The Catch (FFVIII, Seifer/Quistis, PG-13)
The Catch
Author: Seventhe
Fandom: FFVIII
Characters: Quistis, Seifer, Xu ("Quistis/Seifer", but in all honesty, "Quistis vs Seifer" is more appropriate)
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Thanks to lassarina for the beta. I am a few short hours late.
Prompt: 34. hostage situation: A takes B hostage while on the run from other forces
Summary: Quistis manages to collect the worst hostage ever.
- - -
The shudder of the blast finally died down to the point where Quistis felt safe moving. Slowly, she pulled her arms away from her face and lifted her head, trying to blink away the dust and grit.
She'd been thrown to the other side of the alley, apparently; the air was still thick with smoke and dust, but she could see the gaping hole in the building across the way. Tongues of flame licked up the sides of the old library; Quistis winced a little, and glanced the other way. Nothing around her seemed to be moving, at all. Cautiously, she raised herself up on her forearms, trying to keep all her senses alert; there was still no sign of movement, no sign of the enemy... no sign of her other team members, either.
Quistis stood slowly, mentally noting that she'd landed awkwardly on her left ankle and that her head would need a Cura, soon, if she wanted to stay conscious. She glanced around, confirming finally that the alleyway was mostly empty, and cast.
Her vision cleared, and now - of course, now - she saw the feet, slightly to her left. They were tucked behind a pile of rubble and crumbling old bricks Quistis was fairly sure had come from the now-missing wall of the library. They were wearing some really beat-up and ugly-looking shoes, but more importantly, Quistis noted the dark blue slacks that were the uniform of the small faction they were chasing.
Maybe he's dead, she thought, and the small twinge she always felt when a soldier died in battle was almost buried in the avalanche of 'serves him right' that came down from her brain. One of those freaks had almost killed her, and - worse yet - had blown a hole in the library.
The leg twitched, and her instincts took over; Quistis lowered her casting arm as the Sleep spell took hold, and took a step or two towards the body. It was a man, average build, covered in dust and rubble from the explosion. He didn't appear to be seriously injured. Mentally, she debated between leaving him in the refuse and bringing him along - he was almost certainly a dead man if she left him beside a burning building, whereas he might be a burden to their team if she brought him along.
Then again, their team was almost certainly in trouble; they could use a hostage. Quistis unfolded the item wallet at her waist, reaching for the Float Stone; she broke it in two over the body, and grabbed the ankle as it came to hover at her waist level.
In retrospect, she realized, she should've checked his face first.
- - -
"I'm going to be the worst hostage ever," Seifer said gleefully.
"No worries there, Seifer, you are already the worst hostage ever." Xu shot him a look that dripped annoyance. "And if you don't shut up, you're going to be the most short-lived hostage ever."
"Xu, please don't shoot my hostage." Quistis had her face pressed to a set of binoculars that were tracing magical residues in the air. "We might eventually need him."
"No, I'm serious," Seifer cackled. "Worst hostage ever. I told you, I'm a mercenary and only idiots with bleeding hearts pay to get mercenaries back." He sat backwards in the chair with an air of smug authority not undermined by the cuffs about his wrists or the ropes around his ankles.
"You're the worst hostage ever because Quistis won't let me shoot you," Xu said, sounding surprisingly forlorn.
"People will negotiate if they know we have an innocent civilian," Quistis added, still peering out of a thin crack in the concrete. "Xu, I've got magical trace at four-o'-clock."
Xu grabbed the thick backpack lying on the ground, fumbling around until she came up with something that looked dangerously like a grenade.
"I'm not an innocent civilian," Seifer began, his smile mocking until Quistis efficiently smacked him between the eyes with a Silence spell.
"He is the worst hostage ever," Xu pointed out.
"I know." Quistis sighed the sigh of the long-suffering. "Trust me, I wish I'd left him there."
