Disclaimer: All of Final Fantasy 8 belongs to the demigods at Square Enix and Sony and it makes me sad
Written for fated(underscore)children at livejournal, for the themes Home and Don't follow me.
Seifer POV
When the war was over, when all was said and done, the evil sorceress killed, Esthar opening up to the rest of the world, Galbadia retreating from Timber... when all that had been dealt with, I had thought my turn was next. I fully expected them to come to me, I couldn't even fool myself into thinking I'd been able to hide, and arrest me, giving me some trial that would be no more than a facade since the verdict would already have been made, either lifelong imprisonment or death. I had no idea how wrong I was. Instead, they came to me, indeed knowing where I was all along, and offered me to start over, giving me a chance at a clean slate and a new life. I'd have been mad not to accept, so I did. I went along with them, playing nice, taking on the part of the grateful, humbled ex-criminal, following their little orders and, eventually, ending up in Garden again, excused from all the things I'd done, made a level 8 SeeD and reaccepted by all of society.
Or that was how it was supposed to be, anyway. In reality, I only got the shittiest of missions, never getting a chance at working my way up, and everybody looking at me as I walked by, whispering, as I passed, that it was outrageous that I was there, that I should be dead, that I was a disgrace to Garden. They didn't even bother to hide it, they knew I knew.
There were a few people I could talk to, when I got a chance. Chicky, for example, turned out to have grown up a little, acting less iritating than I remembered, and though most of our time was still spent exchanging taunts, we did it with a smile. Trep was another such person, I'd never really disliked her and now that she'd gotten off her high horse, she was, at the very least, pleasant company. That, and she plays a mean game of chess. Rinoa didn't want to have anything to do with me anymore, I couldn't blame her, after all I'd done. The messenger girl and the gunslinger didn't talk to me either, but since I didn't exactly have a burning desire to talk to them, that wasn't such a big loss. And Squall...I think I saw him all of two times in the six months I was there and that was in passing, with him barely awknowledging my existence with the tiniest damn nod I've ever seen.
I made my decision to leave when my request for promotion was refused for about the twentieth time, even though I'd passed the test with an exceptionally high score and hadn't caused the slightest bit of trouble in months. I couldn't bring myself to care anymore, if this was going to be my life, I could just as well go back to the place I'd been living at before. At least there, the few people I could talk to didn't have to go on missions all the damned time.
I pretty much just packed up and left, I didn't own much and I definitely didn't have many emotional ties to the place, it was no longer my home, hadn't been home since the day I'd left. But I still left a note, though I'm not sure they ever found it. Or maybe they did, because, just as I'd asked on that scrap of paper I'd left on my bed, they never followed me.
