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FFVIII: Forging a Lionheart

Chapter Five: Tough Love

By Traingham

Seifer Almasy would be a passionate lover when he took his final steps out the doorway of boyhood, as he was the sort of person that loved hard and did not let go, and this love manifested itself in many different ways—usually with the best of intentions, but rarely unaccompanied by a stubborn unwillingness to be met with rejection. Perhaps, then, it was Squall Leonhart's misfortune that Seifer so deeply loved him as the brother he always longed for, as well as Seifer's misfortune that Squall was so aloof and unwilling to reciprocate such feelings. The defining difference in their rocky relationship had much to do with the fact that while Squall only did his best to shove his orphanage brother away, Seifer did everything possible to counteract those efforts by turning those shoves into the cornerstone of their interactions, and so he relished their arguments and occasional fist fights.

That being laid out as it was, Seifer did not take kindly to others that would even think to lay a hand upon Squall with any ill intentions. What he shared with the aloof boy was a brotherly connection (Of this he was convinced and could not be bothered to see any differently), but what that odious fellow Claudio Humbaba harbored for Squall in his attempts to beat him were nothing but malice and unjustly placed contempt.

"You may want to distance yourself from Squall, Almasy." That shrewd fox, Xu, once told Seifer upon inviting herself to the table that he and his small coterie (Raijin, Fuujin) usually selected. "With that Humbaba fellow taking it upon himself to make the boy miserable, he may be more likely to strike out at you for your harassment."

Initially the young man had tried not to take her words to heart. Having Raijin around meant that his ears were very sensitive to the ever flourishing gossip network of the Garden, and Xu's lips were a source of fear and admiration to many of the students according to the general opinion of the girl. Being spoken to by her was a justifiable cause for suspicion, as it normally felt as though anything and everything she had to say was calculated to the syllable for her own personal means, however, Seifer had not been blind to Squall's increased irritation as of late, and with Humbaba being a fellow student in that tango class that Squall had started attending with Quistis, the idea of the jock taking an unhealthy interest in him was not implausible by any stretch.

The young Almasy reached the conclusion that this was a matter that he needed to get involved in, but to interfere with Squall's personal affair with Claudio by ambushing the older student would have been a disservice to his brother. He had to go about this the correct way and talk to Squall–he simply needed the opportunity for a proper opening to present itself to him, and what better chance for that to fall into the realm of possibility than lunch time? It was perhaps the one period of the day with the highest chance of Squall Leonhart occupying the same area of space as he did (professors made an effort to keep them apart during classes), a fact kept in mind by every other student in the cafeteria since their occasional confrontations in public had become something of a front seat spectacle that was in unspoken demand.

Locking Squall within his sights from the chow line after a cursory look over of the bustling room, Seifer quickly vacated his spot between Raijin and Fuujin to pursue the other boy before he could completely vanish into obscurity within the moving stream of hungry students, all the while crying out, "Hey, Squall!" The cry generated a desirable response from the other students that happened to be standing in his way at the time, parting a path to make his bee line for Squall that much easier, however, the boy in question appeared to hasten his own pace toward the exit as though he heard the call and had every intention of getting away from the owner, which given their history was likely the case.

Seifer would not be evaded.

"Quit ignoring me!" Coming within grasping distance of the fleeing one, Seifer reached out and clamped a hand around Squall's shoulder getting him to stop and turn toward him slightly.

Squall's response was predictably terse. "What?" As in he really didn't want to know the answer to that question, but past meetings like this taught him that to try and ignore a pursuing Seifer meant to find a rock to hide under until the storm blew over.

"Why are you in a rush to leave?" Seifer questioned him in a tone that bordered on interrogating. "You trying to duck out on someone?"

"Tried and failed, looks like." Squall replied, glaring daggers at the hand that refused to leave his shoulder. "Could you just spit it out?"

"Humbaba." Seifer observed the immediate scowl that came upon his habitually deadpan expression at the mention of that name. "Yeah, I see that's ringing a bell awfully quick. You wanna tell me what's going on between you and that pompous son of a bitebug?"

"Nothing stays personal around this academy." Squall cursed under his breath before shifting his annoyance back on his orphanage brother. "Why would I tell you anything? That's never going to be a thing."

"You're not hiding anything from me." Seifer removed his hand from Squall's shoulder to poke at the scab over his right eye. "You're looking beat up these days, and I can see it in your eyes, especially now. You wanna hurt somebody bad."

"...Whatever." Squall moved Seifer's hand away from his face. "I don't need this problem to blow up. Don't interfere."

