Disclaimer: All Final Fantasy VIII characters and related trademarks belong to Square-Enix. Original storyline and characters belong to Kahlan Amnell.
Note: This story is set right after the final battle in VIII. Ultimecia decides to give her powers to the young Squall. Any events leading up to the day Ultimecia died at the orphanage have been kept in place. All changes come after this.
* Some strong violence and swearing, as well as a few sexual references are to be expected throughout the story *
Never an Absolution
By Kahlan Amnell
Prologue – The End
It had been a lovely day. The little things that pass for beauty in this part of the world chose this day to emerge all at once. The seagulls gave chase, rushing after their own across the grand endless theatre of the sky. The waves poured themselves onto the land, again and again, unwilling and unable to leave their place in this portrait. Because for a few stationary moments, the world became less than its troubles. It became a painting. A memory in the minds of children who would remember the sunshine more clearly than any of the events that followed. In this eternal instant, the world was all flowers, all sunshine and all fragrance.
On the edge of the beach, standing at the bottom of the stairs leading to the orphanage, a dying Sorceress unleashed a Holy spell on a tall dark-haired man. She raged with the power of a thousand dead sorceresses and rained centuries of desperation on this one young man. Every power and spell and defence were set forth on this last effort.
It didn't work. Nothing did.
Time is what she needed. Time to speak, time to take in these last moments, just a second to search the world for a solution.
Or absolution.
But he kept coming and his fury kept choking the life out of her. She didn't need the blood on her dress to tell her she was beyond aid, beyond salvation and beyond redemption.
Ultimecia had been dying a long time.
Long before this young man learned to lift the blade in his hand. Long before he learned where to aim and how to end the life in all things. When he was just a child and she was not born at all, her fate was done and sealed.
All she needed was a sword through the chest and complete this endless business of death. She staggered. The young man stretched out his hands and rained rocks the size of planets on her soul, shattering even the hard unbreakable vengeance in her heart.
More time
No, she thought, a different time.
She would not die. Not by his hand. Not today. On this beach, in this impossible space, she had the power to choose the next cycle of life.
The Sorceress smiled. She had felt the little boy before she even saw him. Even as the other children cowered with their caretakers in the distance, crying into the arms of frightened adults, this lone boy hobbled down the steps to take a better look at the chaos.
Come watch little boy, watch me burn
With the last of her strength, she pushed forth a force of green snaking light that would gather him from the distance and bring him closer to her. It's what magic did best. In the distance someone yelled out, but none of the adults ran to beach to retrieve him. You are already lost to this world, she smiled gently. The boy screamed, raging against his invisible bondage, his eyes wide with honest terror.
The Sorceress embraced him, absorbed the shocks of his struggle and held him to her chest. Even this young he was a fighter. He fought and kicked her, but she held him. Like she would an anchor. Like she would her own child.
Just like that the torrent of fire and earthquakes stopped. Alone in the dust of their battle, was her and the two parts of him.
In this strange ugly pause, he just stared. What a vision he was. All that wild emotion, all that horror and passion. Perhaps. She stroked the boys hair, taking in his sand and summer scent. "Perhaps" she whispered to the boy, even as she looked at the man. "Perhaps there is nothing in the world I want more."
"Don't do it Ultimecia,," the man said, his voice lowered by fear and a quiet shattered fury. "Is that why you gave up the fight, to do this?"
But his rage and fear and disbelief were nothing to her. This man, was nothing to her. The only part of him she wanted was in her arms.
She kissed the terrified boy and wiped his tears.
"It was always impossible for me to kill you," the Sorceress said to the man. "Your death would merely have been a prelude to mine."
"Ultimecia," he said with his voice gentled by caution. "It does not have to end like this."
"End? Squall do you not see? There is not to be an end today. Today is when you gain something. Something beautiful, priceless, something more decisive than an ending. I'm giving you a beginning Squall. A second chance. A chance to do all that you have left undone, a chance to read the missing chapters. And you will see, that your destiny lies not with sorceress Heartilly or with that vile Garden and their army of children who seek to destroy my kind, but that your destiny lies with yourself.
Her enemy froze and there were tears in his eyes that pleaded with a part of Ultimecia that was too determined to live, too desperate to listen.
"I will kill you," Squall said, "All over again. I promise."
The sorceress pressed the little boy to her breast, stroking him as she prepared to deliver her powers to him, so that he may finish one day what she had started. With this thought in mind, she whispered in his ear, her voice hot and urgent:
"When the time comes, you will choose. One day you will meet someone and you will choose. You will rage like you are now, you will rise and fall in this life and you will choose at every step. Choose well Squall."
"Be comforted Squall Leonheart," she said to her enemy, "not everyone gets a chance to be reborn."
And so it started. With those words, the boy learned the first of his pains. The first of many terrors to come. Pain snapped his pupils wide as a scalding surge of power coursed from her hands straight to his heart. The first of many fires burned in him until he felt all ash, all pain, all terror.
Farewell Squall, until next time.
A cloud of dust and time took her and the boy fell on his back. Just before he lost consciousness, the boy saw the man and he knew something had ended and that this man would fade with it. And the boy too lost his grip on the world and faded in his own way. With every slow blink of the eye, the man with the sword lessened, his face dimming until he dissolved into the same cloud of nothingness that took his enemy.
Even as the boy convulsed and cried and still saw the cold horror in the eyes of a man who was already less than nothing, the boy knew it.
This was not the end.