Title: Acquired Taste

Summary: Guardian Forces are a two-way street.

Warning & Disclaimer: FFVIII and all affiliated characters are the property of Squaresoft.

Notes: For Twig, although I'm sure she'd rather it not be.

***

She had already been gone for at least an hour when he awoke, something inside him uneasily rousing him from sleep when her expected touch on his shoulder to signify his turn for watch never came.

"Hyne, Squall, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to," Zell babbled, apologizing frantically for at least the eighth time so far. "I swear, I don't know how it happened. She was helping me unjunction and the damn thing just sort of jumped from me to her and the next thing I knew you were asking me where she was and I must have passed out or something because—"

"Zell. Shut the fuck up," he replied, less out of rudeness than desire to just have some quiet so he could think. "How many were you carrying? Who do you still have?"

He noticed that Zell didn't react to the personalization of the question. Not what are you carrying, but who. Not objects, mere weapons to fight with, but each of them individual and sentient in a way that very well equaled the minds of those who carried them—in some ways even surpassing them.

"I had four." Zell stopped in his tracks and concentrated, eyes screwed shut and forehead furrowed. "Still got Quez, that's easy to tell… And, um, Cereberus. Ifrit, too."

His eyes shot open with surprise and both irises briefly washed over with a gold sheen. They blazed in one quick pulse before spreading over the white as well and then retreating, returning to their usual blue. "Shit, I've got Siren too. She must've dropped that one in when the other jumped." He shook his head in a brief grimace. "I don't think Siren's all that happy about it, either. She's used to the girls."

"So, she only took the new one."

Zell, still rubbing his temples, shook his head and frowned slowly. "This is going to sound dumb, but it was more like it took her. I've just had it a few days, haven't called it yet but I'll bet you that one's more powerful then most of the GF's put together. You can just feel it, you know?" He bit his lip and sucked in a slow breath, looked everywhere but Squall's face. "Honest to Hyne, Squall. That one… it's different from the others. I dunno what happened, but…"

"If it's as strong as you say…" He was having a hard time making his thoughts into words, as though speaking them gave them strength and substance, all his fears made concrete. "If she's got her magic and it's as strong as you say, hopefully she's protected even by herself."

"Yeah," Zell agreed dutifully. "It's strong enough." He finally looked at Squall as if searching for reassurance from his own dubious tone but now it was Squall's own turn to dodge Zell's gaze. After a few seconds, Zell dropped his gaze but didn't voice the words neither of them would say: but what protects her from it in turn?

Rustling in the back of his mind, quiet shifting--- Shiva maybe, or Pandemona. Guardian Forces listening in, sifting through layers of thought and memory for their words with detached interest, like listening underwater. This had ceased to startle him a month after he had first began to junction; now he would only notice their absence, so what protected any of them, really? But that was the kind of thought it was best not to finish, better if he'd never thought it in the first place.

"All right," he finally said. "Go meet Quistis and the others at the rendezvous point. It should take you about two hours if you run. I'm going to look for Rinoa—" he held up a hand, already forestalling Zell's reply--- "But if I don't find her right away, I'll return to the campsite and you bring everyone in the Ragnarok there. We'll meet back at the campsite no matter if I find her or not."

"And then we'll all search," Zell said in a questioning rather than confirming voice. Searching for one lost party member endangered the entire team; only a month ago he would have dismissed his present course of action as unthinkable, contracts notwithstanding. But…

"Yes, we'll all search," he replied, and started picking out rounds for his gunblade. Fingers moving through familiar actions, he concentrated hard, trying to measure the curagas he had left. Enough? Thank Hyne he had drawn some of the back-up magic instead of the offensive spells, but no auras, and he was low on ice and Shiva, definitely Shiva was shifting restlessly in the back of his mind…

Life was too damn complicated. But that was not an unusual state of affairs.

He finished loading his gunblade, and as an afterthought, adjusted Rinoa's crossbow so he could sling it across his back. Without looking, he addressed Zell. "Get going. If it's anything like the rest of the GF's, she's probably covered a lot of ground already."

