From the Mind
Prologue
"when there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire"
this is the only time i'm doing this, so pay attention!
Author: chaosvincent
Disclaimer: All places and characters relating to Final Fantasy VIII (c) Square-Enix.
Pairing: SeiferxSquall
Rating: M
Summary: In a world of war, magic, and poverty, Seifer Almasy, a washed-up Sorceress Knight stricken with amnesia, must struggle to find his place. Living at the Dincht Inn, where villagers Ma and Zell Dincht took him and and nursed him back to health, he lives a pointless life, plagued by a Darkness that never seems to yield to the Light, and memories that haunt him in his dreams. He feels he has no where to turn, no where to go, and the war that's left his hometown in shambles has only seemed to come to a temporary end, the threat of a Sorceress looming over the land and causing an uprise in the villagers.
When Squall Leonhart,an injured, icy-cold travelerbaring a strikingly familiar brand on his right breast, appears at the Dincht Inn, memories from a war-torn past begin to resurface, and he's pulled on a journey to pick up the pieces of a life he doesn't even know he lived, a love he never knew he had, and a past he wishes he could put behind him, once and for all.
Warnings: AU,slash, language, violence, adult situations, strange tense for the prologue
Special Thanks: A special thank you goes out to my beta-reader, Yuumoya (LJ),for helping me get writing and for providing me with a title, and my sister, Mailsi (LJ), for sitting through two hours of plot development over AIM even though she was at the desk next to mine.
what have i gotten myself into now?
There was a time when the Darkness wasn't feared.
He's heard about it. A time when it was just merely there, a part of life, a part of the world, and there was no need to fear it or worry what it might do next, because it was just going to vanish when the sun woke from its slumber the next morning, light chasing away the black demons and bringing the world back to life. It was routine.
He can't remember what the true light looks like.
The Darkness sticks around now, always hanging there, always dancing in the alleys or the backs of your eyelids. There's no sun. He remembers that there used to be, a long time ago, but he couldn't tell you what it looks like. The colors of the day are lost in the Darkness, swallowed up and spit back out in monochrome Plainness, eating up the Time and chewing that over, too, until it's impossible to tell whether its day or not unless you look real hard, squint at the gray and the black.
Sometimes the rays of the sun slip through, making the black a little less black and a little more gray, and that's when people know. That's when it's day, and when the Darkness Hours come, well, that's when it's night, because the land is so dark and so thick that you can't even breath without gagging on the dark that clings to you as you walk.
Gray, black, open shop, close shop. Don't look out the door, because you don't know what could be out there, but don't look in, either, because the artificial firelight is too strong for you, too bright to bear after all of that Dark stained into your eyes and your flesh.
He closes the door with a click, locks it up tight for the Darkness Hours. Darkness Hours are closed hours - when the swarming black falls over the land, then the doors shut, all at once, a crow's call to the death plague sweeping over like some horrid creature, swallowing up the sun and dosing it in black water.
The Darkness is just as artificial as the firelight that chases it back from the windows of the houses. The war made sure of that. 'True Darkness,' the real make-your-skin-crawl stuff, the pure black, was lost when the war shattered it all like it was just one big, dark-tinted window. 'Night' ceased to exist as 'night.' 'Night' became the Darkness Hours, and Darkness Hours became more than just the average twelve-hour black that 'night' used to bring to the land.
Occasionally, the Darkness lingers for days, enshrouding the land in a veil so black that one can't see his hand in front of his face, even if he holds it two inches away from his nose. Sometimes it sticks around only for a few hours, maybe four, five, maybe six or so, then it just vanishes, melts off away from impossible black to daylight gray.
He pulls back from the door, slides his hand off it, and turns to face the inside of the room, jade eyes never falling on the faux firelight dancing through the antechamber he's standing in. The room he's in is simple, plain, and sparingly furnished – they don't have the money to do much, but it's never really mattered. There's a few wooden tables - some are crooked, and one is missing a leg, but he fixed that for Ma when he first came here, and now there's a little lopsided stick holding it up - and a few wooden chairs - just as crooked as the tables, if not more so; he couldn't fix those quite as easily. A dark red rug is tossed between it all, spread out before the gray stone fireplace, and a few barrels, filled with the inn's supply of food and beverage for the next few months, are stacked neatly off to the side.
