Four
"Dig faster."
Xu clenched the shovel tighter, refused to look at the soldier who addressed her, and continued to slowly dig a rectangular hole in the ground as she'd been ordered.
She tried in vain not to think of its purpose, but there was no way to deny what it was for. The weak did not last long around here.
"Inmate, did you hear me?"
Maybe, if they fed her more often than every other day, she might pick up the pace, but they forced her to dig for hours at gun-point, without a break or water to stave off dehydration and exhaustion. This was her sixth hole of the day and her muscles burned like fire and her vision occasionally blurred at the edges. Her skin was flushed with sunburn and her stomach tightened like a vice every time she thought of the next meal.
To hell with them and their grave-digging quota.
"I told you to dig faster," the soldier said. He seized her arm and his fingers dug into her flesh. "You deaf?"
Xu, at the end of her rope, turned to him and swung the shovel with all the strength she could muster. It collided against the side of his face with a satisfying thrum and he sank to his knees in the mud beside her.
There was a split second of perverse pleasure at seeing him go down before Xu was taken to the ground by a soldier twice her size. She smiled into the dirt as they cuffed her wrists behind her back.
They could beat her, starve her, and lock her in a filthy pen, but she would sooner die than let them break her. No matter what, she would continue to resist for as long as they allowed her to live.
In the hours that followed, there were a few times when she wished she was dead, but death was not a mercy they offered her. She didn't cry or scream or let on this was any different from the hours spent in the pen with the other prisoners. She kept her eyes open and memorized their faces and waited for it to be over. Somewhere along the way, she lost consciousness.
When she woke, dawn was on the horizon and the air smelled of shit and rain and moldy hay. Her battered, bruised body was cradled against someone kind enough to care that she couldn't care for herself. Everything hurt and it was hard to breathe.
As she blinked away the dregs of sleep, she shifted and caught the scent of something antiseptic. She tried to lift her head off the bony arm it lay against, but it weighed a ton.
"Shh. You're okay."
Selphie.
Xu attempted to sit up, but a wicked pain split across her entire right side and left her breathless and shaking.
"Don't move," Selphie murmured. "It'll only hurt more."
Xu did not remember being brought back here. She was sure they would kill her when they were done reminding her of what happened to rebels.
There was more relief in being alive than she thought. It was a miracle her heart still beat. Twice now, she witnessed women who chose to resist taken just a few feet outside the pen, put on their knees and -
Xu would not think about that. She was lucky, but not grateful they spared her.
Selphie lifted her head and peered around the camp, then retrieved a bottle of something from the bodice of her shift. She uncapped it and pressed it to Xu's lips.
"Drink it, quick!"
Xu didn't ask what it was and parted her lips to receive it. Selphie tipped the contents into her mouth and Xu recognized the flavor – bitter with a hint of something sweet like nectar and thick like syrup.
A potion.
Xu swallowed it down in one gulp. Almost immediately, the pain in her ribs lessened and it took the sting out of the worst of her bruises. It didn't completely repair the damage, but it was enough to ease her labored breaths and quench the fire in her broken bones.
"Where did you get that?" Xu asked.
"They had me scrubbing bed pans and stuff at the infirmary," Selphie whispered. "I might have nicked a few things when their backs were turned."
Thank Hyne for Selphie's fearlessness. She might be small and she might not know when to shut up, but Xu was glad the girl had guts. Stealing supplies was sure to carry a similar punishment to the one Xu received, if not a bullet to the back of the skull.
"Too bad you couldn't get your hands on a grenade."
"Well..."
Xu peered up at her unlikely ally and even in the dim morning light, could see a bit of victorious mischief in her face.
"What?" Xu asked.
"Shh. They're coming back," Selphie hissed.
Xu feigned sleep as footfalls neared, boot soles against shallow puddles and gravel, and she forced herself to relax. Beside her, Selphie took slow, deep breaths that Xu felt against her scalp.
Some how, some way, they had to get out of here or die trying.
Xu wondered if there was a home in Centra waiting for her if she escaped. Up until now, the war did not have much impact on her life and she paid little attention to the news. Her struggles were of the kind where she didn't have the luxury of fretting over what politician implemented what restriction or what policy Vinzer Deling decided to enforce. It was hard enough just to survive on a waitress salary, and just like back home, there were days and weeks when she went without. The war seemed an abstract thing that was none of her concern, until it was.
Did Seifer step up after she left? Or was it Quistis who took charge? Were they okay? Had the war reached Centra?
