Black and White
By: A Voice in the Wind
How could he forget? How could he forget their old friendship? Their old love? How could he forget…
He stood atop the bridge, noting the train tracks underneath his feet. They were cold steel to his bare toes. He lovingly removed his trench coat, the one that had seen him through his tragically short life, and ceremoniously folded it. He placed it by his feet.
Seifer wanted no blood on it. Perhaps it would be picked up by someone and worn with pride as Seifer had? No. If someone found it they would shred it. Tear it into a million pieces. Leave it in the garbage. Like him.
A small, barely noticeable tear ran down the blonde's cheek, creating a path for tears after it to follow. But Seifer would not allow any more tears to fall. He had failed everyone. He had failed himself. Seifer needed no ones pity. He didn't want it, either.
Especially not the brunette's pity.- Pity results in weakness. Seifer had long known that. Pity allows people in. People kill. People rip, tear, and then kill again. Then, if not satisfied, they rip even more, tearing to the bone and beyond. They break your soul, your heart, and everything you hold dear. Seifer did not want that to happen to him.
He hated people who held pity for him. He did not deserve any of it! He didn't want it, either. Why couldn't the world understand?! Why couldn't the world leave him alone?!
Seifer hated seeing his love with Rinoa. They were exact opposites, Seifer the fire, Squall the ice. Seifer held passion, Squall indifference. The ying and yang. Though, which was which even the blonde was not sure of. One could not live without the other by their side, fighting and living.
But it had happened. Seifer had been thrown away, ripped, tore, shredded. All by the one that he held most dear. Squall had replaced him easily, with some little innocent girl who knew nothing of the 'cruel world' in which she lived. He slowly started to fall towards the edge.
Seifer had nothing to lose. His life? Long over. His friends? Deserted him in time of need. His love? ……….gone. He had nothing to lose.
Seifer felt free. He loved the sensation of flying. It was too bad that he was only able too do it once before he died.
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"Get him in here! Quickly now, quickly!" Dr. Kadowaki's voice resonated through the halls of the Garden, easily carrying through the mindless chatter of students and SeeD alike. A small path was cleared for the small stretcher and the SeeD's pushing it.
A scarred man lay on it, his blonde hair tousled as if he had been sticking his head out of the car window. His long frame could barely fit onto the stretcher, his legs spilling over the sides. Some could not recognize him without the telltale gray trench coat, but for many others the scar and blonde hair told all.
Whispers immediately filled the hallways. Whispers of Knights and Sorceresses, Saviors and Hell Bringers, Life Givers and Killers. Whispers of Ultimecia's Knight filled the air and made it heavy with apprehension.
A student held with reverence a beautiful gunblade in his hands. He was careful not to drop it onto the floor, lest the blonde man awake and invoke his terror. There were enough stories flying around detailing exact ways in which Seifer had tortured and killed his enemy, and many too horrible to have been invented by the over-active mind.
The SeeDs and students all clustered around the door to Dr. Kadowaki's room, being held back by a blonde woman with her whip drawn, angrily slashing at whoever dared to breach the threshold of Seifer's room.
She made sure no one could see the brunette gunblader kneeling by the other Knight's side.
Squall was carefully dabbing at Seifer's head, which had hit a rock and was covered in blood. Dr. Kadowaki quickly ushered Squall out of Seifer's room, assuring the commander that the blonde was stable and would survive. The brunette immediately headed for his dorm at a flat out sprint. All of the student's attention was torn from the broken and bleeding man on the stretcher to their 'untouchable' commander, who was running down the hall.
As soon as Squall got to his dorm, he collapsed in an un-gracious heap on the floor. Noiseless sobs racked their way out of his body, numerous tears finding their way down the normally impassive commander's face.
Squall questioned the voices in his head; the ethereal energies floating around the room, that sometimes if one listened closely enough one could hear them, ever whispering to themselves.
"Why?" the shattered voice broke through the invisible voices, calming them to silence.
"Why?" Squall was huddled by the door, finding it impossible to even drag his body to his bed, his arms wrapped around himself, providing comfort and warmth.
"Why…would you do this?" questions raged across Squall's mind, running rampant in his brain. A sudden, unexplainable anger coursed through Squall, making his limbs shake, and his forehead perspire, the sweat mixing with the tears, forming into one. "We forgave you! Why do this?! W…we loved you."
The questions hung in the air, making it hard to breathe, making Squall feel as though he would be crushed underneath all of them. Though asked, they had not been answered.
The gunblader was tired. No denying it. He just wanted to wake up and find out that it had all been a terrible nightmare invoked by Seifer's days as Ultimecia's Knight. The days when Squall had wanted nothing more than to kill Seifer…
Squall went deeper into his mind, his shivering stopped, his eyes glazed over. He un-junctioned all of his GF's without thinking about it, and started uncovering memories long lost under the Guardian Force's spell. Before the war…before SeeD…before the Garden… People's faces that he had long forgotten flashed in front of him…Edea, while she was running the orphanage, ushering everyone inside the house; an auburn haired child running around making his hands into guns, ignoring Matron's attempts at control; a short, blonde child holding his knee where he had fell on a rock; and…
Squalls heart stopped for a moment.
He saw himself, sitting next to a rather tall, blonde boy, their legs draped over the platform and almost reaching the ocean. Squall saw himself pull the older boy into a friendly hug, the blonde fully returning his hug.
The younger Squall pulled out a white feather and handed it to the blue-eyed boy sitting next to him, carefully placing the feather into Seifer's larger hands. The blonde looked at it for several seconds before reaching into his pockets and pulling out a black feather, which he ceremoniously placed in the cupped hands of the other boy.
Squall felt pain course through his body. He unconsciously clenched his hands, and his body tightened into spasms. He lay there for what seemed like hours, fighting of the spasms of pain that with it brought memories.
Squall's eyes slowly opened, remembering what had happened to Seifer. He tried to bolt up, but was held down by the pain in his body. The tremors still shook him. He lifted his hand, still clutched together from the spasms. He slowly unclenched it, looking for what, he did not know.
A beautiful perfectly formed pure black feather lay in Squall's hand.
A/N: -.-' Leave a review ^.^ This will probably remain one-shot, though if I sit down and start writing, don't blame me. I hope you enjoyed it.