Note: Originally written as a potential draft chapter for another story I'm working on, but I was led in a different direction and thought this might function fine as a stand-alone piece, rather than scrapping it. Not planning on expanding.
Bear
"Do you remember that camping trip we all took together, the summer after my second SeeD exam?" Seifer asked from the chair on the opposite side of the room, bent low and resting his forearms on his knees. His fingers were laced together, with one set drumming on the back of his hand.
"AFFIRMATIVE. FUN." Fujin replied, snapping to attention at the sound of his weak and distant voice. They'd been sitting in silence for what felt like hours, as they waited for their enemy to arrive at the gate. He was staring at her—his sunken green eyes bloodshot and void of their luster, his face pale. She flashed him a weak smile and he nodded in approval even though his lips were drawn tight into a flat line.
"It was, wasn't it?" He asked aloud, not really meaning for it to be a question.
"LONG TIME AGO." Fujin chuckled, for the first time in a while, at the thought of three of them trudging through the woods just outside of the Fire Cavern arguing about a good spot to camp. "JUST AFTER RINOA ENDED." He winced at the mention of her name but didn't fully acknowledge it.
"Yeah … too long. We were so much younger then." Fujin nodded, knowing that he meant young in what they'd endured.
"I uh … I think I should tell you, before we do this." He unlocked his hands and made a swirling gesture with his index finger, looping in the concept of what was unfolding around them in the most casual manner—as if waiting within the belly of Lunatic Pandora for a final battle with Squall was common for them. "Because I'm here right now, and pretty soon I won't be."
"SPEAK, THEN. ALWAYS LISTENING." She knew this lucid time with him was short. The sorceress would arrive in his mind soon enough. It was always unclear if she released him on occasion to be kind, or if it was just because she wasn't powerful enough to be everywhere at once.
"Remember how I only brought two tents? Raijin and I wound up sharing and you got your own." Fujin's brow furrowed at his recollection of the odd detail, and at his somber revival of that quiet period of their life. It conjured a distant memory of their vibrant friendship, bringing a dull ache along with it.
"YES. RAIJIN SNORED. YOU, SLEPT OUTSIDE."
"That oaf. I woke up a few times thinking he was a bear." A muted laughter rang out from Seifer's chest—a familiar sound, long unheard, erupting from the ghost of the man she once knew.
"Anyway," he muttered, now avoiding her gaze and bringing his hands back together to crack his knuckles—a nervous habit he'd developed just over the past year. "Since I'm not sure how this is going to turn out … I just thought you should know that—"
"DON'T. SILLY, THIS TALK." She swallowed the lump forming in her throat. "VICTORIOUS. ALWAYS."
"Not always, Fuu." Seifer shook his head, his mouth curling into a doubtful frown now as he pivoted his head to look out the window. "I'd die before I admitted this to anyone else, but Leonhart … he put me through my paces in that last scrape."
"FORTITUDE IMPORTANT." She fought the pain she felt in her chest as he confessed weakness in front of her.
"It is." He nodded, still avoiding her gaze. "But I'm pretty worn out, Fujin. There are some things even I can't will my way out of." Her lips parted to protest, but Seifer's hand shot up in a sign to stop.
"Back to the trip." He stood slowly, groaning as he lifted the weight of his troubles with him, turning his back to her as he sought something in the sky. "I was really excited to go with you guys—I missed you that summer, despite everything."
"DESPITE RINOA?" She stood along with him, not shying from the name but fighting the urge to step forward—a constant struggle for her in regards to Seifer. How close was too close; how far was too far? How much rope should she give him? "SAW US BURDENSOME. REQUESTED SPACE. WE COMPLIED."
"I know that's how it seemed … I regret that." He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his trench, hanging his head. "I mean, at the time I didn't know that's what the feeling was. But I've come to know regret fairly well recently."
"REGRET FAMILIAR TO EVERYONE." She took a step closer, but stopped when he adjusted to look at her over his shoulder. "I REGRET, TOO."
"The trip," he jerked his head, directing her to keep walking and stand beside him. She complied and swiftly joined him at the window, thankful for the directive. Her eye focused on the sky as he continued to stare at her. At least one of them should be watching.
"I planned it so I could make it up to you … for how I acted that summer. You'd never been camping and always wanted to go—remember?"
