Mind Games

The sun was just peeking over the eastern horizon, tinting the lower lip of the clear, slate-coloured skyline a gentle, rosy pink, as Quistis stepped out onto the balcony, the warm breeze whipping her hair about her face and into her eyes as she gave a quiet sigh. There was a moderate throbbing in her temples and behind her eyes, but it was nothing compared to the bully of a headache she’d woken up with the previous day after stumbling home from Rinoa’s beach party in the wee hours of the morning. Why she’d let the young sorceress persuade her to drink was a mystery to her; she had only gone to the party in the first place to keep an eye on Zell, and possibly to try and extort some information out of him while he was under the influence; Zell, however, had been unusually strict with both his conversation and his drink, and he had disappeared not long after they arrived, and that had been the last Quistis saw of him.

She wandered over to the edge of the balcony, pulling a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and sliding one out between her lips. She knew Zell had gotten back to Garden safely yesterday; she had seen him drifting greenly down the hallway that afternoon, looking quite ill, but she, still feeling rather sickly herself, hadn’t stopped to chat or inquire where he’d been. It was what he’d been up to between when she’d lost him at the party and when he’d reappeared the next afternoon that she was curious about - and she was determined to find out, too; just not right then, when she was feeling so very out of sorts. She lit up and sucked down a hearty lungful of smoke, exhaling slowly through her teeth and leaning far out over the edge of the balcony.

She smoked silently for a few minutes, letting the breeze clear her head. After crawling back into her bed at the crack of dawn yesterday morning, she’d only dozed for a few hours before she was awoken by Xu, who needed some help finding a candidate for an assignment; by the time she was finished looking over Xu’s list and making her suggestions, it was well past noon, and on the way back to her room (with every intention of locking and barricading the door and becoming a hermit for quite some time) she was called out by Garden administration, who had a few choice words to say to her and several other instructors concerning the unseemly behavior of a number of students who had apparently returned home early Sunday morning in various states of inebriation - and Quistis noted that she and Zell were not the only two looking sheepish after that meeting; she had seen a fair few of her colleagues wandering through the dunes with brightly-coloured drinks in their hands that night, although none of them had taken it quite as far as she did, and Zell, to go by the sickly shade of celadon his complexion had taken on by the time they were released from the meeting an hour and a half later, was even worse off. As if that weren’t enough, though, she’d only just gotten back to her room when she remembered that she had volunteered to review and update the entrance exams for the coming school year; she’d been putting it off for some time with the intention of getting a free weekend and devoting the whole two days to getting everything up to snuff - she had, in fact, specifically finished all her other work early and rescheduled all her appointments in order to have this weekend free to do just that, until Rinoa’s party got in the way of that plan - but it was getting dangerously close to fall already and she knew that Squall wouldn’t tolerate any tardiness when it came to so important a task, so, with a freshly-brewed pot of coffee at hand, she sat down to start on it, and it was nearly dawn by the time she finally finished and trudged, puffy-eyed and wanting nothing more than a nice, long hibernation, up to the balcony for some fresh air.

She finished off her first cigarette and tossed the stub out into the void beyond the edge of the balcony, promptly fingering another one out of the pack and lighting it up. Class in less than two hours, too; not even enough time for a decent catnap if there was to be any hope of making herself look halfway presentable before the day began, if such a thing were any longer possible. She sighed deeply, staring out over the plains of Timber and feeling calm as she watched the grass ripple and coruscate in the light of the slowly-rising sun. Maybe she could just take a sickie. She was pondering the pros and cons of it when she realized, with a start, that there was someone standing beside her... and, with a greater start, that it was Seifer, leaning casually against the banister a few feet away, a cigarette perched between his lips as he smirked imperiously upon her noticing him. “Fancy seeing you here, instructor,” he remarked coolly, taking a long drag and blowing it out the corner of his mouth.

“Seifer...!” Quistis huffed, putting a hand to her rapidly-beating heart. “You scared me half to death...!”

“Hmm,” Seifer replied, cocking an eyebrow. “Long night?”

The instructor felt colour rise to her cheeks, noticing that he was staring pointedly at her arms which she had crossed behind her back in order to hide her cigarette - which was silly for a number of reasons, not least because she had a feeling that Seifer had been standing there for a good deal longer a time than she’d noticed and it was simply naive to hope that he hadn’t seen her smoking. Besides, he was breaking a school rule just as much as she was, so there was no point in pulling the Good Role Model card on her now. “You’ve no idea,” She answered with another sigh, pulling on her cigarette again and rubbing tired eyes with her free hand. Seifer only nodded, and to her surprise left it at that - actually, he looked very preoccupied and, Quistis noted as she glanced him over, somewhat haggard, as thought he, too, had had a long night. They both smoked in silence for a minute - Seifer didn’t seem to have come out here with the express purpose of bothering her in mind; in fact, he had probably not expected anyone to be up and about so early - Quistis certainly hadn’t.

