Final Fantasy VIII: No Laments for the City of the Dead
The road was cracked down the middle, like a dividing line between the city and the outside. Weeds sprouted up from the gap. Irvine stepped over it, took three careful strides into the city limits. Behind him, Seifer's boots crushed old asphalt, the loudest sound around.
The sun glared high in the sky. High noon, Irvine thought. Safest time of the day.
"Still looks like shit here," Seifer said. His blade was holstered, but his hand hovered close to pull it loose. "King and queen of the new Deling City haven't hired any facilities management."
"Or they did, and they ate them when the Galbadian buffet ran out." Irvine shouldered Exeter and ignored the huff of Seifer's breath behind him. "I can't imagine why Quistis approved this mission." He glanced back to watch Seifer, eyes guarded by his dark glasses.
"You're a riot." Seifer gestured ahead of them, where the car rental place had stood. It was a pile of rubble and memories, its neon sign a year dark and rotting. Irvine couldn't even remember what it had been called now. "Long walk to the hotel. We spent too much daylight getting here." He snorted. "You and your beauty sleep."
"Just because you only need four hours a night doesn't mean the rest of us should follow suit." He almost regretted it as soon as it left his mouth, but Seifer only shrugged and walked past him, his pack shifting on his back.
They cut through the center of Deling City, staying close to wide, open streets. Irvine didn't jump at dayshadows, but on the other hand he lived on an island, in a mobile city, and he hadn't been in Deling City since before the virus broke out. Seifer led the way, which Irvine had expected. No one knew the layout of the city of the dead better than Seifer did.
The whole mission was suicide, but Irvine had signed his name when he heard Seifer would be team point. Zell had followed, eager to help, but one too many arguments with Seifer had put him in the infirmary for at least a week and Seifer in the doghouse with everyone. He wondered how many people didn't want Seifer to come back from this, would be well rid of him. Even Quistis, the most patient of them all, was getting fed up with Seifer's mood swings.
The truth was, none of them knew how to handle him anymore. Their desire to see Deling City cleansed warred with the fact that Seifer would be left standing even when the others were gone.
There was still pale graffiti on the streets, letters missing because chunks of the pavement were gone. The dirty bombs, Alexander, Holy, Holy—holy moly, Selphie had said after the smoke from the bombing had cleared, a shell destroyed but all the bugs still crawling around it. All their spells and magic were useless as anything but defense now and there was no way out of the trap Ultimecia had left with her poison.
The arch in the center of the city survived still, crumbling but standing, wavering in the heat of the day. Irvine watched it as they walked down an open avenue. Seifer muttered under his breath and avoided the worst of the holes. Irvine didn't listen to his words. He watched the arch and wondered if they were sleeping there, or in Caraway's mansion, or somewhere totally different now, if they remembered, if they ever thought—
Irvine walked right into Seifer, stumbling before Seifer grabbed his arm and steaded him. Irvine took a deep breath. He hadn't heard Seifer move, but he hadn't been paying attention, either. He hated Seifer's speed.
"That'll get you killed."
Irvine pulled away. "Apologies. Got caught up in thought, won't happen—"
"It's a waste of time thinking about them."
Irvine couldn't see Seifer's eyes for the glasses, but he saw himself reflected there, shocked and diminishing as he backed away. Seifer looked to the north, sun catching on his lenses. "Most of us don't think so."
"You can't save them."
It was a waste of time, they all knew that, but— "No reason we have to just up and write them out of our heads. She may have stolen our friends, our world, but she doesn't get to steal our memories. I'm drawing the line there."
"Think about them later," he said, and paused, shifting in the rumble under his feet. "You'll have plenty of time to think when we mourn them. Don't forget why we're—"
Irvine jerked. "Not a rescue mission. I remember, captain." He stepped widely around Seifer, and took point, and ignored the fact he had no clue where he was going as Seifer chuckled behind him.
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Selphie and Quistis had seen the first outbreaks. Irvine had been lounging back at Garden, enjoying his vacation and nursing his hangover from the week of celebratory parties when their call came in. He remembered seeing Selphie again when she stepped off the Ragnorak, red as a sinking sunset, the white of her smile stark against it.
It had already been too late to do anything. Irvine still had doubts, despite Odine's insistence to the contrary, that there would have been anything for them to do. Virus from the future, of all things, a virus that made people make meals of their families and pets, a virus that spread thick through anyone with magic in their damn genetic code. Deling City had tried to fight back, but kept losing their footing. Irvine still didn't understand it, how with daylight at their disposal they still could have lost the entire war, lost their friends, lost half the fucking continent before they bombed the hell out of the city.
That damn parade and Vinzer's death had done more damage—Ultimecia had done more damage—than any of them could have predicted. Odine had pinned it all on Vinzer's murder as patient zero, leaking the sickness into the air, into the huge crowds. He had ruined more lives in death than he ever would have as a simple dictator.
