Disclaimer: I don't own Seifer Almasy or his posse, though I'd like to.
Note: This fic(or rather, scene) was written in response to Alonia Everclear's challenge on the Seiftis Forever board. The very first part, "Dark night ... the mirror" belongs to Alonia.
They Come to Me
Dark night, dark blood carrying with it a river of rage that had brought him to this point. And the horror of it suddenly shone with the clarity of his face in the mirror to explode in a scream that echoed in the night. Fear spurted forth in blinding red, in the cracks of his shattered and crumbling face, in the burning of his hand and in the fire in his brain.
"Fuck you!" He screamed louder to be heard over the footsteps behind him. "Get away from me! I'll-" If he did not say something he would die, if his voice was not heard he would be crushed by the figures who crowded in on him.
"Seifer!" Strong hands grabbed him from the back, and to be held, to be immobile, was the greatest terror of all.
I've got to run run away far from all this they'll get me now they're gonna-
Heat, and stinging across a cheek, and there was ground under his feet again. He looked up and the silver-haired woman with a red eye stared back at him, the palm of her raised hand as red as his cheek must be. The hands behind him were supporting him now so he would not collapse to the tiled floor.
"Fu?"
He looked to the wall behind her and saw only gray concrete where the bathroom mirror had been. Not another one. His hand throbbed with pain.
The arms holding him slowly relaxed, and he turned to face Raijin, hulking and gentle, looking distressed.
"Seifer." Raijin's voice was trembling. "You okay, man?"
"Yeah." He kept his right hand from view--he would bandage it later. Fujin and Raijin's presence had driven the specters away, and the bathroom was just a bathroom, the broken mirror just a pile of glass. "Yeah, I'm fine."
He turned to Fujin to tell her and Raijin to go back to bed.
And the burned child peeked out from behind her. Seifer stared at the child, her hairless head, her infection-bloated skin, melted eyelids that had no lashes, every feature in livid detail under the swinging lightbulb.
And they were there again, all of them--the old woman with her brains blown out, the soldier who tried to hold his intestines inside his split abdomen with both hands, the young boy who walked with his throat slit ear to ear. They came to him, to the small house in Fisherman's Horizon, from the frozen wastelands of Trabia, from the temperate island of Balamb, from the deserts of Esthar, from the great forests of Galbadia, all the innocents who had died of too many dreams and too much ambition. His dream, and his ambition.
They crowded around him out of thought and sanity, he had nowhere to stand among their multitude. Their breaths touched his neck and their shoulders jostled his, and through them all the burned child gazed at him, and grinned.
"SEIFER?"
He backed very slowly out the door, not daring to take his eyes from the teeming dead that filled the small bathroom.
"What's up, ya know?"
They would never know. Why he would stare into thin air gibbering, why he smashed mirrors that reflected no face but his own, why he woke up nights screaming. Seifer spared a glance at the faces of his friends, so near. They would never understand.
He turned and fled blindly to his room, cradling his bleeding hand.
He lay down on the creaking bed, exhausted but unable to sleep. He watched the door with eyes that would not shut, and waited.
Presently the door squeaked. There were stuttering footsteps across the floor, and quietly the burned child came to sit beside his pillow.
-the end-