From the Mind
Chapter One
by chaosvincent

"'for it might end, you know' said Alice to herself, 'in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?' And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing." - Alice in Wonderland by C.S. Lewis

Seifer awoke the next day to the sound of what he assumed to be an explosion, it had gone off so loud, and he had nearly leaped out of his skin in surprise while his sleep-laced mind pulled him from the slumber he had unintentionally slipped into the night before. Jade eyes scrambled about the room, scanning for some sign as to what had awakened him, and the rush of a warrior's impulse in his blood made his hand itch for the blade he had tucked away beneath the mattress of his bed.

He forced himself to take a deep breath. Judging by the voices spilling in from the kitchen outside of his room, the noise had been a result of something the innkeeper's son had done and not some attack made against him as he slept, and he fell back down into bed with a hiss of breath at this realization.

If that was the case, then he wouldn't mind going back to sleep for a few more hours, disregarding the sound and the voices it brought as something that didn't involve him in the least bit (although he was quite certain he had heard his name somewhere in all of the shouting, but that wasn't his concern at the moment).

Mornings at the Dincht Inn always proved to be interesting, even when there were no guests for him to tend to and no broken doors or windows for him to repair. The innkeeper liked to set up a strict schedule he was to follow each and every morning – wake up at dawn, clean up the kitchen, move the needed food barrels for the day into the storage room, make repairs, and then stay up as late as he possibly could, keeping an eye out for customers. The work he did for the inn wasn't nearly enough, in his eyes, and he would gladly to more, were he to be asked to do so.

Today, however, was one of the few days where he simply wouldn't mind crawling back beneath the rough, earthy-colored blankets of his bed, burrowing his head away from the firelight that danced beneath his door and through the grain in the wood that had cracked wide open in age, and go back to sleep.

A sliver of said light pooled through the crack under his door now, and Seifer tossed a heavy arm over his eyes to block out the little dance of orange that was taunting him with its glow – a sure sign he was needed awake and ready to deal with the dirty work the innkeeper pegged him with. Thin, cracked lips groaned out a protest, and he rolled onto his side, away from the light and the door that let it in, hoping against all hope that he could simply slip away into the peaceful bliss of slumber once again and pretend he wasn't needed in the waking world.

The nights were dragging on longer now, anyway. As it stood, he had every right to stay in bed – the Darkness still lingered outside, and, although he had no window to see it, he could sense it prickling at his nerves and prying at his senses, and that alone was enough reason for him to want to fall back into the slumber his mind so often deprived him of.

Normally, he didn't sleep. His mind would work away at the things in his life that were uncertainties, would eat at his consciousness and keep him staring up at the gray, splintered wood ceiling above his head, waiting for some answer to creep into his mind and let him rest.

Last night had been a rare occurrence, but it had felt good, and there was no way in hell he was ready to let that go, even if it did mean getting a scolding from the innkeeper later.

"Almasy, you lazy prick, get out of bed and get out here – we've got work to do today."

He wished the world would just leave him alone right now, because he was still too tired to want to work, and his mind was still so thickly laced with thoughts and twists and pulls from the night before that he was sure the knots his mind had wound itself into would take days for him to unravel properly.

The door to his tiny room, tucked away in the side of the kitchen wall, crashed open, and in only a matter of moments he found himself flipped onto his back and pinned down onto the bumpy, hay mattress he slept on by strong hands – strong for their size and the age of their possessor, at least – on his shoulders, a little body on his abdomen, and a grinning face that looked like it was ready to split in half any minute, the smile was so intense, peering down at him.

He suddenly couldn't decide which bothered him more – the kitchen firelight pouring in through the cracks in his door, or the blonde boy perched upon his waist, smiling down at him like it was the most amusing thing in the Hyne-be-damned world that the brat had managed to finally wake him up from his pleasant slumber.

