Chapter 5 – First Night

I.

~ Care to dance? ~

"These mortals fear their own weakness," Ultimecia had said to him once, "SeeD is a tool to fuel their fear. They will halt at nothing. They thirst to see your head at their feet and your body in the flames. If you destroy SeeD, you will destroy their fear."

These words held once a revolting truth, but now they sounded absurdly dull, dimmed by the bright lights of the ballroom and masked by the laughter of young inebriated dancers.

So these are the vicious SeeDs she's been talking about, Squall thought as a drunken young man collapsed on the floor at his feet. He had been watching his enemies for the last hour, his eyes scanning the crowd for a man whose face he had only seen in pictures, but the headmaster was nowhere to be found. Just kids. So many kids, just dancing, talking, chewing like they had nothing to fear.

Were they even soldiers?

The hall was opulently decorated. It reminded him of Ultimecia's balls in Deling City; gaudy lush affairs attended by important people looking to settle their influence.

Except here, the people seemed to be having…well…fun.

He was so busy monitoring every door with patient deadly attention, that he failed to see a pretty girl in blue walk up to him. It wasn't until the second time she spoke, that her words filtered through to him.

"Would you like a drink sir?" she asked, holding up a tray with crystal glasses. She took his silence for yes and gently thrust a glass into his hands before she went away.

Squall watched the blood-red liquid with a frown and put it away on a nearby table. Once more he took in these unfamiliar surroundings. Banners of blue and flowers hung from the walls. Everything was crystal and gold and a gentle Balamb blue. Even the glass dome-ceiling revealed a diamond littered sky which blended seamlessly with the lavish decorations of the room.

He was about to look away when something bright shot across the sky, a sudden secretive flash that startled him. It took him a second to process what happened. It could have been a shooting star, but he couldn't be really sure. He'd never seen one before. People like him didn't have the time for these things. There were too many conspiracies to organise, too many people to kill. The time to stop and look at stars was not his to have.

The flash disappeared into the darkness, its light leaving only a momentary echo in his eye. He continued to stare, long after this after-image had faded and the starry sky turned stationary again. He watched; quietly waiting for something to happen again.

When nothing did, he tore himself away from the sky and was immediately faced with two dark eyes staring straight at him. It took him a moment to establish that they belonged to a girl. A brunette, her dark hair was gentle flow past her cheeks, curling up just above her breast. She wore a dress in a shade which reminded him of an early moon. The girl raised an eyebrow and pointed her index finger up to the sky to indicate that she too had seen the same rare sight a second ago.

Squall had the odd feeling that she had been watching him for quite a while. He considered whether she recognised him and how he ought to kill her in a room full of people, when a sudden smile on her face paused his thoughts.

Okay?

The girl walked over to him and somehow Squall didn't move, once again waiting for something to happen. It was clear, even to his own suspicious assessment, that this was not the approach of an enemy. She moved through the crowd with a step just as her dress, light and elegant. Like she had all the time in the world.

When she finally stood in front of him, she smiled again. "You're not from around here, are you?"

Inconspicuously, he fingered the handle of his gunblade, getting ready..

"Care to dance?" she asked when he didn't reply.

So she didn't know. Best keep it that way. He ignored her and forced his attention back to the dance floor, watching out for the headmaster. She stepped to the right and blocked his vision. "Let me guess, you only dance with people you like?"

He finally took her in. Pretty girl, she seemed young and her flirting was cute, innocent. Almost instantly he distrusted the sincerity of her appearance. Whatever she was tonight, this lightness, she wasn't always like this. She wore it like she wore that yellow dress.

Why?

Was she on a mission too? He recognized the expression in her eyes; it was the same expression he saw in Ultimecia's eyes; the same expression the man in the mirror had sometimes. Squall had the feeling that she was acting a role and that she was doing it badly.

Still, beyond the lightness and the confidence, she was nervous. Her smile was fixed, slightly worried even. She was clearly experimenting, throwing something out to the world in the hope it would stick. It was this 'something' that prevented him from turning his back on her again. He could say no, but he couldn't ignore her. Squall considered a moment and decided he would tell her he was busy and send her off politely. No point in making a scene in the middle of a mission. Just a good solid No.

Then somehow instead he answered, "I can't dance."

"Oh." The girl blinked and the sweetness disappeared, melting into something more sincere and more gentle for it. She raised a knowing eyebrow and extended her hand to seek his.

"Come on," she demanded. "I'll take care of you. I've been ordered to find someone to dance with. It's first day of the rest of my life apparently."

Apparently

For the first time Squall took notice of the music. It was an Eastern waltz and the notes swelled the ballroom with dancers. Couples moved with the waltz as it changed and flowed through its measures, at times dainty, light and at times vast and sweeping, like a story.

