eleven
The sound a body makes when it crashes into brick is a cross between a satisfying thwack and a soft, squishy thud, depending on if they're wearing a heavy coat and if you're deliberately going for the head.
He slams the SeeD against the wall, glaring up into eyes that have gone wide with shock and surprise, and, some goddamned training program, because Seifer thinks this one might've peed himself a little.
There isn't an answer immediately, mostly because the SeeD is gaping like a fish, and he shoves again, pushing the man against the worn bricks, feeling the pulse of heartbeat on his knuckles.
"Where?" he repeats, and the word comes out a roar.
"She- she left. A few hours ago. Going right, then left, and then Jensen picked up her trail."
Seifer tightens his grip on the fistfuls of beige suit coat, and narrows his eyes. "Where the fuck is Jensen?"
"Thirty-second and B-Branch." The SeeD pulls at Seifer's hands ineffectually, grabbing for thumbs or fingers, something to break; from behind him, Fujin clears her throat mildly.
Seifer snarls, and drops the SeeD, but not before shoving him once more for good measure.
"If you're wrong..." he says, but there's no need to finish the sentence, because the SeeD is already hightailing it out of the narrow alleyway, probably off to make a report to Xu or change his pants. Or both.
"Weak," Fujin comments, watching him go, but Seifer only snarls in agreement and stalks out of the alley, feeling the adrenaline beating through his veins, a heartbeat, a woman's scream, her voice whispering his name in the dark-
xx
Her back hurts, and she can smell the coppery tang of blood. Somewhere behind her, there is the drip drop drip of something wet, hitting the cold metal floor.
Her shoes are missing, she realizes distantly, curling her toes up under the balls of her feet. They don't want you to run.
-she isn't the one-
The voice echoes through, tinnily, broadcast from somewhere very far away. She lifts her head and tilts her ear and tries to catch the rest of the sentence, but the words come through murkily.
There is a needle in her arm, held down with a pristine white X of medical tape, and she traces the line coming out of it up, up, up, to where it loops through a narrow hole in the wall and disappears. The fluid running through it is blue, like a cure spell.
(Pretty, whispers a little-girl voice at the back of her mind. Pretty, look at the fireworks, isn't it pretty-, she says, and her burnt-blonde hair is bound up in pigtails, streaming in the wind coming off of the sea as she points up in the sky. Look how pretty it is.)
That first horrible moment of panic has already ebbed and gone, roaring away on the wave of the stuff they're running through her- she cannot think, cannot make sense of this, cannot understand.
Sei-
The word hangs on her lips, distant, dusty, hard to recall.
-how do you expect me to tell the difference, they look alike-
-i gave you a picture, how do you explain the-
Her eyes roll up, to the side, toward that little hole that the tube runs through. The voices are angry, terse, a male and a female with a crisp accent she thinks might be Estharian.
There are bands of thick nylon across her chest and her arms, their rough sides biting into her forearms when she tries to lift her hands (there is no escape, no escape).
She flexes against the low back of the chair, feeling where it bites into the center of her spine. Something rustles behind her, and the pain in her shoulders intensifies for one white-hot flare of a second, and then dissipates. Some brace, then, on her back, some machine that she can't fight against, something ground into her skin.
The word word word, what is the word-
-fer
She makes a fist, digging her nails into her palms, trying to work past the feeling of cotton wrapped around her brain. Cure, she thinks, as hard as she can, digging within her for that reservoir of power, cure, curecurecuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure-
Sei-
It surges up from within her, and stalls out halfway through her chest.
No.
She tries again.
The spell stops, splinters apart, the shards blowing away to places unknown.
Nononono-
There is the sound of footsteps, coming from the direction of the voices, of the wires, of the tiny hole in the wall. One-two-three-four-five-six-
-fer
it takes them seventeen paces to get to the door directly in front of her, and she stares at it, narrowing her eyes in concentration, because this is it, this is her one chance, she has to get out of here, what do they want-
A clinking, scraping of metal, and the door unlocks, swinging open widely, revealing a short woman in a white lab coat, with a face that looks vaguely familiar.
"Hello," she says, and it is the same woman, her voice the clipped, accented Estharian tone that is so, so familiar- a clown collar and a machine? "How are you doing, Rinoa?"
The name weeds through the clouds around her mind and strikes a chord.
Wake up, wake up, that's not your name, is it?
That's not my name-
That's not-
And from behind her comes the rustling again, the tug of weight on her shoulderblades, and it sounds like feathers.
xx
seifer-seifer-seifer
It slams into him, a train to his chest, and he has to stop in the middle of the street, amidst a cacophony of horns and shouts, his breath coming in short, tight wheezes- no no no, not my name not my name notmyname, an icy balm of a spell stuttering out and the copper taste of blood-
"Seifer!" Fujin's voice, a shout, distant, coming from forever away, and she is pulling his arm, dragging him out of the street and to the safety of the curb, where he sits down hard on the concrete.
In, out, in, out, in, out-
It is like swallowing a blizzaga, a frigid bomb shoved down his throat that will blow up at any second if he can't start fucking breathing-
-look, look, isn't it pretty, seifer, aren't they pretty fireworks-
-the adult in you is telling you to back off-
Inhale: a room, concrete, tiny, bars everywhere, metal glinting with peculiar silver.
Exhale: a woman with a fox-face and something blue, everywhere, blue.