"'Mornin,' sunshine." The voice was too energetic for this time of morning, and Seifer wanted to lean up toward the teen on his waist and smack him on the side of that spiky, blonde head of his, because he was not in the mood for one of the little chicken's morning wake-up calls. "Looks like ya skipped out on your nightly duties. Ma's pretty mad at ya, so I wouldn't expect a good breakfast this mornin,' and I bet you're gonna be gettin' a lot of work today. It's your own fault, ya know."

"G'off me, you pain-in-the-ass, little runt." Had it not been for the fact that he didn't want to harm the kid, he would have lifted him up by his shoulders, tossed him out of the door, and slammed it shut behind him, quite content with the idea of said wooden door slamming the energetic boy in the ass as he was tossed from the room.

"Not 'till you promise you're gonna get out of bed when I do get off. You've got a busy day ahead of ya, Seifer, and Ma wants you out there now so you can get started."

Seifer Almasy had never been a patient man, quite frankly, but waking up at six o'clock in the morning to the sound of the innkeeper's son tearing through the kitchen in some bull run through the inn to awaken him was one of the few things that wore his patience thin in only a matter of seconds. Large, muscular arms wrapped around the boy's chest easily enough, and he swept the blonde from his waist, tossing him down onto the end of the bed and as far away from his face as possible. He snorted out a laugh at the squeal that broke from his smaller companion before proceeding to shove his head beneath the makeshift pillow and force out the sound of the flailing preteen he had tossed.

"Why should I get up, Chickie? It's not like we even have any customers today any way. We never fuckin' have customers, but I always have to fuckin' get up and—"

The boy was back on his waist in a matter of seconds, ripping the pillow away from his head and tossing it out of the door and into the kitchen with a sneer of victory plastered onto his thin lips.

"Actually, we got a real important customer in this morning, so get yer ass out of bed an' come out here to get your orders from Ma. She said we got ta treat him really nice, and make sure everything is perfect, so you gotta get up now and get goin,' Seifer!" There was a total of a two second pause before a small fist connected with his cheek, and he grinned up at the teen in amusement at the flushed look of pure annoyance that had slipped onto his round, boyish face. "An' stop calling me 'Chickie,' you bastard. I'm nothin' like a chicken."

"'Look like a chicken to me. I ruffled up your feathers again." He leaned up on the bed, grabbing the boy into his arms in the process and pulling the squirming fighter upside-down as he straightened up, content with the bright red flush of anger that swept over his tanned face as his head was shoved into the mattress. A well-trained kick launched out toward his head, and Seifer grinned once more as he leaned his head to the side, neatly missing the attack, and laughing as the chicken thrashed in his arms and tossed about like his namesake with its head cut off. "If ya squeal like that again, I might think you're more of a pig than a chicken."

Unfortunately for Seifer, the second kick didn't quite miss its mark, and he fumbled back as a strong shin collided with the side of his sleep-mused head, sending his vision dancing.

"What the hell was that for?" He had a sudden desire to toss the boy off of the bed entirely, regardless of what pain he might cause him.

The innkeeper's son had been trained in martial arts since a young age, in a means of self-defense and protection for the conflicts brought about by the war that had just come to an end, and the skills he had acquired from his training over the past years had nowhere else to focus on other than Seifer, as the little blonde liked to remind him.

He could pack quite a punch, if he tried hard enough.

"For callin' me a pig, you asshole! You're more of a pig than I am."

His patience finally running thin, he surrendered to that sudden urge, and in a flurry of kicks and punches in retaliation to his assault, he tossed the smaller boy to the ground, a feline smirk playing on his lips at the flustered yelp and thrash of movement that so gracefully comprised the chicken's fall to the earth.

"Apparently chickens really can't fly." A flustered glare shot his way from beneath the tussled blonde hair that had fallen in the teen's eyes, slender hands working along the blonde's scalp to message where he had hit the ground in his descent. A little pout was set on his lips, and his eyes were crossed, staring up at Seifer with a glare of contempt.

"That hurt!"

"Yeah, well, you fucking deserved it." The larger blonde shifted his weight, tugging his hand through the fringe of knotted hair that had fallen about his ears and forehead in his sleep.

