Chapter Text
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
- Fire and Ice, Robert Frost
All around him, the world burns.
Seifer Almasy stands in the middle of it all, reveling-- this is how it was always meant to be, this is what he’s always wanted. Destruction. Glory. The world to know him, to fear him.
(Funny, how the two concepts seem to always go hand in hand.)
Squall is in front of him now, brave in his terror-- Seifer must applaud him, it takes real balls to be scared to death and still come out swinging. But, it doesn’t matter, because he’s too weak, he’s too small . He's never been good enough. Never been willing to push the limits, to act outside of the framework, the rulebook.
The flame builds in Seifer’s palms, the spell is unleashed: an inferno that sucks all the oxygen from the whole wide world. Before him, below him, beneath him, Squall ignites, Squall burns, screaming, writhing, a hero thrown upon a pyre he’d never wanted, and should have expected all the same. Behind him, Rinoa, Quistis, Zell-- now they’re afraid, now they want to turn and run.
Flames find them, chase them, consume them.
Seifer throws his golden head back and laughs and laughs and--
--
-- he jolts upright in bed, abruptly, as if a gunshot has gone off next to his ear, with sweat streaming down his brow and the yell dying on his lips.
There are no noises from the other side of the wall, no SeeD jerked awake by his nightmares (this time, anyway), and for that, Seifer is relieved. At least, once he manages to get his heart back under control, swallowing the scream back down in his lungs where it can stay until he really needs it.
Relief is secondary.
The standard-issue blue quilted blanket is damp when he yanks it away from his bare chest-- at some point, the sheet that went with it was kicked off, a white bundle on the floor. It looks too much like it’s hiding something; Seifer bends, snatching it up to toss in the same vague direction of the blanket before he gets out of bed to cross the room on legs steadier than he actually feels. The room’s thermostat is set in the wall next to the door. He cranks it down to something more manageable (like off, because Garden’s environmental controls have always been a joke, and one gets no choice in temperature between “boiled alive” and “frozen Trabian tundra.” Seifer will take the latter over the former any day of the week-- at least he can produce his own heat.)
The HVAC system cries its own rattling death knell as it shuts off, obeying the turn of the dial.
Better? Not particularly. None of this is better. He’d rather be living in a tent on the goddamned beach than trapped in this room. Seifer throws open the lone bedroom window for good measure, shoving aside cheap plastic blinds to get at a latch that’s been accidentally painted shut one too many times between dormitory occupants; brute force makes it comply.
He’s not desperate enough to stick his whole head and shoulders out of the window, but he’s pretty close to it. Not that he’d admit that to fucking anyone.
And it turns out to be a good thing that he’s hanging half-outside, because he hears an insistent banging from outside the cramped bedroom. Less a polite knock, more an extremely annoyed one.
He’d bet the last five gil in his wallet that it’s Trepe.
Seifer stalks the fifty-ish feet from the bedroom door to the one being attacked, and presses the button to send it sliding open.
“ What, ” he demands of his unwanted guest-- can’t call her an intruder, unfortunately, because she lives here, too. Down the hall. Too close for comfort. That’s not gonna stop him from looming over her, glaring down at Quistis like she’s shown up right as he’s in the middle of something important. “It’s the middle of the night, Trepe. Fuck off.”
She is not in the least fazed by his attitude; he can only take comfort in the fact that he’s interrupted her beauty sleep, since she’s in her pajamas, a matched set with-- god. One hand extends, forefinger and thumb curling in to meet each other, and Seifer lets go with a solid flick against her breast, just because he can.
“Are those little moogles on your shirt? Damn, and here I thought you were an adult. Did you steal those from some junior cadet’s laundry?”
He'll give her credit; all she does is slap his hand away, a small flicker of anger sparking behind her glasses, gone almost as quickly as her expression schools itself back into neutrality.
“No, I did not. And I’m not going to fuck off; you know the drill. Cassidy reported shouting. I need to make sure you’re not doing anything untoward.” No mention of the idea that he might be in actual danger -- fat chance of that. Seifer’s not afraid of anyone, or any thing.
He sneers at her, stepping aside to leave her barely enough room to fit through the door, and gestures grandly into the dark behind him. “Be my guest.”
“Thanks.” God, she sounds like she even means it, squeezing past him into the room. Quistis finds the light switch, sending the whole place into brightness, illuminating his pathetic excuse for home.
Seifer’s glad he’s never been one for mess, watching her open doors, flicking the switch on in the bathroom and shutting it off again. The last thing he wants is for Quistis to start going through any of his stuff, pawing through his property like she’s entitled to it.