“How did you get out here?” She asked with a slight frown.

“You left the door open.”

“Ah,” she conceded, finishing off her second cigarette and thinking for a few moments over whether it would be prudent to have a third. Biting her lip, she looked over at Seifer again, a thought occurring. “Nice shiner you’ve got there,” she remarked nonchalantly, and Seifer reached up - perhaps subconsciously - to gently touch the dark circle ringing his left eye.

“Thanks,” He said gruffly, turning the other way.

“That looks like Zell’s handiwork,” She went on blithely, pulling out another white stick and bringing it to her lips, striving for indifference even as she noted that Seifer had tensed up, staring the other way - she could tell she was getting into a sore subject, but curiosity overcame her aversion to angering Seifer and she went on, “That’s a shame. I’d thought perhaps you two were getting on better lately.”

“We get on just fine, thanks,” Seifer replied stiffly.

“Is that right? Well, that’s a relief,” She smiled, as if reassured. “But then I have to wonder what you two were fighting about that Zell would hit you...”

“Don’t,” the gunblader warned, but Quistis took no heed.

“I mean, if you two really are getting on fine like you say, then it must have been something important to make you fight...”

“Damnit, Trepe,” Seifer growled, sighing out a cloud of smoke that lingered in the dusky air for moments before dissipating in the breeze. “Even if it was any of your fucking business at all, what makes you think I’d want to talk to you about my problems?”

“Problems?” Quistis pounced, and Seifer blinked, as though mentally backtracking and realizing what he’d just said - although the expression on his face said much, much more than what he’d just let slip with words. He turned away again, puffing quickly on his cigarette and evidently intending to ignore her, probably in the hopes that she would leave the subject be, though the silly boy certainly should have known better. If Seifer and Zell had regressed back to fist-fighting, Quistis wanted to know why; and the fact that Seifer didn’t want her to know - seemed, actually, to be ashamed of - whatever it was they had fought about meant that it was important and something, therefore, that Quistis wanted to get a bead on. For years, the pair’s bickering had been just a part of their daily ritual; white noise that nobody even gave a second thought to because it was so familiar. One thing it had definitely never been, however, was serious, and Quistis was quite determined now to get to the bottom of what had caused this sudden change. A serious fight implied a serious relationship, but of what kind, she was sure she didn’t know.

The quiet stretched on, broken only intermittently by the fluttering of a small flock of birds overhead, eddying and breaking, cloud-like, around them. Seifer had moved on to his second cigarette, and Quistis fingered the few left in her own pack, thinking on how to best approach the subject - she had a feeling that openly accusing Seifer of having a secret relationship with Zell was not the best way to get him to open up about whatever was really going on. Not that she really thought that’s what was going on - but then, it could make sense... No, it was simply too strange; even supposing that both Zell and Seifer were inclined toward such a relationship, which Quistis was not at all prepared to believe was the case, the idea that the two of them could be anything other than the enemies they had always been (though on a comparatively less volatile scale after the war, until recently, that is,) was little more than absurd. But it could make sense, that was the weirdest part. After all, who knew what Zell had gotten up to in the twelve or so hours between when he’d departed, drunk as a loon, from Rinoa’s party and when he’d reappeared early the next afternoon? It was entirely possible that he and Seifer had had some kind of run-in; the gunblader had made a habit of being out and about after hours, and Quistis couldn’t see him happening upon a very drunk and susceptible Zell wandering the grounds and just leaving the other boy be. And perhaps that’s what had got him punched in the eye.

Quistis scoffed quietly to herself; her imagination was getting the better of her. To think that Seifer would try and make a move on Zell! More likely than not, he was simply being his usual arsehole self and Zell had not been able to resist the urge to deck him, which she understood quite well; it was only with a great deal of difficulty that she herself was able to keep from smacking Seifer around sometimes, he irritated her so. She watched from the corner of her eye as Seifer eased a third cigarette out of his own pack, lighting it with the glowing end of his second.

“What I don’t understand,” She began after a few moments, earning Seifer’s attention back as he turned to look over at her putting on her best curiously-thoughtful expression. “Well,” she went on, abandoning her first train of thought and going for a different one, “The great thing about Zell is that everyone likes him. He’s one of those people who can be friends with everyone, you know? Except for you, of course.”