A few months ago, his hair had been a lot shorter than that – slicked back and well kempt, a perfect look of arrogance and strength, like he preferred it to be. Over time, however, he had let his hair grow to the tips of his ears, brushing along his temple and dancing about his brow and over the vertical scar that tore a dividing line between his emerald green eyes.

He scoffed when he realized he had slipped back into the hazy thoughts of the past.

"Zell, Almasy, what are you boys doing in there? We have a lot of work to do today, and I want you two to hurry up and get out here. Move it!" Ma's voice called out from somewhere in the inn, bringing Seifer back to his senses and out of the foggy state of thought that he had let settle over him. Both blondes groaned, and Seifer pushed himself out of the cocoon of blankets he had tangled himself in throughout the night and to his feet. He stretched, angling his back to relieve the tension of muscle that had worked along his spine in his cramped sleeping conditions, and reached over to the pile of clothing that filled up the remainder of the space in his little room, tugging a dark green tunic away from the pile and pulling it over his head. Dark brown work boots followed, and he tugged them on with a swift pull, lacing up the black strings along his ankles before straightening himself once more. With a final wave of his arm to signal for Zell to follow him, he began his walk out of the room, the hasty patter of the chicken's footsteps behind him falling into step with his own.

"Ma's gettin' mad again, and it's all your fault, Seifer. If you didn't sleep all day, we'd have everything done by now." The boy sprinted up to his side, catching up with the quickened pace the advantage of long legs provided Seifer with, and he glanced down at his small friend with a pointed glare of molten emerald eyes.

The teen stood at a good five-feet or so, only making it up to the center of Seifer's chest when they stood side by side as they did now. An unruly tangle of spiky, sunlight-blonde hair hung around sky-blue eyes, and a tattoo, etched along the gentle curves of his almost animal-like, pointed features, stood out as a harsh black-blue against his sun kissed skin. Pointed, pearl teeth slipped over slender lips when he smiled that morning-sun smile of his, and Seifer was more reminded of a canine than anything else when he looked at the energetic youth at his side.

Although Chickie fit just as well, in his loving opinion.

"Yeah, it's always my fault. I get it."

The two of them had been working together at the inn for some time now, ever since Ma and the Chickie had found him passed out in the alleyways of the city four months ago, and a partnership of sorts had grown between them, although most wouldn't be able to tell it from the way they acted around each other.

Seifer had no remaining family – well, no family he could remember, at any rate – and Zell only had the adoptive mother he had found in Ma Dincht to keep him company. When Seifer had first arrived at the Dincht's Inn, that night during the Darkness Hours right after the war had come to an end, he had been weakened, stricken with amnesia and illness, and had been unable to even differentiate between reality and falsehood, let alone know how to care for himself. Zell had been the first to provide for him, and had been the one to convince Ma to take him in as another member of the Dincht family – and so she had, and here he was, assimilated into the dysfunctional family the three of them made up, and Zell had grown into a little brother to him, over the time they spent together at the inn.

"Yeah, it is always your fault."

A little brother who was very, very good at pissing him off.

As they stepped out into the inn entrance hall, Ma greeted them before Seifer could come up with a response to the taunting jeer from his little companion, and the taller blonde had to brace himself to keep from having the air smashed from his lungs as Ma pulled them both into her regulatory morning hug.

Ma was a friendly woman, warm, carefree and loved throughout most of the town for the motherly way she treated everyone and anyone who stopped at the inn, and anyone else she ever came across as well, for that matter. She was large in stature, standing up to Seifer's chin, and she had a hearty laugh to her and a warm smile that made even the most wary of customers stay for a while, if only for a drink and a chat with her. Over the course of his stay here, Seifer still hadn't learned the woman's real name – everyone in the town just called her 'Ma,' and that had been good enough for him.

He owed it to Ma that he was still around and in one piece, and not some crazed man out on the streets in the Darkness.

He needed to thank her for that, one of these days.

