Let Me Make It Alright
Chapter 28: Away From Me
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The air had changed; it had grown slightly cooler and the trees were rustled by a stronger wind. Languidly gazing up at the sky, he noticed that the clouds had thickened and the former pure blue had mingled with an ominous grey. The expected rainstorm was probably going to unfold in the matter of a few hours.
Glancing over his left shoulder, Seifer smiled at the image of a softly snoozing Squall, who had reeled onto his side and was curled loosely in the high grass.
'He's actually kinda cute when he's not trying to glare people to death.'
His muscles were itching and aching from his unusual sleeping position, and he rose to stretch and flex thoroughly. The overcast sky made it difficult for him to estimate the hour, and neither him nor Squall had the habit of wearing wristwatches. Well, he knew that Squall did when he went on missions - the dutiful SeeD would never risk falling out of his time frame. Seifer however carried a dislike for being pressed into conformations and minute schedules.
'Maybe that's why I failed the SeeD exam so often.'
He chuckled. No, there were definitely other reasons for his habit of flunking that particular exam as well as many others. Being one who never followed orders very attentively probably had more to do with it. Not that it made a difference; he was no longer a cadet nor a student.
Oh well.
Circling the great trunk, Seifer lowered himself into a squatting position before Squall's sleeping figure. He liked the way that the other's dark brown hair was flowing in the wind, gently washing against perfectly still, ivory features. For a moment, he considered waking the brunette from his obviously untroubled slumber, but he decided against it. Squall probably needed a good rest even more than he did.
Instead, the blonde pried his gunblade from the tree and moved a little further outwards into the orchard's clearing. Enjoying the blade's familiar weight pulling on his arms, he swivelled it around in gentle archs, trying to recapture his feeling and natural understanding for the weapon he had owned for a good period of eleven years already.
Both Seifer and Squall had started out as gunbladers upon their arrival at Garden, and it had only seemed natural that the younger had picked LionHeart, which was lighter and smaller than the Hyperion series. It fit the fighting style of Squall, who had always been more of a "jumper and dodger" rather than a "thrasher and burner" like his blonde arch rival.
Then again, the blonde mused, little Squally had probably just been fascinated by the lion emblem carved into the sword's case when an instructor had taken both of them shopping for a weapon. He could remember seven year old Squall pressing his nose against the window of a Balamb shop display only too well, his childish blue eyes fixed on the blade that was about twice his size. Back then, nine year old Seifer had really only opted for a gunblade because Squall had wanted one, too.
Eleven years later, that memory almost amused him.
They had gone from being children who constantly picked on each other to rivals that never ceased at trying to surpass the other. So much fierce determination and tension, he really couldn't even say anymore how it had all started out.
Jealousy, perhaps.
He had always envied Squall, as well as he had envied anyone Squall had ever paid attention to. Mainly, that had been Ellone, and Seifer had hated her with as much grudge as his toddler self had been able to muster. And even though Squall had been hurt beyond his childish understanding, Seifer had been glad when Ellone had left them.
Eleven years later, he almost felt sorry.
Thinking about Ellone, he started to wonder whether the older girl would be accompanying Laguna on his visit. From all he had ever found out, Ellone still lived in Esthar. Somebody had told him that she had gotten married to a former soldier named Biggs, a name that he recalled vaguely but had never spent much thought on. The memory of his life as a sorceress knight was painful and dim, covered by a thick veil of fog which he didn't have much desire to slice through. In fact, he believed that some things were better off remaining forgotten.
Suddenly, he turned his focus outward again and realized that the weather was definitely starting to worsen. The wind had picked up distinctly, ruffling even his carefully gelled hair. Huge clouds were casting large shadows, hiding the last faint rays of sun cutting through the greying sky. Even the air smelled of rain.
Seifer actually happened to like storms, but he figured that it probably wasn't such a good idea for his delicate roommate to linger out in the cold any longer.
Resting his gunblade against his right shoulder, he trudged over to the sleeping frame and perched down before it once again. His left hand found Squall's arm and steadily started to shake it.
"Hey princess, time to wake up," he muttered.
The brunette stirred immediately at the sound of Seifer's baritone voice and rolled over on his back, legs propped up on the ground and arms folded across his face. He was obviously bristling against the idea of having to wake up. Seifer wasn't known to be the most patient person to ever have walked Hyne's sweet planet, but he was enjoying the sight of a sleepily groaning Squall so much that he decided to sit it out and simply study his rival's every movement.
