This doesn't seem to be formatting properly – most of the Squall scenes aren't in italics, and no matter how much I mess with the document, that isn't changing, so just pretend they are. Use your imagination.
I am starting this before I post the third chapter of The Dying of the Light. I do not know what the result of the review thing is, but I read the last sentence of it, and then I looked outside at the snow falling on the trees here in Washington DC, and I thought: I really don't care about Frederick the Great right now. Screw the book report; this weather is for writing about love and death and other more interesting things, not dead historical figures.
So here I am, writing about love and death and the Gates of the Light. My mother will kill me.
The Review Responses have been moved to the end of the fic.
I own nothing but the plotline; the characters and world are not mine. This story is a crossover, but you do not need to be familiar with any series beyond Final Fantasy VIII. However, if you ARE familiar with the other series, and you haven't guessed it yet, you'll definitely figure it out in this chapter. Can anyone here say 'blatantly obvious?'
This chapter is for Lauren, Hilda, and Yueling, who held my head above the water when I thought I'd drown. Yes, that's a metaphor.
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THE DYING OF THE LIGHT
Chapter 4: The Gates of the Light
By: nakigoe-chan
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The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.
-Unknown
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It was disturbing, how regularly this happened.
The little girl knelt before her father, alternately shaking her head violently back and forth and burying it in his lap. He tried to stroke her hair, to calm her, but she refused all forms of comfort. She could not hide from herself...
...Or anything inside of her, even if it wasn't a part of her at all.
"Papa," she sobbed, "Papa, I don't understand what's wrong with me!"
"There is nothing wrong with you," he said softly.
"There is!" The girl wept. "There is something inside of me – something that wants to hurt my dear friends!"
The father opened his mouth to attempt argument, but his daughter rushed on.
"And they know it, Papa! They stay away from me; they're afraid of me. I've never tried to hurt anyone or anything in my life, but something inside of me is trying to destroy the people I care for!"
She went back to weeping.
And the father stared down his daughter.
The child of his beloved.
His mechanical, cyborg masterpiece.
And he smiled.
His glasses flashed, and his grey-blue right eye twinkled down at his daughter. His left eye was obscured – the glasses' lens over his left eye was carved in. The design was that of an eye, like the one it hid – but the carved eye was inside a perfect pentagram.
"My daughter," he murmured to her, "There is nothing wrong with you. Nothing at all."
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It was like swimming in stars.
The Light cascaded out, wrapping him in ecstasy and oblivion. And he walked through the Gates...
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I saw it as a flash behind my eyes. It was the first time I'd dreamt of the little girl when I wasn't asleep; but I saw it as clearly as the haunting woman before me.
I doubled over and gasped.
So the little girl, like me, had harmed her friends – and she, like me, hadn't known she was doing it. She hadn't meant to do it.
The thought was so comforting that I almost noticed it, beyond the soul-crushing grief. Squall...
And then there was the fury. The woman before me was responsible for this, and I was going to rip her into pieces. Tiny, bloody, painful pieces. I was going to kill her – but not until she begged me, over and over and over again, for death.
It was so strong that I didn't even register how foreign this seething hatred felt, running through my veins. I had never felt so volatile, so violent, but I felt a fierce, bloodthirsty joy that came with it. I felt my hair growing rapidly – it was at my waist, then my knees – but I didn't care. All I knew was that I was going to destroy the woman in front of me.
And anyone who tried to stop me was going to suffer the same fate.
I lashed out, and claws – no longer nails, but long, sharp claws – raked across Ultimecia's cheek leaving four jagged red lines.
I used the blood on my fingers – her blood – to draw a stripe on each cheek, as if it were war paint.
And she burst out laughing.
"What's so funny?" I snarled, soft and deadly.
It took her very little time to get her laugh under control, and I wondered briefly if her amusement had been nothing but a show. But as I met her gaze, there was honest amusement in her eyes. Amusement...
...and fear.
"You think," she whispered to me, "that I am a demon."
"You are," I hissed.
"If you want to see a real monster, my beloved Firefly," she whispered, "take a look in the mirror."
The tall window next to us provided the perfect reflective surface; the lanterns inside the library weren't terribly bright, but as outside was pitch-black night, I saw my reflection clearly in the glass.
My hair was long again. My eyes had turned purple, but they were darker, redder. My face was sharper, edged in cruelty.
It was darker in intent than even Ultimecia's face.
How could that be me?
I turned back to her, but she was gone, her light laughter floating around me like spiteful butterflies.
And I fell to my knees, hiding my face in my hands so that Zell and Quistis would not see the demon that was destroying me from within.
