Nida | FF8 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skyward_eyes) wrote2015-04-10 08:29 pm
skyward_eyes) wrote2015-04-10 08:29 pm[Aterat Mem Shares]
In the comments below. PLEASE look at the CWs, some are dark.
skyward_eyes) wrote2015-04-10 08:29 pm
Graduation | CW: None | ~660 Words
Wow.
There’s a good chance you’ve never been happier, or not that you remember in the time since coming to this place. Because this is what you always wanted, right? You’re a SeeD, you’re the elite, you’re going to be something. You are something. Giddiness wells up in your chest. The elevator doors chime as they open and you stumble out, feeling like your whole body is strangely uncoordinated in a way that it’s never been. Well, that it hasn’t been since your last growth spurt, but hey, time flows and all that.
The girl bounces right past you with insane energy. Zell pushes past you too, already hopping on the balls of his feet like he always does when shadow boxing. You? You move to the edge of the walkway, look down and over. The height grounds you, keeps your heart from pounding, fluttering in your chest.
Do your best, even if you don’t stand out. Cid’s voice rings in his ears, the encouraging words giving him heart.
Part of you wants to bounce and cheer like the girl and Zell, parading up and down the hall. You can’t, though. It’s not your style. Quiet works for you, and you’re going to stay like that. It’s gotten you this far, right?
“After seventeen years of suffering, my chance has finally arrived,” you say to yourself. Finally a chance to prove yourself, to make people see you. Not like it’s happened here before, except for an asshole bully in Almasy (who of course bullies everyone) and Elijah. Who isn’t even here to see your success.
Footsteps. Right behind you. You flinch and turn, ashamed that you didn’t hear the steps coming. And of course, it’s him.
Squall. The beautiful badass with the gunblade, and so often clad in so much leather. Honestly, how is it fair that Squall can go through being chased by a giant spider robot, getting attacked on it, barely even getting onto his boat, and still looking so good?
“Oh! W-w-what, Squall?” you stammer out, shocked at his presence.
He barely even spares you a glance. Which isn’t unusual. But there’s enough of one because you’re flustered. You’re flustered and the next words spill out because you have to say something, right? Right?
“I’ll… I’ll be the rule of this Garden someday,” you tell him. Which is wrong. That isn’t your aspiration at all. It’s just the first thing that popped to your lips and you’re not great at handling Squall. At handling anyone outside of the masks you put on for classes and that you’ve been trained in for future missions.
Squall just keeps moving. You blush over how much of a fool you made of yourself. And maybe because your eyes are following him. Damn, that cadet uniform does EVERYTHING for his ass.
Still, you don’t move. You’re left there, watching as the girl intercepts Squall to cheer ‘SeeD’ at him repeatedly. Watch as Zell does the same to cheer about the speeches they have to give. Which of course, makes you groan, far behind them. You’re terrible at speeches in front of people. Because people here just seem to see through you. Still, they herd Squall forward, and you follow behind. Like they’d even notice.
You arrive in time to see Seifer, the other absolutely unfairly hot asshole gunblader (why do you always have such bad taste in guys to crush on?), start to clap. Slow, deliberate. Mocking? No, because others join in, and he wouldn’t start something like that just to mock, right? There’s laughter from Zell, nothing from Squall, and you?
Well you turn your back, because you don’t know what to do with it. Because it’s not for you. It’s for Squall, it’s for Zell. The people these other students know.
Do your best, even if you don’t stand out.
Sorta the point, as an intel SeeD. Oh well. Speech time. Hopefully you don’t make a fool of yourself.
Beautiful Green Gown | CW: Cross Dressing | ~720 Words
The hotel room at the Trabia City hotel has not one, not two, but three full length mirrors in it, arranged together as if in the changing room of a fancy clothing shop. In some instances you would love the potential you could put these to use in, especially if you had some extra time on the Garden’s dime to show them off to someone you picked up at a bar. Right now? Right now you’re using them for the intended purpose, which is to change. Already you’ve discarded the rest of your clothing, leaving you only in the sheer underlayer of soft cotton of a shift that the lady at the dress store had insisted on. That and the artfully stuffed bra. This alone, though, makes you look like a loon.
You sigh and shake your head, looking to the dress box on the bed. The white cardboard has been opened, the tissue paper unfolded to show off the beautiful fabric of a rich green silk. All of it had been carefully chosen of course. It would fit, like a glove. Well, no, that isn’t right. If it fit like a glove the whole game would be up, wouldn’t it? And you’re too professional to risk that. No, the dress will fit your waist, your hips, and leave everything else just loose enough to hide what needs hidden. Helps that there’s that high collar to cover the problem areas of your throat.
“Come on, it’s just a dress. If Quistis and Selphie can wear them, you can too,” you say, trying to convince yourself of it.
Too bad you’re not the best at buying lies.
