eyes in shame.

A Sleep spell, a fucking Sleep spell. Not for the first time, Squall cursed the fact that he was no longer Junctioned to Shiva, given that one of the benefits for Junctioning the Ice GF, aside from the hearing boost, was a limited immunity to status affect spells, including Sleep. Without the GF Junctioned as he was, he had been acutely vulnerable to anyone casting such a spell on him from behind his back, leaving him with no protection against magical attacks. He supposed blearily that it had been only the sheer force of Seifer's personality and the threat of the blond's anger that had kept any cadet in Garden with a grudge against him off his back.

As his mind began to clear, he realized that the level of disorientation he was feeling was far in excess of what could be expected from a normal Sleep. Whoever had hit him with the enchantment had obviously gone overboard, hitting him with far more spells than they had needed to, either in ignorance or in order to keep him asleep. He supposed that it was lucky that whoever it was had used Sleep to take him and keep him down. Out of all the status affect spells in a SeeD's arsenal; Sleep had the mildest side effects for overexposure.

Eventually he realized he was being restrained, and quite expertly to boot. Cautious maneuvering told him that not only was each limb expertly bound, but that he didn't have so much as an inch of give in the bonds and the way he was bound prevented him from gaining the leverage he needed to possibly break them. That told him that while whoever had captured him might not have been a mage; they were very experienced in holding on to prisoners.

Prisoners. Why did that word stick in his head? With rapidly clearing eyes, he glanced around his surroundings, tying to place the faint sense of familiarity. A basically standard nondescript metal cell with little or no identifying marks, but was still somehow jogging his memory. He'd been in a cell like this before, even though he couldn't seem to get his memory to respond.

D-District. That was where he was. The name of Galbadia's infamous maximum-security prison abruptly popped into his mind accompanied by a flood of memories that he would have preferred to forget. Memories of Seifer screaming as he'd tortured the blond for information he didn't have, memories of roundups he'd ordered in Edea's name, of the civilians he'd ordered to be tortured until they gave up the names and locations of those who'd resented and resisted the path his Lady had taken to power in Galbadia. Those who had been too close to the late President Deling, those who had ties to the Gardens, those who feared magic and regarded sorceresses as the ultimate evil, it hadn't mattered. All who had dared to resist Her rule, both directly and indirectly, had been ruthlessly hunted down on his order. Barely restraining the urge to vomit at the remembered sounds of the ceaseless screams from all the unfortunates imprisoned here during the five months he had ruled Galbadia in his Lady's name, he frantically cast about in his mind, trying to think of something, anything to keep from remembering the horrors he'd ordered to take place here.

The restraints, keeping him up against one wall were the exact same design as those he had used against Seifer, deliberately using electricity for the torture because of the blond's slight phobia toward it. That had been the only interrogation he'd handled personally, unaccountably reluctant to allow Seifer to be tortured by anyone else. He'd had no problem handing off all other interrogation/torture sessions to those Galbadia kept on staff at D-District. And if they hadn't escaped before he could do so, he would have handled the interrogations of the other SeeDs as well. There had been no real reason for that decision, the same way he'd had no real reason to keep all the other captured SeeDs in a single cell. Now that he thought about it, he questioned that decision. While it was true that the prison had been full, there had still been enough room to keep them separate, but he hadn't. It had been contradictory to all that Garden had taught him about securing prisoners, but done it he had. Why?

He was abruptly ripped from his thoughts when someone entered his cell followed by a flunky in a typical Galbadian military uniform. Dismissing the flunky as unimportant, Squall peered at the first new arrival, unsure if or where he'd seen his face before. Then it came to him. He was out of uniform now, but that was undoubtedly the same man he'd rudely brushed past on his way out of Seifer's office… how long ago had that been? While he knew how long a normal Sleep spell lasted before dissipating on its own, he'd covered that in advanced magic his last year as a cadet (more than long enough to get you killed in a fight, as he recalled his Instructor saying wryly), he had no way of knowing just how many spells he'd been under the influence of and just how far apart they'd been administered.

