From the Mind
Chapter Two
by chaosvincent

"where i end and you begin; the sky is falling in" - Radiohead, Hail to the Theif album

Seifer wasn't exactly sure how many minutes had passed while he had been sitting there, in that chilled room, with his eyes focused on the mysterious traveler before him, but he knew it was enough to cause his eyelids to fall heavy with fatigue and his mind to spiral off into the inner workings it liked to wander into when he didn't have anything to occupy his hands with, other than the hem of his old, forest-green tunic.

He had been trying for what seemed like hours to answer all of the questions that came to mind, and he wasn't any closer to an answer than he had been at the very beginning. After running through all of the possible explanations for the strange man, after digging through what memories he actually could dredge up, he still found himself at a loss for an explanation, and with a headache to fill the gap.

To be honest, he didn't even know why it bothered him so much. The man was a stranger, just another war victim who had washed up at their inn and who he needed to care for, because he had neglected his duties during the late hours of night. There wasn't anything special about him, wasn't anything out of place about him – other than the radiating chill that seemed to seep from his very being and drop the temperature of the room down to a level that sent shivers dancing along Seifer's spine.

Then again, there was something about him that struck the blonde as odd, different, in some way or another. The man seemed to be no ordinary traveler – the sinewy build of muscle hidden beneath the folds of traveler's garb and the sculpted, solid chest bound up in white bandages gave him the look of a fighter more than a rogue.

Something in him responded to the man. He realized it the moment he let his eyes fall on the slumbering, pained face, let himself take in the appearance and the dress of the man who was spread before him, deep asleep. A part of his mind that he could no longer access, a place where his past and his family and what he used to be was locked away, held up tight and put away from him, seemed to respond to the man. He didn't know why, didn't know what exactly it was he was trying so desperately to remember, trying to imagine, but he knew it had to do with the man before him, and that was enough to cause a sickening chill to build up in his gut, like a block of solid ice had settled into his system to stay.

He focused on the space around him, sitting upright in his chair, to keep his mind off of the traveler, for now.

The chill of the room had not gone as he had sat there, and, instead, it seemed to grow, as if an unseen, impossible blizzard had worked into the house, spiraling through the room and soaking into the atmosphere. He was half-tempted to pull one of the blankets from the closet to wrap up in, the chill was growing so intense, but he dispelled the idea out of sheer stubbornness. A delicate map of gooseflesh prickled at his arms and the exposed nape of his throat, causing the hair on the back of his neck to stand on edge, stiff and alert as if to warn him of some oncoming danger. Moist particles of breath still danced before his vision, perfectly clear and much thicker now, more so than they had been when he first walked into the room, and he watched them with morbid fascination as they curled into unique shapes before his face.

"Fucking freezing." He spoke to ease his mind, to chase away the chilly silence that had settled in the room, although he didn't really care if anyone heard him or not. His own voice was enough comfort in the room, enough to keep him awake and to keep him from wandering too deep into the treacherous darkness of his mind, and that was all he could have asked for, while in his current situation.

He stood, stretched, and walked over to the fireplace at the opposite end of the room. It would do no good for the man he had been assigned to watch to catch his death from the chill of the place, and he scooped one of the thick logs from the black, metal cage placed next to the fire, tossing it onto the dimly glowing dance of flame that was already skittering around in its brick trap.

Zell should be finished with cleaning that room anytime now, he thought to himself, watching the flames swim up along the chimney, enthralled in their self-destructive dance to elude the wood that fed them. He felt an attachment to those flames, and he crouched before the fire, holding his hands out to the glowing heat to warm his chilled fingertips.

A flame flickered out toward his hand, and he watched it, emerald-green eyes locked onto the red and yellow glare as if daring it to grab his skin and burn him. It flickered before him for a moment, as it contemplating his dare, before it danced backward once more, snuffing itself out from being too far away from the center of the warmth.

As if on cue with his thoughts, Zell bound into the room moments after he had taken his position before the fireplace, a flurry of electric energy and enthusiasm. Using his weight, he pushed himself to his feet, turning away from the fire – with some reluctance – and walked back toward Zell, smirk pulled onto his face.

"Ya finally done? I was getting sick of sitting in here watching Sleeping Beauty." He mocked the boy with a practiced ease, and the younger blonde shot him a sharp glare of defiance, his arms folding over his thin chest, as if he were aiming to make himself appear stronger and taller than he really was. Seifer smiled at him, and, reaching forward, ruffled his hair in that big-brotherly manner of his.

