SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1
Disclaimer: 'kay…..with five bucks I'm gonna go buy Seifer but no one else……maybe I can get zell for two fifty since he's real short. ^ ^ just messing people. I don't own 'em. . those reviewers of mine, the few and proud. Thanks so much for the reviews and for takin' the time to do it. Its so nice, *_* I'm so happy somebody takes the time! And you others…..shame.. ~_o. you cause me twitching. On with the fic.
strange thoughts, and second chances. ! Chapter 3.!
Quistis squeezed her eyes shut, the world? She thought, can wait. Smiling for no reason she let laughter erupt from deep in her gut, from somewhere in her she felt she needed to laugh. Who was she to ignore herself, smiling and laughing, she just couldn't stop, she was clutching her stomach and giggling madly as she thought about nothing in particular.
"I'm...huff...going crazy!" she mused out loud. The thought made her laugh harder, the room was filled with her voice and she felt good, despite the circumstances, she knew today wasn't going to be a bad day.
After routine things, she left her room and walked to the elevator, her steps were paced, slow deliberate steps, as if testing them for the first time. She felt like a new person, what had brought on this change? She asked inwardly. As she waited for the elevator, she let it take its time, looking at the other people that were standing next to and around her. There was a couple that were talking with a family and to the right of them were a few friends, she guessed, and they were chatting like crazy about the parade that Delling was going to have in a few months. She looked at the couple they must have been about in their forties; they were talking with a young married couple that was carrying twin boys. The groups looked as happy as she felt. Smiling she boarded the elevator and let it take her down.
What parade? She thought briefly. I never knew the city had a parade every year; it would make sense since I have no life outside garden, no real life anyway. If you think about all the things you don't get to experience at garden then you'll feel worse about it, and you can't experience them because you have no time, your life is filled with mission briefings and training and conditions. Yes, and what of death? They train you for that too. You learn to except it and if your caught there are conditions.
You swallow a little pill that will make it impossible to be coherent and drugged properly. A drug that blocks other drugs from working, when you swallow that a sensor activates, garden will know, and this is only in dire circumstances. Then there are those missions where those conditions aren't given. In that case, you will have to gut it out, and death is always at the back of your mind. When you live in garden and live inside its shell, the real world and all that goes on in it is rather lost on you. It is a benefit because you think less of those things and the things you would miss about it, that's what garden thinks, I think it makes it worse because you never even knew life outside garden.
When trapped inside the rooms with death and you have nothing holding you down, except maybe your love, but not everyone gets as far as to love. Those who do will fight for them and will always know that their in their loves hearts, so they will always s fight. Some will succumb to it, say their death pray and let it all fall down. What will I do, will I fight, no if there is no use I'll find peace, the fastest peace I'll ever have to find and I'll try to pray, would I really? No! I'll never get trapped in a situation where I'll die for sure, shit the only way death will take me is by age or the end of the world, I'd see it through though all the way till the end came, with whoever was with me I would. Damn no use in hiding from something like that, she mused as the elevator's passengers left to go about their business, she wondered were they had gotten ready for death, when it all started, then she mused.
The sorceress' war was where we learned to be like that, for all of us, squall and Rinoa, Zell, Selphie and Irvine we were prepared, to give it all. Its a sad end for such young people, we were babies, really now, we were. We didn't understand anything, and we didn't see the consequences of our actions. At the young age of sixteen and seventeen and for a few eighteen, and we were prepared to give our lives. When you think of it, you feel old, like an old war veteran, but at the age of twenty, I'm a war veteran. I can't teach, I'm not a good teacher they told me. No abilities in that area, they said privately when I went to ask for my position back. It's about how you handle them and I couldn't, so the hell with it. Seeds the life for me, right and squalls very open-minded she thought sarcastically.
People starred strangely at the woman on the elevator, she had been there for half an hour, just standing inside of the elevator. A little boy cam up to her and tugged at her right hand, having to move his little arms up a little to do so.
"Hey! Lady I was plawying for a few minutes wit the elewater and I wanna ta know if you frowzed or sumethings."" he told her honestly, she looked down at him and smiled brightly. Unsure of what to do he smiled in return and asked, another question.