Squall peeled his arms from his face lazily, blinking up into a pair of flickering green gems and an all too familiar satisfied smirk. Brows slanted wryly, he licked his lips subconsciously and swallowed the bitter taste that coated his mouth. He didn't see the sudden passionate hunger flaring up in Seifer's eyes, because a second later, his natural self-protective instincts kicked back in. He was exposing all sorts of vulnerable body parts lying there on his back and consequently, his senses immediately flipped to alert status.
Squall sat up quickly, and he would have slammed his forehead right into Seifer's if the blonde hadn't managed to back off just in time. In a flash, the younger leapt to his feet and brushed stray grass from his clothes. He, too, noticed the change of weather almost right away and cocked his head to glance at the sky.
"A storm," he mumbled, more to himself than to anyone else.
"That's why I woke you up," Seifer replied as he stood as well. "It's gonna rain."
"Hn. Thanks."
Seifer repressed a sarcastic comment at the brunette's grumpy response, figuring that grumpy or not, Squall had been thoughtful enough to thank him. Instead, he watched how Squall bent down to pick up his half empy ice tea bottle and took a sip of the berry red liquid. Seifer almost coughed painfully seeing Squall running his tongue across his lips briefly once more, not even aware of what he was doing, let alone what it was doing to Seifer.
'Geez, he has to quit doing that.'
"I need to go and get ready for Laguna's dinner."
Finally distracted from Squall's mouth, Seifer adjusted his gaze slightly and looked blankly into Squall's swirling storm blue eyes, which oddly reminded him of the color tinting the sky that very same moment.
"You call him Laguna?"
Squall merely shrugged and twirled the bottle in his gloved hands, obviously not too comfortable with the subject.
"He's your father and all," Seifer added.
"I hardly know him."
The blonde cocked his head to the side in wonder.
"Do you want to get to know him?"
The brunette blinked hesitantly at the question. Nobody had ever asked him that before. He had been told that he should get to know his father better, but no one had once bothered to ask whether that was something that he actually wanted.
Seifer Almasy was still full of surprises.
"I don't know," he answered quietly and truthfully.
"I remember you always wanted a family when you were a kid. You're still a kid now, so what changed?"
'Man… I just can't help it, can I?'
For some reason, Squall didn't pick up on the insult. He was focused inward once more, troubling his mind over things that Seifer now regretted he had brought up.
"Hey, you really don't have to talk about it, Leonhart," he offered amicably. "No worries."
"I don't know what changed since then," Squall answered anyway. "But... things just aren't the way they used to be anymore."
That had to have been the understatement of the year, and both of them knew it.
"No kidding," Seifer snorted.
They both looked at each other for a long time, either of them incapable of reading the other man's face. Eventually, Squall broke the eye contact and kneeled to gather the heap of sandwich wrappings, but Seifer stopped him short by extending an arm and halting him by the shoulder. He could feel Squall tensing at the unexpected contact, but the SeeD didn't jerk away.
Immediately, Seifer removed his hand.
'I'll bite my own ass before I make the same mistake again.'
"I'll do that," he shrugged casually. "I wanna stay here a lil while longer and train some more."
"What about the storm?" Squall asked, sounding somewhat surprised.
"I don't mind. I'll be back in there in a bit."
Squall nodded vaguely, holding on tightly to his sword and tea bottle.
"Alright. Later, then."
"Yep. Later, Leonhart."
He watched the slender brunette's silhouette disappearing uphill against the brooding dark sky. The wind had picked up another notch; it was tearing through the trees, his hair and his clothes much colder and harder than before. Seifer pinned down the empty wrappers with the last remaining sandwiches to prevent them from just flying off, before he resumed his own little training ritual in the rising gale.
Soon enough, though, it was getting too dark to see much of anything and the wind was starting to howl at an annoyingly loud pitch. Far off in the distance, he could even hear the first foreboding rolls of thunder. Sighing into the shuddering air, he gathered his drink, sword and garbage and trudged back to Garden.
The first drops of rain were beating down onto his skin before he even reached the roofed part of the school building. Cursing, he decided that he had waited just a little too long; he most certainly hadn't planned on getting wet.
