Disclaimer: Square Enix owns FFVIII lock, stock and both smoking gunblades. Neither world nor characters belong to me. I mean no harm, I make no profit.

OWN, NOT. PAID. NOT.

RAGE!

- Knight Moves -

By

Gyre

"For now we see through a glass, darkly…"

- 1 Corinthians 13:11-12 -

Every first time is an ending. Twice an ending. The death of what came before. And the death that is to come…for with every first is cast the cold shadow of that final, fatal last. The glass is turned, and not the greatest strength nor the blackest regret can turn it back again.

First breath. First sight. First step.

Before can only ever be remembered, never regained.

Looking behind down the one live path that leads to the present moment, the withered forks of the roads not taken are only too clear. All along that lonely way are littered the corpses of decisions made and selves that nearly were.

They all bear the same face.

Her own.

SEE.

Face off.

The advantage should have gone to her. An eye patch could stare anyone down – except that now it couldn't. Now she couldn't. Now her adversary's watchful gaze buffeted her with the dangerous possibility of mercy. She shut it out. Refused the rough consideration in those stormcloud eyes.

For the first time the weight of an enemy's attention was a significant burden, heavy with the silent question that was not his to ask. Not looking, she would not see it reflected in the terrible mirrors of his eyes. Not acknowledging, she could pretend she did not recognise it…but not to herself.

For the third time she went down. For the third time she pulled herself up to one knee, gathered her balance – and for the first time, hesitated. She didn't want to get up again. She. Fujin. The woman who never in her life had let herself be beaten. The woman who would fight on to the bitter end, be that end unconsciousness or be it death.

She knew that still. Knew that she could fight on even now. But for the first time, when she reached down into herself for what she would need to do so, it didn't rise ready to her hand.

Why?

And the answer came.

KNOW.

Realisation.

This was a battle she should never have taken on.

She had let duty bind her - no. She had let duty blind her. She of all people. One eyed Fujin who should understand better than anyone the value of clear sight. Wary Fujin, who had so well taught herself to beware of delusion. Watchful Fujin, who had learned to value what was over what was merely wished for, to know what she truly had, and thereby hold it safe.

She had forgotten to test him as she tested herself, had not set truth against hope against reality, had not seen that he had lost himself somewhere between his dream and hers.

Trusting blindly, she had betrayed herself. Betrayed him.

Him. Seifer.

…know me?

She asked that question because she knew the answer. Because she would not look away from that most painful truth. No more than ever she had.

No. He did not. His was the furious defiance of an abandoned child; bold and reckless, he would paint his existence across the world, never caring if the strokes drew blood. Never caring if the blood was his own.

He did not see the one person who followed always in his wake, stood always guarding his back. He saw only the faceless multitudes of a history yet to be made, the many who would hold his name up to the eye of time, who would prove to the ages that he had been real, been valued, that his life had mattered. For better or for worse, good or ill, he would make it happen.

Be his name curse or blessing in the years beyond, never, never would he let it be nothing.

…care for me?

No.

Not her. Not anyone. Not even himself.

He would die to attain his immortality. He would let her die for it.

That had always been understood. A soldier's brutal truth. He asked no more of her than of himself, and no less. But the covenant had been broken. There was a difference between ally and tool, and she knew it. The one she had always been…but the other was what he had become. What she would be in his service, did she not prevent it.

ACCEPT.

Clarity was almost painful.

The Deceiver. Queen of air and darkness, mistress of illusion and secret deceit. Alien to all he was and wanted – and yet as insidious as poison, she had worked her way through his defences to somehow set herself more deeply into his soul than ever Fujin had managed.

Sorceress' knight. She moved him in square angled loops and circles and zigzags and he never noticed, never realised what she was doing. Never seemed to understand that the ends to which she worked were none of his.

He should have been able to read that pattern, should have seen that he was letting his moves be dictated to him. He was a swordsman; he knew how to control his fighting space. He was a leader; he knew how to spot the shape of the trap before it was sprung.

How could he not see that she was playing him?

UNDERSTAND.

Temptation.

A name to chime through eternity, or as close as mortal man could get. At a price.

The Sorceress promised him everything he had ever wanted. She spoke to the deepest part of him, to the hopes and dreams that not even the harshest of realities had managed to defeat.

But the price…

To have another name branded on to his soul. To be bound forever with chains of ice and iron and bitter-edged time.

A price that destroyed all the secret places in him that dreaming had kept alive.