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The Gates of the Light opened before him, and for a moment, all was endless radiance.
And Squall found himself in a garden.
It was a beautiful garden, filled entirely with white roses. But as Squall started through it, they grew darker, until he found himself wandering through endless black flowers. They were still beautiful, but they were dark and brought no joy. In fact, Squall found that when he stared at them, he grew not only distinctly uncomfortable – as if tasting forbidden fruit – but also nauseous.
These flowers were not death, not peace, but loss and pain.
{This is what's left,} said a voice Squall could not identify. {This is what's left of my home.}
Squall found himself running through the garden, desperate to find the white flowers again, but he realized when he had run for what felt like forever, that the bright, happy flowers had long since faded away into darkness.
Squall turned in circles, trying desperately to see one flower – just one! – that wasn't black, wasn't painful.
There!
Far in the horizon, a beautiful field – full of pink and blue and yellow and green – lay dappled in sunlight.
He raced towards it.
And a voice in his head – beyond anything the Lurk, or Julia, or even the unknown voice in this dark garden – spoke softly to him. And this voice, he knew, was interwoven with his own heart. This voice was no trick. This voice belonged in him as none of the others did. He knew what it would say, even as the words flowed through him.
I'll be here...
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"Rinoa," Zell's voice said above me, as his hands tried desperately to pull my hands from my face, "Rinny, look up. Take your hands away from your face."
"NO!" I shrieked.
"Rinny..." he said, and for a moment I thought I heard patience there. "Grow up."
Quistis put a gentle hand on my back. I marveled at her courage. Doubtlessly she was frightened – who knew better than her what I was capable of in this state?
"Man, Rinny," Zell said. "What happened to your hair? You look like a Barbie Doll, only not as frizzy."
I lifted my face out of my hands and glared at him.
He was smiling. "Plus you're not as well-proportioned. Plus not even a Barbie would have fallen for that stupid little made-ya-look gab I just pulled."
Quistis snickered.
"Squall," I said, "we need to help Squall."
They looked at me blankly, and I realized how absurd I sounded. It was a little late to help Squall. He was dead.
"Yeah, okay," Zell said, obviously not having an issue with the little life/death factor. "But we aren't gonna get anywhere if you continue to insist on playing peek-a-boo."
"You help?" I asked, sounding hopelessly weak with relief.
Quistis gave me a look that said it all. Zell, however, summed it up just in case I didn't get the message. "Of course we will, Rinoa, you moron."
Now came the question of how. I voiced it, with the short-and-direct approach. "How?"
"Okeydokey," Zell said. "Let's see if our friend the big fat leather book on mythology can help us."
"Zell, this is really not the time to be looking for more mythological warrior chick drawings."
But Zell was zipping through the index at record (if you'll excuse the pun) speed. "Nope."
"Nope what?"
"Nothing in here on The Gates of Light. Your consolation prize is a reference to The Gates of Time..."
The Gates of Time.
That gave me a jolt. I knew I'd heard of the Gates of Time somewhere before...
"Here we have Life and Death," Zell went on. "The only way to control death is by using the silence glaive, which can only be wielded by one of the ten senshi, the senshi of silence, I have no idea what the hell a sen-shee is, blah blah blah...we don't care about this paragraph..."
If I had thought The Gates of Time sounded familiar, the sudden recognition paled in comparison to my subconscious reaction to the words Silence Glaive.
"Here we go, this is interesting." Zell was still at it. "The object with the most regenerative power is the Sacred Cup, with the power to restore life and peace to a region/world, yadda yadda, this thing sounds like what we want."
We crowded around the book, but Zell gave a massive groan. "What the fuck is this? It doesn't exist?"
"What?" I said, my hope faltering.
"You have to make it. You need three sacred objects – the Space Sword, the Aqua Mirror, and the Garnet Orb."
"Okay, show of hands." I said. "Who knows what any of those things are?"
Zell and Quistis looked at me, completely blank. Shit.
"They have pictures," Zell offered halfheartedly.
I looked down at the book.
I remembered these things.
They were from my dreams – the little girl had seen the sword, the mirror, and the bejeweled heart in her dreams, and I had seen them through her eyes.
Of course, that didn't mean that I had any idea where to start looking for them.
Quistis's eyes widened, and she pointed excitedly at the picture of the Space Sword.
"Quistis, you have got to deal with this speech thing," Zell said, exasperated. "It's impeding our progress, here."
Quistis produced a pen from nowhere, and gestured for my hand. I gave it to her, warily, and she scribbled a word onto the back.
Odin.
Odin?