A window is to the far right-hand side, but he doesn't turn to look at it. The Darkness has been staying longer recently, growing more persistent, pounding away at the buildings and the people inside almost as if it was searching for something, digging through the dirt for that little speck of gold it lost.
The window is cracked and dirty, anyway, and he boarded it up last week to keep the Darkness and the thieves from breaking in it like they did two weeks ago, so he wouldn't have been able to see through it anyway.
He still doesn't look, though.
There's a staircase up to the left, and he turns to it, walking passed the ancient, gray wood before heading into a back door pressed to the wall that the stairs are imbedded in. Up there, that's just the inn rooms, the rooms for the few customers that they do get when the Darkness Hours aren't around. He's tried asking why he can't just sleep there, in a real bed, but Ma just said that they have to stay nice for the guests. He doesn't question her - it's not worth it.
The door opens up to the back room, a tiny kitchen and storage, and a little door tucked to the side, which he enters by ducking down and squeezing in passed the little wooden frame that he doesn't quite fit through. A mattress, held together by old brown cloth from Ma's traveling cloaks and one of his own, sewn by Ma herself and stuffed with what hay they could find, takes up most of the little room, and he tosses himself down on it with a thud, arms folding behind his head, eyes focusing on the rotting wood in the ceiling above him.
It's not much, hardly enough to be called an inn, but it's the only one in the whole damn city, and he's quite proud of it. The business isn't good, and the pay isn't any better, but he has a home, and he has food, so he's perfectly fine with the dingy old thing if it'll keep him going for that little bit longer.
They don't get business during the Darkness Hours. No one ventures outside to brave the Darkness, to come to the inn, and those who do don't make it through the stuff sane enough to get a room of their own. When the Darkness is around, the streets are bare and dead, and the regular sounds of life in the city are no longer filling the air. There's a dead silence, a chill numb that soaks down into the bone and shakes a person from the inside out, that freezes the heart and the guts just by listening to the simple Nothing that's out there. They've never had customers when the Darkness is around, and since the Darkness has been here for what seems like an eternity, then they probably won't be getting any guests during the night, and he leans heavy into the mattress, content feline grin on his face. There's no need to sit behind the desk and wait or stand behind the door and wait if no one is even going to open the door he's waiting on.
He dozes off to sleep, lets himself fall into a relaxed state of half-consciousness and half-awareness that has been trained into his flesh and burned into his mind in the past, though he doesn't know exactly what from. 'Be always alert, always aware of the world around you - if you fall off into unconsciousness for too long, the Darkness will get you in your sleep, will eat you up and never give you back, trap you in the black Nothing that always tugs away at the Something that you are.'
He doesn't remember where he heard that, who told him those words, but he knows they're right.
That strange half-sleep comes easy to him, washing him over, cleaning out his mind and letting him lie there, blank and refreshed, staring up at the wood ceiling above him. He lets his thoughts wander, lets himself drift off into the Darkness for only a minute, and in that minute he wonders just when the Darkness will finally part and when he'll get a chance to get out of this damn town, out of this little inn and back into the life that's awaiting him.
He knows that things haven't always been like this, that he hasn't always had such a small role in the massive confusing rush that is life. He knows there was a time when he would walk through the Darkness like it wasn't even there, that he'd stroll through the streets in the middle of the Darkness Hours and wander about as if he owned the world, a great warrior and a mighty king ready to take on anything.
He can't remember it, though. He wishes he could, tries as hard as possible to do so, but he can't.
And that frustrates him to no end.
Another attempt at a chapter fic, that's what I have gotten myself into. Let's just hope my life doesn't hate me, my muses are feeling friendly, and my migraines stay away, and everything should go perfectly fine. :D
Does eat spaces in documents for anyone else, or is this just me? If so, I apologize for any strange incidents in the text. sighs I try.