- - -
She got a small amount of vindictive pleasure out of the way Seifer spluttered himself awake through the splash of Esuna. "The hell?" was all he could manage to string together before she had the gun pressed against his cheek.
"So what in the world are you doing working for Elsevier, Seifer?"
"I told you, Trepe, I'm a mercenary." Seifer didn't seem to be bothered by the barrel of the gun, so Quistis pressed it into his face a little harder. He blinked. "I work for money," he said, drawing the last word out slowly as if she were a child. "Mon-ey. You know, that stuff that lets you buy food and guns?"
"Funny, Seifer," Quistis said. "Did you have any idea that Elsevier was also an anti-Garden terrorist organization? Did they forget to tell you that when you signed up?"
Seifer blinked again, and twisted his head around - somewhat into the gun's barrel, which made his cheek flab up comically - to look Quistis in the face. "They didn't say shit about Garden. They said they had a job and was I a hired hand. I said maybe, and then I said a price, and they said okay."
"You realize how much jeopardy you've put yourself into," Quistis said, letting the gun relax slightly - only slightly. "And us. If the public finds out you're working for anti-Garden terrorists, all that work Squall put into saving your good name will just go to shit."
"Aw, darn," Seifer said, sounding excited.
"And if we kill you," Quistis said, deliberately ignoring his last comment, "and it gets out, it'll be everywhere - 'Garden Kills One of its Own'." She pressed the gun back into his cheek viciously, which made her feel a little bit better. "We're just going to have to hold on to you for a while."
"Your loss." Seifer shrugged as best he could through the ropes. "You may as well just let me go. No one out there's going to think twice if you threaten to shoot a known war criminal. They'll probably pay you to NOT hold off."
"Be nice, Seifer," Quistis said, "or I'll let Xu torture you for information."
- - -
"They say they've never heard of him." Xu looked awful. Her normally-smooth hair was frizzed on end as if she'd been hit by a Thundaga - which she probably had - and she was favoring her left arm in a way that only someone as sharp as Quistis would've noticed. For Xu, it merely meant that her left hand wasn't hovering around the holster of her gun like it normally was in this kind of tense situation.
"Seifer Almasy, blond hair, scar on his face, annoying as a cactaur?" Quistis shook her head. "They're bluffing."
"Maybe." Xu sat down, weary, and Quistis grabbed the med-kit and headed to her side. "The guy I had seemed serious enough, though. He was almost offended that we'd even think they took mercenary help." She snorted.
Quistis sighed and started dabbing at the ugly wound she'd found on Xu's shoulder. "So we're not getting a cease-fire, then?"
"Right." Xu rolled her eyes. "He said there was no way they were going to cease-fire over some guy they'd never heard of. He said they never hired anybody, and that we could shoot him for all he cared." She grinned. "And then he shot me."
"Damn." Quistis reached for the Esuna-charged disinfectant, depositing a generous amount into the gash and ignoring Xu's angry hiss. "Alright, then, we'll have to see whether the city guard wants to let us out of here."
"Out of this war zone?" Xu shook her head. "Not likely."
"But we have a hostage," Quistis pointed out. "We could threaten our way out. Our team's collapsing, Xu. We need backup."
Xu sighed dramatically and leant backwards, resting her head against the crate behind her. "Can't we just shoot him?"
- - -
"You're a plant."
Seifer looked up. His hair was dingy and his face was in need of a good shave; Quistis noted that his beard was growing in uneven patches. She did not return his bold smile.
"You're a plant," she repeated. "You're not working for Elsevier at all. You're trying to get in there."
Seifer merely sighed. "Score one for the lady. Although you get minus one hundred for not figuring it out before."
"You could've told us this from the start," Quistis snapped.
"And miss all of this fun?" Seifer grinned. "I wouldn't dream of it."
"Why didn't you say something?" Quistis was teetering somewhere in-between furious anger and red-hot disappointment. "Seifer, we're not your enemies. We could've helped you."