"That's where I've seen this before!" Zell bonked himself on the head with his fist. "Do you remember when we went to get Odin at the Centra Ruins, and there was that mural on the wall with the woman holding the sword? The sword she was holding was this sword!"
"It could have been any sword," I said doubtfully.
"It. Was. This. Sword." Zell said.
"It was just a picture, Zell."
"It's a clue, Rinoa, and as it's the only one we have, I say we go with it."
It was absurd. The concept that we should go off on a quest to find something to restore the dead to life was, in and of itself, was ludicrous. It went against all factual possibilities, and even if it didn't, no one was supposed to play God. No one was supposed to mess with life and death. And the fact that we would risk our lives to follow a far-fetched theory was almost as absurd.
He is already dead to you, and very soon he will be dead to those in the underworld as well.
"Let's do it," I said.
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I'll be here...
She was there, and he needed to go to her. He needed to go to her because she was there, and she was everything...but she was in danger, he knew it, and if he didn't get to her, all hope would be lost.
Hope...he realized, with a start, that he didn't even know the meaning of the word. It was not something he had any experience with – except he heard it, in her voice, and recognized it. It was something he had once had. It was something she had given him.
"Why?"
I'll be waiting here...
Why was she waiting? Waiting was dangerous, he knew. If she waited for him, she put herself at risk, and Squall could think of nothing worth risking her for. There was nothing more valuable, not to him. Even if he didn't remember her, he knew she was worth it.
"For what?"
I'll be waiting here...for you...so...
She was waiting for him.
So if you come here...
He wanted to cry out to her, to tell her, 'I'm trying! I'm coming!' but found he lacked the strength. All his energy was poured into pounding forward through the black flowers toward the field. The dark roses reached out at him, scratching and tearing with their thorns, but they didn't matter.
You'll find me.
He had to find her. Because...she had been his life, his death, and anything and everything else. Without her, he was no more than the words the Lurk had whispered into his ear in the In-Between.
I promise.
As he entered the field, the black flowers fell away, and the Light he had walked through at the Gates paled in comparison to the sunbeams that surrounded him.
But she wasn't there.
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"Zell, I need you to stay behind."
Zell seemed to have a little problem with this. "WHAT?!"
"Look, I said, trying to sooth him, all we have is one little clue. We're going to need someone to find out more information – even if something at the Centra Ruins tells us where the Space Sword is, that's one object out of three, and we need to find out more about the Sacred Cup. You know, how to make it, how to use it. I'm sure there are other books in her library, and I'm sure there are some towns with mythology experts. We need you to go to Galbadia and see if you can find Juno's journal."
"Why me?" Zell whined. "Quistis is way better at this intellectual junk."
"Yes, she is," I said. "But her ability to talk to mythology experts is somewhat impeded right now, inasmuch as she can't talk."
Zell conceded to this, but he wasn't done resisting yet. "How will I be able to be any help if I'm not with you? The computers are down and we don't have phones – I'd be able to tell you less information than Quistis."
I had a solution to that one. "When I was with the Forest Owls, we kept these little books." I pulled them out of a pocket. They were about half the size of a paperback novel, and very thin.
Zell was doubtful. "This will help how?"
I threw one to him, grabbed Quistis's pen, and wrote on the first page of mine: They will allow us to communicate.
"Open your book," I commanded Zell.
He did so. "Ooooh, Ancient Magical Email, or something. What are these, Sorceress books?"
"Actually, I have no living clue what they are, but they work. Which is what we need to get down to. Work. That thing where we figure out how the hell we're gonna pull this off."
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Getting out of the castle itself wasn't all that difficult, even with the books: The big leather book, the small unreadable book, and the communication book. We all left from different places, at different times, on the off chance that Ultimecia decided to try and stop us.
I doubted she would. She wanted us to unravel this mystery, to a certain extent. She wanted to have something only we could get, so she would let us believe we were doing this for our own sake until we had what she whatever it was.
Zell was waiting for a few days, to see if there was anything else in Ultimecia's library. We knew it was risky, but we had agreed that it was necessary.
I didn't realize until I was out of the castle that Quistis and I hadn't arranged a meeting place.
I swore softly under my breath, and started off on the path that surrounded the castle. It was long and dark and I was freezing cold – I had decided against trying to use the bridge to escape, which meant swimming the moat – particularly difficult to do when one only had one arm to swim, since I didn't want the books getting wet.
The one personal item I hadn't been able to leave behind impeded me the most. It made it almost impossible to swim, even attached to my belt, but I would have drowned rather than let it go.
In Squall's hands, Lionheart had looked so light. In mine, it felt impossibly heavy.
