A/N: This was written for The Third War project over on LJ (thethirdwar dot livejournal dot com), a multi-author Seifer/Quistis compilation.

the crownless again shall be king

-irishais-

He's been having this dream a lot lately.

He'll close his eyes, and there, in snapshots like he's upended on of his mother's photo albums, he'll see a boy, young, blond, racing a truck across the just-mopped wooden floors of the orphanage. It isn't his truck, but it doesn't stop him from zooming it across furniture and walls, slipping and sliding as he shoves it faster, faster, right over a stack of books Quistis has carefully arranged. Cid sits in a chair, a newspaper in hand, a big, boring thing that holds no appeal for little boy Seifer unless he gets to read the comics.

He runs the truck across Cid's knees, and the rumble of laughter this elicits makes him warm somewhere in his stomach, like a hug from Matron, who calls for him to be careful.

Behave, she says, wagging her finger at him. Be a good boy.

Be a good boy, Seifer.

Be a good boy..

Her words echo around, until they twist and warp and run together, mixed with Cid's rumble, and Seifer runs, runs, runs.

He doesn't see the table until it's too late, and by that point, the vase is falling, a slow freewheeling descent.

Matron's going to be so mad.

Good boy, Seifer. Be good, be good. Her chant is dancing through his head as he grabs for the vase, trying to catch it before it can be ruined. But his hands are too small, his fingers too short, and the vase is so, so big.

He wakes up before the vase hits the ground, every single time.

xx

Seifer blinks awake, and the first thing to come into focus before his sleep-gummed eyes is the alarm clock, reading two-thirty in the morning, and the faint whisper of vanilla and weapons oil still lingers in the the pillow he's ended up crumpling under his head.

-good boy.

With a sigh of disgust, he rolls over onto his back, grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes until the gunk is gone. It shouldn't bother him as much as it does, this dream (this memory), incessantly replaying every time he closes his eyes. It was just a childhood accident. It doesn't mean anything.

But he can still hear Cid's rumbling laugh and Edea's admonishments, and something inside him tightens up.

-good boy, Seifer, now off with his head. Good boy, Seifer, now kill the girl. Good boy, good boy, good boy, slaughter them all-

He flings aside the covers, and a cold finger of wind from the open window rakes across his bare chest. Summer is impossible in Balamb; it's broiling during the day and frigid at night, and he has made the mistake of renting a rundown house by the sea, picking it arbitrarily from the list that Garden presented him with. They will not let him live on campus, and they will not let him out of their sight; Seifer almost thinks he would've preferred prison. It's better than being tracked like an animal.

Absently, he scratches at his wrist, where a tiny disc of metal has been embedded into the muscle. Most of the time he can forget it's there. Other times... other times, it seems like the world has gotten entirely too small for him, when all he wants to do is get roaring drunk and start a bar fight, just to prove that he's still a man to be feared.

Not this man, where the woman who occasionally comes over frequently doesn't stay the entire night. Not this man who wakes at two in the morning with the woman who was supposed to be his mother screaming at him to be a good boy, yes, be good, Seifer-

Seifer gets up and spends the next three hours flipping through crappy early-early morning movies with the largest mug he owns filled with coffee until he hears his alarm go off in the next room.

xx

Quistis Trepe is waiting for him like usual, leaning against the wall as she sips coffee from an overly large go-cup in her hands. She glances up as he approaches, and in Garden's hideous lighting, he's surprised by how tired she looks.

"Instructor," he greets her, with a nod. But the word is mild, not an insult anymore, not for a few months now. "You should've stayed."

"I had work to do," Quistis mumbles around the rim of her cup. He doesn't know if it should surprise him that he understands most of this.

There's a part of him that wants to say, fuck it, to the careful walls she's built up and throw his arm around her shoulder, because it shouldn't matter, not now, not after all of this, but for once, Seifer doesn't break this rule, and keeps his hands shoved in his pockets.

"Bring any for me?" he asks instead, nodding toward her cup, and Quistis raises an eyebrow.

"You do remember that I can kill you with my pinky, right?"

He snorts in amusement. Quistis shoves off of the wall and starts down the pristine halls of Balamb Garden that are so scrubbed and polished it's hard to believe there's a war on.

(He remembers bombing Trabia, then seeing pictures online six months later, and being surprised at how quickly they've rebuilt.)

Seifer follows her to the garage, where there is already a small knot of SeeDs waiting, probably for them. A few of them look like they haven't even had a chance to shower and wash the stink of yesterday's blood off of them. He knows that feeling. His old coat is in ruins in a dumpster somewhere, caked in gore and filth.