Zell's look of sheer defiance melted away to a rather childish pout, and he pulled back from Seifer's reach, lips pursed in anger. "Don't treat me like a little kid, Seifer! I'm gonna be sixteen soon, and then I'll be a man, like Pa was."

Seifer snorted, shaking his head, before slipping away from the little blonde and heading back to the bedside of the mysterious stranger.

"A man, huh? Yeah, I'd love to see the day they made you a man." He could hear the boy's feet scuffing along the polished, wooden floorboards at his remark, the chicken dancing that little ruffled dance he was known so well for, and Seifer laughed, soft and deep and gentle, in the back of his throat.

The idea of Zell, the little chicken, his "little brother," growing up to be a "man" now was almost as humorous as the idea of Ma actually letting said little blonde leave the house without Seifer or herself around. Zell, despite how hard he tried to deny it, was more childish than he portrayed (or just as childish, in Seifer's opinion), and the aged warrior in Seifer knew Zell had quite the way to go before he could really call himself a man.

He would humor the boy either way, of course. He had quite the knack for spoiling the Dincht family, after everything they had done for him, and giving in to every little whim of Zell's, every childish dream and hope and longing he had just proved this. It was one of the ways he felt he could repay them for the kindness they had showed him when he was in his worst, and, even if he didn't have the funds to repay them properly, he assumed what he did was just as good in both of their eyes.

"So, mister man of the house, gonna tell me what I'm supposed to do with our guest here?" As if his words had set the blonde's mind back on track (he had a horrible tendency to forget exactly what it was he had been doing, and Seifer often had to take the liberty to remind him, one way or another), Zell bounced to his side, full of that energy so characteristic to his personality.

When the boy stopped beside him, however, he felt a solemn sort of calmness come over him, and he frowned as well.

There really was something remarkable about the man before them, something otherworldly that made his blood run cold and his hair stand on end that he wished he could name. However, he knew there was nothing he could do on that matter for now, and he nudged Zell in the ribs, back to his mocking self, to get his attention.

"Yeah, sorry. It's the big room down the hall, second one on the right from here. All ya gotta do is put 'im in the room, and wait 'till he wakes up. Ma said something about shoppin' for supplies the other day," he paused here, electric-blue eyes darting to the darkness-marred window at the back of the room, before dancing away toward the fire, as if to have the light of the flame chase the shadows from his eyes, "but with the Darkness the way it is, I'm not sure that's gonna happen."

Seifer nodded, and sighed quietly to himself, ice crystals dancing and wrapping around themselves before his face as he did so.

The Darkness was clearing, little by little, but, at this rate, it would be another day or so before he could get outside without having to worry about the complications that came from venturing into the Darkness. They had a stockpile of supplies packed into the Inn for occasions such as these, and, because of their lack of guests, it was still holding out fairly well. Given time, however, he would have to travel outside, despite the tiny twinge of fear that licked at his insides at the thought.

And with an injured guest on their hands, the need for fresh bandages, bedding, medication, food, and water was made greater, and pressed them for time more than he had wanted.

He shoved those thoughts to the back of his mind, blocking them out with the task at hand. He would think of the Darkness when the time came; for now, he would worry about what was presented to him in the present.

He never had been one to look too far back or too far forward into time. For him, the past wasn't really there, and the future was too uncertain – in his opinion, the present was the only thing he could guarantee, and that's where he kept himself.

Or tried to keep himself, even though the past had a tendency to creep up on him at night, when he was at his weakest, fatigued from a need for sleep and the thoughts and feelings of the day finally catching up to him.

Bending down, he pulled the blankets back from the man before him, exposing his form to the chill of the air. Regardless of this, however, no shiver passed through the pale skin of the traveler, and Seifer frowned, scooping the form up into his grasp, carefully, delicately, and pulling him against his chest, supporting his weight.

The man was smaller in his arms than he had thought he would be, thinner than normal and clearly not anywhere near being healthy. He seemed underfed and sickly, a fact that was made very visible when he lifted him completely from the bed, small yet still holding a strange sense of power and independence to him, and Seifer found himself staring at the tightly drawn face of the man longer than necessary as he stood there, Zell's voice and a light punch to his bicep pulling him from his daze.

"Come on, Seif. Ma said to be real careful with 'im, 'cause moving him might hurt him more." He nodded in response, moving away from the bedside to follow Zell down the hallway and to the indicated guest room.

