Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, settings, or the plot of any Final Fantasy game. No harm intended.

General Warning(s): This is an eventual slash story, and the pairing should become apparent ... soon. There is a splash of slash in this chapter, by the way.

Author's Ramble: I don't plan on this to be lengthy, probably less than 10 chapters. This installment is so short because it is a prologue, I will do my best to make all the upcoming chapters meaty to make up for it. I will comment that continuation usually hinges on the amount of reviews per chapter. .... enjoy. Oh, by the way, these ' ' indicate thoughts.

Prologue : A Bad Night Indeed

As he lay there, Squall realized that he never quite got the hang of life. Well, maybe he got the hang of being a soldier and so forth, but that is not life - contrary to what some people think. Ah... so maybe you can save the world, get the girl, and smite your enemies – in a biblical sense, of course – but lets look closer at that get the girl bit. General affection drives on communication, he never had much of that, general affection leads to specific affection, which leads to – for a lack of a better word – love.

Squall was sure he had been, was, in love - the positive, confident, no- questions-asked kind of love. But, really, how do you know what love is without the firm foundations in the steps to love. Ah... but he was getting sidetracked. He wasn't sure what had lead him down that train of thought because, after all, he knew he was in love.

Anyway, he also happened to know that he was dying.

Interestingly enough at that exact moment that thought flew through Squall's mind one remarkably similar passed through Seifer's psyche, which is that he was simply fucked. Fucked - please excuse his foul language; I am terribly sorry for it, really, but it is quite apt - in every meaning of the word. It is perhaps because of these similar thoughts that this horrible error took place.

He, Seifer that is, stared across the padded green table with a sinking sensation. That sensation only increased as he glumly watched the last remains of his gil being gathered up by the man across the table. The man nonchalantly fingered through the last of Seifer's cash that he had won on the last hand. He gave him a departing nod, along with a departing wink, and headed out the door of the tavern.

Seifer rubbed his temples – it had been a long night, he thought as he absently sipped at his drink. It had started out with a rousing jog as screaming men chased him while waving pitchforks and torches through the streets of Timber. Honest to God, pitchforks and torches. He had only thought those existed in bad vampire films. By the time he had lost them he was in an untoward neighborhood. You know the type of place with boarded up buildings with bullets lodged in them. But he knew that in order to really shake the mob he had to lay low for the night. Unfortunately, they had found him outside of his apartment so he couldn't head back there. He went into the first bar he could find.

After about his third drink, Jack Daniels on the rocks, when he was nicely intoxicated, that man had sauntered up to him. He had bought him a drink and they talked. Not about anything specific, but in a lazy manner that one has when browsing through wines – keep in mind that they were in a bar. This of course lead to casual flirting, when it became apparent that they were both comfortable with this, which lead to a casual game of cards.

Now Seifer was no slouch at cards, not by a long shot, but he liked this guy, and was mildly drunk, so he let him win a few. But before he knew it the man was holding his Odin card. Now this upset Seifer, that was one of his favorite cards, and had won him many games tried and true. So he had paid him to give it back. This lead to betting on the games while all the time the man bought him more drinks. His skills decreased as he drank more and more, so he lost the games while losing money hand over fist with the double hit at his wallet as he paid for his cards and lost the bets. The man eventually left the bar with the majority, that is all, of his money and half of his cards.

He looked at his drink – it suddenly occurred to him that he had no way of paying for it. He sighed; it was going to be a long night indeed.

Now, Squall had plenty of chances before this to die. Heroic, valiant, and noble ways to die. To die saving the world from the evil sorceress, to die for true love, to die for friendship, these were all deaths any man would be proud of. As he lay on the floor Squall could only remember these chances wistfully and wish that he had taken them. He could see the head lines now; "HIGHLY REGARDED SORCERESS-SLAYING SEED COMMANDER DEAD FROM FATAL FISH FIASCO," he could admit it did have a nice ring to it with the alliterations and so on, but it was slightly redundant with the repetitions of 'fatal' and 'dead'... but again he was getting side-tracked. He wished he could stop doing that because he didn't have that much time left in the world of the living.

He had been walking on the shore road of Balamb, the town that is, in the early morning. He had had to stay there last night on account of a late night meeting with some potential clients that had run late. He was strolling down the street when he heard an odd noise. It was a noise like old wood being pried from rusted metal, which is a screeching noise. Seeing no source of this odd noise, Squall had stopped in an attempt to find it. What fallowed next was a final loud screech, a curse, and two loud thuds. The screeching, Squall could now see from his position on the ground, had been a woman attempting to open a stubborn old window. The curse had been caused by her knocking a whole bucket full of fish out of that window, while the first thud was the bucket hitting Squall square on the head, and the second thud was him hitting his head square on a sharp jagged rock in the middle of the road.

He could now feel moisture condensing around the back of his skull, which he could only assume was him own blood, as people began to crowd around him. It was getting hard to see them as his peripheral dimmed until his entire vision went black. 'What a way to die,' he thought miserably as his spirit began to float out of his body and into the abyss.

Seifer soon found himself in the back washing dishes. He could never remember being so miserable in his miserable damned life. He was just trying to get a particularly adamant glob of burned-sauce off of a pan when faint words floated through his mind like a clown waltzing through a wake; 'What a way to die.'

He froze; he did not think that, he did not even come close to thinking that. He quickly looked around the pin-sized kitchen. He was alone. 'What the hell was that!?'

The voice spoke again, 'Where the hell am I?' this time it was not faint, and he recognized it immediately.

"Squall!?"

' ... Seifer?'