The List

Lieutenant Xu Chastein was a capable woman. She'd steered Balamb Garden through a civil war, and was currently keeping it afloat with a budget one eighth of what she'd had access to before losing Garden's two main financial backers, NORG and Balamb Village Council. She'd negotiated repairs of technology she barely understood with a man who was dead set against violence, but had no such problem with usury. She'd discovered that the building she lived in was a Hyne damned flying bomb shelter and stayed sane. But some duties did not come easily. There was a stack of paperwork on her desk that she had not looked at yet, and it had to be dealt with tonight.

Nida would be eager to help if he knew, not because he liked the job, but because there were some things no one should have to do alone. But he was the only person keeping the Garden from crashing into a mountain while the Commander and Quistis were down below.

These were the things a good Lieutenant had to deal with, to make sure the commander didn't get distracted from important things like his getting re-acquainted with his long lost mother figure. That wasn't flippancy, it was important for the man in charge to deal with that psychological bullshit as soon as he could so he could get back to work.

Not that he was likely to focus on anything like this as long as his unconscious girlfriend was down in the infirmary. Xu had visited Dr. Kadawoki the day before. Apparently Rinoa's brain was encased in some kind of web of sorcery that was keeping her consciousness suppressed, one that even the Doctor didn't like to touch. In all the time she'd known her, she'd never seen the doctor so completely defeated. There was no damage as such, either physical or magical, and she didn't want to touch the web until she was certain it wouldn't cause some.

Her thoughts were skittering like a bluebottle flitting from corpse to corpse on a battlefield. But that didn't shrink the pile of paperwork on her desk.

Throwing back the blinds, she let the poisonous moonlight brighten the desk and pulled the first page towards her, picking up the pen.

Angeline Wheatley, age twelve. Drove a spear through a Galbadian skull, then was run through twice by two of his friends. She was junctioned, so that didn't completely take her down, though. She'd kept fighting until a Galbadian officer had put five rounds from an automatic rifle through each eye. The woman who'd killed Angeline had been hacked apart by her brother Todd five seconds later, but that hadn't brought her back.

Dear Mr. Wheatley,

It is with great and profound regret that I inform you that your daughter, Angeline, has been killed in an assault on Balamb Garden by the Sorceress backed Galbadian army. I know there are no words to adequately convey the extent of your loss, but as a representative of Balamb Garden, I have no choice but to try.

Too self pitying. She crossed it out. He would be busy dealing with his own loss, he didn't need to hear about hers.

It was easier for the dead SeeDs. Sure, it was sad, but they'd signed up to be put at risk, so she could just print off copies of the standard form and sign them. Granted, they'd signed on without actually being aware of what their organisation's real goals were, but at least they'd known there was a risk. Not all of the cadets had wanted to be SeeDs. Many of them were just coming to Garden to be educated. And then one day they'd had to fight a battle-hardened army embittered and bloodthirsty after losing too many friends to SeeD operations.

For cadets, the standard letter wouldn't be enough. The cadets' families deserved more than that, which was why she was taking the time to write each in ink, to show that somebody had at least cared enough to spend more time on their child than stamping a page and moving on. It wasn't enough, but then, nothing was.

Second page. Todd Wheatley, aged nine. Damn, I'll have to rewrite the first one. The Commander, to his credit had tried to keep the under tens out of the fight, but inevitably, some had sneaked away to be heroes, to not be left out, to support their friends. And some of them had died for it. Galbadia could not afford to be discriminating. Quetzalcoatl could still kill whether it had been summoned by Quistis Trepe or an eight year old. During the battle, a Galbadian squad that had gotten into the cafeteria had been quite courteous to any staff obviously over thirty, while killing anyone younger than that they found.

The shadows thrown by the moonlight lengthened, the monster spawning hellhole her only illumination as her pen scratched on through the night. There were hundreds of documents to get through before dawn. At some point, Quistis and the Commander took seats at her desk without saying a word, and began pulling some of the pages towards themselves. No one spoke as the pile slowly diminished. Youngest casualty, Aaron Griffin, aged six.

If not for the fact that most of Garden's students were unclaimed orphans with no next of kin, they'd never have finished before dawn. As it was, there was light on the horizon before Xu signed the last page.

With my most sincere sympathies,

Lieutenant Xu Chastein,

pp Squall Leonhart,

Commander,

Balamb Garden.

Three hundred and twelve dead children in all. As dawn broke, the Commander sat back and placed a hand over his eyes.

"I should have kept the cadets out of it." Quistis' face contorted, but Xu got there first.

"If you had, we wouldn't have had enough defenders. We'd have drowned on Galbadian blood, but Seifer would be sitting here now, and our heads would be decorating the mantelpiece."

"But If I'd just attacked first–"

"Hindsight. You didn't know that would work, you didn't know Garden's propeller wouldn't shatter. It made sense to see what they'd brought to the table rather than jumping down their throats without looking where you were going. That's just how engagements like this work."

Quistis almost reached to pat the Commander's shoulder, but caught herself just in time. She never had been good at expressing herself, and 'go talk to a wall' hadn't improved matters.

Xu drew a breath. "Look, Commander, when you go to war, people on your side die. If you can't accept that, you need to find another job. G-Garden's scuttled, Edea has… retired, I guess, and we're all still alive. I have to admit I don't completely understand why we're not blasting that orphanage into a crater right now, but–"

"Edea was a sock puppet, Xu. A mouthpiece. She didn't do those things of her own will." Xu had never seen Quistis look so tired.

"And you're basing that on what? Her word? ...Alright, I'll assume you know what you're talking about. Commander, you did nothing wrong. There was no way this could have ended any other way, and if our Commander can't get past that, we can't finish the war. 'If only I'd done something else' doesn't help. All we can do from here is catch up to Seifer and make sure he pays for this."

Judging from the silence, that wasn't the best thing she could have said. Squall turned his face to her, and she saw for the first time how ravaged he was. She'd organised the defence of Garden, but he'd cut a path through monster infested G-Garden and fought to kill his former best friend and his mother figure before staying up an entire night signing the casualty lists. None of them were at their best just now. She should step lightly. She knew it would be the right thing to do.

"I know he's your friend Commander. I knew him almost as well as you, but there are a lot of angry people down there that I have to deal with who won't settle for anything less. Friends of that list, mostly, and I'm not why I should tell them otherwise."

" Xu… He may not have had a choice."

"Yeah? Then how come you walked out of that TV station without vowing to serve her, Commander? How were the three of you able to fight her in G-Garden without being bent to her will?" Damn it, she was tired. And had no prospect of even seeing her dorm for the next twelve hours, either.

The Commander bared his teeth. "We'll deal with that when the time comes."

Xu stood, trying not to stagger. "I'll accept Edea on your word, Commander. But when you catch up to Seifer, he dies or I walk."

Stretching, she took the lift up to the Bridge, where Nida was already busy. Maybe the breeze would wake her up some. Hyne knew, she needed some help to face today.