Suddenly, his attention was caught by something rolling over the pavement before him noisily, moved by the wind whipping about the grounds sharply. Bending down, he realized that it was an empty plastic bottle with an all too familiar label. Only a few feet away was the matching blood red puddle of berry flavored ice tea. Seifer's brows lowered.
Feeling somewhat uneasy, Seifer looked around for a sign of Squall. There was nothing. He couldn't be sure that it was the brunette's bottle to begin with, but he found it discomforting nonetheless.
He gathered it into his arms and continued on into the brightly lit main hall, which served as an odd contrast to the darkness raging outside. He shivered underneath his wet clothes and his eyes adjusted achingly for a second, before they fell onto a large group of people standing a little off in the distance, gossiping loudly.
He almost dropped everything he was carrying.
Seifer knew all of those people, some better than others.
One of them he wished he never had met.
Jade green was disbelievingly glued to a feminine, slim figure dressed in white and blue holding on tightly to somebody else's arm. Long, chestnut colored hair was framing a beautiful pale skinned face dominated by large, thick-lashed brown eyes that clung to the man whose arm she was claiming possessively. As much as Seifer's mind was trying to deny the sight, he knew who he was looking at.
It was indeed no other than Rinoa Heartilly.
He shot a quick glimpse at the man at her side, immediately mistaking him for Squall, before he called himself to mind that Squall did not have hair long enough to be gathered into a pony tail. Even so, the man's features were similarly elegant and fair, his hair the same cold brown if with a slightly more bluish tint to it. Seifer had only seen that man and his two friends, a dark skinned sinewy man and a large guy about twice his size, once inside the Lunatic Pandora after Adel had been miserably defeated. Her spell on him had been broken then, and those were some of the few vivid memories he had.
That man was Squall Leonhart's father, the president of Esthar and the valiant hero of the first sorceress war. That man was Laguna Loire.
And Laguna was holding Rinoa Heartilly in his arms in a cruelly unmistakable way.
Seifer could merely gape at the scene, mind racing at light speed and heartbeat picking up to where it was almost crushing his chest. He knew what he was seeing, and he prayed to Hyne that his brunette roommate hadn't seen it yet. His eyes roamed the hall for the sight of Squall, but he was nowhere to be found. Unsure whether that was a good sign or not, he returned his focus back to the group.
Laguna and Rinoa had obviously been accompanied by the two men whose names Seifer did not know, as well as a couple of Estharian soldiers who were crisply standing at attention. Apparently, Cid, Edea, Quistis and the others from the old orphanage gang were playing welcome committee, and none of them appeared to feel particularly comfortable about the situation. He even caught a glimpse of Quistis chewing on the corner of her lips, looking more than just uneasy.
To his mild surprise, even Rinoa didn't seem to be her usual overly cheerful and annoying self. There was something different about her, but he didn't know and didn't care to find out what it was. He had more important things to worry about.
Taking a deep breath to collect himself, he quickly stepped up to the assembly and caught their attention by his wet boots snapping over the marble floor loudly.
"Where is Squall?" he growled, not looking at anyone in particular, yet definitely not looking at Rinoa.
"S-Seifer?"
He shut her surprised voice out immediately, turning to glare at Quistis and Zell whose pained expressions seemed to mingle with confusion.
"Where is he?"
"I-I don't know," Quistis replied, taken aback. "I thought he'd be with you?"
"He was. He went inside about fifteen minutes ago. Where is he?"
Seifer's voice was tense, shadowed with urgency and slowly rising panic. He had an extremely bad feeling about the whole situation. The bottle that he believed to have belonged to Squall flashed before his inner eye, crimson red puddle and everything, and he subconsciously tightened his grip around it.
"Fifteen minutes ago? Where were you guys at?" Zell asked confusedly.
"The yard."
"We were all standing outside until it started to rain, because…" Quistis paused, leveling a nervous glance with the Estharian guests, "Because they wanted to see Garden."
His panic flared. If they had stood outside all that time, Squall would have had to pass by them in order to enter the facility... there was no way around that.
'Fuck.'
"What's wrong, Seifer?"
He lashed around immediately, not paying any attention to Quistis anymore, or anyone else for that matter. Slamming the trash into the nearest bin, he didn't care that he missed and wrappers spilled all over the floor.
'If Squall saw Rinoa and Laguna being all over each other…'
Seifer was outside in the pouring rain again only seconds later, running down the wide paved path, calling Squall's name loudly through the howling wind, thunder and the lightning that tore the sky in two.
