Okaaay…here we go again.  Normal disclaimers apply

Chapter Eleven

 Never made it as a wise man
I couldn't cut it as a poor man stealing
And this is how you remind me
 Of what I really am
 It's not like you to say sorry
I was waiting on a different story
This time I'm mistaken
For handing you a heart worth breaking and

I've been wrong, I've been down,
To the bottom of every bottle
These five words in my head
Scream "Are we having fun yet?"

Nickelback: How You Remind Me (edit.)

And Seifer woke.

There was nothing but blue above his head. Squinting into the bright sun, he looked around. A beach.  No shit.

He was lying on his back, arms spread out to the sides. If this was another hallucination, it was fucking real.

Seifer stood up, a lengthy process that looked like it really should involve some kind of heavy lifting equipment. He swayed.

 Shit, he felt sick. The noises of seagulls and waves and his own heartbeat melted and weave together in a crazy tapestry of light and heat and the feel of sand on his bare feet.

His grey trenchcoat was familiar on his body, sand catching in the bottom of his trousers, necklace warm against his throat. But no gloves, and his hands felt naked without them. No weapons. And that felt even stranger, for such a long time he'd lived and slept and eaten with a dagger or gun always near his hand, wary and watching..

Running a hand though his soft buzzcut, Seifer looked round but there was nothing, just clear aqua water, laced with white foam and deepening out to sea, dunes behind him fading towards a golden horizon. And a set of footprints etched into the sand as if someone had come, stood by him, and then continued on.

A tiny dark figure was outlined against the rays of light further down the beach.

He started walking, feet pushing against the soft sand. The sun seemed like it should be setting soon, with the shadows long and the amber golden light washing lazily over everything it touched, but in the time it took for him to walk a good hundred metres down the beach there was no change and he left no footprints behind.

As he got closer the silhouette started to look like Quistis, and he speeded up, walking easily now on the hardpacked wet sand left by retreating waves. Bare feet traced through seaweed and kelp and tiny shells. Further on it resembled Squall….Selphie, IrvineZell…..too fast for his eyes to see and as he finally caught up and placed a hand on its shoulder to pivot it round, it was Edea.

She laughed and as he hesitated for a moment, drawing back, it flickered, changed to the empty shattered face of the dead soldier and then to an abstract cloud of blue mist, almost invisible against the sea, little glinting slits that might or might not have been wolf-eyes shining at the base of the column. Or maybe they were just bits of sand, which swirled up and coalesced like clotting black blood into the Edea shape again.

The gunblade came easily to his hand, an arc of deadly dark steel swinging up to point at the apparition's throat.

It laughed, raising a black-gloved sharpedged hand to catch the edge of the sword which made him flinch and push the sword in a jab that should have poked a neat hole in its throat and the arm sheltering it both, but left no mark. 

"Bad move."

Great . Seifer drew back a couple of steps and tried to think about what to do next.  He'd already come to the conclusion that this was probably some kind of dream, what with the changing of shapes and the way, well, everything was too perfect, the whole landscape pristine, sterile and glossy like the enclosure of some exotic animal at the zoo.

"Get the fuck out of there.  We both know it's not her.  You're not fooling anyone."

Maybe not. You decieve yourself if I think I am trying to fool you.  We both also know that your intentions were not entirely honest.  It spoke like it was rebuking a servant

"You can read minds." Flatly. Seifer shifted uncomfortably, noticing that the imaginary sun shed no heat, on a real beach he'd have been sweating rivers by now, wearing his coat.

No, but I can read yours now. You're thinking' how does it know what I'm thinking?'  

As a sign of my good will I will refrain for the moment.  And repeat my offer.

"I already tricked you once. Why the hell would you do this again?" He thought, while he said it, unless it wanted him to agree.

Needed him to agree.

  Because it was weak.

Because in a million years it was never going to get anyone else to say yes apart for some deadbeat loser who had nothing left to live for. Weaknesses could always be exploited. Maybe he could find a way to kill it, keep it on edge.  Maybe he was so far out of his depth he couldn't even see the bottom.  Maybe the sharks were just beginning to circle, out of sight.