"Squall."

He turned around, not sure what to make of that flat voice, utterly unlike Zell.

"You should call it by its real name, Squall." Zell shoved his hands in his pockets, turned his face to the sky, and he could see the stark black curls of shadow that marked the tattoo. Moonlight silvered over his blue eyes and when he lowered his face to Squall, it was like looking into the gaze of a blind and ancient sibyl. "It's old," he said remotely, still looking at the sky. "It's old. I remember that. And it has a name."

Something shivered in the back recesses of his mind; it felt like a cold finger had been laid on his spine for a brief caress. He touched Zell with his voice alone, not sure of what he would receive otherwise. "Go back to the ship, Zell."

Zell looked momentarily confused; the same golden flash from before flickered across his eyes and was gone. "On my way," he said in his normal tone of voice, and turned, smoothly loping off easily into the darkness until it swallowed him completely.

Squall started moving in the opposite direction. There was a moment when he thought he heard a word that hissed after him—no, not after him, from inside of him—hissed, despite the fact there were no sibilants in it, like something from an inhuman mouth. He kept going.

Eden.

***

He wouldn't have found her at all except for the scrap of blue fabric catching his eye, bright as the sky against the dark leaves. A few steps further and he found her torn duster, a few steps beyond that and there she was, curled up on her side and pillowing her head on one hand. She looked very peaceful lying there, and much younger than usual. Not a scratch on her.

At first it was difficult to make out her features with her lying as she was, a slightly smaller and darker shadow among other shadows. Her face was turned against one outstretched arm. Relief made him clumsy and the leaves crackled beneath his knees when he knelt beside her. The staccato beat of his heart slowed when he confirmed she was breathing and then jumped again when he could see her face more clearly.

A few dark strands of hair spilled across her cheeks in inky curves; when he put out his hand to brush them away, they had dried mostly stiff and a few were sticky still. When he brushed his fingertips across her cheek, she murmured instinctively and tilted towards them; what was smeared around her mouth looked like--- was--- blood, and not like shadows as he'd first thought. And not her own blood, either. It crusted along the bottom swell of her lip and all over the white evenness of her teeth; she sighed in her sleep and he could smell her breath like an abattoir.

He sat back on his heels and thought fixedly of the answers to the last SeeD rank test he had taken. After a moment, he touched her shoulder gently but firmly, shaking as he did. "Rinoa. Wake up."

Murmuring incoherently, she pulled away from him this time, hugging her other hand to her chest to protect what it held. He couldn't see it aside from a few stringy gobbets and doubted if she could open her hand to show him anyway; blood stuck her fingers together, had run in rivulets down her palm and wrist to pool in the crook of her elbow, drying in long maroon tracks.

He saw the way she held it: lovingly, familiar, something to be held close. Her fingers tightened and relaxed; he ignored the wet squelch as best he could. Gingerly, he took her arm and pulled it away from her body, carefully prying away the bloody--- no, not looking at it, there was no need to look at it too closely. Her fingers opened and closed again restlessly, a worried line forming between her brows as she made another incoherent noise. He held her hand and she quieted.

He was a SeeD. He repeated this fact to himself over and over, relived the stab of sorceress ice through his chest and rollicking waves of electricity through his body and a thousand other hurts or horrors he had encountered and moved past. He had done these things and kept going but as he looked at what was on her mouth and what she hadn't been able to part with in her hand before going to sleep, he felt bile rise and nearly lost the entirely inadequate camp rations he had eaten several hours ago.

"Rinoa. You have to wake up now."

She pulled out of sleep reluctantly in a slow flurry of motion, sooty lashes dipping and falling before finally opening all the way. There was a splash of dried blood high on her left cheek, a stark ideograph on the pale skin. She looked up at him hazily, a soft unfocused smile spreading across her mouth.

"Squall," she said, and her voice was still sleepy and delighted. "Squall. I've been having such dreams."

He could see something in the dark beyond her, a shapeless bulk, a carcass that he couldn't even identify. "Have you?" he said, almost impressed at how steady his voice was. "Were they good dreams?"