He stared straight ahead without fear as the older man moved into his personal space, already gathering his strength and preparing his mind for torture. He'd faced it in training several times, and the memory of Seifer's defiance precluded any slight possibility of giving in he may have had. Truthfully, he didn't know what they expected to get from him. Garden was certain to have changed its security codes during the War, and he hadn't been allowed access to the new ones. Almost everything classified about Garden that he knew was more than likely out of date, and thus of no use to anyone.

But, what if this wasn't about Garden? What if this was about Edea/Ultimecia, and things he might have known as Her knight? Or what if this wasn't about information at all; just an attempt to seek revenge on the Sorceress knight who had ruled Galbadia with an iron hand in his Lady's name.

He shuddered internally at the last thought, not daring to show the slightest outward sign of weakness. It made no difference, really but it made him feel better. As the old man began talking, he forced himself to at least appear to pay attention, not the easiest thing in the world given that he was still feeling the last effects of the Sleep spells. "Finally awake, are you? No matter. My name is General Vincent Caraway, in Command of all Galbadian Armed forces. What's left of them anyway." The last was added as if on the side, given that Squall's Garden-trained ear nearly failed to pick them up.

Squall didn't respond. What did he have to say? Disregarding his silence, the general continued. "Not to mention, I'm the closest person Galbadia has right now to a leader, given that you and the Sorceress killed the president and everyone able to take over from him. And while Deling was a weak-willed idiot, he could be worked around. Thanks to you, and your bitch of a Sorceress, almost everyone who could have held Galbadia together as a nation is dead or maimed in such a way that they can no longer hold any office."

Squall allowed him to talk, allowing the words to flow over him like water, similar to the way he'd tuned out some of Seifer's more outrageous monologues in the past. General Caraway. The name was familiar. How? Oh, yes. The investigative reports for the botched assassination attempt, of course. The then-retired General Caraway's townhouse, built like a fortress thanks to his legendary paranoia, had been one of the top location suspects for the base the SeeDs had used to plan their assault on the parade, not to mention the plan itself had been a thing of beauty that had nearly succeeded, clearly the work of a master strategist, which the general was known to be. But, by the time the Galbadian Army had managed to gain access to the general's house, both he and his daughter had escaped, fleeing the city to an undisclosed location by means of some well-disguised escape tunnels that had led out of the city. He'd meant to hunt him down, but the force of his Lady's displeasure, targeted at: his failure to adequately protect the missile base from attack, the SeeDs unprecedented escape from D-District, and Balamb Garden's narrow escape from destruction, had forced him to concentrate his attentions to other matters.

A fist crashed across his face, pulling him abruptly from his musings. Squall blinked, suddenly re-focusing on the General's furious face. "Since you're so clearly uninterested in what I have to say, maybe this will get your attention." A wave of the general's hand signaled the flunky Squall had seen earlier and dismissed as unimportant. Abruptly the flunky's position relative to the general's became obvious to Squall, he'd given orders to just such a flunky when he'd tortured Seifer. The cell wasn't simply like the one where he'd tortured Seifer, it was the exact same cell, complete with the electrical torture equipment he'd used on his rival.

Suddenly, unaccountably panicked, Squall's eyes flew wide in futile protest, unable to speak before the first torrent of electricity crashed through his body, nearly inducing him to cry aloud in pain before he swallowed the sound into a pained grunt. Seifer hadn't cried out, at least, not at first. He would do the same if it killed him. Which it just might, because he wasn't Junctioned.