He stuck a verbal knife in and twisted, testing the water. "You said you're weak. If you could do that you would have by now. You're just not damn strong enough, are you? Fucking useless. Otherwise you wouldn't be here, hiding in this crappy bargain-basement Gothic Vincent Price shithole. You'd be out there doing some bad. And I don't see you doing anything much apart from hanging round.  I don't think you've got any power. I'm not helping something that won't help me. Go fuck yourself. I'm calling your bluff."

The apparition flickered once more between the shape it had adopted and the column of blue fog, almost too fast to see.  It resembled some kind of bizarre editing trick on a too-cool-to be-true music video, an unholy combination of woman, liquid nitrogen and Haze blue air freshener.  It seemed to think for a moment (though how the hell Seifer could tell what a pile of blue smoke was thinking he had no idea)and then spoke in a voice like the slamming of wrought iron gates, It was cold and final and very very old and it made Seifer's skin prickle like a bitch.

Very well.

He just had time to think shit, now that was a mistake, and the beach spun with a lunatic funfair slant colours merging sand to swirling blue and misty green and back to greyblurredbluedarkredlikelipstickandgrapesandgrey ..clouds. Clouds. And a grey desert. Wasteland. Time compression?

Great. Déjà vu.

His subconscious must really hate him.

The nothing-landscape spun once more with a sick lurch and then settled. A breeze brushed his shoulder, a voice at his back.

Always leaping into things you don't understand…

He spun, gunblade cutting through the air.

Behind you

Nothing but greyness and wind.

Behind you.

He whirled, free hand balling into a fist, eyes scanning the featureless blurs for something to focus on.

You are slow.  And predictable.

"You don't know me."

A movement in the mist and Edea was standing again in the fog, all dangerous smile and little black dress, eyes burning amber.

"Don't fucking do that."

The Edea-thing came closer. It gave a innocent radiant grin that the possessed Edea never could have attempted, but he had a nasty feeling that the innocence was only a veil over something darker and far deeper, older.

Why? I know everything about you. I can see your memories. When you were five years old you father threw you through a window and broke three of your fingers and two of your ribs. When you lived at Garden you used to keep your copies of Playboy under the mattress and your little roommate found them and ripped them up and said RAGE and threw them out of the window.  And of course your career as the sorceresses knight.  How…..romantic. Faithful. Stupid. It made it so easy .because the pathways were already open. Not everything can be solved by fighting.

"Fight this, fucker." He slashed at the air, ineffectually, Damn. He closed his eyes, opened them. Still there. The landscape of nothing shimmered unpleasantly.

You turned me down once. Have you heard the saying 'do it the hard way, or the easy way?'. This is the hard way  .Pity  .It would have been so much easier if you'd done this of your own free will.  It takes so much power to go against someone's will .But I can feel it in your head…...the dreams , the magic….live in dreams for far too long, and you go mad, you can't wake up properly and you never really get the hang of reality again.  Isn't that what you're afraid of?  But this time, they'll never end. You think everything seems so drab since you came back. A  knight without a cause to fight for. I can let you live again. You remember how you felt so alive then? I can give it back.

"I'd rather die."

Sorry.  It spun, face changing into a disingenuous childish smile. Choice is no longer an option..

The wraith flickered again and changed into Quistis, hand on her hip and with a coquettish smile she never would have in real life. A pale hand ran up one thigh, to her breasts, presenting herself to him like she was demonstrating an expensive new product. It was just playing with him now and he resented that, something here again he couldn't fight with steel.

"I'm not being a fucking tool again. Get as much blood on your instruments as you want but don't leave me to take the blame when someone hammers a stake through your heart."

The wraith turned its head. You care for her. Way to change the subject. 

"I don't care about anyone. " A lie.  "Except myself."

You like to pretend that, don't you?

"I'll kill you." And at that moment he meant every word.

I am… hard to kill.

"Well, I guessed that. But a sword through your throat might prove you wrong. Want to try?"

How sweet. You've already lost, and you don't even know it. You can't, anyway. Not with that..thing, that piece of metal. Not now, not here. Even less than the memory of a sword. How quaint. But you always did want to be a hero.'

"You don't know anything about me, you fucking piece of shit." His hands shifted restlessly on the hilt of Hyperion.