"Ya wanna plawy?" he asked as he looked at the floor with his big brown eyes and dark untamed hair. She giggled and patted his head, and told him that she wasn't frozen and that he should play someplace safer. He nodded and left with his ball in his hand. She went out into the streets to find breakfast. The streets full with the loud clamor of crowds as usual.
The streets were clean and she could always depend on the normalcy of it all to bring her some peace if only temporarily. A café in the corner of the shopping district was her best bet at a cheap meal. She ordered a cup of tea first; it tasted like sweet-skinned dinosaurs eggs. Then she ordered a fruit salad, with fresh cut strawberries, bananas, sliced red, green, and yellow apples, pears, and peaches. The mixed fruit soaked with the fruits juices, everything treated wonderfully. The apples were both sweet and sour and the peaches were a bitter but wondrous pleasure to her tongue. The pears were sugar and the strawberries were her punch, the bananas evened everything out with their sugary but regular taste that made everything else she ate seems foreign to her tongue; giving it a adventurous feel to it. The meal was large but it consisted of fruits and she couldn't bring herself to finish it, her stomach already too full as she paid her debt and left the café.
I'll keep it to myself. They don't have to know what happened, I don't know what happened. That is very sad Quist, what if someone finds out, wait I don't even remember that night, I can honestly say I didn't know what they were talking about. I have to get to garden soon, I should get my ticket. She thought as she set her course for the station. At this time of day, it wasn't jammed with people but there are crowds scattered here and there and on platforms. She went to get her ticket.
"You want a ticket? Its three thousand gil per ticket." he told her, his old face was sullen and tired looking. She felt bad for a minute and then shook her head and frowned, they all look like that Quis! She told herself, their old and their faces mold into a constant frown. Grabbing the ticket, she muttered a thanks and left.
I have to stop thinking she told herself, all I do is confuse myself, and I'm not even thinking about anything important, I'm analyzing the way an old person ages! What in Hynes name am I doing that for. I really am going crazy! She imagined, as she walked to her hotel room to get changed and board the train, the stray jacket and patted walls and thought that she was just tired from the last mission. It wasn't that physically tired, but the metal kind, after everything that happened.
She didn't even get her target, Percy Eski. The whole thing is hazy to her, when had she let him out of her site. The mission was to track him down discreetly, of course she had remembered seeing him spot her and running. Then he ran into a alley after a few days of running around in circles; her luck had crashed when it started to pour and he snuck into a very uninviting alley. Smarter than most she chose to ignore the prospect of chasing a large bulky felon into a alleyway as the storm had started to make itself known. She looked for a place to rest, the cavern was near and easy to get to before the storm got bad, she had seen the weather report.
Then the real crap fell from the holiest skies landing right in the booth next to her. Yes, she thought, holy shit! For both a curse but a grace, she was holy crapped on. For because of the group of drunks the bartender saved her, leading to a series of events that both left her confused and extremely happy and she felt betrayed. Being rational, she leveled that she should be depressed and ashamed but her mind told her otherwise.
Betrayed by her brain, opposing emotions and sides surfaced and eventually it concluded; leaving her in the confused and cheerful state of mind that she was in. Yes, she didn't know what had actually happened, no real memories of it, but somewhere deep inside of her mind she had gone through something very awe-inspiring. Well, understatement, she thought, and I don't understand it! She cursed her mind and her luck and got on the train. It wasn't what she did it was that she did this with a stranger that confused her it was the aftereffect that had her perplexed, instead of shame she felt only purely good, and then that led to the only question left.
"How could a stranger make me feel more than I've felt even with my whole life pulled together?" she asked herself aloud. Then something occurred to her, I can't remember who it was! What if it wasn't a stranger?!
Groaning she held her head as she had let that possibility go unknown for such a long time. Then I would have remembered wouldn't I? Damn it! I can't figure it! She stomped the floor with her heel in frustration. I just have to put this behind me, I can't go back or doing anything about this, she told herself.
Seifer given a clean transfusion of blood and left alone, he had been in the hospital for a total of three days, seething at the teeth when they told him he wasn't strong enough to leave yet. To prove him wrong Seifer had gotten out of bed and lifted the five, nine in height doctor of the ground a good three inches. The doctor didn't go wide eyed but hit Seifer over the slash across on of his shoulders and Seifer hissed as he instinctively went to grab it.
