HISTORY NEVER REPEATS
A FFVIII Second
Generation Fan Fiction
CHAPTER ONE
~For
Charlie, aka The Flaming Moe
"You say I've always
played the fool,
I can't go on if that's the rule.
Better to
jump than hesitate,
I need a change and I can't wait."
~History
Never repeats, Neil and Tim Finn
Tempest Leonhart wasn't sure where she was, and she didn't really care. Her entire body ached and felt leaden, and try as she might, she couldn't seem to lift her head from the pillow. She fought it for a moment, then resigned herself to her position and relaxed against the cot. Aches aside, she was at least comfortable.
When she opened her eyes to identify her location, her vision was blurred and the light stung her eyes. She blinked a few times to clear her vision and turned her head slightly to see the room around her.
Suddenly, her view was blocked by a single face, a face so familiar, it was as if someone had placed a mirror in front of her and she was looking at her own reflection. Except, the face looking back at her most certainly wasn't her own. It was too open, too gentle, and the eyes were far too sincere and innocent to belong to her.
Tempest blinked a couple of times, trying to understand what it was she was seeing. Her own face, on someone else. Was that possible?
"Tempest," the girl said, flashing a warm smile.
The girl's hand came to rest on Tempest's forehead and smoothed back her hair, gentle and familiar. In spite of herself, Tempest didn't protest. It felt nice to be offered that particular comfort, when it had seldom been offered before.
Tempest struggled to sit up, but it was futile. For whatever reason, she wasn't getting out of this bed. Maybe this was just a dream. It certainly had the surreal quality of a dream, but it also felt quite real. For a moment, she wondered if she'd been critically injured and was hallucinating.
"Who are you," Tempest croaked.
"Don't you recognize me?"
Tempest recognized her, all right, but she wasn't sure exactly who it was she was looking at. A dream version of herself, perhaps. Sure, it looked like her face, but not her face, exactly. And those clothes! Tempest wouldn't have been caught dead wearing a cardigan or a wool skirt. Not in a thousand years.
For a split second, Tempest thought maybe she was having a dream about her mother, but then remembered that everyone said she was the spitting image of her father, Squall. Tempest had seen pictures and had compared her own features to her parents, and there was no denying that she took after her father in looks. No, her mother's eyes had been dark brown, not blue. The girl looking back at her had the same gas flame blue eyes, and her hair was the exact same shade as Tempest's own.
So who the hell was she, and what was she doing here?
Obviously, Tempest thought to herself, I'm dreaming. This is too weird to be real.
"I'm sorry," the girl said sadly as she brushed a lock of hair from Tempest's forehead. "I shouldn't have come. I just-heard you'd been wounded, and I had to see you. I've missed you, and I had hoped you would remember me, but it's been a long time. Too long, I guess."
The girl leaned over and placed a kiss on Tempest's cheek and stood.
"I shouldn't have come," she said sadly.
With that, the girl disappeared and Tempest slipped back into sleep, but not before wondering if maybe she was actually dead.
She dreamed of her parents, as she often did. More often than she would have liked, for most of these dreams started off nice and ended with her waking up out of a dead sleep because, as in real life, something terrible had happened to them in her dreams.
Tempest couldn't remember her parents, exactly. She knew what they looked like from the small photo collection Edea had given her when she was a girl, but she couldn't remember a time in her life when she'd known them. She didn't have any memories of them at all. They'd died in a car accident on the way back from Balamb one night when she was very young. No one knew how the crash had happened, and Tempest supposed it didn't matter. What mattered was that they were gone, leaving Tempest orphaned and in the care of Cid and Edea Kramer. If not for them, who knows what would have happened to her?
Laguna Loire, Tempest's grandfather was still alive, but he had his own children, who were only two years older than Tempest, to raise. Tempest had always resented the fact that Laguna had never been there for his son, and was now repeating the same mistake with his only grand child. She'd never understood why he hadn't taken her in after the accident, and deep down, was hurt by his lack of interest. It wasn't as if she had any other living relatives who could care for her.
