After the brunet had disappeared, Seifer had slowly become a desperate man. He withered under the pressure of Squall's hatred, the image of agonized, blazing eyes burned into him, sickness and pain and apology boiling up in his throat and choking off his voice.

Fuujin and Raijin saw less and less of him, sought him out, but he was always working, and for what they never knew. He never told them anything, no more than 'I'm busy,' and when it came to it, 'I'm just trying to make a bit of money,' his voice exhausted and mildly defensive.

As far as Twilight Town residents could tell, he'd been possessed by the ghost of diligence or something, because he seemed desperate to do nothing but work. Eventually he disappeared altogether, and speculation amassed. Some joked uneasily that the work-ghost had pulled him into the haunted mansion in the woods outside town, and he was busy renovating the place.

Speculations were wrong, and he'd used up most of his recently-made cash to buy himself a flight out of town and into the new hub of civilized life, the 'big city' of the Kingdoms, now that they were mostly open to each other- Radiant Garden.

He figured it was the first place he could look, and with the mass of jobs he'd taken he was sure to have enough here-and-there experience to get him a higher paying job, enough to keep looking.

Luckily, he didn't have to look for long. On his way across the marketplace he glanced a boy storming down the stairs: a familiar one, in fact, with a head of brown spikes and, as far as he was concerned, the dorkiest clown shoes in existence.

Originally he'd intended to question the boy. He'd seen him with Squ… 'Leon' enough to know they were acquainted. Instead he was lucky to discover he'd been lead straight to jackpot.

Unfortunately, the angry mayor was not a prize he could claim quite yet, since he'd preferred to get yelled at when they were alone, without the keyblader running about.

So he skulked in the shadows of the odd houses and a set of stairs two stories high, eyes fixed on the pair before what he had not-yet-learned was a wizard's home- and a temporary home for the entire Radiant Garden Rebuilding Crew, Sora, Riku and Kairi occasionally included.

Sora screamed the brunet's name and Leon looked at him sharply, annoyed, and shut the door, leaning against the wall.

"What do you want?" he asked, sounding stressed and edgy and annoyed. Fingers jarred through dirty hair, and he tossed his head to the side.

"I got a call from Olette," Sora told him, brows scrunched together and arms crossed over his chest. "She says Seifer disappeared, and its probably your fault because she saw you yelling at him and be a jackass right before he started acting all weird."

The was a long pause, Squall's face passing through several expressions- fear, loss, crumbling resolve, anger, hatred- before he managed to gather himself somewhat, raising his head to look at Sora again. He looked haunted, gray eyes dull. "His name is Seifer?"

The hiding blonde felt his throat tighten, wanting to apologize desperately for such an odd thing, just so Squall wouldn't have to look that way anymore.

"Yes, his name is Seifer. Leon! That's not even important!"

"It's just another thing I didn't need," the man answered softly, choking on his own words.

Sora looked at him oddly, before shaking his head as he realized he was getting detracted. "What the hell did you do to him, anyway?" He tried to look angry, but it didn't look right on his face. He was annoyed, maybe aggravated, but being truly angry at anything was hard for him now, his effort having paid off and the world having returned to him everything precious.

Leon, somewhere in the dark depths of his soul, felt bitter and cheated; hadn't he worked just as hard?

He looked away, steel-gray eyes searching the sky for answers. "I told him to stop following me around."

Sora, always anxious to help, practically jumped at his answers. "And you think that'd make him disappear? Be real! Leon, tell me what's really going on!"

"Nothing."

"Le-on!"

"Sora."

"Why are you so mean to him?"

"Sora!"

"Leon!" The sharp exclamation from the teenager caused Leon's expression to turn faintly surprised, before he became resigned. The Chosen was not going to let him off the hook, but it was a place he really didn't want to go near. The boy's expression softened. "Leon, there's something else you're worried about, and you need to tell someone."

"You don't understand, Sora."

"Then explain it to me!" he yelled, stomping his foot.

"Why don't you just shut the hell up and mind your own business?!"

The older man had been punched across the jaw before he knew it was coming. He looked into the boy's face, angry and resentful. It had been the start of a spectacular battle, all the more amazing for the great restraint both showed in not damaging anything around them in the slightest.

It ended oddly, with the gunblader sprawled against pavement, torn and bleeding, Sora standing over him. The adolescent was breathing laboriously, teeth clenched as he glared down at the man, pointing the dull keyblade at the man's chest. "Are you gonna tell me now, or do I have to beat you up s'more?"

