Chapter Ten- The Devil's In The Dreaming.
Now I lay me down not to sleep
I just get tangled in the sheets
Swim in sweat three inches deep.
I just lay back and claim defeat
Chapter read and lesson learned
I turned the lights off while she burned
So while she's three hundred degrees
I throw the sheet off and I freeze.
Who needs sleep (well, you're never going to get it)
Who needs sleep (tell, me, what's that for)
Who needs sleep (be happy with what you're getting, there's a guy who's been
awake since the Second World War)
Barenaked Ladies: Who needs sleep?
It has been a long time.
Seifer isn't exactly sure just how long, several weeks at least. It seems longer,
or may be shorter.
Ironically, on the face of it, the cell is better than the old chambers in the D
District prison where he vaguely remembers incarcerating Squall in the wars,
this one newly, scrupulously hygienic. It's much easier to hose blood off
neoprene-coated plaster than rough stone blocks, and besides, these rooms
have a thoughtfully situated drainage grill in the middle of the floor. The
moulded plastic floor tilts slightly down towards the grate. Seifer has woken
up most mornings to find himself lying on top of it, body moving downhill
during the night.
Mornings and nights are present in name only, he's not altogether sure of the
time in the real world, outside the walls. The corridors are windowless, lit by
electric lights in the day and dimmed at night. Inside the room, it is never truly
dark. The disorientation this creates is not an accident.
In good prisoner fashion, Seifer started out marking the days on the walls with a
dropped biro, in scratched crosses and gated groups of lines, but after the second
room change he gave up. He used the pen to stab a guard so they took that too.
Besides, he isn't sure he wants to know how long it's been.
It has been long enough since he's had any sort of proper conversation that
isn't curses, threats, or repeated and hopeless denials. He is beginning to
learn that 'I can't remember' is never what anyone wants to hear, and that
'pretty please with sprinkles on top' is never a recommended form of interrogation.
These are just one among many things that he is beginning to understand.
The words 'multiple' and 'life' and 'sentence', and what they really mean.
The fact that people suspected of terrorist activity can be held in custody
for any length of time without charge.
The rules are different here. There are more of them for a start.
To begin, it's not a prison. The official name is 'penitentiary', an archaic term
that doesn't seem to fit. He's never felt all that penitent. But regret and
contrition isn't going to bring back the people he killed, that they tell him
he murdered.
He's never heard most of the names before. Whole lists of names, people
in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It might be the right time, but he is most definitely in the wrong place. Shut
in a box somewhere in Galbadia like a particularly malevolent birthday present.
He has a number, and that's about it, apart from guards. He always has guards.
The place is seven and a half feet wide, the roof so low he can almost reach
up and touch the ceiling with his fingertips. It has a narrow door and a metal
framed cot bolted to the wall and a stainless steel toilet, fixed likewise. Seifer
has stared at all of them half a hundred times and they're beginning to lose
what little charm they had in the first place.
He is barefoot and the plastic floor is cool on his feet: they took away his
boots after one of the guards was rendered permanently incapable of having
children. Seifer misses them occasionally, when he remembers.
There is no blanket. Theoretically one should not be needed, but he suspects
someone of playing around with the thermostat because it never seems to
be warm enough. Blankets can be torn and plaited, he heard someone say,
they can be twisted into a rope long enough to strangle.
But he already knew that.
Sound carries a long way in the corridors.
It makes it harder in a way. He doesn't want to know about the guards' kids
or what they do when they're not beating on people, how many strikes their
sons scored in the latest bowling tournament, their pet dogs. They have mugs
with their names on, and heavy duty Sig Sauer automatics that can punch a
bullet through an inch of lead.
Seifer wonders, sometimes, if they tell their kids what they do all day. Whether
they do little dumb things to pass the time, like everyone used to do at Garden.
One thing is for sure, they don't make many mistakes.
What mistakes they make, they pay for dearly.
Of course, Seifer gets it back, with interest later. He's not as much giving violence
as loaning it out for a while, but it makes him feel like he's doing something. The
tally stands at two broken wrists, one broken nose, three bruised kidneys, two
fractured skulls and one permanent case of infertility to the guards and he can't
remember how many to him. People visit with Cure spells every so often,
efficiently eliminating the physical evidence on his body. After they've finished,
he looks better on the outside than when he came in, the constant barrage
of magic erasing his scars.
The fighting pisses his guards off even more. They would dump him in solitary,
but he already is. There isn't a whole lot more they can do that they're not doing already.
They are always the Galbadians.
Most of the time, they're all he sees.