In dreams, her parents were always her age, the way they were in the photos she had of them, and she couldn't imagine them any other way. They hadn't been much older when they died than Tempest was now, a young couple with a young daughter and a bright future ahead of them. How different things might have been if they'd lived.
In her waking life, she tried not to think about them at all. It was just easier that way.
"Open your eyes, Tempest," a soft feminine voice said, rousing her from her dream of being in her mother's arms.
"Mommy," Tempest heard herself mutter.
She tried to roll over and ignore whomever was interrupting such a nice dream, but she found she couldn't move. Try as she might to hang on to the dream, it slipped away, just as it always did.
"Tempest," the voice said again, sounding amused this time, "Wake up. Quenton is on his way down to get you. There is an exam today, you know."
Tempest opened her eyes to the stinging brightness that brought unwanted tears to her blue eyes and she lifted her hand to shield them from the light.
"Hyne," she muttered as she noticed for the first time the throbbing pain in her forehead. "Can you turn off the lights?"
Her visitor chuckled. "No can do. The sunshine comes with the room. Free of charge."
Tempest groaned and covered her face with the sheet. She wished she could just go back to sleep.
"Come on, Tempest," the woman said again. "Get up. Let me look you over."
Tempest let out a heavy sigh and sat up, letting her eyes adjust to the light before opening them fully.
So. She was in the infirmary. It was then she remembered what had transpired between herself and Syrus the night before in the training center. She should have known better than to challenge him with revenge on her mind. A SeeD was never supposed to take it personal and she had, to her own detriment. And she didn't know what her intent had been when she'd taken him on. Had she wanted to show him that she wouldn't let him get to her? To teach him a lesson? Kill him perhaps? She wasn't sure what her motivation had been, and that scared her.
"Tempest," Dr. Crowley, the resident physician and daughter of Dr. Kadowaki, asked, looking concerned.
"What?"
"You looked like you were way out in space there for a second," the doctor said, giving Tempest a scrutinizing glance. "I think I'm going to call Quenton back and tell him I'm keeping you here overnight for observation. Don't want you keeling over on us, now do we?"
"No, thanks. I'm all right. Really. I just have some things on my mind," Tempest said. It wasn't exactly a lie. "The exam, you know."
At that moment, the door opened and Quenton Trepe stepped into the room. Inwardly, Tempest groaned. She braced herself for the inevitable lecture she was sure to receive about using caution while training.
Instead, Quenton rushed to her side with a look of deep concern lining his pretty-boy features.
"Are you all right," he asked.
"I'll live."
Tempest tried to mask the wave of dizziness that overtook her as she got to her feet, but Quenton saw her discomfort and grabbed her by the arm. Further annoyed by his mother hen attitude, Tempest yanked her arm away from him and strode confidently to the door and fought back a galaxy of stars that tried to cloud her vision. There was no way she was going to let Quenton feel the need to baby her. She wasn't a child. She could take care of herself.
It had always been that way. Quenton had always felt the need to protect her from imagined dangers like a mother that tried to protect her child from the evils of the world. And he wasn't the only one guilty of doing it. Everyone felt it necessary to protect and pity Tempest because her parents were dead. What they didn't understand was that Tempest was fine without them. She missed them, but she hadn't known them either, and she'd long ago learned to deal with it. Being alone had made her tough, strong and fiercely independent. She didn't need anyone to take care of her, and she was sick of being coddled like some three year old.
"Tempest, maybe you should-" Quenton began as he followed her out of the infirmary and out into the corridor.
"Maybe I should what, stay here in the infirmary?" Tempest asked as she tried to mask the breathlessness she felt. "Not on your life Instructor. I'm not going to miss the exam just because I have a bump on my head."
"It's not just a bump, Tempest. In case you haven't noticed, you have two and a half inch gash right between your eyes. Twelve stitches. Not to mention the eight in your arm," Quenton countered as he tried to steer her toward the dorm. "I'm going to recommend you don't take the exam today."