Irvine stepped around a stone carving of a lion's head, cracked and upside down, keeping far enough from Seifer so he could keep his eye on him. He had dropped back after two blocks. He didn't really care to have Seifer behind him for very long if anything decided to pop out and try to eat him.
"Up ahead."
"You're kidding." Irvine stared at the remains of the hotel as they cut across the ruined street. It looked like it had been punched in, or Alexander might have stepped on it when Quistis had sent the GF to the center of the city.
Seifer stopped and turned around. Irvine knew he was passing out that cold, condescending look, but he couldn't see it. He hated Seifer's fucking glasses and hated himself for hating them. Seifer needed them in the sunlight.
"I bet you'd taste pretty good to the locals. Foreign delicacy."
"You have to mouth off like that here?"
"You and Quistis don't like me to lie, remember?"
Irvine felt the afternoon sun on his neck. Seifer was deliberately goading him on the street, wasting their light for any reason other than he liked to see them all sweat. Irvine had figured out long ago that it was a trust test, that Seifer was grading them on his secret scale, waiting to fail one of them for being scared of him, even after all the time he had been with them. "I'd rather not know you have thoughts about snacking on us," he said, because it wasn't the first time, but it felt different here, where it had started.
This wasn't the safety of Garden.
Seifer's eyebrow went up. "Who said anything about us?"
Irvine rolled his eyes. "Oh, fuck you."
Seifer grinned. "We can get in just fine."
Irvine follow him when he started walking again. He kept forgetting that Seifer was an old hand at extermination missions, missions that had for months been just him junctioned to a shit-load of Holy, the only spell that kept the suckers at a good distance away. Irvine had it on, too, and it had taken longer than usual to not feel like he was high. He hated junctioning high level magic. But the Holy wasn't his defense in Deling City—Seifer was. He was just the bait.
The hotel looked even worse on the inside. There had been riots in the streets when the worst of the outbreak was in progress, looting and vandalism, even though half the thieves were dead and sucking people dry before they could get whatever they had taken out of the city. Irvine nudged a broken frame over with his foot.
"Are we sure they're not sleeping here?"
Seifer was staring at the floor, seeing something Irvine wasn't privvy to. "I've been leaving Holy Stones all around this building for the last three months." He slid a gloved hang along the banister as he went by the stairs. "Too much dust; they haven't been here."
Irvine was only half-convinced, and then he didn't have time to be suspicious because the sun went behind a cloud, reminding him sunset was only five hours away, and they didn't want to move around spreading their scent everywhere right before dinner time. They wandered down with their flashlights to the staff stairs, through the trashed kitchen to an abandoned cooler, the portable lights humming to life when Seifer hit the switch. It was cleaner than the rest, the floor covered with bare mattresses.
"And here I thought I was special enough for sheets," Irvine said, as Seifer started unloading his pack.
"I'll go get your pampered ass some sheets in a minute."
Seifer pack went gently on the floor, and Irvine followed with his own. They weren't heavy, but the contents made Irvine nervous enough to be careful with them. Odine had packed them specifically for Seifer, so Irvine figured he shouldn't worry.
Seifer tossed a box from his pack at Irvine. "Report in. Let Quistis know we're not dead yet." He was gone without another word, swinging the door to the cooler almost shut.
Irvine kicked off his boots before settling down on the mattress and setting up the radio. Tiny, but everything out of Esthar communication-wise was tiny and packed a hell of a punch. Garden's frequency was preset; all Irvine did was hit a button. The bait and the button masher—this was going to be the mission of his career.
"Anyone home? Half-sucker stud and his tasty treat checking in."
"That's not funny, nor is it proper radio protocol."
"Hey, Xu. Is Quistis busy having panic attacks about Seifer's awesome plan still?"
The radio crackled—laughter in the background, from Garden parked by a tomb a few hundred miles away. "Seifer's plan is solid as long as the bait does his job and doesn't decide to get heroic at the last minute," Xu said. "You—hey, this is important—"
Irvine grinned as Xu cut out and in, the sounds of a tussle over the mic in the background. "All this fighting over me. I feel real special."
"Irvine!" Selphie sounded happier—she hadn't been pleased that Irvine decided to volunteer, and hadn't seen him off earlier that morning. "How's the mission so far?"
Irvine leaned back against the wall and smiled as Seifer pulled open the door to the cooler and walked in, throwing sheets at Irvine's head. The cooler door was shut and locked with a padlock from inside, the key to which Seifer's stuck in his pocket.
Irvine avoided the sheets and let them slide down the wall. "We walked hundreds of hot miles and Seifer decided to get romantic and bring me sheets that smell like dust."
"No baddies in dark shadows?"
"Unless you count Seifer, we're good."
"Okay, good! Quistis is in some sort of meeting, so save your battery and call tomorrow to let us know how placement goes." She paused, and her voice wavered. "For the record, I'm still angry! This whole playing bait idea is stupid."
