#instructortrepe

It comes in flashes, the magic and the pain, and the fact that she's unconscious for most of it doesn't matter to the frozen power that seeps and burrows deep in her bones.

At least Quistis is alive.

At least Quistis is safe.

Even if that's come at the cost of what she fears most-- all that Xu can hope for, somewhere beneath the frigid fire, is that this kills her instead of turning.

She has no memory of leaving the battlefield, only that one moment, Quistis was breathing again and the blood had stopped trying to make its escape from her insides, and the next, Xu was on her back, blinking up into the unforgiving bright of infirmary fluorescents.

[txt]: I’m fine, I promise. 

[txt]: Well, concussed, but fine otherwise. 

She knows what Quistis is worried about, but it was just a little incident, a lapse in concentration in the gym and suddenly the mat beneath her back, the white tile ceiling looking very blurry despite her otherwise pretty-good vision. 

He’d apologize, but he’s not at all sorry; besides, her reaction is the polar opposite of what he was expecting, but it’s hardly unpleasant. Seifer wraps the towel back around his hips, and leans against the narrow sink in his bathroom as his thumb slides across the keyboard.

[txt]: i mean

[txt]: if you’re offering, how can i refuse?

He’s hunched over a work bench in one of the basement labs, welding together scrap. It’s not Hyperion-- it’ll never be Hyperion, but as long as no one figures out what Seifer Almasy is up to, it won’t matter. 

It’ll be something to prove he’s still a warrior, still everything that Balamb beat into him from the age of eight. 

The footsteps, he doesn’t hear, not until they hit the doorway and there’s a beep as someone walks in. Seifer glances away briefly, and back to the blowtorch in his hands once he’s seen the intruder, and found her irrelevant. 

“No one down here but Garden’s most unwanted,” Seifer informs her. “You get lost or something?” 

“You know it.” She’s got a cigarette between her teeth, ash balanced precariously on the burning tip as she tries to avoid dumping it all over the mammoth pile of exams covering Quistis’ desk. 

“Good thing I learned how to forge your handwriting, right?” 

It was a simple question and Fang was left to weigh the answer in silence. They were huddled together in a train car heading back from a mission. Fang had done her role well in getting them out safely but was left to wonder if trust was so easily shoved out. There was one answer and the only proper answer she could give.