Requiem of the Soul
A FFVIII Fanfic
by Asiah Loire
Prologue
Calm Before the Storm
Outside, the sky was dark and overcast. The sound of thunder crackled in the distance, threatening an immense downpour from the storm clouds at any given moment. Moaning winds and the scent of summer were present in the air, yet the temperature was much below seasonal on this particular day. Not very far away, white capped waves crashed against the nearby cliffs and rolled in, over the sand of Balamb beach. An onslought of raindrops began to pour down, but from where Seifer sat in his room in the Balamb Hotel, he was spared from them. The window was open wide, and several of the droplets were blown in by the breeze. The former member of Garden lied with his hands behind his head on the bed, staring outside with a multitude of thoughts on his mind as he watched the raging ocean.
"Seifer ... the Sorceress' Knight ..."
A voice, calling to him in his dreams. He knew the sound all too distinctly, and it continued to torment him even now as it echoed in his ears. He could hear his heartbeat getting louder; faster as the voice resonated. Closing his eyes, he pictured her in his head. Beautiful, untouched by age, elegant, and deadly. Her heart was a black pit of ashes, devoid of any human emotions. With the keen and powerful mind of a sorceress, she knew his every move, his every thought, and also where his loyalty lied. Seifer had been fully devoted to serving her, his dark queen who commanded him to protect her, and then punished him when he failed.
"Seifer ... Seifer ..."
He tried to block it out of his head, willing it to stop, pleading with her to leave him alone. She had reduced him to this useless being, who could not even bare to look at what had once been his pride and joy, his Hyperion. He could not stand touching it, much less use it in combat. And so he sat her, day after day, refusing to even venture outside the hotel. Sometimes she would stop toying with his mind momentarily, and they would have conversations, in his head. He could almost see himself reaching out to touch her. She was pulling him away from everyone else, she wanted to claim and have him all to herself. When they talked it was almost as though she was whispering into his ear, right there next to him on the bed. He imagined her lying beside him, dressed in a flowing gown, with her long silver locks falling over her shoulders. She stared at him so intently, and stroked his face with her hand, the long, claw-like nails scraping against his skin and causing him to shiver.
He opened his eyes and there she was, no longer just a figment of his imagination. His mouth was agape as she lay there with roses surrounding her on the matters. Golden flecks shone in her eyes as their gazes locked and his arm extended with a mind of its own. She took his hand in her own and placed it over her heart. He heard it beating, so loudly and quickly. Her breathing was labored and fast, and he watched her full, tender chest rise and fall out of the corner of his eye. She leaned in closer to him so that their faces were almost touching, and closed her eyes. This was torture, his lips were in agony as he struggled not to press them against hers, and his heart was filled with lust. His mind was torn. Was this real? A hallucination brought on by insanity?
He ran his hand up along her arm to find it was real, and moved down to her slender legs. They were not fake either, and so he touched her stomach, her breasts, her neck ... he bowed his head, closed his eyes, and trailed kisses along her collarbone. A chill ran down his spine when his warm lips were met with cold flesh. Everything about her was soft, and suddenly she seemed all the more fragile than she had in his daydreams. She lay there exposed, in her translucent, sheer gown which hid nothing. He craved to be pressed up against her, to warm her in an passionate embrace. She was so innocent now, unlike before, in her castle. Nothing about her was harsh anymore, nothing was evil or tainted. She was pure; cleansed of the evils of sorcery. Still, there was something about her, an aura of grace and strength. He loved it; he desired her more than anything else in the world. He would travel through time, he would slay thousands and risk his life to be with her.
Seifer moved his arm around her and ran it along her back, feeling the crevices and smoothness of her ivory skin. He pulled her closer to him on the bed and saw the corners of her lips turn to form a small smile as she looked at him, her eyes full of trust and adoration. This amazed him, for he had never once seen her smile before, not once had he been graced with the look of love that was now evident as she watched him lay a gentle kiss between her breasts. She cupped his chin in her hand and brought him back up to her parted lips.