"Says the one who wants to hug them all better," Seifer said, plopping down across from Irvine.
"I heard that, Seifer!" She huffed. "Call tomorrow!"
The connection cut out, and Seifer reached out to flip the switch. "Damn, that hurts my ears."
Irvine sat the radio away from them and poked at the sheets. "You have a sick sense of humor," he said, pulling the dark red sheets out of their folds. "You could give a guy a complex."
"You didn't specify color." Seifer pulled out one of the packed meals and dived into it. He was constantly eating; it was just another side-effect. It didn't creep Irvine out half as much as the glasses thing did, which—
"Take off the glasses," he said. "No sunlight down here."
Seifer chewed and stared—at him or something else, Irvine didn't know. He finally pulled off and blinked. His eyes weren't different—not to Irvine's eye—but every time Seifer took off the glasses he felt like they might have changed while under them, the irises gone black.
"So, any danger outside?"
Seifer jerked, but Irvine wasn't stupid. Seifer had gone outside to look around without the added human baggage. Irvine stole one of his apple pieces.
"No disturbances, all the stones are still in place and active." Seifer grinned. "I fucking love Holy Stones. Makes the suckers want to claw out their own eyes but they can't get close enough to kick them away without exploding their own brains. Wish we had clued into them earlier before the city got too overrun."
Irvine shrugged. "Now's fine."
Seifer swirled the pieces of steak in his pack. Irvine was jealous—he only had regular ration food and Seifer got steak. Not hot steak, but steak. "Nothing to do but wait around until tomorrow morning. I have all the drop points in the order we need to hit them, and Odine gave us extra supplies. Day after tomorrow, we should be able to set the bait and drop the last payload before getting the hell out."
"Boom." Irvine didn't know much about how the bomb Odine and Seifer had built or how it reacted with the cache of poisonous powder sealed in their packs. He had seen video of it, tested on one of the suckers Seifer had brought back to Odine, and he didn't want to know anymore than he already did.
Seifer leaned back on his elbows. His shirt tugged up and Irvine distracted himself by stealing another apple slice. "You sure you're okay with being alone tomorrow?" Seifer's eyes might have not been different on the outside, but when he watched someone, they knew it. Irvine felt like all his secrets were on a ticker on his forehead when Seifer kept his unguarded eyes on his for any length of time.
"Use the map, find the markers you left, drop the packets into them, rinse, repeat. You pretty sure you can open those things without getting it on you?"
"I have gloves, but a little won't hurt. First degree burns. I'm a big boy, Kinneas."
Irvine kept his next comment to himself, because that was asking for trouble. He eyed the food containers that had been spilling over just minutes before. Seifer's metabolism was the craziest thing. Irvine didn't know how he handled it.
Seifer stood to kick off his boots and hit the lights. Three in the afternoon was too early for bed, but Irvine had already guessed that the early morning hours before sunrise were going to be full of directions. Seifer was still Seifer, bossy as hell.
They spread the sheets down on the mattresses, and the middle didn't smell so bad—Irvine could almost imagine the scent of the laundry soap on them, but resisted actually asking Seifer. Stupid questions, and Irvine had sworn off stupid question from the beginning. Tomorrow he would go walking around Deling City, the first human in months to do so—voluntarily. He rolled until he was comfortable on the lumpy bed, Seifer a few feet away.
Seifer sighed. "Ask instead of lying there dying of curiousity."
Irvine could have reached out and socked him in the back. "Why did you leave them?"
The quiet sat in the dark, broke and ran when Seifer shifted on the mattress. "I don't fit in. My sorceress is dead, so I get sunlight. She's dead so I can still eat those disgusting hotdogs at the cafeteria and all the other shit they serve. She's dead so I can have a heartbeat. I can't explain it, and neither can Odine, although he likes to pretend all the tests he runs on me mean something."
Irvine rolled to his back. "You don't talk about it."
"Who wants to listen to the fuck-up talk about how not even the monsters wanted him? They weren't able to kill me; maybe because I was hers and stronger, and Rinoa hadn't organized them with her fucked up magic. So they did the next best thing and threw me out."
It was as much as Irvine had suspected, months of guessing validated in seconds. "You still pissed at me for hauling you in?"
Seifer laughed. "Don't get cocky. If I hadn't wanted to go, you couldn't have made me. And I might have had a snack for the trouble."
"One day you're going to make that joke at the wrong person." Irvine thought of their packs, the tightly loaded glass vials, full of powder that could kill Seifer in seconds. "After this, especially. People don't like to laugh about it yet."
"I don't like wanting to eat people," Seifer said. "I win."
The silence was heavy. It pissed Irvine off to know that Seifer had survived two wars, and they would end the same way, with people calling for him to die. The first time, he had, just not the way people wanted or expected. Irvine didn't doubt they would try to take half-life from him, too. There was too much the rest didn't understand about how the virus worked, and Odine was too greedy with his research material—he refused to publish until all of the suckers were gone, and by that time, Irvine worried it would be too late to reassure people Seifer was safe.
