six
Balamb General doesn't have enough beds after three days- too many SeeDs working themselves sick with smoke inhalation and nausea and stress, not to mention it's peak fishing season and more people are coming through gored by sailfish than they would ever like to admit- so Seifer is ejected from the hospital with a heavy duty prescription and his arm in a sling. His hearing is still muffled; liberal application of diluted cure drops help, but not by much. He doesn't like it. It puts him off balance.
Garden puts them up in a cramped third story walk-up at the far end of town, the best they can do on short notice.
It takes Seifer thirty minutes to get up the stairs the first time, with the morphine cocktail running through his veins and the ache in his shoulder. The apartment's floor plan is unfamiliar, cramped, worse than the dorm's. He runs into things when he does get out of bed over the next couple of days, boxes and bags that there aren't any room for. Their salvageable furniture is tagged and stored in the quad of Garden, along with everyone else's.
Dressing himself with one good arm is an interesting challenge. The official diagnosis is a torn rotator cuff, a cracked clavicle, a hairline fracture down his humerus bone. He's just glad he landed on his left side. If he'd rolled the other way, it'd be harps for his gunblading career.
Xu orders him to temporary headquarters two days after he gets out of the hospital, her patience worn thin with terse emails and voice mails that never get returned. Headquarters is the old Balamb Hotel, at the far end of town, looking like it's going to fall into the sea with one strong wind. The commander has occupied the penthouse suite, and when he walks in, she's at her desk, dressed in her civvies. It's the first time Seifer has seen her out of uniform in a long time, but that's what happens when your dorm room is blown to smithereens with your wardrobe.
"Sit down," she orders, when Seifer lets himself into the room. "You're late. You were due here at 0900."
He shrugs and regrets the maneuver. "Being blown up has that effect on my schedule."
She doesn't look up from what she's working on until Seifer has settled himself into the ill-designed wooden chair. When she finally does glance at him, she raises an eyebrow. "Well. You look awful."
"That's a relief, because I feel like shit," he retorts pleasantly. "What can I do for you, Commander?"
Xu sits back in her chair and studies him over the rim of thin glasses; when did she start wearing those? Maybe she thinks it's intimidating. Maybe she's just going blind.
"How's the apartment?" Xu continues, as if he hasn't spoken at all. "Working out for you?"
"Bit small, really."
"And Quistis? How is she doing? Sleeping alright? Eating well?" Pages in the file on her desk are rifled through; she appears bored, not caring much about his answers. It's the worst therapy session ever or she wants something.
"I've hardly seen her the past few days. You would know better than I would."
Xu taps her heavy silver pen against the pad of paper on her desk. "I just want to make sure everyone under my charge is doing well, especially in the wake of what's happened."
Bullshit.
"I need you to do something for me, Seifer. I've been worried about her, and she's not been the most forthcoming recently. You'll let me know if anything...strange starts happening, right? Anyone would be in a state after what she's been through."
It takes him a second to process through what she's asking, and when he gets to the root of it, he's pissed immediately. "I'm not spying on her."
"I'm not suggesting that at all. I'm only saying-"
"I quit."
The words are out before he can stop them, and he has no interest in doing so.
It catches Xu off guard. "I beg your pardon?"
"I quit," he repeats. "I'm done with this, with your ridiculous spy-novel bullshit. I am done." He gets up ungracefully; the chair skitters backwards and clatters over onto its side. Months of frustration and fury are outpacing the sedatives in his bloodstream.
She takes off her glasses, folding them neatly and tucking them in the pocket of her shirt before she sits back and studies him. "Can you imagine, for one minute, what life outside of Garden will be for you? Some people don't forget, Seifer Almasy, and we can't protect you out there." She stacks together the report. "Or do you think you're going to get a chance to have a normal life? Do you think Quistis will ever leave Garden and...god, forbid, settle down with you? She's a top-ranked SeeD, and you're the lapdog who came crawling home for scraps, who just happened to catch her attention."
She laughs. For fuck's sake, she laughs. Like this is the biggest fucking joke in the world.
He's glad he wore his boots today, no matter how fucking hard they were to get on his feet. Seifer slams the sole of one into Xu's desk, shoving the whole enterprise on its side. Xu slides her chair back just in time, ripping her laptop out of the path of destruction. The desk crashes against the floor, legs breaking off. Papers go everywhere.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" she exclaims.
"You don't know shit about our lives," he snarls, and he wants to grab her by the throat, repay her for all the crap she's put them through, for what a shitty friend she's been to Quistis, for getting Squall thrown out on his ass. For a hair's-breadth, his vision tinges red, the roar of battle in his ears, and he has to shake his head to dispel it. He's got better things to do with his time. She isn't worth it.
Security is swarming into the room, but Seifer shoves through the crowd, ignoring the agony in his shoulder and the pounding building in his head.
"I'm fine," he hears Xu say from behind him as he leaves. "If you see him on Garden property again, arrest him."
xx
The door opens, then shuts.