Defeated and lonely, Leon resigned himself to a few hours of tearing open barely-stitched and ever-unhealing wounds. "Go inside and get some potions, I'll figure things out before you get back…"

Seifer watched the boy vanish into the house and started moving towards the brunet before he knew he was doing it. He paused in shock-realization, shrinking back as gray eyes racked the area near where he stood, narrowed. This would be a bad, bad time… but he didn't want to leave. Besides, this was about him- well sort of. He deserved to know, after all the odd feelings he'd been forced to wrestle with.

Leon waited against the wall with his arms crossed, chin against his chest and hair falling across his face, making it unreadable. He exhaled in a quiet hiss between clenched teeth when Sora came back out. He purposefully took his sweet time drinking the potion, though it tasted terrible, refusing to look at the boy in the eye.

Sora coughed loudly after a few moments, looking at him sternly. Leon made a tense comment about who was oldest, and Sora replied simply with something about maturity, smirking faintly. Leon avoided talking to the point where it looked like Sora was about to pull out Oblivion on him.

He sighed heavily, sinking to the ground. Confused, the teenage sat beside him.

"I wasn't born here, Sora."

"Really?" he mused. "I thought all of you guys wanted to come back here because it was your home..?"

"My home doesn't exist," he answered, teeth gritted. "Not anymore. It never returned."

"I come from a place called Balaam Garden. The names were… alike enough. Maybe that's why I stayed at first…"

"My… friends there… Rinoa, Zell, Quistis… there were too many of them, we couldn't… We evacuated all the students first, god knows if most of them survived… there were a few in Traverse for a while… I don't know." He spoke quietly, slowly, as though it was hard for him to gather a clear line of thought out of the mess that was his past.

"They all said the survivors would need me. They wrestled me on the damn ship and… god. Selphie and Irvine were with me- Selphie was our pilot, after all. I had to watch." His voice shook and he cut himself off, swallowing thickly.

"Selphie was- she'd dealt with total destruction before, I guess… it was a bit too much. She wasn't watching her piloting too closely, so she hit something. We were heading straight for an asteroid so… they forced me onto an escape pod. Irvine wouldn't go without Selphie… I had to watch them crash." He stopped again for a long while, so that he wouldn't show any weakness. He hated dealing with his past. He didn't have to say anything around the others, but Sora… Sora didn't understand! Things had been terrible, but no one he loved had died.

In the shadows, Seifer had developed the oddest expression. The entire thing made him sick, and an echo in him told him- not only should Squall not have been saying all these things, but he should be reassuring him. It was only natural.

"So," he started again, voice low, "out of everyone I knew it was down to me and Seifer."

"… 'Seifer'?"

"Yes," he hissed, fists clenching. "Seifer."

"So, 'Squall' and Seifer, all alone land in a pod in the Radiant Garden wastes, knocked unconscious by the landing. Yuffie found us, because Cid had pretended to hide something of hers around there to get her to leave him alone for a while. You can probably guess the rest. Aerith healed us, Tifa talked to Seifer- he was… stronger than me. I couldn't even start to talk about what had happened, then. He said it was only because I was closer to them, but he had lost Fuujin and Raijin."

Seifer thought the entire thing was getting completely out of control.

Leon pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes, breathing slowly- it was painfully obvious that his was consciously making it that way.

"Leon, I'm so sor-"

"Save your breath. I'm not done yet."

Sora looked shocked that there might be more. Well, after all he knew Seifer- just never imagined they might know each other. And why would have Seifer left Radiant Garden for Twilight Town? He supposed they must've been some of the students Leon was talking about, and they had made it out. It made enough sense to him.

"Seifer," the gunblader started again slowly, "is not the Seifer you know. He was my age. Actually…" a flash of something akin to a faint smile ghosted across his lips, before being cut off abruptly, "a faint bit older."

He made an odd, frustrated sound, running shaky fingers though his blood-crusted hair.

"He was the only thing I had left." Sora had to swallow.

"Goddamn idiot had been around all my life," he continued, gritting his teeth. "Pissing me off for most of it, imagine. And he just kept doing it. To distract me, because he thought it was funny, I don't even know. It was a part of him just as it was a part of me." He laughed quietly- and both listeners thought to themselves that it sounded painfully fake. "Yuffie would love to tell you all about him," he added softly, leaning forward, hair obscuring his face once again.

Leon paused for so long Sora was afraid he'd stopped talking altogether, nudging the man. Leon jerked his head to the side, and the younger brunet settled back for a while longer.

Seifer was getting annoyed. Sure, Squall had led a terrible life, but he was getting really sore here!

He was so busy bitching he almost missed it when Leon started up again.