He was dizzy all of a sudden as hundreds of questions burned in his mind. There were too many things that confused him; his thoughts were so conflicting. Part of him told him this had to be a dream, and yet she was right here before him; he was able to feel her and kiss her. This couldn't possibly be fake, it couldn't be a hallucination; it was too real. Nothing else mattered -- not the time and not the place, as long as she was with him. His mind was overwhelmed, and all he could feel was lust. Their hearts pounded, in sync with each other. He wondered how this was all possible. How could she simply appear before him like this? He had known that her spirit still lived, even after the SeeDs destroyed her, however he had assumed her body to have been destroyed. Now, as her black wings enveloped him and he felt her body against his, he knew she existed in mind, body, and soul.
"My sorceress' knight ... always mine." She whispered to him, "Forget the mortals, my destroyers, forget the Gardens and the war. Those are long past, and now I am here."
"Ultimecia-"
"Kurse those things, and forget them."
"But why now? After all this time?" His voice sounded young to him, like when he had been a child, "You left me alone."
She showered kisses on his face and pressed a finger to his lips to silence him. He took it in his mouth and suckled on it, remembering the familiar, sweet taste.
"I'm here now, aren't I?" She asked as he continued to taste her.
He closed his eyes and nodded, hoping his response did not displease her. She smiled once again and took her fingers from his mouth. He was overcome and couldn't hold back anymore. He crushed his mouth against hers and their tongues met. It was wet and warm as they kissed long and hard, lying there together. When he deepened it, the room began to spin. The light blended with the shadows, colors meshed and objects melded together. The dizziness was stronger than every, and it was more than he could bear. He heard his heart pounding, heard himself struggling to breath, and still, in the background there was a voice that called. He cried out in agony, holding his head in his hands and squeezing his eyes shut.
"Seifer ... Seifer?"
"No, just shut up." He heard himself yelling, over and over. It echoed.
"Stop it. Let go."
The voice was soft, and he noticed now, when his heart slowed slightly, that it was also familiar, yet it did not belong to his Sorceress. He strained to make it out, struggling to remember who it belong to. It was torture; he could not will his eyes to open, and all he could see was the darkness. The woman that spoke to him now very shakily, sounded afraid as she pleaded with him. He realized that beneath him he felt someone trembling. Her skin was not cold, but warm, and then he was aware of his nails digging into something soft and fleshy. Slowly the darkness began to fade, the colors appeared less blurry, and the dizziness began to disappear as quickly as it had been brought on.
His vision cleared, and he saw that he was on top of his best friend, pinning her down to the bed. She was crying and trying to writhe away from his iron grip. His hands held down her arms and his nails dug into them, drawing tiny rivers of blood. Fujin was terrified, shaking like a leaf, and desperately tossing and turning on the bed. He released his grip immediately, tumbling off her, falling off the bed and onto the floor. Seifer stared up at the ceiling in utter confusion. What happened to the sorceress? Where had she gone? How had Fujin appeared in her place? Why had he been pinning her down and hurting her? He realized that outside it was pitch black, aside from the glow of the crescent moon. He heard the tide coming in, the ocean waters splashing against the piers. A calm, sea breeze filled the room with it's scent and coolness. The floor was cold, and he realized he was not wearing a top, leaving his chest and abdominals exposed. It was almost as though he had been stunned, or was in shock, or perhaps he even had stop cast upon him. But he knew neither of those things were the true reason he was feeling like this. There could not be a logical explanation for this.
Had the Sorceress been a dream? A figment of his imagination? Had she caused him to attack Fujin? He tried to block the questions out of his head, suddenly feeling extremely tired and helpless, laying on the floor half-naked. Fujin slowly sat up, hugging her knees to her chest as she peered down at him, looking a cross between terrified and baffled. He noticed that her shirt had been torn open, exposing her lingerie and tiny stomach. Everything about her seemed small and fragile at that moment. He wondered how her shirt had been torn. Had he been the one who had ripped it open? Why? How could he have done it without his knowledge?