She frowned, her hand drifting up to press against her forehead. Something shifted under the nearly translucent skin of her face, a ripple of subtle color. "I don't know," she said slowly. "I was running somewhere and you weren't there. But I wasn't alone."

"I'm here right now." He covered the hand that stroked her forehead with his own. "I'm going to take one of your junctions out now. You'll feel better afterwards."

"No." Her voice sharpened like ice. "Don't."

Some deep instinct kept his hand on her, despite the inclination to pull back, and his voice in the same register as before, counting on her response to the tone rather than the words. "All right. You're not hurt, then. You have to sit up. We need to walk somewhere. We're going to go meet the others and then we'll be able to take another rest."

She quieted under his hands and nodded. "All right. I'm ready."

After some maneuvering, he got one of her arms around his shoulder and wrapped his right arm around her waist, slowly levering both of them to their feet. She swayed once, her nails digging into his skin, but managed to keep her feet and they made their way, step by halting step, back towards the campsite. His gunblade banged awkwardly into his side at every step and he fervently hoped that nothing else would go wrong that night, no more attacks. It seemed wrong to depend on hope, against all his teachings of depending on himself.

He could smell her. He wondered that she didn't notice it herself.

At the campsite, he was relieved that Zell had banked the fire instead of putting it out completely. Water in a canteen, throw a few sticks into the flames, try to throw the packs together, find one of his spare shirts in the tent… Rinoa sat docilely on the ground, head drooping forward already and her hair curtaining her face from him. Her fingers flexed in her lap as though looking for something to hold, and he tried to hurry his steps without letting her out of his sight.

Her shirt was black and had fortunately taken most of the stains. He hadn't forgotten to pick up her duster on the way back and that was only torn, easy enough to explain, easy enough to repair. He scrubbed her face and arms with the dampened extra shirt, daubing awkwardly. Time was too short, Zell and the others would be back any moment now, but he didn't let himself miss any part, rubbing the crooks of her elbows, behind her ears, between the webs of her fingers. There was nothing he could do about her fingernails, he hoped it would just look like dirt.

"Squall." Rinoa roused herself enough to lift her head. "Squall, I'm thirsty."

"Drink this," he said, glad enough to guide the canteen to her mouth. He had gotten most of the blood off her face but he could still see it along her teeth and catch it on her breath.

She tasted it eagerly, almost sloppily, made a face, and pushed the canteen away again. "I don't want that." Something in her face shifted again, that ripple of color under her skin that was gone almost before seen. When he finally realized that he was seeing the guardian force moving under it, he couldn't stop his hands from giving an involuntary twitch as he pulled the canteen away, and water splashed his own leg.

"Squall?"

Don't look.

"I think…"

Don't look.

"I think…" Rinoa's voice was remote and her gaze was a transient thing, touching briefly on his face before moving out and away, towards the blackness beyond. The night air was very cold, even through his jacket, and he felt something tremble in the air, in time itself. "I think there's something wrong with me…"

He followed the line of her gaze, helpless not to. The sky was rife with stars, almost sparkling. Crystallizing, that was it, it was the only word he could seize upon, as though something enormous and insubstantial was waiting in the dark for the moment to form and become real. She tilted her head back, fading, becoming lesser as she looked up and up and the only thing he could do was hold her cold hand in his own, look helplessly, and hope…

Light spilled from the sky like a benediction. The roar of the engines descending filled his ears and threw the grass back in a rippling curtain. Beside him, Rinoa gave a tiny gasp that the wind snatched away almost before it even left her lips, and he couldn't stand to look at her and have to meet that lost, bewildered gaze.

Quistis and Zell were through the doors and down the ramp almost before the ship had finished landing. Quistis's hands were warm and blessedly removing Rinoa's from his and into her own; Zell's hands in their fighter's gloves wrapped around his shoulders, slipped across his ribs, all over his chest and expertly checking for broken places, before he could shrug the other boy off and away. "Get it out."

