Edited 11/23/08.

As the head of what was most likely the sneakiest, slipperiest organization in the history of Spira, Baralai had eyes and ears everywhere. He hadn't even needed to plant them – it seemed that his army of spies simply came with the job. A very handy perk, and it had helped him out of too many difficult situations to count. It had given him heads-ups on upcoming assassination attempts. It had helped him find loose tongues and double agents.

And he had never been more thankful for it than he was now. He stared at the paper, the contrast of black on white burning into his retinas so that he could not escape the words, not even when he closed his eyes and pressed the heels of his palms to his face.

The transcript was brief, without description or notes. A simple conversation, short and to the point, but enough that there was no doubt in Baralai's mind what needed to be done.

He had a name, and a sphere to place the name to a face. And best of all, he had a gun.

It didn't take long to find Wulfe – a day and a half, to be exact. To be fair, the man had made a decent attempt at hiding. But Baralai had spent two years learning every trick in the book about exactly how to cease existing in every way short of stopping his heart. And Lord Seymour, greasy bastard though he may have been, had taught Baralai well.

Baralai did not kick the door off its hinges. With the combat training he'd received with the Squad, he probably could have, but this was not a time for dramatics and vanity. This had to be handled carefully. With finesse. Simply knocking a few heads together would not make the threat go away.

It was very hard to remember that, however, when he entered the room (having melted the lock with a Fira that had been particularly well-aimed and focused, if he did say so himself) and saw the face of the man who intended to take all Baralai had with a single bullet.

Baralai took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down, fingering the engraved metal of the gun in the deep pockets of his robes. "So you're Wulfe, huh," he said. It wasn't a question. The man looked up from the letter he'd been writing and frowned.

"How did you get in here?" he demanded, and Baralai saw his hand creeping along the desktop to the drawer, where there was almost definitely a gun of his own.

Baralai chose this moment to pull the beautifully carved, silver-and-mahogany pistol out of his pocket, cocking it and pointing it right between Wulfe's eyes, underlined by dark smudges and wide with fear. His hand froze.

"Good choice," Baralai said. "You should probably stay like that."

"How did you get in here?" Wulfe repeated, and Baralai hated to admit that a thrill of sick pleasure ran up his spine at the quaver in the man's voice. "The – the lock had an anti-magic thing… a… a charm…"

"Yes," Baralai agreed. "It was insultingly easy to overcome."

Wulfe was silent. Baralai could see sweat beading on his forehead.

It was sad, Baralai thought to himself, that this pathetic excuse for a man could have so thoroughly destroyed him. Embarrassing, really. It was unlikely Wulfe could even shoot a gun straight. Not that Baralai was an expert gunman, himself, but he had trained enough with Nooj and Gippal, who could probably hit a needle from a hundred yards away, that he was sure he could hit a man sitting right in front of him, frozen in place.

Wulfe was skinny and pale. He didn't look like he'd spent a day in the sun in his life. His skin was shiny with sweat and his eyes were a faded blue, his hair a muddy brown. There was a mole on his left cheek, and his lips were a little too thin. He was a wholly unremarkable man. Baralai would not have given him a second glance in the street. Whatever muscle he had was what he'd been born with – there was no way he'd ever really trained for fighting.

Baralai had known men like him. They gave orders and then sat back to watch the show, as though the deaths of innocent people were entertainment. Perhaps the worst part was that Baralai knew he could have ended up the same, had things gone just a little differently – still small and pathetic, hiding in cramped apartments in dark alleys with guns he couldn't handle and only cockroaches for company.

"I've heard you're planning something for this afternoon," Baralai said, and gods but he wanted to shoot this man dead right here and now. "I've heard you don't think much of the Machine Faction because it is run by Al Bhed. I've heard you think if it were under different management, say, someone you know very well, you could take some of the machina the Faction excavates for yourself and make a lot of money off it. After all, machina is in high demand these days."

Wulfe said nothing, but Baralai heard him swallow hard. His eyes were darting around the room, looking for an escape route and finding none but the door behind Baralai.

"I've heard you gave a man a gun and a ticket to Luca Stadium for this morning, and you told him to shoot the leader of the Machine Faction. Gippal."

"So what if I did?" Wulfe's surge of bravery – or foolishness – disappeared as quickly as it had come – when Baralai began to walk towards him, leveling the gun at his heart, he quieted and squirmed back in his chair until he was as far away from the praetor as possible.