Tempest was furious that he'd even suggest such a thing. Was this just another way of trying to shelter her? He couldn't possibly think she'd bail out. Her injuries weren't that bad.
"You wouldn't dare," she said in a low voice. "I'm taking that exam today, whether you think I should or not. I've worked too hard to get here and I'll be damned if I let a couple of cuts stop me, and I'm not going to let you stop me either."
"Tempest-" Quenton began, sounding defeated.
"I'm taking that exam, Instructor."
"Fine," Quenton conceded. "But don't blame me if you don't pass."
Satisfied, Tempest followed him to class in silence, trying her best not to be annoyed by the pleading looks Quenton was sending her direction. They arrived at the classroom in a matter of minutes and Tempest suddenly became aware of the painful throbbing between her eyes. She shook it off and strode to the back of the room with affected confidence and took her seat.
Across the aisle, Syrus glanced at her, but she ignored him.
Let him suffer.
Syrus Almasy's head was killing him, and he was trying in vain not to let it show. He hadn't wanted to get into a knock down fight with Tempest, but she'd asked for it, and now it seemed they were both paying the price. He knew the moment she stepped into the classroom that she was as bad off as he was. Her face was pale, her eyes puffy and she sported an ugly, stitched up gash between her eyes to match the one she'd given him.
What was it with the Almasy-Leonhart rivalry? Were they all destined to scar one another like this for generations to come? It seemed so, since Syrus now had his own scar, to match not only Tempest's but his father's too.
Syrus hadn't meant to hurt her. He loved her, for hyne's sake. He needed her in more ways than one. She was his mirror, his soul mate, his other half. He'd known that the very first time he'd laid eyes on her, back when they were both ten years old. That day, in the training center, he'd taken a cheap shot at her and knocked her to the ground because she was a girl trying to include herself in a boys-only club. Girls weren't strong enough to handle a gunblade, at least, that's what he'd thought.
When he'd knocked her down, he'd expected her to start bawling like all the girls did when they got hurt, but not Tempest. Instead, she'd gotten up and launched herself at him, threw him to the ground and punched him right in the mouth. Twice.
He'd known right then that their fates were entwined. Not because she was a Leonhart and he was an Almasy. Not because she'd beaten him up. It was because he'd instantly saw her as his equal and he'd known right then that she was the only one who would ever match him in skill. No other girl had ever dared come back at him like that, but she had and without hesitation or remorse, and Hyne, almighty, it had hurt.
It had taken him almost a year to get her to talk to him, and then only in training. Outside of class, she spoke to no one but her instructors and the Kramers, who seemed very protective and very interested in her progress. More interested than they were in any other student, which Syrus had always found curious.
But the more she ignored him, the more he wanted to count her among his friends. Eventually, they did become cautious friends and friendly rivals in training. Every fight between them had been a challenge, and never had she conceded to him, even when she lost. Syrus had found this even more appealing than her gorgeous face, and when he finally did fall, he fell hard.
Finally, about a year and a half ago, Syrus had worked up the courage to ask her out, and they'd been together ever since. She was no conquest, she was the better part of himself.
Well, she had been until he'd screwed everything up. Now she wouldn't even look at him. She wanted nothing to do with him. Except, maybe to hack him to pieces in the training center, which she'd come close to actually doing. He wished she'd just talk to him, let him explain.
From the corner of his eye, he watched Tempest take a seat and pointedly ignore him. So typical. Hyne, how he missed the days when she'd glance over and flash one of her rare smiles or roll her eyes at something Trepe had said. He missed sending her instant messages on the computer and he missed their inside jokes and the fact that she almost never smiled at anyone but him. He even missed the way her shampoo smelled and the way she sometimes talked in her sleep.
All he knew now was that she wasn't with him, and he didn't have a clue how to make it up to her.