Zell nodded and didn't wait, his hands clapping to Rinoa's temples. Squall didn't realize that he had been holding his breath until Rinoa released hers in a long sigh. There was nothing to mark the transfer except Zell jerking slightly, not even a flash of color in his eyes or a ripple under Rinoa's skin.

"There," Zell said less than ten seconds later. "I gave Siren to Quistis, she can give her back to Rinoa later. You sure you're okay, Squall?"

"I'm fine." He focused his eyes with no little amount of effort. "Go put it on the strongest junction plates we have. When you're done, come help me carry the packs in. I want to get moving."

Rinoa was leaning against Quistis now, her head on the taller girl's shoulder. It would have been difficult not to notice the stiff patches on her shirt but Quistis said nothing, just got her arm around Rinoa's waist the same way he had, and gave him an long, unreadable look. "I'll put her to bed," she said, and started walking back up the ramp.

He watched them go, thinking how he had taken care of them all, sometimes well, sometimes badly. His job was to take care of things. Everyone told him that he was good at his job.

After giving Zell the coordinates to give to Selphie, he finally let himself into a bunkroom and made doggedly for the bed without even bothering to remove his boots. Irvine was in the room as well, hair mussed but awake. "You got back all right. Is Rinoa okay?" he asked curiously. His eyes were sleepy but aware and open. Their color didn't change.

He considered telling Irvine for almost twenty seconds, maybe talking to him, really gave it consideration. Irvine was the one who saw outside things, the one who remembered, the one who had grown up in SeeD but hadn't had his own personal gods and demons plugged into his brain as they had for so long.

But he couldn't do it. Life as a SeeD, life with Seifer—he knew all about paying too dearly for a moment of weakness in his life, even if being weak was almost what he wanted right at that time.

"She's asleep," he replied shortly, and rolled over. Sleep for himself was a long time in coming; when it did, he dreamed of the copper taste of blood and metal, the shadow of something vast that filled the sky and dwarfed all other dreams.

***

(But she is not asleep.)

She is somewhere where the conscious and unconscious meet like the lip of ocean and shore; she stands-will-stand-has-stood in a place that time does not touch in the same way it touches the waking world. What she is breathing is not air and what she is seeing is the recently ravaged landscape of her own mind, where the bright figures of Guardian Forces revolve and dance endlessly in the distance.

This is the place they go to when summoning. This is the hollowed and hallowed portion that the Guardian Forces claim. She has never been here so long before and she has never brought back a clear conception of the place— there is Siren as a whirling flurry of gold, home again and safe. Now there is time to stand and get a good look. Now, there is time for her to stand and watch the various Guardian Forces dance and remember.

The taste…

The taste was not what she would have expected. Maybe things would have been different otherwise.

This is what she remembers. She remembers sitting up in her sleeping roll, stepping carefully over packs and drying clothes. She remembers the coldness of the dew on the grass against her bare calves, the dying embers of the campfire. She remembers the feel of Zell's skin against her fingertips as she prepared for the junction transfer, ready to sit for her shift of the watch. Ifrit was warm beneath her fingers, pushing to the front of Zell's mind and she could almost smell a hint of smoke and brimstone, feel gritty ash beneath the skin. When all of a sudden--

(jolt)

--There was something else. And all she could sense was the movement of something rushing directly towards her at great speed, soaring through nothingness. There was an impression lstretching her neck backwards to see something that defied vision with its size, vast and almost mechanical. When it hit her---

(JOLT)

---It was impossible to register the exact impact. She heard nothing except Siren's faintly disappearing scream, the lapping of water against rocks and discordant jangle of music as the thing shoved Siren aside and pushed through her mind as easily as a hand through smoke, an attacker, a rapist, and then it was in her, deep and terrifying and so damn strong that---

This is where she begins to get confused.

She had been running and she might have been screaming too, she doesn't really remember. Running and (maybe) screaming and (definitely) clawing at her own temples to get it out get it out GET IT OUT, and suddenly there was a shape looming up in the dark in front of her, snarling.

Screaming and flinging her empty hands in front of her face, weaponless and now trying to get the thing in her head out for an entirely different reason, summon the thing, summon anything to drive away the monster.

