Author's Note: Arrgggh! Evil Bitch-Queen From Hell alert! No-oo-oo-oo-oo! Though, she’s actually kind of being intelligent here. OOC? Maybe; be she is just a plot device anyway, so... whatever. But perhaps I’ll change her to one of the others... there’s a scene for later which this just really doesn’t gel with. And gomen to all you Vasquez fans for the "Damn shit fuck and other such expletives" line.

Feedback: This is my first major fanfic (I’m not really a fanfic writin’ kinda gal) and the longest single coherent piece I’ve ever wirtten, so be nice...

DISCLAIMER: Characters of Final Fantasy VIII are the property of Squaresoft. Don’t sue.

Futureloop

Chapter Four - The Homecoming Queen’s Got A Gun

By Devi Dee

It took Rinoa almost the whole day to worm out of Zell where Squall had run off to so suddenly and completely, and when she finally did find out, she really wished she hadn’t.

He’d gone to get Seifer.

What was he thinking?

Was he insane?

But, of course, Rinoa already knew the answer to that and it frightened her. Frightened her more than she knew how to express. She’d only noticed it after the War, after everything began settling down again, but once she had it was impossible to ignore. Something wasn’t wired quite right inside her dear boyfriend’s head. What everyone took to be a general case of the introvert actually ran far, far deeper; right down into a core which, Rinoa had realised with growing horror, was just as cold as it pretended to be. Squall saw things strangely, saw things in terms of total shades of grey. He had absolutely no innate morality at all, absolutely no remorse. He was cold and cruel and strange and alien, not from circumstance so much as makeup.

Sociopathic, maybe. But he wasn’t stupid. Wasn’t, dare she put it, dangerous under normal working conditions. He wasn’t about to go on a giant killing spree just for the hell of it - he was strange, not sadistic. And while it was indeed true that he should come with a label marked "Warning: Does Not Play Well With Others" - and, in fact, now did thanks to a t-shirt bought as a joke birthday present which had seemed hilarious at the time but now only chilled her whenever she saw him wear it - while that was indeed true, he could pull together and work in a group when he had to, and he was good at it.

He was, she’d realised one day as she’d watched him tenderly clean and sharpen his gunblade, exactly like the weapon he wielded. Strange, difficult, beautiful and very, very deadly. Not good, not evil, just a tool; and a criminally efficient one at that.

Squall seemed the diametric opposite of the hot-headed, egotistical, daydreaming boy he’d taken off so readily to collect; and yet, the more you got to know either of them, the more similarities you saw. Like the twin scars they wore, slanting in different directions across their otherwise flawless faces. Scars which, had they the presence of mind to press them together, would have appeared as indistinguishable mirror-images. An anchor which linked them both.

She’d realised it almost the moment she’d met them both, but had pushed it to the back of her mind, the thought too disturbing for her to want to think it. Because, when you did think about it, you realised that Squall and Seifer really weren’t two different people at all. As if, by some fatalistic twist, their joint soul had been sundered in two before birth; each gaining the qualities the other lacked, only truly making sense when you considered one in the light of the other.

Hell, they even looked more-or-less the same; give or take a bit of height and some hair.

Which was what scared her about having them both together again. Especially now, after everything they’d both done; to themselves and to others. Things would either turn out badly, or...

Either way, she knew she was out of the picture. Had never really been in the picture as anything other than a small-yet-intriguing artefact to be picked up and studied for a time before being forgotten. She’d tried - god how she’d tried - to get Squall to stay. To rummage about until she found something even remotely human in the bottom of those impossible eyes, but had pulled up blank and isolated him in the process. Now he’d gone to get the one thing which would either save or destroy him; maybe both if fate was feeling especially angst-ridden. Something he could understand. Something which was like himself but different enough to prove interesting.

But she still didn’t like it.

Not one little bit.

It was late in the afternoon when the Ragnarok had landed in the quad with the inelegant thud of the autopilot. When it had just sat there, unmoving, for a few minutes, people had grown apprehensive and a squad had been sent in to open the ship up by force. They were armed and prepared for the worst, but were offered up no resistance by the two unconscious bodies inside. Both were immediately shipped off to the Infirmary, though there had been some discussion about sending the ex-Sorceress’ Knight to the holding cells, but Dr. Kadowaki would have none of it. So they’d settled on posting an armed guard outside his room; which the good Doctor didn’t like either, but agreed to reluctantly, until the Commander had woken and irritably shooed them away before collapsing again.