The room Zell had mentioned was the largest guest room in the Inn, more expensive and well furnished than any other. A fireplace, already glowing brightly by the time Seifer had stepped into the room (more than likely the handiwork of Zell, under Ma's orders to make the room presentable for their new guest), was positioned closest to the door, along the same wall. The room was made more comfortable by a dark, blood-red rug on the floor and various decorations of simple pots and jars, all made by Ma, and a table, set over to the right, by the large, picturesque window, was cleaned and ready for use. Around the table were two wooden chairs, crafted by Ma's late husband, and on the table were various plates and bowls, stocked with fresh fruits and dried meats, for when the guest awoke. The window at the back had a simple, dark curtain hanging around it, which was currently tied back with two strong pieces of rope, revealing the clear glass pane beneath. The walls were dark wood, and the floor was a similar shade, the entire thing bearing a warm and comforting feeling, despite the overall simplicity of it.

Tucked into the far corner of the room was a large double-bed, freshly equipped with cleaned bedding; an oak nightstand was next to the bed, a few feet away from the mattress, just enough to provide whomever may be staying in the room with a space to climb into the bed, and on the nightstand was a fresh stockpile of snow-white bandages, a wooden bowl filled with clean water, and a bundle of medicinal herbs, all wrapped together with a small piece of sand-colored twine. Seifer walked slowly over to this bed now, careful so as not to harm the guest he carried in his arms, and, waiting for Zell to pull back the sheets of the bed, he placed him down on the hay-filled mattress.

"There." Zell pulled the blankets up over their charge after he backed away, arms crossed, face set into a stony scowl, and he turned to the smaller boy, rolling his neck and feeling the snap and crackle of muscle and bone disagreeing with his time spent hunched over in that chair. He watched the sleeping traveler for a moment longer, eyes set on his pale, icy form, scanning him up and down, tearing him apart with his eyes as if to search for a signal, or a beacon, or some other kind of clue as to who he was, where he had come from, and why he seemed so familiar to Seifer, as if he had seen him before.

Desperately, he tried to run over the possible times he may have meet the smaller man in the village, but he came up empty-handed, unable to think of a time when he had seen someone quite like him before.

It was his mind playing tricks on him, he told himself, tearing his eyes away from the man on the bed and instead watching Zell as he pulled another log from the rack beside the fireplace, tossing it into the hungry grasps of the flames that licked out toward him, calling him in. It was his mind trying to create some explanation for him, some past; his mind trying to find something to cling to that he could call familiar, could know as something he had always had.

Zell turned to him, a frown on his slender lips, and walked up before him, his smaller hand falling on Seifer's before the large blonde could realize it. Blinking, clearing the fog from his mind and his eyes, he gave the boy a tiny smile (as false as it may be) of reassurance, squeezing the slender fighter's hand in his.

"So, wanna go get something to eat? I'm sure he'll be fine on his own for a little while longer." Seifer said, tilting his head toward the door, arm wrapping around the boy's shoulders – why, he wasn't sure, but the sullen look that had crossed over the blonde's face ever since he had laid eyes on the traveler was painfully not like him, and if even the smallest action to make him smile again was going to help, he would do it – and holding him tight to his side, a brotherly hug filled with something a little bit more than companionship. Electric-blue eyes watched him for a moment, a sadness darkening their depths and making them just a shade deeper, like the clouds in the sky during a summer storm, and the boy nodded, his own arm, so much smaller than Seifer's but still fleshed out with a strength that was hard to believe, wrapping as best as it could around the taller blonde's waist.

"Yeah, I'm starved. Ma was cookin' something that smelled really good when I walked by, and I bet it's done by now." He let Zell lead the way, tugging on him and pulling him out of the room, and he cast a backward glance, over his shoulder, toward the man sprawled on the bed, icy-chill air thick in the room and sending a shiver up and down his spine.

It was strange, he thought, how the room they were just in was so much colder than the hallway was.

The door shut with a quiet click and a rush of blizzard-laced air behind them.

-----

Fully fed and away from the ice, Seifer was now able to think clearly, lounged back in the plush chair in the main room of the Inn. In his hand he held a small blade, shorter than his forearm, but still a decent length for an attacking weapon, and on the blade, running up and down in delicate, golden detail, were the inscriptions of some form of magick or another – what they meant was beyond him, but it was soothing to just sit here, basking in the heat of the flame that blazed before him, running his fingers over the warm, flat side of the blade.