Junctioned. In between one agonizing bolt of electricity and another, the word came to him. Yet another thing he'd failed at doing while Ultimecia's knight. He hadn't Drawn Seifer's GF's away from him before beginning the torture. Somehow, impossibly, Seifer had been right. Like an infiltration Instructor had repeatedly cautioned him, "Life was in the details." The Instructor had been warning his class that the smallest detail could mean the death of the cover they might be using. One speck of the real identity that slipped past a SeeD's scrutiny could be the key on which deadly suspicions were based. Also, one detail missing from the cover identity could derail the entire illusion.

He may have believed he was Ultimecia's knight, believed it with all his heart, but several key details had revealed his true loyalties. He had placed all the captured SeeDs in one cell, and one that they could break out from at that. He had neglected to Draw out Seifer's GF's, allowing him to endure the torture with less damage than might otherwise have occurred and to heal from the torture much swifter than he would have otherwise. Ultimecia might have taken him as Her knight, but since he'd never surrendered his will willingly, she had found herself unable to control him completely without taking over his body completely. It was like deep cover at its greatest, and at it's worst, because, for him at least, his 'cover' had been his reality.

His body jerked in his bonds as another wave of electricity poured through him. Distancing his mind from the pain, he focused on Seifer's words, both during Time Compression, and, more recently, in his office. During Time Compression, Seifer had told him that he'd never left Squall alone, not at the orphanage, not at Garden, and not even during the War. Seifer had still believed in him, had offered him a place back in Garden after everything he'd done as Ultimecia's knight. True, the infernal probation had been a condition of his return, but it had been a small price to pay given that he'd had no where else to go. And truthfully, if Seifer had allowed him back without any strings attached after what he'd done, he wouldn't have accepted, no matter what Seifer's condition for their spar might have been. Taking charity was something he would never, ever do.

It was getting harder and harder to stay mostly silent. Shiva, how had Seifer done it? And how long had this torture been going on? As Squall's eyes fluttered closed from the pain, he tried to guess how long it had been since the agonizing pulses began, and failed. It felt like hours, but it may have been only minutes. His world had shrunk to the brief space of time between each pulse, which was just as well; it wasn't as if the general was asking him any questions. Though a part of Squall wished he was, that way offered the possibility of relief, of respite from the relentless pain. No, no he wasn't going to break. He wouldn't. How could he face Seifer if he broke?

Seifer. For a long moment Squall concentrated on the image of his rival, forcing his memory to exactingly recreate each detail of the blond's face, concentrating on remembering the exact shade of Seifer's eyes or the shape of his nose, that arrogant smirk, to try and block out the constant pain from the electricity. It worked, somewhat, at least a little bit. Then he lost it all in one agonizing burst of electricity. Shaking and moaning aloud in his brief moment of respite between bursts, he wondered just why he'd pictured the blond to help him escape the agony. Then the next burst hit, and once he could think again, after he stopped screaming from the pain of it, wondered why he had pictured his rival to try and escape the pain. Could Selphie have been right? he wondered vaguely after the next pulse. Being in love with Seifer, was that really so bad? It could hardly be worse than his current predicament. Then he couldn't remember just why he cared about that anymore. It had worked after all, at least for a little while.

The constant pulses of high electric current were almost becoming too much. Abruptly Darkness beckoned and Squall knew no more.

//\\

It was two days after Squall's disappearance and Seifer's nerves were on their last edge. It had been two long days of worrying, and bullying uncooperative Intelligence networks, shaking out every scrap of news that might relate to his rival's disappearance until one minor network assigned to Deling City disgorged the interesting fact that General Caraway, had a 'special prisoner' consigned to D-District prison recently and was seeing to him or her personally. Given the fact that the general had just signed a contract with Seifer for a couple of squads to help stabilize his regime (a contract Seifer had voided as soon as he'd learned about Caraway's likely involvement in his rival's abduction), Seifer would have expected Caraway to head back to Deling City, given that it was the seat of Galbadian government, not closet himself away in D-District, after leaving word that he was not to be disturbed.