"REMEMBER." Fujin smiled at his acknowledgment of the kind gesture, though he'd never fooled her—she'd known it was an attempt at repairing something he'd thought he'd broken. "MOTIVE ALWAYS UNDERSTOOD."
"Mmmm, partially, maybe." Seifer agreed, his tired green eyes still frozen on her profile as she kept watch for him—from the corner of her eye, she could tell he was smiling. "You probably didn't realize I meant for the second tent to be Raijin's though."
"WAS RAIJIN'S. HE—" She stopped speaking when he turned towards her, pressing his shoulder to the window as he leaned on the glass. Being vigilant lost to her curiosity, and her eyes left the clouds to observe his features softening at the sight of her realizing what he meant.
"I meant for it to be just his though." His lips were still curled into a gentle smile as the memory of that day swept over him. "I wanted you and I to …" He made that same circling motion he'd made earlier with his hand, rounding up his feelings and his words in a single gesture. "I realized I missed you that summer, and I wanted to stop missing you."
"MISSED?" Fujin blinked, both understanding and not. "NEVER WERE. NEVER HAD."
"Weren't we on our way, though?" Seifer's eyes narrowed as he analyzed her shocked expression, wondering if he'd misjudged. "I suppose I never clarified."
"NO." Fujin laughed, though she found it ludicrous and not actually funny. "WOULD'VE REMEMBERED. AFFECTION, CRAVED." Her cheeks flushed at the inadvertent admission, astonished and encouraged by his free speaking. Seifer laughed along with her, leaning his head against the window and staring upward at the sky.
"Wow, I thought it didn't need to be said, but I guess I was wrong."
"VERY WRONG." Fujin found that her laughter had shifted to an ache, and that her eye was becoming misty. "NEVER KNEW."
"Another regret then," he sighed, not looking at her still—worried about what he'd find if he did. "I paced outside of that tent of yours—remember it woke you up? You thought it was an animal."
"YES." She lifted her hand to wipe her eye clear, laughing bitterly. "YOU LIED. SAID YOU SAW A BEAR."
"With the way Raijin was snoring it made the most sense."
"KNEW, LIAR." She reached out to swat his arm lightly, drawing his eyes to her again. "KNEW IT WAS YOU. KNOW YOUR SOUND. YOUR WALK. FEEL YOU, SOMETIMES."
"Why didn't you call me out?" There was a smile on his lips, even though he regarded her aqueous eye with a pained expression.
"DIDN'T KNOW WHY." Fujin shrugged and crossed her arms over her chest. "NOT ONE TO PUSH. SEIFER KEEPS SECRETS. REVEAL IN YOUR OWN TIME."
"I guess I should've been honest, then?"
"WHY NOT?" She countered his question with another, his smile fading.
"I wanted you to ask me in." He pressed his lips together, his jaw clenching and unclenching before speaking again. "Clearly I demand a lot from you…" His voice trailed off, as his eyes darted around the interior of Lunatic Pandora to cite the evidence. "I didn't want to seem like I was demanding … more. I wanted you to want me there, not feel like I'd ordered it."
Fujin shook her head, and looked back out the window to search the sky—almost forgetting why they were there in the first place. She fought back the mist once again.
"WAITING FOR YOU, TOO. WOULD NEVER HAVE ASKED." Her voice sounded breathless, almost timid—it used to be a rarity for her but was becoming more prevalent as of late. Things had gotten so hard, so quickly. "TOO SCARED. TOO MUCH TO LOSE … RINOA."
"I figured I scared you away; made you nervous with that summer." He ignored the girl's name again, arching an eyebrow. "… If I'd gone for it?"
"SEIFER … WANTED." The words rose from her chest with a shaky exhale. "WANTED THEN. WANT STILL. BUT ALWAYS OUT OF REACH. ALWAYS SOMEWHERE ELSE. ALWAYS SOMEONE ELSE." Air hitched in Seifer's throat, his chest expanding for a long moment as he took in a deep breath.
"Well, that sucks." He laughed again, his own eyes growing misty as he acknowledged his error. "In the best possible way something can suck, that sucks a lot."
"WOULD'VE ALLOWED YOU IN. WAITED FOR YOU ALL THESE YEARS…." Seifer froze as his eyes snapped to lock with hers again.
