8. she keeps you bottled up like sea glass

First Street Police Station

Deling City

"How long have they been at it?"

"Four hours, sixteen minutes, and...thirty-eight seconds."

"I'm surprised the glass hasn't shattered yet. Coffee?"

"I'd call you a saint, but I don't think you'd appreciate the religious implications."

"Says the mercenary."

Quistis snorted softly and took the styrene cup of coffee from Xu. "I'm beginning to think I should go in there and stop them from killing each other."

"Easier said than done. Have you seen Rinoa's limit?" Xu's laugh was brief. "I think I'd rather take on a herd of Mesmerizes."

"Mm." Quistis turned the cup between her palms slowly, watching the dark brown liquid spin clockwise, then counter-so. The distraction did little to ease her thoughts. Xu leaned against the wall and regarded her friend critically; Quistis raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were jealous."

Quistis blinked. "Are you out of your mind?"

Xu shrugged. "Probably. Are you?"

"I am--I could--No. This is not a topic that is open for discussion."

The older woman shrugged again, and sipped at her coffee, waiting patiently for an answer. Quistis felt her cheeks flush hot; she drained a quarter of her coffee before diverting the conversation at hand.

"I never expected to see Rinoa getting involved in something like this. It's so unlike her."

Xu chuckled. "I have no trouble believing it. She always did want to be right in the middle of something dangerous." Somehow, Xu managed to smirk and finish her coffee simultaneously, a trick that Quistis had never figured out quite how to master. Then again, Quistis wasn't really big on the whole smirking thing; she left that in the hands of people like Xu, Almasy, and Selphie when the brunette was feeling particularly dangerous. Quistis turned back to the one-way window. Beyond the glass was a bland gray interrogation room, graciously rented out to them by the Deling City police. Quistis had offered to talk to Rinoa herself, but Squall had sharply denied her the privilege; now that the commander was in there with his ex-girlfriend, Quistis was beginning to think that she should have gone in his place anyway. For every question that Squall, in an admirably painstakingly concise tone, had asked Rinoa, she had retorted with a smart response or a noise of indignation. This only provoked Squall into raising his voice, which led to Rinoa raising hers to match, which...Well, it wasn't pretty, and Garden was probably going to have to replace the external speakers by the time they finished. Sighing, Quistis reached for the volume knob on the wall and turned it up an increment.

"How long have you been involved with this drug?"

"I don't know, Squall--how long were you waiting before you took the opportunity to shoot my boyfriend?"

"Rinoa, can you just answer the question?"

"No, I won't. Not until you answer mine--"

Squall threw his arms up in disgust and turned sharply on his heel, exiting the interrogation room, slamming the door shut behind him. Rinoa sat back indignantly in her chair and crossed her arms, glaring at the closed door and the SeeD guard who stood watch outside. Quistis had to look away.

Squall stopped directly in front of the coffee maker. Quistis didn't say anything until he'd succeeded in filling one of the plain white cups mostly full of coffee.

"Are you going to let her go?"

Squall glared very hard at a section of wall.

There were only two options that could be taken--one was that he simply released Rinoa, and she went back to doing whatever it was that she did in Deling--illicit drugs, planning rebellions, spending too much money--or he could arrest her strictly on the blue sky drug charges. For some reason, Quistis couldn't quite see Squall incarcerating Rinoa for any length of time, even if it went with the contract that he was paying a hefty chunk of his own money to orchestrate.

Squall took a deep breath, and an equally deep swallow of the bitter black coffee. "Xu," he said finally, his voice precisely even. She snapped to attention. "Interrogate Almasy again. Find out everything he knows about Damien. Everything about this damn drug, everything about the people buying it. Everything."

Xu nodded, tossing out a "yes, sir," as she slipped through the space between Quistis and Squall.

Quistis waited patiently, until Xu had disappeared through the automatic door at the end of the short corridor. "Well?"

Squall shoved his hand through his hair absently, pushing back the rogue strands from his forehead. "I don't know. She's not telling me anything."

"Nothing?"

He sighed frustratedly. "All I know is that she saw my sister the day that--" A sharp pause. "She wasn't involved with anything short of taking that damn drug, and I don't want the drug. I want who killed Elle."

xx

It had begun to rain, fat, heavy droplets beating down on the pavement; a spring storm, Quistis decided. A minor irritant, and quickly over with.

Quistis stood near to Rinoa as they waited for the car that Rinoa had said was coming, having gotten the call on her cell phone while waiting for someone to come back into the interrogation room. Neither party made an effort to speak to one another; the way that Rinoa's jaw was set made Quistis feel that the parking lot could be Angel Winged at any moment, regardless of the Odine bracelet around the girl's slender wrist. After all, one of the precepts of being SeeD included knowing when to pick one's battles--whatever potentiality Rinoa's temper held, Quistis knew for certain that she did not want to be on the receiving end of it.

A sleek dove-gray town car turned into the parking lot at that moment, and Quistis let out a breath that she hadn't been completely aware of holding. It wasn't that she didn't like Rinoa as a person; she did, genuinely. It was more the idea of getting Rinoa out of the situation for at least a little while. There were only so many raging shouting matches that Quistis could take between Squall and Rinoa--they had been loud enough to make the floors tremble when things had first come to a nasty head.