He chuckled to himself. Safe enough, he guessed.
"How's it work?" he asked. "The cravings."
Seifer made a noise. "You and Selphie are the nosiest people—why do you care?"
"I'm going to sleep in tiny room that you locked from the inside and have the only key to. Gee, I wonder."
Irvine could almost feel Seifer leer at him. "Think I'm going to want a midnight snack?"
He couldn't help it—he laughed. "Maybe. Or maybe I'm just worried about my virtue."
Seifer was silent for a few seconds. "As long as I eat a lot it's just annoying. It's always there, but worse at sunset. Supposed to be waking up." He huffed. " What bothers me more is the light."
Irvine turned his head. "Light?"
"I miss sunlight in my eyes. Pretty fucking stupid to miss something that I always bitched about." He shrugged. "There are worse things, like not having a heartbeat and forgetting who I am. At least I still function."
"If you call being moody like a twelve year old functioning." Irvine reached out, almost touched, but pulled back at the last second. "I'm the only one that'll put up with you."
Seifer laughed. "At least with you I know it's just punishment for your sins rather than pity." Irvine was surprised when Seifer turned and his hand fell on Irvine's shoulder. "You did everything you could. They thought they were immortal and they were wrong."
His palm was warm through Irvine's shirt. "Who said I should be punished?"
"You did, when you pulled me out of the gutter and dragged me home instead of bringing Squall and Rinoa." He took his hand back. "I'm saved now, yet you keep trying." He wiggled down on his own mattress. "Either you still haven't forgiven yourself or you want in my pants."
He turned over and the conversation was over, and left Irvine wide awake in the dark, annoyed and curious.
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Irvine wiped the sweat off the back of his neck as he stared at the map. The remnants of the bistro had been easy enough to find, but the markers Seifer had left to find the hole he had dug were gone. Fourteen holes down and this one to go, and the day was mostly over. Irvine had expected this to be the easy part—plenty of sun, no worries about suckers popping out to eat him, an easy checklist to get through before he went back down to the cooler to read the book he had brought along. The only problem was, Seifer hid his markers too damn well.
He finally found the hole, hidden under one of the overturned, rusting metal tables. Half a foot deep and two feet across, lined with plastic, it looked harmless. Irvine had poured the green powder into holes all morning and afternoon, thinking about how silly the whole idea seemed. Poisonous flammable powder, Odine-mixed for extra oopmh with suckers. If he hadn't seen the damn stuff at work he would probably feel like a moron.
Seifer had given him the outer city map, forcing Irvine to circle the entire city to come back to almost the south road that they had come in on. Something about it being safer, but Irvine wasn't stupid. Less shadows on the outskirts, especially in the industrial districts. Having Seifer for a teammate was going to give him heatstroke.
He picked his way through a few wrong turns getting back to the hotel; Deling's layout was a mess, mapped now only because Seifer had wandered around and done it himself. All he heard was his breathing the crunch of rocks, and hours of it was enough creepiness to last for a lifetime. Deling wasn't meant to be dead and silent. He had cursed Ultimecia plenty over the last few months, first when he and Quistis had found Cid and Edea dead on the coast, with early signs of the virus, then again when Laguna had taken Quistis aside to deliver the bad news about Ellone. He might as well curse her for helping him get a sunburn.
He passed the lion's head in the street outside the hotel and traced his fingers across the remainder of the curved ear. The was no more Deling to hear, now or ever.
The inside of the hotel wasn't much cooler until Irvine hit the basement floor to find Seifer lying back on the mattress, reading his book. He didn't look up when Irvine stumbled in.
"You took long enough."
Irvine just gaped at him. "How long have you been back?"
Seifer turned a page. "I shadowed you for a little while, but you were slow. Boring."
Irvine tugged off one of his shoes and chunked one at Seifer head, littering dirt across the sheet, and managed to miss as Seifer moved too fast. "You could've lent a hand."
"You were fine; we had equal workload." Seifer finally looked up. "Fifteen each."
Irvine grumbled and stripped off his soaked shirt. "You might use those supernatural powers for good a time or two, instead of just trying to scare the pants off people."
Seifer's lips twitched, dropped his eyes, and Irvine didn't miss the flick of his gaze. "Like this, you mean."
Irvine couldn't always hate it when he played like a kid with his flashing. He blinked and Seifer was behind him, pushing him forward into the scratchy dirt he had scattered on the sheet. Seifer loomed over him for a second, and then the light flashed out.
"Oh, what the hell—" Irvine sat up on his elbows at the loss of light. "Now that's a a dirty trick, mister I-can-see-in-the-dark." Seifer laughed, in what seemed like all four corners of the room at once before flipping the light back on. Irvine rolled his eyes. "What's got your spirits so high? Maybe I should take notes."