Seifer shrugged, tucking his hands into his pockets as he puffed on his cigarette. Quistis pursed her lips tightly. “I suppose you just rub each other the wrong way,” she offered.

“Oh, you’ve no idea,” He mumbled, so quietly that he probably didn’t think she could hear - but hear, she certainly did, and she didn’t miss the smirk that flashed across his face, either, even if it was only for a split second; she turned away, not knowing how to reply to what was clearly a blatant sexual innuendo, although Seifer, who was staring off into the distance and appeared to be quite occupied with his own thoughts, didn’t seem to even realize - not for the first time during their conversation - what he’d just said. And that smirk was gone as quickly as it had come, but it told Quistis everything she needed to know about just what Seifer was thinking, and she was shocked by the implication... oh, sure, she’d entertained more than a few wild ideas about Seifer and Zell and their unusually turbulent behavior toward each other over the past months, but not seriously... they couldn’t really...

She decided to try again. “Couldn’t you just try?”

“Is it really that hard, Trepe, I mean, would it kill you to just mind your own fucking business for once?” He snapped.

“Well, I just don’t understand why you can’t at least try to be friends with Zell. No one else finds it difficult, you know,” she replied with only the merest hint of embarrassment. Seifer, his jaw clenched tight around the burnt-out stub of his cigarette, was quiet, clearly angry but also, underneath that, pensive. He tossed the cigarette butt out over the railing, making a soft sound under his breath - was that a sigh? - and turning to face Quistis, though not looking at her.

“I’m not interested in being friends with Zell,” was the answer he gave, fishing in his pocket for his lighter as he placed another smoke between his lips while Quistis, feeling suddenly very abashed by what he’d said - or rather, what he hadn’t exactly said - turned the other way, at a loss for a response. That reply, though not suspicious in itself as Seifer had never been seen to express any wish of becoming friends with anyone, had a distinct and unsettling undertone of I want more than that to it, and Quistis was damned if she knew what to make of that.

She cleared her throat, now plenty more than bewildered but striving not to show the gunblader that, if he was even paying her enough attention to notice such a thing, which she wasn’t inclined to believe considering some of the things he’d let slip already. Then again, nobody who knew Seifer at all would put any stock in the notion that he could have feelings for Zell, of all people, so he couldn’t have expected her to do so. “Zell?”

He spared her a brief, irritated glance. “Yeah, isn’t that who we’re talking about?”

“No, I mean, yes, it’s just...” She paused, thoughtful. “I’m not sure I’ve ever heard you call him that.”

He blinked, caught off-guard, and his reaction was all Quistis needed to see - that small, simple action spoke volumes about Seifer’s state of mind, and everything fell into place. Before she could gather her thoughts, however, he barked at her, “Are you going to smoke or not? Because if you’re not, why don’t you fuck off elsewhere and let me think in peace.”

“Well, if you wanted me to drop the subject, all you had to do was say so,” she said with a cocky little grin that she knew would only infuriate Seifer more as she lit up again, if only to give herself an excuse to stay outside and badger him some more - now that she had a fair idea of what was really going on, she was not going to let such a good opportunity as this was to wheedle some information about the gunblader’s personal life out of him go by. She exhaled, casting her gaze out over the plains and the forests, treetops glittering in the light of the slowly-rising sun, the mist that lingered on the ground gradually dissolving with the coming of day. “I didn’t see you at Rinoa’s party this weekend,” she remarked.

“What?” Seifer yipped, his tone laced thickly with irritation. Quistis frowned, adopting a look of confusion.

“Rinoa’s beach party? You didn’t go? I thought for sure she’d have tried to invite you,” the instructor replied offhandedly.

“She probably would have tried if I hadn’t been doing my best to avoid her,” Seifer explained. Then he gave Quistis a probing sideways look, and added, “Is that why you look so like shit this morning?”

“Excuse me?” she huffed, but without much real feeling - she couldn’t fault Seifer for speaking the truth, after all. “The party was Saturday night, for your information. I look like shit today for an entirely different reason,” She went on tiredly, scowling as Seifer grinned at her admission, clearly amused.

“Saturday night, hm,” he said absently, sucking a last lungful of smoke from his cigarette and then flicking it away. “So what were you doing there, instructor? Breaking it up?”