"You let that ass beat you up again and I will." Seifer poked him in the chest hard, his eyes intense. "You have no problems with throwing a punch my way, so quit being a wuss and fight back like a man." Said one thirteen year old to another.

"You don't get it." Squall retorted. "This isn't about proving whether I'm scared of him or not."

"I do get it. We think differently, but what you don't understand is that the more you let this guy push you down the cockier he is gonna get. Just taking it isn't going to make this bastard go away, he's only going to hit you harder until he's sure that he's beaten you, and you keep disrespecting him by walking around the Garden like nothing's bothering you. What do you think is gonna happen when you piss him off like that?"

"I'm handling this my own way." Squall insisted, turning to walk away. "And I'll do it without anyone's help."

"Doesn't look like you're doing much of anything." Seifer shot back, picking up the volume of his voice as the other boy's fleeting form got farther toward the opposite end of the cafeteria bridge. "You're embarrassing me!" Fully expecting Squall to call him out on his last remark, Seifer felt an undeniable twinge of disappointment when he received nothing but silence as a reply. Everyday it seemed as though Squall was only getting better at tuning his voice out.

Discouraging.

"Jerk." Seifer spat at the floor, turning around when the edge of something flat jabbed his back. Raijin stood behind him holding two loaded lunch trays with Fuujin standing close by holding her own. Her left eye, not obscured by her unkempt, silver hair, followed Squall's back momentarily before refocusing on Seifer. That did not go unnoticed.

"Went better than expected? You're usually sporting a busted lip or a black eye whenever you two talk, ya know?" Raijin inquired optimistically with a hearty laugh. Unlike Fuujin the idea of Seifer and Squall throwing punches at each other was not a cause for immediate intervention to him, which is why he insisted that they take their time getting back to Seifer after picking up their lunch. Raijin had generally quixotic views regarding the engagement of physical violence, especially when it was a personal matter. It was likely this very attitude that allowed an easy friendship between him and Seifer.

"Nah." Seifer replied, accepting his tray from his friend with a grateful nod. "That idiot reasons on a different wavelength from everyone else. S'alright though, I was gonna get involved without his say so anyway."

"Why ask then?" Fuujin asked with an inquisitive tilt of her head.

Seifer gave her question a shrug. "Let's him know that I'm paying attention, I guess. People are always appreciative when someone pays attention."

Fuujin couldn't argue with that logic. "I suppose."

"So how are we going to get involved?" Raijin raised the question. "Ya know, without tipping Squall off?"

"First I wanna see if Squall mans up." Seifer answered, looking to the bend of the lobby path where Squall vanished from sight. "Let him throw a few punches at Claudio, and if the bastard still has the strength to run away we'll finish him off."

Causing grief for Claudio was a welcome diversion."DISCIPLINE." It was hard to put into words what Fuujin felt toward Squall as clearly they could not be labeled friends, and yet watching him from afar bizarrely made her feel a particular connection toward the quiet boy—a feeling that was made all the more stronger by her one intimate conversation with him in the library. Needless to say, when Xu informed them of the friction between Squall and Claudio, she had been eagerly awaiting the perfect excuse to become involved.

"That's right, Fuu."

Squall had barely managed five feet of walking distance between him and Seifer when his guardian Shiva began buzzing in his head again in hopes of sparking some sort of response from him, chastising him for being so frustratingly stubborn and making threats of taking matters into her own hands if he allowed Claudio to take things any further. Squall could take her harsh words against his character, but the idea of her taking control of the situation chilled him like nothing else, no pun intended. Having an unusually long history with Shiva that went as far back into his youth as the moment he had become fully conscious of his own existence in relation to the world around him, Squall could claim to know his guardian well enough to understand how she ticked. She was wise, witty, patient, loving, and possessed a surprisingly dark sense of humor. To counterbalance those qualities she had her occasional streaks of jealousy (made scarier by her wit), she could hold grudges (while employing a frightening amount of patience in acting on them), but above all else she was overprotective of him, which more often than not served to inconvenience him whenever conflict arose. To put things into perspective, around two months back when Squall received his first taste of aggression from Claudio (which was, coincidentally, around the time he began ignoring her), Shiva's immediate suggestion for a solution to ending the problem was to stick the underclassman on the end of an ice stalagmite and watch him bleed out. Her suggestions have progressively gotten much more violent and depraved since then with no signs of waning.

Probably not too healthy having that voice talk in his head.