The Doctor just tutted at them both. This time they almost had killed each other. It wouldn’t have been the first time, though something about the wounds and the way they’d been found curled against each other suggested, to her mind at least, that perhaps this would be the last; and thank Hyne for small favours. Or large ones, as the case may be. But Cure worked wonders, and the Commander had woken up properly bright and early the next day, changing into the clothes Rinoa had left for him; dark denim jeans and that disturbing "Warning: Does Not Play Well With Others" t-shirt. Kadowaki had admonished him not so much for getting into the fight he must have known was coming, but doing so without any obvious preparation whatsoever.

He’d just shrugged an apology, sworn it would never happen again and asked about her other patient.

"He’ll be fine," she’d said, and he’d nodded his thanks and left.

When he was gone, she’d sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose irritably and realised it was probably about time she retired.

Everywhere I walked there was only one thing buzzing; The Sorceress’ Knight was back.

Nobody could figure out why, and the rumours ran thick and fast. He was being punished, executed, imprisoned. The Sorceress hadn’t really been destroyed. He was really the Sorceress in disguise. There was something new going on and his help was required. They seemed to get crazier the longer the day wore on. Word had gotten around that I’d refused to have him guarded while in the Infirmary; does that mean he’ll be allowed to walk around Garden freely? Will he be re-enrolling as a student? Promoted to a SeeD? Then there was the way in which we’d been found. Why had we been fighting? Why were we curled so tightly around each other that they’d had difficulty prising us apart? Who’d won the fight? Done the most damage?

I grew so sick of being asked for my reasons that I eventually replaced my silence with another question; "Well, what do you think?" When no-one gave the right answer, I just turned around and left. Suddenly, it grew into a fabulous game; Guess Why The Commander Has Brought Back The Sorceress’ Knight And Win A Prize!

So I retreated into the office - no nosey students allowed, thank you very much.

Unfortunately, I’d apparently forgotten I now had nosey friends as well.

"I want to guess."

"Huh?" I looked up from where I was settled down on the couch, staring out over the balcony at the Balamb countryside beyond.

It was Quistis, of course.

Okay then. "Well, what do you think?"

She grinned that grin she gets when she’s about to reveal to me some deep dark secret of my inner psyche that she’s just worked out. Ever the nosey older sister type was our dear Quistis.

"I think you went to go get him because you were lonely."

Damn fuck shit and other such expletives. I hate it when she’s right.

"A-hah! Bingo, yes?"

"..."

"I thought so."

Either she’d been talking to Zell or I was getting more and more transparent. I just stared back at her impassively, maybe now she’d so cunningly wrung my confession out of me she’d just piss off. No such luck.

"It’s not going to be easy for him being back here," she said, pushing aside my feet to sit herself down on the arm of the couch. "He’s not a very well-liked guy."

"So?"

("He wasn’t particularly well-liked before, either.")

She sighed. "It’s not going to be like it used to be, Squall, and you should know that."

I did. Really, I did.

"He’s got a year before he’ll be too old to take the SeeD test," I said.

("There are only so many rules I can break for him without people getting too uptight.")

"And what if he doesn’t want to be a SeeD anymore? Hypothetically speaking, of course."

What? Seifer, not wanting to be a SeeD? The thought was so alien it took a long time for me to roll it over in my head before it registered.

"Have you even bothered to ask him?"

"..."

("Why are you so concerned with him all of a sudden?")

She just looked at me funny. Of course she was concerned; she was Quistis, it was her god-given duty to be concerned.

"Well?"

She knew the answer, but was trying to make me say it. "No."

("The thought of it never entered my head, actually. Is that... wrong?")

"Did you ever, in fact, stop to ask him what he wanted at all? Ever?"

"..."

("I always just assumed I knew. No, I always just knew; no assumptions. Like it was damn obvious. Besides, even if he doesn’t want to be a SeeD, then it’s better that he’s here with us - with me - than on his own somewhere. We have non-SeeD people here; Rinoa, for example.")

