Please review, its what keeps me going!
disclaimer: if i owned ff8 i wouldn't be writing fan fiction, which obviously makes me a fan, not a rich rich rich owner....
It had all been like a dream, a haze of thick fog scattering events, people, time. He was there, he was in bed, and then he was gone. Far gone, in all literal meanings of the words before. He left but a note, a simply scrawled scripture upon paper, feelings defying their owner…
He had written it without thought, of the conscious degree at least. Hand being possessively stolen and smoothly writing words filled with incredible meaning, words of confusion. Everything from then on was slow, a defiling and empty hospital room, denying the once there presence of the man, of Seifer Alamsy.
She walked in to find it this way, cold, empty, a room filled with contradiction. She wished to explain to hear his breath once again, to understand why he continued on breathing…but all she found was the note. Slinking among the freshly made bed covers, distinguishingly there for her, for every fiber of her being knew she wouldn't understand the note but that it was only to her.
Thin, graceful hands swept the note up off the covers, shivering with the thought of what it contained, what wasn't there in the room, a living breathing human being. She sat on the chair in the corner, face covered in dried tears, eyes red refuting her feverish means to hide the emotion, and began to read.
It was carved in harsh long-hand, filling the page quickly and efficiently. All in blue pen, all understating their own meanings. The top stated simply "Quisty", the woman's childhood name. At the mention new tears began to fall, she knew he had left.
'I'm going now, gone. Don't try and find me, I can hide better then any tracker can uncover, that's what I've done for the past few years, is it not? I had to speak, had to tell you something. I can't get close to anyone, not you, no exceptions. I cannot be vulnerable, it only leads to failure, something which I can't handle anymore. I've moved on from everyone close in the past few years and I can't… This is by no means a judgment of you…it is just what I have learnt.'
She had him all figured out…hadn't she? He left because she cared, maybe in fact this meant he cared. He had signed it 'I'll always remember waking up to see you face, Seifer'. What exactly had he tried to convey?
The woman slumped off the chair slowly, recoiling on the floor before snapping into a fetal position. She forced her back upon the world, shell. Nothing ever worked out, nothing ever worked out, not even those things that had never been incarnated.
Squall…her friends…Seifer….
She thought once more of the curse laid upon their two souls, love never dieing but forcefully denying and crippling the wielder. To hers, an un-repented sin, nary a person could love that. To his an undeniable thirst for acceptance, betrayal leaving ever prevailing scars.
All of this bound them to their fate; to be alone.
The train whistle droned a melancholy song about the cascading alps. Trabia. Land of ice and altitude. The strange man flattened a woolen hat against his head and breathed out, ice crystals forming a melodic and tempting white cloud before his frigid eyes.
He shook a cold hand and began to bite his mitten off, before sending the barren limb to rummage about in his knapsack. He found several hundred Gil and mused for a moment, paused in thought, before handing the torn bills to the trainmaster. He was setting off to a small town nestled in a pass, several hundred miles from where his trembling mind stood and thought, or in truth tried to avoid thought. Indeed, he was running. Not as an ordinary man, from law or debt, but he was irrefutably running from love.
They had spoken that love can win and lose many battles, stronger then hate (or so many humans like to believe), stronger then conscience thought. And sometimes someone wanted to deny love, beat it at its own controlling game. Seifer Alamsy was one of them.
His hand, already turning red and numb from the sterile air, grasped the ticket from the graying mans hand. A muffled 'thank-you' surpassed pursed lips and a thick mass of knitted fabric. He was to leave in an day, leaving but enough time to grab a warm drink and a meal at the local pub and a nights stay at the inn before passing the cliché mountain town by.
He heaved the knapsack about his right shoulder and shakily replaced the glove upon his hand, beating it against his thickly covered leg to recover all feeling. Groggily, almost limping over a splinted leg, he made his way over the wooden platform and down the ice laced steps safely. He left the sharply sounding train whistle behind and all at once was overwhelmed by new stimulants. He could smell baking on the crisp air, and hear gentle laughter resounding from a pub on the far side of town, in truth around three blocks down.
Heaving a sigh he began to trudge through the snow dusted street, carefully steering away from an obstacle course of ice patches and rocks.
It had been four days and there had been no sign of the ever diligent Seifer, covering his tracks meticulously. The search had begun after a nurse had stumbled upon an open door, gentle sobs resounding throughout the room and no one in sight but a woman sniffling on the floor. The woman did not speak, not really. She simply stared up into the wiser woman's eyes and let the empty bed speak for itself.
Seifer wasn't healthy enough to leave the hospital, leg in a splint, ribs cracked within his swollen taunt skin, waiting to pierce something irreparable. Not a soul could speak of how he had managed to leave the hospital unnoticed. He was a character that refused to show itself without vivid representation, and yet he was able to waltz out of a hospital, obviously damaged, and have nary a soul speak a word of it.
The hospital called it an error, and promised to look for him, helping Quistis hire a private detective. Of course, this all become a luckless hunt, broken lead after broken lead. The man had obviously been triumphant in mastering his evasive skills, a professional tracker could be broken down to insanity trying to follow the man, like looking a for a needle in a haystack, impossible.