Seifer stilled beside him, grinning. "If I told you, you'd just get disgusted."
Irvine laid back, because the sheets were cool. "Oh. Snacks."
Seifer snorted. "I don't have snacks. But wiping sleeping suckers out is cheering."
The excitement wasn't contagious, but Irvine had long ago gotten over his issues with killing innocent people who had hadn't done a damn thing besides have magic in their blood. It was easy when he remembered they wanted to nibble on him. "Congratulations. Guess I'll let you off the hook since you were hard at work making the streets a tad safer."
Seifer was silent, his joy gone. It threw Irvine off, it was so sudden. "There's still running water."
Irvine didn't get it. "Are you saying I smell?"
Seifer closed his eyes. "You always smell, Kinneas. Just now you smell worse."
When he opened them, Irvine caught his breath. "Oh. You don't mean worse." Irvine kept his eyes on Seifer's, the blue green almost gone, so he didn't have to see the fangs if they were there.
"I didn't."
"Probably wanted to help me out there."
"Maybe."
"Watched me the whole time, too, I bet."
"They set traps sometimes. Better safe than sorry."
"Sorry for being so appetizing." Irvine couldn't move, wondered if this was part of the deal. Seifer never confirmed the rumors about the ability of suckers to hypnotize, but Seifer was eyeing him like dinner had been delivered on a golden platter and Irvine wasn't running for his life.
He wondered what he was scoring on Seifer's trust scale now for not cutting loose.
"You don't have to give in," Irvine said.
The look on Seifer's face suggested that he thought Irvine was crazy. Irvine didn't give up any ground as Seifer crawled toward him.
"I don't want to eat you, stupid." Shit-eating grin in place, fangs were a definite yes, and it was the last thing Irvine saw before Seifer pressed their mouths together.
He didn't expect Seifer to be cold, but it always surprised Irvine when he touched him and he was on fire, burning hot with what would be fever in anyone else. No flashy tricks with his kissing, and as Seifer pressed him to the mattress, Irvine could appreciate someone who knew when to slow the hell down.
Seifer ran his tongue across the pulse in Irvine's neck, following the line of his torso, all the places his heartbeat showed themselves under the surface of his skin. Irvine had no clue where this had come from, cared even less than that to know, and he groaned when Seifer reached the edge of his pants and stopped.
"Tease."
"You don't get to pull out scorecards yet, Kinneas."
Irvine's head shot up with a retort, but he lost it watching Seifer pull buttons free of their loops and nuzzle the curve of his hip. Seifer yanked his pants down without him even lifting his hips, and curled his hand around Irvine's cock like it belonged there. Irvine's back left the sheets; he hadn't been much for this before, impersonal and too quick, but Seifer just held on like his hand belonged there, making Irvine pant with the pressure.
Seifer licked the skin at the junction of his hip and twisted his hand at the same time, and Irvine writhed with the rhythm of it. He twisted the loose sheet in his hands as Seifer's thumb traced a lazy, wet path over the head of cock, like he had all the time in the world.
"Holy—" The sharp prick of teeth on skin made him jerk, rocked him into Seifer's grip again. He knew what Seifer wanted; it was easy. "You don't have snacks."
Seifer growled—Irvine didn't have another word for it—and licked him again, and everything was playing between his hand's slow stroke and the warmth of his tongue on Irvine's skin. "Leave it." It was an order, but Seifer didn't get to be team captain here.
Irvine pressed his hips up, annoyed. "Bite me if it'll make you so happy, but don't start what you can't finish."
Seifer was heavy against his legs, his breath quick. "You have no idea—" He didn't finish the thought, and Irvine didn't give a shit. He palmed Irvine's cock as he sunk his teeth in, and god, he was good at both, fingertips and tongue driving Irvine crazy. Irvine lifted his hips, but Seifer was firm and wasn't budging and it was probably for the best. He groaned when Seifer lifted his head, and he felt the absence of teeth, couldn't believe what he had done.
It all went away when Seifer licked a stripe up his cock, and he arched into Seifer's mouth.
Once.
Twice when Seifer dipped his head.
"Shit!" Irvine clawed as the mattress as he came and Seifer just took it, swallowed to make him shudder all the way through it. "What—fuck." He slammed his head back. He rolled his head, his hair sticking his his cheeks in clumps.
Seifer's heartbeat was still so slow—almost like it wasn't there. Irvine followed the beats on his thigh, matched their breath together after the buzz wore off. Things were clicking into place in his head, as Seifer traced his tongue along the bite mark, making Irvine tremble. He wasn't a trembler, but he was apparently going to make an exception when sleeping with suckers.
"Is that why?" he asked, trying to keep himself awake. "Besides that fact most people are scared of you?"
"Is what why?"
"No sex." Irvine shifted. "A key partner missed out on a few things, and it wasn't me."