“Please,” Quistis scoffed, rubbing her eyes wearily. “I only went because Rinoa wanted me to bring Zell. My idea of a good time is not to spend it with a bunch of teenagers at a beach party on a Saturday night,” she tutted. She smoked, exhaling deeply, and giving the gunblader a quick, studying glance; he appeared to be lost in thought, and she watched him for a moment or two.

“Don’t you think Dincht’s a little old for a chaperone?” Seifer asked.

“I wasn’t chaperoning. It wasn’t my idea to force him to that party. Rinoa wanted to set him up with a bunch of her dimwitted friends,” Quistis lied, putting on her best aggravated front, while she watched out of the corner of her eye as Seifer pieced things together - his face, though he couldn’t have realized it, was completely giving him away; she could pinpoint the exact moment everything clicked into place in Seifer’s mind, and it was only then that she allowed herself, as well, to fit everything together.

Seifer and Zell had something more going on than met the eye, that much was obvious. They had evidently had an altercation of some sort after Zell left that party Saturday night, and had fought about something, which is where Seifer got himself that lovely black eye. But whatever it was they had together, it seemed that Seifer wanted more - could that be what they had fought about? Could he be... Quistis paused in her thought for a moment, struck by the complete and utter strangeness of what she wanted to ask herself, but she wondered on; could Seifer be in love with Zell? Was that even possible? It was plausible, certainly; Seifer, out of bed and wandering the grounds in the middle of the night as he was wont to do, coming upon a very tanked up Zell and, probably half-exasperated and half-amused, helping the blonde back to his room, where they had... Quistis puffed on her cigarette, shaking that image out of her head; it was too much for her. But the rest she could picture easily. Zell, sobering up, Seifer, angry, frustrated, sick of waiting, completely disregarding tact in bringing it up... love. Bringing something like that into the equation, depending on Zell’s mood at the time, could easily merit a good sock in the eye, if not more.

Yes, the situation was entirely plausible, but was it possible? Could Seifer be in love - in love - with Zell? How would such a thing even come to happen? How did the two of them come to be in this sort of situation in the first place? That was the biggest mystery of all, wasn’t it? That Seifer and Zell, of all people, could be...

“Something on your mind, instructor?” Seifer cut into her deliberation sharply, and she startled, the cigarette butt that had burnt out some time ago dropping from her lips.

“No...! Sorry...! I... daydreaming,” She stammered as an excuse, blinking and trying to straighten out her muddled thoughts. “Sorry, I’m not quite lucid, I’ve been up all night. I’d better go...”

Seifer nodded, uninterested, watching her as she trailed off. He didn’t suspect, did he? Was it obvious she had figured him out? Rubbing her tired eyes, she gave a quiet groan; she was acting silly, he couldn’t possibly know. But all the same, he was watching her. She offered a weak smile, and, tucking her packet of cigarettes down the front of her shirt for hiding, she headed back inside, trying to put both Zell and Seifer far from her already too-stressed thoughts. Something would have to be done, of course; an intervention of sorts - not that she wanted to meddle in other people’s business; she just wanted to make sure Zell knew what he was doing and that whatever went on between the two of them, no matter the outcome, wasn’t going to affect his work or his position at Garden. But that, needless to say, would at least have to wait until she got some sleep...


Seifer smirked to himself, lighting up a fresh cigarette, as he watched Quistis shuffle wearily out the door, but not before shooting one last worried, uneasy glance over her shoulder at him, which he did his best to pretend not to notice, trying to appear quite immersed in thought, at least until he heard the door click shut. He allowed himself a short laugh; Quistis was really too easy. A little sexual insinuation here, a few slips of the tongue there, lace the whole conversation with an undertone of thinly-veiled emotional frustration; just imagine, if she hadn’t run away so quickly, what he could have had her believing. She was probably running off to Dincht’s room at this very moment to give him a good talking-to about the dangers of playing around with someone’s feelings. It hadn’t been in the plan, of course, to let Quistis in on his little “project”... but it probably couldn’t do any harm to lead her on a bit, in any case. If anything, she deserved it for being so damn meddlesome. He knew exactly what was going to happen; Quistis would find some way to bring this up to Zell, who would get furious over it and set her straight before, presumably, finding Seifer to lay into him in retaliation for his rumor-mongering - which would be only to Seifer’s benefit in the long run; after such a scene, Quistis would never again believe anything he’d have to say on the subject of himself and Zell, and since it was still in his plan to seduce Zell at some point, securing beforehand the assurance that no one would believe that’s what was really going worked out perfectly to his advantage.