Priceless, the heart's desire may be given, but it can never be bought. Put a value on it, ascribe any price, no matter how great…and a guardian angel must weep to see incorruptible gold transformed to base metal through the alchemy of human folly.

He should have known better. Should have seen through that bargain in an instant. But he hadn't.

REGRET.

Why?

Why had he given himself over to the Sorceress? Seifer, who had never in his life looked outside his own capable self for any solution, any answer…anything at all.

The world would break him if it could. Fujin knew that as well as he did. It was what the world did. They had learned it young, both of them. Had taken the enemy's measure and made ready their stand. But where hers was a defence of cool and shifting shields, opaque as thickening mist and indifferent as the sea, Seifer made of his a glorious vaunting defiance, burning so much of himself outside his skin that he dared even death to smother him.

She could warm herself at that fire, grey ash that she was.

Her choice. She had hitched herself to his star long ago, had held firm through every test and trial and challenge, secure in the knowledge that back-to-back there was nothing that could take them down.

She had known that. But perhaps Seifer had not.

Perhaps he burned too bright. For he could not seem to see so clearly as she, standing cool and quiet inside his own thrown shadow. He could not see that he was no longer alone. That she was there. That she had been there down all the long years.

Always self-absorbed, Seifer had never paused to assess his adversary, never realised that he was playing into its greedy hands. That the world expected each victim to face it alone.

Any expectation is a weakness in the hands of a wise opponent. To stand united against the common foe is to confound its best attack.

Fujin knew it. But Seifer didn't.

Seifer fought no battles but his own, and never questioned why she took up a cause not her own to fight beside him.

…know me, not.

The question was answered. The answer was accepted. Old, old question. Old answer. There was no part of her not touched by some part of one or the other. The refrain followed her, burning along the boundary lines of thought and hope and memory. It had always been the illumination she used to know him by.

…care for me, not.

There is no answer without a question.

For too long Seifer had been her answer, her only answer. She had forgotten that the answer is never more important than the question – and the question was hers. Had always been hers.

Understanding always comes at a price.

TRUTH.

Finish.

Afterwards, and the taste of defeat was sick and sour. Throat and stomach and heart. Heart most of all.

Betrayal.

Every choice she turned between her hands was sharp enough to cut.

DECISION.

Rinoa.

Beautiful Rinoa. Alien in ways that went far beyond the familiar vagaries of fate and chance and magic. Exotic and fascinating and utterly incomprehensible. More unknowable by far than any force of nature. Wind and wave and magic might be patterned by the living edge of chaos, but such complexity paled into insignificance beside such as she.

Unreasonably happy, she was apparently capable of spontaneously generating that emotion in others. Unpredictable of behaviour, she could still somehow make others follow her lead. Impossible to understand, her power was undeniable.

So bright she was, bright and full of dreams. Living in her own certainty, strong with the kind of faith that can make those dreams form solid reality. Clean of skin and soul, unmarred by the ugliness that weighed down lesser mortals.

Like to like, light to light. Rinoa - and Seifer. No surprise that two such certainties should recognise one another. Extrovert intimates, they had seemed so clearly meant for each other. One to guard and the other to be protected from harm, one to laugh and the other to be happy, one to shine and the other to admire…

And yet, bound by oath and choice and enchantment, Seifer had looked down into the pleading face that he had once cradled so gently – and he had delivered her to the fate that she feared above all else. Nothing Rinoa had ever done had warranted such retribution, but she was only human, only real; she couldn't stand against the power of his dream.

She had not deserved to be broken as they were broken.

He had done it. Betrayed the best of his futures…and lost the only true chance to achieve his dream. Lost the woman who might have loved him. Lost the one sorceress who might have honoured his service.

If he knew, he didn't seem to care.

TRUTH.

Once the first question was asked there was no turning back. Every answer bore another question, and every question an answer. Each one burned. She burned. But at the end, when hope had flared and screamed and died, she found that the heart of her remained. Hard and scarred, little and plain and leaden – but still hers.

…know you?

First sight.

Too tall for his age, a lanky youth who hadn't yet grown into his bones, all tense hands and the too-fast movements of one who doesn't yet know how much the body can betray. A gaze hot enough to sear the conscience of any who met it, a dream clutched hard enough to draw blood from the soul that touched it. A boy so focussed that he only registered the world and people around him where they touched on that dream.

Seifer.

Fujin saw the obsession and didn't judge. Her own dreams were so long gone that she could barely remember having them at all. She hadn't been strong enough to keep hold of them – how could she begrudge another whatever it took to hold back reality's scythe?