Ma released them swiftly, pulling back and standing before them both to look them up and down in that concentrated way she always did, as if searching for some way that either of them had changed over the past few days. A dishrag was in one hand and her other was resting on her hip in that scolding manner of hers, and she paced away from them to continue cleaning one of the tables she had flipped up-right for this elusive new guest of theirs. Seifer followed after her, Zell hot on his heels as he always was, and he leaned, heavily, against the bar at the far back of the room, waiting for the reprimand and orders he was certain he was going to receive.

"Took you boys long enough. You've got a lot of work to do today, and Seifer, I hope that extra sleep ya got did ya good, because you sure ain't goin' to be getting any tonight."

Somehow, he saw that much coming from the very beginning, and he was very glad his mind had actually allowed him to get some sleep last night, for once.

"So, Ma, where's this supposed 'guest' that we got in? I haven't even seen him yet." Ma stopped cleaning the table, and she turned, a stern look chiseled into the round, soft features of her plump face, and Seifer realized that this guest must be more than just the odd bum they found out on the streets.

"If you'd be patient for once, I'd get a chance to explain all of that." Seifer did as he was told, his slender lips shutting up tight, and he noted that even the Chicken had stopped the normal barrage of questions he would be prattling off under any other circumstance. "He's in the back room. I found him in the entrance hall this morning, standing there waiting for someone to serve him," She glared a scolding glance in Seifer's direction, and he rolled his eyes. It was just his luck that the one night he decided to go and get some sleep, instead of sitting up to wait for the guests who will never come, someone actually does brave the Darkness to wander into their inn. "He's not in the best condition – passed out after paying for his room, never got to tell me how long he was planning on staying or what his name was. It's gonna be up to you to take care of him, Seifer. Zell, honey, all you need to do is run upstairs and clean up the best room we've got for him, alright?"

"Gotcha, Ma!" Zell nodded, pushing himself off of the stool he had been sitting on before bounding up the stairs in a blur of blonde, eager to obey Ma's orders and free up his schedule for the rest of the afternoon.

Seifer focused dark green eyes back on Ma after Zell left, a frown set hard on his tanned face, and he folded his arms over his chest, tilting his head back. "So you pretty much want me to play nurse for however long it takes for this guy to recover, right? Since when did I get pegged with a job like that?"

"Since you decided to start ignoring your duties. Now why don't you head back there and make sure our guest hasn't woken up yet, and if he has, be a gentleman and make him feel right at home. He's injured, so you're gonna need to change his bandages as soon as he wakes up, whenever that might be. Be gentle with 'im, and don't complain, 'cause I'll make ya sleep in the attic if you do." He waved a hand in dismissal as he moved, pushing away from the bar countertop before heading toward the stairs at the far end of the room and the back chamber Ma had indicated early.

"Yeah, I'm going."

"And try to be nice to him, Seifer! This is a real important guest this time, so you better drop that attitude of yours and act your age!"

"I'll try." He vanished up the stairs, shaking his head as he went and running a hand through his still sleep-tussled hair. "So I'm stuck babysitting, huh?" The words were directed more to himself than anything else, in an effort to keep his mind occupied, and he shoved his hands in the rough pockets of his old, dirt brown trousers as he walked, a sigh curling from his thin lips and brushing along his chest.

Having someone wander into the inn in such an injured state, passing out as soon as they walked through the door, wasn't as rare of a thing as one would think. With the end of the war that had just recently torn apart the country and the current state the citizens had spiral into, people were left poor, ruined, and injured, and most of the customers they had acquired over the past few months had either been soldiers on their way home from the war or people who had been caught in the deadly crossfire and now had nowhere else to go, left to wander from place to place in search of food and shelter.

Despite all of this, the Dincht inn was never very busy, even during the lightest hours of the day. Few people wanted to come into the bar and inn combination – although he wasn't sure why, because the inn was sure as hell a better place to stay than the rundown buildings people tried to call homes in this city – and few people had the money to, even if they only charged a simple twenty-piece golden coin to stay the night and have a good breakfast in the morning. The war had wiped people's pockets clean of all gold, and had sucked up all of the business with it – they were lucky if they could pull in enough customers to pay for the provisions and repairs that needed to be paid for on a monthly basis.