Somehow these pulses of music carried a note of irony that he found hard to enjoy. It was a mockery really, a counterfeit indulgence. What would they think of this in Deling City, the mighty Lord Sorcerer indulging in such mortal pleasures. If there hadn't been a press injunction against reports on the Lord Sorcerer, the tabloids would have had a field day.

The girl took no notice of this and cut a decisive path through the twirling crowd. She halted suddenly in the middle of the dance floor, ignoring the curious glances of the other dancers. She took his right hand and placed it on her hip. The soft fabric of her dress felt cool and soft under his fingers and he itched to move his hand away.

Then, she began to dance.

Awkwardly he tried to follow her steps, but he couldn't concentrate as his gaze traveled all over the ballroom, searching for the Headmaster. Being distracted as he was, with his head lost in the mission ahead, Squall bumped into the girl as she suddenly inexplicably halted mid- move.

She smiled apologetically and mouthed a silent 'sorry'.

This was not the mission. This was a ridiculous breach of operational protocol. There was nothing to be gained from this. Squall turned to walk away and resume his search. The girl however had different plans for this night. Firmer than he expected from those slender fingers, he felt her grip on his wrist and she pulled him back to their original position on the dance floor.

"The dance isn't over yet," she reminded him, the way she might remind a child to finish his vegetables.

Before he had the time to position himself, she had already swept off with him in the ritual of the waltz. Always a step ahead of him at every turn. An embarrassing collision with another pair followed next.

"Look out where you're going man," an irritated male SeeD snapped at him, vexed that he missed a particularly complex move to impress his blonde date.

For the first time in his life, Squall felt his cheeks burn and immediately his hand shot up to unleash a spell on the boy. But the girl reacted faster and stuck out her tongue at him. Squall stared at her, suddenly aware of his own hand and the childish paranoid impulse that raised it.

Did she really just stick out her tongue?

Her bland reaction somehow released some of the tension that had been building inside of him. It was clear really, nobody in Garden knew who he was. There was no one here to challenge his purpose. The obnoxious guy glared at the girl, muttering a vague unheard insult and kept out of their way.

The girl turned back to him and gently pulled him closer. The ends of her lips were raised slightly and he couldn't tell whether she was smiling or grinning. She didn't move. For an awkward few seconds the music seemed to pass them by. Then he got it, she was waiting for him to lead. A glance at the other dancers and the familiar swell of the next measure, he suddenly realised that they had done this one before, two moves ago. Squall grabbed her hand and managed to lead her in a perfect twirl.

There you go.

And from that moment on, things were different.

It wasn't like the mission had lost its hold on him. Or that he had forgotten why he was there. But sometime during the stumbles and collisions, the pattern had become clear to him and he now understood the perfect progression of twirls and slides and endless turns. He counted the steps and turned, and was pleased he had timed it right. The dance became a different beast. It unraveled before him and he saw a list of things he needed to do for it all to go right. He was a fraction of a second ahead of her and it allowed him to do things like draw her closer, spin her on her axis and turn her to face him. He made her move into him, close into his arms, for exactly one beat before he uncoiled her, threw her out to the world. It was only his fingers that kept her anchored to him and he waited for the next beat that would bring her back to him again.

For just a few minutes, he had no greater purpose than to study this music with her, lay it open and discover the parts that could make someone like him move. It was a pretty math, precise and the solving of which became something that needed to happen. This dance needed to happen, exactly like this.

Every time he pulled the girl closer, ever faithful to the pattern, her scent came over him. It was hardly detectable, covering her like a blanket of light. To him it seemed embedded in every particle of her body; it was in her hair, on her breasts, on the hand that lay on his shoulder, on the lips that told him well done.

He completed the last few steps effortlessly as though he had done it all his life, though he actually hadn't. He finished the dance and completed the math with one last flawless move and even before she landed back in his arms, he knew it was over.

The edges of her black hair brushed his fingers as they stilled into place. For a long impossible second Squall considered winding a lock around his finger. It seemed like the thing to do. Her head rested against his chest, making for herself a pillow listening to his winded heartbeat.

"You dance well," she said, a little breathless and he felt her lips move into a smile against his chest.

He decided that he liked her voice. Only now did he notice how different it was from all the other voices in his life. How differently she used it. It wasn't urging him to do something or lecturing him on the ways of politics. It wasn't trembling with fear. Tonight, under a sky littered with diamonds and sudden surprises, on a night that was beyond possibility, here was someone who wasn't placing any demands on him. She wasn't asking him to spare her. She wasn't asking him to prove his devotion.

All she wanted was a dance or two.

"Thank you," he said.

The sorcerer had taken the first step in a journey that started centuries ago. He had come with a goal that provided the groundwork for the few beliefs he held. He had come here with a purpose. But right now, as his fingers inched closer to her hair, he couldn't remember for the life of him what that was.