"You guys are the mercenaries," Seifer replied. "How'm I supposed to know what side you're really on? If you blew my cover, I'd be done for."
"Seifer." Quistis levelled a glare at him. "We've been almost completely blown up twice by your little terrorist friends. Three members of my team are dead. Whose side do you possibly think we're on?" The last was a vehement hiss, and she was rewarded by an almost surprised look on Seifer's face. "You could have said something."
"Well," Seifer drawled slowly, "I know that now."
There was a long silence while Quistis tried to make Seifer catch on fire with her eyes.
"Why are you spying on Elsevier?" she asked finally. "Why are you trying to - to infiltrate their ranks?"
"They're after Rinoa," Seifer replied without a moment's hesitation.
Quistis blinked.
"She's still the Sorceress," Seifer pointed out, without a hint of sarcasm in his voice. "And I'm still a Knight."
- - -
"You just won't let me kill him because you guys grew up together," Xu said.
Quistis sighed and buried her face in her hands for a few fleeting seconds. "I'm going to give you a patented Squall-Leonhart 'whatever' as my response," she said listlessly. "Have you re-checked our rations?"
"Two days," Xu said. "You've got some kind of weird crush on him, don't you? You like him."
"I do not like Seifer Almasy," Quistis stated in the voice she used when dealing with delinquents. "Just because I don't want to kill him right now doesn't mean I don't want to kill him, in general."
"Now we're getting somewhere." Xu grinned.
Quistis ignored her. "So we have two days before we have to break out of this city by force because we're out of food. Any word back from the city guard?"
"City guard." Xu snorted. "You mean the secret police. And no, they're not really interested in negotiating with us too much, sorry to say."
"Not even with a hostage?"
"Not really," Xu said with a shrug. "They asked who it was."
Quistis' voice was a screech. "And you told them?"
"I think we need to talk," Xu replied. "You seem to have formed some kind of sentimental attachment here. To our hostage."
"Look," Quistis snapped, "can we please stop talking about killing Almasy and move on to something constructive? Such as, how we're going to get out of this godsforsaken excuse for a suburb?"
There was a long silence.
"We could use him as a human shield," Xu offered, finally.
- - -
Quistis threw the door open, startling Seifer into some sort of consciousness. "Wake up."
Seifer blinked a couple times, but when he spoke, his voice was surprisingly clear. "What's the occasion?"
"We have to get out of here." She felt - tight, as if something decisive was straining within her. "We're out of food, and I only have three team members left, one of which will be spent protecting you if you don't agree."
"Agree to what?" Seifer definitely seemed awake now.
Quistis took a deep, deep breath, and then took the plunge. "We want to hire you, Seifer."
"I'm tied up," Seifer shot back - then he grinned. "Unless you're into that kind of thing."
Quistis gritted her teeth and reminded herself that this had seemed like an excellent plan only an hour before. "We need manpower to get us out of the city. Two of the three team members are injured. The third is Xu, and she'll be in charge of your 'safety' if you don't agree to help us."
"And you trust me enough to give me my weapon back?" Seifer shook his head. "What's the catch?"
"I'm not using you as a human shield," Quistis said sardonically, "if that's what you're asking. Although Xu certainly wanted to."
Seifer pursed his lips, thinking.
"You're not going to get out of here any other way," Quistis added. "The 'city guard' has pretty much been bought by Elsevier, and they're not letting anyone out of the city. We're going to have to shove our way through by force."
Seifer grinned. "Just the way I like it."
"We have no other choice," she said - and added ruefully, "you really aren't worth anything as a hostage."
He nodded, once, decisively. "Alright, you're on. Now will you please take this stuff off?"
Quistis bent to the handcuffs, and then paused. "Seifer-" Her voice felt taut.
"Don't get all mushy on me, Trepe." Seifer looked away. "I'll help you out, but only because you're paying me."
Quistis smirked, a little. "Don't backstab me," she said calmly, "or I will let Xu finally shoot you."