She just listened to my silence for a long time, and I really began hoping that Zell’s ESP wasn’t wearing off on her. The last thing I needed were two

(three)

people who could second-guess me without too much effort.

"He’s been in hiding for over a year, and yet one five-minute visit from you and he comes back, just like that. And you’re even fighting like you always were. I bet he’s going to get up from that infirmary bed in a day or so and start swaggering around as if nothing had ever happened; he’ll just be Seifer again, because that’s what you want."

Fuck, what is this? My daily dose of Guilt?

"If he didn’t want to come he wouldn’t have followed."

"And if things had been reversed, and he had been the one to come to you instead, would you have gone with him?"

I shut my eyes. Fuck Quistis, just go away.

("I... I don’t know. Maybe... I think...")

"No," I heard my mouth whisper. Traitorous thing.

Quistis pressed her lips together in a thin line. "Power struggles; always power struggles. Him physically, you emotionally." She shook her head. "Just... I hope you know what you’re doing."

("So do I.")

And there was no room for anything more because the banging at the door started, loud and instant. A brash voice behind it shouting, "Commander, Commander please! I demand to be let in right away!"

Relief from escaping Quistis was instantly washed away by the sour looks on the faces of the students who poured into the office the second I released the door lock. They all began babbling at once, an irritating torrent of nothingness which spilled out onto the carpet, seeping deep into the pile. I was glad I was on the couch; I didn’t want to burn my boots in the things they hissed.

"... too dangerous ..."

"... tried to destroy us ..."

"... Sorceress ..."

"... prison ..."

Words like that. I ignored them; not really caring about what they had to say, and having my own answer fired up when they’d exhausted themselves. What, like they thought I’d just blindly rushed off without an excuse? An excuse to return Seifer to Garden was all I’d been thinking about since, well, the end of the War. You don’t get to be Commander of a Garden by being impulsive and under prepared.

After a long time, the realised I wasn’t paying them a lick of attention and wound down a little.

"Commander? Commander, are you listening to us?"

"Yes. Are you done yet?"

They seemed slightly taken aback. "Well..."

I looked over at them for the first time, nothing their uniforms rather than their faces. People all tend to look the same to me unless I have some reason to notice them. Amazing, and yet somehow, not surprising. I noted that they were mostly students, though their apparent ringleader was a SeeD. He looked familiar; I think he might have graduated before me. That very thought in itself was faintly disturbing.

"What is Garden?" I snapped.

"C-commander?"

"What is Garden?"

I could feel Quistis’ eyes boring into me, and I avoided them, turning back to look at the ceiling.

"Is this a trick..."

"Just answer me, damnit! Hyne on a pyre..."

"Garden. A training ground for SeeDs," he stammered, before tacking on, "More or less."

"And SeeDs?"

"Elite mercenaries, sir."

"And a mercenary is?"

He swallowed. Maybe he wasn’t as stupid as he came across. "A soldier who works for money..."

"Yes, exactly. We’re here so people can pay us to hit their problems until they don’t stand back up again. Who we’re working for is irrelevant; so long as they have the gil to wash away our consciences. There is no room for a concept of the ‘right’ side or the ‘wrong’ side; if you want that, join an army or a fucking resistance movement or something. Do you understand?"

"Y- yes, sir," he sounded quiet. I wondered how much of a mutiny I’d have on my hands when word of this got around.

"If you don’t like it," I added, turning my gaze from the ceiling to the uncomfortable SeeD, "then maybe you’re in the wrong line of work."

He looked at the floor. Looks like I’d smashed another young man’s romantic dream. Well fuck that; I’d never asked to be the good guy, had I?

"I assume I’m not going to hear any more about this?"

"No sir."

"Good. Now stop wasting my time."

They shuffled out.

"Squall the Lionheartless," Quistis said when they left. I turned to meet her gaze again. I thought she’d be angry, but instead she simply looked sad. Or tired. Maybe both.

"... whatever." I dismissed her with a wave of my hand and went back to glaring at the roof. I swear the paint up there had started to peel.

She just sighed.

Yes well, it was a bit like that, wasn’t it?

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