On rare occasions civilians are allowed down into the cells. They pass through
the heavy doors, down flights of stairs with their shoes clanging loudly on metal
walkways and eye the other prisoners like frightened sheep gazing at wolves. It
isn't strictly within the laws to allow civilians in to view prisoners, but the people
that run this place make the rules.
Seifer's always allowed to clean up before they come. He watches as they talk
nervously about the weather and eye him with unfriendly eyes through the tiny
slit in the top of the door. Other, angrier visitors bang on the chequered bullet
proof glass, crying, demanding why, why.
He doesn't say anything.
He doesn't know why.
He is beginning to understand that he doesn't know a lot of things.
Great time to have a revelation, huh?
He understands that they tell him they want information. They don't say why,
and he thinks some of the time that that is unfair. They seem particularly
interested in the sorceress and how can he put that into words?
Saying; it was like being drunk, and wishing he was.
Saying, I loved her, and not even remembering who the hell he was talking about.
They ask, are you sorry?
But he can't really remember what he's got to be sorry for.
Apart from being caught.
They don't really care, anyway. The debt can only be paid in blood, and there's
not enough credit in his body, it seems. He can't die five hundred and thirty-eight
times just to please them, although the sophisticated Curaga variants allow
serious injuries to be healed in a matter of days.
This is not a cause for celebration.
Officially it is illegal for physical interrogation methods to be carried out under
Galbadian law for the purpose of obtaining information. Officially it's also a
mandate that every male over eighteen years old must carry out one hour's
archery practice every day, and this rule has about as much relevance as the first.
Seifer tries to tell them nothing, but he isn't sure exactly how much he knows,
how much they already know, isn't sure what they want to hear, isn't sure what
they plan to do with the information.
Nothing good. He is sure of that.
He is aware that information on just what they are trying to do might be of use
to Balamb, and finds this frequently ironic, or more often, just dumb. He can't
even help himself.
It scares him more, in a way, when they are nice. Like he's going to tell them
everything in return for a blanket and the reward of getting the lights switched
off while he sleeps.
Dream on.
Besides, he doesn't owe Balamb a thing.
Really.
As soon as Galbadia squealed, Garden chucked him out like a grenade someone
had just pulled the pin on. They don't want him, and honestly, he can't blame them.
Seifer can almost imagine Squall's expression when the Galbadians knocked on
Garden's door that day in September. He wonders if Squall had even let them
finish their demand before he asked where to sign. One some days he thinks yes,
on others no.
Mostly no.
He's never had any illusions about Squall's opinion of him. He thought he saw
the new Commander as the soldiers took him out, backs bent against the pouring
autumn rain, but it probably wasn't him. He thought he saw Quistis as well, but
he knows she wasn't there.
It would be nice if she had been, instead of out on a mission. It might have been
different otherwise. Quistis and Edea were the only ones who would have cared
enough to try and make a change. Edea had been a thousand miles away, visiting
the old lighthouse, Quistis almost as far, and as far as he is concerned now they
both might as well be on the other side of the moon.
He thinks about Quistis a lot. Sometimes he dreams about her. Her and Edea/Ultimecia,
Squall, Rinoa, the works. Dreams are funny things, although his are not particularly
amusing.
Sometimes he dreams about dreams.
But that's stupid, because nobody dreams about dreams.
It's all stupid and fake.
It's not real.
Thank Hyne.
Seifer groaned and woke up.
Shit.
His hands were fisted in the pillow and he could feel sweat cooling his body. He hadn't been
making noises or thrashing round or anything, though, because Quistis was still lying asleep
next to him. They'd finally gone to bed at midnight, Quistis too angry and Seifer too hungover
to try anything more athletic than sleeping..
Seifer rolled over carefully. Quistis slept on. She looked kind of cute when she was asleep,
more relaxed than in real life without the diamond-hard sheen that covered her like a shield
as soon as she opened her eyes. Seifer decided he liked her either way. Whatever. It was
just fine.
He'd never had it so good.
And that was the problem, pure and simple. Despite all the wars, all the things that he'd
done and the others he reckoned he must have (because who the hell else was there to blame),
he still had this.
By rights, it shouldn't have been a dream.
By rights, he should be where he'd put Leonhart in the wars. That prison. Maybe he shouldn't
be anywhere, lost in time compression, or just dead, he didn't know.
He exhaled quietly. It had been so damn vivid.
None of the books he'd read had mentioned anything about weird dreams. Perhaps it was
something to do with Time Compression: things that might have been, were going to be,
were, maybe, somewhere else.