"Well, it's not like people were beating down my door." Seifer's breath was warm on his stomach as he shifted, his fingers replacing his tongue as they brushed along the still tender bite mark on Irvine's skin. "Except you and Zell, and no offense, I didn't really want to fuck him."
"Too hyper."
"No, wrong smell." Seifer turned his head into the curve of Irvine hip. "You smell like muffins."
Irvine snorted. "I smell like muffins? You just blew me and imagined you were eating a delicious blueberry muffin?"
"Buttery cinanmon."
"I'm so flattered." Irvine tousled his hair. "My masculinity is downright injured. Muffins."
"Sex is risky." Seifer's voice went soft. "I don't—I don't think clearly."
"Maybe that's my sexual prowess at work."
"Or that fact I want to sink my teeth in and not let go." Seifer chuckled. "Both?" He pulled himself up to run his open mouth over Irvine's neck again.
Irvine hadn't thought too closely about what the bite had meant, hadn't cared. But when he kissed Seifer again, the tang of blood was there, faint. Blood, his blood. He shivered as they tangled their legs together. "Guess I'm lucky you have good self-control." Irvine poked him in the side. "Just don't decide to check out when you have my dick in your mouth and we'll be okay."
Seifer was warm and he shifted when he breathed and his laugh was full of everything that Irvine found right in the world. That was dealing with it enough for now.
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Irvine stared back and forth between the hole in the ground and his gun as he loaded it as Seifer slid the pack onto his back.
"I don't like this a bit, I've gotta say." Irvine stepped around the hole, edges jagged from bomb blasts. "Sewers during the day seems just as stupid as a dark alley at night."
"It is." Seifer turned his back to the sun, took off his glasses. He handed them to Irvine like an afterthought. "This is why I'm going to walk through and drop the this load in the center of the sewers so they don't have a place to go, and not you."
Irvine didn't like feeling like the little woman left at home, useless—doubly so because he couldn't cook and always used too much laundry soap. "Back in an hour, then bait-set. Draw them out, find their home. The part where I get to do something besides manual labor."
"You have your precious gun and your special bullets. Use them if you need them." Seifer watched him slide the last bullet in and holster the gun. "If you can."
"That's so reassuring, thank you kindly."
Seifer shrugged. "You're slow, they're not. But...maybe." He looked up at the sky. "One hour—if I'm not back five minutes after, you haul ass out of the city. Leave everything."
Irvine hated that plan. "Both go down together, what happened to that?"
"We never agreed, and you just said that because I'll be dead and you won't be losing anymore brain cells to your dick." Seifer sat on the edge of the road, felt for the ladder rungs. "Sex addict."
"Bloodsucker."
Seifer grinned and dropped out of sight down the hole with the last of their delivery. Irvine paced around the hole for a few seconds, then stepped back to sit on the curb. Seifer could handle himself; he'd been doing it for months. No reason to think this time was any different.
The sun was there, but it was so weak. Seifer had watched the sky all morning, and Irvine felt how nervous he was. He wasn't talking, which made it all the worse, ominous because Seifer was quick to diffuse situations with confidence. It was easy to get pissed at Seifer for taking so many chances, keeping so many secrets, but Deling City was his goal.
He was focused, and used to working alone. Irvine could empathize. He tossed rocks across the street to watch them go through he gutter grates.
At least, he thought the noise was just him. It was between throws he finally heard it. The scrape of crushed rock under shoes. It was light, behind him—fast. He didn't freeze, but it was a close thing.
Fuck.
They weren't unheard of—Seifer had seen plenty of daywalkers in his first weeks in the city. They were ugly and mean and used as servants, fed scraps. Before Esthar had come in to declare Deling City too hazardous, thrill seekers had gotten picked off by the dozens thinking they could scavenge. Seifer had been confident he had picked them all off the last few weeks.
Even half-suckers could be wrong.
Irvine swallowed and stared at the hole. Going down was just as dangerous, and the sun was still out.
Another shift of stone, across the street. He didn't look up at the flash out of the corner of his eye, but he felt the wind from the stalker this time. Closer. Rubble crumbled from two different places. More than one, then.
Exeter was in his holster. Why the hell had he put it up? Two days in the sucker city with no incidents had made him lazy, and now it was going to kill him. He shifted, but there was no way to do it. They were already here. They were fast.
Fuck it all.
They were only brave in the daylight if freshly fed, iron rich, and food had been sparse. Had been—what had changed? Irvine couldn't remember hearing about any disappearances. It was all a waste, anyway. He was dead. Real bait, not fake-bait.
Lunch.
He felt the wind from the impact behind him first, and was out before he hit the ground.
------------
Irvine woke with the ache in his arms, long numb above his head. He couldn't even shift his wrists. He twisted, felt a firm wall against his back, wooden floors under his feet. It was dark but he could hear them, rustling around him.