The inn had housed only two guests in the past month – an old man who had wandered in last week, before the Darkness Hours had returned from the halt in the search they had initiated only Hyne knew how long ago, and a youthful woman with raven-black hair and a grin that was simple and sweet and pleasant to look at, as long as you didn't watch her for too long. The Darkness Hours had gotten to her, and she mumbled a little to herself, whispered things he couldn't really understand, and, quite frankly, didn't want to.

Both had fled swiftly, after only a measly one-night stay, and he was quite certain he wasn't going to be getting his pay for this month any time soon.

The prospect of having a new customer to inhabit the inn, as bothersome as it might be that he was the one forced to care for their injured guest, was promising. With the new customer and the way Ma was treating the man, he was positive he'd be able to pull in some form of pay within the next month, and that was all he needed to keep him going as he stepped up to the door at the far end of the hallway.

Receiving pay meant a chance for him to finally get out and buy a good set of clothing and a new traveling cloak – two things he honestly wouldn't mind having in his possession, what with the upcoming threat of the winter season breathing down the necks of the people. The current clothes he owned consisted of a poor mockery of pants and a tunic, hand sewn by Ma for him when he had first been taken in, and the clothing he had been found in – a torn, shredded mess of the knight pants and tunic that were worn underneath full body armor, stained with blood and dirt – and those were obviously out of the question.

Seifer pulled open the door with a silent, careful tug, stepping inside of the room and shutting it behind him in quiet haste for fear of disturbing their guest. The room in the far back of the inn was really Ma's room, and for a customer to be resting in that room, even while they were setting up a chamber of his own, was proof enough that Ma was taking this situation seriously. It was tucked away into a tiny corner of the hall, separate from the guest rooms that were down the hallway by a curve in the path that led of to two rooms – Ma's and Zell's, each one across from the other. Ma's room was the biggest room in the inn, and the most furnished, but it wasn't the most ornate of the rooms. Ma liked her life simple, and her room reflected that perfectly.

The chamber wasn't much, even if it was the nicest room in the inn. A fireplace sent a splash of reds, yellows, and oranges dancing along the wooden walls, and a four-post bed took up most of the remaining free space in the room. It was, by far, the nicest and most expensive possession the entire Dincth family owned. It was made of furnished dark oak, and the mattress was a stitched cushion stuffed with fresh hay on a weekly basis. Dark blue quilts, sewn by Ma herself, lined the bed, and a stack of pillows she had purchased to go along with the bed, all those years ago, were piled up at the head of the mattress. The bed had been bought by Ma's late husband before the war had started, and she cherished that thing more than any other possession she owned – Seifer was surprised to find she had even let someone else use the thing, it was so dear to her.

He stepped inside of the room, peering about swiftly to make sure everything was still in place and that their guest hadn't decided to wake up while everyone was making a fuss about him, snag something, and then make his escape – they'd had that happen, once before, when a thief had come in as a customer and left with what little money they had managed to gather up that week.

He still had half a mind to chase down that bastard, as soon as the Darkness receded enough for him to want to get out of the damned inn on his own, and beat the shit out of him for making Ma and Zell suffer through a week with little provisions.

Luckily, the room was still intact when he entered, and he let out a breath of relief about that. They couldn't risk a loss such as that one again, especially with the Darkness chasing away the customers they would normally be serving. They hadn't had a good amount of pay in a while, so it was understandable that Ma was so excited about the new guest, and Seifer told himself he'd be nice, just this once, if it would make Ma happy.

The only out-of-place thing, he noted, was that the fire didn't seem to be doing its job of warming the room to the extent that it should – a near deathly chill hung in the air, and the blonde was almost positive he could see his breath curling before him in a dance of faint ice crystals, his brow lifting in question. It was true that the winter season was starting to creep in, but the year's first snow had yet to fall, and the fact that he could see his breath inside at all was more than enough for him to be concerned. Jade eyes flickered to the side, glancing along the left wall and toward the wide glass window that overlooked the town from the second-story position, in search of any way that the cold could be seeping into the room, but he came up empty-handed.