Wherever they were, he was glad they weren't here, and that he was.
It was an unfamiliar feeling.
Quistis moaned in her sleep and then rolled over onto her front, pulling the sheets around her.
She was just as beautiful in the dark.
In Braille.
Did he deserve this? Did he deserve her?
The little traitor voice in the back of his mind whispered, of course you don't.
Seifer squashed it, but like a bug it slithered its way out again.
He sighed and knotted his hands behind his head, glancing over at Quistis. She didn't look
so upset.
It was two a.m., not so long after all since they'd finally got to sleep, and he didn't feel
in the least tired. The shadows were long on the ceiling from the sodium light parked
outside their window and the crickets clicked ceaselessly, a quiet omnipresent sound
that was only there if you listened for it and then impossible to forget. The faint roar of
the sea was a constant undercurrent beneath the noises of the bugs. Seifer rolled over
and then guiltily threw an arm across Quistis, resting his hand in the curve of her waist.
She didn't wake.
He lay staring at the ceiling, feeling wide awake and counting down lists in his head for an
unmeasurable number of minutes until he opened his eyes somewhere else.
Seifer stands alone on a desolate spit of land. It's night, and the air smells of
salt and iodine from rotting seaweed. Waves crash and break around him,
showering him with spray.
It is some time before he thinks to look around him. It's hard to see in the dark,
but the architecture is both familiar and horribly wrong at the same time. Broken
stones and columns stick up like ragged teeth in the night. The old orphanage is
covered with weeds, overgrown and derelict. The path is hardly visible under the
grass and brambles but Seifer doesn't think to ask how the hell he got there. He
turns and looks out to sea again, the night wind howling in the ruins behind him.
It's very dark.
There is a small scraping of metal on stone. A few seconds are wasted as he looks
at his own feet to check it's not him, but his boots are fighting for purchase amid
seaweed and limpets. Seifer looks up.
A familiar scarred profile stares back at him.
Squall.
Leonhart is dressed in his usual clothes, (which from the look of them he must have
to superglue on in the mornings) gunblade sheathed at his hip. He's hard to see in
the dark, though his pale face is creased in a puzzled frown, the scar standing out
in a red weal between his brows just like in the wars.
And further back, past him, there is Edea.
Sliding past Squall, his gaze fixes on her.
She's not in her old sorceress garb, instead she looks almost normal, too young,
maybe, because Edea must be knocking on for forty now if he really stops to
think about it. She looks achingly unhappy, leaning against the old gatepost in
the dark. Her body is twisted in on itself miserably and she looks more alone than
Seifer has ever seen her, up to her ankles in tangled blackberry brambles. Left
untended, they've spread into an untameable mat, dark and twisted, with huge
prominent thorns that catch on Edea's long skirt, pushing her off balance.
She puts out a hand to the gatepost to steady herself and the old rotting stone
crumbles and slips under her fingers. The brambles move like a living thing,
faster than Quistis' whip they snake up and loop round Edea's wrist to pull at
her arm. She tugs at the stems and drops of blood run through her hands like rain.
Seifer can't see a wound, it's funny that he can see so well when it was hard to
see even the outlines of the ruins a moment ago.
Edea raises her head and opens her mouth in an inaudible wail, dark hair falling
round her face. She looks directly at him and Seifer suddenly knows that he has
to go to her. He accepts this, can dimly remember this being what it was like in
the wars, just knowing.
He tries to move, and can't.
It's like walking through treacle, slow and dragging, His hands feel like lead
and his boots slip over the rocks, painfully aware that the sea is only a few
inches away. More spray touches his face.
A few feet in front of him Leonhart's mouth opens and shuts like an extremely
feminine goldfish. He might be shouting but the wind carries his words away.
Seifer shakes his head and shouts back; can't he see what's happening? He
tries to raise a hand and point but it's too slow and from the sudden panicked
look on Squall's face, it's the wrong thing to do. The wind howls in his ears,
though he can hear the click of Squall pulling the hammer back quite clearly.
He HAS to go to her. Can's Squall see? He always was so damn blind.
Seifer' face feels wet.
In front of him Squall's scar has suddenly begun to drip blood, the drops
falling in a long crescent shaped arc. The blood sheets down the side of his
nose, but this doesn't seem to bother him as he raises the gunblade to his
shoulder like a rifle. Dark light glints off its blade.
Seifer screams insults at him desperately, hoping to annoy Squall and force
him to lose control. It doesn't work, not must of a surprise, because it never did.