Author: Seventhe
Fandom: FFVIII
Characters: Quistis, Seifer, Xu ("Quistis/Seifer", but in all honesty, "Quistis vs Seifer" is more appropriate)
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Thanks to lassarina for the beta. I am a few short hours late.
Prompt: 34. hostage situation: A takes B hostage while on the run from other forces
Summary: Quistis manages to collect the worst hostage ever.
- - -
The shudder of the blast finally died down to the point where Quistis felt safe moving. Slowly, she pulled her arms away from her face and lifted her head, trying to blink away the dust and grit.
She'd been thrown to the other side of the alley, apparently; the air was still thick with smoke and dust, but she could see the gaping hole in the building across the way. Tongues of flame licked up the sides of the old library; Quistis winced a little, and glanced the other way. Nothing around her seemed to be moving, at all. Cautiously, she raised herself up on her forearms, trying to keep all her senses alert; there was still no sign of movement, no sign of the enemy... no sign of her other team members, either.
Quistis stood slowly, mentally noting that she'd landed awkwardly on her left ankle and that her head would need a Cura, soon, if she wanted to stay conscious. She glanced around, confirming finally that the alleyway was mostly empty, and cast.
Her vision cleared, and now - of course, now - she saw the feet, slightly to her left. They were tucked behind a pile of rubble and crumbling old bricks Quistis was fairly sure had come from the now-missing wall of the library. They were wearing some really beat-up and ugly-looking shoes, but more importantly, Quistis noted the dark blue slacks that were the uniform of the small faction they were chasing.
Maybe he's dead, she thought, and the small twinge she always felt when a soldier died in battle was almost buried in the avalanche of 'serves him right' that came down from her brain. One of those freaks had almost killed her, and - worse yet - had blown a hole in the library.
The leg twitched, and her instincts took over; Quistis lowered her casting arm as the Sleep spell took hold, and took a step or two towards the body. It was a man, average build, covered in dust and rubble from the explosion. He didn't appear to be seriously injured. Mentally, she debated between leaving him in the refuse and bringing him along - he was almost certainly a dead man if she left him beside a burning building, whereas he might be a burden to their team if she brought him along.
Then again, their team was almost certainly in trouble; they could use a hostage. Quistis unfolded the item wallet at her waist, reaching for the Float Stone; she broke it in two over the body, and grabbed the ankle as it came to hover at her waist level.
In retrospect, she realized, she should've checked his face first.
- - -
"I'm going to be the worst hostage ever," Seifer said gleefully.
"No worries there, Seifer, you are already the worst hostage ever." Xu shot him a look that dripped annoyance. "And if you don't shut up, you're going to be the most short-lived hostage ever."
"Xu, please don't shoot my hostage." Quistis had her face pressed to a set of binoculars that were tracing magical residues in the air. "We might eventually need him."
"No, I'm serious," Seifer cackled. "Worst hostage ever. I told you, I'm a mercenary and only idiots with bleeding hearts pay to get mercenaries back." He sat backwards in the chair with an air of smug authority not undermined by the cuffs about his wrists or the ropes around his ankles.
"You're the worst hostage ever because Quistis won't let me shoot you," Xu said, sounding surprisingly forlorn.
"People will negotiate if they know we have an innocent civilian," Quistis added, still peering out of a thin crack in the concrete. "Xu, I've got magical trace at four-o'-clock."
Xu grabbed the thick backpack lying on the ground, fumbling around until she came up with something that looked dangerously like a grenade.
"I'm not an innocent civilian," Seifer began, his smile mocking until Quistis efficiently smacked him between the eyes with a Silence spell.
"He is the worst hostage ever," Xu pointed out.
"I know." Quistis sighed the sigh of the long-suffering. "Trust me, I wish I'd left him there."
- - -
She got a small amount of vindictive pleasure out of the way Seifer spluttered himself awake through the splash of Esuna. "The hell?" was all he could manage to string together before she had the gun pressed against his cheek.