He held it up with a mild sense of interest, watching the light of the fire catch on its sides and sharp point, reflecting a false sunlight around the room and over his face, a fractured dance of light that made the room seem a little less bleak and a little more mysterious, traced with a golden spread of designs.

The reverberation of colliding pans rang out behind him, crashes that sounded like harsh explosions in his mind, but he was so far lost in thought that he did not hear more than what sounded like a gentle beat of wings in the air, drumming at the inside of his head. The sound helped him relax more than anything else, and he watched with a detached sort of enthrallment as the fire spread throughout the fireplace, leaping up to the side, dancing along the brick, tickling over the metal casing that held it in and eating up the wood it used as fuel, devouring everything in its path.

A hand fell on his shoulder, and the thoughts vanished, dispelled from his mind like smoke, left to drift back to the dark corners of his emotions. The song that had been playing out behind him had ended, he realized with a start, more than likely some time ago, and now Zell was at his side, hands still damp from washing the dishes, a small smile on his face. He couldn't help but think Zell still looked so grim whenever he caught eyes with him, but he pushed it away as merely a tension that came from the situation they were being handed, and thought nothing more of it for now.

"Hey, Chickie. Done with work?" His voice sounded coarse to his own ears from disuse, and he realized then that he had been sitting there for quite some time; the younger blonde nodded, and his hand, moist and cooled from dishwater, grabbed his, pulling him up, out of the chair he had sunken into.

"Yeah. Ma said you should probably head back up there now – said he's startin' to wake up, and she's gonna need to change his bandages, but she wants some help." Arching a single, golden eyebrow, Seifer allowed the smaller boy to lead the way back up the staircase and toward the guests room, although he wasn't sure how he would be of help to Ma. Raised as a warrior all his life – or the bits and pieces of it he could remember – he had little to no knowledge about medicines, bandages, or healing methods. The most he would be able to do would be offer curative magick to the man – he assumed that was his purpose, and thought nothing else of it.

Magick was a rare occurrence amongst the townsfolk and everyday people; to cast magick, one would have had to undergo extreme training that no one knew the details of. Seifer had learned he was trained in basic magick when they had been trapped in the Inn during the midst of a cold snap in autumn, and he had been able to start a fire with no idea how he had managed it or why he was capable of such a thing. At the time, he had thought nothing of it, had assumed it was nothing more than a normal action, but the looks he had received from both Ma and Zell had spoken otherwise.

Unable to remember his own past, however, he had no idea when he had undergone the training to perform such an art, and had simply considered it a byproduct of the knighthood he didn't remember, and thought nothing more of the subject, until now.

The creak of the wooden door to the guest's room caused Seifer to be drawn from his thoughts, and he watched, quietly, uncharacteristically, as Zell pushed open the door and moved to the side, giving him clearance to the room.

That familiar, otherworldly chill he had come to expect when he was around the mysterious man swept over him when he stepped inside, but he was used to that by now, and held back the tiny shiver that threatened to overtake him, tickling at the base of his spine. Ma was already in the room, seated in a chair beside the bed, bandages in hand, and the brunette traveler, blurry-eyed and half-conscious, was now seated upright, leaning on a plush, overstuffed pillow against the dark wood headboard of the bed. His head was tilted to the side, obscuring his face from Seifer's view beneath a curtain of dark brown hair. The blankets were pooled around his waist, and his chest, visible in the firelight provided by the blazing flame at the far end of the room, was still wrapped in a tightly bound patchwork of bandages, stained dark, dried-blood-brown in several sporadic places.

"Ah, there ya are." Ma spoke over her shoulder, her hands fast at work removing the bandages from the forehead of the man and her attention focused solely on her task at hand, "hun, hand me that fresh role of bandages on the table over there, will ya? I left 'em on accident." He nodded, doing as he was instructed. Coming up to her side, he handed her the tightly bound handful of gauze, and she took it with a grin and a tilt of her head in thanks.

Close up, he could catch a faint impression of the man's face, now that he had turned his head back to face Ma so she could bind the bandages once more to the large, lightly bleeding gash that ran along the length of his forehead. The injury was half-healed, poorly treated and bruised around the edges, and Seifer found himself wondering just how their strange guest had managed to receive the injuries he was now so colorfully sporting, a strange patchwork design across what he could only assume had once been clear, spotless flesh.

He would have asked, were it not for the sight that meet him when the man turned to face him instead, his mouth snapping shut with a click.

