Prologue
...kursed fool, you will obey...
Hell is blue. The walls. The floor. The ceiling. Everything.
Hell is his twisted mind and the blood on his hands.
Adel towers over him as Rinoa struggles in his grip, fighting, clawing, (kursing) his name, begging, pleading, crying for him to let her go.
...give her to adel, boy...
Seifer doesn't know what he's doing anymore, or why. She isn't the Sorceress he followed out of love and loyalty for the only mother he's ever known. She is a stranger, a parasite and she's sucked out every part of him that mattered, destroyed everything he's ever loved.
Rinoa, he almost loved her once. Before all this.
This isn't what he planned, none of it the boyhood fantasy he dreamed up late at night in his dorm room as he listened to Raijin's snoring through the wall. This isn't what he imagined when he sought to help the Forest Owls in their attempted coup.
Hyne, how he wanted to impress her, to strip away that flare of doubt in her eyes when he swore he was behind her all the way. All he wanted was to be her hero, but fate and circumstance cast him as villain, and it's too late to back out, too late to put down his weapon, and his pride won't allow him to raise a white flag, no matter how tired he is of the fighting and confusion.
...do it now, boy...
"I'm not a boy!" he shouts, but no one hears him over the din of Adel's howl of rage as she wakes from her long slumber. "I'm... not a boy."
"Please, Seifer... Please don't do this."
He's torn between zealous belief in his Sorceress' cause, and affection for the girl in his grip. This is wrong. It's all wrong, and he doesn't know how to stop it. He almost loved her, almost, and the things he's done are a guarantee she will never love him back.
She's fighting this. Her foot collides with his shin, her elbows batter his ribs and her nails leave bloody trenches and crescent moons of red on his skin, but he feels no pain, only registers it on the periphery, his body barely his own anymore.
...i kommand you...
It isn't Rinoa's tears that stay his hand a second too long. It isn't the stinging pain inside his skull or the pulse of red behind his eyes. It isn't Adel's wolfish grin or fear of what will become of him now that his life is a ruin.
It's the look on Squall's face, the raw disappointment, the sympathy. Leonhart pities him, and it's sickening.
"I don't want to have to kill you, Almasy," Squall says. "Let her go."
His grip on Rinoa tightens, she cries out, and the hellish blue light in the walls sputters like a strobe and he's pulled along an invisible chord, a puppet on a string, his mistress a deity and her control absolute.
But Seifer resists. He fights her with the last of his sanity and strength, and he throws Rinoa to the ground at Leonhart's feet, lifts his blade and drives it deep into Adel's gut.
And in that moment, as Adel's blood spills over his hands, everything changes.
If hell is blue, this is the floor below.
He's been running for days, hours, years, over cracked earth and dark holes that bleed out over the dirt like amoebas, through fog and downpours that reek of blood, under clouds the color of bruises and smoke.
Lost, lost, lost, tired, ashamed, Seifer doesn't know where to turn.
Leonhart let him have the finishing blow – an honor or an obligation, Seifer's still not sure, and now he's unraveling in the wake of her end. It cuts him all the way to the bone, all the way into what's left of his charcoal black soul, but she's still with him somehow, following not far behind, looking for a place to die.
The orphanage is as he remembers it.
He stands upon the beach as children play in the sand and he picks out familiar faces among them, Trepe and Leonhart and Sis, himself with snowy blonde hair and thick, stocky legs, and he doesn't remember ever being this innocent. His smile is ornery as he tugs Quistis' braid, and he laughs as she shoves him down into the sand, hands on her hips in indignation.
He smirks a little as he looks around and remembers – this is the last place he was ever truly happy.
He doesn't belong here, not in this time, and not in this place, but as he turns to leave, Cid stands before him, slimmer, younger, his face unlined, and Seifer presses back a mixture of fondness and bitter hate as he stares at the man that will help shape his future.
That little boy in the sand will do things he never dreamed he'd do, and not all of them worth living through.
"Kramer," he says.
"Can I help you, son?"
Seifer looks at him full-on until the man takes a step back and casts his eyes at the younger version of the almost-man before him.
Cid lets out a shaky breath and he removes his glasses and wipes them clean on his vest.
"Why are you here?"
There are a thousand things Seifer could say to him. A thousand grievances he could get off his chest. He could offer a warning, but instead, he thinks of the life he deserved and never had and compares it to the one he's lived so far.
"Don't let me turn into a monster."
Cid doesn't know what he means, but he casts his eyes to the laughing five year old boy burrowing in the sand.
"Fight your own battles, Kramer," he says. "I want no part of Garden or SeeD-"
He hisses the last part, but before Seifer can say anything more, he senses her there and turns toward the presence he's run from since the moment he took her life.
She staggers across the sand, her dress ragged and stained dark with blood, her face a beautiful horror and she falls to her knees before Ellone. Seifer's heart is in his throat – he didn't mean to bring her here – not Sis, Hyne, not Sis - but it's too late and magic pours from her body and into the girl and there's a blinding-burning-scalding heat in his blood that sends him to his knees as her consciousness dies and she fades into nothing.
But there's a new presence in his head, softer, gentler, and so, so young, and a part of him dies as he looks up and sees her staring back at him with big, frightened brown eyes.
His younger self, previously engaged in the destruction of Quistis' sand creation has gone still and his ocean blue eyes are fixed on Ellone.
What have I done?
All his memories, of Garden and SeeD and everything he knows are ripped apart as the world around him spirals away and dissolves into dust.
Notes: This is the convergence of a really old idea and a new one - a "what if" scenario I really wanted to develop but didn't quite know how to go about. I promised myself I wouldn't do this again but here I am... Heh. The good news is a solid half of this is already written.
As far as other stories go, "Bad Habits" and "Fall on Your Knees" are officially dead. As much as I liked both ideas, my motivation and interest in writing them just wasn't there. "Bad Blood" is on hold, and "Swashbuckling" will continue to be updated as time to write allows. DCC, still in progress and will be updated to completion.
Hope you enjoyed!