It still doesn't stop him from sitting in the farthest back row of the van, propping his boots up on the rest of the bench to prevent any of the stinking, weary cadets from sitting next to him.

"You could sit on my lap, Trepe," he says mildly when Quistis enters the van and he's taking up the last seat with his feet.

"Cute," she says, and taps the toe of a boot with her gloved hand. He removes his feet, and she sits primly, Save the Queen nestled in her lap like a puppy.

The mission is simple: take out a Galbadian communications outpost in the woods just outside of Balamb. It's ludicrously easy, something cadets could do as a field exam. But Garden's numbers are not what they used to be, and Leonhart is not taking any chances to protect his little princess. Still, there's no need for eight of them, Seifer thinks.

The van drops them off just as the sun is getting comfortable in the sky and Quistis is finishing her lecture on what is expected of them during the siege, and the day promises to be another miserable scorcher.

"Get in, take out as many as you can, and get out," she emphasizes, her hand on Save the Queen as they check their weapons. Hyperion is slung casually across his back, cleaned and oiled to perfection, loaded with the Bio-tipped rounds that Leonhart introduced him to an eternity ago. They're lethal little suckers, especially when the bullets are hollowpoint rounds.

Quistis stops him as the group starts to move off. "Are you junctioned?" she asks, and he glances down at her hand on his arm, then back up at her, raising an eyebrow at the absurdity of her question- this is barely a mission, not worth the devoured memories it would cost him to keep a GF crawling around in his head. He's got enough magic-infused rounds to take care of himself, and if not, that's what they make the potions he keeps shoved his pockets for.

"Concerned, Instructor? I'm touched." He glances over his shoulder; the rest of their party is oblivious, trekking off into the woods like a bunch of Moomba Scouts, and he swoops in, kissing her before she has a chance to protest, and he thinks there's a faint coffee taste still on her lips. When he pulls back, she looks like she can't decide whether to hit him or kiss him again, and he smirks. "Let's go, or we're going to miss all the fun."

xx

"Fun" turns into a nightmare almost instantly.

Corville is the first one of them down, stepping on a buried trap that sends him rigid with shock as a Thundaga runs all over his skin, and while Seifer would like to applaud the novelty of the trap, Corville's on the ground, spasming so badly that he slams his head against a rock and that's curtains for him.

There is a stunned second of silence, and then Quistis is crying, go-go-go.

The Galbadians don't wait for them to get into position- it's never easy like it is in the movies- and open fire.

Seifer dives, hitting the ground rolling and coming up with Hyperion unsheathed, getting off a shot that elicits a shriek from its mark. Somewhere ahead of him, Quistis' whip cracks, the sound exploding into the air. He catches a glimmer of her, vague and indistinct through the blur of battle, her blonde ponytail streaming in the early-morning light.

He charges, hacking away with Hyperion, pausing only twice to wipe the enemies' blood off onto his pants. It makes his grip on Hyperion unstable, and he won't have that, a loose grip that could take Greaves' head off of her shoulders or knock off Shang's arm instead of a Galbadian soldier's. No matter what Seifer's principles are regarding SeeD and its complex military bullshit, he won't have that, hurting an ally by accident.

Hyperion embeds itself to the halfway point of the blade into a Galbadian's chest, and makes a sucking sound when he rips it out, taking out lung and hunks of flesh. The soldier gapes at him like a Balamb cod, mouth moving soundlessly, sucking down air and coming up with bloody sputum instead.

"Seifer!" and it is Quistis' voice, screaming across the battlefield like she's junctioned amplification. He whirls, parrying a soldier's assault with the flat of his gunblade just in time to see her running toward the largest of the tents.

She is met head on by four soldiers pouring out of the tent, and Save the Queen flashes out, a lethal gleaming snake of leather and barbs and metal. She is fast, so damn fast he's not sure what she's done, but one of them is already down, hands clawing at their face as red runs over their fingers, and the others are trying to crowd her, cutting off her ability to use her weapon.

He throws up his arm over his eyes before she casts, and the afterimage of the spell still leaves spots dancing at the corners of his eyes.

Three down.

He vaults over a pile of corpses- he glimpses a half-familiar body wearing the black and silver of Balamb. He cannot put a name to a face and a quick scan of the field shows that there are only two others in their colors- they're losing, he can't believe it. Ahead, there are three more coming up on Trepe from behind.

A battle roar rips out of his throat as he attacks, and it is only much, much later, when he is heaving, sucking down air like a drowning man, bodies scattered around them, that he realizes Quistis isn't on her feet anymore.

