Emerald Tears 3/?
By Nix Winter
Disclaimers: I don't own them. The Final Fantasy series is a great set of games. I urge you to buy them and play. I should also point out that this story is entirely my responsibility.
Warnings: *tries real hard to think of any* Might a spoiler here and there for the game, but not likely.
Emerald Tears
Somewhere in the halls, dark shadowy places, Squall came to a new understanding of life, of himself. It was like that stupid rebirthing ceremony that Rinoa had dragged him too. One struggles through the dark, fearing to lose the warmth and comfort, only to emerge in the light of freedom and self-responsibility. Seifer's frail body lay against his, hair feathered out over Squall's neck. The halls seemed endless. He wasn't sure they'd been this long on his way in.
About the time he was going to start looking at signs on the wall for the way out, Seifer's fingers fisted in his shirt, clutching tightly. He stopped and tilted his head to look at the face of his rival. Anyone else in this condition, he'd have pitied them, distanced himself from them on the sheer grounds that they were likely to be leaving him soon. Seifer just rolled the world different though. His grip on Squall's shirt wasn't needy, wasn't an act of fear. It was an act of possession, of unmitigated gall. It was pure Seifer to grab onto his rescuer as if he had just captured himself a nice butterfly.
Squall felt one side of his mouth twitch upwards. "Seifer."
The smile that he got as a reward, that was Seifer too, all smirk. Squall hugged him gently. "I'm taking you home, Seifer. I have your blade, your things."
"Owww," he said, a mewling sound.
Squall froze, releasing his hug slowly, holding the man in his arms like the finest porcelain.
"Got warn him, man with gray eyes," Seifer whispered, his fingers relaxing. "Sorceress hunting him."
Seifer's small cry drew Rinoa's attention and a frown from her. "This place is barbaric."
Squall gave one small nod.
"He's in pain," Rinoa said apologetically.
Squall ground his teeth. He knew that. Why did she feel the need to point this out to him?
Then she closed her eyes, stepped very close, and touched Seifer's temple. Glitter floated from her fingers, a whole haze of sparkling magic. This little cloud flowed over Seifer's face, leaving color and firmness in his skin. His breathing eased. His fingers grew stronger. Even his hair seemed to lift and lighten. And that was it. Seifer settled into a more relaxed sleep.
"What did you do?" The spell was weak. If he junctioned, he could get a better spell than that.
Her mouth fell open, then closed tight. In her furious-at-the-world voice, "That was curaga, mixed with esuna. I know I'm supposed to be careful, but Squall, he's hurting."
"He's gonna need a full life soon," Squall snapped. They both knew that Rinoa's spell should have done more than bring back a little color to him.
Squall walked. His pace now so rapid that Rinoa had to run to keep up just about. It was this place, Squall had decided. Not even magic could heal in this place.
Rinoa followed along, hurrying to keep up. When they emerged out the front, sunlight bathed them all, made even the dull of Seifer's hair shine gold.
Zell was waiting in an armored van, of all things. He stepped out of the driver's seat, waved, "Hey! Who's that?"
"Seifer," Squall said, moving down the last few steps as Rinoa opened the side door.
"No fucking way," Zell said, ducking back inside to watch Squall lay Seifer down on the cot that pulled down from the wall. SeeD equipment was multi use. "Can't be Seifer."
Rinoa took the passenger seat in the front. "Let's go."
Squall fastened the safety restraint over Seifer's chest, then turned to pull the side door closed. "It's Seifer."
"Whoaa man," Zell started the van, still looking over his shoulder. "His crimes have caught up to him. He didn't resist getting captured? Or did you lay him OUT?"
"Zell!" Rinoa slapped him lightly on a muscular arm. "We're rescuing him."
"Oh. Right." Zell turned back and put the van in gear. "Yeah, rescuing. It's not like he didn't try to kill us well enough the first time."
There wasn't much to say to that. The trip back to Garden passed in uncomfortable silence. Some things were just facts. Squall was in love with Rinoa. Seifer was a violent criminal.