Add that to the fact that Caraway had been in Garden the night of Squall's abduction…well Seifer wasn't so dumb that he needed someone else to connect the dots for him. Though he still didn't understand Fujin's snorted laugh when he'd told her that.

But back to the present. He'd gathered Balamb Garden's full available complement of SeeDs together, no matter what their specialty happened too be, for a meeting geared toward pooling their Intelligence and gathering together a plan to take the former-knight back, operating under the likely assumption that Caraway's 'special prisoner was, in fact, Squall. It had been going well too, until it had been interrupted.

"What's the big deal?" the almost-inaudible mutter came from ear the back of the large briefing room, reaching Seifer's ears with ease despite the distance. Laser-like sea-green eyes immediately latched on to the speaker, an Intelligence-class SeeD that Seifer vaguely remembered meeting during his second Field Exam and had disliked at once, even more than his general mistrust of all of Garden's Intelligence agents. He'd been furious when she'd passed the exam, leaving him in the dust of failure. Now the joke was on her because she was still a midlevel Intelligence agent, of whom Garden had plenty, while he was the Commander, and the one to whom all of Balamb Garden, all of SeeD for that matter until Galbadia Garden got back up on its feet, reported to and took their orders from. And this low-level flunky, an Intelligence flunky at that, dared to think she could question his orders?

"Could you care to explain you comment, Ms. Richardson?" he purred dangerously in a deliberate tone, cutting effortlessly through the buzz of chatter that the stray mutter had called forth.

Seifer had to give her credit. She stood her ground even when faced with his wrath. But then it could be simple stupidity, given that he still looked and even sounded amiable enough. Instead of realizing her potentially hazardous situation and retracting her statement that had brought her to Seifer's attention, she expounded on it.

"I simply would like to know why we're planning to put Garden in danger with such a large-scale rescue operation merely for a Sorceress Knight." Raijin shifted threateningly at the slur, but Seifer put up a hand, calling him to stillness.

"I mean," she continued, warming to her topic when he didn't stop her, "he ordered the destruction of Trabia Garden, attacked Balamb Garden while using Galbadia Garden as a base after he took it over for his own use, stole the Lunatic Pandora facility and used it to call down the Lunar Cry, which SeeD squads are still cleaning up the monsters from even though its been nearly 3 months since the event-"

"Two months, three weeks and five days precisely." Seifer's voice interrupted, still in its dangerously pleasant purr. "And yes, Ms Richardson, I am aware of the events that took place during the Sorceress War. I participated in most of them."

He was smiling as he spoke, smiling in such a way that the unfortunate Ms Richardson suddenly began to realize just how far she'd erred, and that the absolute worst that could happen to her for challenging her Commander on this, went far beyond being replaced on the assignment, far worse than losing her job or being expelled from Garden. Seifer didn't like to be challenged at the best of times and now he was heading into a mood where he could slaughter her where she stood and smile about it, and she was the only one who hadn't realized it in time.

"Now, I have a question for you, Ms Richardson," his falsely pleasant tone and smile making the words lash like a whip. "Would you please recite for us Garden policy regarding SeeDs imprisoned for events that took place under contract?"

She shuddered at the ugly promise in the smile, but gave the information he asked for without stuttering. "If, either during or after the conclusion of a contract a party feels that vengeance is called for on either Garden itself or on the part of a particular individual SeeD, Garden is well within its rights as a distinct entity to either defend itself or take the wrongly-imprisoned SeeD back using whatever resources and methods available to itself. But-but you can't possibly-"

Once again Seifer cut her off. "Squall Leonhart is a SeeD, given that he passed the latest Field Exam just prior to the Sorceress War, something I myself didn't do. According to former-Sorceress Edea, who helped write Garden's charter, becoming a Sorceress knight is roughly equivalent with being a SeeD under contract. And as to that, I watched as he was taken against his will to be Sorceress Ultimecia's knight. During the War, my actions were always aimed toward two goals: the preservation of Garden, and rescuing Squall Leonhart from the hands of Sorceress Ultimecia."