She is slouched against the communications tent, holding her arm tightly against her collarbone, and when he gets nearer to her, he can see blood pooling out across her flesh, leaving a crimson wake. Her black t-shirt is sticky, matted with the stuff.

"Potion," she says, holding out her other hand for it, and he yanks off the cap with his teeth, spitting the rubber cork off to the side.

"Move your arm," he orders, and when she protests, reaching for it, he snaps, "You'll just miss and waste it."

She drops her arm and the way her face drains of color makes him think she regrets the motion pretty much immediately.

The gash is long and jagged, and he dumps the entire potion straight into the wound. He has to commend Trepe on her willpower- he's done the same thing, and it had him swearing like a sailor, but she barely lets out a peep.

"Get the equipment," she rasps when he is done, and already, he can see the gleaming starshine of the potion taking effect, knitting together as much of the flesh as it can in a temporary parody of sutures that Kadowaki will have a fit over trying to fix.

Some part of him wants to argue- she'll bleed out if they waste any more time, but it's the look on her face, the one that dictates she'll kick his ass regardless of what state she's in, that puts Seifer on his feet and charging into the communications tent, where a tech wearing massive headphones sits in a ridiculous little swivel chair. She's pressing buttons frantically, transmitting data and live feeds of the assault on their camp as quickly as she can, and when she whirls to face him, Seifer wastes no time.

Her head thuds against the floor, and he kicks the corpse in a chair out of the way, digging into his pocket for one of the Fira-infused rounds, chambering it quickly. Seifer aims, and fires, and the control station goes up in a combination of flames and arcs of electricity.

It won't be long before it explodes, he knows, because the three big generators in the corner aren't there just for show.

He remembers only bits and pieces of what follows:

Scooping up Quistis in a fireman's carry over his shoulder, and feeling a sticky warmth flow through the shoulder of his shirt, yelling that they have to go, right now, and smelling the sickly-sweet stench of electronics catching fire.

The sound one of the remaining soldiers makes as Seifer runs him through, falling and hitting one of his own Thundaga-mines.

Quistis' hands flat against his back and the bitter blue-stink of Shell and Protect coming to form around them.

Greaves, somewhere to his left, screaming into her headset that they need a pick up, they need one now.

Thinking, wildly, there'll be more any second, this can't be the only wave.

The force of the blast roaring through the woods, rendering him deaf and dumb and speechless, and the heat is insane, flames practically licking at their heels.

And all of a sudden, they are through the woods, crashing through the underbrush with all the subtlety of a herd of Mesmerizes, and the van is there, doors open. He ducks low as he vaults in, and Quistis ends up in his lap, curled up against him with her fingers tangled tightly in his shirt, whimpering with the agony of the journey, and he can see the wound leaking again.

Someone has left a faded gray sweatshirt sitting on one of the seats, and he snatches it up, pressing it against her chest.

Shang is last in the van, and slams the door shut behind him as they careen off, back toward Garden.

He drops in the seat next to Seifer, and there is nothing to say.

This was supposed to be easy.

xx

Seifer spends a very long time in intimate conference with the shower, standing under the pounding spray until the water goes frigid, and even then he spends a few more minutes, staring blankly at the hodgepodge of blue tiles on the wall until they all blend together in one long streak.

He knots a towel around his waist, hissing as his fingers brush a boot-shaped bruise on his hip, although he doesn't remember getting kicked quite so hard. When he looks in the mirror as he lathers shaving cream on his face, his reflection shows him another bruise blossoming rather spectacularly on his temple.

If he dreams tonight, he doesn't know what the fuck he's going to do.

Quistis sits on the edge of his bed with a brush in her hand, running it methodically through her wet hair until it is a smooth sheet of burnt gold. She is wearing one of his old B. Garden basketball jerseys; it comes nearly down to her knees, and he can see too much of the pristine white bandages wrapped around her shoulder and upper torso for his comfort.

"I would've been fine in the dorms," she tells him as he exchanges the towel for a pair of ratty sweats.

"Yeah, well, Kadowaki says you shouldn't be alone tonight."

"Yes, well, I do live in a military academy with its own private infirmary, if anything were to happen."

"Tch, but I have a bed that doesn't feel like sleeping on rocks." He yanks aside the blanket and slides underneath it. "Wake me up if you think you're going to die," he mumbles into the pillow.

She smiles, a faint glint of one, and reaches to turn off the light.

"Good night, Seifer," she says, and her voice is the last thing he hears before he surrenders to oblivion.