Contrary to the impression some may of had of the cool goddess after skimming over that last passage, Shiva was capable of feeling more than absolute disdain for those not named Squall Leonhart. In fact, she was quite sympathetic of Seifer Almasy in his tireless attempts to bond with his brother, harbored a great amount of respect for Headmaster Cid for...reasons, admired Quistis Trepe in spite of how much of the opposite could be said of the aforementioned girl's feeling for her in that regard, and as for Xu–well, Shiva did not much care for her. The farther away that girl was from Squall the better, which was rather unfortunate because Xu had been doing nothing else as of late but clinging to him in any way she could. Shiva didn't like it at all.

Oh, and there was Ellone.

"Squall?"

He could almost swear she was speaking to him even now, even though he put so much effort into burying every memory he had of her when he left the orphanage and was taken into the Garden for the first time. Why was it that he only thought of her when he felt like he was losing control over his own life? Others were trying to decide for him now–Seifer wanting to solve his problems for him despite being the same age as he was, Claudio wanting to put him in his place because he deemed him inferior in comparison, and Xu carving out his future with a jagged edge because he refused to do it himself. Could it have been that all he could remember of Ellone anymore was how helpless she made him feel in her absence? Did he depend on her for so much?

"Squall!"

"Hm?" The boy in question stopped in his walk, just in time to prevent himself from fulfilling a crash course with Quistis Trepe. He must have been lost in his head for a moment there for him not to notice the radiant blonde standing in his way. He had to play this off somehow. "Oh..didn't see you."

Brilliant.

"I doubt you were seeing much of anything with that blank look on your face." She said this while approaching him to hold him by both shoulders, leaning over slightly so that her side bangs tilted toward him. "You alright? I'm about to head to the quad for my free period. How about you come with?"

Seeing as how he didn't have to meet Xu for another three hours—"I guess I don't have an excuse to turn you down." Squall replied in the usual deadpan. It made the older girl smile brightly, enough for him to blush under the blatant affection she showered him with and somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind Shiva began a long rant.

"Yeah, I love you, ya' little jerk." She heaved a quiet sigh, taking his slightly smaller hand in hers and lead him along the way to the quad, all the while unaware of the Trepies watching from afar with such hellfire brimming in their eyes Ifrit would be proud. Xu watched on from the bridge of the second floor that lead from the elevator, having been observing Squall intently since the moment he'd been placed in the position of humoring Seifer at the cafeteria entrance. Satisfied with what she had witnessed, the student slinked away from her vantage point like a scheming villain.

It was fitting.

Entering the Quad Squall already had brewing in his head a list of the possible reasons for why Quistis Trepe had been idly standing out in the lobby around his lunch period– many of them did not point to the next few minutes being spent away simply relaxing side by side for the entirety of her free period (Quistis was, after all, a methodical girl when it came to making use of her free time), so when his senior spotted an unoccupied bench facing the sluiceway amidst the others that had been taken by students, he liked to think that he was prepared for any possible questions she might have intended to throw his way, especially those that might have concerned the friction between Claudio Humbaba and himself, or anything regarding his time spent with Xu. For the Claudio situation, he had been making an effort to keep that privy from her–having the training center to serve as an excuse for the bruises helped him with that, and Quistis so did love every excuse she could get to play the concerned older sister even if she did lecture him all the while.

He took the widow open space on the bench beside her, his muscles tensing on reflex at the warmth of her shoulder against his when she scooted over to close the gap he purposely left between them. When Quistis did begin the conversation, her opening question deviated somewhat from the bank of questions he had envisioned beforehand, asking, "Do you know what made you decide to be a gunblade specialist, Squall?"

Depend on her to throw him off with a seemingly inconsequential inquiry from the onset.

Answering that question with 'Have you seen how cool it is to swing around one of those huge swords?' would have likely gotten a frown out of her; that and Squall didn't like admitting to his childish fascination with sleek and shiny designs (especially not in front of her), so he went with, "It just felt natural, I guess." He could feel the heat rising up the sides of his neck and prayed to Hyne that he was not openly blushing in front of her. Quistis, however, did not tease and when he turned his head to study her countenance very little gave way for interpretation.

"It's a notoriously difficult weapon to wield effectively. Most students that work up the nerve to take the course never actually stick with it, and even then it takes true grit to really master the proper technique." At this she finally cracked something that resembled a smile, subdued as it was. "I'd even go so far as to say that determination isn't enough. You'd have to be as stubborn as a behemoth to find any appreciation for the art, but…" She reached an arm around his shoulder. "I guess that's what makes you perfect for it."

"Well, thanks, Quistis." So much time spent around the proclaimed idol of the garden and her words of praise still managed to make him glow. He could even feel a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth in spite of himself.