"So what in the world are you doing working for Elsevier, Seifer?"
"I told you, Trepe, I'm a mercenary." Seifer didn't seem to be bothered by the barrel of the gun, so Quistis pressed it into his face a little harder. He blinked. "I work for money," he said, drawing the last word out slowly as if she were a child. "Mon-ey. You know, that stuff that lets you buy food and guns?"
"Funny, Seifer," Quistis said. "Did you have any idea that Elsevier was also an anti-Garden terrorist organization? Did they forget to tell you that when you signed up?"
Seifer blinked again, and twisted his head around - somewhat into the gun's barrel, which made his cheek flab up comically - to look Quistis in the face. "They didn't say shit about Garden. They said they had a job and was I a hired hand. I said maybe, and then I said a price, and they said okay."
"You realize how much jeopardy you've put yourself into," Quistis said, letting the gun relax slightly - only slightly. "And us. If the public finds out you're working for anti-Garden terrorists, all that work Squall put into saving your good name will just go to shit."
"Aw, darn," Seifer said, sounding excited.
"And if we kill you," Quistis said, deliberately ignoring his last comment, "and it gets out, it'll be everywhere - 'Garden Kills One of its Own'." She pressed the gun back into his cheek viciously, which made her feel a little bit better. "We're just going to have to hold on to you for a while."
"Your loss." Seifer shrugged as best he could through the ropes. "You may as well just let me go. No one out there's going to think twice if you threaten to shoot a known war criminal. They'll probably pay you to NOT hold off."
"Be nice, Seifer," Quistis said, "or I'll let Xu torture you for information."
- - -
"They say they've never heard of him." Xu looked awful. Her normally-smooth hair was frizzed on end as if she'd been hit by a Thundaga - which she probably had - and she was favoring her left arm in a way that only someone as sharp as Quistis would've noticed. For Xu, it merely meant that her left hand wasn't hovering around the holster of her gun like it normally was in this kind of tense situation.
"Seifer Almasy, blond hair, scar on his face, annoying as a cactaur?" Quistis shook her head. "They're bluffing."
"Maybe." Xu sat down, weary, and Quistis grabbed the med-kit and headed to her side. "The guy I had seemed serious enough, though. He was almost offended that we'd even think they took mercenary help." She snorted.
Quistis sighed and started dabbing at the ugly wound she'd found on Xu's shoulder. "So we're not getting a cease-fire, then?"
"Right." Xu rolled her eyes. "He said there was no way they were going to cease-fire over some guy they'd never heard of. He said they never hired anybody, and that we could shoot him for all he cared." She grinned. "And then he shot me."
"Damn." Quistis reached for the Esuna-charged disinfectant, depositing a generous amount into the gash and ignoring Xu's angry hiss. "Alright, then, we'll have to see whether the city guard wants to let us out of here."
"Out of this war zone?" Xu shook her head. "Not likely."
"But we have a hostage," Quistis pointed out. "We could threaten our way out. Our team's collapsing, Xu. We need backup."
Xu sighed dramatically and leant backwards, resting her head against the crate behind her. "Can't we just shoot him?"
- - -
"You're a plant."
Seifer looked up. His hair was dingy and his face was in need of a good shave; Quistis noted that his beard was growing in uneven patches. She did not return his bold smile.
"You're a plant," she repeated. "You're not working for Elsevier at all. You're trying to get in there."
Seifer merely sighed. "Score one for the lady. Although you get minus one hundred for not figuring it out before."
"You could've told us this from the start," Quistis snapped.
"And miss all of this fun?" Seifer grinned. "I wouldn't dream of it."
"Why didn't you say something?" Quistis was teetering somewhere in-between furious anger and red-hot disappointment. "Seifer, we're not your enemies. We could've helped you."