From the moment their eyes had met she had known him completely, and known herself safely invisible. Knowing, she had stepped into his blind spot, taken her place at his back where she could stand guard against the dangers he did not allow himself to see.

Loyal guardian, she had never faltered in her charge, self-chosen though it was. She had kept faith. And yet…for every choice there is a check, and even trust asks a reckoning in the end.

…care for you?

Seifer made his own choices. She would not judge, neither then nor later – but she could decide.

Always, she had walked behind him. Had followed him, shadow to his sun, echo to his song – not because she must, but because she chose. It was the highest compliment she had to pay.

She didn't follow blindly; had known from the beginning what he was, and what he wasn't. She had never asked more than he had to give, never offered less than the best she had. How little that was, she had always known – but she had thought he valued it.

KNOWLEDGE.

No stranger could hurt her, but not even she was proof against one who should have been her friend. It hurt. Oh it did. The number of people whom she would let stand on her blind side could be counted on the fingers of one hand. It mattered.

He took it for granted. Took her for granted. Everyone did.

They assumed blind loyalty to match her blind eye, assumed her helplessly in thrall to his charisma, assumed her passive and pliable in his grip; poor lonely Fujin, imprinted on the first one to give her a place and a purpose. Pitiable Fujin. Pathetic Fujin.

They were wrong.

It was Seifer who needed people. Not she. Unsurprising that others didn't see that truth when even he was convinced of his own lonely superiority, in love with the romanticism of the rebel, the solitude of command.

So self-sufficient he seemed; free even of the bonds of friendship, careless of the concerns of others, determined to go his own way at any cost…but he did need other people. He needed them to prove to himself that he was real. Whether they looked up to him or stood against him, they must be his – his admirers or his enemies, he left them no middle ground.

Not like her. Not like her at all. Fujin was always alone, even in company. There were scant few people whose attention could so much as touch her. They were the only ones who mattered, because they were the only ones who could still hurt her. Not that she let them know it. She had long since lost the ability to trust any part of her self to another, however much she might wish it otherwise. Nothing had ever changed that. No-one had really tried.

Oh, she wanted… but she did not need. Not the way Seifer did.

Seifer was forever measuring himself against other people, their meanings and symbols and dreams giving definition to his own. They made the world matter, made him matter, and he was strong enough to pay in pain for the privilege of caring what they thought about what he did and who he was. It was the price of the world he had chosen to be part of.

She wasn't that strong.

UNDERSTANDING.

Fujin. One-eyed, scarred, language-broken, albino, freak. All true, all hers. The face she presented to the world was the only one she had. Let them see, let them think whatever they would; she would not wear blind glass, would not hide behind the disguises of dye and cosmetics. She knew who she was; such lies were for other people, and she neither feared nor cared enough to try to spare them the truth.

That was who she was, though not all she was. One red eye and the honest brutality of the black patch that cut so shockingly across ice pale skin and into grey-silver hair.

An open challenge. A challenge that few could meet.

That even Seifer had never fully accepted.

ACCEPTANCE.

He had never asked. Not once. It might have been consideration. It might have been his own selective blindness. Or it might have been that he simply wasn't interested. Didn't care. Didn't feel the need for more information than a practical man would ask of any weapon that came ready to his hand – to know what she could do, and to know whether she could be relied upon to do it.

She had come late to Garden. Old not in years but in experience. Experience that set her apart from even the most cynical of foundlings. Her files were jagged with question marks. With questions that she had never answered.

If he had asked she would have told him. Him and no other. The eye. The speech. Other things that no one had ever got close enough to guess at. Truth that would have surprised him.

But he never had asked. He never would.

…why?

Fujin had never required that he know her, that he need her, that he give her a reason to be; her reasons had always been her own. She had seen him clearly, always, seen the flaws that only focussed his life more brightly, and followed him anyway. Followed him because he was so much more alive than any other person she had ever known, so alive that he could call warmth even from the dead embers of her starveling soul.

Her world was brighter with him in it.

His life was special. He was special. That, truly, was why she followed him; because of the value she put on his life…and because of the purpose she had found in protecting that pure and precious thing.

Now, when she looked for that golden glow she found it beginning to tarnish, dulled by the hardening shell that was slowly closing over the man she had known.

She couldn't protect him from this, not from himself. He had never let her close enough. Never given her the right. A friend could have helped him…but they weren't truly friends. It was nothing that Seifer had ever asked. Not of her, not of anyone. And, damaged creature that she was, it was nothing she knew how to offer.