With a sigh you reach into the bag and pull out the material, turning it around just enough to undo the zipper. Then you’re left staring. You remember trying the other version on when you were in the store. The woman there had been so helpful, and she had explained you pulled it on over your head. Seemed stupidly arranged. But you’re not a fashion expert. Not in this way.
Again you hesitate over the forest green silk, and then take a deep breath before twisting the fabric around in your hands. Then you drape the whole thing over your head, squirming this way and that as your hands get free at the top. Then you’re carefully pulling at fabric as you shimmy your hips, as you shuffle your arms, as you shift on your legs until the fabric reaches that perfect point to just fall like a curtain around you. There is another moment of smoothing your hands slowly over your body, the fabric like a dream against your hands. Some small bit of your brain wonders how it would feel against bare skin.
You do up the zipper before you return your attention to the mirrors, stepping forward into their view. And for a moment you can’t help but smile. The dress is perfect, the loose fit working with the bra given to you to give the illusion of shape up top, but hanging loose enough to hide that your torso definitely has the wrong dimensions. It helps a little that the material falls a bit tighter around your hips, and you have great hips. You’ve been told that more than once, and you didn’t see a reason to argue with it. And your height? It makes the dress look like a dream, makes you look like floating.
That, of course, will fade once you have the heels on. But you smile as you reach back and do up the zipper to over the lower shoulder and your bra. Then you reach up and gather the draping material at the neck that is close to being a scarf. A few careful twists of your hands behind your neck and the thing is tied into place. And you smile at the mirror.
The yous in the mirrors smile back.
“This will work,” you chuckle to yourself. This will work. And the best part is? You’re pretty sure you can write your final report without this particular detail. No one will ever know.
The Showdown | CW: Betrayal, Violence, Blood, Death, implied manipulation | ~4000 Words
A pointless prayer, and you know it. Never before has the god cared about the needs of the people he created, nor will he ever. Of course, when god is probably at least somewhat dead, what should anyone expect? Not like Hyne was ever a good father to the people anyway. Still, if there was any mercy in the creator, you would get to be face to face with the source of all of SeeD problems you’ve been assigned to get to the bottom of, and it won’t be his.
The room is a lot like ballrooms in any number of homes of the rich and powerful in Deling. The room is a beautiful spread of marble, pale gray at the walls and pillars that surround the dance floor, the floors a rich black shot through with veins of brilliant white. Stairs dominated the far side of the room, which was a weird arrangement from your experience, but it sure allows for a dominating position over others for the little drama you know is about to unfold. This is almost a stage, and you’re the last player to walk across it, your boots making a heavy, echoing sound as you stride across it, glaive held at your side.
Lights come up as you cross the room, this is a fucking dramatic production, and you’re just another pawn moving across the floor. And with the lights on you see them. First Boyce, a wall of a man with broad shoulders and a massive two-headed axe on his back. Once he was the weapons instructor for one of the Gardens, but not one you’ve ever trained under. You thought is was brains behind the plan, an intended coup in Galbadia, a takeover that puts a new sort of tyrant in charge of the torn nation, and a plot that hasn’t moved toward fruition yet. You’ve been working at foiling it every step of the way. If you’re lucky, you’re going to manage to stop it before anyone but your boss knows it exists. Boyce stood at the top of the stairs, arms crossed over his chest, his eyes heavy on you. That’s the harder fight, you already know it. But he’s not your concern right now.
Further down the stairs, clad in his favorite heavy sparring clothes and that red leather jacket, is Elijah. He’s beautiful in this light, and for half a second, your heart aches. You want to move to him, pull him into your arms and press your lips against his, to feel the strength of your lover’s arms, to feel safe like only he’s ever given. No one welcomed you at Garden like him, the first person to offer you his friendship after your parents’ deaths. The one who helped you find the secrets of your past, the memories you’d suppressed long before the Guardian Forces could nibble them away. A swordsman of the highest order who once tried to teach you the blade, but in the end who had just encouraged you to throw yourself deeper and deeper into your polearm work.
How many mornings back at Garden had you woken up with him, your body aching in the best ways, your skin covered in his marks? How much had you given to him, devoted to the one person who always saw, always recognized, always loved you? Even these last months you'd worked together undercover in Deling to try and find the source of the apparent schemes against Garden. Schemes that you now know lay at his feet.
Elijah’s long sword, Rupio, gleams with the bright, metallic red the shade of blood, more menacing now for how it was in hand. A blade ready to face you, and you know it. Across the expanse of the floor your eyes meet, his pale blue narrowed in anger, in disdain. There’s no love in them now, and that cuts you to the quick. Did he ever love you? No, that isn’t a question you need to be thinking about now, not as Elijah rises.
“So it comes to this,” Elijah sighs, his voice is heavy with disappointment. “You won’t reconsider?”