And--

(JOLT)

--something answered her call.

And she doesn't remember exactly, only the terrible heat as she plunged her arms into yielding flesh, fingers hooked and digging like claws and the death-screams and when she realized the blood in her mouth was not her own, swallowing, the taste of it---

She didn't mean to, not really, but that first taste only woke the thing inside her up more, she faded in and out of her mind even as her body continued to move but the taste--

It wasn't on purpose, some part of her was standing back in the no-place where they go while summoning, watching in horror, but this wasn't summoning, this was something else because she was still mostly there---

Most of her was there, she could feel the Guardian Force because they share, they give, they are the Guardian Forces, at least for a little while and the thing, the thing, she could feel raw power and primitive delight stronger than anything in the world and---

The first swallow was an accident. Not on purpose. There was blood in her mouth and she had to swallow because she couldn't breathe and there was no time to think, no time at all. And if she had just spat out the blood instead of swallowing it, maybe… Nothing like what she expected and everything that the thing inside her expected.

(good so good so good so good so GOOD)

And they share so much with the Guardian Forces… and they ask so much of the Guardian Forces, how can anyone be surprised when the Guardian Force wants something besides memory?

How can anyone be surprised when they find themselves wanting the same things the Guardian Forces do?

(and it must be dead now but the warmth is still there and she revels in it, rolls in it, gulps it down in long thirsty draughts, and there is the frenzied strength in fingers that are not quite her own, ripping away chunks and strips of flesh like a child stripping daisy petals, the ache in her jaw is something to be acknowledged only faintly, and beneath it all is power power power, raw-life energy and beast-magic slipping into her with every bite. it crackles green between her teeth, and soothes her torn and battered mind like a numbing balm, cooling the primitive flurry of rip-eat-drink-fight that raged out of the guardian force until slowly, mercifully, it fades away completely and blackness creeps over her vision. and then there is squall, and he brings her home like he said he always will. when they take away the thing inside her, she can feel the subtle shifting of her mind as the guardian forces acclimate themselves to the new shape of her mind, gently prodding the holes and ripped edges, licking off the leak of memory-condensation and slowly taking away all sensation until she is almost willing to think it never really happened after all.)

Some things are better not to remember completely.

But now the Guardian Forces are dancing away and slipping over the horizon like stars fading in the daylight. It's time to leave and stop remembering. She turns away from this place, walks into the ocean, slips into real sleep and real dreaming.

She is running through a field and the wind is blowing, blowing, blowing behind her. Her hair swirls around her shoulders and she raises her hands to the sky as she runs and dances and leaps, chased by nothing but her own steady breathing and the whirl of the breeze. It feels like an unexpected curaga and there is the coolness of new magic tingling between her eyes, the webbing of her fingers, and curled in short, glittering strands at her temples.

And oh the power is everywhere in this cool and endless field, there is so much life here to consider, what to take first…

As she dreams, her tongue moves across her lips; she swallows and smiles.

***

End notes: Twig mentioned in her blog that she didn't think it was possible to write a serious piece using the "Eat" ability available through Eden in FFVIII. She's right, but I had to try anyway.

On a less serious note:

TwigBrnch: Zell: Where the hell is Squall?
TB: Rinoa: Funny story about that
ThorneScratch: Zell: …
TB: Rinoa: Well, not so much funny as... um...
TB: Rinoa: You ever hear of the Donner Party?
TS: Rinoa: Or Dahmer?
TB: X D
TB: Zell: ....CIIIIID
TB: Rinoa: On the upside, I did get all his nice shiny belts
TS: Soylent green!
TS: Now with fifty percent more SeeD!
TB: Zell: Stay away from me, demon woman!
TB: Zell: And your little dog too!
TB: Rinoa: *sob*
TB: Rinoa: *devours Selphie*
TB: Zell: HOLY SHIT!
TB: Rinoa: What?
TB: Zell: You just ate Selphie!
TB: Rinoa: No I didn't
TB: Zell: She's a goddamn Black Widow!