When Tempest grew bored of hearing Trepe talk about the Field Exam expectations, her mind wandered back to Syrus. They'd been so close for so long, it felt as if part of her was missing. She could admit to herself that she missed him, but there was nothing to be done about it. Things between them were over, no matter how much it hurt to have to walk away. She owed him no forgiveness, no loyalty because of what he'd done. He had no power over her anymore, no place in her heart or her life.
Still, she couldn't help but steal a glance at him. His eyes were trivetedo the floor and his shaggy blonde hair hid his face from her so that she couldn't see the number she'd done on him. He seemed to want to avoid eye contact after last night's activities as much as she did. It was better that he ignore her. There would be no confrontations.
But it hurt to be ignored, especially by the only person she'd ever allowed herself to open up to. She'd believed him when he said that they were meant for one another, that they belonged together, and that they'd be together forever. She'd believed in him, only to find out all of it was a lie. She'd allowed herself to be conned. That part hurt the most.
She pushed back these sentimental thoughts before they could further depress her. This was all for the best. Better to find out now that he was an insensitive douche bag than to find out years down the road. Besides, it wasn't as if she was going to forgive him, even if he apologized. She was still too hurt and too angry with him to forgive.
Her thoughts turned to the field exam, and she felt a rush of anticipation course through her.
Tempest had confidence in her abilities and was almost certain she'd pass the field exam, but she couldn't help the butterflies in her stomach or the cold sweat of anticipation that broke out on her brow every time she thought about it. More than anything, she just wanted to get it over with and become a SeeD. For herself, and for her parents.
Up front, Quenton was bringing the class to a close, and Tempest was looking forward to taking a nap before the exam. Maybe her head would feel a little better after a little rest.
"Class dismissed," Quenton said. "Oh, Syrus and Tempest. I need to see both of you before you leave."
Tempest pretended not to hear the giggles from the other students as she rose from her desk. Apparently, everyone knew what had happened between them, not that Tempest cared.
She knew the lecture she had anticipated earlier was now inevitable. Quenton was only a year older than she was, but he exercised his authority as if he were someone much older, if only in class. The rest of the time he was an obnoxious butthead.
It was in these moments of haughty superiority that Tempest disliked him most. She disliked this even more than his overzealous mothering. So many times, she wished she could have told him off, for real, but that would be insubordination, and Tempest was the kind of girl who usually followed the rules. So, she kept her mouth shut.
The sound of Syrus' boots shuffling behind her made Tempest straighten her posture and walk with a more confident step towards the front of the room. She was determined to show Syrus that he hadn't injured her that badly, even if her wounds were still smarting.
"What were the two of you thinking," Quenton asked after all the others had left the room. He perched on the edge of the desk and crossed his arms. "You both know that you're not to injure your partner while training."
Tempest stared back at Quenton without speaking. How could she explain her motivations when she herself didn't quite understand what she was doing. How could he understand the rage and hurt that had driven her.
"Look, I know the two of you can't stand the sight of each other right now, but you're just going to have to deal with it, or else," Quenton said. "Garden can not have students and SeeDs fighting amongst themselves. You both know it's not permitted, and I will not watch you cut each other to pieces just because you're both too stubborn to back down."
He glared at both of them to make his point but Tempest refused to meet his gaze.
"Tempest, I'm disappointed that you chose to break the rules like this. Syrus I can see, but this isn't like you," Quenton said.
Offended, Syrus spoke up.
"What was I supposed to do, Quenton, let her slice me up while I stood there looking stupid?"
"You could have been the bigger person and ended the fight."
"She was trying to take me out," Syrus fired back. "I didn't have a choice."
"Be that as it may," Quenton said, "This kind of behavior is inappropriate and I will not tolerate it. Whatever differences you have, they need to be settled out of the training center, and without violence. Is this in any way unclear?"
Tempest looked away. This was all her fault.
"Next time it gets out of hand like this, you will both be suspended and adisciplinaryction will be taken. Understood?"
"Yes sir," Tempest mumbled.
Quenton stared at them for a long moment before speaking again.
"Sometimes, it's best to surrender, especially when it escalates like this. I want you both to remember that."