She reaches inside the open bedroom door, pausing for a second before she hits the switch.
“You don’t have any other visitors I should be aware of, do you?”
“Think I’d tell you ?” he snorts. Like anyone in this Garden would deign to sleep with him after what he’s done, at least no one wearing a uniform. “Nope, just me and my right hand as of late, Trepe. Knock yourself out.”
She hits the switch. The bedroom looks like a bedroom, bedding rumpled, yesterday’s clothes in a corner on the floor, the blinds clacking lightly in the breeze coming in through the open window. Hyperion’s case is the only thing really out of place, set open on the floor, its cushioning gray foam pulled out of it and piled on his desk. There’s a sharp utility knife, ubiquitously orange, set inside one of the half-finished cutouts.
He’d been working on upgrades, if she must know.
“You can’t have that,” she points out, picking up the knife and sliding the blade back down until it’s safe. Never mind the giant gunblade at her feet. “It’s against your terms of parole.”
“Hardly paroled, Trepe, with all of you in and out of here at your pleasure, going through all of my shit. Besides, what the hell else am I going to modify that case with? My teeth? A butter knife? You and I both know those terms are about as bullshit as the Garden Council could come up with.”
He knows what she’s really getting at, though.
“‘Sides, Hyperion’s a hell of a lot more effective if I were gonna stage a coup.”
She rolls her eyes-- if Garden had satellites trained on them, they’d probably be able to pick up on her dismissal from space. But the knife is set back down on the cheap pressboard desktop; small victories.
“Return it to whomever you borrowed it from, then, once you’re finished.”
Like his father will miss it, the knife nicked from Cid’s pencil cup when Seifer had been trapped in his office earlier that day, going through the motions of compliance and bored out of his skull the whole time.
“Sure. Promise.” He mocks a salute at her, finishes with the middle finger at her back as she slides open his closet, looking for-- what, he doesn’t know. Just being a bitch about things, probably, as she’s prone to do.
She’s apparently satisfied her curiosity a moment later, though, and turns back to face him. “So. Yelling. What was going on?”
“Watching porn,” comes the flippant reply. “Lot of creative videos on the Network the Trepies made of you, Trepe-- didn’t know you were such a screamer.”
Ah, yes. He’s made her cheeks turn pink, a frustrated blush she can’t control. Good. The Trepies are a weak spot in the Almighty Quistis Trepe’s armor, an easy target, but one still fun to hit nonetheless.
“Kidding. Mostly. You should really crack down on them, y’know.”
“ Seifer-- ”
He holds his hands up in mocking defense, and lets her have one straight answer-- if nothing else, it’ll hopefully pacify her enough to go away.
“Okay, okay. I had a fucking crappy dream, if you must know. Don’t think it’s a crime to react to what my subconscious decides to play while I’m asleep.”
“About?”
“I’m not telling you.”
He doesn’t have to, either. She’s not a court-mandated therapist, she’s not even his Instructor anymore, much less his friend, and she can try to pull rank all she wants, but Seifer’s not a SeeD, so that means exactly shit to him.
“You happy? Satisfied you got to go through all my shit, or do you wanna look in my fridge, too? Maybe rifle through my underwear or something while you’re at it?”
Quistis sighs, exasperation in the exhalation, shoving some of her hair behind one ear as she glares up at him. There’s a fingerprint smudge on one lens of her glasses, he notices. It’s shocking that she’d allow herself to leave her room in such a state of disarray, really.
“Could you, for just one second , shut up and let people do their jobs? I was assigned to look after you, and that includes when I get reports of random screams coming from your dorm at 0200, Seifer.”
“What’re you gonna do ? Put my bad attitude in your report to dear old Dad? It’s not exactly a state secret, but if it makes you and that stick jammed up your ass happy, knock yourself out--”
She wants to punch him. He can see it in the way the muscles in her arms tense, the way her fingers tighten around her phone. She wants, so badly that she radiates it from every inch of her, to deck him-- and hell, maybe he wants her to do it. Maybe Seifer’s just itching for a fight , a really good knock-down, drag-out brawl with someone who might actually be a relatively decent match for him. God and Squall Leonhart alone know that Garden keeps sending him off on jobs that a first-year student could do unaided, wasting all of his skills, refined and honed at their hands, because Seifer on their leash is better than Seifer on anyone else’s.
Or worse, off a leash entirely.