"Fuu?" His own voice sounded strange to him, hoarse and little more than a whisper as he laid there, bewildered.
She peered down at him over the bed and he saw her shiver as she rubbed her injured wrists. Her shirt still hung open, and she made no attempt to fix it. He saw her eyes were still glittering with fresh tears as they looked into his. He struggled to sit up but realized that when he fell, his head had smacked against the floor, and he felt he could not even sit up. Fujin swung her legs over the bed and extended her hand to him in an effort to help him up, despite her obvious fear. She read into his expression and realized his confusion.
"I woke up. You were kissing me, and I tried to push you off but ..." She trailed off, "You held me down, and kept saying I was your sorceress; your Ultimecia."
He didn't say anything and made no effort to reach up and take her hand. He was overcome with guilt and resentment for doing that to his closest friend, of all people. How could he have pictured her as Ultimecia? How could his mind play tricks like this on him? Maybe he was going insane. All he knew was that he couldn't trust himself anymore, and he couldn't trust anything he saw and believed to be real. For all he knew this room and Fujin could be all in his head. He could be dreaming this entire thing, and damned never to wake up from it all. Why was she still offering her hand to him? Why didn't she just run out of the room when she was free?
Free from him ... that was the worst part of it. He wanted it to all be a dream, and wanted to believe he had never touched her like that, never drawn blood and gave her cause to be afraid. Yet something inside him told him it was real, that he had just woken up from the nightmare, and these were the true happenings. Was it a spell that the sorceress had cast over him which doomed him to slowly loose his sanity until it became too much to handle and he finally took his own life? What was he becoming, and what if he hadn't awoken from the dream when he had? What would he have done to Fujin?
It had been over six months since the SeeDs destroyed his sorceress. Did she still seek revenge on him for his failure? Nobody knew about her wicked soul still being in existence, except for him, because she talked to him so frequently these days. When he was trying to fall asleep, she would taunt him. And now this. It wasn't the first hallucination he had experienced either. Although, never had he been so out of his mind that he became violent before. Ultimecia was the cause of all of this, she had to be the one who made him do those things. There was no other explanation for it. But now the voice was gone, at least momentarily, and they were both alive. So he finally took Fujin's hand and she helped him sit up, onto the bed. He laid back, with his head on her lap, and she looked down at him with pity evident in her glance.
"It's eating you up inside. I see it every day, more and more. She's not dead yet, is she?"
He nodded and closed his eyes. Her voice somehow had a soothing effect, and it made him want to sleep. That was something he felt he hadn't done for a long time. And now a wave of exhaustion seemed to wash over him. His dreams caused him to wake up in the middle of the night and the voice calling to him would not let him go back to sleep once he had awoken. If he did, his dreams turned to nightmares of blood, slaughtering, and death.
"I'll talk to Cid then tomorrow morning. Maybe he'll know what to do about it."
Seifer shrugged, "The old man probably won't believe me."
"Maybe Squall will then. Even though he's not the headmaster anymore, he still has some influence, correct?"
"Squall would rather see me dead than anything else. It's a waste of time. I should just pack my bags and leave tomorrow, as soon as possible." He motioned to her wrists, "So nothing else happens."
He liked to think of himself as changed since the events in the previous months. He was sorry for all the things he had done to Garden and Galbadia, yet somehow he was still attached to the sorceress. He loathed every waking minute of it.
"You're not yourself."
"Last time I checked, that was the problem."
"Affirmative, but-"
"She's still alive, that means I have to find her. The Gardens will just interfere, like they always do. It's none of their business anyways, they shouldn't be poking their noses where they don't belong. Nobody there is having the dreams. I'm not going to bother them with it."
True to his word, the next morning Fujin awoke to find him, along with all his possessions, long gone from the hotel room. On the bedside table there was a sealed envelope with her name written in cursive on the front. She didn't bother opening it, for she already knew what it contained.