Muffled groaning off to his left snapped him out of the musings he had allowed himself to spiral into, and he suddenly remembered that he had a guest he was supposed to be tending to. Gathering up his thoughts and plastering on that sickening smile he used around the customers, he strode up to the bedside where the current guest was resting, peering down at the crumbled form curled up upon the mattress with almost curious interest.

"Well, shit."

The sight that greeted him when he reached the bed was far from what he had expected to see, and he couldn't help but gape in awe as he stared down at the lithe form on the mattress, viridian eyes scanning up and down the man in inspection.

The first thing he noticed was that the man spread out on the sheets was in far worse condition than what he initially anticipated, even from Ma's words. Stark white bandages were wrapped around his exposed chest and arms, hiding away the pale skin that rest beneath in all places other than his broad shoulders – he could tell he had been wrapped by Ma; he knew that patchwork anywhere, had had it bound about him enough times to know when the skilled innkeeper had played a hand in the recovery. An ink-black traveling cloak was wrapped around his waist, pulled down by Ma so she could get to the injuries that lie beneath, and, judging by the thick bundles of the cloth that were stuck together about his torso, the injuries must have been fresh and bleeding at the time Ma had found him. Matching dark pants hugged close to his slender, long legs, a sure sign of a traveler who wished to move silently and freely without clothing as a hindrance, and sturdy, black leather boots composed the rest of his outfit. More white bandages wrapped around his forehead, obscuring his brow from view, and a pained expression was crossed over the ruby-red, full lips and well-formed cheekbones in the man's state of unconsciousness.

Seifer was, honestly, surprised that he had managed to make it as far as the inn and still have enough strength to pay Ma for a room. Judging by the condition of the traveler, it was obvious he had been in such a state for quite some time, and the telltale signs of a long journey wearing away at this already harsh injuries were evident in the paled skin and worn-out traveling garb he wore.

The second thing Seifer perceived when he took a closer look at the man was that there was something strikingly familiar and oddly unreal about him. He couldn't place his finger on it, wasn't really sure what it was, but there was something about their guest that stood out, made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle up when he looked at the too-pale skin, the muscular-yet-slender build, and the gently gaping lips as they sucked in pained breaths. Dark chocolate hair hung about his face, brushing along his cheekbones, his bangs hanging close to his jaw, and dark lashes rested on flushed skin, adding a look of abnormal brilliance to the man's appearance. Blackish-blue rings marred the skin beneath his closed eyes, making him appear so much older and wiser than he obviously was. Judging from the soft curves of his skin where injuries, bandages and scars were littered, he had to have been in his early twenties, possibly younger even than Seifer was, if only by a year or two.

A distant portion of his mind screamed at him that there was something important here, something memorable he should be remembering, should be recalling, but it wouldn't come to him, no matter how long he watched the unconscious man fight through his fitful state of slumber. A sharp sting inched down into the knots of scar tissue across the bridge of his nose, and absentmindedly he reached up, rubbing at the burning flesh with the tip of his forefinger and his thumb.

There was something incredibly familiar about him, now that he thought about it.

He just wished he could find out what 'it' was.

"Who the hell are you?" The words slipped from his mouth without any real meaning as he pulled a chair up to the bedside, content to just sit and watch his charge as Ma had told him to do, and he wished that the man resting before him would wake up and give him an answer to the question that the cold silence whisked away after he asked.

He was only a little disappointed when he never received one.

I honestly have only a basic idea of where exactly this story is going, how long it will be, or how often I will update it, but, rest assured, I promise to take time to put more effort into the chapter fics I have started. With the claims I have (five of them, each with one-hundred themes to write for, to be exact) updating may seem a little difficult, but I promise to update as soon as possible. Chapter two is already four pages in, and is going along rather nicely; updates shouldn't take too horribly long if I can keep this pace up. Wish me luck.

Well,until then.