Your hand tightens on the haft of your weapon, and you steel yourself as you advance. Of course you keep your pace slow, mostly as you need to calm yourself. Need to be sure you can handle this fight. Which won’t be easy, as Elijah pulled your GFs from you while you slept last night. That, perhaps, was the final clue that you’d been betrayed. Asshole stole Siren and Leviathan right from your head, and left you with nothing. The only satisfaction you get is that Leviathan and Elijah’s own Salamander can’t be getting along.
“Elijah Zale,” you say as you reach the halfway point of the ball room, “and Boyce Megill, under the authority granted me by Garden, I hereby demand that you throw down your weapons and surrender yourselves. You will be taken back to stand evaluation by Commander Leonhart for your betrayal of SeeD and of the Gardens. If you’re lucky, he’ll have an answer that doesn’t involve turning you over to the Galbadian military.”
Boyce laughs and it’s a sort of laugh that says ‘we don’t recognize your authority’ and ‘like you can take us both without your GFs.’ Elijah, at least, takes you seriously, you can see it in the tightness of your shoulders. He knows what it means to for you to have made Rank A, a height he hadn’t reached. Of course now you don’t know if that’s because he wasn’t good enough, or if he was hiding his skills. Probably the latter. But you’ve fought him unjunctioned enough to think you have a chance. Unless there were more lies between the two of you than you’d ever suspected.
There’s a softer, sadder look on Elijah’s face as he moves down the first step.
“My poor, deluded love, do you really think you can win? Even if you could beat us, do you think we don’t have allies? Wouldn’t it just be better for you to admit to what you know? That you belong at my side?”
“I have backup,” you lie. “I saw through you days ago, Elijah. I contacted Garden with the information. They’ll be here shortly. Elijah, if you ever really loved me, do us a favor and stop this madness. Please.”
You hate to use that word, it burns at your lips and makes your stomach turn. Like you could ever care for him again. Still, you have to keep up the little fiction, even knowing that he’s going to see through it. No one has ever seen through you as easily as he has.
“Don’t beg me, Nida. It’s not attractive when you aren’t on your back for me,” Elijah counters, the words a poison in the air between you.
Again your stomach rolls. Had he ever actually cared for you? Or were you just another tool, another toy in his games? For half a second tears sting at your eyes, but you refuse to let them fall. They’re useless.
“Stop underestimating me, Elijah. If you do, it will be your last mistake.”
“I know your limits. Perhaps more than you do.”
“Or maybe you only assume them,” you snap, and then you’re shifting into a defensive stance. One foot slides back, another a little forward. The polearm moves between your hands, going from a one-handed grip to a sturdy two handed. It’s a position of power for you, a place from which you know you can achieve whatever you set out to do.
Except… except he helped you refine it. Which almost breaks you down.
“Come down here and I’ll prove just what you don’t know.”
Laughter bursts from Elijah’s lips, and he shakes his head. “Frankly, I was going to have you take Boyce on, only watch you until he’s left you all broken and more willing to listen, but damn, Nomura… you know how to catch a guy’s eye.”
“That and only cowards don’t fight their own battles,” you remind him.
“Only fools misuse resources.”
“And that’s what you see people as? Resources?” Was that how he saw you? “The man’s your fucking uncle, and you see him as a tool? What a pitiful man you are, Zale. Don’t you get it? If he wins, you lose me. If I win, you lose me. So what is the damn point?”
You can’t stand the taste of his first name in your mouth anymore, so you fall back on his last. You’ve never called him that before, and it’s easier with the distance. Or so you’re telling yourself. The lies you have to tell yourself to get through the day, aren’t they bad?
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe this needs a personal touch,” Elijah agrees, but that was always the way this was going to go, wasn’t it? You brace yourself as he moves from walking slowly down the steps and into motion in a way that you’ve only ever seen from him.
He’s always been poetry at speed, a flash of red coat and red blade and red hair, all centered around laughing blue eyes. You used to love to watch him spar with other people, watch the way he used his speed to dance around those that would try and leave a mark on him. The speed is more now that he has no doubt slid Salamander’s speed junctions into place. Good thing you were always fast yourself, or the first blow would be the end of this. As it is, you’ve trained for this, you’ve fought against him for years, so you know what you’re doing.
It’s easy, almost too easy, to bring your glaive up to defend, blocking the first blow that is so rote, so predictable, so absolutely how Elijah’s always fought. He starts with testing blows, teasing attacks, and wide open guards to throw people off balance. More than that, he tends to start far too slow to really be considered him at his best. There’s a new ache in your chest now as you hold the glittering red edge of Rupio away from your face, because this is the way your fights always start, have always started, how you want to say they always will start, but it’s foolish to think the two of you are going to be fighting again in the future. Still, he meets your block the way he always does, light blows to test defenses, almost courting and encouraging you to greater effort. Perhaps he’s trying to make you think back to it all. To hesitate, or to reconsider joining him, or just throw you off your game.