The moat had been slimy and gross and about ten gazillion degrees below zero. I wanted a fire, but I didn't dare make one until Quistis and I were well away from the castle. I muttered and swore as I trekked around the fortress, but two sweeps and a half-hour later still found me fruitless.
What if Ultimecia stopped her? What if I was supposed to do this alone? I really didn't think I could. This was so much bigger than me...
A shadowy figure detached itself from the darkness surrounding the castle.
I gave a sigh of relief and darted towards the spot where Quistis would hit the woods.
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She wasn't there.
Squall felt desperate, and betrayed. She'd promised she'd be there. So why wasn't she?
And then came the footsteps, light at first, moving carefully through the flowers.
Squall turned. A young man – just a boy, really – stood before him, staring. The boy had wavy white hair and amber eyes. Those eyes were older than anything Squall had ever seen. The boy looked so tired, so sad, that Squall managed to put aside his misery for a moment. "Can I help you?"
{Actually,} said the boy, his mouth turning up into what was almost a smile, {I'm supposed to help you.}
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"Hey!" I said softly.
The figure kept running, so I leapt into pursuit. Unfortunately, Quistis was obviously faster than I gave her credit for, and the books and the gunblade weighed me down. "HEY!" I cried, throwing caution to the winds. It didn't help.
I jumped on Quistis, knocking us both to the ground and sending us tumbling down a short ravine into a creek. Fortunately, I dropped the books at the top of the ravine. Unfortunately, I was all wet again.
"Fuck," I said, ever the eloquent one.
Then I reached over, and grabbed Quistis by the back of her coat. I was about to start a tirade – why the hell had she sped up when I called to her? – when I realized it wasn't Quistis at all. It wasn't even a woman.
It was Seifer.
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END OF PART 4 (hope you enjoyed it - please R & R or email me at nakigoe_chan@hotmail.com - I respond to all emails.)
Next Chapter: The Turning of the Traitor:
Squall talks to the weird boy, Seifer and Rinoa have a Deep Talk, and Quistis and Seifer work out their differences via some physical violence on Quistis's part. ^_~ You Go, Girl! (Yeeeek. Did I just type that? ^_^;)
Author's Notes:
Selphie: Okay, people! nakigoe-chan is unavailable at the moment. You'll be glad to hear that since chapter 3's reviews hit the double digits, she's sticking with this fic. However, she's just gotten into college, and right now she's jumping up and down and squealing and sending highly intellectual instant messages to her friends such as HOLY SHIT! So the responsibility for the review responses turns to me, because she's totally gypped me in this fic so far.
Casey Dale: Thanks - but as you just read...the Gates present many possibilities.
Wynter: I'm sorry I haven't emailed you yet; I got grounded off the Internet for a while, and exams have kept me busy. Thank you for the compliments!
Pierson: While I appreciate the sentiment, Ranma ½ fans are dangerous – you may not want to annoy them. ^_~
Corinne: Arigatou!
Amy: Thanks! Actually, I'd rather write this one, I just didn't see the point of working on it if so few were reading it. But I AM continuing it, so everyone can relax. The TV anime of Ranma ½ isn't great, but the manga/comic books (which can be found at your local Borders/Barnes & Noble) are pretty funny. It's essentially character-driven: all of them are completely wacky, and every male in the series is in love with the lead female, and every female in the series is in love with the lead male, and the two of them are in love with each other but wouldn't admit it if their lives depended on it.
Jessica: Uh...wow. You can't be serious, but thank you SO MUCH!
Dee-whY-Cee-aRe: Glad you enjoyed that little bit – I'm never sure when my jokes work. And you will be happy to know that the next chapter revolves almost entirely around Seifer. Don't worry – he plays one of the top four roles in this fic.
Casper: Arigatou!
Woodge: Arigatou!
Dragonchic: Yup, Zell's a male. And voila, Seifer's big entrance. Oh, and BTW, you've turned me into a complete Ro/Lo fan. Yes, I watch that show.
Baby Rose/Alexia: Your constant support has helped so much, and yes, the number of reviews I have now for this fic really isn't bad. I've never written a FFVIII fic before, so I don't know what a lot or a little is, and I suppose the response that After You got warped my perspective somewhat. I actually think that this story has more interesting possibilities than AY, so the fact that the first chapter of AY had more reviews than the first three posts of DotL put together kinda made me wonder. But this story will continue – at what is, for me, record-breaking speed.
CHECK OUT http://www.faniac.com - THE FIRST EVER FANFICTION MAGAZINE! (I think.)
Ja ne!
~ nakigoe-chan