"Well, Gippal happens to be a very good friend of mine. I don't look kindly on those who wish him harm."

Wulfe's laughter was shrill, with an edge of hysteria. "'Friend'? I heard he fucks you."

Baralai smiled, but it was tight and close-lipped. "Really? How do you know he's the one doing the fucking?" He hated using that word, he really hated using that word. It felt sharp and awkward in his mouth, like it didn't belong. But he was going to be taken seriously, and if it took a gun and a foul mouth to gain that respect, so be it.

Wulfe was sneering, now, and his eyes were searching the room more frantically than ever. "That kind of thing is best left to Al Bhed. There are words for people like you. Disgraces to our race. Faggots."

Baralai was still smiling, tense and controlled, using all his willpower not to pull the trigger and end this now. Life was life, and he was fairly certain he could stop this without spilling blood. Wulfe didn't require an actual bullet in him – he only needed to understand that if the need arose, Baralai wouldn't hesitate.

"Yes," Baralai said. "Faggots, fags, queers. And there are many more. But for now, you can just call me 'the guy with the gun'. I'm not like you, Wulfe. There are a lot of ways I'm not like you. For one, I don't like taking life. I don't enjoy it in the least, not even when it's people like you who are more fiend than human. I also, probably unlike you, have taken life. It's not pretty and it's not easy, but I will do it if I must. I might be gay, but I'm not the coward people like you take me for. If you're looking for a fight, I can give you one. And I guarantee that you'll regret you ever crossed me."

Wulfe swallowed again, and his knuckles turned white as his grip on the chair's armrests tightened.

"So you're going to call off that hit, now. You're going to forget this ever happened. You will never lay a hand on Gippal or I, nor will you tell anyone to do so. In fact, you're going to be delightfully supportive of us – both of our politics and our relationship. Because I'm going to be keeping a very close eye on you, and if I hear so much as a whisper against us, you will not like the consequences."

Baralai cocked, aimed, and shot, missing Wulfe's ear by inches. There was silence as the casing hit the ground and Wulfe sat, frozen, eyes closed as if waiting for the next bullet to hit him.

"Do you understand, Mr. Wulfe?"

"Man, what took you so long?"

Baralai was surprised to find Gippal, usually so laid-back, tense and fidgeting. Nooj's arms were crossed over his chest, his expression menacing. "You're late," he growled.

Gippal ran a hand through his spiky hair and sighed. "You are so late," he reiterated. "And we couldn't start without you, obviously. People are getting restless. That's half of Spira out there, 'Lai, we do not want a riot on our hands. Let's go say goodbye to Yuna and them and then we can get this show on the road."

Nooj was still scowling darkly as he passed Baralai, who glanced up at him apologetically before following down the path to the dock where Yuna, Rikku and Paine waited, talking and laughing. Gippal jogged to catch up to Baralai, tugging at his shoulder and peering at him worriedly. "Hey, seriously, 'Lai, what took you so long? Is everything okay?"

Baralai was an expert at lying. He had practically written the book on deception. It took absolutely no effort at all to look Gippal straight in the eye and pull on his half-smile – the curl of his lips that was all he was willing to give in public – and say, "Of course. I overslept, that's all."

Gippal shook his head in disbelief, but the suspicion on his face had melted away to amusement. "No way. I didn't think you could."

Baralai's smile turned sheepish and he ducked his head. And he knew how good of an actor he was. He knew that when he really put his mind to it, he could fool even Gippal, at least some of the time. He should have been thankful for the skill.

But really, it just made him hate himself all the more.

Gippal started to laugh, probably at nothing at all, and Baralai drank it in like fine wine. He had missed this – through weeks of pyreflies and floating around in a body that was no longer his, and before that through years of silence, of knowing nothing about whether or not the Al Bhed boy had even lived to become a man. He had missed the laughter and the expression in Gippal's eye when he looked at Baralai. He had missed the casual way Gippal slung an arm around his shoulders as they walked – a one-armed hug which could have been friendly affection or a blatant, unashamed this-is-mine.

If it had been hard for Baralai to stop his finger on the trigger, it was a thousand times harder to resist the desire – an ache, thrumming deep in his bones – to turn and kiss Gippal there in the crowded streets of Luca, soaking the laughter right into his lungs.