The things that Squall was good at pretty much all involved some kind fighting. Sorting out his own inner thoughts and fears could be considered a kind of fighting, he thought, but it was all new. It was those drawings, the paintings on the walls. It made him know that he had seen Seifer wrong. All of them had lost their memories a little when they started junctioning GFs. That was why he still didn't remember all of those things that Seifer drew.
Impulsively, he unfastened his safety restraint and reached for the older of the sketchbooks. Sitting there in the floor, his back to where Seifer lay, Squall started going through the sketch book. It was like seeing right into Seifer's mind.
These were images poured out from the blond's very soul. One page after another, there was just one little bit after another of Squall. Pencil and paper had never meant love to Squall, not before this. He paused, took a slow breath, holding his lip between his teeth, as he turned the drawing side ways.
Warm slid down his cheek. The hand that drew this had moved the pencil with a tenderness, expressing a kindness, a knowingness of what it had drawn. The artist had recreated an image with love. There was Squall, right down to the lines of his lips, the shades in his eyes, tangled wild hair. It tore him apart, seeing himself through Seifer's eyes, seeing the distance and the pain in his own face. No wonder everyone was always trying to save him from himself.
It hurt, so deeply, prying open his heart, hurt like the first breath after a full life spell. Squall felt that he was loved, not for what he could do, or what someone could make him into, but just for himself, distant, bitchy, angsty. Seifer loved him.
Romantic love or just true friend love, he didn't know, hadn't thought that far. "Zell."
"Yeah?"
"I wouldn't let anyone hurt Seifer. I will not allow anyone to hurt him."
Just pulling into the garage, Zell looked at Squall's tear wet face in the rearview mirror. "Whatever you say, man. I got your back which ever way you go."
Squall nodded curtly, acknowledging that he was being watched and that Zell would follow his lead. He turned the page in the sketch book. Even in the dim light of the garage, he could see that the next drawing was only in Sefer's imagination. It was a drawing of Squall, of his face, white fur of his jacket brushing his jaw, and the hugest smile on his face. Squall promised himself that he would give this to Seifer, he would smile for Seifer.
The van parked, jerked a bit as the break was thrown on. The door snapped open and Irvine and Martin looked in. "Is it true," Martin asked. "Did you really catch that asshole?"
"Oh man," Zell moaned, "Don't go there! Squall, let me help carry him."
"I'll go tell the doctor what we know," Rinoa said, a distance in her voice.
Squall nodded to her, quickly gathering Seifer's sketch books. "Here," he said, giving them to her.
Then it was about getting the cot Seifer was on disengaged the wall, so that Zell and he could carry him out.
"Oh Hyne," Martin sneered, "You really got him good didn't you!"
Irvine made a sound like he'd touched something hot when he saw the look in Squall's eyes. "Martin, be quiet."
The main doctor and three med techs met them half way there, got Seifer on to a wheeled medical table. Squall stood there, watching them take him away, hand over his mouth. The world was all changed, all different than he'd imagined.
Irvine and Zell stood there with him. Touching Squall's shoulder, Irvine asked, "Tell me?"
Squall shrugged. "He's hurt."
"Yeah, I can see that. I mean, why are you crying."
Wiping his cheeks with the back of his hands, he said, "I'm not."
He followed, slowly, Irvine and Zell, Selphie joining them on the way. Quistis met them there and then all of Seifer's family was there. Except Matron Edea and Sid; Squall didn't know if they'd notified or not yet.
Squall didn't know much about medicine. Magic made practical knowledge less attractive. Much easier to just cast curaga on someone until they were okay again. So when the doctor tried to explain why magic wouldn't work on Seifer was like being told about a whole new world all over again. There was an object inside his skull, blocking the energy of the magic.
"So what you're saying," Squall tried to recap to the doctor sitting across the desk from Rinoa and him. "Is that someone forced this thing into his head. We don't know what's for, but the only magic that will work on him now that it's breaking down is something that's connected to this thing? And that if you remove it you might kill him and if you don't remove it he might die anyway. And that either way, his personality is probably lost with all the memories because this thing is eating into his brain? Isn't that a little dark ages?"
"Basically," Dr. Ewen agreed "You seem to be very important to him. You're as close to next of kin as he has, so the decision is yours. I feel he has the best chance of survival by removing the cortical net."