A FFVIII Fanfic
by Asiah Loire
Prologue
Calm Before the Storm
Outside, the sky was dark and overcast. The sound of thunder crackled in the distance, threatening an immense downpour from the storm clouds at any given moment. Moaning winds and the scent of summer were present in the air, yet the temperature was much below seasonal on this particular day. Not very far away, white capped waves crashed against the nearby cliffs and rolled in, over the sand of Balamb beach. An onslought of raindrops began to pour down, but from where Seifer sat in his room in the Balamb Hotel, he was spared from them. The window was open wide, and several of the droplets were blown in by the breeze. The former member of Garden lied with his hands behind his head on the bed, staring outside with a multitude of thoughts on his mind as he watched the raging ocean.
"Seifer ... the Sorceress' Knight ..."
A voice, calling to him in his dreams. He knew the sound all too distinctly, and it continued to torment him even now as it echoed in his ears. He could hear his heartbeat getting louder; faster as the voice resonated. Closing his eyes, he pictured her in his head. Beautiful, untouched by age, elegant, and deadly. Her heart was a black pit of ashes, devoid of any human emotions. With the keen and powerful mind of a sorceress, she knew his every move, his every thought, and also where his loyalty lied. Seifer had been fully devoted to serving her, his dark queen who commanded him to protect her, and then punished him when he failed.
"Seifer ... Seifer ..."
He tried to block it out of his head, willing it to stop, pleading with her to leave him alone. She had reduced him to this useless being, who could not even bare to look at what had once been his pride and joy, his Hyperion. He could not stand touching it, much less use it in combat. And so he sat her, day after day, refusing to even venture outside the hotel. Sometimes she would stop toying with his mind momentarily, and they would have conversations, in his head. He could almost see himself reaching out to touch her. She was pulling him away from everyone else, she wanted to claim and have him all to herself. When they talked it was almost as though she was whispering into his ear, right there next to him on the bed. He imagined her lying beside him, dressed in a flowing gown, with her long silver locks falling over her shoulders. She stared at him so intently, and stroked his face with her hand, the long, claw-like nails scraping against his skin and causing him to shiver.
He opened his eyes and there she was, no longer just a figment of his imagination. His mouth was agape as she lay there with roses surrounding her on the matters. Golden flecks shone in her eyes as their gazes locked and his arm extended with a mind of its own. She took his hand in her own and placed it over her heart. He heard it beating, so loudly and quickly. Her breathing was labored and fast, and he watched her full, tender chest rise and fall out of the corner of his eye. She leaned in closer to him so that their faces were almost touching, and closed her eyes. This was torture, his lips were in agony as he struggled not to press them against hers, and his heart was filled with lust. His mind was torn. Was this real? A hallucination brought on by insanity?
He ran his hand up along her arm to find it was real, and moved down to her slender legs. They were not fake either, and so he touched her stomach, her breasts, her neck ... he bowed his head, closed his eyes, and trailed kisses along her collarbone. A chill ran down his spine when his warm lips were met with cold flesh. Everything about her was soft, and suddenly she seemed all the more fragile than she had in his daydreams. She lay there exposed, in her translucent, sheer gown which hid nothing. He craved to be pressed up against her, to warm her in an passionate embrace. She was so innocent now, unlike before, in her castle. Nothing about her was harsh anymore, nothing was evil or tainted. She was pure; cleansed of the evils of sorcery. Still, there was something about her, an aura of grace and strength. He loved it; he desired her more than anything else in the world. He would travel through time, he would slay thousands and risk his life to be with her.
Seifer moved his arm around her and ran it along her back, feeling the crevices and smoothness of her ivory skin. He pulled her closer to him on the bed and saw the corners of her lips turn to form a small smile as she looked at him, her eyes full of trust and adoration. This amazed him, for he had never once seen her smile before, not once had he been graced with the look of love that was now evident as she watched him lay a gentle kiss between her breasts. She cupped his chin in her hand and brought him back up to her parted lips.