Frankly? It’s working.
Elijah’s always been fast, which is half the problem. It means he has the chance, when you’re thrown off for just a second and it leaves your guard open. His blade lashes out lightning fast and cuts a searing line of pain across your chest. This wasn’t the same sort of glancing blow he would have given you back when you trained together, it just tells you how serious he is, because you could swear you feel it cutting over your ribs. But maybe he’s shocked too, because there is a flash of something in his eyes, and it gives you the chance to dance back a few steps, regaining the proper distance between him and you that gives your weapon the advantage. With Elijah winning first blood the two of you have officially moved past what he’s always called the ‘flirting’ stage of the fight. The only hope you have at the second is the fact that he gave you distance, and polearms are about distance. If you can maintain it, maybe you can wear him down before Boyce decides to join the battle.
Thing is, Elijah apparently isn’t looking to let you keep that distance. Even as you swing at his left with the head of your glavie Elijah throws himself into a somersault, carrying him forward and over the blade, right into your guard. His landing matches up perfectly with his blade lashing out again in an overhanded blow, forcing you to take a step back. There’s no time to get the glaive up to block, so instead you throw up your arms in front of your face. Better a cut there than to have your face split open. The distance you put between you is enough, though, to keep you from losing more blood. For now. On the other hand, you’re temporarily unarmed, and Elijah is very certainly not. It leaves you with nothing to do but try to dance further and further away from the blade, further and further back across the floor as Elijah swings again and again. And of course, superior asshole that he is, he only swats at you with the flat of his blade, taunting blows. Yet each one made a new part of your arms and sides ache, and if you don’t act soon…
Already the exchange has carried you most of the way back to the doors you came in through, and your brain is racing for options. Maybe it’s for the best, because Elijah smirks, cocky and sure in that way that you found attractive in the past. He thinks he’s won, and it’s only further proven by the way he kicks at your stomach to knock you over. In a way it’s good for you, because when you fall you work to tangle your legs with him, tripping Elijah and forcing him to the ground as well.
Fight dirty, he once told you, because then you’ll survive.
You hate the advice, but it’s helping. And with him on his back you have a chance to roll to the side and spring to your feet. Without the constant strikes, the constant needs to dodge, you’re finally able to flick a clasp on the leather harness on your back, allowing your halberd to drop into your grip. Armed again you move away and get into a defensive stance even as Elijah flips to his feet, grabs his sword, and jabs forward once more.
“Luck like that won’t be enough to help you win this fight,” Elijah calls, laughter in his voice. “Come on, darling, you’re better than this. Don’t you get that your life hangs in the balance?”
Oh no, you get this, Hyne do you get this. But this is a different fight for your life than Elijah realizes. This is about everything you were, everything you could have been for Garden. This is about the lives of SeeDs from multiple Gardens that he had ruined, that he had ended. This is about all the innocents in Galbadia, because they do exist, that Elijah wants to break. No, he needs to win, and more than his life rests in the balance.
And yet…
“I don’t want to kill you,” you admit, twisting your halberd to block another blow.
“What makes you think you can?”
“The fact that I don’t think you can kill me. Your heart isn’t in it. I don’t think you’re a good enough liar to pretend to be in love, Elijah.”
Sure, you don’t know if you believe the words yourself, but clearly Elijah does. You see him hesitate, just for a moment. There’s an unmistakable flash of sorrow through his eyes, something that is hard to do anything but grieve over. But you need the time, you need the chance, and you aren’t going to waste it. The halberd twirls between your fingers and you strike out quickly, aiming for his head. Rupio comes up only just in time to redirect the blow, but it’s enough. Elijah’s guard is left fully open and you take a half step and deal a kick to his ribs. It throws Elijah back a few steps, doubled over in pain, and you can’t lose the momentum of the fight now. You spin the halberd again, bringing the heavy weight of the pole down across his back, and at last Elijah crumples to the floor, moaning in pain.
It can’t be over, not this easily. You’ve never beat him in a fight, and never with such speed. Was it… is it possible that he was going easy on you? Was this fight not his idea? Was it…?
Your eyes flash toward Boyce on the stairs, and you catch sight of amusement on his face. No. No. You were after the wrong person the whole time, weren’t you? It’s all there, in the easy confidence as Boyce steps down the stairs, swinging the ax from his back. It’s the challenge in his smirk.
“No,” you sob out, and the pain in your chest redoubles.
Continued
A searing pain in your back, and you stumble, skid, fall to the floor. Hyne, it hurts, and you know what you did wrong. You let them distract you. You let yourself be blinded by preemptive grief. There’s no doubt a dagger in your side, probably covered by the same sort of poison that asshole Joshua that Elijah had been working with used. The same poison that, with a mere cut scored against your leg, had nearly killed you only two weeks ago. Dammit. Dammit you were so close.
Or are you just lying to yourself?