"How long have you been sitting in the dark?" Quistis asks after a moment. He hears a thud as she sets something down. There is the rustle of paper and the distinct smell of Centran food fills the apartment.
Seifer shifts the ice pack higher up on his shoulder. "A while."
She flicks the light switch. The transition isn't nearly as smooth as it was in the dorms; here, the lights flicker and quiver before they steady. He blinks in the brightness, and eases himself upright.
"I heard what you did," she says. "You can't just walk out like that. There's procedure, regs."
"She says she'll arrest me the next time I'm on Garden property. I think I'm pretty well out." Seifer pushes himself off of the couch, crossing into the alcove that serves as a kitchen. "Dammit, she wanted me to spy on you, Quis, like you were some mission."
Quistis pulls a couple of white cardboard containers out of the bag. "My knight in shining armor," she says, and there isn't a trace of irony in her voice. "I brought you fried shrimp."
"I'm not hungry."
"Liar." She would know; Quistis hands him a box and a pair of chopsticks. He takes them grudgingly, setting the box on the counter and popping open the lid. "Is it true you threw her desk through a window with one hand?"
He pokes at the food, shoveling a piece of shrimp in his mouth and chewing thoughtfully. "Who said that?"
"Just a rumor I heard." Quistis digs through her salad with her fork. "Xu won't let this go quietly, you know."
"I know."
xx
Seifer lies away from her on the bed, cradling his left arm in its splint, his sling cast aside for the moment. His back is seared red, a horrific burn, like he's spent hours in the sun. The doctors say that if he hadn't been halfway through the gym when the bomb went off, he wouldn't have skin back there at all. Seifer claims it looks worse than it feels.
She squeezes a curl of ointment into her hand, a medicinal scent filling the room and the aloe cool where it touches her. She can see the muscles in Seifer's back tense as she lowers her palm, and he hisses as she dabs it on his hot skin.
"Sorry," she murmurs, moving her hand in slowly expanding circles as he grows used to the cream. It is a ritual she does not want, this nightly application of burn ointment, this changing of bandages and helping him work a shirt over his head.
Maybe it's for the best he's walked away from SeeD. There are only so many wounds a body can take, and they both have too many scars.
There's only so much healing magic and cure spells can do-
Healing spells. She doesn't know why it hasn't occurred to her before; she's so used to her magic being rationed and monitored, filling out paperwork for every bottle of elixir and cure that she uses. But here, in a sparse old apartment away from prying eyes, she could try...
"Stay still."
"I'm not moving," he mutters, his voice muffled in the pillow. "Are you almost done?"
"Shh."
Her fingers graze over the burn, and she concentrates, digging deep within her, past the flashy magic, the destruction and the lightning and the annihilation. There is a serene pool of power there, untapped. She has never had a reason to look for it before now.
She draws from it in a narrow stream, her fingers going frigid as she traces along his spine. The effect is instantaneous- her touch leaves a faint sparkle and tanned skin as she pulls the burn from him. The glimmer fades after a moment. She moves her hands away from his spine, down to the small of his back, reveling in how easily the burn disappears, how the heat runs up her fingers, a reverse cast.
His breathing slows and evens out as she works, and soon, she is done.
Quistis withdraws her hands and half-expects the injury to resurface, the way a sunburn looks when pressed by a finger, normal for a second until it's back to boiling scarlet. Nothing reappears, and she lets loose the breath she has been holding.
"I think they put cure spells in that crap," Seifer comments sleepily. "Feels good."
The magic still hums just below her skin, anxious to be used.
His shoulder is the obvious target, swollen, painful. She hasn't been able to sleep lately with the way he tosses and turns, favoring his left side, shifting to find some position that doesn't feel like getting tortured with hot knives (an awful sensation to feel secondhand, she has recently discovered.)
"Seifer," she whispers. Do you trust me?
She's already reaching for him when he nods, seeking out the root of the injury, visualizing the doctor's X-rays as she trails her fingers along the curve of his arm...
There.
The magic funnels through slowly, slowly, spreading out into the hollow of bone and sinew, making bridges of muscle and tendons, knitting bits of bone back together, accelerating what would have taken his body weeks to accomplish into seconds.
Seifer lets out a strangled sound of pain, pulling away from her instinctively, the veins taut in his neck. "God," he swears. "What the hell are you doing?" He presses his hand against his shoulder, and she can feel his anger and confusion radiating off of him in waves, the residual agony from her procedure.
"How does it feel?" she asks, even though she knows that the soreness will be fading now. She can feel it receding- (the fuck is wrong with you?)
Anger is trickling away, drop by drop, as he flexes and stretches his arm carefully, his motions controlled, restrained. He winces at one point, and the jolt of surprise rushes through her.
"It's not completely fixed," she says. "There's a lot of damage. I just-"
He makes a fist, loosens it. "Beats the shit out of a month in a sling," he says, and the thank you he does not say aloud.