"We got… closer, I guess. We always had a foolish sort of relationship and… well, never mind, I'll spare you useless details. We… got married. I suppose."

It was where Leon got weird. He stood and began to pace, moving much more than he ever did- turning here, running fingers through his hair, reaching for a ring that didn't exist around his finger, running his palms down the side of his pants. Sora winced and stared at his feet, unable to watch Leon's equivalent of breaking down- or trying not to and failing.

"My vows…" he started again with a wicked laugh, digging his nails into his scalp, "my vows said I'd… never let anything happen to him like happened to the others." Hot tears fought their way to his eyes but he swept them away, clenching his jaw.

"And come the fall of Radiant Garden, he was the one to force me on the damn ship and close the door. That damned fucking asshole, all my life I should have seen that coming, and his last fucking words were 'I'll see you later'! I can't stand him, I can't-"

He cut off abruptly, swallowing, and turned around to stare at Sora for a second or two before hurrying off. Seifer watching him pass before darting after him as quietly as possible.

Sora sighed sadly, slumping. He heard the door open and close, and pink dust across his vision. "Aerith, I-"

"After that," she started over him, as though continuing Leon's speech, "he wouldn't let anyone call him Squall anymore. 'Squall wouldn't have let him die,' he said, 'Squall would've pushed him on the damn ship. I wasn't strong enough.' We tried to tell him Seifer wouldn't have left him, but… nothing to do. He won't let himself heal, even after he threw his ring away."

She shook her head, sighing. "He'd say it wasn't his. Squall was married to Seifer, but Squall didn't exist anymore."

Sora laughed weakly, though he looked ready to cry. "And I thought I had it bad."

"Let's just leave him on his own for now…"

Regardless of their decision, Leon wasn't going to be alone for long.

"You're really stupid, you know that?" The juvenile sounded rather angry for someone who wasn't really involved in the situation as he moved towards the brunet. The man was sitting on the edge of the chasm, feet dangling over, fingers playing with his Greaver pendant

Lucky for him, Leon was too worn out to beat him up for showing his face. "What do you want?" he hissed, shoulders tensing.

Seifer ignored the question, seating himself near by not next to Leon, looking over the odd blue landscape. "You think he'd want you to suffer forever? If he knew you'd act this way, he would've rather died with you. Who wants to die for someone who's just going to grieve for their whole life?"

"Would you just shut up? You don't understand what it feels like. Don't just run your mouth at me, brat."

"I lost you, didn't I?" he answered a half-beat later, voice tight and airy and oddly old.

"Don't talk like you're him," he hissed, digging his fingers into the ground. "There's no way you're him. Even if you died and had been reborn, you couldn't be more than four by now."

"Does it matter?" he answered softly. He reached around his neck and unclasped something, pulling a chain out from under his shirt. Unraveling Leon's fingers, he let the entire thing drop in the man's palm. "And do you really think he'd ever willingly let you break your vows?" He smiled faintly, shrugged, and trudged off.

Squall stared at the ring in his hand, shivered, traced the 'forever and always' etched into the gold and finally let himself cry.

He didn't return until the next morning, once again quiet, a wall to those that didn't know him. He was faintly surprised to discover the din of breakfast- it could be bad, but not this bad. He understood when he noticed Seifer's face among them- Tifa and Aerith with odd theories on how it was possible for two Seifers to exist, and if their consciousnesses could have melded, if the Balaam Seifer was just slipping slowly into the Twilight Town Seifer or if he was the main Seifer laying dormant within the younger Seifer…

Yuffie was rambling on to Seifer as she used to, the blonde interjecting with snide comments and useless jokes.

Cid coughed loudly as he noticed Leon and quiet settled over the table. Yuffie certainly looked happy. Seifer was avoiding looking at him, looking faintly uncomfortable. Aerith watched with an expectant smile, Tifa smirking at him. Cloud was raising an eyebrow at him, which really irked him, and Cid looked like he was trying to gauge his possible reactions. Sora, for his part, looked guilty, as though it was his fault Seifer was there.

"What?" he snorted, before starting to walk towards the shower.

"Wait." It was Seifer. He turned and looked at him through half-lidded eyes, arms crossed defensively.

"What?"

"Um, this may be pushing it, but… do you know where I can find a job?"

He watched for a second or two before turning around, walking again towards the door. "Reconstruction could always use more people."

He didn't smile. Squall never did. Not for petty reasons like that anyway.

Maybe in a while. He had some things to get used to first.

No, I don't know if it ever works out, or if Seifer suddenly ages. Write it for yourself and send it to me and I will love you forever. :)