Foot steps from behind you, Elijah moving slowly toward your side. You can hear the tip of Rupio dragging lightly over the marble, a taunt without words. He’s always had that flare for the dramatic. At last he’s there beside you, kneeling at your side.
“How could you do this?” you ask, and frankly, you don’t know which of them you want the response from. “Don’t you realize what you’re doing? What you’re going to cause? The world falling into chaos again, a new war. Is that really what you want?”
“This is progress, Nida. This is a solution to wars,” Elijah counters as he lays the tip of his blade to rest against your neck.
“Asshole,” you spit out, unable to help the bitterness in your voice.
“Yeah, but you always liked that,” Elijah laughs. “Now get up. This is getting boring.”
Strangely enough, he lets you move. He’s toying with you, and you know it. But you know you have to move, because if you don’t, this is over. And if it’s over you’ve lost. You can’t lose. You roll aside and grab your halberd as you move, rolling until you’re on your feet and glaring up at him. Still he’s smiling. You’re growing to hate that smile.
Back on your feet you swing your weapon in a overhanded blow, aiming right for his head. Still he smiles, defiant and unafraid, bringing Rupio up over his head to knock the blow aside. Sparks fly from where the weapons meet, metal screaming at the force of the blow. When Elijah twists and shoves your attack aside you stumble after it, thrown off balance. It’s a momentary lapse in your defenses, one Elijah is quick to capitalize on, throwing on every ounce of speed you know as the true from of his limit break. Blow after blow after blow, quick cuts meant to wear you down with each sting and ache, raining down over your arms, your legs, your torso. And then, because of course, the red blade pierces into your right shoulder as you scream, cutting through skin and muscle and the agony is intense. Immediately the grip on your weapon loosens, your hand spasming under the pain.
If you lose your weapon again, you will die. There is no question. It is just a pure and simple fact.
Your hand tightens around the wood and you try to jerk yourself off of the blade. Thing is, it turns out to be too deep for that to happen easily, leaving you to grit your teeth in a new wave of pain.
“Looks like I win the battle, little bird,” Elijah taunts, but there’s a sadness in the curve of his lips. “I wish it hadn’t come to this.”
“No,” you agree, gritting your teeth and tensing the muscles in your right arm. “I wish it hadn’t either.”
All of your body protests the next part, screams in agony as you lift your halberd and thrust it forward, driving the spear point at the tip up and into Elijah’s chest. It’s not a good blow, no one is going to give you positive marks on it, but it’s what you had to do. The sharpened point pierced in at a low angle, between ribs and no doubt into his heart. Not enough of a blow to kill him right away, but enough to guarantee death. Something Elijah clearly realizes too, from the way his eyes go wide and he crumples to his knees.
“I’m sorry,” you sob out. “Hyne, Elijah, I’m sorry.”
Maybe if you’d realized everything earlier, maybe if you’d loved him more, maybe if you’d been more attentive this wouldn’t have happened. You wouldn’t have his body falling back toward the black marble floor, blood spreading over his shirt as it leaks out around the wound.
All the cold is gone from his eyes, but there isn’t the warmth you used to know in them either. Instead there is only resignation.
Then there isn’t anything at all. Not for the first time in your life you’re left in a growing pool of blood of someone you love. On your knees in a pool of blood trying not to sob as piteously as you did back then. Instead you try not to be sick over how dark the blood looks against the marble, a growing shadow. It’s nothing like the bright crimson of his hair that you used to adore.
You could linger here forever, pained by it all. Instead you push to your feet. Because this isn’t over yet, and you know it.
Across the room and up the stairs Boyce stares down at you, apparently unmoved by this little drama. Yes, you realize as you look up at him, this wasn’t Elijah’s fault. It was Boyce’s. Somehow it was his.
You’re going to end this. Tonight.
Once more your eyes go down to Elijah, and for a moment despite everything you’ve done in your life, all the people you’ve killed, you can’t believe how much blood there is. Your pants are stained with it, it will never come out. You don’t want to believe this, you don’t want to see this. You want to fall back on that time when you loved him and you were innocent in your own way. Was there a time, you wonder, when there had only ever been the blood of monsters on your hands? When you were free of the blood of people, of soldiers following orders, of the people who got in your way, of those you were contracted to kill, of friends, of lovers. Was there ever a time before you were forced to kill someone you once trusted with everything you were before?
You haven’t been innocent like that in a long time. You never will be again.
And still Boyce looks down at you, taking the steps one at a time. His axe looks like it could cleave you in two. In a way, you welcome that.
I can’t do this, a strange clarity says in your head, perhaps fed by a new bubble of panic welling up in you. I can barely stand. Even if I want to, can I get through Boyce? Can I even stop this here when I can barely lift my arms?
“You’re going to pass out from blood loss soon,” the man observes, his voice rumbling across the room. “Give up now, take his place as my second, and I’ll let you live.”