So now Quistis sat in her blood red apartment, surrounded by messages of condolences, distant messages. They meant nothing, nothing more then plastic labels, heartless stuffed animals and enviously bright flowers to engulf her, make her forget.
They just made her remember more then ever, everything. The letter, scrawl upon a meaningless thin sheet of wood, holding so much that the light of day couldn't compare to insanely unstructured poetic symphony. Not for the beauty of the words, but for all they held, all the pain, contempt, hate, caring, and most of all loss.
Seifer was pure, at one point everything is. Humans defile this, cracking the white shells, surrounding the soul in forlorn materialism, hate, and even love destroys this. He was the living incarnation of a fallen angel, in all truth; humans are this as a whole. Once something of pure beauty, radiance, tarnished by the world. He had been stained by betrayal, he had loved so much, many would call it obsession, but he was always turned the cold shoulder.
She had arrived much too late in the game, too late to save him, but just in time to destroy what he had gained. Now she crouched, clutching the empty carcass of a teddy-bear, contemplating how to move on.
She was filled with guilt. There was so much guilt.
The pub was smothering, warm bread and meat scents wafted about the air before descending on the cold man's alienated senses. It was insanely warm inside, a hearth burning brightly in the corner and bringing about an orange tinted glow to the area. His gaze shifted uneasily about the room's wooden interior, cluttered with short table and relaxed chairs. A warmly smiling woman greeted him as he began to remove the layers of clothing swallowing his body whole.
Swollen fingers picked at scarf and missed at moments to grasp the skin beneath them. Much to his surprise the woman began to help him remove his scarf and placed in onto a well-pronounced hook near the door, she then proceeded to unbutton his coat and hang it too upon the hook. He looked up at the woman's rosy face to find her smiling in a rather excessive manner and motioning him to a seat nearest the fire.
"Hello there lad, you really shouldn't be about in this weather, you'll get frostbite from walking a mile," she patted the prospective chair and waited for the maladjusted stranger to plant himself upon it's worn surface. As if being willed to, he eventually took a seat and scanned the room briefly. Several others were watching him take his seat, two women and a shady man in a shadowed corner who had yet to reveal his face.
"I'm just staying the night," he looked up reluctantly at the ever prevalent flushed cheeks of the woman and turned his eyes to his abandoned sack near the door.
"Oh, well that's a shame. Thought I'd have two good looking young men staying at our inn for awhile," she glanced momentarily at the shady character in the corner before turning from table and returning briefly with a cup of steaming cider. She placed it forcefully before him, shaking the table with its ubiquitous weight, "Now this! This will keep the cold out and the depression." Seifer got a whiff of the strong apple and liquor that made the cider and waited a moment, recollecting what had occurred last time he drank.
Against all good will, and along with all human nature, he took a giant swig of the cider, licking his lips of the bitter-sweet substance, "Thank-you, I'll be requiring a room if you have one open."
"We've only one other traveler here, leaving three empty rooms, and I'll give you the nicest one at a discount. You'll be sharing a bathroom with our other patron, Mr. Jessel over there in the corner," she smiled, reminiscing, "He's been here for awhile." Her voice dropped several decibels to a barely audible whisper, "I think he's got liking for my daughter."
Seifer dismissed the petty ramblings of the inn owner and politely spoke once again, "I was wondering if you are serving dinner?" His voice was obviously shaky, as if missing a pillar of its varied foundation, and his speech sounded almost weak.
A nod shook the jolly frame of the woman as she left the table once again, giving Seifer a peaceful moment to sip the cider. It made him feel slightly light headed, not full on drunk, but as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Maybe it was just obscuring his almost obsolete judgment. When he had finished the drink a raven-haired girl, who had been conversing with the other woman who had appeared to be a patron in the pub, swept it up almost instantly. Undoubtedly the inn owner's daughter.
The drink was replaced and Seifer found himself quickly on his fourth mug of cider when his meal arrived. A hearty looking stew and crisp homemade bread congregated in a stone bowl. He sipped at the undeniably nourishing chunks of meats and vegetables, and tore pieces of bread off to wipe the bowl clean.
He ate it so hungrily that one might've thought he hadn't eaten in a year. His savage movements drew attention from both the two girls and the woman, although he didn't seem to care much. When he had finished the second bowl he stood to grab his bag and retire to his room, oblivious to increasingly staggering steps he was taking.
He had made it but three steps when a minuscule amount of light hit his eye the perfect way. The corner of the room in which the unidentified stranger was seated was lit, and the recognition was almost instantaneous.
For there, directly to the left of a drunk Seifer Almamsy, sat Squall Leonhart.
Notes: okie, Seifer's drunk….Seifer's drunk and he has stumbled upon Squall…drunk Seifer and Squall…what mayhem ensues? will Quistis find Seifer, or move the hell on (haha, I felt oh so compelled to swear at least once this chapter)? stay tuned for next weeks chapter!