The next move, however, was Zell’s. Seifer grinned to himself, leaning back against the railing with a contented sigh. Now it was just a matter or waiting...


“You’re shifting your weight too early,” Zell was explaining, offering his hand to the young student laying at his feet in the dirt who was grinning despite the fact that he’d just been knocked on his arse with extremely little effort on the instructor’s part. “I can tell where you’re going before you’ve even moved.”

“Sorry,” the cadet, a tall, svelte boy with the look of someone who was working very hard not to be weedy, staggered to his feet, wincing as he kneaded his stomach where Zell had gutted him, but Quistis didn’t think he looked particularly put-off by the outcome of the spar as she watched the interaction from the other side of the training center. She couldn’t help but smile; Zell’s students adored him and it was obvious to everyone except, perhaps, Zell himself that they greatly enjoyed pulling his leg, although he would make them pay for it later.

“Don’t apologize to me,” Zell said with a shrug. “You’re the one who’s getting beaten up,” he added, nodding toward Quistis as he happened to look up and notice her, and he motioned to his students to stay put before trotting across the room to join her. “Hey, what’s up?” He said in greeting, lifting the hem of his tee-shirt to wipe a sheen of sweat from his forehead, revealing a flat, tanned stomach. Quistis hesitated before answering, biting her lip contemplatively; Zell looked to be in a good mood, which was certainly to her advantage if she didn’t want this conversation to blow up in her face.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your class or anything,” She said at length, offering an apologetic shrug. “I have something I want to talk to you about, but of course it can wait until you’re done.”

“Oh? Okay, well, I’ll be finished in a few minutes, if you don’t mind waiting,” he explained, flashing a grin as Quistis nodded to acknowledge that she would. But he paused as he turned to go, and then said a bit hesitantly, “Is everything okay? You look kinda troubled.”

“Well, there is something I’m worried about, to be honest,” she admitted hesitantly. Zell’s expression almost at once turned dark, and he frowned, looking not at her but at a spot somewhere over her right shoulder.

“Seifer,” He said quietly.

Quistis blinked, taken quite aback. She was about to ask how he knew what she meant to say - he must already have known that she was aware of his and Seifer’s situation, but how, she couldn’t bother to wonder right now - when she was distracted, and startled, by a presence just behind her.

“Good morning, instructors,” Seifer purred, an elusive smirk dancing over his lips. Zell was staring daggers at the gunblader, whose expression was completely unreadable - how long had he been standing there? What had he heard? That cocky grin of his told Quistis nothing; she couldn’t tell if he knew what was going on or if he was just being his usual antagonistic self and trying to rile Zell up by coming in there and purposely singling her fellow teacher and herself out. Thinking fast, she decided to intervene before Zell and Seifer could get into one of their famous brawls, and opened her mouth to reply to the ex-knight’s greeting, but Zell beat her to speaking.

“So, Squall finally let you out to play?” The martial artist snipped, rather coldly in Quistis’ opinion, pointedly eyeing the gunblade Seifer was wielding; it would appear that he had come to the training center in order to, well, train, but Quistis had a distinct feeling that that was just a front and that he had in fact come with a specific purpose, of which provoking Zell seemed to be a key component, seeing as he hadn’t wasted any time in getting to that.

“Fancy a match, chicken-wuss?” Seifer replied with an easy grin.

“I’ll pass. I wouldn’t want to put you out of commission,” Zell shrugged.

“Big talk from someone who failed the prerequisite course for gunblade training,” was Seifer’s casual answer, and, to Quistis’ surprise, Zell cracked a smile at this - a strained, forced smile, more telling of his anger than anything else, but it was still better than a punch, which was what she was expecting would come next in the exchange.

“You’re nothing without that big fuck-off sword, Almasy, and you know it.”

Seifer’s grin stiffened just a bit, and then, never once breaking Zell’s stare, he brought his gunblade out to his side and threw it to the ground, holding his arms out in what was clearly a challenge. “If you’re not careful, Dincht, I might think you’re looking for a fight.”

“Come on, now, you two, can’t you cool it for just one day?” Quistis tried to interject, but her plea went completely ignored. Seifer hadn’t paid her a moment of attention since he entered the training center, and Zell, likewise, seemed to have forgotten about her presence in light of more pressing matters - he looked, in fact, quite cheerful at the prospect of a fight, bouncing on the balls of his feet and bringing his hands up in front of himself in battle stance.

“Bring it on, Almasy,” was his response, his grin confident and excited.

“Maybe your students will finally get to see what a real fight looks like.”