He allowed himself to meet the gazes of the other SeeDs in the room, impressing his words on them all in turn, before turning back to his victim. His smile now showed all the whites of his teeth and she was only barely holding her composure together at the sight. He grinned broader at he sight.

"Finally," he continued, driving the nail home, "we not only have a Sorceress knight in the room with us, we have a Sorceress as well." An expansive wave of his hand indicated Fujin and Raijin, both of them standing just as formally correct as any other SeeDs in the room. "Fujin was able to accept Sorceress Edea's powers following assault by Galbadia Garden where Edea was purged of Sorceress Ultimecia's influence. Without her help, we wouldn't have been able to beat Ultimecia. After Time Compression, she took Raijin as her knight in order to stabilize her powers. Ultimecia's influence was not purged at the same time for Squall as Former-Sorceress Edea and he remained under that influence until only moments before Time Compression, when Ultimecia decided that She had no more use for him. What is Garden's policy regarding mind-control?" he shot abruptly at the unfortunate Ms Richardson.

"Sir?" her voice quavered, just the smallest bit. Outwardly, Seifer didn't seem to notice it, but inwardly he exulted. She was nearly there, almost at the point where she would be thoroughly broken, spirit crushed, never to fully recover. Contrary to what some would say, he didn't casually break people, only allowing himself the pleasure when he was beyond pissed already, and something had pushed him over the brink. The entire room was deadly silent, faces either a mix of approval and disgust, or an enticing blend of horror and fear. He ignored them, putting all his focus into destroying his target.

"I asked you a question." his voice was deliberately mild, he hadn't raised his voice once the entire time, and no one listening to him dared to think that the seeming kindness was anything but another level added to the condemnation. His very reasonableness was a weapon, and the whole room knew it.

"…T-there are several sections in Garden charter that deal with mind control. C-could you be a bit more specific?"

Seifer's grin was feral. "Tell us the section that deals with SeeDs that are subjected to it. The section that details the aftermath of mind control, and the consequences of being subjected to it."

She shuddered again, but obeyed. "For those SeeDs subjected to mind control, no blame is to be attached to their actions. Once they have served a period of probation to demonstrate that they are free from outside influence, they can return to Garden's service without penalty." Her voice shook slightly as she spoke, but she still relayed the information clearly, likely falling back on her training to memorize and spit back out facts no matter what her emotional state might be.

"Precisely." Seifer spoke for the benefit of the entire room. "Squall Leonhart has served his probation without a single word of complaint since Time Compression ended. Under conditions that would make any of you bristle, not one word of complaint at his situation has reached my ears. And all of you know that eventually I hear everything that goes on in this Garden."

He waited for the nods all around. During his time as head of the Disciplinary Committee, he had cultivated a reputation for being all knowing, which, truth be told, had been helped in a large part by the bugs Fujin had scattered all over Garden. Of course some at least would be regularly found and squashed, but enough of them always remained intact that he could gain at least a general sense of what was being talked about in any given location at any given time. And while the fight with Galbadia Garden and the ensuing repairs had resulted in the majority of them being destroyed, well, by that time he'd no longer cared about the petty gossip in the cafeteria was and his reputation was firmly in place.

Now he laid it on thick, appealing to their egos. "How many of you, after passing the exam and getting real field experience feel about being suddenly restricted to a first-year cadet's level of access in the archives, or being suddenly forbidden to wear your weapon inside Garden, something we all take for granted once we begin training. How many of you could walk around the corridors unarmed, after all the conditioning we all go through to not let our weapons out of our sight, and being forced to leave them in a Training Center locker. How many of you could do that without complaint?" he paused, theatrically, then said, "Come on, people, I want a show of hands of who think they could undergo this without so much as a peep."