He swings a fist at Squall's chin but pulls the punch at the last minute as he
watches Squall's lips twist in a snarl much like that of his lion and his finger
tighten on the gunblade's trigger. The movement throws Seifer off balance
and he stares down at the sea which is suddenly a lot further away, waves
swinging round in a vertigo-inducing whirlpool of water
Edea, behind Squall, cries out. The brambles are up to her waist now, covering
her legs and twining round her waist. The sight fills him with desperation. Why
isn't anyone helping? Can't they see?
Can't Squall see?
He pushes forward again desperately. Squall shouts at him, shoving at him, face
angry, tense and worried. The scar pulls his eyebrows down into a deep slash.
It seems like it's important to him that Seifer stay where he is. Seifer is
unimpressed: since when has he done anything that Leonhart wanted him to do?
His eyes flick to Edea.
She's not there Instead a mound of brambles covers the spot where she once stood.
As Seifer watches a pale hand waves desperately at him from within a tangle of
thorns. He thinks he sees her eyes, her mouth, through holes in the vines. Her lips
form two words.
Help…..
Me.
Seifer snarls and throws all his weight into Squall; who's taken by surprise and
pushed back. In doing so his glance rakes over the ruins of the orphanage, but
he seems to see nothing out of the ordinary and throws an arm out to block
Seifer's way. Seifer grabs his wrist, and twists it, hard. They're both shouting
but as before the only noise is the howling tempest of wind and waves rimming
a circle of silence. No breeze so much as fans the collar of Squall's coat. For
a moment Seifer almost forgets about Squall's other hand, the one holding the
gunblade, but then Squall pushes him back with more strength than Seifer ever
thought he'd have in that skinny body and takes a swing with the Lionheart.
It hits Seifer in mid chest, but Squall obviously isn't trying to kill: the blade
is reversed. Even so, it does its job. The blow knocks Seifer off balance for a
second, pushing hard enough to make him stagger, and that is enough to tip
him off the edge of the cliff and into the sea. There are strange little glimpses
of images as he falls:
Edea, now totally covered in bramble vines, Squall, standing over the drop.
He doesn't look exultant, just tired, shaky and vaguely troubled. Seifer opens
his mouth to tell him what he really thinks of him but right then he falls into
the water and it's probably just as well .
He hits the sea like a dropped stone. The cold salt taste of it fills his mouth
and he can't breathe. His clothes are heavy on his body and in a panic he
kicks up, trying to get to the surface. The current tugs and pushes at his body.
He opens his eyes, sees a paler green rectangle and kicks towards it but when
he reaches the surface his hands meet only flat rough boards. Bubbles escape
from his nose and mouth
He's drowning
No, he's not.
Pathways click into place in his mind.
It's the jetty. He swims a little to the right, out from underneath and then pulls
himself up and the wood. He's barefoot and wearing a T shirt and shorts, both
red and slightly too small. This is not a surprise, for it is daylight, and summer.
Seifer looks down at himself and suddenly realises he's a lot shorter.
He gets up from the jetty and wanders off, jumping onto close packed sand that
feels gritty and cold between his toes. Water sheets from his clothes and they rub
uncomfortably, making him squirm. It's making him cold, but this isn't the only
reason that getting soaked to the skin is not a good idea.
The thought flies quickly from Seifer's head as he reaches the nearest rockpool.
It's so interesting out here, and there's never any one else around. He lies down
on his belly and stares at the tiny crabs and sea anemones, swirling one hand in
the pool in a vain attempt to catch one. The anemones, funny name, turn into
tiny jelly lumps when he pokes them. This is fun, so he sits in the sun and pokes
them for a while until they won't come out anymore and then he wanders along
the tideline, kicking at beer bottles washed up by the sea.
The bottles smash and clink on rocks, shattering in an immensely gratifying way.
Seifer is careful to keep out of the way of the shards, they're sharp and jagged
instead of smooth and rounded like the glass brought up by the sea. He likes
smashing bottles, they make such a great noise.
Drying salt feels sticky and rough against his skin, but he soon forgets to feel
uncomfortable.
The tide brings all sorts of interesting things, pieces of bottle glass, chinks of
redbrick and shells and funny looking bones. Stones with holes in them are
lucky, though he can't remember why, and the shiny oblongs that look like
plastic are eggs of a fish and they're called mermaid's purses. From time to
time he picks one up and checks to see if a mermaid might have left any
money in them, though he's too old to really believe in mermaids now, and
then runs on as another piece of flotsam catches his attention. Soon he's
got a whole pile of interesting things, a whole crab claw both top and bottom,
five pieces of bottle glass ranging in colour from clear amber to blue,
a stone with a hole in it almost large enough to fit on his finger, and a
broken pair of sunglasses. He likes these because the one remaining lens
is cracked and when you look through it the light shivers off the broken
pieces and turns the world into crazy shards.
