A.N. I wrote this in a matter of moments after listening to Michelle Branch's song "Are you happy now?" for the first time this morning. I gift this to Seshat for being the most wonderful friend a girl could ask for. And for all those that have followed my works and have hung in there with me when I've gotten "lazy and slow" about writing.

Thank you all. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: unfortunately they aren't mine, Well the Seifer Doll I have is very much mine, and all the fingerprints…*Cough* ok aaaaanyways. Nope they belong to square soft, I'm just borrowing for the next hundred years or so!

Do you really have everything you want
you could never give something you ain't got
you can't run away from yourself

could you look me in the eyes and tell me that your happy now yeah yeah
come on tell it to my face or have i been replaced
are you happy now yeah yeah yeah yeah ohh ohh oh oh
yeah yeah yeah ohh oh would you look me in the eye
could you look me in the eye
I've had all that I can take and I'm not about to break cause I'm happy now
are you happy now?

Voracity



In his darker moments it all came back to him fresh as driven snow, the memories of time and space filling his vision. She took his dreams and held them up to the light making them look weak, laughing at him. He found himself gritting his teeth at those particular memories. She held him close, nurturing with one arm, while the other slammed the blade home into his spine. His blood dripping constantly, till he was near death and still, she pushed him. There at the end, he'd been simply a puppet on a string. Something of a husk, merely saying words to keep others from seeing.

Seeing the emptiness in his eyes.

It did no good to try to explain to others. To try and tell them that most of the things he did hadn't been his doing, he'd been following blindly, with no will of his own. But people always saw what they wanted; still only saw him as he had been then. No one really looked to see if he had grown, if he had matured. But he understood, everyone needed someone to blame, and he was handy. So he let it go, to tired to fight it otherwise. It wasn't worth it, the battle could be won, but the war would remain the same.

She'd left him out to dry when she realized that he could aid her no more that his tired body and mind were at their limits. Dropped him from her line of vision with a subtle beautiful cruelty of words, sharper than any knife. Each word weighed and measured to give the utmost pain. To cause the deepest wounds, wounds that would never scar up and heal.

He lived life on the edge, every day going about like a dying man taking his last meal. He expected at any moment to fall down dead, to give up the game. Waiting for the ball to drop. He sometimes wondered how long this could last, living from place to place, hiding in the shadows to keep himself whole one day more.

"Are you happy now?"

Some had asked him that once, his answer then had been yes, of course it had been a sneered yes, but still. No matter, he'd been running the show, and now he had no stage to play on, he was the phantom hidden in the bowels of the stage, afraid to be found by others.

"Are you happy now?"

The phrase kept running through his mind as he relived memories, rather than looking out into his reality. He chose not to consciously answer the question now, not while this deep gnawing hunger lived in his belly. It wasn't a hunger for food, it was something else entirely, something that he chose not to look at closely for fear of what he would find.

Hidden in the shadows he watched the group of friends walking through the streets of Balamb, laughter and smiles coming easily. Even to the one in the rear, though his was smaller, quieter. He watched the dark haired man, watched as Lionheart swung on his back, his hunger suddenly feeling voracious. Whispering to himself as he watched the man avidly.

"Are *you* happy now?"