"What is something like that good for? Why would someone do that to him?" Squall felt like when Ellone was just gone, as if he'd just been robbed again.
"I found references to such things in the early sorceress wars." Dr. Ewen took a deep breath. "Such things are used to junction a human. I would think that it was used by Ultimcia to control Seifer, to channel power to him. He was her knight, after all."
"Seifer never would have agreed to something like that, to something in his head like that." Rinoa protested then reached for Squall's hand, gave a gentle squeeze before he pulled away. "Maybe he was fighting her, to protect Squall and me, and she just did that to him."
"Oh Hyne." Squall paced, almost knocking over his chair when he got up. "She raped and destroyed his mind. But you saw the drawings. There is still Seifer in that body. He's not gone."
"The quicker we do this surgery, the sooner healing magic will be able to affect him."
"How long?" Squall asked.
"How long?" Dr. Ewen asked back.
"How long will the surgery last? I want to junction, so I can cast curaga on him."
Ewen studied Squall. "Despite his sketch books, the childhood connection between you two, I hardly would have expected you to want to heal him."
Squall scowled. Had he really thought Seifer was his enemy? He patted the side pocket he'd put his emeralds in, after he'd taken his jacket off in the taxi. Green eyes. He dreamed about green eyes. "That's how he found his way out of the time compression, by thinking about my eyes. Seifer is," Squall sought out the right word. Brother? Friend? Neither seemed quiet right. Everyone expected him to marry Rinoa. Where did he had room in his life for Seifer?
"He's your soulmate," Rinoa said, a very slight resentment in her tone. "He's not you friend, yet. He's defiantly not your brother. The two of you are like opposite magnets, locked in orbit around each other." She stood leaned closed to him and kissed his cheek. "I love you, Squall."
"Rinoa?" Squall asked, searching her face for signs of abandoning him.
She smiled. "Squall?" She turned to look at the doctor. "Squall wouldn't hurt Seifer and god help anyone else who tries too. The Lion of Balamb needs his Ghost, you see."
By Nix Winter
Disclaimers: I don't own them. The Final Fantasy series is a great set of games. I urge you to buy them and play. I should also point out that this story is entirely my responsibility.
Warnings: *tries real hard to think of any* Might a spoiler here and there for the game, but not likely.
Emerald Tears
Somewhere in the halls, dark shadowy places, Squall came to a new understanding of life, of himself. It was like that stupid rebirthing ceremony that Rinoa had dragged him too. One struggles through the dark, fearing to lose the warmth and comfort, only to emerge in the light of freedom and self-responsibility. Seifer's frail body lay against his, hair feathered out over Squall's neck. The halls seemed endless. He wasn't sure they'd been this long on his way in.
About the time he was going to start looking at signs on the wall for the way out, Seifer's fingers fisted in his shirt, clutching tightly. He stopped and tilted his head to look at the face of his rival. Anyone else in this condition, he'd have pitied them, distanced himself from them on the sheer grounds that they were likely to be leaving him soon. Seifer just rolled the world different though. His grip on Squall's shirt wasn't needy, wasn't an act of fear. It was an act of possession, of unmitigated gall. It was pure Seifer to grab onto his rescuer as if he had just captured himself a nice butterfly.
Squall felt one side of his mouth twitch upwards. "Seifer."
The smile that he got as a reward, that was Seifer too, all smirk. Squall hugged him gently. "I'm taking you home, Seifer. I have your blade, your things."
"Owww," he said, a mewling sound.
Squall froze, releasing his hug slowly, holding the man in his arms like the finest porcelain.
"Got warn him, man with gray eyes," Seifer whispered, his fingers relaxing. "Sorceress hunting him."
Seifer's small cry drew Rinoa's attention and a frown from her. "This place is barbaric."
Squall gave one small nod.
"He's in pain," Rinoa said apologetically.
Squall ground his teeth. He knew that. Why did she feel the need to point this out to him?