By now he knows he's almost as far as he is allowed to go and his trove
is getting almost too big to hold by himself. It's hard work having to
carry it all and often when he stops to pick one piece up another falls out
of his hands, so he stuffs the smaller pieces of bottle glass into his shorts.
The stone slides easily onto a frayed piece of thin blue nylon rope washed
up on the tide from some fishing boat and he hangs it round his neck. The
rest is still awkward to carry though, and he knows he should go back.
One last look along the strand first….and there something is. Seifer feels a
leap of excitement as he catches a glance of a strange rounded shape sitting
on the sand ahead. Excitement wars with caution as he gives a last wary
glance over his shoulder
It's clear.
He's not sure who he's looking for; no one comes to this beach anyway, and
he hurries on.
The treasure, when he gets to it, is even better than he thought. It's a strange
shape, smelly like the crab claw he's already got but much larger, a dish as
big as his two arms with a stiff spiny tail sticking out one end. Seifer takes a
stick and carefully tips it over. Underneath there's a row of little tiny legs,
curved up like the dead woodlice he finds round the skirting boards and when
he hides under the steps.
The whole thing has an alien air of slightly organic, rotting oddness that charms
Seifer. He picks it up, arms locked firmly round its shell. The other things he's
collected fall from his small hands and rattle round it, cascading onto the sand.
It's heavy and he almost drops it, shifting his grip tenaciously as the shiny hard
shell tilts to the left and the right and then inexorably downwards to the beach.
It leaves a trail of muddy water on his T shirt and this gives him an idea.
Seifer takes his shirt off, scratching furiously between his shoulderblades to
dislodge sand, and wraps it round the thing. It looks kind of absurd, like the
monster's wearing it, but he's determined not to leave his new plaything behind.
There's a faint feeling of unease, he knows he should be back by now, but there's
still no one along the beach for as far as he can see and the strange treasure can
be dragged along the sand in his shirt quite easily. The sunglasses fit inside its shell,
on top of the little curled legs. The crab claw is tossed contemptuously away: this is
MUCH bigger, and it's not just one tiny little leg, it's the whole thing. It looks like
armour, like what they wear in videos and the news reports that sometimes flash
on when his father watches the TV. His father always swears and flicks them off
but they look exciting. They're from other places with more trees and no beaches
or sea. People are always running about, talking in tense voices. They look like
they're doing something important.
Seifer wants to be something important, like a fisherman or one of those TV
people with real armour, but right now he wants to examine his interesting
found thing. It looks like a real monster, just like TV. His father always says
that there are no monsters round here but his father is wrong about a lot of
things and now he's wrong about this too.
Seifer thinks monsters are fun.
He drags his monster back to the jetty without incident. The beach is still empty
and this is good, but the treasure has soaked his shirt with dirty water and this
is bad. Seifer can see the top of the house from the jetty all black and peeling
with corrugated iron. He knows that he should wash his shirt before he goes
indoors, but he also knows that he's got to be in before the sun sets.
The shadows are already long so he unwraps his shirt from the monster and
takes it out of the bag. He empties his pockets and places his stuff carefully
on the jetty and then he squats down on the boards and washes the thing first,
because if it made the shirt dirty, it must be more dirty itself. It looks like it's
swimming when he splashes water over it so he dangles it in the sea and that's
even better because it looks like it's moving, its little legs hanging down to
sway with the motion of the water. Seifer looks around.
It's getting dark, but there's still no one else there.
He looks quickly over his shoulder and slides in the water, holding the monster
tightly with one hand round its tail. It's almost too heavy for him to lift like this
on land, and he's afraid the tail might fall off, but he can hold it just fine in the
water. It looks kind of like a dragon, with a hard shell and a long pointy tail.
When he grows up he wants to fight dragons.
He swishes the monster about on the water, pretending that it's a dragon. It
terrorises the limpets on the side of the jetty for a while before he slays it with
great enthusiasm using the leg of the sunglasses.
The monster is dead. Seifer feels great satisfaction watching it float upside down.
He treads water for a second, forgetting almost that the monster isn't real, and
it slips, falls. He isn't fast enough to catch it and it sinks almost lazily to the
sandy floor below the jetty. A fish, silver and shining like real armour, darts down
to nibble at it. Seifer is indignant.
After all, it's HIS dragon.
But it's also getting dark, and something keeps nagging at him.