There was a flash, and three candles were lit a few feet away, illuminating some bookcases nearby, a flash of white arms a few feet away before they moved. No hands, he thought. Striking matches with minds these days. Regular old blood-sucking sorcery. Or was it new, since it had come from the future?
"Hey, Rinoa." His voice broke, and boy, he was glad Seifer wasn't here to laugh at him.
She came at him straight on, pinning him back against the wall with—not her weight, she had always been too thin. Unnatural weight. Magic. "Don't use my name." She didn't even say it, because her mouth was on his neck, like he was a popsicle. It was in his head, and this entire mission had been a mistake. How could they begin to fight this? No wonder Seifer had broken Zell's arms to keep him from coming. No fucking wonder.
"I'll stop using your name if you'll step back a few feet," Irvine said, straining it out through the pressure on his chest. "Also, I'm taken."
She laughed, and it started it the unseen crowds around him mimicking her, what sounded like hundreds of voices. "We know. We smell him all over you." She licked his ear. "You let him bite you," she whispered it into his head as her hand trailed down and tickled her fingers on his skin through his pants, cupped him with her palm. "Let him taste you." This had not been in the mission notes, getting sexually harassed. "Dangerous games, human."
Irvine kept his eyes closed. "In polite company we give permission for that kind of thing. Don't guess you would know much about it."
Sharp noise to the left, metal on metal, and Irvine felt the sparks on his skin as the blade scratched down the wall. "He's coming. Sooner than expected."
Squall's voice. Irvine wouldn't open his eyes. He didn't want to see either of them, suddenly. He had wanted to for months, felt he needed to see it to believe that they had saved the world only to let themselves be taken by the same stupid virus that had come to the city to fight, but now, faced with it, it wasn't the last memory he wanted of them. They didn't remember themselves; they didn't remember him. They were long dead.
He kept his eyes closed.
"Let him come home, then." Rinoa's fingers scraped down Irvine's cheek. "We have excellent bait."
"I'm pretty tasty," Irvine said. "No wonder he's in a hurry."
She leaned in close, the flowered stench of her enough to make Irvine vomit, but he thought past it. "Don't worry. After we kill him, we'll all know your flavor."
------------
Irvine hung around while the room emptied and filled and emptied again. Exeter was still with him, holstered at his side. They hadn't taken it away; but why would they? Guns didn't hurt them.
Irvine wished his hands were free, so he could give them a little taste of what they thought couldn't hurt them. He had no sense of time in the dark, didn't know how long he had been here. He faded in and out a few times, head pounding each time he came to.
Once he woke with hands all over him, in his clothes, noses sniffing. He was man enough to admit that made him pass out, convinced he was going to be served up buffet-style.
He came to again with Rinoa's mouth on the pulse in his neck, wondered if he was already bleeding out, but then she was backing away, making the most awful noise Irvine had ever heard. And then Irvine heard Seifer coming, because he heard the high-pitched squeal he was leaving in his wake. It was like a chorus, songs from the dead.
Irvine had never watched Seifer fight; Seifer had always refused. Irvine had thought it was because he was just too fast, too good for people with normal reflexes, but he knew better now. The noises came from all around him, above and to the side. Seifer didn't didn't need to train anymore; he fought to kill. Irvine heard tapping outside the room he was in; almost a melody. Something rolled down the stairs.
Irvine opened his eyes when the door creaked open, the space lit by candle light and the deep blue glow of Squall's gunblade. Irvine trained his eyes on it, the dark spots covering the light of it, the dark spots that could only be blood.
Rinoa hissed. Squall hissed.
The candles went out.
"You know, I remember telling you once to stop taking shit that doesn't belong to you, Leonhart." Then he was gone, out the door, Rinoa and Squall and the remnants of the rest of them hissing after him, the food forgotten on the wall.
Irvine hadn't realized he was so tense. Seifer had come only to leave, and he didn't know what sort of plan that was, but he didn't like it. When he got off the wall and could feel his arms again, he was going to use fists on someone for the first time in years. He didn't care if it would hurt him worse than Seifer. He shifted, and realized the hook his restraints were hanging on wasn't that high. He pressed himself up, ignored the fire in his back and shoulders, and managed to find that the end of the hook was curled up.
He slumped back down, took a deep breath, and did it again, even as the door slammed against the wall behind it. The frenzied sound of animals fighting and the smell of blood assaulted him as he stretched up.
"You're going to pull something, princess."
Irvine jerked, and managed to somehow keep himself from pissing his pants. "Damn it all, Almasy, do you have to just appear like that?"
"When I'm saving your ass, I do." Seifer wrapped an arm around him and lifted him, the edge of the hook Irvine would have never reached on his own scraping his skin as he went by. "Fucking telepathy now? Means she's fed recently, and I don't want to stand around and be dessert."
