In Who's Name? Chapter 22: In Who's Name?, a final fantasy viii fanfic

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VIII belongs to Squaresoft.

I had to write this. It's taken me a little while to find the right words and it's smack in the middle of my exams too. I'd like to say thank you to everyone for their reviews. I hope, if anyone has a critique to make, to address it to me at goldenstarlight@hotmail.com. Or if it's short enough, to review it at ff.net. I'd be very glad to hear your views.

And, since I'm an anime fan, I'd sincerely like to recommend CLAMP's works, particularly Cardcaptor Sakura, Tokyo Babylon and X/1999. The last is pretty bloody—decapitations and what have you . —but the storyline is good. Not at all straightforward, and has plenty of room for speculation. Tokyo Babylon must be read before X, by the way.

One last thing—someone here plagiarised a Cardcaptor Sakura fanfic. If you discover any plagiarism, go straight to the Plagiarism Police Patrol. I forget their website address, but they're here on the web. One division deals with anime fics, and the other with non-anime fics. I understand they deal with all sorts of fic.

Okay—enjoy!

Title: In Who's Name?

Part 22: In Who's Name?

If his mood was worse than black, they never saw it.

If his eyes were a green close to black, they never felt it.

If his heart was lost somewhere, they never knew it.

If he was torn a thousand ways, caught up in a Time Compression created by his own mind—they could never realise it.

One day, you're ambling along, not remembering many things, and wondering who you are, and why your name is Seifer Almasy; the next, you suddenly fall back, teetering as your memory hits you with all the gentle consideration of a dozen tsunamis, assaulting you on all sides.

You remember.

Your name is Seifer Almasy.

Born twenty-one years ago come this winter.

An orphan, with a childhood by the sea.

Your home used to be a place you were comforted by, where you had a mother you shared with other children—children you called your playmates, friends, siblings, whatever. You fought with them on the golden sands of your home, ate with them at the same table, slept with them in the same room, competed with them to see who could run faster, jump higher, swim farthest, or catch the wind and ride on its heels…

But you had to grow up. Too fast—too fast the sands of time run for the Fated Children, and you and the others heard the call...

Your best friend, someone you could call brother deep, deep inside you, in a place you kept secret, turned his face from you and walked away. That was the beginning. You were only a child; he was only a child; how could either of you know what it would mean?

You went to a huge new school. An academy, they called it. The best in the world. How did you get in? You heard about it. You went there to learn about the world—and search for the fulfilment of a dream. But in the summer before you entered the Garden, you were elsewhere. Travelling the world. You ran away from the orphanage, remember? You wanted to see the world. You wanted to race all over the world, through forests green, and wide, open seas, under skies as blue as the cornflowers of your childhood…Did you feel that your time was coming? That there was a chance that you might never run again, under those skies, through those trees, or feel the waves at your feet? Perhaps you did. Perhaps you tried to run from the call.

You were always a romantic. In you, fire edged its lines in your nature, in your body, and in your mind. With every movement and thought, you were fire. It threatened to burst its borders, and it made you restless and defiant. It burned you and every day, you fought it. Others in your place would sink into the mire of depression, lose control of themselves; not you. You fought it, every day, battling the fire, striving to be its equal if not its master, before it could consume you utterly.

Then one day, you met for the first time, a beautiful girl who was different. Light. In her, you saw laughter, and joy, and the promise of happiness, because she radiated it. Such a lovely, joyous person. And like you, she was a romantic. Both of you had dreams. She understood what it meant to chase a dream. She was chasing hers, after all, against the wishes of her only family.

But then the summer was over, and you had to go after your dream. You had a vision. You would be—the best. A strong, brave leader, renowned for your courage and intelligence, and your chivalry, and you would save people all over the world. Where there was suffering, you would raise your hand and rid the people of their pains. And the world would grow to love the name of Seifer Almasy. You would be a knight in a time when knights were no longer there to help the world. You would lead a new order…a new order of knights.

You would save the world. This was the dream, the highest pinnacle, and the fire was satisfied. And then you understood the fire—it was yours. Its name? Ambition.