“I can’t do that,” you admit.
You can’t let what you’ve done be for nothing. Your left hand comes up despite the pain that aches across your chest, and it closes around the hilt. Despite the pain, despite how stupid it is, you drag the blade free and offer the man a vicious smile.
“I’m going to stop you.”
You don’t have much time, but you also don’t care. Anything to succeed on the mission. Even your life.
Because is it even worth living anymore?
A Last Choice | CW: Self-Hate, Violence, Self-Harm, Suicide, Breaking Mirror, Blood | ~3300 Words
One of the serious issues that came with being park of a mercenary academy in the world as it stands, is that there isn’t always a lot to talk about that isn’t classes or missions. Things have gotten better since the radio tower, since broadcast is a thing again. The ways that the student body used to obsess in mass over the same television show or movie passed around on disc throughout every single hand in the whole Garden. These days they even talk about, what, three or four different shows at the same time that are on season, and whatever lasts for reruns. And, of course, whatever discs people bring in.
It’s been eight months or so since the last time you were home for any real length of time. As home as this place could ever be. It was less that these days than it had been in the past.
What it means is that your face hasn’t been a presence in the back of their minds. Your presence hasn’t been there to annoy people as they fiddled around in the engines of vehicles you carefully maintained when you were on site. None of the cadets and junior students immediately look at you and think ‘Instructor Nomura’ anymore. Eight months and your hair has grown out and there is a faint limp in your left leg, and how often do you ever bother wandering around Garden without your uniform these days? And yet…
The start of it is the pair of girls outside of the infirmary when you limp out, ignoring the way that Kadowaki tells you that you have to be back twice a day for check-ups, to be certain the poison has fully washed from your system. You can hear their voices because Siren carries them to you on the winds. Should you have a GF junctioned right now? Probably not. But you aren’t going to give the name of the person you talked into fetching her for you, who respected the idea that maybe you needed some of the oblivion that only a GF could offer. She carries their voices to you and what you hear makes you sick.
‘He’s the one, right? SeeD Nomura?’ one girl whispers.
‘Yeah, you heard about his last mission, right?’ the other asks as you limp past them and continue over the bridge toward the core of the Garden.
‘Who hasn’t. Is it true that he stopped the traitors single-handed?’
Traitor.
It’s the right word for what Elijah was. For what Elijah did. But he had been more than that, right? Surely he’d been more than that. Didn’t these girls know who Elijah had been? He had been a SeeD longer than you had been. Sure he hadn’t made A rank, but you’ve come to realize that was deliberate. That he had other aspirations.
You think you remember the time when it used to be enough for him to wake up with you in his arms. Had that ever actually been true?
No, this isn’t what you want to think about, so you just keep walking. There is nothing that matters right now like walking. To keep going forward, to put one foot in front of the other. You make the core and ignore the trio of lower level SeeDs whose voices don’t pitch as low as the girls had. They don’t care if they’re overheard. Part of you wants to reprimand them for the fact that there should be such easy dissemination of important details regarding a completed mission. A larger part of you wants to shout at them for daring to talk about such terrible things when there are cadets wandering the halls. The largets part wants to turn and punch the one with a grin on his lips in the jaw as all three of them turn to salute you.
“As you were,” you say instead, because you’re one of the top SeeDs, you’re an authority figure. There is no dare in you for lashing out at the lower ranks. It isn’t your place. Discipline isn’t your place. And after what happened…
Your eyes want to go to your hands. It’s happened so many times in the days since you regained consciousness. These were them. These were the hands that stole everything you’ve ever loved from your life. They’d look good, balled into fists as you lashed out at the first person to look at you with pride in their eyes.
Not everyone can possibly know what happened, you tell yourself as you keep walking. The whispers are louder in the halls the further you walk. That shouldn’t happen, of course, the area around here is built to dampen sounds to a bit. Which has always impressed you, given how cavernous the core building can be in this area. Perhaps it’s something about the materials the Centran people used to construct their mobile shelters. Either way this noise shouldn’t happen, not like this. Yet as you walk there is more whispering. There are more people.
By the time you get to the path to the dorms and look back briefly over your shoulder, you can tell there are some people staring. There are people following. There are people not even bothering to hide the fact that they are watching you with their eyes, not even bothering to hide whispers behind their hands.
You’ve become known, Nida, and that’s a problem, isn’t it? It’s not what a spy should be. It’s not what you should be.
Maybe I was wrong to want to be noticed, Cid. Maybe that was the greatest mistake of my life.
No, it wasn’t. The greatest was trusting someone. Surely Garden had trained you not to. And yet you made the mistake, over and over again. All with the same man. For half a second you stop in what is starting to feel more and more like a walk of shame. Stop and close your eyes and try to breathe. The world feels like ti’s compressing around you, maybe space can do the same thing Time did when guided by a Sorceress. Because somehow the monumentally distant walls seem to be closer. Closer still. It’s like everything is crashing in around you.
