seventeen.
Not my boyfriend, you bitch.
She may be losing her mind, may be turning into something she is not, but there is one thing that Quistis Trepe keeps at the very core of her being, beneath muscles and magic and many, many field hours, and that is her SeeD rank.
She is a warrior, a killer, a gun for hire, and watching Rinoa fling Seifer across the expanse of the beach is enough to bring that fury to the surface. If he's dead, after all the effort Quistis has put in to keep him alive, safe...
Xu has always said that it would take the barest hint of a reason to eliminate Rinoa, the threat hovering over them all, and she would sleep easy for it. Quistis now understands what she means, how easy it would be to snap Rinoa's neck and take her out of the picture once and for all.
Friends or not. And she does like to consider Rinoa a friend, an ally, at least. You don't go through a war with someone and come out unscathed.
Rinoa is untrained, field-tested but not mercenary-cruel, and it is that cruelty in Quistis' bones that propels her forward, hands out
(claws out)
reaching for a slender throat.
There is a sharp searing pain across her cheek, a knife sailing in the space between them, one of Seifer's, and he is alive.
She has no time to touch on that right now.
Rinoa is a monstrous thing, wings and power and stardust that envelopes Quistis, and the world folds, folds again and again and again, and her hands tighten around Rinoa's throat as they fall into the space between.
xx
He has a Guardian Force and Lionheart, and there is absolutely nothing he can do when he breaches the space between the boardwalk and the sand, and Seifer is digging a hole, his frantic words a reptition of one syllable that sounds like nonsense until Squall gets within a few feet.
no no no no no no no no
There are no women on the beach, save for SeeDs and soldiers and a riot down by the docks.
"Almasy."
He reaches out, and Seifer punches him, one solid stroke to Squall's chin that sends his head sharply to the right, that causes him to swear and spit and taste blood on his tongue. It clears his head a little bit, though.
Seifer has always had the strangest timing.
"They're gone."
no no no no no
"Almasy."
He picks up a knife sitting on the sand, and offers it hilt-first to the man digging his own grave. Seifer pauses, stares at him warily, a cornered animal, and Squall Leonhart of all people knows how dangerous this beast can be.
The knife is snatched from his hand.
"Where are they?" Squall tries, he does, he tries so hard to keep his voice level, even, because there is blood on the boardwalk, the sand, and Rinoa's scent of magic in the air, all mixed with the pounding torrent of rain. He crouches, picks up a white feather half-buried.
It doesn't dissolve in his palm; it just sits there.
no no no no no no no
His fingers crush it before the storm can snatch it away.
He takes a step closer to Seifer, aware that they are exposed here, that the civil war raging on along Balamb's streets will hit them any moment, that this story could end so simply, a pair of bullets, a pair of gunshots.
Seifer is very, very still, hand white-knuckled around the knife. Any closer, and Squall may end up with it in his gut.
"We have to get to cover. Almasy. Listen to me. We need to get to the hotel. You need to come with me."
It is like talking down a man about to jump.
(Squall has to be honest, if he thought Almasy could tunnel down to where they've gone, he'd be in that hole himself, digging straight down to Centra, if necessary.)
xx
They hit solid earth, and the stench of flowers is everywhere.
Give it to me, Rinoa screams, and her words are ripped away in the howling wind. Give it back to me!
Quistis looks like every nightmare she has ever had, blue scrawled across her face and pupils stripped down to cat eyes, and the power is bleeding out of her, everywhere, everywhere, she can't even control it. She thinks she can, she thinks she's so brilliant, so smart-
She can't even hold onto this gift, this blessing, and the tendrils wrap around Rinoa's hands, her head, her body, invades, invades-
Rinoa fights for it, drags it back into her bones, laughing, laughing, even as she cannot breathe from the grip that Quistis had on her throat for what feels like an eternity.
It is not enough, it is not enough.
Ultimecia's madness is underwritten in the power, Edea's softness and the charms she uses to make a garden bloom where desert only grows. Adel's rage skims beneath the surface, a lurking shark.
Rinoa feels herself in all of it, feels her love and life and laughter and the whisper-beat of an unborn child's heart. Promise me, she breathes, promise me you'll always stay by my side.
She walks barefoot through the flowers, stems breaking beneath bare soles, gathering power instead of petals.
She needs more.
she understands now, why witches go mad for power
xx
she comes to in a flower field, in a desert,
in the white hot ruins of time compression.
in seifer's embrace, in the hothouse flora of the training center.
she is everywhere at once, she is nowhere.
hyne sits by his lotus pond and laughs at her.
trickster, fake, false prophet.
take it back.
she does not want this power, she has never wanted it, all she wants is to be a woman, not a monster. all she wants is to be human. all she wants is for this to end.
if rinoa wants it back that badly, she can have it.
(it doesn't work like that, little girl.)
i just want to go home.
xx
They fight and kill and slaughter, pushing their way through the battlefield, and Seifer has stolen a sword from someone, something short and broad-bladed. He has no qualms about looting a corpse, not anymore.
Not if it means Quistis will come back to him.
xx
She pushes herself to her feet, and the bloodlust is still hot, still searing beneath her skin. She wants this woman dead, she wants normalcy, she wants Seifer to be alive, to be by her side. Didn't Rinoa love him once, too?
One well-placed gunshot right between the eyes, she thinks. All of this could be over.
But she has no gun. She doesn't even have Save the Queen, just unbridled magic burning up her arms, beating behind her temples, the weight of wings against her back.
It almost feels like the setup to a joke. Two sorceresses walk into a room...
Quistis closes her eyes, breathes, exhales slowly.
"Rinoa- Rinoa, listen to me. We don't have to fight like this. We don't have to do this. Let's go home. We can get you some help."
take the power take the magic take it take it take it back
She feels her blue magic beneath Rinoa's stardust, feels Devour and Degenerator, wants it, craves it.
Rinoa has crossed that line, gone crazy for it, gone, gone.
Quistis relishes the feel of the power beneath her palms, loves the way it dissolves her foes with little more than a flick of her wrist.
But she does not want it. She never asked for it.
"Come on, Rinoa. Please. Please just take my hand, we can go back home. I'm sure Squall is looking for you."
She reaches out.
xx
i will never let you forget about me.