Rip, Torn, Tumble
(straight into me)
~ Vain 9.4.2002
*------------~*~*~*~ --=-- ~*~*~*~-------------*
I do not own Squall Leonhart, Seifer Almsay or any of the other characters in the game Final Fantasy VIII; they belong to Squaresoft and their respective creators. The story and its concepts are mine.
Please be forewarned that this story contains spoilers, yoai, shounen-ai, mature themes, and violence. Translation: stuff you won't see until you finish the game, fighting, swearing, angst, Seifer/Squall man-love, and a dab of NCS. Get over it or go away.
The only profit I get from this is emotional satisfaction, so please read and review. Thank you.
~Vain
*------------~*~*~*~ --=-- ~*~*~*~-------------*
Chapter Two
A Little Life In Yet
*---------~*~*~*~ --=-- ~*~*~*~----------*
"Who is right and who is wrong? No one!
But if you are alive—live: tomorrow you'll die as I might have died an hour ago.
And is it worth tormenting oneself,
when one only has a moment in comparison with eternity?"
- Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace
*------------~*~*~*~ --=-- ~*~*~*~-------------*
I have lived my entire life in a state of confusion. The world spins through space 18.5 miles per second, steadily passing me by and leaving me frozen in its exhaust. And they don't understand it at all. I am the High Commander. The Slayer of Sorceresses. I am the Lion of Belamb—The SeeD. I see beyond the obvious, lead in times when other men would have fallen on their knees and wept. I walked into hell and expected nothing in return but a slow death.
So they say. They don't understand at all.
I have never held all the answers, nor boldly led the way into anything. If anything, I was the least sure of all of them. They had me to look to—or blame, although I don't think they'd have ever done it—and they did so without hesitation. I had no one. Well, no one left to look to. Sis. My mother. Laguna. Edea. Cid. They all left me in some way or another—averted their eyes from my face. I didn't care.
I got better everyday. I would be okay without them. I tried really hard. I would be just fine by myself.
But I'm not.
And the memory of them—of him—is eating me alive. His flashing green eyes. (Mocking me. Loving me.) His strong, calloused hands. (Holding me down.) His laughter, suddenly so cruel. (Owning me.) His scent—pine and gun oil and sparks. (Marking me. Suffocating me.) Almost like Irvine's, but like steel and fire where Irvine's is water and mint.
"Squall? Squall? Are you even listening to me?"
Rinoa's coffee brown eyes are like little chips of amber as they bore into me from the other side of my desk and I want to shudder. My face hardens a bit instead.
Papers rustle faintly as she lays her proposal down. She'll be eligible for her SeeD test soon although she really doesn't want to take it and we both know it. This is all for her father's sake. But Rinoa will never be a killer and everyone's happy with that, especially me. Her face twists in a slight frown and it takes me a second to realize that she wants a response.
"Yes," I murmur after a moment.
She stares at me silently when I don't say anything else and soon the clock on the wall is the only sound in the room. Her eyes soften in that peculiar way of hers that makes her indescribably beautiful to me and she exhales slowly, her lithe frame settling back into the comfortably functional chair across from me.
"Really?" Her voice is so soft that I might have missed it if I hadn't been staring at her.
"Yes," I say in the exact same tone. Soft. Flat. Empty. As though there were nothing more to the word or to all the other words I never say to her. And there is nothing more to what I do and do not say to her. Because there's nothing there.
That's solely my fault and we both know it.
She shifts and I can feel her unease batter against my mental walls. Time between us has somehow become a solid, physical thing these past few months. We fight, we argue . . . Or rather she fights and argues at me and I just watch her until she burns herself out. It's not because I don't care about her; I honestly do. She's my sorceress and, even if she were to relieve me of that duty, that would be irrevocable to me. So long as I'm alone, I have her. I need her.
I'm not angry at her. I'm not annoyed or cross with her for any specific reason.
She's just . . . no longer worth the effort of speaking to.
Maybe I am angry at her. Just a little. She shouldn't have said those things to me that morning—not then. Not in front of the whole student body. Not on that day of all days.
Rinoa's not a genius, but she's not stupid either. She knew better. She wanted to make me angry. I knew it then and I know it now—she told me as much. She wanted me to react. And I did. I don't think I've ever seen her so frightened since I've met her. She had good reason to be.
"How was the mission?" Her voice reminds me of feathers. My poor, sweet, beautiful Rinoa—delicate as a feather.
"Fine."
"Was everything okay? You were all alright?"
"Yes."
"Oh . . ." She trails off and the conversation begins to drift listlessly again. Her energy, the sparkle that flashed throughout her words when she speaks to me, vanished months ago.
Rinoa pushes her hair needlessly out of her face and sighs quietly. "Did you have sex with Irvine?"
I freeze. ". . . What?"
She blinks calmly and looks so terribly sad and small that for a moment I feel a twinge of shame at my utter inability to surrender to this woman. I look down at the impeccable finish of my desk instead of at her. Looking at Rinoa too much makes my head hurt lately.
"He came to my room last night and . . ." she trails off and I feel a chill overtake me, freezing my tongue and making me feel nauseous. "It's okay if you did, you know," her ashy soprano voice continues. "I don't mind. I understand . . . with everything."
"I didn't," I mutter at the reflective redwood. She waits for me to continue.
I raise my eyes to her and desperately wish that some emotion, some expression, would bleed through my body and let her know how important it was that she understand this. "I . . . wouldn't do that. You know that."
Her eyes flash briefly with anger and her tone hardens. "But he knows?"
I settle back in the chair. Yes. He knows. But not what you think. Irvine is an observer . . . Even though he didn't know me that well back then, he could probably tell when they found me. I was so sure they all knew . . . But only Irvine knows that secret. Attentive Irvine, always watching with his glowing sea-violet eyes. I suddenly don't want to talk about the cowboy—there's too much danger in that. "I don't see how. We . . . talked."
She snorted, a surprisingly indelicate sound. "Then he knows."
My eyes narrow dangerously and I can feel a glare edging its way onto my frigid features. I make no effort to conceal the ice in my voice. "You don't know what you're talking about."
My sorceress laughs bitterly. "He's all you can think of." She doesn't dare say his name in front of me—not after last time. "You call for him in your sleep—when you sleep, you don't eat, you don't go out, you don't talk . . . All you do is work. Work and kill things."
"I'm a mercenary. That's my job."
Her eyes narrow and for an instant she looks as though she wants to reach across and smack me. This is not the Rinoa I thought I could love 18 months ago.
My fault.
"You're a love-sick puppy that's been kicked one too many times." And then comes the old Rinoa, complete with the shimmer of tears on the edges of her eyelids. I'm almost relieved. "Him, of all people!"
"Enough." I don't raise my voice. I don't have to.
She twists uncomfortable in her comfortable chair for a moment before standing and stalking out of my office. I don't watch her go.
The papers on my desk have been piling up during my absence and, while I know that neither Cid nor Xu like me going out into the field, I suddenly wish that it had taken me longer to kill Hokitawa. I wish that there had been a snag or a complication or something.
I don't want to go to Esthar . . . To Laguna and Ellone. I don't want to walk these halls and hear them echo with my own footsteps. I don't want to be back to the mundane life of the Garden or to the mundane lives of my friends. I want to pretend just a few moments longer.
But wishes don't come true and I am the High Commander of Belamb Garden, Slayer of Sorceresses.
It's okay, though. I'll be okay without him. I'm trying real hard. I'll be just fine by myself.
I have to be.
*------------~*~*~*~ --=-- ~*~*~*~-------------*