Then she closed her eyes, stepped very close, and touched Seifer's temple. Glitter floated from her fingers, a whole haze of sparkling magic. This little cloud flowed over Seifer's face, leaving color and firmness in his skin. His breathing eased. His fingers grew stronger. Even his hair seemed to lift and lighten. And that was it. Seifer settled into a more relaxed sleep.
"What did you do?" The spell was weak. If he junctioned, he could get a better spell than that.
Her mouth fell open, then closed tight. In her furious-at-the-world voice, "That was curaga, mixed with esuna. I know I'm supposed to be careful, but Squall, he's hurting."
"He's gonna need a full life soon," Squall snapped. They both knew that Rinoa's spell should have done more than bring back a little color to him.
Squall walked. His pace now so rapid that Rinoa had to run to keep up just about. It was this place, Squall had decided. Not even magic could heal in this place.
Rinoa followed along, hurrying to keep up. When they emerged out the front, sunlight bathed them all, made even the dull of Seifer's hair shine gold.
Zell was waiting in an armored van, of all things. He stepped out of the driver's seat, waved, "Hey! Who's that?"
"Seifer," Squall said, moving down the last few steps as Rinoa opened the side door.
"No fucking way," Zell said, ducking back inside to watch Squall lay Seifer down on the cot that pulled down from the wall. SeeD equipment was multi use. "Can't be Seifer."
Rinoa took the passenger seat in the front. "Let's go."
Squall fastened the safety restraint over Seifer's chest, then turned to pull the side door closed. "It's Seifer."
"Whoaa man," Zell started the van, still looking over his shoulder. "His crimes have caught up to him. He didn't resist getting captured? Or did you lay him OUT?"
"Zell!" Rinoa slapped him lightly on a muscular arm. "We're rescuing him."
"Oh. Right." Zell turned back and put the van in gear. "Yeah, rescuing. It's not like he didn't try to kill us well enough the first time."
There wasn't much to say to that. The trip back to Garden passed in uncomfortable silence. Some things were just facts. Squall was in love with Rinoa. Seifer was a violent criminal.
The things that Squall was good at pretty much all involved some kind fighting. Sorting out his own inner thoughts and fears could be considered a kind of fighting, he thought, but it was all new. It was those drawings, the paintings on the walls. It made him know that he had seen Seifer wrong. All of them had lost their memories a little when they started junctioning GFs. That was why he still didn't remember all of those things that Seifer drew.
Impulsively, he unfastened his safety restraint and reached for the older of the sketchbooks. Sitting there in the floor, his back to where Seifer lay, Squall started going through the sketch book. It was like seeing right into Seifer's mind.
These were images poured out from the blond's very soul. One page after another, there was just one little bit after another of Squall. Pencil and paper had never meant love to Squall, not before this. He paused, took a slow breath, holding his lip between his teeth, as he turned the drawing side ways.
Warm slid down his cheek. The hand that drew this had moved the pencil with a tenderness, expressing a kindness, a knowingness of what it had drawn. The artist had recreated an image with love. There was Squall, right down to the lines of his lips, the shades in his eyes, tangled wild hair. It tore him apart, seeing himself through Seifer's eyes, seeing the distance and the pain in his own face. No wonder everyone was always trying to save him from himself.
It hurt, so deeply, prying open his heart, hurt like the first breath after a full life spell. Squall felt that he was loved, not for what he could do, or what someone could make him into, but just for himself, distant, bitchy, angsty. Seifer loved him.
Romantic love or just true friend love, he didn't know, hadn't thought that far. "Zell."
"Yeah?"
"I wouldn't let anyone hurt Seifer. I will not allow anyone to hurt him."
Just pulling into the garage, Zell looked at Squall's tear wet face in the rearview mirror. "Whatever you say, man. I got your back which ever way you go."
Squall nodded curtly, acknowledging that he was being watched and that Zell would follow his lead. He turned the page in the sketch book. Even in the dim light of the garage, he could see that the next drawing was only in Sefer's imagination. It was a drawing of Squall, of his face, white fur of his jacket brushing his jaw, and the hugest smile on his face. Squall promised himself that he would give this to Seifer, he would smile for Seifer.
The van parked, jerked a bit as the break was thrown on. The door snapped open and Irvine and Martin looked in. "Is it true," Martin asked. "Did you really catch that asshole?"