For the first time since she left, she felt guilty for taking off. At the time, she was so fed up with the role Cid forced her into, she saw no other option but to leave or forever be responsible for a bunch of other people who resented her every effort.
As the footfalls faded, Xu wondered if Selphie remembered, or if she was too young when she left to recall where she came from. Once or twice, Xu almost reminded her, but then didn't because the girl seemed so fond of her family, it would be a tragedy to shatter that illusion for her.
Best to leave it be.
Selphie scooted down until they were face to face and withdrew something else from the bodice of her shift.
"Hyne, do you have a secret locker in there?" Xu whispered.
Selphie grinned and put the object in Xu's hand. It was a long, cylindrical tube, roughly an inch thick with a plastic pull-tab on the bottom.
"Is this what I think it is?"
"Yep," Selphie said.
"They had a stash of flares just sitting around in the infirmary?"
"Might have fallen off the back of a truck," Selphie said.
"Has anyone ever told you, you're insane?"
"Once or twice," Selphie said. Her stomach rumbled, and she pressed a hand against it. "I hope they feed us today."
Xu's stomach clenched in response. "You and me both, kid."
Rinoa kept the handgun trained on Irvine as he steered the car down a dirt road the map said would connect them to a trade route to Timber. He played it cool, no big deal, but he was used to being on the other side of the barrel, not the one in the cross-hairs.
He doubted Rinoa would actually shoot him. He doubted she even knew how to use the weapon, but that didn't make it any less nerve-wracking.
Irvine should have anticipated her impromptu change of plan, but his talents were not of the strategic or tactical variety. He was a good shot with a rifle. Nothing more, nothing less. Now, he was a hostage and it was his own damn fault. If he was smart, he would have expected this.
"Take the next left," Rinoa said.
Irvine obeyed and eased the car onto the intersecting road.
"So," he drawled, "what's your plan, Rin? You even have one?"
"We're going to help the resistance," she said. "In any way we can."
Boy, she was naive. On an intellectual level, Irvine appreciated Rinoa's desire to help the victims of the war, but he also saw the value in laying low. She was the daughter of a wealthy man, a girl who never wanted for a thing or went to bed hungry, and she didn't know what it was really like out there. For all her noble intentions, she was unprepared for the future that awaited them, or the risk she was about to take.
He slowed and pulled onto the shoulder of the road and put the car in park.
"I didn't tell you to stop," she said.
"Look, Rin, this is a really bad idea," he said. "I respect you taking the initiative and all, but I didn't sign up for this. All I was supposed to do was take you to dinner, not become an accessory to... whatever this is."
Rinoa didn't waver.
"I know you're not going to shoot me," he said. "Put the gun down."
"No."
"Come on, you don't even know how to use that thing."
"I don't think you want to find out if that's true or not," she said.
"Well, why don't you drive for a while? I'm gettin' kinda tired."
"I don't know how to drive."
"Your old man never taught you?"
"Are you kidding? He barely taught me how to tie my shoes," she said. "You think he ever bothered with anything else?"
Irvine sighed and slid his eyes back to the windshield.
"Then what makes you think you can survive out there on your own?" he wondered. "You grew up with privileges the rest of the world didn't get, Rin. You had housekeepers to do your laundry and make your bed and clean up after you. You got regular meals and nice clothes and you don't know a lick about what goes on outside the walls of your daddy's fortress."
Rinoa stared at him, aghast.
"Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but if you think for one second the people of Timber are going to welcome you with open arms just because you climbed down from your ivory tower, you're sadly mistaken," he said as kindly as he could. "If anything, you're more valuable as a hostage, and don't think there won't be a few of them that would use you against your father."
She opened her mouth, closed it, and her nostrils flared.
"They don't need to know," she said after a beat.
"Just some food for thought," he said. "Figure, if you're going to play rebel princess, then someone needed to give you a heads-up. Like I said, it's real noble and all that you want to help, but I'm not sure this is the way to go."
"How would you do it?"
"I'd stay out of it," he said. "Keep my head down, play by the rules, and maybe throw a monkey wrench in from the inside when I could get away with it."
"So you're all talk and no action."
He reached over, seized her wrist and twisted it until she released the pistol. He snatched it with his free hand and received an armful of scratches in return as Rinoa attempted to reclaim the weapon. Pinkish-lines raised along his forearm and two of them began to bleed.
"I'm still here, ain't I?" he said, pocketed the weapon and started the car.
Zell poked his head out from under the hood of their rusted, beat-up truck and held out his hand. Fujin placed the appropriate socket in his palm and he grunted his thanks.