"What are you thinking?" she raised her head.

He hesitated. "I'm wondering about something."

Her fingers moved through his own honey-brown hair, defeating his lack of courage with her own and curled a lock around her thumb. She smiled and again she gave him that feeling of watchfulness. Squall was suddenly and most explicitly aware of his hand on her waist, of the silky material of her dress, of the warm smooth skin beneath it. He swallowed, tried to keep his mind on other things, on matters of great importance that he couldn't remember.

"What are you wondering?"

"Why I'm here," he answered truthfully.

Her smile evaporated, and a distant look appeared in her eyes, where a moment ago it had been all glitter and excitement.

"I wonder the same sometimes."

Something about her reply touched the edges of his lips, a transformation that in another life might have produced a smile. His hands stroked the ivory silk material of her dress. Squall took in that fragrance from her, the one he just couldn't place.

"Do you think we'll figure it out sometime?" he asked, immediately wishing he could take back the words.

She smiled that peculiar smile again, one that stood at the boundary of where a smile fades into a grin.

On this impossible first night, at the midst of his sworn enemies, Squall found something. He didn't know what exactly, but he knew that it was something that he had been searching for a long while since. Something sporadic and tenuous like . . . . like a truth. A truth that had eluded him, and yet one that still escaped analysis.

Hyne, what was that fragrance she wore? So familiar, like she was wearing a memory.

He was about to ask her when an explosion overhead distracted her. In the sky a dozen colours flashed in explosive brilliance across the heavens. She watched the fireworks in awe, a smile of unadulterated delight spreading across her face. She seemed very young then and this time the innocence had a touch of an old, distant truth to it.

With her attention elsewhere, Squall took the liberty of studying her face without fear of being watched himself. He usually wasn't very good with faces, but then again, when had he ever the time to study another human being from this close? His eyes followed the contour of her bumpy nose and the outline of her ear. The inexorable sorcerer of Deling was mapping her cheekbones, her dark lashes, the sly pink shine on her lips. He watched the look on her face; that delighted silly expression and absently wondered if it would still be there when she turned her gaze back to him. For reasons beyond his immediate comprehension, he somehow hoped it would.

Then just a little ways beyond the smile, beyond the eyes and the hair that he never touched, a sudden sight caught him off-guard.

A short middle-aged man disappeared through one of the entrance doors. It was the Headmaster. His appearance shocked Squall back into his old purpose. Back to a reality in which his prey was about to get away. When the sparkling lights faded to nothingness, she turned her gaze back to him.

His eyes were no longer on her.

With a short excusing nod, he untangled himself from the embrace of that elusive something. It was an overdue goodbye to dance and starlight and silly lapses in judgment. He turned on his heel and made for the doors. It was time to be the Sorceress's Knight again or whatever it was they called him these days.

Squall didn't look back and kept his eyes on his quarry. He knew that if he turned, she wouldn't be there anymore. And there was no admitting, even to himself that it was important, so very important, that she wasn't gone.

At some point in the future, when all his wars were done, the Sorcerer would want to look back. When he did, he would like to know that he would always find her standing there.

II.

~ "Finish the job you came to do"

The man before him didn't turn as Squall approached the Directory where he was standing.

He was a chubby man, in his forties, amicable by appearance and from what he had heard, a downright mortal monster by heart. When Squall held still behind him, the Headmaster turned to meet him. Not the slightest trace of surprise in his eyes. It was as though the Headmaster had been expecting this intrusion and had been waiting for him in the solitude of the hallway, away from the hundreds of unwary people in the ballroom.

"Sorcerer Leonheart," Cid said by way of greeting, "I trust you enjoyed tonight's festivities?"

"You've been expecting me?" Squall asked him, already knowing what the answer would be.

"The Sorceress Edea sent you, am I right?"

"Do you have so many enemies to keep track of?"

Cid Kramer chuckled under his breath. "Indeed I have sorcerer Leonheart, it's not very uncommon in my line of work. I'm sure you experience the same in yours."

Squall didn't reply.

Fearlessly Cid stepped closer to the sorcerer. "How is she," he asked quietly, "Edea?"

Edea? She's dead Cid, or as good as dead.

"Edea is fine," he replied curtly.

Cid's gaze wandered away from the Sorcerer. His thoughts headed decades into the past as he stared through the watery depths of the pond that circled around the centre of the main hall. It had been many years now, but Cid had never really recovered from the news that Edea was the new ruling Sorceress. He so much wanted to talk to her, to see her one last time. And knowing that he now would never be able to, wrenched his heart into a thousand irreparable pieces.

"The end is near now, never realized how near," Cid muttered. "You are exactly as you should be and yet a thousand times worse than you could have been."

