Title: Seifer Returns
Author Cain
Email:
Rating: R
Summary: After the game, Seifer is living in the gutter somewhere, and he has an alter ego that's telling him to die.
Comments: Someone needs to love Seifer because he's an angel inside. Oh yes, and I don't like writing about girls, so there.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these people but Squaresoft is very welcome to give Seifer to me if they ever tire of him.
Zell, Squall and Selphie crowded around the computer screen, staring at the red dot intently, watching at it blipped and stayed in place, the first time it had done so for a long time. Zell blinked as Selphie played with her flipped up hair, some of it had swiped him across the eyeballs.
"Zell, these are the latest feeds from the satellite," Selphie turned around in her seat, prettily as always. "I wouldn't say that he's got very long to live, his mental activity is not unlike that of an animal and constantly hiding away and living in the gutters, wouldn't lengthen his life span."
Zell checked the words scrolling up the screen worriedly.
"What are we to do then? If he knows that we're tracking him, he will go into hiding again and this time he'll make sure that we won't ever find him."
Selphie looked innocently at Squall, who shuffled a bit and cleared his throat before beginning.
"Well, you see, that's where you and I come in Zell, Seifer's known us for longer than he's known the others and…well, we're his best friends in a way, apart from Fu and Rai of course. So, what do you think about going and getting him? I mean, it seems the sensible thing to do rather than leave him out there in the middle of nowhere starving to death and living in total depression."
Squall looked at his feet and Selphie looked at Zell as if to say that there was no other choice open to him.
"Well of course, why not?" he said. "Didn't you think that I'd want to go and pick him up?"
The silence was enough of a reply.
"I'm not sure that he'd appreciate being pulled in by us, and you'll have to understand that he may not recognise you and attack."
"What do you mean? I wouldn't mind being taken out of the gutters if I were him, even if I were an arrogant prick."
"Zell, it's not his arrogance that's the problem, if you two read these reports on here, the last few months have not made him an improved man. I'm afraid that the Seifer we all know is most likely dead and gone."
"What? Gone? How?"
"Having to live in hiding and always running away from people that he knew and love can be very traumatising, his mind has obviously found a way to block those emotions from depressing him too much."
"So…what's happened to him?"
"He's created an alter-ego personality, most likely of himself before Ultimecia, the image he remembers of Seifer the knight."
"He's crazy?"
"No, not quite, he's just seeing things in his mind's eye, double personality kind of thing. We're not very clear on this type of thing, it's not very common you see and most of the cases happen to ex-militaries so they are protected from investigation anyway."
"Oh, shit, what if he can't take it anymore? And that alter ego of his tells him what to do next? I remember him once telling me that to die would be the next great adventure and that he would go down unafraid."
"Well then, we had better get him out of there as soon as possible."
He had been driven out of every town; wherever he went he was followed by the disdain of others, until at last he had found a way to live, hiding in the shadows, sleeping during the daytime and travelling at night. Of course it wasn't much of a life, but it was better than walking by hearing insults shouted in your direction.
People would still look to him and think of the sorceress' knight that he once was; the follower of a tyrant who had met her timely downfall. He had changed, he'd tried telling them, but no one believed him.
Seifer woke up looked at the sunlit streets and regret flooded his scarred mind, why had he ever been what he was? What was it like to be treated as a human again, to live back at Balamb with the others, pretending things had never happened?
"That's just rubbish, you cannot undo time, it runs on whether you want it to or not, that's why it's so precious."
Seifer turned to face himself, the person that he used to be, a proud, arrogant knight wielding his gunblade like a part of himself. The other man smiled, it wasn't pleasant he noticed, more of a sneer, it was how he used to smile.
"So, this is how the great Seifer Almasy has turned out? Living like a hunted animal, look at you now, you aren't even a shadow of me."
His other self picked him up as if he weighed nothing and peered into his eyes, green on green and then threw him back again.
"You are a pathetic excuse for a human. Look at me, this is what you were all those years ago, don't you remember? Those were the days when others lived in fear; they were the ones being hunted, what has happened to you? Where along the path did you lose yourself?"
Where, where indeed? He wondered where he had lost his arrogance, his pride, and the will to keep going however badly life had gotten.
"Life hasn't got a lot to offer to you now, does is? Remember what you once said? To die would be the next great adventure, something a wielder of a gunblade would not possibly turn down. To fall as the sakura does, beautifully and in its prime."
Seifer turned his head away.
"A wielder of the gunblade? I no longer hold such a noble weapon, I would have it, but I do not. My Hyperion did not deserve me, Squall has it now; I gave it to him before I left."
"Squall!" he spat out, eyes blazing with a sudden anger. "Your greatest rival, without him you would have become a SeeD, and you gave him the Hyperion? You fool!"
Seifer cowered in the shadows unable to meet his eye. He rounded up on Seifer, shadow falling across the forlorn form on the ground.
"Well then, get it back. Take it from Squall, he will never wield it as you have, the Hyperion in his hands would be just another worthless blade, but in yours? Who knows, maybe you could bring the world to its feet again, as you once did…"