A second fish joins the first. They butt at the shell, almost turning the monster over.
Seifer's scared, a little bit. The shadows are deep under the jetty and he realises
it's almost dark. He's frightened of the sea in the dark but then he won't be able
to come back and look for it later, and he might not be able to slip out in the
morning. The fish might have eaten it by then. He's only five, but he's a good
swimmer.
Seifer takes a deep breath, holds his nose, upends neatly and kicks towards the
bottom. Eyes tightly screwed shut, he bumps into the pilings, his outstretched
hands making the fish shy and dart away nervously. He slits an eye open just
enough to see the thing, his water dragon, and snatches it to his chest.
He's got it.
Seifer kicks up, filled with satisfaction, his lungs bursting. It seems to have
got very dark all of a sudden.
He surfaces about a foot out from the jetty, arms still wrapped tightly round
his dragon, and kicks towards the wood. It's getting dark now and he's more
than a little scared, his breathing fast and panicky, but he's proud, because
he's got his dragon back, and he's done it all by himself.
He lifts the monster carefully onto the planks, though it's heavy. The weight
of it as he struggles to lift it over his head ducks him back under the surface
again so he can't see for a minute, salt stinging his eyes as waves from the
ebb tide slap against his face. Something clasps his wrists, tightly, and lifts
him out.
It s not gentle.
Josef Almasy grabs his son by the arms like a hooked and landed fish and
dumps him unceremoniously on the jetty, streaming water. His shadow is
long as he stands over the boy, his speech slurred, but Seifer doesn't notice,
though he does remember now what he was supposed to do.
He was supposed to stay inside.
His father picks up the ruined shirt, waves it in his face and then tosses it to
the jetty where it lands with a slap. He's shouting, speaking fast, too fast for
Seifer to follow. He starts to cry in confusion, silently, snivelling with his
arms wrapped tight round his body as he tries to explain that he was fighting
a dragon.
The senior Almasy is not interested in either his son's incoherent explanations
or his frequent and increasingly desperate gestures towards the shell of the
horseshoe crab.
He's more interested in his bad manners and the stink of crab and iodine on
one of his only sets of summer clothes, which he's outgrowing fast. There's
no money for more, no money for much these days.
He tries and fails to hide his growing anger and frustration with a child that
would sometimes try the patience of a saint. And Josef Almasy has never
even pretended to be anything like a saint
Seifer's father picks up one foot and stamps it though the crab's carapace.
A lift of his booted toes under the shell kicks the crab's remains flying over
the sea. The second kick sends Seifer sprawling to the jetty. His father shouts
incoherently, grabs him under his chin and pulls him up to face him. His
breath smells hot and foul and saliva spurts in little droplets from his open
mouth to land on Seifer's face.
Seifer squirms in his grip and stats to cry properly, fighting back the tears.
His father doesn't like boys who cry and snivel like little girls
His father doesn't like a lot of things, including kids, especially ones who
don't do as they're told.
Seifer wonders sometimes why he got one in the first place.
His hands pull and tug uselessly at his father's thick wrist, desperate but tiring
himself out fast. The drunken drawl frightens him, and his stomach hurts from
the kick. His father makes no response, except to lift him higher until his bare
feet are almost off the boards. The grip round his throat has tightened to an iron
vice and he no longer has enough breath to cry.
"What did I tell you not to do?"
After a few seconds of desperate airless gasping the man drops him and there is
an instant of floating release before he hits the jetty, hard, his legs crumpling up
under him. His father has picked up the shirt again in one hand and he bends
down and shakes it at his child, calling him familiar old names that Seifer doesn't
understand, throwing punches and kicks that he does only too well. There's still
no one around, or even if there was, it's too dark to see anything. All Seifer can
see is the angry whites of his father's eyes and his teeth when he opens his mouth
to shout and the white T shirt he's wearing, pale blurs in a huge angry dark shape.
The jetty is a pale island in a sea of nameless terrors and the ocean that was so
friendly and engrossing earlier has turned into a dangerous place. Waves suck and
splash under the jetty as the tide retreats.
"I told you not to go out there! You didn't listen. You never listen. It's like talking to a
brick wall. It's like talking to myself."
The man crowds Seifer out, walking closer and closer to the edge of the boards,
his legs barring the safe way back to the beach. Halfway there the boy starts to
whimper and cling to his father's legs and this infuriates the man. He kicks Seifer
a few more times until he lets go and falls back, mouth wide and wailing in terror.
He's shivering now, in fear and cold, because the sun has completely set.
It's late.