She’s working it over-- she’s still considering her options, weighing consequences against the actions. Seifer straightens himself up, drawing away from the door frame to stabilize himself, just in case.
But then she opens her mouth instead of a good right hook, and he’s disappointed, he realizes. Just a little, but still.
“You’re an asshole.”
Seifer’s laugh is barking, brief. “Clever. You hurt that big brain of yours coming up with that one?”
She shoves past him, shoulder-checking him hard on the way, and he locks the door behind her once she’s out entirely.
--
Asshole!
She doesn’t regret saying it, because it’s true. Quistis tries not to swear, save for when it’s appropriate, but with Seifer Almasy, it seems like she could let loose an entire litany of what she thought of him, and it would all be appropriate.
There isn’t enough room in all of Garden for him and his ego, she thinks in frustration, stalking back down the hall to her dorm, punching in the key code, fingers jamming hard enough against the buttons that her knuckles whiten briefly with each press. The door opens, allowing her entry-- Quistis doesn’t wait for it to open all the way, just slides in and hits the override to shut it again before it can complete its cycle, locking the rest of Garden out.
Why did Squall push so hard, for Seifer to not spend the rest of his life in a cage? Quistis had made her peace with that, the idea that the worst punishment they could inflict on him would be putting him in a small box and never letting him see the sun again. He would deserve it, too, after everything he had done.
Possessed or not, crazy or not, the atrocities Seifer Almasy had waged were too monumental to simply sweep under the rug.
So Squall had fought, and argued, and enlisted the entirety of Garden’s legal team trying to find a loophole, and it had fallen all on Quistis’ shoulders, a redemption for her Instructorship being revoked so unceremoniously. If she could put him on a right path, make him see reason, get him to work in Garden’s best interests instead of his own, she could have her license back, she could teach again.
It’s hardly worth it, if I have to deal with that every minute of the day!
Is it too late now to send a curt message to Squall and tell him just where exactly he can shove her Instructor’s license?
She’s irritated, enough so that when she throws herself back down onto her bed, dragging her comforter up high over her shoulders, it’s impossible to sleep, tossing and turning and scowling into her pillow until the alarm finally goes off a few hours later. There isn’t enough coffee in the whole of the world to shake the weariness from her shoulders, but Quistis shoves herself through it, past it. She’s a SeeD, and she’s survived on less.
Recently, even.
She dresses for battle, dragging herself from the semi-comfort of her bed, through a shower cold enough to burn, into practical combat fatigues, muted blue and black. They’re clothes she doesn’t have to think about.
“Latte?” Michele Xu asks, catching up with her halfway to the lobby, and Quistis is still fuming enough that she doesn’t hear her the first time.
“Sorry. What?”
“Do you want this, or not?” Xu is still waiting for an answer, or at least an acceptance, one eyebrow up as she continues to hold out a white paper go-cup that is still steaming through the tiny hole in the plastic lid, a commonplace incongruity to the elaborate rifle that’s slung across her back.
Quistis doesn’t care about the gun; Xu’s coffee maker is a thing of wonder, imported from Galbadia and worth more than most people’s cars. She will never turn down coffee from her, even if this one she drains half of in two gulps.
The milk burns her throat, but the espresso backed in sweet cinnamon flavor is worth it.
“You’re my hero.”
Xu shrugs, and shifts the strap of her gun across her chest. “You may want to retract that statement in about thirty seconds-- I had to revise the squad. Leonhart’s down with the goddamned flu.”
She must be more tired than she even knows-- it takes Quistis an extra few seconds to follow that train of thought to its inevitable destination.
“Oh. Oh, no, Xu. No. No, no, no.”
Xu nods sympathetically. “I know. I hate him, too, but he’s the only tank I could scrounge up on short notice with the practical experience.” She outpaces Quistis as they head through the security checkpoint, squeezing her shoulder on the way past. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ll shoot him if he steps out of line.”
Quistis scowls into her latte. It’s a beautiful day, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and she’s got to put up with Seifer goddamned Almasy on a mission that’s already complicated enough without factoring him and his ego into the equation.
He’s beaten them to the front gate, sunglasses on, leaning against the cement pillar with Hyperion’s case at his feet, looking completely at ease despite the fact that every single person in this school would kill him, given enough opportunity.
Oh, to be at the head of that particular line. Quistis finishes her coffee, the empty cup finding its mark in one of the discrete waste bins along their route. She wishes she could just throw it at his stupid head.
“I’d feel better if I could do it.”
She’d even deal with the paperwork that would come after. With pleasure.