No one raised their hands, as Seifer had known would happen. Frankly, he'd been bracing himself for a legendary Leonhart meltdown for the first few weeks they'd been back, sure that Squall would throw a fit about the restrictions the former knight had been subjected to, restrictions that Seifer had had no hand in devising. He'd tried to talk Fujin into going easier on his rival, but had found himself overruled. And, for some reason, the anticipated explosion had somehow failed to materialize. Squall had tamely submitted himself to the probation, and had never once tried to test his new, narrow boundaries.

"And one more thing," he added to cap things off. "Garden is, at least for most of us, our home, the only sanctuary we have in the world. How many of you have family outside of Garden?" he asked, and only one or two hands actually rose, both of whom Seifer had known about already. "Not that many of you. It's the same for Leonhart. His mother is dead, his father and sister both abandoned him at different times, and we're the only real family he's got. He's got nowhere else to go outside our walls. He's one of us. Are we going to abandon him?"

The answer was everything Seifer could have wished and more. He grinned ruthlessly, seeing his expression reflected on every face. "Then let's get him back!"

//\\

No memories haunted him on his return to D-District prison, no lingering horror of his time there resounded at him through the walls. Nothing stopped or slowed him down; righteous determination spurred him onward, resolute in his desire to free Squall Leonhart from this place. Once his rival was secured, and somewhere safe, Garden demolition teams would blow the entire place sky-high as a warning that no one fucked with those Seifer Almasy had claimed. Once, he had destroyed the Sorceress Memorial in Esthar for daring to abduct and imprison Fujin; now D-District Prison would serve the same lesson for those who had dared to take his rival and…

And what? He snapped to himself, testy at his own thoughts. Then he put it out of his mind, unwilling to spare the energy to decrypt the puzzle his own subconscious seemed to delight in teasing him with. Whatever it was, whatever revelation awaited him, however obvious it might be when it revealed itself, it could wait. He had other things to worry about now.

They had hit D-District like an avalanche, overwhelming the guard before they could sound a warning in the prison below, or determine that the signal that had ordered them to lower the prison's entrance to ground level had been faked. It seemed like only the work of a moment before they were hacking into the central computer, trying to find the location of their target.

Several minutes were wasted before Seifer determined that they were wasting their time; that whoever had taken Squall hadn't given then the courtesy of entering him into the computer system so he could be easily located.

A sneer lit Seifer's mouth, so, they were going to make this hard for him. If they had made it easy for him, he would have considered going easy on them when he destroyed the prison, would have considered allowing them to evacuate before he blew the place sky-high. Now, that option was closed. He would either slaughter them all personally before the charges were set, or make sure that they were still inside when the charges went boom. He'd also be sure to tell Selphie to be as creative as her heart desired when the time came to make the prison go 'boom.' He was sure she'd brought some of her handmade explosives with her and was just itching for the chance to use them.

He gestured for the retrieval teams to head out, one to a tower, himself at the head of one of them. Floor by floor they searched, checking every cell they found. Occasionally they ran into roaming guards, guards that were slaughtered almost before they realized what they were up against. Two or three times, Seifer gestured for the rest of his team to step back, he wanted to face the guards himself, wanted to went the rage that was boiling up within him on the targets that had just happened to find themselves in Hyperion's way, not caring about the way the rest of his team looked at him after he'd reduced those guards to nightmarish lumps of flesh.

Finally they reached the Squall's cell, and by that point, all of Seifer's last shreds of patience had been long since shredded past recognition by anxiety and disappointment. Several of the less experienced members of the team looked confused as Seifer headed straight to the door as if drawn by a homing beacon, completely dismissing the other cells on that level as unimportant. They couldn't hear it, couldn't recognize the barely audible sounds just inching their way past the door to the cell.

