Companion drabble to my "True Friends" and to Iliyana's "True Love" - both SeiferxSquall, and part of our bid to kill Seifer as many times as we can in one day.
This one is for my Seifer and Rinoa friendship claim, you can guess the POV. Themes: sunshine, fire, precious memory and power.
I never understood why Squall was so dead set on killing Seifer. I thought it was because he hated him, so I tried to stop him. I could never have imagined, during the war, how much Squall loved Seifer. Even now, I still can't envision loving someone enough to kill them at their own request.
I liked Seifer. He was dangerous, he was charming, he was arrogant but flattering when he wanted to be. He could be sunshine, lighting up a room, brightening a day. In the heat of summer, he burned. He was a summer love, a first love, and I know he would never have hurt me. Too much of a good man, at heart, for that. Like Squall, I knew that Seifer wasn't himself when I met his eyes, though no doubt it took me longer to understand.
It makes me laugh, bitterly, that I ever considered Seifer my boyfriend. He was probably just stroking his own ego, but I don't mind, for some reason.
It's an honour to have known men like Squall and Seifer. Men for whom honour and love and mercy, doing the right thing, rule their lives. I'll never understand Squall; how he could possibly kill Seifer, the man he loved more than life. But I can understand Seifer, from the time spent in his company that summer. He didn't mind how many people had eyes on him, how many people wanted him; no one had power over him. Until the sorceress. And then the only other person that might possibly have had power over him set him free.
I was the only one apart from Squall who understood that Seifer wasn't himself, so perhaps the tears I let fall in grieving were the only tears wept for Seifer, but he would probably prefer it that way anyway. Every tear that falls extinguishes his fire even more, so I hold them in, a burning inside of me that is so like him but so pathetically not him.
I miss him, his dangerous humour, his friendship, like a knife stuck into my side, because he didn't deserve death this way. It shouldn't have happened. Squall is destroyed, and my dreams of happily ever after died in that moment of Seifer's death.
But the sun rises and falls, just as it always has, burning bright, almost trying to take his place in our lives. Arrogant sun; and the sorceress's knight is soon to be forgotten everywhere but here.