Title: A Promise is a Promise
Rating: G/K
Character: Seifer (orphanage crew mentioned)
Summary: Seifer muses on a promise they made as children.
Notes: I should be slapped, because this is, by no means, a drabble. But it's under one thousand words,so I'm shoving it here, because I am lazy. For the themes 'left alone' and 'letters' at the Fated Children LiveJournal community.
Seifer can't really remember it very well, but it's the only memory he has of when they were children, and he cherishes it like it was his greatest treasure.
When they were in the orphanage, he remembers making a promise. He remembers sitting out on the beach in the middle of the night, lost little children huddled close together because they were the only things each other had left; he remembers a bonfire that he lit himself – the others were too afraid of matches to touch them – and he remembers someone bringing up their futures, the topic they hated to mention and avoided as if it were some kind of death omen to mention it.
He remembers one of them – a pity he can't remember who did what, during this whole thing – bringing up adoption. Remembers saying that he wouldn't mind having a family, but only if the others could, too. Remembers them all leaning in close, arms touching, breaths creating a mingled fog between their faces, and he remembers them putting their hands out in front of each other, smiles bright on everyone's faces. Zell wasn't crying, Selphie wasn't singing, Quistis wasn't laughing, Irvine wasn't playing cowboys and Indians and Squall wasn't moving away – it was the one thing they had ever agreed on, the one thing they had ever promised each other.
That no one would be left behind. No one would be forgotten.
Two weeks later, Zell was adopted. Quistis followed shortly after, and soon it was just him and Squall left, standing side by side, watching as Irvine waved at them from the back seat of Matron's car with tears on his cheeks and that little hat of his tucked to his chest. Neither of them were crying outside, but he knew even Squall was sobbing on the inside, by the dark cloud that had filtered over his vision and the tense stance he had taken in the doorway.
He remembers looping an arm around the brunette's shoulders, whispering under his breath that everything will be alright, and thinking that he'd make sure to keep his word even if it meant bending over backward to do it. That was the last time they had touched like that: as friends and equals.
A few months after that, they were shipped off to Garden. He was a year behind the set curriculum, and old man Cid wasn't too happy about that at all, but a promise was a promise – he had stayed at the orphanage with Squall until Squall was of age as well, intent to not leave him behind, as the others had (as Big Sis had).
When they got there, the promise was forgotten. More things were shoved into their heads, and they let it slip away into a loose thread at the back of their minds, constantly there but never addressed. (Honesty, he wasn't sure why they never thought about it or brought it up – a part of him figured they were both just too busy or too afraid to want to deal with the past, because things had changed now, and that was how it was going to be from now on.)
Squall went from being his best friend to his greatest rival; Quistis became an instructor, someone else to tie him down with rules and regulations and for him to fight against and argue with; Zell stayed the same (he was thankful for that), but he didn't have time to care, didn't want to think about it.
He made new friends. The promise was hardly there at all, now, but that didn't stop it from existing, and he thinks that that's the reason they were always so drawn to each other, so compelled to fight and argue and tease and threaten. Lingering phantom memories from their childhood.
Soon the War came. And they were split, torn apart – he was shoved away, and he joined the other side, blinded by power and greed and the idea of fame that had been implanted into his head by soft words and gentle touches.
And they overpowered him, just like he knew they would, just like they overpowered Her in the end and set things 'right' again. And, this time, he was the one who was going to be left behind, left staring at their backs as they walk away and watch as the fame and glory is showered down upon them. He was the one who was going to be abandoned to wallow in his own defeat and his own faults, and the promise, hell, half of them didn't even remember the promise any more, did they? Maybe he was the only one who had ever cared about it in the first place, hopeless dreamer that he was – maybe he was the only one who had meant it when he had poured his very being into that promise and the touch of their hands and the words that had passed between them that night.
He was wrong, in the end. He hates admitting he's wrong, but he'll be the first to say that he had them pegged all wrong, and he still feels horrible for it, for making that jab at them when he should have known better.
They called him back. He received the invite not long after he had been left alone in the form of a crisp white letter, scribbled in that neat little cursive handwriting of Squall's, signed by the entire group. It was short, simple, and to the point, but it was all he needed to know that he was still welcomed, and that no one had been left alone in the end, after all:
A promise is a promise.