I’m panicking, some part of your brain, the rational part, the SeeD part, tells you. The rest of you, the Nida part, it doesn’t care. Knowing isn’t half the battle. Knowing is just a moment of realizing just how weak you are. How useless it is to fight back.
“Hey, are you…?”
The question doesn’t finish, because the second the young man’s voice is supported by a hand on your shoulder, you react. SeeD training first, human reactions second. That’s the sort of weapon you’ve been made into. Really, they should have known better.
You turn immediately, your hand darting out to grab the wrist. You pivot and pull, toward yourself, twisting the arm even as you drag the person in front of you and your other hand, your right, comes up to clamp around their throat. Which, actually, is a good thing. That side is still a bit weak. That side is still a bit of a useless thing. Kadowaki said that, in time, you’ll regain full control of it. Until then you’re on mandatory medical leave. She acted like the fact that you won’t be able to get back out there is something you’re going to argue about.
Why would you argue? How could you ever want that again?
“Shit,” the person curses. He’s young, you realizes as your weaker right hand grips at his throat. It’s a good thing you don’t have knives on you, you realize. He’s young and he’s lucky you’re unarmed because you reacted out of fear, out of trained instinct.
You’re a danger.
The kid is maybe fifteen, and you’re choking him. Your hand loosens and instead of apologizing you just start walking away. Xu will definitely have a disciplinary discussion with you in a few days at the latest. With all the people watching, you know it will get back to her. Keep walking you tell yourself. Keep moving, because if you don’t, you’re going to fall. Your fingers move to work at the tight cluster of scar tissue from where Elijah ran his sword through your shoulder. The pain is so intense, even now. Even when you know it shouldn’t hurt.
Phantom pain, Kadowaki called it. Something the body remembers even when it shouldn’t Can it also remember the feeling of those arms around you, because it almost feels like he’s holding you even now.
Keep moving.
The hallways feel long, but you’re a SeeD, Rank A. Best Rooms, best placement. Which means the main hall on the first floor. Once you appreciated the convenience, now you hate how everyone clearly knows where it is, because there are things waiting for you. A whole cluster of things, barricading you from your door with the pain they offer. Cards taped to the frame telling you to get well soon. Silk and plastic flowers in glazed pots or colored glass vases. Vacuum sealed boxes of chocolates. Tins of cookies.
In a way you understand. You pause and look at it all, and there’s another SeeD there, standing nearby. They were waiting for you. For half a second you look at them, placing their name. SeeD Evans, he graduated a year after the war. A swordsman, with eyes of piercing green that in so many ways had reminded you of Elijah’s. Which made sense. Elijah had been his personal tutor, just like Elijah had been yours.
“Nida, I…”
There is pain in his voice. Grief. Denial.
You’re not the only one with the loss.
“Not right now,” you answer, toeing at vases and pots and boxes, pushing them this way and that to clear your door enough for you to walk through it. Once that’s done you punch the code into the door.
Elijah’s birth date. Another reason to be sick. You’ll have to change it later.
“Please, I just wanted to talk. No one else…”
“I said later,” you hiss out as your door slides open. Don’t even bother to look at him. If you look him in the eye, you know what you’re going to see there. Part of you wonder which of the stages of grief he’s in. Thing is, you don’t know which you’re in either. It would take too much time to figure out. So you step through the door and let it slide closed right behind you.
Some part of you wonders if anyone at Garden realizes that all they did, that display out there, was just a celebration of what you did. Another is frankly surprised that there wasn’t a group of people out there to applaud you now that you were free of the infirmary. To celebrate your act. Or maybe they just know better. Maybe they know better than to celebrate death, even as they walk with it as surely as you do. At least they’re not bloodthirsty.
Maybe one of them could have figured out how to talk Elijah down.
Cont
Deep breaths, you remind yourself, as you let Siren fade from the edges of your awareness, from the touch of her mind. Your fingers brush over a metal bowl near the door and with a thought you force the GF into it, storing it away as surely as you could on the network here. Terrible place to put her, and you frankly don’t care right now. What you need is a drink. Which is, of course, the worst idea ever.
Water. You’ve got water. With a sigh you start limping again, heading for the bathroom. You hadn’t bothered getting one of the rare suites with a kitchenette, you had always been happy with the cafeteria. Right now you’re regretting not learning to cook, or things like that. Would make it so you wouldn’t have to leave your space for a while. You keep moving, though, because your throat is dry. Beyond dry.
The bathroom light comes on when you flip the switch, and you grab the glass you left by the sink months ago. Fill it up and take a drink of cool water. How could water taste so sweet? Maybe the one thing in the world that is any good anymore. In fact, you set the cup aside and splash your face with the water. It’s so soothing and refreshing against your skin, something to counteract the fact that you feel so hot right now. Was it even remotely reasonable that you were starting to feel feverish despite how Kadowaki assured you that you were okay. Again you lean down and splash water over your face, loving the way it drips and runs. At last, though, you reach blindly for the towel that you always keep by the sink.