"That word isn't part of my vocabulary, Instructor," Tempest replied. "You, of all people, should know that."
Syrus chuckled and shook his head, a knowing smile on his face.
"I beg to differ," he said. "I do recall -"
"Shut up," Tempest hissed and turned her angry blue eyes towards his vibrant green. How dare he mention anything of the sort in front of Quenton!
"Just correcting your mistake."
"My only mistake was letting myself care about you," Tempest growled.
"You cared? Could have fooled me. There's a reason you're known as the Ice Princess around here."
Tempest wanted to hit him, but she held back. All she'd wanted was to avoid another conflict with him, yet here she was, embarrassing herself in front of one of the instructors who would be grading her exam.
"Stop it, both of you," Quenton demanded. "This is childish and inappropriate. Either you agree to disagree or you're both on suspension as of now."
Tempest bit back every nasty word that came to mind, took a deep breath, and decided to take Quenton's advice.
"I apologize instructor," she said softly. "It won't happen again."
Then, she turned on her heel and walked away
As the SeeD handbook said, "Walking away is not always an admission of defeat. Sometimes, it's the only way to win."
Syrus watched Tempest go with a mixture of longing and anger. He hadn't wanted to fight with her again, but a part of him knew that if he could still get her going, then she still had feelings for him. Tempest was the all or nothing type. If she didn't care, she didn't even bother with a smart ass come back, she just kept on going and pretended not to hear it.
This had to stop, one way or another. Quenton was right about that. But for reasons other than those defined by their instructor.
Syrus knew he had to make things right again. He had to apologize.
He caught up to her in the hallway, where she pointedly ignored him, even when he moved ahead of her, turned around and walked backward so that she'd have to look at him.
"Tempest, we need to talk."
She kept going, as if he wasn't even there.
"Come on. I know you don't like arguing with me any more than I like arguing with you, so let's talk this out. Please."
"Go away, Syrus," was all she said.
"Not until you agree to talk to me."
"What's there to talk about?" she asked. "You're still a jerk and I've got better things to do."
"Like what, sit in your room and read comic books like you used to?" he asked.
He was baiting her, just because he needed to know that she still cared.
"Maybe," she said coolly. "Now move it. I don't have time for this."
"So you're just going to act like a child every time you see me from now on? Is that it? This is how you want it to be?"
"I'm not the one who's walking backwards," Tempest pointed out, "and I'm not the one who screwed up in the first place. This is how you wanted it to be."
Syrus sighed. This was a lot harder than he thought it would be. And the worst part about it was that she was right. This was all his fault. Did that mean there was no way to make it up to her.? That she couldn't even be decent enough to listen to him?
"Would you at least let me apologize?" he asked as he backed into the elevator.
"I'm not having this conversation with you, Syrus. Not now, not ever," Tempest said and stepped back into the hall, letting the elevator doors close on him.
Angry, he slammed his fist against the door. Hyne, why did she have to be so hard headed? Why couldn't she be like other girls and just forgive him already?
But then, the reason he loved her to begin with was because she wasn't like other girls.
A\N: I may have said before, of all
the stories I've written, this is probably my favorite, and I
(unfortunately) abandoned it when it was met with some pretty harsh
criticism and lack of readership (as well as other, more personal Anyway, I absolutely love the dynamic
between Tempest and Syrus, and this is the one I couldn't let go. So
I've decided it deserves a full rewrite because I really wanted to
continue to explore that relationship, as well as the others. Like
the original game, I was guilty of only focusing on developing the
main characters and leaving the rest pretty much flat 'types' versus
a good supporting cast. While the major plot
points of the story won't change, some things will, beginning with
the next chapter. In the original post, the first few chapters
paralleled the game quite a bit, though not exactly, but it did take
a while to get to a point where it was it's own story. I
realized I needed to get there sooner, and therefore, made some
significant changes in chapter two, of which, you'll just have to
read on to find out. Well, anyhoo, I love this story, and I
hope you do too. And, don't fo
Sara