The glare in Squall's eyes flared anew. "What do you mean by that?"

His question shook the Headmaster from his brief reflection. "Oh never mind, we better get on with it. Time is already catching up with us. I have done my part; the rest is up to the sorceress Ultimecia and the world."

Squall was taken aback for a moment. "You know about Ultimecia?"

Cid shrugged. "Edea wasn't the only one who was there that day."

"Edea?"

Alarm bells sounded in Squall's mind. This man knew about Edea and Ultimecia! He knew them both from a time when the two didn't inhabit the same body? In all these years, Ultimecia never even hinted at this impossible former acquaintance. Even Edea, vocal though she was about her husband's treachery, never mentioned Ultimecia to him. He always assumed that Edea never knew Ultimecia before she was forced to surrender her body to the witch.

He paused. "That day? The day the orphanage burned down?"

The headmaster frowned. "No, of course not," he replied. "The other day, you know, when it all started, when you received your powers."

Squall didn't remember anything about the day he received his powers. One morning he had been a boy. The next morning all the children of the orphanage were cowering in the corner, yelling at him to stay away. That he was a monster. He accepted that he was different without questions, because really, hadn't he always been different?

Suddenly Squall noticed the glaring voids in his life. The torn chapters that he always regarded as trivial and irrelevant now contained entire epic events of their own. Gaps so crucial that he could never explain away, he had forced himself to ignore. Yet now the abyss of ignorance loomed so large, that he found it absurd that he had never noticed it.

Neither the Sorcerer nor the Headmaster said a word. The older man studied this young boy and tried to discern what his revelations had wrought. The Headmaster couldn't read the pauses in a face so blank, couldn't quite read the silence, but he knew that the Sorcerer's mind was working to reconcile this new information with some image he had of his own past. And he understood that somehow the image didn't quite fit anymore.

"Has Edea not explained to you what happened?" Cid asked quietly.

Edea had told Squall that he had received powers from a dying witch, like she had in her youth. Snippets of the days leading up to the Estharian assault on the Orphanage came to him. Squall remembered children huddling together in a corner, children who were once his friends regarded him with fear. One day, a blast woke him from his sleep and Edea's was the first face he saw in the smoke. She was crying as she carried him out of the burning building. His last memory of that day was seeing the roaring flames eat away at the building that had been his home for most of his life. Squall had never forgotten how eerily beautiful the flames had been against the canvas of the evening sky.

It was the last time he had truly watched the stars.

"If she had, I wouldn't be asking you," Squall said impatiently.

"Right, but then, why are you here then if she hasn't?"

It was Squall's turn to be surprised. "Why I'm here?"

The headmaster nodded.

"I'm here because you and your Garden have wanted me dead since I my childhood," Squall said calmly. "Why else would I be here?"

The old man's eyes focused on him, like he was really seeing the Lord Sorcerer for the first time. There was a shade of confusion in the Headmaster's eyes that Squall was sure mirrored his own. The old man was also trying to find an explanation for the things they had both learned tonight.

" I'm not sure what she's playing at," Cid said finally, "but whatever it is, I don't care. I think I've said enough."

Not quiet, not nearly enough.

"Well," the headmaster said impatiently, "I assume you came to take me down. So do your worst Sorcerer and better be quick about it."

Squall paused for a moment, one infinite moment where he considered something impossible.

"No, that won't do," Squall finally decided.

Cid looked genuinely puzzled. "Aren't you going to kill me?"

Squall shrugged. "Eventually yes, but for now you are of better use to us alive."

The man's expression tightened. "Listen to me you obnoxious piece of shit," Cid said, his voice calm and dignified compared to his words, "You won't get anything out of me about Garden. You could spend years of torture on me, and you wouldn't be any further then than you are today. So stop playing around and finish the job you came to do."

"We don't need intelligence headmaster," Squall said calmly, "We already know everything we need to about Garden."

"But why then," Cid said, "why not kill me and get this over with?"

Squall crossed his arms as he frowned. "Well for one, I make a point of not killing someone who is asking for it . . . until I know why."

Cid stood fazed, wondering what implications this turn of events would have on Garden's plans.

"Anyway," Squall said, "the party seems to be over, so we'd better be on our way."

Before Cid could utter another word, Squall cast triple sleep on him. He caught the Headmaster's limp body and pulled him over his shoulder.

That was it. Squall crossed the main hallway and when he passed the entrance guard he re-casted sleep on him. Squall stepped outside to meet the dark grasslands, with his quarry safely resting on his shoulder and he signalled for the helicopter to come. The night went well.

Exceptionally well.

Squall now knew that there was something he needed to know. Something that was worth knowing. As the helicopter rose to bear him back to Deling City, Squall watched Balamb Garden shining like a beacon in the dark and he thought of her.

And he wondered why he was where he was.