He was dizzy all of a sudden as hundreds of questions burned in his mind. There were too many things that confused him; his thoughts were so conflicting. Part of him told him this had to be a dream, and yet she was right here before him; he was able to feel her and kiss her. This couldn't possibly be fake, it couldn't be a hallucination; it was too real. Nothing else mattered -- not the time and not the place, as long as she was with him. His mind was overwhelmed, and all he could feel was lust. Their hearts pounded, in sync with each other. He wondered how this was all possible. How could she simply appear before him like this? He had known that her spirit still lived, even after the SeeDs destroyed her, however he had assumed her body to have been destroyed. Now, as her black wings enveloped him and he felt her body against his, he knew she existed in mind, body, and soul.
"My sorceress' knight ... always mine." She whispered to him, "Forget the mortals, my destroyers, forget the Gardens and the war. Those are long past, and now I am here."
"Ultimecia-"
"Kurse those things, and forget them."
"But why now? After all this time?" His voice sounded young to him, like when he had been a child, "You left me alone."
She showered kisses on his face and pressed a finger to his lips to silence him. He took it in his mouth and suckled on it, remembering the familiar, sweet taste.
"I'm here now, aren't I?" She asked as he continued to taste her.
He closed his eyes and nodded, hoping his response did not displease her. She smiled once again and took her fingers from his mouth. He was overcome and couldn't hold back anymore. He crushed his mouth against hers and their tongues met. It was wet and warm as they kissed long and hard, lying there together. When he deepened it, the room began to spin. The light blended with the shadows, colors meshed and objects melded together. The dizziness was stronger than every, and it was more than he could bear. He heard his heart pounding, heard himself struggling to breath, and still, in the background there was a voice that called. He cried out in agony, holding his head in his hands and squeezing his eyes shut.
"Seifer ... Seifer?"
"No, just shut up." He heard himself yelling, over and over. It echoed.
"Stop it. Let go."
The voice was soft, and he noticed now, when his heart slowed slightly, that it was also familiar, yet it did not belong to his Sorceress. He strained to make it out, struggling to remember who it belong to. It was torture; he could not will his eyes to open, and all he could see was the darkness. The woman that spoke to him now very shakily, sounded afraid as she pleaded with him. He realized that beneath him he felt someone trembling. Her skin was not cold, but warm, and then he was aware of his nails digging into something soft and fleshy. Slowly the darkness began to fade, the colors appeared less blurry, and the dizziness began to disappear as quickly as it had been brought on.
His vision cleared, and he saw that he was on top of his best friend, pinning her down to the bed. She was crying and trying to writhe away from his iron grip. His hands held down her arms and his nails dug into them, drawing tiny rivers of blood. Fujin was terrified, shaking like a leaf, and desperately tossing and turning on the bed. He released his grip immediately, tumbling off her, falling off the bed and onto the floor. Seifer stared up at the ceiling in utter confusion. What happened to the sorceress? Where had she gone? How had Fujin appeared in her place? Why had he been pinning her down and hurting her? He realized that outside it was pitch black, aside from the glow of the crescent moon. He heard the tide coming in, the ocean waters splashing against the piers. A calm, sea breeze filled the room with it's scent and coolness. The floor was cold, and he realized he was not wearing a top, leaving his chest and abdominals exposed. It was almost as though he had been stunned, or was in shock, or perhaps he even had stop cast upon him. But he knew neither of those things were the true reason he was feeling like this. There could not be a logical explanation for this.
Had the Sorceress been a dream? A figment of his imagination? Had she caused him to attack Fujin? He tried to block the questions out of his head, suddenly feeling extremely tired and helpless, laying on the floor half-naked. Fujin slowly sat up, hugging her knees to her chest as she peered down at him, looking a cross between terrified and baffled. He noticed that her shirt had been torn open, exposing her lingerie and tiny stomach. Everything about her seemed small and fragile at that moment. He wondered how her shirt had been torn. Had he been the one who had ripped it open? Why? How could he have done it without his knowledge?