"Payload," Irvine said, and his arms were on fire as soon as they dropped. As soon as Seifer let go of him, he was on the floor, retching, bringing nothing up. He must've been here too long.
"Delivered, although you took the bait thing a little too seriously, genius. I wasn't supposed to come back to find my favorite pair of glasses crushed on some rocks." Seifer gripped the back of his coat to haul him up, and before Irvine could protest he was yanking Exeter out of the holster. "Whatever, now it's your turn to save our asses, because I'm tired. I can't move like them for very long. How do you fire this thing?"
"Cock and trigger," Irvine said, trying to make his fingers work enough to undo the ties on his wrists. Eventually Seifer took pity on him and helped him out. "But your aim sucks," he said as the rope fell away.
Seifer laughed and turned away. "My aim used to suck," he said, and he shouldered the gun. "Right, Rin?"
Irvine had a split second to see Rinoa only a few feet from them, the flash of pale skin as she jumped lost into the dark as Seifer fired Exeter point blank into her face and she flew backwards. The howls around them grew louder still, and Irvine was being pushed along too fast to keep up with Seifer's shots into the dark, who saw things Irvine couldn't.
"There's only twelve shots," Irvine said as they hopped the stairs two at a time. He had lost count of how many they had left, but nothing else was jumping at them. They skittered around a pile of suckers, writhing at the bottom of the stairs, their screams lost to Irvine, the pitch too high.
"I have two left." Seifer stumbled, righted himself just in time to press the trigger and send another sucker flying backwards. "Shit! Rescue plans always suck. This was not a rescue mission!" He cocked the gun again. "One left."
Irvine didn't think they would need it as they left the mansion behind, tripping down the sidewalk into the night, lit up by a huge moon. Out in the open, they could see, they could avoid, except Squall stood directly in their path, his blade shining.
"Oh fuck, what's wrong with his face." Irvine drew up short.
"You know they don't let their dead go to waste," Seifer said. He didn't move closer like Irvine expected. "It's not him, he's just been having a snack." He cocked his head when Squall just stood still, head hanging, hair obscruing his eyes. Seifer's voice was quiet. "Rinoa is dead."
Irvine had never seen one of them be so still, it was unnatural. "What's going on? What the hell is he doing?"
Seifer ignored him, and sighed. "I know how you feel," he said, raised Exeter and pulled the trigger.
Irvine couldn't watch Squall fall, didn't have to listen to his shrieks because there were none. Seifer yanked him into motion and past Squall even before he was done hitting the ground.
They didn't look back.
------------
They made it back to the hotel in record time, remnants of suckers on their heels even as they were running for the cooler and the padlock.
The wave slammed into the door like bugs to a windshield, sending them cowering to the back. Irvine watched it shake and rattle, didn't understand how it held. Beside him, Seifer was tense. They watched and waited until it stopped.
"Still there." Seifer whispered it, a secret, almost like he didn't want Irvine to know. "Waiting."
Irvine shifted. "How long will they stay?"
Seifer spared him a glance. "We can hope dawn will drive most of them out and the rest will be easy." He turned away. "Their leader is dead. No more magic, but our bomb won't care either way."
Seifer was bleeding, cuts on his arms and face. Irvine covered one of the deep ones with him palm, Cure easy to pull. "You're a crazy bastard."
Seifer grabbed his wrist and Irvine froze for a second until Seifer pulled him down and mouthed his jaw. He backed away with blood on his lips, leaving Irvine gasping for air and pissy because he had stopped.
"That was driving me crazy."
"I'm not a free food joint, you know."
"Give me a break, I saved your life." Seifer leaned against the wall. "You're a hell of a lot of work for a damsel in distress and you don't even have good tits."
Irvine didn't have the energy to argue. They slept off and on, Irvine waking twice as Seifer shoved him over to lay on the mattress and another when the light went out, startling him. Seifer shoved him back down, and it wasn't too much work to go back to sleep.
When he opened his eyes again, the door was open, Seifer leaning against the doorway staring down at him. "Beauty rest, of course."
Irvine yawned. "Safe?"
"As it's going to get." Seifer came forward and crouched down. "You're going to have some ugly bruises. Selphie's going to nag me for a month."
Irvine rolled to his back. He kept seeing Rinoa darting out of the shadows, except it was all wrong, because she was the Rinoa he remembered, the one before she had turned. He kept replaying her flying back. "They're dead. You killed them."
"Squall didn't want to live without Rinoa, and just as a reminder, she was going to eat you. Don't start the pity party." Seifer started stuffing things in their bags, which sunk sad and empty now that everything was gone.
Irvine rubbed his face. "I get it. It's fine and dandy." Mission complete.
Seifer paused. "There's a big red button I'd like to hit back at Garden." He shrugged. "You can help push it. There'll be fireworks. We can make out and make Xu gag."
Irvine figured that was good enough commitment for him, and helped Seifer pack the sheet.
It was time to end it for good.
Time to go home.