I know one thing, Seifer Almasy.

He snarled  "What?", feet shifting in the nothingness, as he moved automatically into a defensive crouch, poised, weight balanced evenly on the balls of his feet.

You've lost.

It backhanded him across the face, almost faster than he could see. He'd already brought the gunblade up into a guard position that should have chopped its hand off like a stick of butter, but the sharp edge cut through the arm of the thing like a stone through water and the flesh split and resealed behind it. The feel of it against his skin, a grey slick touch of it in his head. Another second of that and he would have gone completely and gratefully insane.

The spirit shifted, at once a room of twenty or thirty people, and just one, some male, female, young, old. The face changed and morphed too, from a soldier's mouth open in a silent scream and with a scar neatly bisecting the remains of his left eye, a young child with her hair braided in beads and rags, a old woman hunched and wispy and thin another man this time middle aged and with a beard the colour of salt and pepper a girl with long brown hair and green eyes.

 Seifer touched his face, burning, skin on fire and a substance like mercury seemed to cling to his fingers like acid before he shook it away, the pain like nothing he'd ever felt before, like blood and death and defeat. Like someone had heated a knife and pressed it to his cheekbone, slicing through skin and flesh and bone and muscle until nothing was left and then cutting down into his soul as well, cutting through all his little petty hopes and desires and despairs like a cheesewire though soft wax.

And so maybe it'd kill him after all, he thought with the perfect logic and clarity that only came at such times, after you've seen the person in the shadows you didn't know was there, heard the click of a gun cocking and just knew you weren't going to be able to move away in time.

 It raised an arm and touched a hand lightly against his forehead and the world fell away.

Seifer fell with it. It was hard to stand when the ground had just been ripped out from under your feet, no matter how imaginary.

He was falling. He was going to die. Again.  Dammit.

Seifer fell in silence. To proud to scream, too heavy to float.

There was no sound, and nothing to see except the greyness blurring past. His coat flapped behind him as twisted in the air, falling head down and trying not to look at whatever lay below him until he did anyway and it was just more fucking grey so he didn't bother again..

Onlyadreamonlyadreamonlyadream. Think it could freak him out?

He had to admit, it was succeeding. If he hit rockbottom he was going to wind up looking like an imploded plum…. Stay calm. He could do this. The one thing he knew how to do. He'd fallen before. The fallen knight. It hurt…..it got easier with practice.

A voice in his ear. He craned his head round, but the sound was coming from a point just behind him, and he couldn't see anything, no matter how fast he turned his head.

You can make no mistakes and still lose. It isn't weakness, it's just life. It doesn't have to be this hard.

Seifer lashed out because who knew, maybe it was the kind of monster you just had to hit in the right place to kill, despite the whole limitless magic thing. His hand cut through empty air. Maybe not, then.  But when in doubt, hit something. Makes you feel better.  Stupid, Talk about an invitation to rip open psychological scars.

It was a philosophy that had served him well, or not so well, depending on your viewpoint.

 "Over.  My.  Dead.  Body." Hard to talk, the wind ripping the words out of his mouth and carrying them away.  Casual defiance, in an 'I can do witty dialogue in a situation of almost certain death' way..

You're no use to me dead.

He looked round, despite himself, opening his mouth to tell the ..thing it was talking bullshit to find the coat flapping behind him and ripped into bloodstained tatters and something on his back that could be either sweat or blood. The half-formed words turned into a muffled obscenity as he tried not to scream, gone beyond begging or anything else until the pain passed, wind whipping the words away from his face as he exhaled in a long string of cursewords of every damn thing he could think of. Blood from wrist to fingertips in long sticky threads, ground under nails chewed and stained with nicotine and paler from months of winter gloves.

The wind carried the drops away like red flowers in the wind.

"What the fuck?" Why was it doing it? Why now? Why him?

He just wanted to be left alone.

 Fucking trouble magnet for any freaky-ass wack job thought it wanted to take over the damn world.

I can't hurt you, you know. It's all in your head.

It felt damn real. "Aaa..fucking Hyne..Will you stop screwing up my mind, you freaky bastard?"  The pain stopped again. Heaving, dragging in breaths , dry retching on an empty stomach, only the harsh metal taste of coppery blood  and bile in his mouth and a feeling in his belly pulling him down like lead, as surely as a millstone, what the hell, he was finished, dead, whatever this thing wanted.

