five
-the blistering heat against skin and the agony, the agony of the impact is the worst-
She has her phone out before she even realizes it's ringing, and it's the order she expected, the recall, Xu screaming in the phone in the way that one does when they're made half-deaf by an explosion.
"Turn around!" Quistis commands, and the cadet driving her to the airfield glances at her in the rearview mirror.
"Ma'am?"
"Now, turn around!"
He complies, jerking the wheel in a one-eighty, cutting off the car in the opposite lane. There is the staccato blaring of horns, but the Garden car rockets forward.
-this hurts so fucking badly-
The cadet slows as they approach Balamb Garden, staring out the window, his profile aghast. "What happened here?" he exclaims, and Quistis could ask the self-same question. Smoke billows from three points that she can decipher- the gym, the library, the-
The dorms are on fire. Oh, god, the dorms are on fire.
-goddammit-
She opens the door and hits the ground running, Save the Queen beating rhythmically against her hip, sliding off the kevlar-reinforced fabric of her pants. Garden is in chaos, people everywhere, streaming out of the building from every available door.
Someone grabs her arm. Raijin is there, wild-eyed, his hair sticking up in every direction and his bare chest streaked with ash.
"What happened?" she demands, and he shakes his head.
"I don't know. Woke up to the blasts and next thing, the commander's ordering everyone to evacuate."
There are children everywhere, twelve- and thirteen-year-olds in shock and in tears. She didn't realize that there were this many children in Garden. Which part of the dorms got hit? The SeeD wing? The cadet area?
"I don't know," Rajin says. "I gotta find Fuj." And he is gone, then, leaving her alone.
Seifer, she thinks, as hard as she can, but there is only a rush of silence that leaves a gnawing knot of dread building in her stomach.
The scream of fire engines cut through the freezing dawn, and she is denied entry to Garden by a chain of stoic SeeDs whose names she does not know, despite her protests, her insistence that the commander has summoned her here, her violent swearing, Seifer is in there and he might be dying-
Xu texts her, directing her to the far side of Garden, and Quistis runs around the building, completing the circuit faster than she ever has on any of her regular runs. The smoke is billowing from the dorms in clouds, massive gray plumes that leave her gasping. The heat is oppressive- she ditches her jacket as she approaches the gathered crowd.
The commander is there, in her sweatpants and cutoff tank top, directing soldiers, paramedics and firefighters alike with aide of a bullhorn that she has pulled from god-knows-where. There are bodies everywhere, stretched out on the grass, some moving, some not. More than the ambulances can hold. Men, women- the bulk of the smoke is coming from the SeeD wing. There aren't as many smaller figures as Quistis had feared.
"Quistis!" Xu yells, dashing across the lawn. No one would notice the hints of panic in Xu's eyes unless they had known her as long as Quistis has. Xu grabs her shoulders, the most contact they have had in months, far from the hugs and easy gestures they used to share. Her friend has become a stranger, but that doesn't matter now. Not after this.
"What happened?"
"I don't know. Intelligence is analyzing the remains of some of the explosives now. They'll have a list of suspects in the next few hours." Xu's tone is still loud, still off. She keeps leaning toward the left, trying to compensate for a loss of hearing. "I haven't seen Seifer, but they're taking all the injured to the hospital."
Every inch of her wants to go, hitch a ride on an ambulance, to rip through the covered, prone figures lying in the grass. To find him.
She stays, though, put to work, handed a respirator and gloves as she joins the search teams working their way through the building once sections are cleared. After two hours, the dorms are finally opened up to SeeD, and her team is the first through. Xu gives express orders to be careful, but thorough. Get everyone out.
It's the worst part. They find a first year, curled up in her bed, head cracked open by a weapons case. Another, gasping and unable to move out from under where his dresser has fallen onto his legs. He screams for his mother when they haul the furniture out of the way, and he will never walk again.
They find too many bodies burned up into horrific shapes that she will see forever in her nightmares.
The apartment that she shares with Seifer is the last one in the cleared zone, and the door has been blasted open with the impact. Quistis stops in the doorway, breathing her air supply, while an explosives detail SeeD carefully walks the room one last time.