You thought the Garden would be a different place. You went in and what you saw there should have told you to be careful, right from the start. The first person you saw…was a memory from your childhood, now grown up. She was tall and beautiful, her golden hair neatly tied up, dressed in a grand military uniform, smart boots clicking sharply against the floor as she walked, head held high and poise undisturbed. She carried a sheaf of papers, held against her chest. In her face you traced the memory of a childhood friend, a girl you had grown up with. The features were the same, and blue eyes behind the glasses were clear and watchful, and courageous. Once, they had been clear and unafraid. They had changed with the years.

You stared at her, unable to say anything and wondering if she remembered you. And she looked back at you, eyes surprised but viewing you as one might view a stranger, and then she shifted her gaze away. You opened your mouth to call her name, but another beat you to it.

"Instructor Trepe!"

She turned calmly to address the person who had called her name.

You froze.

Instructor Trepe?

Instructor? She couldn't be older than you—she wasn't!

You should have known. But all you remembered as you stood there was that she had forgotten.

So did you.

Like her, you forgot. You fought with them, yes, and ate with them, and slept under the same roof with them, and competed with them. But like them, you forgot. You even forgot your dream and saw it as illusion, stripping it of its beauty and seeing only the power and glory that came with it. A dream is made not of its power and glory, but of its heart. The day your dream lost its heart, you lost it too.

And then someone gave your dream greater power and glory. Edea, Sorceress Possessed. So she tapped into your mind, and found your memories, and shaped them to her will, and made you her vassal and vessel. In shaping them, she had to wake the heart in you—but it was too late by then, because you were already trapped and alone, and too weak to fight on your own.

She left you with scars too many and too deep to speak of—your scars, and the scars of the friends you hurt. So you fled, or tried to, and the world found you anyway, and howled for revenge. But they freed you instead, although you would rather have been punished—and they said your former instructor found the woman who saved you from death, and who laid you bare for the whole world to see.

But you knew they wouldn't want to see you anymore—and you didn't want to see them either, because now that the scars were open again, they hurt again, and the woman who opened them to save a life you would gladly give up, told you to go, go and close them and heal them, because only you can heal them now. Too raw, she had said to you sadly. Your scars were too raw.

So you went far, far away, to live at Fisherman's Horizon, where the people were silent and taciturn, and kept their noses in their own business. You stayed with the Master Fisherman, who had returned to Fisherman's Horizon for a little while—the very day you arrived there, actually. So you didn't end up living at Fisherman's Horizon, but on a quiet little island not far off, where you did a lot of fishing. The Master Fisherman came and went as he liked, and neither of you disturbed the other.

But you couldn't shake off all of your old life, because there were two people who still cared, two friends who had been at Garden with you and whom you'd dragged into the mire of the Sorceress' Knight. But they still cared. That was the important thing. So they came to live with you, having scoured the world over to find you, and they found work not far off—at Fisherman's Horizon. And though your life wasn't going anywhere, it didn't seem to matter so much anymore. Being a fisherman was quite a safe job. All you had to do was to catch fish and sell it, to the nearby Fisherman's Wharf. You had friends who cared, and a roof over your head, in a quiet place where you could be at peace and even forget, if only for a little while, how much those scars hurt.

Until one day, when the old fire rose in you, and the battle sense you thought you had honed into spotting fish and squalls reared its head and smelt something rotten in the state of FH. So you followed your battle scent of old on instinct, and put your nose into a hornet's nest.

The hornets caught you…

…you don't want to remember what they did to you—but you have to. They opened your scars again, and made fresh scars. Again and again, they made you remember what green glades, cool breezes and deep blue ocean waves helped you ease into the past. They made you remember, and left you to die. They had as little mercy as you had once.

And they're going to do what they did to you again—only they're going to do it to someone you care for. It doesn't matter how you care for her, or whether you care more for this woman in your life, or for the girl who first shared your dreams. What matters is to make sure that she lives, whole and unbroken, unlike you. And to do whatever it takes to snatch her away before she ends up in the ocean, the way you did.

Once someone used you to destroy everything you held dear, even if you didn't know it was happening. You won't let it happen again—not to her, not to anyone, not to Garden.

You are Seifer Almasy, who once hunted crabs as a little boy, with your playmates, along the golden sands. Today, you go a-hunting again, with those same playmates. Out of the ocean and into the light—may you find the crabs you hunt now.