“Zell, please-!” Quistis cried, but it was too late; that last provocation had evidently been the last straw, and Zell launched himself at his rival, fists flying. His moves were permeated with the swift rapidity of rage; he wasn’t fighting with any calculated pattern, but merely with anger, which Quistis knew was not something he was often prone to doing. Still, Seifer was keeping up with him - extremely well, she had to admit, and there weren’t many who could stay ahead of Zell when he got serious in a fight - he was only just managing to defend himself against Zell’s lightning-quick strikes, but he was managing it. Seifer wasn’t all talk, after all.

He was still smirking, too, even as he was hard pressed to keep one step ahead of the martial artist’s punches, which made Quistis wonder if this wasn’t the very thing he’d had in mind when he had come strolling up to them. He seemed to be completely content with the situation at present - indeed, was a little more cheerful than he ought to be. What he had to gain from pissing Zell off, Quistis couldn’t fathom, unless it was just Seifer’s way of letting the other work out his anger over whatever argument they’d been having; the same argument, perhaps, that had prompted Zell to deck Seifer once already. Maybe this was just their usual way of working out their resentment - Quistis couldn’t imagine that a couple like them got on very well most of the time. She couldn’t really see that they got on very well at all, but she supposed that they might act completely different in private... and that was something she certainly didn’t want to be thinking about.

Zell was moving a little more slowly now, his strikes less impetuous and more precise as his temper cooled, and this change in strategy allowed Seifer a few chances to get in some jabs of his own, though all were easily dodged. Neither of them had landed any solid hits yet, as far as Quistis could see, but it wasn’t for lack of trying; Zell looked, in earnest, to be going for blood, and if Seifer wasn’t giving his all it could only be by a tiny amount that he was holding back. His grin had not faded, and any way that Quistis looked at it, this fight seemed more like a lover’s spat than anything else, particularly in the way Seifer was handling it; though he wasn’t pulling his punches - assuming he wanted to walk away from the bout in one piece, that wasn’t even an option - he clearly felt he was indulging Zell in letting him take out his anger in this manner, rather than let the instructor nurse his resentment for however long it took him to get over whatever offense Seifer had committed. Their fights, in fact, had always been something like this, though Quistis had never considered the idea of their being lover’s spats before now, but the more she did consider it, the more valid the notion became in her mind. She couldn’t even begin to guess how long Seifer and Zell had as intimate as they appeared to be now, but it was apparent that this sort of thing was routine for the two of them - prompting the idea that this relationship, whatever it was, had been going on a lot longer than she first would have supposed.

There was a sudden lull in the fight, and both men stepped back a few paces to catch their breath, Seifer smirking, Zell’s glare brimming with animosity. Quistis seized on the opportunity to step briskly in between the two, turning her gaze sternly on each of them in turn before she chided, “That’s quite enough, the both of you. Zell, you have a class to attend to. Seifer, if you want to train, please find something to do it on besides your fellow SeeDs.” Dispensing severe scowls all around, including to the students of Zell’s who had come to watch the brawl, she shooed the onlookers away, giving Zell a very serious look as his attention for anything besides the fight he’d been goaded into returned and he sheepishly met her eyes. He turned away, giving a petulant sigh.

“You gonna let Trepe stick up for you now, chicken-wuss?” Seifer inquired coldly, retrieving his gunblade from the dirt and hefting it over one shoulder, the cocky attitude he’d affected all through their fight now conspicuously gone, replaced by something Quistis would have suspected was melancholy if she hadn’t been more focused on keeping the two of them from going at it again.

Zell didn’t even bother to turn around to snarl his answer, “Fuck off, already, Almasy.”

“Alright, whatever.” Seifer shrugged, but he didn’t look half as nonchalant as he appeared to be trying to seem. “We can finish this later, if that’s what you want.”

“Seifer, if you don’t mind,” Quistis prompted, nodding her head encouragingly toward the exit, which the gunblader bypassed completely as he turned and stormed off; he marched grumpily further into the depths of the training center, slashing at the undergrowth. She would have preferred he left the area altogether, but at least he hadn’t put up a fight, she supposed. Zell, however, was giving her a very obstinate look, as though he knew exactly what she was about to say and he wanted to head her off before she could lecture him, which he hurried to do.

“Don’t give me that look, Quistis,” he warned irritably.

“What look?”

“That same look you give me every time me and Seifer get into a fight,” he snarled. “He came in here purposely to wind me up; you saw it!”

“Yes,” She agreed, “But I also happened to notice that it didn’t take him a lot of effort, did it?”