At least she could channel most of that blame to the fact that both of them had been junctioned. As it stood, arguments between Quistis and Squall had resulted in more than one dented wall.

The driver of the town car stepped out, unfurling a dark umbrella as he walked around to the passenger side door. Rinoa stepped out from under the awning, without so much as a "see you" escaping from her tightly pursed lips. Quistis could see the tear in the hem of the girl's dress as Rinoa walked away.

"Excuse me," she said as the driver shut the door and made to return to the wheel. He paused, and looked up at her expectantly. "She can't leave town, under SeeD order."

He nodded. "I'll keep that in mind, then, ma'am."

Quistis nodded. "Right. Thank you--"

But the driver had shut his own door firmly and pulled the car away from the station before Quistis could even finish her sentence.

"Well," she murmured, "that was interesting."

She tugged open one of the heavy smoked-glass doors of the station house and headed back inside.

xx

"Don't tell me you're here to set me free," Seifer said languidly, looking quite relaxed for a man in handcuffs. Then again, it wasn't really a new situation for Seifer Almasy--he'd been cuffed more than a few times as a disciplinary precaution back at Garden.

Xu pulled out the chair across from him smoothly, and spent a good minute deliberately examining her nails. Seifer hated nothing more than to be ignored, to know that he wasn't the center of attention. Unfortunately, he'd been privy to her tricks enough that she wasn't sure what would work with him anymore. Seifer hadn't been in Garden's custody for going on two years now--he probably had changed plenty in that time.

"No, lucky for you, you're our ward for a bit longer."

"Oh, good." Seifer settled back further into his chair, not even bothering to fight the restraints as was his usual tactic. "If only every man were so lucky to spend an hour in your company."

Xu smiled halfway. "You'll be spending significantly more time in my presence when we get you back to Garden."

Seifer narrowed his eyes, the change of expression the only thing altered in his posture. "What makes you so sure I'm going back to Garden?"

Xu flexed the fingers on her right hand experimentally, and crossed her index nail over to her thumb, scratching off an invisible imperfection. "Oh, no reason, really. Just the fact that we can hold you for ten years for getting involved in even the loosest sense in this drug scandal. It goes against all the agreements you made when Garden let you off the hook in the first place."

He sat, silently.

"Unless..." and here Xu really enjoyed her job, "you want to tell me everything that you know about Damien, about Ninth Circle, and about this." She reached into the pocket of her pants and removed the small silver case, tossing it carelessly on the table. The lid sprung open, and tiny plastic-wrapped blue pills scattered across the steel table top. Seifer lurched forward in his chair for the drug, and was brought up short by the cuffs keeping him restrained to the chair. She let him gather his composure, waiting patiently until he was settled back in his original posture, his body more rigid than it had been before. Xu relished in the way his eyes kept flicking from her to the pills scattered in front of him. It was amazing, really, what a hold addiction had on some people.

He turned his face to her. "If I tell you, then what?"

"We let you out of here and you go back to being the scum of Deling society. And I'll be damned if I care what happens to you."

"What if I don't?"

"You go back to rotting in a Garden cell, and I get the pleasure of being your jailer again," Xu said evenly.

Seifer licked his lips briefly. "Okay," he said finally. "But only if you take off these fucking cuffs."

xx

Galbadia Hotel

He stood in the shower, rinsing the obnoxiously floral hotel shampoo out of his hair, and tried not to think about dead girls. It wasn't working so well, not after seeing Rinoa so indignant and angry over Damien's unlucky path in the line of fire. Why the hell couldn't she just stay out of trouble? Was it that hard to not get involved in things that didn't concern her?

He shut off the water angrily and stepped out of the shower, ignoring the puddle that formed on the tile around his feet as he knotted one of the plush towels around his waist. Sure, he was still a little annoyed about how quickly she had ended everything, but he had thought that he had mostly moved on from it. There were more important things to deal with, like finding Elle's killer.

Of course, despite what he had told Quistis, they did need the drug if they wanted to find the junkie who murdered Ellone. Those blue pills were the key; he'd known that from the beginning. If they were lucky, Ninth Circle was the distribution house for all of it, and when Damien woke up from his post-surgery haze, Squall was going to get answers in spades, even if he had to beat them out of the kid--

Squall jerked open the door and stalked out into the bedroom.

"Hey," Quistis said, looking up from her seat near the window. "Feel better?"

He shrugged, snatching up the worn Garden Athletics sweatpants he used for pajamas.

"Goodness, I hope there's still hot water left." She smiled faintly, encouragingly, and he simply sat on the edge of the bed, letting the towel fall in a pile on the floor. Quistis stood, crossing to him.

"Hey," she said quietly. "We'll get answers."

"I know," he said sharply. "If we didn't, we were trained wrong."

Quistis rolled her eyes and sat down on the bed next to him. "Yes, Commander," she conceded, her tone slipping into gently teasing. She reached for his hand, gently twining her fingers in with his.

He stared at their hands for a long while, his expression indecipherable. Eventually, Quistis extricated her hand from his, and when he looked up, she'd moved the last few inches between them and put her arms around him.

"We'll get it sorted out," she murmured into his ear, her breath warm against his neck. Reflexively, Squall carefully returned the hug, resting his chin on top of her head, his fingers automatically clutching for purchase at the back of her shirt.

Quistis pressed a kiss against his shoulder, her exhalation a gentle sigh.