But Seifer had Shiva Junctioned, having picked up the Ice GF on a whim as he was leaving Garden. The hearing boost thus gained was more than enough to clearly identify the faint sounds that leaked out of the heavy door guarding the portal to the interrogation chamber. Screams. Squall's screams, screams that Seifer recognized as his own, unvoiced ones from his own time in that cell. Someone was inflicting on Squall the same torment the brunet had visited upon him. That someone was going to die. Soon.

The door was locked. Too angry to care, Seifer used Hyperion's perfect edge to cut the door open, kicking the useless metal panel that had been a functional door mere minutes ago, down with a clang. He took a moment to examine the scene in front of him, then took action.

Two steps and one swing from Hyperion later and the flunky at the electrical station was abruptly without his head, his blood staining the rusted metal walls a new shade of red. Caraway had a few seconds warning before Seifer was on him, but it had been at least 10 years since the general had faced combat. Too long. His reflexes were still fast enough to allow him to turn around and face Seifer, but far too slow for him to do anything to defend himself. Seifer took his time with him, meaning that it took several minutes for Caraway to die and not seconds the way it had taken Seifer to dispatch the flunky.

While he was amusing himself with mangling the corpses of Squall's captors in a variety of fatal ways, one member of the team destroyed the electrical controls, making triply sure that they couldn't activate anything on accident, while the other two worked to get the groaning and barely alive former knight down from his bonds, casting Cura and other restorative spells as they did so. Finished with his fun, his white trench-coat looking more like a butcher's apron than anything else, Seifer vibrated with a helpless fury at his rival's condition. There was nothing he could do, beyond passing the two impromptu medics his personal stash of Phoenix Downs and potions to help Squall. Nothing.

He almost didn't notice the race up to the control room with their helpless burden. They were almost out before Seifer recalled that he still had Shiva. Hoping it would work, he passed the Ice GF to the unconscious brunet, forcibly Junctioning her to Squall, all the while hoping against hope that Shiva would allow Squall to hold on long enough for them to get Squall to Dr. Kadowaki and her team, so that he could be transported safely back to Garden and the Infirmary to recover.

They burst out of the prison proper and out of the control room to the base camp that had been set up far enough away from the prison to be out of sight and outside the projected blast radius while still being close enough so that emergency medical care could be administered before it was too late if Squall had been found in a bad way like he had.

Seifer snuck several peaks at the brunet as they ran, he was so fucking still… not that the Ice Prince hadn't made an art form out of stillness, but there was something off about this stillness. Maybe it was the way he was so limp, bouncing a little at the pace they were moving at, when he should have been running right along side them. Or maybe it was Squall's face, slack in unconsciousness when it should have been tight with control. He didn't know what it was, not exactly, but he did know one thing: he didn't like it one bit.

Seifer didn't even hear himself give the order to the demolition team, led by Tillmit, to get going, or issue the recall order for the other two search teams to get the hell back to camp before the prison blew. He barely even noticed when the prison exploded, large pieces of the structure repelled from the temporary camp by the Barrier spells cast around the feverishly working medics. He couldn't look away, couldn't take his eyes from Squall's far too still face. He absently passed all his spells to a medic asking for any the restorative spells to be had, hardly aware that he was doing so, and certainly not even taking the time to sort through them enough so that he only passed on the spells that could help his rival.

He didn't care what he had to do, he swore to himself, watching the medics work, but he would make sure that Squall Leonhart would be safe. If he had to force Ellone and Fujin to induce another Time Compression and get Ultimecia's help to do so, he would. Whatever it took. No matter what the cost.

//\\

I know, I nearly killed off Squall… :ducks a hail of stones and rotten vegetables: I know! I know!! It was very bad of me to do that.

But, but, but!! I had a reason for doing that. It'll all be made clear in the next chapter or so, but something had to happen to jerk the boys out of their denial. If they had been left alone, they might have killed each other before they admitted anything to each other, or even themselves.

Hope you don't mind that this chapter's a little short, for some reason it wanted to be this way. Please don't hold its short length against me when you review?

You are going to review, aren't you? Aren't you?