The doctor grinned triumphantly and told him that he would be out in a few more days. Sighing Seifer then remembered the cures he had and cast one on himself, the pain ebbed and he felt better. Grunting he went back to bed, reassured that tomorrow, he would be leaving. The nightmares that followed this erased his previous feelings, leaving him with his past to relive as he always did. The screams tore through the halls. The nurses tutted and shook their head, knowing that they couldn't reach the boy. Returning to their work, they tried not to focus on the sound.
Seifer's dreaming constantly plagued him, with life came a price. The nightmares, the dreams were always just sad replays of his life, twisted around and played with. There were dreams of the orphanage and all of his life and its all tinkered with, Ultimacia had messed with his head in many ways. He had false memories and repressed memories resurfaced enough times to leave emotional scarring. All the things she did to him were replayed and intensified, the words she feed him the things he did they haunted him. Sure, he would not complain but he still cried out for mercy. His painful past was always following him as his shadow.
Even the sun didn't want the rays to hit him, instead he got his past as the dark shadow that followed him. This never left, nights were tough but the truth was worse he was broken and battered mentally left bare and untamed. His wild nature was unleashed as a power, which was what Ultimacia did. She stripped him of all sense, comparing him to knights and leading him blindly and with a bare mind, unawares. He was now learning and seeing his mistakes for the first time. Ever since Danny found him, he was learning the cruel pains and truths of what he did.
This was his price, he wanted life and he got it, with the price of forever living the present with the past to tag along. Life itself was a struggle for him. when Danny discovered him at a shore off far away from the cities, Danny had recognized him. Deciding to forgive he took him to a town where he would be able to live without the world to torture him along with his dreams.
The next day the doctor was shocked and had little to say as Seifer got his clothes, or Danny's' because his was shredded, and left the hospital after he called Danny and told him that he needed clothes. They were walking down the street and Seifer asked.
"So where is that house that you left to rot away?" he asked. Danny rolled his eyes and they drove to another town, a smaller one with only a few houses and long acres of carrot and tomato fields. There was a pier and a small house that was just before the docks and colored with the light of the surroundings; its white reflected the colors of the sea and sun. The front lawn was a few feet and the grass was dewy and green, with a two-railed wooden fence that reaches your knees. The wooden door had an old worn look; the pathways to the door were large stone steps, which Seifer noted looked like marble. The docks had lots of boats and export and import ships coming in and out frequently. Danny was the one that usually took care of the ships but now Seifer would have to deal with it.
"Every few weeks boats come in asking for something or other, I have set up store and you've helped out enough times to know what to do." he told him, Seifer nodded.
"I just take over for you then, permanently," he told him.
"Basically" he replied.
When they got inside, the sea breeze welcomed them. The floor was made of wood; it was red and well worn so that your feet felt only smooth surfaces. The entrance was facing west of the sea and the living room is the first thing that Seifer saw. The furniture was old but reassuring the big couch in the middle of the room was a deep green. A large rug underneath it with a design that was beautiful. The coffee table that lay out in front of the couch was perfect to place things as you looked at the fireplace that was on the same wall of the door.
"Ah shit! Look Seifer I gotta go man. I have to catch a ferry ride to F.h so I'll call, just get acquainted with the place its all yours, man, for real. Do with it what you will." he told him truthfully as he shook his hand and patted him on the back and left running. Seifer shook his head and chuckled at his predictability. Exploring the house, he noted how open and free it seemed, with the windows open and the large windows.
The kitchen was on the opposite wall, the walls were a light blue and the shutters were made of wood, open windows left the house open to the sea and seagulls, shore, and Seifer noted that the sounds echoed calmness into the house. The kitchen was small but nice and the living room had a counter to eat meals on that connected from the kitchen to the living room serving as a wall. The stools, created out of bamboo and had a back to them, there were four stools.
The rooms divided by a hall to the far left of the house, the hallway stretched until it reached the last room. The first room was the master bedroom, as you walked further n the hallway the next two were across from each other and were both bedrooms the hallway then made a right turn. Then there was one on the right side after you turned to the left from the corner that was a laundry room.
Moreover, the last was a bedroom, after you turned in the hallway, with a bathroom attached. The two rooms that faced each other were connected and had a bathroom that they shared; the master bedroom had a bathroom that was the largest. Seifer whistled and laughed at his sudden change of luck. He grabbed the phone, and prepared for some long conversation with the insurance company, he needed the money.