"You've never?" Fujin shook her head, silver hair falling in front of her face, her pale skin growing pink with the confession.
"CLOSE ONCE. GALBADIAN SOLIDER, AFTER BALAMB OCCUPATION. WAS DEPRESSED. SQUALL TOOK PANDEMONA … NEEDED SALVE."
"What happened?" Seifer pried, even though he knew it wasn't his place and that she didn't owe him anything. His mind was racing to remember where he would've been at the time, but it came up blank—so much of his time with the sorceress was walled off in a void he couldn't access.
"YOU. TOO MUCH OF YOU EVERYWHERE. THOUGHT OF YOU…WORRIED ABOUT YOU." Fujin shrugged, amazed by how casual the conversation was going, considering they were laying bare the feelings they'd kept locked up for years. "COULDN'T GO THROUGH WITH IT."
"I'm sorry, Fuu." Seifer sighed. "I'm sorry for taking so much from you, and apparently giving you so little." And he was sorry, but he was also silently glad that others had tried and failed.
"DOESN'T MATTER. SOLIDER A MISTAKE. HEART WASN'T IN IT. FOR ME, IS IMPORTANT."
"I wish I'd thought that way before that summer." Seifer smiled at her then, his jaw slackening a bit. "And I mean the whole summer. I know I had a bit of a reputation before, but Rinoa and I never …" Hearing her name come from his lips gave him the chills, but he pressed forward. "Anyway. There hasn't been anyone in a very long time."
"YOU'VE BEEN OCCUPIED."
"That's true, but not in the way you mean it." He pushed himself from the window and moved to throw an unexpected arm around her shoulder—she leaned into him. A long silence passed between them before Seifer chose to speak again on a separate topic.
"We need to talk about what happens from here on out."
"DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT." Fujin tried to shake her head, but it was stopped by the weight of Seifer's cheek against her.
"I'm not making the same mistake twice and assuming you know," his arm sank down to wrap around her waist, pulling her more tightly against him. "You and Raijin need to defect—publicly. Right in front of Leonhart and his goons. I won't be able to tell you to do it once this starts … I won't be myself. I won't be able to stop."
"SEIFER, NOT LEAVING YOUR SIDE." She wrapped her arm around his back too, her hand pressing between his shoulder blades, her fingers absentmindedly digging into him. "LOYAL. POSSE."
"I can't drag you down with me, Fuu. I'll give up right now if you don't promise." Fujin's eyes began to water, knowing that giving up meant something much more serious than packing everything in and leaving—they wouldn't make it far, and there was nowhere to go anyway. "Garden will be lenient on you guys if you break with me, with Squall there to see it."
"BETRAYAL. WORST KIND." Fujin tried to free herself from him. "WILL BE WITH YOU, ALWAYS."
"And you will be," Seifer replied and kept his sturdy grip in place, meaning it in a different way that wasn't lost on her and causing her to shed a few silent tears. "Promise me, Fujin. You still have so much to do. More than I knew…" He chuckled at that, but a single tear dropped from somewhere above and fell into her hair. "I don't want you to sit in a jail cell for the rest of your life. Raijin either … I'm pretty sure they'd kick him out once his snoring kept all the other inmates awake and caused a riot, though."
A laugh or a sob escaped Fujin's lips—she wasn't sure anymore. She pivoted towards him, her face pressing into his chest and her arms wrapping around him in a tight hug.
"Say it." He commanded quietly and didn't move to embrace her back just yet, waiting for a deal to be struck. Fujin nodded against him, filled with a desperation—the world felt like it was on the verge of ending, taking Seifer along with it.
"PROMISE." He kissed the top of her head when the word fell from her lips, and pulled her into a tight hug.
"Hey, you never know. Maybe I'll make it out of this, and maybe this conversation will look silly when this is over." She shuddered against him, and he only held her more tightly.
"Maybe if we make it … we'll go camping again. Count this as me asking you to share a tent right now, so I don't lose my nerve next time." He thought he heard her laugh, but a dark shadow in the distance caught his eye and distracted him. His grip on her loosened, as the war commenced.
"Ragnarock's here." Seifer whispered, running his hand through her hair as the ship approached them with speed. Somewhere in the universe, Ultimeca stirred, and Seifer could feel her in his bones.
"This is the beginning of the end … one way or another."