The damn truck was on its last legs and pissing oil from somewhere, and he wasn't too sure he could fix it this time. It had too many miles on it, and there wasn't enough money to maintain but the most basic of things, and they definitely couldn't afford to put a quart in a half in it every week, just to keep it running, even with Squall and Seifer's weekly income.
He tightened the engine cover and passed the tool back to Fujin with a disgruntled sigh.
"I guess we'll drive it until it breaks down," he said. "Can't find where the leak is."
"MAINSEAL?"
"Doesn't look like it, and there's no oil around the spark plugs," he said. "Probably a line, but I can't find it."
"JUNK."
"Just like everything else around here," he said and closed the hood. "Hey Fu? What do you think about those guys that came the other day? The Estharians."
Fujin leaned against the bumper and shrugged.
"Think it's bad that I wanna join up?" he asked. "I'm kinda, you know, thinking about it."
"GOOD."
Zell chewed his lip and perched on the bumper beside her. It was all he thought about the last day or two. How nice it would be to have regular meals and a purpose. He wasn't positive Esthar could be trusted, but there was that old saying about the enemy of your enemy being a friend. In this case, Zell was inclined to side with the guys that weren't trying to invade every continent on the planet.
Not that Zell thought much about the war until those guys showed up. He paid close attention to the news from the radio after they left, and what he heard scared him. People were dying for fighting back. They were dying because they were hungry and sick and the Galbadian government didn't care about them unless they pledged loyalty to Deling.
The Estharian's were right. How long before the war came to Centra?
If he joined their cause, maybe it wouldn't. Nobody knew much about Esthar, but Zell was pretty sure, they weren't the bad guy.
"How 'bout you?" he asked. "You thinking about it?"
"THINKING," she said with a nod.
"You leaning toward a yes or a no?"
"YES."
"Yeah," Zell agreed. "Quis wants to go, too. And Raijin. Think Seifer will join up if we all decide to go?"
Fujin turned thoughtful, cocked her head and and shook it.
"Why not?" Zell asked. "He'd do pretty good as a soldier, don't you think? He'd wanna be the boss and stuff, but I bet if he put his mind to it, he'd do all right."
"ELLONE."
Zell never quite understood what that was about. Squall, sure. Zell understood why Squall would miss her. Ellone was his sister, or his cousin on his mother's side or something, Zell wasn't sure which, but Seifer, after all this time, was still really attached. Seifer, who didn't give a damn about much, bordered on obsession when it came to Ellone, even though he never talked about it.
It was something that became a running joke in the house. Whenever Seifer disappeared for a while, even if he'd gone out with some girl, they blamed it on Ellone.
"Think she'll ever come back?" Zell wondered.
"YES."
Surprised by her answer, Zell pushed away from the bumper and looked at her.
"Really?"
"YES," she said, and pointed past the cliff to the horizon, where a ship with a rear-facing sail was moored just off the reef. "SEE?"
It was well after dark when the small rowboat came ashore. In the distance, the lights of the ship winked like stars and left the barest suggestion of its source against the night sky.
Seifer stood back near the rocks, his posture an unconscious mirror of Squall's. Both waited with their arms crossed over their chests as the others edged closer to the shoreline in anticipation of a reunion.
...hope Cid can help...
He could barely make out the shapes in the boat, but he counted three figures. A man in a white uniform. Matron with her long hair flying like tangled serpents in the wind.
And Ellone.
In Seifer's limbs was an unfamiliar buzz, almost like an electrical current that hummed in his blood. In his head, pieces of her thoughts flickered in and out - an unhinged Matron with eyes the color of gold and ocher., bad dreams of a place full of horrors that could not be real, inhuman wails of pain and rage.
….stop what's coming...
Seifer shivered in the wind and cast a sidelong glance at Squall. The younger boy's expression gave nothing away, but his tense posture and clenched jaw echoed Seifer's own feelings on their return.
"How long have you known?" Squall murmured. "That they were coming back?"
"I always knew," Seifer said. "Said it a thousand times, didn't I."
Squall tightened his folded arms over his chest and nodded at the sea.
"Guess you did."
Zell was the first to greet them. He barreled into the surf, his shoes still on, and lifted Ellone from the boat with a whoop. He slung her around to his back to carry her to shore, freakishly strong for his size. He didn't even sway under the weight of a woman who weighed only a little less than himself.
A woman. Ellone left as a young teen, but she returned to him a grown woman.
Had she, like Seifer, sought the comfort of others to kill the longing? Did it leave her with only a temporary reprieve? Did someone love her?