"Oh man," Zell moaned, "Don't go there! Squall, let me help carry him."
"I'll go tell the doctor what we know," Rinoa said, a distance in her voice.
Squall nodded to her, quickly gathering Seifer's sketch books. "Here," he said, giving them to her.
Then it was about getting the cot Seifer was on disengaged the wall, so that Zell and he could carry him out.
"Oh Hyne," Martin sneered, "You really got him good didn't you!"
Irvine made a sound like he'd touched something hot when he saw the look in Squall's eyes. "Martin, be quiet."
The main doctor and three med techs met them half way there, got Seifer on to a wheeled medical table. Squall stood there, watching them take him away, hand over his mouth. The world was all changed, all different than he'd imagined.
Irvine and Zell stood there with him. Touching Squall's shoulder, Irvine asked, "Tell me?"
Squall shrugged. "He's hurt."
"Yeah, I can see that. I mean, why are you crying."
Wiping his cheeks with the back of his hands, he said, "I'm not."
He followed, slowly, Irvine and Zell, Selphie joining them on the way. Quistis met them there and then all of Seifer's family was there. Except Matron Edea and Sid; Squall didn't know if they'd notified or not yet.
Squall didn't know much about medicine. Magic made practical knowledge less attractive. Much easier to just cast curaga on someone until they were okay again. So when the doctor tried to explain why magic wouldn't work on Seifer was like being told about a whole new world all over again. There was an object inside his skull, blocking the energy of the magic.
"So what you're saying," Squall tried to recap to the doctor sitting across the desk from Rinoa and him. "Is that someone forced this thing into his head. We don't know what's for, but the only magic that will work on him now that it's breaking down is something that's connected to this thing? And that if you remove it you might kill him and if you don't remove it he might die anyway. And that either way, his personality is probably lost with all the memories because this thing is eating into his brain? Isn't that a little dark ages?"
"Basically," Dr. Ewen agreed "You seem to be very important to him. You're as close to next of kin as he has, so the decision is yours. I feel he has the best chance of survival by removing the cortical net."
"What is something like that good for? Why would someone do that to him?" Squall felt like when Ellone was just gone, as if he'd just been robbed again.
"I found references to such things in the early sorceress wars." Dr. Ewen took a deep breath. "Such things are used to junction a human. I would think that it was used by Ultimcia to control Seifer, to channel power to him. He was her knight, after all."
"Seifer never would have agreed to something like that, to something in his head like that." Rinoa protested then reached for Squall's hand, gave a gentle squeeze before he pulled away. "Maybe he was fighting her, to protect Squall and me, and she just did that to him."
"Oh Hyne." Squall paced, almost knocking over his chair when he got up. "She raped and destroyed his mind. But you saw the drawings. There is still Seifer in that body. He's not gone."
"The quicker we do this surgery, the sooner healing magic will be able to affect him."
"How long?" Squall asked.
"How long?" Dr. Ewen asked back.
"How long will the surgery last? I want to junction, so I can cast curaga on him."
Ewen studied Squall. "Despite his sketch books, the childhood connection between you two, I hardly would have expected you to want to heal him."
Squall scowled. Had he really thought Seifer was his enemy? He patted the side pocket he'd put his emeralds in, after he'd taken his jacket off in the taxi. Green eyes. He dreamed about green eyes. "That's how he found his way out of the time compression, by thinking about my eyes. Seifer is," Squall sought out the right word. Brother? Friend? Neither seemed quiet right. Everyone expected him to marry Rinoa. Where did he had room in his life for Seifer?
"He's your soulmate," Rinoa said, a very slight resentment in her tone. "He's not you friend, yet. He's defiantly not your brother. The two of you are like opposite magnets, locked in orbit around each other." She stood leaned closed to him and kissed his cheek. "I love you, Squall."
"Rinoa?" Squall asked, searching her face for signs of abandoning him.
She smiled. "Squall?" She turned to look at the doctor. "Squall wouldn't hurt Seifer and god help anyone else who tries too. The Lion of Balamb needs his Ghost, you see."