He never received an answer.
Panting and dripping wet from every pore already, he reached the Garden's gate warden house. At the sight of a dim light, he leaned over the counter to face the old man who had been working that same job for well over ten years. The warden recognized him at once, old grey eyes wide in surprise and shock.
"S-S-Seifer? Seifer Almasy?"
No time for courtesy.
"Have you seen Squall?"
"Uh… Commander Leonhart? Why, yes, I have."
"When? Where?" he hissed those questions with a razor sharp edge, not minding that the man flinched fearfully at his open display of aggression; to the man's dismay, Seifer was hell bent on receiving an answer, no matter at what cost.
"Ah, uhm… maybe twenty minutes ago? I-I actually just called back there to find out if anything was wrong."
"What do you mean?" Seifer spat.
"W-well, he wasn't looking too good, a-and I didn't know, I mean… he was just-"
Growling, Seifer reached across the counter and wrenched his hands into the man's uniform, pulling him close to his face, feeling his frightened breath brushing his own rain slicked skin.
"Define not looking good!"
"E-h-h… d-d-don't, p-please-"
"Answer me, old man! What was wrong, and where did he go?"
"H-he… I really d-don't know where he went! He didn't talk to me! He just ran outside. He was really pale, and…I-I think he was crying."
Panic now enveloped Seifer like a second skin. His hands still grasping the trembling warden, his eyes shot around, trying to pierce the darkness beyond the gates of Garden, but there was nothing but rain and pitch black distance.
"You let him run out there?" he roared harshly and accusingly, glaring the man in front of him to a sniveling wreck. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"I-I…I…"
"Ah, fuck!"
He thrust the body away from himself and back into the cubicle, immediately lashing around to sprint back to the school building. It didn't matter to him that the warden would call security right away; if he wanted to catch up with Squall, he'd need a motorized vehicle.
The odd group was still in the same spot where he had left it, all of them staring apprehensively, some even making attempts at stopping him, but he was too fast and past them before any of them had a chance to react properly. He heard his name whirring through the air behind him, but it didn't even slow him down.
Running through the hallway to the parking lot, he felt blood pounding through his veins and rushing in his ears as panic seized his very core.
..:"He ran outside. He was really pale. He was crying.":..
"Fuck, fuck, FUCK!"
He thrust his foot into the vehicle department's office door, kicking it open with a loud thud that sent the two men in the small room yelping out of their chairs. Narrow emerald green eyes that were flaring with determination, as well as something that others could have easily mistaken as madness, raced across the room until they located the board that held all keys to Balamb Garden's cars. With two long strides Seifer had reached it and he randomly teared a neatly numbered key off a hook.
"H-hey! You can't do that!"
He silenced the man who had stepped up behind him by slamming his right arm up in an acute angle, crushing his fist and forearm into the other man's face. His opposite dropped to his knees like a stone, howling and grasping his nose that was spilling coursing streams of blood.
Seifer didn't care.
Pushing by the fearfully paralysed second vehicle officer, he entered the garage and begun the frantic search for his car.
"Number 14, number 14, number 14, c'mon, come on! Fuck…"
His fist was curled tightly around the key, holding it sacred like the Holy Grail itself. Intricately etched metal was carving itself into the flesh of his palm, almost cutting off the blood flow. Seifer was too consumed by his anxiety and alarm to even notice the pain.
Finally, he found what he had been looking for: a boxy looking yellow jeep, fortunately one of the kind that would easily comply with a rough overland ride. He shoved inside quickly, started the motor and slammed the gas pedal before he had even fully sunk into his seat.
With screeching tires and his hands clenched around the steering wheel like vices, Seifer hurled through the garage and hit one of the laser controls for the gate, causing the huge doors to slowly hiss aside and emit him into the pure darkness and rage of the storm.
Even if his eyes had ever searched the rear view mirror, he would not have seen the red alarm sirens lighting up and shrieking in a tantrum of acoustic violence.
Then again... it wouldn't have made a difference, either way.
.
.
.
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To be continued!
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Oh boy oh boy, what's gonna happen next I fear I am going to get some flames or at least unhappy reviews for this chapter. I know that Laguna and Rinoa being there in an "unmistakable position" probably comes as a surprise for some of you and seems highly unlikely, but I will explain everything further soon, I did spend lots of time thinking about it… this just wasn't the time for explanations - Just bear with me a little longer