Seifer remained where he was and watched while Raijin and the young man in the boat assisted Matron to the shore. Squall took a few steps forward, then stopped. Like Seifer, he was wary of this, of what it meant, and why they were here after so long.
Matron moaned as Raijin scooped her up and carried her to the sand. Seifer wondered if she was ill.
….getting worse...worse...Cid will fix this...
Whatever Cid had to do with it, Seifer doubted he could fix anything. He barely acknowledged Squall's request to join them, and instead stayed behind in his room with his face to the wall.
Quistis fawned over Ellone as if she wasn't four years younger but a sixty-year-old spinster, and Seifer smirked to himself, though he wasn't surprised.
The buzzing grew stronger the closer Ellone came, and along with it, the throb of a heartbeat that wasn't his own.
As if she sensed Seifer's reluctance, she went to Squall first, and Seifer caught a glimpse of moonlight reflected in her tears as she looked Squall over.
"Hyne, you look like your mother," she said in wonder. "You're so tall. I bet the girls just fall all over you."
"Not really," Squall said.
They might, if not for his distant nature and his obvious, abject poverty. Even Seifer noticed before he quit, how the girls at school stared. Squall either pretended he didn't see it, or he was too wrapped up in his own head to pay attention.
Squall's throat bobbed and his lips pressed into a thin line. He said nothing else and flinched when she reached out to lay a hand to the side of his face. Ellone took a step back and turned her gaze to the sand.
Behind her, Matron shrieked at the sky and raked her nails down the side of Raijin's face. Raijin squawked and pressed his palm to his cheek, stunned by the attack.
Ellone turned away and rushed to Matron's side, drew her away with gentle hands and soft words that Seifer couldn't hear over the woman's wretched sobs.
This must be the reason they were back. Not because Ellone craved him the way he craved her. Not because she missed her family.
That burned him from the inside out. To be presented with a thing he needed and could not have was like tempting a starving dog with a piece of meat, only to take it away after a solitary bite.
She did not come back for him. He wondered if she ever planned to, if not for the madwoman she brought with her.
Whatever she said calmed Matron, but the woman sunk into the sand in a heap of black fabric and folded in on herself. She rocked back and forth, murmuring in a language Seifer didn't recognize.
Ellone stood and wiped her hands over her face, then returned to Squall. She bowed her head again and clasped a sheer wrap tighter around her shoulders. Seifer fought the instinct to shield her from the wind, dug in his heels, and waited for her to acknowledge him directly.
"I'm sorry I was gone so long," Ellone said. "Please don't be angry. It wasn't my choice."
Squall's nod was barely perceptible, and he patted her arm awkwardly, then leaned in to press his lips to her forehead.
"Welcome home, Sis."
How easily he forgave her. Seifer wasn't sure he could do the same.
It wasn't her absence Seifer resented. It was her presence. Not here, not now, but the one he could never shake, that tie that bound him for as long as he could remember. It flared in his chest and demanded answers to questions he couldn't ask her now.
When she turned her eyes on him, it faded. Before him stood a slightly older version of the girl he remembered, but not much changed in the years apart. Her face was still more cute than pretty, and her frame was delicate and a bit coltish. Not much meat on her, but for as fragile as she looked, he sensed something deeper and stronger, something beyond the eye's perception that said her will was as solid as steel.
She didn't need to tell him how much he changed in that time. The last time she laid eyes on him, he was barely five feet tall and still a child. Now he towered over her, nearly a foot taller, barrel chested and strong as a ruby dragon.
….forgive me...
That abandoned child went to war with what Seifer knew to be true. It was not her fault she left, but she left him behind without a fight. She bonded to him before he could spell his own name, took his free will before he could give his consent to belong.
"Why?" was the only word he could manage.
Ellone didn't give an answer. Not the verbal kind, and not the kind only he could hear. She just stared.
"We should get Edea inside," she finally said and broke eye contact. "We'll talk later."
He followed at a distance, and in the darkness, he swore there was an aura around both Sorceresses. Not quite a color, more like the impression of a color, a suggestion that only Seifer could see. It trailed behind them in waves, like heat off blacktop, the shimmery mirage of water in the desert.
Red-violet for Matron. A frosty blue-green for Ellone.
Now, more than ever, he felt the ties that tethered him to her. For so many years, he longed for her to come back, and now everything in him rejected it.
As if she sensed his conflict, Ellone paused on the steps and turned to face him.
He ached to be by her side. He yearned to be set free.
But he wasn't sure which he wanted more.