Zell stared at her, the expression of incredulity quickly overtaking his features suggesting that he couldn’t believe she was actually excusing Seifer’s behavior. He frowned deeply at her, sweeping blonde locks out of his eyes as he asked accusingly, “Are you defending him?”

“I’m not defending anyone. I just find it odd that, after all this time, you would be so susceptible to his attacks.”

“I’m not! I’m just-” he began, but cut himself off with an irritated huff, throwing his arms out as if to express his frustration with her. “He’s coming around constantly lately, just to rile me up. I’m getting sick of it, alright? I’ve been tryin’ not to let it get to me.”

Quistis somehow didn’t think this was exactly the case, but she didn’t attempt to go any further into the subject. Instead, she asked next, as calmly and evenly as she could manage, “Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on him?”

“Excuse me?” Zell stared, his expression twisted with pure disbelief. “You think I’m being hard on Seifer? When he’s the one coming around every fuckin’ day trying to start fights with me? Don’t you think you’ve got it a little backwards?”

“You know what I mean, Zell,” she answered softly, and his face darkened, but he maintained his confusion. So he wanted to play innocent, did he? Well, Quistis certainly wasn’t one to force someone into confessing if they wanted to keep a secret, but she could get her point across nonetheless, and she fully intended to. When Zell didn’t reply, she went on smoothly, “Perhaps it’s not my place to say anything, but I think you ought to be careful. If you keep treating him like you are, you’re going to drive him away.”

“I’m trying to drive him away! That’s my problem! He won’t go away!” Zell cried, punctuating his words with wild hand motions to fully demonstrate his complete and utter bemusement with the situation. He gave a short, testy sigh, and began to pace. “Quistis, what is this all about?” He demanded shortly.

“I don’t know, you tell me?” she replied cryptically.

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you!” Abruptly, he stopped pacing, facing Quistis sharply and staring her down quite seriously. The quick, gruff tone of his voice indicated that he was running out of patience with the conversation as he went on to ask, “Are we talking about Seifer, or are we talking about something else?”

Quistis thought for a moment before answering, unsure of which was the proper answer to give. Zell was no fool; he must have known exactly what she was really talking about, but she couldn’t tell if his question was a trick or not - if he really wanted to keep pretending he didn’t know what this was about. Cautiously, she replied, “We’re talking about Seifer.”

“I don’t get why you’re on his side.”

“I’m not on anyone’s side,” she huffed, irritated.

“Then don’t stick up for him!” Zell went on belligerently. “For fuck’s sake, this guy has been making my life a hell for years, and all of a sudden you think he’s the victim?”

“I didn’t say that!” Quistis interrupted, starting to feel quite fed up with Zell’s accusations. After a moment, she added, in a very clipped tone of voice, “I’m not trying to defend Seifer. He’s an arse. I know that. I’m just saying...” She paused, fishing for words, before she knew how to go on. “...Think of his feelings toward this situation. Just because he’s a great arrogant git doesn’t mean he doesn’t have them, you know.”

She thought she saw Zell crack a smile for just a second, presumably at her description of Seifer as a great arrogant git, but he said next, quite seriously, “What the fuck do Seifer’s feelings have to do with anything?”

“Well,” Quistis began, somewhat taken aback; she hadn’t expected Zell to be so frank, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to be equally as frank and say outright what she was really getting at. Instead, she decided to raise a slight change of topic. “Do you consider you and Seifer to be...” She paused for just a moment, searching for an acceptable word to substitute for “lovers”, which somehow she didn’t think Zell would be very amenable to. “...friends?”

He looked incredulous at her even having asked such a thing, as though he thought the answer was so obvious it was ridiculous, and in response, bit sarcastically, “Yeah, we’re the kind of friends who like to beat each other up and can’t stand being around each other. What kind of question is that?”

“I’m being serious, here!” She insisted, giving a frustrated sigh. “I mean, did you ever think that maybe Seifer does consider you to be... friends?”

Zell’s expression, utterly blank, clearly said that he had never entertained any such thoughts, and that was all Quistis needed to deduce what was really going on between the two of them. Seifer was obviously putting more into their relationship than Zell, and it was becoming an issue. Hell, he was in love with Zell, that much was evident; that and the fact that Zell was by no means reciprocating the sentiment and, to go by the tension currently bubbling between the two of them, had not been receptive to the idea when Seifer proposed it. Now Seifer was trying to shrug the whole ordeal off by acting like an arse, and Zell was holding a grudge over what he had probably taken as a grievous indignity to his person.