Seifer is almost as frightened of his father as he is of the sea but then he knows
what his father can do to him. The fishermen say that the deep water fish can
suck the flesh right off your bones. The night makes the water look very, very
deep and he doesn't want the fish to eat him.
It sounds as if it might hurt
He's used to hurting but he's afraid that this might hurt worse. In his fear he
tries to dodge back to the beach but all this does is move him closer to his
father who kicks him again, twice more in the ribs and then into the side of his
face and his arms when he curls them over his skull. The last kick pushes him
off the jetty and into the black water.
It closes around him and the boy fights it with strength he doesn't know he had
in him. He opens his mouth to scream and it fills with saltwater, the cry
evaporating in a cloud of bubbles. It's too dark for him to see, and he can't
feel anything except terror and the cold soft sigh of the ocean all around him.
Then Seifer feels his father's hand on his arms for the second time this evening.
His father saves him from the water, lifts him up and pulls him out on the jetty,
still crying with seawater running in streams from his mouth and clothes and skin.
The man waits as his son gasps on the boards, blood and snot and tears dripping
from his face. After he decides that a suitable interval has passed, he hauls the
boy up, one hand on his shoulder. He speaks gently, this time, his fury seemingly
run out.
"I'm only doing this because I don't want you to get hurt. You know that, right?
You know that, boy. You could get hurt wandering off alone."
Seifer nods frantically. Yes, he knows that. He stands up unsteadily and drags his
arm across his face. It doesn't wipe the blood off so much as spread it around, and
for a moment the man's face creases in a frown that it's too dark to see.
"There's some crazy people out there. Crazy people."
His father picks up the shirt off the jetty, and hands it to the child, who takes it
automatically.
"You don't want to get hurt."
Seifer shakes his head no. The man places an almost gentle hand on his head
and they set off across the beach to the sandy house, Seifer with one hand
tight fisted in his father's trouser leg to help him walk. The other clutches his
ruined T-shirt.
His father's hand slides down, warm and heavy across his shoulders.
"It's for your own good, boy. You know that, don't you?"
Seifer came awake with a crash and a gasp to find that he'd fallen right off the bed
in the night, torso on the floor and legs from the knees down still lying on the
mattress next to Quistis. His head ached from recent impact with the floor.
It's onlyadream,onlyadreamthey'rejustdreamsso damn real goddammit
I thought I grew out of not ignoring those fuckers about the same time my
voice broke….
Guess not..
Quistis must have woken up a few seconds after he fell out of bed. Seifer vaguely
heard the faint scrabble of her hands on the bedside table as she searched for her
glasses and then saw the faint glimmering reflections of the lenses in the dark.
Her voice was crisp and sharp as always. "What's the matter?"
The noise jerked Seifer to full awareness. The blankets were wrapped around him
like some kind of mummy. They smelt of sweat and confusion.
"Nothing. Just bad dreams." He blinked. The darkness pressed in around him,
thickly hot and heavy.
"Again?"
"Quistis, everyone has dreams." Part of his mind did a mental victory dance ( Quistis
Trepe knows my sleeping habits, hell yeah) and the other half growled, shit , it's not
your fault., you can't help it.
Women.
"They're not mad."
"Nightmares? Every night?"
Hyne, how could the woman be so damn coherent at whatever the hell time it was?
"I'm getting up for a bit. Go back to sleep." He pulled on his boxers, almost tripping
over the tail of the sheets, and tossed them back on the bed. Quistis made a small sound
of assent, or anger, or surprise, as she was buried in folds of billowing cotton.
She was still fighting her way out of them as he made his way silently across the room
to the open window. The floor was cold on his still-damp feet.
Seifer climbed out onto the balcony and stared out at the glowing lights of the city and
thought that in other circumstances, they'd have made a great target. The breeze was cool
and pleasant in sharp contrast to the heat of the day. He could feel sweat drying in the roots
of his hair. It itched.
Stupid dreams. As if he had to have the right number of nightmares to prove he still had
some kind of conscience left.
My father..
I…..
"You used to sleep all the time in my class." Quistis joined him on the balcony, bare feet
and hems of pyjama bottoms brushing the boards in a soft rustle that he liked. Her hair
was pulled up into a messy bun.
"Because I don't sleep at night." Seifer leaned on the railing, which creaked alarmingly,
showering termites and dust to a watery grave. Nightmares? Take your pick. His issues
had to have time shares.
I've got the whole abused child thing, and then the mind control sorceress thing
where I fed my ex to the Powers of evil, oh and tortured one of my friends and
tried to kill you a lot, and then the bit where I got hunted down like an animal
and had to fight this creepy thing made of sticks. That's a lot to fit in.