"You guys are the mercenaries," Seifer replied. "How'm I supposed to know what side you're really on? If you blew my cover, I'd be done for."
"Seifer." Quistis levelled a glare at him. "We've been almost completely blown up twice by your little terrorist friends. Three members of my team are dead. Whose side do you possibly think we're on?" The last was a vehement hiss, and she was rewarded by an almost surprised look on Seifer's face. "You could have said something."
"Well," Seifer drawled slowly, "I know that now."
There was a long silence while Quistis tried to make Seifer catch on fire with her eyes.
"Why are you spying on Elsevier?" she asked finally. "Why are you trying to - to infiltrate their ranks?"
"They're after Rinoa," Seifer replied without a moment's hesitation.
Quistis blinked.
"She's still the Sorceress," Seifer pointed out, without a hint of sarcasm in his voice. "And I'm still a Knight."
- - -
"You just won't let me kill him because you guys grew up together," Xu said.
Quistis sighed and buried her face in her hands for a few fleeting seconds. "I'm going to give you a patented Squall-Leonhart 'whatever' as my response," she said listlessly. "Have you re-checked our rations?"
"Two days," Xu said. "You've got some kind of weird crush on him, don't you? You like him."
"I do not like Seifer Almasy," Quistis stated in the voice she used when dealing with delinquents. "Just because I don't want to kill him right now doesn't mean I don't want to kill him, in general."
"Now we're getting somewhere." Xu grinned.
Quistis ignored her. "So we have two days before we have to break out of this city by force because we're out of food. Any word back from the city guard?"
"City guard." Xu snorted. "You mean the secret police. And no, they're not really interested in negotiating with us too much, sorry to say."
"Not even with a hostage?"
"Not really," Xu said with a shrug. "They asked who it was."
Quistis' voice was a screech. "And you told them?"
"I think we need to talk," Xu replied. "You seem to have formed some kind of sentimental attachment here. To our hostage."
"Look," Quistis snapped, "can we please stop talking about killing Almasy and move on to something constructive? Such as, how we're going to get out of this godsforsaken excuse for a suburb?"
There was a long silence.
"We could use him as a human shield," Xu offered, finally.
- - -
Quistis threw the door open, startling Seifer into some sort of consciousness. "Wake up."
Seifer blinked a couple times, but when he spoke, his voice was surprisingly clear. "What's the occasion?"
"We have to get out of here." She felt - tight, as if something decisive was straining within her. "We're out of food, and I only have three team members left, one of which will be spent protecting you if you don't agree."
"Agree to what?" Seifer definitely seemed awake now.
Quistis took a deep, deep breath, and then took the plunge. "We want to hire you, Seifer."
"I'm tied up," Seifer shot back - then he grinned. "Unless you're into that kind of thing."
Quistis gritted her teeth and reminded herself that this had seemed like an excellent plan only an hour before. "We need manpower to get us out of the city. Two of the three team members are injured. The third is Xu, and she'll be in charge of your 'safety' if you don't agree to help us."
"And you trust me enough to give me my weapon back?" Seifer shook his head. "What's the catch?"
"I'm not using you as a human shield," Quistis said sardonically, "if that's what you're asking. Although Xu certainly wanted to."
Seifer pursed his lips, thinking.
"You're not going to get out of here any other way," Quistis added. "The 'city guard' has pretty much been bought by Elsevier, and they're not letting anyone out of the city. We're going to have to shove our way through by force."
Seifer grinned. "Just the way I like it."
"We have no other choice," she said - and added ruefully, "you really aren't worth anything as a hostage."
He nodded, once, decisively. "Alright, you're on. Now will you please take this stuff off?"
Quistis bent to the handcuffs, and then paused. "Seifer-" Her voice felt taut.
"Don't get all mushy on me, Trepe." Seifer looked away. "I'll help you out, but only because you're paying me."
Quistis smirked, a little. "Don't backstab me," she said calmly, "or I will let Xu finally shoot you."