Your fingers don’t find it. Another grab, and they don’t find it. A third, a fourth.
Elijah always put it there. Every time there was laundry, Elijah always fished the damn towel out and put it there by the sink. Except he could never do that again, could he? Would there ever be a towel there again after you killed him?
At last you look up, intending to turn toward the nearby shelf to pull a towel down. Instead, you meet your own face in the mirror. You look nothing like the man you used to be.
Your hair is different, buzzed short at the sides still, but long and flopping in your face, getting in your eyes. In Deling you’d gel it up every morning, that was proper clubbing fashion, and you’d gotten advice to that end. Elijah had loved it, you remember, the way his fingers could curl into your hair and pull your head into position to kiss him just how he wanted.
You eyes are different, cold and broken, and shining with unshed tears. They look empty to you, perhaps because they really do reflect what is inside. It’s almost like there’s no tears, but rather just water in your eyes. This doesn’t look like the gaze of the sort of man who had so recently murdered his own lover. And what marks do you have to show for the crim? A few cuts nearly invisible now from the healing spells, an ugly line up one leg, and the large and ugly point on your shoulder that echoes with pain even now. In a way you wish there was something more visible, cuts or bruises left on your face, something to prove it happened, something that can’t be covered by cloth.
The mirror seems to manifest a cracked and shattered pattern while you look. It’s only the pain in your knuckles that makes you realize how much you hate the face that’s looking back at you in the mirror. That isn’t enough, though. The shattered face, reflected in hundreds of sections, it isn’t enough. Angry, your eyes dart to the cup you put back on the sink. It comes up and is thrown into the mirror as well, smeared with blood from the cuts on your fist, and you don’t even care.
You don’t stay to survey the ruins you’ve created. Instead you turn and storm out of the tiny bathroom and into your bedroom. You have to escape, you have to be free of that face, of that murderer reflected there. Of course that means being near your bed and that comes with catching sight of a flash of light reflected off the highly polished and sharpened edge of the head of a halberd that you’d used to kill Elijah. Someone had brought it back, perfect, untouched even by blood now, and left it on your bed. Resting in Elijah’s place.
In that moment you stop making choices and start just acting.
You tear open the closet door and pull out the first poleaxe your hands find themselves on. In a second both of your hands are around it in a death grip, and you whirl, bringing it down, full force, into the bed. The wood of the halberd’s half groans for just a moment before giving way before the blade and the force fo the weapon, but that isn’t enough to stop the stroke. The weapon continues down, into and through the shitty mattress, the springs of the bed protesting in the ugliest noise of your life.
Not the ugliest. You remember how he sounded as he died.
Can’t stop there. The weapon pulls free with surprising ease and you repeat the stroke twice, turning the broken haft and the rest of your bed into a mess of cotton, splinters, cloth, and a stray halberd head.
The next thing to catch your eyes is the alarm clock (which never managed to wake Elijah on time) resting on the dresser (filled with casual clothes Elijah had encouraged you to by). Again the weapon comes down, breaking through cheap particle board far easier than through the oaken halberd shaft. The lamp is the next casualty, mostly because it’s in the way.
Again you whirl, this time for the closet, and with one hand you snatch out every scrap of cloth that he loved, every polearm with any bit of wood that he laughed over you buying, every memory you can lay your hands on, and all of it is scattered to the floor.
Anger can be useful. It makes your blows stronger, it makes you faster. The mind? It gets slower, sloppier. In a lot of circumstances, you end up dead.
Elijah told you that, not long ago, and the problem is that you can’t find it in yourself to care as you lay into the assembled mess on the tile floor, rendering it all useless in surprisingly few strokes. The poleax is going too, the blows wearing at the head of this weapon as well. Which, of course, you couldn’t care less about. Somewhere beyond your room you can hear shouting, can hear motion, and you just keep striking. The only thing spared is your uniforms. You’re too well trained to disrespect them like this.
Damage done you throw the weapon to the floor and turn back around, heading for the bathroom. There is so much more you can break, so much more to destroy. The thing is? None of this made you feel better. You realize it, now that the mess is made. None of it is cathartic. None of it helps. None of it makes any of this better. None of this makes you any better.
So you return to the bathroom. To the mirror. Shattered and broken, pieces knocked out into the sink. A hundred different glimpses of yourself, and none of it the full picture given all the gaps.
Yeah. That actually looks like a proper reflection at last. Broken. Irreparable. Ultimately it will be replaced.
Like you.
Your fingers close around a shard in the sink. You know the most efficient way to do this, after all. With a sigh you sit down on the floor and turn one wrist up to look at. And then...