Quistis allowed herself a quiet sigh. She didn’t want to interfere, but, knowing what she already did, she had to at least make sure that whatever went on between Zell and Seifer behind closed doors didn’t get carried into their professional lives, as well - and as it had already, she considered it her duty to warn at least one of them not to let it happen again. Not only would it be detrimental to their careers should any of this get out of hand and their relationship be discovered, but it also posed a danger to their work and the work environment of those around them if they were constantly bickering and trying to spite each other over personal matters. At least, all of that was what Quistis told herself to justify her meddling; truthfully, she was highly curious as to this unusual relationship of theirs, and she had a million questions for Zell, but to ask them, she would have to build up some trust first.

“I know you think it’s crazy, but just think about it for a minute,” She went on. “I mean, he doesn’t have anyone he’s close to, except maybe Fuujin and Raijin, but they’re always away from Garden. So who is he going to hang around when he’s lonely? It’s always you he goes to.”

“Only ‘cause he sees me as an easy target,” Zell offered.

“No, I don’t think so,” Quistis replied. “I mean, yes, you are an easy target,” she added, giving a cheeky grin in response to Zell’s exclamation of outrage at this remark, “You’re very easy to rile up, you can’t deny that, Zell. But I don’t think that’s why he bugs you. I think he takes your guys’ fighting in a very playful manner. He enjoys it. That’s obvious. I mean, I’ve never seen him act with anyone else the way he does with you, y’know?”

“Well,” Zell started, but that was all he said; he seemed to be surprised at himself for not having considered all that before, and he frowned in thought. “No,” he said eventually, shrugging. “I guess I never did think about it that way.”

“I guess my point is,” Quistis finished, flashing an encouraging smile at Zell, who appeared quite bewildered at himself now, “I’d be careful how far I push him, if I were you. He might be an arse, but he’s still human.”

Zell was giving her a look she couldn’t quite read, looking himself as though he didn’t know how to answer to such an observation. There was a silence between them for a few moments, and then Quistis, with only a minimal amount of awkwardness on her part, cleared her throat, and said, “Anyway, I’m sorry to have interrupted your class. You’d better get back to your students now. I’ll see you around,” She ended.

He nodded in return, a slight frown gracing his expression as he mulled over what she’d left him with. She offered a wave, and then turned to go, feeling fairly pleased with how the conversation had went as she headed out of the training center. Hopefully, Zell would rethink his attitude toward Seifer, or at least realize that their constant fighting wasn’t going to do anyone, least of all themselves, any good. And, well, if her advice just happened to make Zell see the light and help to get his and Seifer’s relationship back on steady ground, she wouldn’t complain. It was, after all, only her duty to help out a friend in need.


Zell watched her go, his feeling of utter bewilderment ever increasing as he mentally rehashed their conversation, trying to figure out exactly where Quistis had lost him; it was somewhere, he decided, between defending Seifer and trying to paint him out as the victim. “What the fuck was she on about...?” He wondered quietly to himself, shaking his head, as he returned to his students.


“For fuck’s sake, what?” Xu growled to herself as the phone on her bedroom wall began to ring again; all day long, it had been nonstop, and she was on the verge of ripping the damn thing right out of the wall if she thought it would stop people seeking her out for stupid, trivial matters - if it wasn’t some instructor or other looking for next month’s class schedule or this week’s field exam dates, it was a student needing a referral for their next mission or some reference for their paper on the practicality of GF junctioning versus the risks or a pardon for missing their magic lab this week because they had been stranded in Dollet after the trains went down or some other ordeal she couldn’t be bothered to give a shit about. Or, even worse, it was one of the disciplinary committee staff calling to report that Seifer had done something outrageous again; those were her least favorite calls of all, although they had become relatively infrequent lately... but with the day she was having, no amount of bad news would surprise her. Grumbling to herself, she got up from her desk and yanked the handset off the wall, answering it in the calmest, sweetest tone she could muster, “This is Xu.”

“Xu? Hi, it’s Quistis.”

Ah, fuck, what does she want? she thought to herself, but merely replied, “Hey, what’s up?”

“Well,” Quistis began a bit hesitantly, and Xu mentally groaned - no doubt the instructor was about to ask some massive favor of her, just like everyone else did. For what other reason did she exist than to do others favors? “Remember this weekend, you asked me to help you find a candidate for a mission next week?”

“Uh-huh,” Xu said in her most noncommittal voice. There was a slight pause, as though Quistis was contemplating whether or not she ought to continue.

“Have you found anyone yet?”