"I just want to make a selfish request. Would you be willing to hear me out?"

Squall quirked a brow at the timid inflection in her voice when she asked that brave question. He decided immediately that he did not appreciate the rawness of it, as it shook something loose in the back of his mind that he had made a personal task of forgetting. Suppressing it, he commented coyly, "Selfish? You?"

Quistis chuckled at a notably rare attempt at flattery. "I'm pretty good at hiding it so you wouldn't know, but I can be a very selfish girl when I want to be, especially when it involves my little guy!" Saying 'little guy' in such a sweet voice, the students occupying the neighboring benches could not help staring in their direction as the blonde SeeD cadet nuzzled her captive without a care for how her public display of affection would cause others to feel.

Squall did his best to lean away from her, pressing a hand against her shoulder to keep her away before she could succeed in embarrassing him any further in public. "Whatever! You can stop now."

"Fine, enough of that." The older girl finally relented after taking note of his mounting discomfort. She composed herself, continuing with, "Getting back to what I was leading into before, Xu has pretty much appointed herself as your personal instructor, right?"

As if just realizing that was the state of things, Squall replied after a beat of silence. "I guess there's no other word for it."

"And how well are you receiving her instruction? Xu's always shown a proclivity for challenging people that catch her interest, so I'm not going to beat around this nicely." Quistis looked him dead in the eyes, all humor gone from her sapphires when she asked, "Do you feel like she's over exerting you?"

Squall shook his head. "No."

"Do you feel like she's genuinely doing this to advance you as a cadet, or do you suspect that she's just doing this for her own amusement?"

That question made the boy a little uncomfortable. It sounded like Quistis was insinuating something unpleasant about Xu's reasons for volunteering her help—not that he thought particularly well of the young woman (He'd found himself a pawn in her schemes before). He couldn't shake the idea that he was being used again by Xu—as for what, that's what he could scarcely figure out the more he taxed his mind to make sense of it, however, when even Quistis (Xu's supposed best friend) was questioning the validity of Xu's kindness, it only made the itch in the back of his mind irritate him all the more for it.

"I feel like I'm getting better with her help, so I can't really say." He finally answered her after a long inner debate over his feelings. What his orphanage sister said in response only sent those feelings into disarray once more.

"Is it because she called you weak?" Her delivery made it fairly clear that she intended for the question to bother him. The blank stare she received in return was painful to behold—she hit him dead center and he was scrambling not to get caught up in her pace, but it was already too late. Quistis found the opening she had been searching for, and she was going to keep tearing away at his walls until he was an open wound. "What did she do, lecture you? Have you felt that way all along and you just needed to hear it from someone else to act on it?"

Squall could not meet her eyes. "It's not like that."

"What makes you feel that way, Squall?" Quistis tried to reach out to cup his cheek so she could get him to face her, but he refused to meet her gaze. "Who is making you feel weak? You're one of the strongest boys I know. You're probably the only person in the world that has managed to hold a contract with a guardian force at such a young age and remain in control."

"If you want to call it control..." Squall muttered under his breath, ignoring Shiva as she laughed from within his mind.

"Fine, don't tell me." Quistis removed her hand from his face, and with it the warmth that had been permeating the skin of his cheek. The loss of that pleasant sensation finally made him look at her, but by then she had turned her eyes away from him, instead looking to the sluice way. "You've never been very open with me about your feelings. Why should you change that now?"

"...Quistis, I..."

"I didn't mean for that to sound harsh." The older girl caught herself losing her temper and tried to dial it back before she could let her heart decide the course of her tongue. "That request I wanted to make...I want you to depend on me as well. Nothing you could ever need would ever burden me in any way, I want you to know that–to really understand that. It just bothers me, you know? I've been waiting, looking forward even, for the day you would just come up to me and say 'Could you hear me out', or something close to that. It wouldn't need to be anything major; It could be a complaint, a need to vent, anything that could make me feel like I have an actual impact on your life...and you running to Xu for help really just made me feel inadequate."

"This...I never wanted to make you feel that way." Quistis heard a strange crack in the boy's voice. It made her feel horrible. "I'm sorry, Quisty." He got up, she saw it from the corner of her eye, but she could not move a muscle to try and stop him. Her guilt was already getting the best of her, and all she could think of was how much she may have been burdening him with her own feelings by saying so much all at once. By the time she worked up to nerve to try and call him back he had already left the quad, probably off to see Xu, leaving her there alone with more than a few uncomfortable witnesses.

"Hyne. I can be such a damn idiot..."

To Be Continued