"Clear," Instructor Shang calls, and Quistis steps forward before she can stop herself. The apartment is surprisingly intact- most of their pictures are on the floor, and the window has blown out. The TV is a loss. The furniture is still upright, though, and the coffee mug she left in the sink is still exactly where she set it.
None of that is important- things are replaceable. She has enough in her account to buy a hundred televisions.
The walk into the bedroom has Quistis expecting the worst, and when she finds the bed empty, the coverlet half-heartedly pulled flat and the pillow smooth, her knees nearly give out from under her.
Quistis turns away, and when she climbs over the wreckage, escaping onto the lawn, the first breath of fresh air leaves her lungs feeling tender and new-made. She pitches her respirator in the growing pile nearby. Someone offers her a bottle of water, and she drains half of it.
Xu tries to stop her, but Quistis ignores her, and climbs in the back of an ambulance next to the boy with the ruined legs.
xx
-no return, boy or man, boy or man, talons and lover's flesh and Odin's face when Hyperion screamed through the air-
He wakes up to the hollow beeping of machines.
There is a scraping sound nearby, and Quistis is leaning over him, looking just out of focus. "Hey," she says, and her voice is so quiet. He's having trouble hearing her, or anything.
"What?" He's having trouble breathing, for that matter. Every inhalation is searing in his throat.
She touches his face, and her words are tinny, hard to make out. You scared me.
He blinks and she is gone, and the light in the room is different. Everything hurts. He blinks again.
Someone's touching him, lifting his arm and pressing against his pulse. Someone's touching him, fiddling around his face. There is the cool feeling of a compress against his brow. It's hard to think. His brain feels like mud. There's a stinging in his arm, and then something cold through his veins.
Xu is there at one point, asking him questions. He doesn't remember what she asks, her words muffled and deadened, and he doesn't remember what he answered. He isn't even sure he does answer.
There are long swatches of time that he spends coughing, hacking up globs of black stuff into bedpans held by nurses who make sympathetic noises.
When he opens his eyes again, Quistis is back, and she's a little clearer, her brow furrowed as she studies him. She slips her hand into his and the command he gives his fingers to close around hers seems to take forever to process down his arm.
"Hi."
She smiles, relief all over her face. "Hey. How're you feeling?" Each word is carefully pronounced, and he wonders just how loudly she's actually speaking.
Seifer does a mental inventory, taking particular note of the hot spot of pain in his shoulder. "Hurts," he pronounces. The word comes out sounding like he's got marbles in his mouth. He wonders what they've got him on, because he doesn't hurt as badly as he should. "What happened?"
"The group responsible for the riots in Dollet and Deling- they're claiming responsibility. Xu's got people working around the clock trying to hunt them down." She runs her thumb along his palm. "She wants you to come in for an interview. When you're feeling up to it, of course."
"Comfy here."
"That's what I told her."
"How bad?" Seifer asks, finally, because she's doing that thing where she dances around what she really wants to say. His brain may be working at the speed of molasses, but he's not fundamentally idiotic.
There is a long moment of silence, and he wonders if he fell asleep again, if she left. But her hand is still in his, and her face is working its way through a gamut of emotions. She's always worn her heart on her sleeve, calls it her biggest fault.
"Bad," she says. "Twenty SeeDs are dead. At least three times that, including you, stuck here for a while. Five second years holding a last-minute study session in the library." Her grip on his hand tightens. He wonders just how close he came to being number twenty-six. He doesn't ask. "We're transferring people to Galbadia and Timber until the dorms are habitable."
"House in the suburbs," he mumbles- should've retired early.
She raises an eyebrow at him. "What?"
"Nothing."
xx
The pictures on the television send her recoiling to the bathroom, heaving into the toilet with the images of ruin seared into her eyes. Squall has sat in numb horror for the last hour, watching.
Rinoa heaves again, bringing up only acidic bile. There isn't anything in her stomach to throw up, thank god. She's never been so grateful for a lapse in appetite as she is now.
She reaches up, flushing the toilet, and leans back against the wall. This isn't her fault. She isn't responsible for this, she isn't. She's left Garden. No anti-Sorceress group should be going there to look for her, to murder her.
Her hand curls over her stomach, and when she closes her eyes, she sees the wreckage of Balamb Garden, and something whispers, it's all because of you.