Deep blue eyes, stormy-dark and laced with a silver glow of icy-cold precision, locked with his gaze, rooting him in place and causing his breath to catch in his throat. The man's eyes, however, were not the only thing that caught his attention and made him stare blankly at the figure before him: a delicate scar, thin and precise and perfectly aligned on his brow, tore down between those startling eyes, from somewhere near the gash on his forehead, across the bridge of his nose, and down beneath his left eye. A familiar chill worked into his very being as he stood there, watching the man, gazes locked together, and, absently, he reached up to his own forehead, lightly tracing the scar there with the tips of his fingers, mouth ajar, face contorted in question.

As if the action had broken the man out of his stupor, the traveler glanced up to Seifer's forehead for himself, eyes widening just a fraction at the scar that greeted his gaze.

Before he could ask any questions about the matching scars he now realized they bore, however, Ma had finished her duty of wrapping the bandages around the wound, successfully cloaking the dark-red mark from view, and the man had turned his head away once again, swiftly, as if he were ashamed to watch Seifer for much longer.

"Seifer, this here is Squall. Squall, that's Seifer – he's my assistant around here. Does all the dirty work for me." If Ma had noticed the exchange of startled and confused stares between them, she failed to acknowledge it. Instead, her voice sounded almost cheerful as she introduced them in that brisk – and, unfortunately, infuriatingly simple – way, and he watched as the traveler – Squall – flinched, as if the words had been an invisible blow to him, knocking the wind from his chest.

Ma's introduction had managed to bring him back his voice, however, and a moment later he was glaring, hard and cold, toward Ma and the guest, confused questions running through his mind in a dark turmoil of thoughts. "Who is he?"

The striking resemblance between their scars, the familiarity of his appearance, that icy cold aura of his – all of it seemed familiar to Seifer, annoyingly so, and he watched, arms crossed, as the man offered no further explanation to his position.

Infuriatingly still! He just sits there like nothing ever happened, that bastard! What does he know that I don't? His thoughts were brash and harsh and fiery in his mind, licking over his skin, as if to scream at him to move, to do something, to find answers for himself. Who is he?

There was something about the man that made his blood boil, and Seifer's frown hardened, watching the man through narrowed, molten-jade eyes. A voice, soft and gentle, fluttered at the back of his mind, seeming to chant at him, mock him, words over and over again, a long mantra he could barely pick apart: hate him, hate him, hatehatehatehate!

He wasn't sure if the thoughts were his own, or simply the strange presence that haunted his dreams; he clenched his fists at his side – why was he so tense all of a sudden? – and watched the man, as if trying to pierce through his layers with his gaze, pick him apart and pull out the answers he knew the man must have for him.

"A guest." Ma's answer was calm and simple, and her hand feel on Seifer's arm, diverting his attention away from the man on the bed who he was desperately trying to place, and he glanced down at her with a sharp flicker of his eyes. "Now, Seifer, sweetie, mind headin' to that nice little store next door and buyin' some fresh supplies, herbs, and bandages? We're gonna need 'em, at this rate."

She was trying to get him to leave. It was that simple. The Darkness was lifting, just a tiny bit, but for him to travel out could still be risky.

"But –"

"You'll be fine. Things are startin' to clear up now, anyway."

Before he could protest further, she had climbed to her feet, sweet smile set in place, and had handed him a list she had, no doubt, prepared for him ages ago, and a small satchel of gold, before leading him out of the room and through the doorway. Leaning up to him, she wrapped him in a tight hug, and, away from the man at the bedside, he could catch a flicker of almost saddest and apprehension in her sugary-sweet, brown eyes.

What was going on?

"I'll explain when the time comes." She answered him almost as if she had read his mind, had picked up on the turmoil that was plaguing him, and she smiled at him, releasing him from her grip. "Just head back when you're finished."

And, with those frustrating, overused words of hers, she shut the door behind him, leaving him in the hallway with a handful of money, a shopping list, and a very confused blonde watching him with dark, electric-blue eyes.

I'd like to apologize for confusing anyone with the prologue of this fanfic - I realize it is rather odd, and has quite a different writing style, but it's the last time I'll be doing something to that degree (maybe) in this fanfic, I promise. Also, the details of the Darkness mentioned will all be explained, just slowly (in other words, in the next chapter); I like to drag out the details before shedding light on the answers, to add to the effect.

Thank you for previous reviews.