And I don't even sleep all that often.
He flicked a glance at her for a moment. Quistis' face was calm and unreadable in the
warm dark, but Seifer could see the light reflect from her eyes. Far above, crickets
squeaked their tiny creaking sounds against the noise of the sea in the distance.
He added, defensively, "And you need to cut your toenails."
"You know, I read once that sleep patterns can't be disturbed without serious
psychological consequences, including a loss in sophisticated social functions."
"Nnn." Seifer switched off. Quistis was the only person he knew who could get away
with sounding like a textbook on occasion, but that didn't mean he had to listen.
She gave him a black look. "Figures."
"I hallucinate sometimes. That seems to take care of it." Hyne, times like this his fingers
itched for a cigarette.
She gave him an odd look that meant that she didn't know whether he was joking or not
and then must have decided he was, because she smiled. "We don't have to sleep"
He turned away from the lights without much effort, starting to grin.
"Sounds good to me."
The last word was spoken very gently into her neck as Quistis moved forwards to press
into him. She looped her hands round his waist and Seifer hugged her round her shoulders,
more grateful than he would ever have admitted for her acceptance, for not asking questions
or trying to dig any more secrets out of him.
A few seconds later he slid his hands downwards, the movement starting to pull the thin
silky pyjama top down over her shoulder and round her waist. Her skin was pale in the
night and fine crackling strands of her blond hair stuck to Seifer's hands. She made a
small slow sound of satisfaction, took his face in her hands and kissed him thoroughly
and with great attention to detail until they both had to come up for air. Her mouth tasted
of toothpaste.
Seifer muttered "I'll have to have some more nightmares…." as they slid very slowly to the
floor of the balcony. Sex might not be the most recommended method for laying old ghosts
to rest but he was willing to give it a go.
Five minutes later the balcony began to creak gently, showering splinters and termites into
the night.
Alternate chapter song -and reason for the title-' I Wish I Was A Girl', by the wonderful
band Counting Crows ( "I'm going down to Hollywood, they're going to make a movie
'bout the things they find crawling round my brain.)
As for the ficbits cunningly disguised as dreams: the Seifer-child one is heavily inspired by
Keri Hulme's The Bone People. When I was a kid at the beach I'd always stuff crab claws
in my pockets; on a trip to Virginia a couple of years ago I found some giant horseshoe crab
shells and thought how much I would have loved them, say, ten years earlier. The bit about
the prison is kind of my response to all those prison ficbits on ff.net. It's not D-District, by the way.
The other one is just a freaky dream, because most things work best in threes –see
bishonenink's Touchstone(pt2) for the same 'Seifer-and-Squall meet up after everything
at the orphanage' thing.
I am nothing if not unoriginal, despite my best efforts.
I hope you like it.
Reviewers:
Amber Tinted: He will return eventually. Probably. Maybe. Just not yet. They way he's
going, it may be for the funeral.
Breaker-one-I actually won the X2 action figure for designing alternate costumes for Payne.
I want that game. Looks very cool.
DBZ Fanfiction Queen: I'm working on a short Seifer/Edea drabble at the moment:
so far it seems to be ranging from Disturbing to Very Disturbing, with rain later.
Ghost 140: There was going to be an argument, only it got kind of defused somehow.
Of course I'm going senile, I just hit the big 22. Commemorative slippers, pipes and
Zimmer frames can be sent to the usual email address.
Nynaeve77: The explanation for why Quistis isn't returning will be in the chapter after
next. Love and peace!
Seatbelts: 2! Ta guys. Drugs are bad, mm'kay?
Seventhe: I wrote the hangover chapter after a father-daughter bonding session
involving the truly excellent film Touching The Void, two bottles of wine and one of
Chivas Regal whisky. I do my research. And the drinking culture is waaay different
here than in the US.
Superviolinist: Well, if it's a Seiftis fic, you can pretty much work out how the pairing's
going to go. I may be evil and break them up sometimes, of course.
NB-have now finally laid my hands on a copy off ff8 for my PS1-so am joyfully rediscovering
the world. We tried naming Squall 'Mandy' for a while, but it just didn't fit. Am
currently tying Squall to cross in vaguely Jesus-like-way and molesting him. Squall isn't
making much sense, Seifer is being vaguely disturbing, and everyone else is getting on with
kicking some serious monster ass. Ph33r m4 m4d 5k1llz!
Kate ( they look like pirates from here, oh I've been one for years, just keeping my hand in..)