…how?

Seifer…

Vivid and glorious, so full of the future that for the first time she could see it too. Until him, the future had not been worth her attention. Hope, belief, desire; none of them made a difference. What happened, happened, whatever she thought or wished or wanted. Ironic, that now the lesson which Seifer had overwritten so long ago should be proved true after all – and by the very one who had seemed to refute it.

She could see where he was going, and it was no place that she cared to be…but she would follow him. As long as she thought there was even the smallest chance that she could aid him, she would be there. That maybe-chance was vanishingly small, but she would rather believe in it than in the alternative. She would rather…but the world had never been in the habit of offering Fujin what she would have chosen.

She had no hold on him, because he had given her none. Seifer made his own mind, always, and she was no sorceress to reshape him to her own intentions. All she had was herself, and if that was the coin that was asked, then that was the coin in which she would pay.

Follower to leader, there was only one way she might be able to make him hear her, and there was no way that he would ever forgive it. But dread it though she might, she would do it. If she had to.

If…

Fujin knew the world too well to put any hope in that word.

GRIEF.

Leader and follower. He had chosen the roles, and she had let him. Easy to forget that the power flows in both directions.

Fujin was one of his certainties. Stronger than memory, deeper than belief, her loyal presence was one of his constants, as much a part of him as his gunblade. She knew it. And she knew that she could break that certainty.

She could refuse him.

He would not forgive it, but she could do it.

The only sanction she had was herself. All or nothing. Follow him – or don't. And know that mutiny is never forgiven. Half a lifetime's worth of loyalty and hard earned trust spent for the chance to make him listen, gambled on the hope that the hole she left in his life would be important enough to make him question what was left.

One decision. Two sides of a divide. Loyalty. Or the ultimate betrayal. He would never know that she was giving up the one bright thing that had ever touched her life, the only thing she valued…the one dream that she had allowed herself to hold.

Loyal unto death, she was. But loyalty is more than rules. More than simple obedience. And like all the greatest virtues, at its highest pinnacle of expression it can ask the highest of prices.

It seemed that she had learned something true after all, if not what she would have chosen.

It hurt.

RESOLVE.

Decision.

His dream had been twisted out of true. Warped back upon itself by mischance, mischoice and blackest sorcery until Seifer himself seemed not to remember how it should have been. How he should have been.

He didn't need a sorceress to be a knight. He didn't need to be flawless to be a hero. He didn't have to turn to destruction to make a difference in the world. All he needed was the courage to face his mistakes and take back his convictions. Redemption was always within a hero's grasp.

He might have forgotten – but Fujin hadn't. And she would do whatever she must to remind him.

To redeem his dream, she would lay down her own.

Love?

Ahead, the paths into eternity stretched barren and empty before her, without guide or goad or goal. It no longer mattered which one she would walk, not even to her.

Love.

Ash and dust with a dash of blood; more of the same. That had always been her fate - more of the same. She should have known better than to expect anything else.

Futures were for other people. Bright people, not broken ones.

Love you.

Then. Now. Beyond.

Love. Choice. Sacrifice.

Somewhere on a ravelled road Fujin stands alone in the dark, watching as the swing of a pale trench-coat is swallowed by shadows.

For every first, there is a last.

- finis -

First, my apologies for the peculiarly fragmented structure. This originally started out as a songfic/poemfic using the words to Suzanne Vega's Knight Moves, but had to become something else to be posted here. I've kept the original statement/question/answer shape that I wrote around, but nothing else (I'd have liked to be able to keep some phrases, such as 'walk on her blind side', but it felt dishonest). I'd be interested to know whether it still works as it stands.

Perceptive readers may well note that this fic holds several ideas and metaphors in common with Falling...but subtly skewed. This is Fujin's in-game perspective, and as such at once more perceptive and self-aware, but less hopeful than Seifer's post-game frame of mind.

It was interesting to see how writing from her point of view differed from Seifer's in Falling - she's even more single minded than he is, far more direct, and far less inclined to avoid difficult decisions: it took almost the whole of Falling for Seifer to admit that he even had a problem, let alone a decision to make, while Fujin sees there's something wrong from the start and determinedly works her way through to the conclusion. Of course, given two possibilities, she always assumes that the least pleasant outcome is the most likely, and that the right choice is the one that hurts her most...which isn't necessarily true.

Anyway, I was pleased with the way this turned out. I hope you enjoyed the read.

Feedback is lovely…

-Gyre