Title: Just Another Quiefer

Chapter 1: A Simple Reason

Author: OneMoreSquall

" I don't know exactly where I went wrong, it just sort of happened, I couldn't tell why I was doing it anymore, it was just sort of a filler in my life,I had moved on, Garden had become a memory, and I know that I could never go back, and I never would want to go back. Its hard to explain, but Garden and I are different, completely, the frame there, I can't be in it. FUCK! you get what I mean don't you? Fuck, I don't even understand it. I was corrupted, I think, and through my corruption, I just lost the ability to live at Garden. I'm sorry ,Quistis, I can't go back. Never. Not even to join you."

Seifer Almasy stirred his drink around and around, not daring to touch it lest he destroy the feelings, afraid even to stop twirling it around. The thoughts were dancing to a bittersweet tune in his mind. To be free of Garden, and in the same sense to lose it too, the home he knew. He didn't know what to do, He couldn't go anywhere, all he had was his fifth floor hole in a seedy part of Deling(redeemably near the shopping arcade, though).

"Hey, wait, why the fuck are you even here anyways? What could be so fucking important that Squall had to send a fucking SeeD to talk to me?" Seifer was mystified. What the fucking fuck. He dug his calloused hands deep into the front pocket of his worn coat, and fished around till he found his pack of smokes.

"I've come, but I was not sent by Squall, I came to talk to you on behalf of all your old friends. They want to give you a second chance, isn't that what you always wanted?" Just come back, you dumb fuck, so you can be near me. Many nights Quistis had lay awake worrying about Seifer, alone, without his posse, and his only friend a hideous, possessed sorceress. Those sleepless nights haunted her now. Come back so I can sleep, knowing you're safe. What an infuriating man, he said nothing, just lit his cigarette, and stared at it.

"Give me a good reason, and I'll go back with you."

me.

"You don't need a reason, just come back to your home."

"Its not my home anymore. Its as much my home as Trabia is yours. I have to be up early tomorrow, so I'm headin' the fuck out. Don't bother trying to call, I can't afford a phone." Seifer's usually smug expression was made even smugger by the way that he puffed on his little piece of cancer, looking for all the world, like he was a king.

Quistis hated him for a moment then, and she would never forget that feeling. In a brief second she realized that she had never really hated anybody before, and would never again feel that angry or that...hating of somebody for the rest of her life. But she didn't know that yet, all she knew was that she really fucking hated Seifer fucking Almasy.

The next morning was rough for Seifer, he woke at 5, still half-drunk from the night before, the taste of rank beer and stale smoke sat on his tongue like sandpaper. The world swam before his eyes as he threw two legs over the side of the bed and stood up. Groggily he scratched himself, picked a pair of dirty grey pants off the floor, threw on his old shirt and paused only to grab his battered duster off the peg beside the door.

The morning sun urned into his eyes with some unholy hatred, and the infrequent sounds of the cars passing by him on the street, the earliest of the early risers, played havoc with his already pounding head. Despite the pain that he felt, the self-inflicted anguish of the hangover, Seifer looked about and strode purposefully across the street, and headed off to catch the bus that would take him to the first step of his new life.

The early morning sun was peaking through the blinds of the Deling Hotel room where Quistis was staying. She rolled over, the last of a thousand time in the night, and stared at the clock with her burning sleepless eyes.

"5 am, give me a break"

It was getting more and more common for the blonde teacher to lose sleep these days, and what little sleep she did was plagued by the nightmares of those final moments against the Sorceress Ultimecia and the ordeal of time compression. Every time she closed her eyes in the night that haunting face would show up, and blurred with it was the face of Seifer. The look on their face was a contemptuous one, Seifer's eyes burning with betrayal, and Quistis knew that it was her fault as teacher and nearly older sister that she hadn't stopped him from going over to the other side. Whenever she saw that look in here dreams,she would remember the scene back in the Timber TV station, the flash that Seifer had stepped into, the flash that robbed her of any chance to ever get the man for herself. Along with that horrible look on seifer's face was the fear that Quistis knew while she was staring death in the face against Ultimecia. She had looked over at Squall, and saw nothing in his expression, no fear, no anxieties, nothing. When she looked at Rinoa, the Sorceress Rinoa, she saw nothing but contempt for the evil sorceress; for those two there was no fear in battle, Rinoa knew Squall would never let anything happen to her, and Squall was a man without fear, perhaps unwisely, but with Rinoa at his side, the Commander was all but invincible. Quistis had stood by as Squall stood fast against wave after wave of Ultimecia's best attacks, never faltering never stumbling, just continually swinging that burning green blade back; nor did Rinoa take a step back. Then the now-familiar blast racks across the scene, engulfing the lone cowardly figure in flames, then blackness.

That was always the part where she woke up, just as she did in the Ragnarok after the battle ended, Squall and Rinoa had defeated the sorceress, and she had been pulled out by Irvine. She couldn't bear to look at the companions that she let down.

"Maybe that's why I think I love Seifer, he's the only one who did worse than I did." The thought brought a smile too her lips, the first one in a long time. Maybe every cloud did have a silver lining.

She lay back on her bed, and pondered what had happened the night before, what Seifer had said, and her inability to say what she wanted to. Just a few words, almost anything would have sufficed, she knew that he was proud, but she also knew that Seifer thought of the Garden as his home and that he would try to get back there somehow. Any excuse, the flimsiest of reasons that she could have come up with would have brought him back to Garden where he could be forever by her side. It didn't even have to be personal, even "we need people who can use a gunblade", or "Squall wants someone to train with". Anything would have been easy to say, for anyone else.

But there was the little catch in her mind, what if he didn't mean it, what if he had just been joking with her? His expression never changed, just that smug arrogance; so cavalier in the face of the horror of what he had done, like passing water, those months of his life disappeared. Quistis secretly wished that she could do the same, that she could hide that shame, forget it and live her life on, somewhere else. What was different between them?

He must have something to live here for, someone maybe. Perhaps he wasn't meant to be at Garden, maybe he was improving himself or something along that lines. All the questions and doubts swirled around, into each other and formed into one black ball that sank to Quitis' already knotted stomach. Her own frustrations at here inability to lead and teach, her inability to stand and fight, her inability to even be the attractive woman she was, mixed with her hatred for her love of Seifer, burned horribly. The pain caused her head to reel and she sank to her knees, grabbing at her unwelcome tears, trying desperately to push them back, to hold them in.

They wouldn't stop.

The bus ran quietly through the the predawn streets, wending its lonely way through the empty, blue streets. Seifer was alone on the bus, which suited him fine. It was better, nobody to gawk at him, stare at him like he was a killer, as if he were the one responsible for all the atrocities suffered by the people during the reign of the evil Edea.

"I was" he would remind himself anytime he saw those suspicious looks, the hatred. It was always the same, every time he looked into those burning eyes, he would cringe. There was a time where he knew he could do everything, beat anyone, where he was invincible, a near force of nature. Now the sight of a child who recognized him from the old newspapers, or heaven forbids a student from a garden on vacation, would bowl him over, crack his visage, and break his soul. Seeing Quistis last night, he was struck by how well she handled herself, how she could look at herself in the morning, put on that neutral expression of hers, and be content with what she had done. She was a good guy, she was the epitome of right. She had nothing to be ashamed of; there were no single mothers walking a stroller with that tired look in her eyes, the look of loss and burden. She would never have to answer to that innocence, tell the mother why her husband had to die in a attack that amounted to revenge.

The bus continued its subdued journey through those quiet streets, never needing to stop, just rolling on with little purpose beyond its predetermined route.