"Fuu?" His own voice sounded strange to him, hoarse and little more than a whisper as he laid there, bewildered.
She peered down at him over the bed and he saw her shiver as she rubbed her injured wrists. Her shirt still hung open, and she made no attempt to fix it. He saw her eyes were still glittering with fresh tears as they looked into his. He struggled to sit up but realized that when he fell, his head had smacked against the floor, and he felt he could not even sit up. Fujin swung her legs over the bed and extended her hand to him in an effort to help him up, despite her obvious fear. She read into his expression and realized his confusion.
"I woke up. You were kissing me, and I tried to push you off but ..." She trailed off, "You held me down, and kept saying I was your sorceress; your Ultimecia."
He didn't say anything and made no effort to reach up and take her hand. He was overcome with guilt and resentment for doing that to his closest friend, of all people. How could he have pictured her as Ultimecia? How could his mind play tricks like this on him? Maybe he was going insane. All he knew was that he couldn't trust himself anymore, and he couldn't trust anything he saw and believed to be real. For all he knew this room and Fujin could be all in his head. He could be dreaming this entire thing, and damned never to wake up from it all. Why was she still offering her hand to him? Why didn't she just run out of the room when she was free?
Free from him ... that was the worst part of it. He wanted it to all be a dream, and wanted to believe he had never touched her like that, never drawn blood and gave her cause to be afraid. Yet something inside him told him it was real, that he had just woken up from the nightmare, and these were the true happenings. Was it a spell that the sorceress had cast over him which doomed him to slowly loose his sanity until it became too much to handle and he finally took his own life? What was he becoming, and what if he hadn't awoken from the dream when he had? What would he have done to Fujin?
It had been over six months since the SeeDs destroyed his sorceress. Did she still seek revenge on him for his failure? Nobody knew about her wicked soul still being in existence, except for him, because she talked to him so frequently these days. When he was trying to fall asleep, she would taunt him. And now this. It wasn't the first hallucination he had experienced either. Although, never had he been so out of his mind that he became violent before. Ultimecia was the cause of all of this, she had to be the one who made him do those things. There was no other explanation for it. But now the voice was gone, at least momentarily, and they were both alive. So he finally took Fujin's hand and she helped him sit up, onto the bed. He laid back, with his head on her lap, and she looked down at him with pity evident in her glance.
"It's eating you up inside. I see it every day, more and more. She's not dead yet, is she?"
He nodded and closed his eyes. Her voice somehow had a soothing effect, and it made him want to sleep. That was something he felt he hadn't done for a long time. And now a wave of exhaustion seemed to wash over him. His dreams caused him to wake up in the middle of the night and the voice calling to him would not let him go back to sleep once he had awoken. If he did, his dreams turned to nightmares of blood, slaughtering, and death.
"I'll talk to Cid then tomorrow morning. Maybe he'll know what to do about it."
Seifer shrugged, "The old man probably won't believe me."
"Maybe Squall will then. Even though he's not the headmaster anymore, he still has some influence, correct?"
"Squall would rather see me dead than anything else. It's a waste of time. I should just pack my bags and leave tomorrow, as soon as possible." He motioned to her wrists, "So nothing else happens."
He liked to think of himself as changed since the events in the previous months. He was sorry for all the things he had done to Garden and Galbadia, yet somehow he was still attached to the sorceress. He loathed every waking minute of it.
"You're not yourself."
"Last time I checked, that was the problem."
"Affirmative, but-"
"She's still alive, that means I have to find her. The Gardens will just interfere, like they always do. It's none of their business anyways, they shouldn't be poking their noses where they don't belong. Nobody there is having the dreams. I'm not going to bother them with it."
True to his word, the next morning Fujin awoke to find him, along with all his possessions, long gone from the hotel room. On the bedside table there was a sealed envelope with her name written in cursive on the front. She didn't bother opening it, for she already knew what it contained.