And the next time he looked round his hands were clean, normal, with only callouses and old scars marking them, souvenirs he couldn't lose from a holiday that never really was that great to begin with. When he woke up, if he woke up, they'd look just like that, he bet. No marks. Well, none that weren't there already.

Bet they'd be shaking a bit, though.

Do you want to be like this?

Visions slipped across his mind, mostly of him.  Alone, in a stale room stinking of beer and cigarettes, pulling an old belt around his arm with his teeth and slipping a stained hypo full or a clear liquid into arms that bore the needle tracks overmarking old scars, old, bitter, drunk, dead, in a wheelchair, in a coffin, back at Garden and spending all his life hiding from something he'd been and done forever, pitied by some and hated by others and in a cell with crosses marking days on the wall and the whole place half-covered with pencil marks and the rest by a poster hanging sideways some chick in a fur bikini people queuing to point and stare and feel all damn smug that they'd made the right choices, been with the winning side.  Bastards.  

If it was going to pull the old 'hypothetical futures' balls, why couldn't there be some happy ones? Maybe people who tried to destroy the world didn't get happy futures.

" 'm not like that." But then it'd be nice to have one, right now. "Thought I was..taller."

Something yanked at his head, forcing him to look at the ground. And the first thing he thought was 'hey, there is ground' followed by 'oh, shit.'

No-one to pull him out or catch or hold on to. He hadn't expected it.

Or maybe he had.

Everything stopped.

Oh yeah, go check out  

for a great ff8 MST featuring Robot!Squall, Whiny!Rinoa and Stoned!Selphie. . But for God's sake don't go on it unless you have at least two hours of time to spare. Need to work. Must work..dammit.

Okay.  This chapter's a bit shorter than I usually write 'em, but then the chapters before it were longer than I wanted, so it must kind of balance out. I also like beach imagery, but judging from the Kingdom Hearts amvs, so do Square.

 The beach stuff was heavily inspired by an old clip from a black and white film about WW2 pilots that was a backdrop at a Flaming Lips gig, in case anyone cares. And all the alternative reality things were fic descriptions on the first three pages of ff.net, pt from the poster thing, which is of course Shawshank Redemption. Poor guy.

Also, my wonderful sister made me a GB CD to cheer me up what with examinage and all. This is the song list, in case anyone is interested, some are chapter songs, some will be, and the rest..just fit, I guess. GB-best read with these songs in the player, a pint in your right hand and the best part of a packet of fags in your left….the author in no way condones smoking and cannot be held responsible in any way for lung cancer caused by reading this work of fiction….

Intro:

Sympathy-GooGoo Dolls, Michigan Militia-Moxy Fruvous

Main:

Hello City-Barenaked Ladies, The Trouble Song-John Gorka,  Forty Miles from the Sun-Bush, Sullivan Street-Counting Crows, Crash-Dave Matthews Band,  Monsters-The Bush The Tree and Me ( my sister's mate's sister's band-they're very good, go make them rich and famous) Over at the Frankenstein Place-Rocky Horror Show soundtrack, Scar Tissue-Red Hot Chilli Peppers, The Space Between-Dave Mathews Band, Fool-Mansun, Name- GooGoo Dolls

Epilogue

Do you Sleep-Lisa Loeb, Stress-Jim's Big Ego.

Also, thanks to breaker-one (Hope that doesn't mean he's OOC…got tired of "must save random orphans..drowning baptists..baby seals" Seifer. He was never particularly nice in the game. Also, I think it's a combo of the English author trying to find alternative ways to say 'fuck', the coat, the smoking, the sarcasm and the blondness. Aaaah….I give up.  Seifer IS Spike.) Dalpal (ta) ElfGurl (also thanks a lot), Kams Blue Tiger (thanks, but what the hell does rnrn MEAN, guys?) Quistis88 (d00d, you make me happy.) VegaKeep (well, the predictability of isn't that high..what you think's going to happen probably is what's going to happen. ,I'm afraid) and yaya-meets-nana (cool name)